Scene #9264:

Owner	Pose
Timespace Riders	<X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Sougo Tokiwa says, "Hey, Petra, do you wanna hang out sometime soon?" <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Petra Soroka says, "Oh-- sure, but do you have, like... something you want?" <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Sougo Tokiwa says, "Well... yeah, but it probably won't come up." <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Petra Soroka blinks. "From me, I mean." <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Sougo Tokiwa says, "Yeah." <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Angela says, "...Can you not just say it?" <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Petra Soroka rapidly comes to her own conclusion, slightly unhappy. "Sure. Well, we'll figure out a time." <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Angela mrrrms suspuciously and warningly. <X-Concord-Chatter> 4 Sougo Tokiwa says, "Ok. Thank you." Sougo's choice of place to hang out is a small coffee house on the corner of a decently busy intersection in Kiyose. It looks like it was plucked from the pages of a storybood, with its brick exterior, blue shingle roof, dormer windows and partial half-timber facade on the upper half. Ivy clings to the walls and spills out from tiled planters, shared with short trees that give it a charming contrast of seclusion with the otherwise open plot it occupies. A sign out front boasts a cheerful figure; a middle point between a dandy and a vagabond, welcoming patrons in a jaunty pose, with his eyes hidden behind the brim of a top hat. It's just Sougo, waiting at the table inside (which is decorated as one would expect, in the same sort of quaint little fairy-tale take on Tudor architecture). As Petra might expect, he looks too tired to be wearing the bright pastels he's so fond of, but he does smile at the sight of her anyway. "Hey, Petra, thanks for coming." The menu has what you'd expect--a spread of coffee blends to account for a variety of tastes. But there's also a little lunch menu. Sougo asks for a panini and a salad, along with a blonde roast. "Before we get into anything else, I wanted to congratulate you on getting into the Concord. It's funny... you really just kind of fit right in. It was like you were already a partner before anything was signed off on."
Petra Soroka	Like a lot of nights lately, Petra didn't sleep well. By the time midday comes around, Petra's already been awake for long enough to feel tired again, and she could hardly tell what productive things she did with all of that time. With a grey hoodie and jeans, bags under her eyes, it's still a far cry from what her appearance sank to years ago when she was a frenetic suicidal little freak; whether she likes it or not, she's stable in her misery, drained rather than burning overdrawn reserves. Having changed her entire wardrobe-- forcibly-- and seemingly having been doing her best to cut back, it's almost surprising how little like cigarette smoke she smells when she slips through the adorable cafe door. Hands in her hoodie pocket, she doesn't smile back at Sougo, but she at least doesn't look hostile. It takes a minute for it to settle into place on her face, but in her dim and distant self-analysis, she thinks that she probably looks 'resigned'. "Yeah. Well." Petra slides into the seat across from Sougo, twiddling the menu around between her fingers and not quite managing the effort to look at it for options. "... It does feel that way, a bit. Even before Angela and Doctor Eggman, I guess I wasn't ever really... distant, from it." Eventually she settles down to pick a coffee at essentially random off the menu, just so that she isn't sitting without something in front of her. "So I guess it's a tiny bit like fate, or something. But I know it's not that easy. You wanted something from me, right?"
Timespace Riders	Sougo sighs. "Yeah," he says. "But it wasn't the kind of thing I could say somewhere Sarracenia would hear, because you know how she is. If she gave us away to the Black Silence, she wouldn't think twice about giving this away." He aimlessly stirs his coffee. "And this isn't the kind of thing I want out in the open right now." Sougo takes a sip, then a bite of his salad. The fork clinks on the plate gently as he limply lays it down. Leaning forward, now more with intent than from tired posture, he answers her question. "I want to visit your past. Specifically... any of the times you spoke with Agents who are dead now, even if it was only for a few minutes." "I thought about what Lilian said about how much mercy costs. I'm willing to pay, if it means that people like Ayin don't get to have their pound of flesh."
Petra Soroka	"Yeah, well, good plan." When Petra gets her coffee placed in front of her, she's surprised for a second at how quickly it arrived, before realizing that her sense of time for coffee-making hasn't been adjusted since Chesed taking one hundred times as long with Angela. She takes a sip, and-- it's really bitter, but she decides that's fine actually. "It's sort of a hassle to have to be careful with the Concord channel with her around, but... I survived the Watch, so that's nothing new. Honestly, I was the reason in the Watch, so... karma, I guess." Then, tensely stiffening up, she covers the underside of her face with a slow sip of coffee while her eyes avoid Sougo's. "... Why? Are you planning on writing some post-fucking-mortem biographies, or whatever? You know that that's... a lot, from me. You...." She trails off, vaguely disoriented by the suggestion and the thoughts it brings up.
Timespace Riders	"I know. I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important," he says. He's known Petra for long enough not to be fazed by her answer. "I'm doing it because I'm planning on bringing them back, Petra," he says, eyes fixed on her like weights. "And in order for it to work, I have to have the most information I can about them. That means I have to see them through the past of anyone that spoke to them, and I'm not in a position where I can afford to be picky about whose." "Eventually I'll even have to look at Sarracenia's," he wearily admits.
Petra Soroka	Petra couldn't really have believed any other answer from him besides that one. Biographies would be the kind of return to life that Petra would pursue for them, if she did at all, but she knows Sougo wouldn't ask something like this, with that sort of tone, for just that. The details don't need to make sense for the emotional angling to lead a particular way. It still makes her mouth dry up and her throat tighten. To keep her expression from flickering in a way she can't control, Petra keeps the coffee cup by her lips, and momentarily unable to choke it down, she's forced to hold the hot coffee in her mouth even as it burns her tongue. The stretch of involuntarily silence continues on until she shakily swallows, and her mouth tastes like heat, blood, and bitter ash. "... That's... you're asking...." Petra knew all of them, obviously, besides the ones that died to Melting Love's quarantine all the way back then, and even they were familiar through Angela's memories. But 'seeing memories' and 'learning as much as possible' immediately leads Petra to the most pressing and crushing one, and the one that's surely on Sougo's mind as he asks her. "I-- I don't care about Sarracenia. That's not-- y-you--" The hypocrisy of Petra's instant discomfort with the idea, given what her role in Angela's Sigmund Procedure was, isn't strong enough to stop her from feeling shivery tense, hands tightening around the cup on the table as she stares into the coffee. "How does that even work? I-- that's a lot of memories, you know. C-Cinder-- what do you even expect me to do?"
Timespace Riders	"I know it's a lot of memories," he says. "Why do you think I'm so tired, right now?" He's been at it with other people, then. "I can handle 'a lot of memories.' I've looked through them in people who are thousands of years old." He hasn't touched his food since they began this topic. Even his coffee is lying untouched at this point. "When I go back in time to change something, what do you think happens?" he asks. "Do you think it's like the movies?" "It isn't." He shakes his head. "If something changes, it doesn't change universally, or retroactively, because we only experience points one at a time. You and I... we'd still have these feelings, these memories, about having lost those people. The City would be the same, Angela would be the same. But they wouldn't be lost anymore. They'd have experienced things a little differently than how we remember them having died." "Someone who died to Melting Love would have had the experience of getting away by inches or not coming into work that day." "All I'd need you to do is let me in."
Petra Soroka	"I'm not asking if you can handle it!" Petra suddenly raising her voice makes the rest of the coffeeshop feel awkwardly silent afterwards. Rather than aggressively standing up or leaning across the table to shout at him, Petra's hands are shoved down between her knees, shoulders drawn together and face staring downwards into her lap. She grips the edge of her seat, fingernails scraping against the wooden underside of the chair. "I'm not asking-- what, how your powers work, how tired you are, how much you're fucking dreading Sarracenia. You-- you fucking-- Cinder was my girlfriend for almost two years! Am I supposed t-to just-- just hand that all over, because if I d-don't, I'm fucking holding her corpse hostage, or-- obviously I knew her best, so it doesn't work without me, and it's suddenly my fucking responsibility if I say no. What's your problem?" Petra sucks in a breath that feels like it blisters across her tongue and glares at Sougo, tears in her eyes. "You haven't even said her name to me since she died! Not even today! And now you want all my fucking memories?! For what?! Why should I even believe that you can? I-I'm not...."
Timespace Riders	What's your problem? "What's yours?!" Sougo throwa back at her, raising his voice in return. "What would I say to you, Petra? What could I possibly say about Cinder, that wouldn't feel hollow and fake and stupid? Would you really want to hear that from me? If we'd been strong enough to handle White Night, if there was enough inside of us to stand up to the way it erased us, then she'd still be here." "What right do I have to try and... commisserate," he says, like it's a dirty word, "...with you, about something that's my fault?" And with that, there are his tears. "I haven't stopped thinking about all the Agents who are gone since the first time I saw one die. Before I even met Cinder. I couldn't protect them," he says, his voice faltering. "I kept telling myself I'd get stronger, and every time I managed, then there'd be a worse Abnormality, or those stupid Sweepers, or some other awful way for the City to remind us that no one there gets to be happy without bleeding, and sometimes not even then. And that doesn't even count for the times I didn't manage." Like with M.O.M. "...If you don't want me to see your memories with Cinder, that's fine. If you don't want me in them at all, that's fine. But..." I need this to not hurt so badly. And I don't want to say it'll 'get better with time' when it never should have happened to begin with. "If you don't believe that I can, then the only thing I can do is come back with proof."
Petra Soroka	"Fucking something at least, right?!" This is where the patheticness of complaining about not being commiserated with hits her, and wrings the energy out of her lungs on a defeated little wheeze. She's forced to lower her voice, but even with less force behind it, she still sounds just as bitterly unhappy. "Fucking anything. I don't know. How am I supposed to know? You know the only person that doesn't either awkwardly avoid the subject or mock me for it is Audrey. I don't really know what else I could have expected." "... Audrey and one other person you don't know," Petra has to correct herself after a minute. It doesn't actually matter at all, but she'd feel like death if she exaggerated this kind of thing beyond the strict truth. "... And don't you try to take credit. I was the most experienced agent there. It was my job to deal with it. It was literally, in the end, a... choice between her and me. It's no one's fault more than...." 'Mine', is the word that doesn't come out at the end of that sentence. ". . . since the first time I saw one die." "M.O.M.. I remember." Petra says without actually interrupting Sougo, just supplying the name she knows and the person she remembers too. "...If you don't want me to see your memories with Cinder, that's fine." "And just like that, it's my fault a second time." Petra's bitter expression droops more, shrinking into the back of her chair where she'd stiffened up before. She stares listlessly at the coffee cup as the steam coming off of it gradually dissipates while it cools. "I don't... you're fucking awful at trying to help, Sougo. You're really fucking bad at it. The deal that you're offering fucking sucks, and I'd expect a Demon to at least trick me into thinking it's tolerable. Either I trade you my memories of my dead fucking girlfriend and get my hopes up about you trying to make some fucking time clone of her, or I refuse, and then I've just...." Petra slowly inhales through her parted lips, cold air making the burns on her tongue feel frigid. She puts her hands on the table and pushes herself up, still seated, but on the verge of leaving. "... You can't bring me here and talk about the cost of mercy and then hold my fucking life and dignity at fucking gunpoint and demand that I pay it for a fucking chance."
Timespace Riders	... You can't bring me here and talk about the cost of mercy and then hold my fucking life and dignity at fucking gunpoint and demand that I pay it for a fucking chance. Your dignity? Tell the people who are gone about that. Cursed swords don't have 'dignity.' What good are you as one of those, if you won't let someone swing you when it counts? Sougo sets his jaw and swallows the thought. "...And now you understand the other side of why I didn't want to bring it up in the open," Sougo says coolly. "Because if I can't do it, then I've gotten people's hopes up for nothing. And if I can, then everyone who said even one word to an agent would feel like it was their fault for not coming to me." "So, I'll come back to you when there's more than a chance. Maybe it'll seem more tolerable to you when you see someone you recognize, who recognizes you. Goodbye, Petra." He motions to the door with a sweep of his hand and fixes his attention on his food.
Petra Soroka	"... Yeah. I do." Petra is more exhausted than she was when she came in here, and the coffee in her empty stomach is starting to make her feel sick. She isn't going to stay and eat anything here, of course, and she can't conceptualize bothering making plans to go somewhere else, either. There's times where she would just stand up now and leave, maybe spitting a closing word or two back at him before stalking out the door. She's angry, sure, but more overwhelmingly than that, she's sick and tired and unhappy, and Sougo isn't someone she can bring herself to dislike and disrespect even when she's upset at him. She promised she owed him something, after all, for being one of the only people that she didn't have to manipulate into being a weapon on her side for Angela, and the general lethargy of her recent existence means she's forced to think before she speaks. "I'd like to believe you can do it. Or... even if I do... I guess I'm angry at you for how clumsily you thought you could get away with doing this. That we'd meet up for coffee and I'd let you walk away with... a year and a half of most of the memories I made. I trust you with a lot, but not with the... core of my existence. Not with the core of Cinder's existence. Not when you admit yourself that you can't think of anything to say about her that isn't just... claiming you can fix it all yourself. I don't know." Petra turns to the side and drags herself out of her chair, slouched over and hands back in her hoodie pocket. "... I don't know. Let me think about it. See you later, Sougo."