Scene #9526: But It's Still More Bearable Together

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	There's a certain kind of cruel indignity to the fact that great unburdenings don't come with a fade to black in real life; never, at least, for the person who has to shoulder them. Whether Sakura agrees that the pain of undoing is real injury or not, subjecting herself to it had doubtlessly been done to earn the following reprieve as much as it was to convince anyone at all; after they return home, whether shaken or determined, expressing hope, worry, or fear for their lives, she is the one who has to answer for everything she's done, and being 'wounded', at least in mental state, is the only concievable ground from which she might feel somewhat safe. The smoking part, the crutch that Bond had noticed, had begun when working on the tengu, but even back then, it was out of fear more than pain. Some time after the others have left, Sakura retreats back to the infirmary to finish off the rest. With circumstances arranged such that none of her minders are around for at least a little while longer, nobody is around to actually ensure that Petra leaves for real. Lingering around even ten minutes later is a good reminder of how monumentally stupid it was to arrange this meeting in the first place, from a perspective of abundant caution. As far from the scenic courtyard as it's possible to get before leaving the building, she finds her at the other end of the recently-bloodstained room from before. Elbows on the edge of the window. layers of formalwear only halfway on her shoulders, Sakura burns slowly through the last, bitter dregs of smoke, staring outside at the November plum blossoms; the sole remaining uncurated colour that the manorhouse permits anyone inside to see.
Petra Soroka	It's easy enough for Petra to delay leaving just by lingering to talk with Nika for a bit longer. By the time the others have filtered out, the hour timer that Sakura gave them is into its latter half, and after that she'll be whisked away by the structures that surround her to be reprimanded for 'misbehavior'. The absence of a fade to black is to Petra's benefit, as it usually is-- in the stumbling shadow of one bad decision, once the heat has dimmed but before the cold reasserts its grip, there's more bad decisions to be made. Once Sakura has retreated back into performing for the Elites and the Himorogikage, it'll be impossible to convince her of anything besides self-sacrifice. It feels a tiny bit obscene for Petra to poke her head past the entryway without announcing herself first, like she might catch Sakura half-naked, so there's a timid pair of knocks on the frame. The sense that Sakura 'ran away' to the opposite side of the house, penned in and unable to get any further from Petra due to the confines of the walls, is one that Petra would like to avoid, but there's no helping that Petra is approaching her in a state of emotional vulnerability. The solution, then, is for Petra to be a little distraught too, rather than coming across as wholly reliable. This is easier than the alternative, but comes less naturally. "Hey, Sakura. Um. I haven't left yet. Sorry. I don't think there's a better time to say it besides now." Just an hour before, Petra stood in this same spot when she swore that she'd help Sakura by any means necessary. Now she's back, without any of the other Elites present, Norton and the newly-named Koban hidden in her mirror to leave just the two of them. Visibly restless and worked up, Petra takes a few breaths to try and make more sense of the words coming out of her mouth, thumb rubbing against her compact case. "... I guess, funnily, I don't actually know how much you know about me. But I made a wish a long time ago too, and it's one that would let me be useful to you now, as long as you'll let me."
Lilian Rook	'Hey, Sakura. Um. I haven't left yet.' If nothing else, Sakura appears to agree with Petra; about the fact that she's chased her into a corner and has her backed up against the wall. The way she turns back to Petra is smoothly normal, but her arm wanders over the windowsill all the same, halfway pulling her up to the open window by some sort of habit, or instinct. Judging by where her eyes focus, most of the opium must have worn off; which isn't a great sign, if she has that much tolerance by now, but it makes her purpose here easier to accomplish, as a silver lining. 'Sorry. I don't think there's a better time to say it besides now.' "Gracious. What an intimidating thing to say." Sakura says, then laughs, weakly trying to play it off. It's not much of a joke, though. She glances down, and Petra can intuitively recognize it as at the spot where she would be standing in blood a half-hour ago. '... I guess, funnily, I don't actually know how much you know about me. But I made a wish a long time ago too' Sakura winces with just her eyes. Her smile doesn't move. "I'm sorry." she says, nearly a whisper, sympathetic. She repeats "Useful . . ." in tones of concern, verging on dread. "A wish shouldn't be something that you 'find a use' for. You shouldn't . . . make that sort of thing, unless it's something just for you; something you can't live without. It should never be useful to others." And yet, still, Petra is asking, in a certain sense, exactly what Sakura had demanded. There's only so long she can fidget with the stem of that antique in her fingers, before dread obligation compels her. "What do you mean?"
Petra Soroka	If there's one thing Petra's learned to hate especially over the past year, it's being treated as a predator by girls she's trying to help. Her resentment for this is both tempered and worsened by the very reasonable fact that she almost always is a predator towards the girls she's trying to help, and it's never been enough justification for her to not soldier on through anyways. She drops her hands from her pendant and holds her wrists behind her back, passively disarmed. ". . . something you can't live without. It should never be useful to others." The side of Petra's head thocks against the wall, leaning in a way that vaguely gives off the impression of 'curling away' from Sakura. She smiles flatly, pinched fingers twisting the hem of her shirt. "Dunno if I can say there's really a difference at this point." Her eyes fall from Sakura, looking down at a spot of floor between them. "It's still benefitted me way, way more than anyone else. I'll probably never get close to breaking even on it anyways, given how much it cost to get it. But a wish is something that can't help being true to who you are, so... as bad as I've been, that's what it's for, just like me." When Sakura begrudgingly prompts her, Petra takes an uneasy breath. The absolute necessity she feels at Sakura's answer being affirmative makes her dread and second-guess every word, but there's no route forwards besides clumsy, headlong honesty, and hoping that Sakura either cares enough for or little enough for her to agree. Apathy, as with stasis, is the worst of all options. "... What I wanted more than anything else, was to wish for other people's wishes. That, um, 'Petra' was an inert, empty thing, and that the only way to change that was other people. To want what they want, see the world how they do, and feel it all the same too. So, it's actually the most selfish wish there is, ha." "So," Petra swallows and looks up to meet Sakura's eyes again. "No matter what, you won't have to endure the Voyager alone. I could do it in your place, or relieve you from it, or... at the very least, everything's more bearable together, right?" Embarrassed a little bit, Petra hides her mouth behind a knuckle, scrubbing at her face like a shy animal. "Um... but no matter what, I just want to do anything that'll make you not be alone. There's nothing worse than seeing the world in a way you can never share with anyone else, I think."
Lilian Rook	'Dunno if I can say there's really a difference at this point.' "Then I'm more sorry than before." Sakura says. Her smile is vague, but her meaning is anything but. 'It's still benefitted me way, way more than anyone else. I'll probably never get close to breaking even on it anyways, given how much it cost to get it.' "Breaking even?" Sakura raises a brow in inherited Lilioid fashion; an expression she lacked and found use for gaining since. "How does anyone do that with . . . a wish? Have I?" 'That, um, 'Petra' was an inert, empty thing, and that the only way to change that was other people. To want what they want, see the world how they do, and feel it all the same too. So, it's actually the most selfish wish there is, ha.' Sakura goes quiet. With that same expression, the same fidgeting, the same place and stance against the wall, it'd be impossible to tell what she's thinking if she didn't-- without thinking-- slowly and steadily lower her arm from the windowsill, until all of both feet touch the floor. "You're right, Petra. I haven't watched you much at all." she says, to something that wasn't ever an accusation, or even an assertion; just a question. "You should've had an easy life. I wouldn't wish such a thing on anyone." She glances away, forgetting her insincere smile. "It's better for them all if they never realize it for themselves. So that they might be spared the trial of trying to become 'someone who exists right now', thankless and without reward as it is." 'Um... but no matter what, I just want to do anything that'll make you not be alone. There's nothing worse than seeing the world in a way you can never share with anyone else, I think.' Sakura allows herself to sigh. She rarely does. She turns her head back to Petra with a slow weight borne of reluctant gravitas. "Mmh . . ." is all she says, for a little while. Her fingers stop on the pipe-stem, and after a while, she turns it over and slides it smoothly back into her sleeve. "Nothing good ever comes of sharing it, Petra. I've told no one, this time, but for today." The corner of her lips twitch and fall; the most sincere movement they've made in a long time. "And yet you're right. The only thing worse than sharing it is keeping it to yourself." She takes deep breaths, slowly, in sequence, and unlike she did while injured and panicked. Bracing, or perhaps searching; not calming. It takes her surprisingly little time to think. "This time was the first that I thought I might finally be truly alone. Somehow, some way, I've always been able to share just a bit of everything before with-- Lilian, though . . ." She glances past Petra. Nobody is coming, and yet the instinct persists. ". . . Every time before, she was born as Holly. The only one that ever stayed the same; so much that it always feels that she's 'crossed the divide' with me, each time. I could never say how much that did to make it all bearable; just barely. The day she reaches me is always the one I anticipate the most."
Lilian Rook	"And this time, she nearly wasn't Holly. Or perhaps it was only my own sin, to believe the same as the others, that she wasn't. That feeling; that we had never truly connected, but that I had only been lucky each time; that the randomness of the universe had no such pity for me at all; and the way that my heart broke to realize it truly was her again; no, even more herself than ever before, with a truer name . . ." Sakura coughs quietly, then laughs even softer. "Sorry. I've gotten lost in my thoughts. I don't remember what I meant to tell you at all." ". . . I think that I feel too little guilt towards you, and even less pity, to beg you not to suffer. And I know without a doubt what you mean by that wish to suffer, too; because I've seen you suffer 'together' to bring Lilian back to me, when she was almost taken away." Sakura softly presses her hands to her face, breathes deeply, and then leaves the window, moving hesitatly away from the wall; at least as far as the nearest bed. "If it were only to spare me, I'd refuse. I think you know that already, though. What you really want to 'exist in the same world as me', because everything I want is for her, isn't it? If that's so, then I won't refuse you."
Petra Soroka	"How does anyone do that with . . . a wish? Have I?" The relief in having two sets of eyes viewing the world in similar ways is apparent in a million miniscule ways. As Lilian's two biggest fans, both parasocial even as they've become close to her anyways, Petra can bypass the need for clumsily explained context entirely and speak about things that only the two of them were privy to at all. Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's proud, though. "Lilian used to talk a lot about betraying the expectations of what she was given. She was wrong to beat herself up about it, obviously, because the people that put those expectations on her were the absolute scum of the earth. But I was given my wish by better people who expected me to be better than I am, so...." Petra almost trails off there, leaving the rest implicit for Sakura to assume. She has to look away, but manages to force her way to the end. "... The price of getting it back was to try and live up to them anyways. Being an example of 'success, even so'. So I guess it's kind of an indefinite goal of breaking even, or something. Whether you have... I don't know. You didn't hurt anyone to take it." "So that they might be spared the trial of trying to become 'someone who exists right now', thankless and without reward as it is." Petra props herself up on the corner of a cabinet, repositioning a tiny bit closer to Sakura. The edge digs into her lower back, and her thumb digs into her upper arm, but she relaxes somewhat, surrounding a core of shapeless tension. "I think, an easy life was the only thing I was given that I was right to say no to." "Awareness and improvement are kind of their own reward, really. I mean, we only get the one life-- er, exceptions aside, but-- sorry if that was, yeah." Petra dips her chin and lowers her voice. "... And I've sort of been happy enough lately. I just got to show off a little plant Lilian gave me to take care of to Nika. Existing right now's got some rewards." Petra stays quiet while Sakura does, breaths that allow the pace of the conversation to slow and loosen. Sakura's words outweigh Petra's own by orders of magnitude, so she wants, primarily, to leave open the space for her to speak more of them for Petra to absorb and reflect on. The gratification that she feels from 'you're right' is visible in how she gets a little squirmy in the quiet.
Petra Soroka	". . . no, even more herself than ever before, with a truer name . . ." Petra's voice is low and soft, murmuring in accessory to Sakura's recollection for the mere fact of providing tangible responses rather than silence. "It's kind of incredible that just knowing her for a little bit of one lifetime is such a strong impression that I'd be surprised if anything else was true. Even without meeting, you can get attached to... patterns in the noise." "Oh, you-...." Petra start to remember something Sakura said to Tamamo and speak on it, until the rest of the thought processes. She stops cold, chest suddenly tightening, hit by a pang of sympathetic heartbreak so severe it rips her breath away. "Ah...." She struggles to find words for a moment, not directly putting to speech the realization. A shallow gasp precedes an unsteadily abbreviated story, as the only thing she can think to say. "... I had to relive Angela's memories of ten thousand years in order to save her. It's nothing like what you've went through, not really, but... one way I kept a little sane. My girlfriend was in the facility. You saw her, with Ash. I watched her live over and over, a little different but mostly the same, as a... single dot to follow in the movement of it all. Even though she was already gone in the final loop." "What you really want to 'exist in the same world as me', because everything I want is for her, isn't it?" Petra smiles dimly and swallows, scrubbing at her face with her hand. Voice a little rougher, "Well, I also feel pretty strongly about existing near you too. But, um... I'm very selfish, yeah." She looks away to check the exits of the room, wondering if there might be somewhere better to move to than the infirmary, but decides against it. "Thanks. Do you mind... sitting down, for it?"
Lilian Rook	'But I was given my wish by better people who expected me to be better than I am, so....' 'Whether you have... I don't know. You didn't hurt anyone to take it.' Sakura breathes out, meditative in its slowness. It's easy to understand how Lilian lets go of her tension and wariness like that, but it's strange to intuit that Sakura is somehow letting go of ambiguity; and difficult to tell whether because of its safety or its threat. "If that's what you think, then I must've already." she says, smiling again, with a different breed of pained look in her eye. "Everything I've done after, with it, has nothing to do with that. It's only a fact of this life which I have cursed by myself. And as for what I've done to others . . ." She hesitates, only just. "I must confess that I don't feel any need to make reparations. I just couldn't life with continuing it." 'I think, an easy life was the only thing I was given that I was right to say no to.' She suddenly giggles. Tired, perhaps, and short-lived, but genuine. "I wonder if a caterpillar feels rewarded for becoming a butterfly. Surely, it is the culmination of its life; it enables its reason for being, and surely a butterfly must see the world in such breathtaking completeness, experience it with such freedom, compared to a caterpillar; but is its short life from then worth envying?" 'I just got to show off a little plant Lilian gave me to take care of to Nika. Existing right now's got some rewards.' Sakura laughs a second time; this time louder. "No, never mind. You're right again, of course." 'Ah....' Sakura's tired and warm smile cools down to nothing. Her eyes glide past her head. "Even if I am a wicked woman, there should be limits to my greed. Even for waiting half a lifetime between each meeting, and even for the fresh wound of every parting, she was mine for many years more than Lady Tamamo." Subtle as it is, Petra can tell that she's holding her breath; to prevent a sound that she knows will come if she doesn't. "I only think it's a shame that . . . 'Lilian' is the name that came from within her. It's different from the one I always knew she grew used to as one does a scar. It . . . would have made me happy to call her by it in that old way. And to see the face she would wear." 'Even though she was already gone in the final loop.' It's not fair. Where does Sakura get off looking at Petra like that? Like she's the one who might cry. Even from two beds away, she can hear her swallow in pause that comes after. And where does she get off sounding so grateful just to hear it? "If only we'd known." she says, almost non-sequitur, yet painfully charged. "I might have thrown it all away, escaped to the west, grown up together, and left it all up to you." 'Well, I also feel pretty strongly about existing near you too. But, um... I'm very selfish, yeah.' "How spoiled I am, that the one I can trust to say 'Lilian before the world' and mean it is also prone to fondness for the rest of us." she says. Lowering her head as she turns and sits on the edge of the infirmary bed gives her an opportunity to breathe and glance out the window and touch her face without Petra seeing her eyes. "Only if you would oblige to be gentle." she says, bleary and laughing.
Petra Soroka	It's embarrassingly shameless, how much of a visible, physical effect Sakura's laugh has on Petra's demeanor. Where she creeped into the room fearful and preemptively apologetic, now she's been worked all the way up to bouncing on the balls of her feet in response to the sound, excitedly pleased like a dog hearing the pitched up sound of 'walk??'. But as easy as it is for her to show her cheerful moods, she's equally bad at preventing herself from crying when the topic turns. "It . . . would have made me happy to call her by it in that old way. And to see the face she would wear." A quiet choked sob comes through Petra's fingers, and she barely swallows the one that comes next. Voice shaky, she gasps softly. "Ah...." Murmuring, eyes downturned to focus on keeping any of the tears from falling out, "... The Earth's magnetic field changes slowly over time, doesn't it? Polaris shifts by one degree, and the entire Earth reorients to match her." From 'Holly' to 'Lilian', and then dozens of new faces show up with allegiance to the latter name alone, minutely different in ways that both draw Sakura in and leave her behind. "... She's really, really amazing. I'm so sorry." "How spoiled I am, that the one I can trust to say 'Lilian before the world' and mean it is also prone to fondness for the rest of us." Petra isn't shy enough to hide her face when the tears do finally escape from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks from accumulated weight without any more to follow them. She wipes them away with her hand and weakly giggles. "What can I say? I've got a type."
Petra Soroka	She wouldn't be so presumptuous as to sit on the bed beside Sakura, so that leaves her with kneeling on the floor in front of her. She shucks the mother-of-pearl inlaid mirror case off over her head, holding it in her palm like a pocketwatch, and then flicks her eyes up to Sakura. "Um, don't be startled." A thumb pressed to the center of the mirror makes a small, icy crack, and from there, broken fractals unfurl like a hallucination. The scraping of uncountable iridescent fragments of glass against each other is gentled by the sheer number of them until it sounds like flowing sand, pouring out and around to fit together with a billion tiny clicks. Assembled as a jigsaw, the huge shape of the Beauty of Ash fills the infirmary, curled into a crescent moon on all fours like a wolf. Its head is ducked to just barely not scratch the ceiling, and for all of its bulk and sharp edges, it barely has to shift any of the furniture around to delicately lay down. The way it's settled, the exits to the rest of the manor are all blocked off, leaving a semicircle with just the bed, the window, and the two of them. "The Beauty of Ash. ... Um, no relation." There's a sense of weightlessness that accompanies the presence of the mech, like a physically embodied void. The odd sense of silence and distance that it brings seems to cut the infirmary off from the rest of the world as if it was an oasis a million miles separated, intoxicatingly isolated. It reflects the sound of Sakura's own heartbeat, softly enough to almost be imperceptible. "It's as gentle as I can be." Petra shuffles around to get comfortable on her knees, and then holds out both of her hands to clasp Sakura's if she places hers on top. In this state, Petra's unusually focused, absorbing the physical contact as both a necessity and luxury without comment. She closes her eyes, and the unsteady surface over the void on which they'd been balancing pulls away, and the world temporarily ceases to hold any meaning. This power is a way of saying 'I love you'. Not the phrase itself, comprised of clumsy words and vibrating phonemes, but each of the three concepts in their primordial forms before translation. The greedy, sucking 'I'; the exaltation of 'you', obsessive and irreplaceable; and 'love', magnified beyond reason or good sense, a chorus of hymns and crashing drums like palpitations, a wave of heat and electricity and starlight, hands on your wrists, fingers in your ribcage, and perfect, unified silence. Feelings, all-consuming but gossamer-thin, layered and obsessed over and yearned for until 'nothing' becomes 1.16 x 10^-35, and then it punches through reality like a spotlight shining solely on Sakura. Petra sharply inhales, hands squeezing Sakura's, though not painfully at all. Slowly, much slower than it came on, the sensation that they two are the only people who exist in the world recedes, but the lingering, buzzing warmth like alcohol and full body contact remains. She forgets to let go until reminded. "... Yeah. There we go. Thanks, Sakura."
Lilian Rook	'... She's really, really amazing. I'm so sorry.' Sakura is reduced to nothing more than a nod. Even that is stiff, as if she could shake tears loose by moving her head too much. When she finally forces a laugh, it croaks, and shivers, and doesn't feel fake. "Well. If this is the last time, then I have the rest of my life to look forward to, don't I? Maybe one day . . ." tThe words are the fake part. The idea of finding someone else would be too sad even if it were true. 'What can I say? I've got a type.' "You're despicable." Sakura says, wiping her dry eyes with an accidental smile. "Thank you." 'The Beauty of Ash. ... Um, no relation.' "I know." Sakura says. The simple phrase erases any idea that she could ever startle at this. Even if it's different in-person, to see the mirror shatter and to feel Petra's other half, or the rest of herself, fill the room, in the same distant sense, the Beauty of Ash is a friend that Sakura already knows. She regards it with the fondness of a favourite streamer's spouse and a rich childhood friend's butler and the girl who warmly hasn't changed since they went to school together. "Why do you say it as if you're a rough person?" And the meaninglessness of it all was back then a drug; a sickly numb inevitability and an overpowering high of cathartic closure. And the meaningless of it all is a different kind; the sweet kiss of the opium, and the flood of warmth through every muscle and bone as the crushing burden of the world falls away and the feeling of life pressed down inside finally expands to fill the void; unfurling as a night flower in the absence of the sun's unfriendly heat. The escape from meaning, the absence of experience, the obliteration of the ten thousand things and the dizzying view of the wheel of birth like the pale blue dot that entrances astronauts for life, fills her lungs after the sweet exhale of relief, and fills the heart and soul with the golden glow that comes after the decrepit flickering of the light, in the moment it reveals the use still left in it. If all the evil of the world could be held at bay, if the million microscopic fractures could be splinted and let be, then the bone would show that it fondly remembers its shape, and heal as would a charred but living tree. '... Yeah. There we go. Thanks, Sakura.' Far more calm than on the drug, and far more lucid than without it, Sakura gives Petra one more smile, thin and uneasy and terribly, genuinely fond, and says "Don't thank me for what you're about to do to yourself, Petra. It's just something that has to happen to the both of us."