Scene #8585: Daughter of the Galaxy

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Cinder knows where Petra's apartment is; Petra's very excited about having one, so she mentions it sometimes. She's never been there, but she knows the address and the number-- 201 North. The apartment complex is fairly pleasant, in terms of the city, a cute trio of brick buildings surrounding a small courtyard. It's the sort of clean but cramped environment that someone gravitates to when they're low-income, but can't stand the idea of living outside a gentrified neighborhood, so they settle. Her decor has been upgraded since Rita was here, for the most part, and the small studio looks a little more like someone's home. The pair of folding chairs still angle towards the CRT in the corner, but she's put up the painting that Sougo got her, the glass sculpture from the Infinity Train, the writing desk Woz gave her. Opposite the writing desk, in place of a mattress, is a large half-moon dog bed on the ground, with a sheet layed out below it and another crumpled up inside it. Over the bed, hooked on the wall, is a wooden sign that says "LIVE, LAUGH, LAMENT". The kitchen is not clean. A dirty pot sits on the stove, some dishes are in the sink, and there's a cup that seems to be half-eaten. Petra is clearly unprepared for visitors. Even the idea of visitors feels weird to her, because if you invite a girl that you've been on dates with back to your apartment, then that's basically a sin! It also feels weird especially now, because-- When Cinder knocks, Petra cracks open the door without peeking out at first. Her voice is flat and hoarse, the lack of her usual soft subvocal hum feeling lifeless, somehow, despite the synthetic source. "... Who is it." Then Petra chances a look, and her eyes widen. "Cinder? What are you...?" She opens the door a little more, not entirely enough to let Cinder in, and Cinder can see how Petra's posture is drooped and heavy, and she can see the heavy impression of Petra's body in the cushion of the dog bed. She's apparently been spending her day off lying in bed. "Do you need something? Is there an emergency?" Petra tenses up, like she's ready to spring out the door that instant, despite being in her sleepwear. Her reactor starts to distantly whine, and she trembles slightly, staring at Cinder. If Cinder reassures her that's not the case, then Petra will ease up slightly and let her inside.
Angela	Cinder, of course, didn't really know what happened in that place, nor has she heard the message. But Yuri had to talk to someone about it and talking to her oldest friend was the way to go about it. Yuri was considering going to talk to Petra herself but ultimately Cinder offered to make the trip over herself. Yuri was fine with that and promised to cover her 'shift'. Angela is weirdly permissive about Cinder leaving for this task as well, though not in a particularly enthused way. Angela has a lot to thinnk about. It isn't the death of some guy she never knew that really hits her so much as the words. Likely not the expected words. She is thinking about the two giants. Of a failed attempt to split humanity into the good and the evil. Those sorts of things. Cinder is mostly worried about Petra because in her mind, even listening to a stranger's final words can be haunting. There is an added weight to them even if they aren't saying anything particular at all. She has brought along a bag of hay for the purposes of feeding the chinchilla(s). Usually people in places like this will ultimately fall prey to the Nest or be pushed into the Backstreets, Cinder thinks, but L-Corp pays well enough to get people willing to risk working for L-Corp--most employees are doing their work for their families or out of an ideological commitment. Cinder does it to feel real. She knocks on the door. ''Who is it.'' "It's me, Cinder." Cinder says holding up the bag of hay. "Brought some food for our little friend." Cinder lifts the bag of hay up. She doesn't make a big show of looking into Petra's apartment so she doesn't like gaze around to catch the hidden details she would if she were to crane her head but she does notice the dog bed. Oh that's clever, Cinder thinks, a dog bed is probably more affordable than an actual bed. Cinder may remember that someone did gift Petra a real bed later but will naturally assume Cinder was just feeling too down to use it. "O-oh no! No emergency." Cinder stammers. "Yuri told me the mission yesterday was rough so she offered to take my duties on so I could pay you a visit." Cinder will step in if Petra allows her. "If you'd rather be alone, I understand--but I'm here if you want some company." She will set the bag down near one of Sougo's folding chairs.
Petra Soroka	Petra exhales and sags, releasing her built-up tension. When Petra she her hand through her hair, there's no EGO gift for her to fidget with-- it's placed on the desk, directly in the middle. She opens the door wider and holds it for Cinder, closing it behind her, then automatically wanders over to the kitchen bar in a haze and leans her elbows on it. "Oh. The mission yesterday." Petra's eyes fall to the ground, and she draws her shoulders in. "It wasn't-- i-it. I'm okay. It shouldn't be..." Trying to say 'it wasn't bad' or claiming that she should be fine feels wrong in a way that dwarfs any of Petra's personal feelings. It feels like spitting on a grave. Petra shudders, turning away from Cinder to hunch over the bar. "He was someone from Metamorph One's old squad. It was hard for them. I was just there." Tacitly avoiding saying whether it was hard on her or not. Hiding being from Applied Ontology feels so insignificant, compared to Jay's death, but it also feels so, desperately, pathetically necessary, after listening to his message. Something she would never have heard, if she was really one of the kids Jay had talked about. "... You don't need to go. You can stay. I'm sorry." Petra partially straightens up and goes to the fridge, pouring Cinder a cup of water, and her battered metal water bottle for herself. "Sorry. It was hard on everyone. It wasn't a... happy thing to see." Petra hisses air through her gritted teeth, her voice a hoarse croak. "I just-- just. J-just. Seeing Dianna and-- and Elara, and him-- Jay-- and all of that, I--" Petra slides her back down the wall, slumping to the floor. She curls up to press her face into her knees, shoulders shaking, failing to suppress the sobs that cut through her words. "Sorry. I'm sorry. You can go if you want. Th-thanks for checking on me. Y-you don't-- don't-- don't need to stay."
Angela	"Ah, I don't know them too well--I think if I tried to talk to them about it they'd be all 'we don't even know you' but I do hope they're holding up okay." Cinder says, thinking about it. Maybe she should ask Yuri to check in on the duo there. She actually got to know them, a little. ''I was just there.'' Cinder swallows and wonders if she's really capable of being a good enough friend to be the one Petra deserves right now. She thinks back through her life and mostly thinks of a maniac that she learned to tie down. Cinder collects a glass of water. She has a sip of it to be polite. It wasn't a happy thing to see. Surely not. "Yeah..." Cinder agrees with the obvious but then Petra sinks to the floor and starts sobbing. Cinder quickly sets down the cup and drops down on the floor next to her, wrapping an arm around Petra's shoulder, tightly enough for a one armed hug. "Hey, hey--don't apologize for...being sad at seeing something sad." Cinder says softly. "We don't have to talk about it. We can talk about it. Whatever you'd like, okay?" She can't leave Petra like this. She should be allowed to cry it all out without LCorp seeing, she thinks. She really is so kind, being able to empathize and cry for people she didn't even know. Cinder's starting to feel a little weepy herself, just from sympathetic vibrations.
Petra Soroka	Petra makes a short, self-deprecating laugh, sounding more like a wheeze. "God. They definitely do need someone to talk to. But I'm not good enough to. I've never been. No matter what, I'm still not." When Cinder wraps her arm around her, Petra tenses up for a moment, then leans into her. The way she shakes doesn't feel like how a person does when crying, now that Cinder's actually touching her. It feels like she's an off-balance motor rattling in its casing, shuddering all over from some internal distress. Petra wipes the back of her hand across her eyes, streaking it with quicksilver trails, and she shakes her head weakly. "No, no. You-- you shouldn't need to see me like th-this. No one sh-should. I-I don't need help or comfort or anything, that's what I'm saying. I'm not the," Her words strangle in her throat. "I'm not the one hurt. There's a boy who's dead who was barely older than us, and there's his squad mates who have to live with it and can't ever expect us to understand. I'm not hurt. I don't deserve anything." Petra can't help herself from talking, though. Being held by Cinder, the two of them alone in her apartment, knowing that Cinder doesn't have the context for any of it, makes the words spill out of her just like they did when she was talking to Justin, and all the more bitter and self-loathing."Not me. I'm just a fucked up tourist who took advantage of them. I'm a fucking parasite who ran away from space when everyone else was fighting to save it. Too filthy to stay, too rotten to go back."
Angela	"Hey...Of course you're good enough to. I mean, you want to. Isn't that enough? I mean, someone should talk to them. And it might as well be you." She says, "He's out of my reach," softly, about Jay. She can't help him now except by remembering his name. Can she help his old squadmates? Well, that's a little more plausible--but less than you might think. If Petra isn't on that list, Cinder definitely isn't. She doesn't even know how to approach them. She feels Petra. She's auged up, it's fine--right? They aren't as wild as BETTY!'s. She used them to save her. "But you ''are'' hurt." Cinder protests. "It's...Pain isn't a competition. Yours is as important as anyone else's and..." She trails off for a moment before suggesting, "And when you're ready, maybe you should. I'm sure they'd prefer someone trying over nobody reaching out." ''I'm just a fucked up tourist who took advantage of them. I'm fucking parasite who ran away from space when everyone else was fighting to save it. Too filthy to stay, too rotten to go back.'' Maybe Cinder's sense of Petra the hero takes a bt of a hit here at the benefit of Petra the person. She's quiet for a long time. She knows how vicious Petra is about tourists. She has some context for that at least. She hadn't heard the message. She doesn't know what he said about the kids who ''didn't''. She just knows it was a sad message. Angela cannot ever forget it. But she isn't sharing it either. And this isn't something Cinder can forgive--not that she wouldn't, but it isn't about her and as such it isn't her place to. "If that's how you feel, isn't it more important to talk to them? I know how you feel about tourists so...Don't just be a tourist. I know you're more than that." Even if Petra is only visiting L-Corp, she's been a part of the team well beyond someone who just drops in just for the meltdowns. Cinder can't call ''that'' tourism. She rubs at Petra's back, unwilling to leave while Petra is hurting.
Petra Soroka	"It's not that easy. Not when their problems are so... big, and complicated." Petra's had this argument in her head before, a million times, over so many years. She's lost it, too, enough times to know what the consequences are. "I'll say something wrong, and I won't know how to recover. And they'll get mad and I'll freak out and say something stupid. They'd hate me if they knew what I was, anyways." No matter how much better Petra has gotten-- and she knows she's gotten better; as long as Lilian exists Petra knows at least one good thing she'll always fight for-- listening to that years-frozen voice talk about his last wishes for the beautiful children of space transported Petra back in time too. A child who belonged in a safe fucking home on Earth, who was never so loyal to the program that she wouldn't abandon it at the first opportunity, sheltered in a little fucking gated community while the dying boy's words were directed at a lab four hundred million miles above her head. She's a tourist for coming and going whenever she wanted. She's a parasite for coming back when the fighting was over. How is it even possible to make up for that? Petra shrugs halfheartedly at 'pain isn't a competition', cheek pressed into her knee to face away from Cinder. "It still means I can't understand it. It means I won't have the right words or feelings, and trying to use the ones I have will just fucking diminish what they feel." Petra shrinks in Cinder's hug, curled up and fetal and scared. "I'll have to. I know I'll have to. And I will. That's sort of what this whole..." "Don't just be a tourist. I know you're more than that." Petra tries to scoff, but a sob forces its way out of her throat instead. "I wish it was that easy. But it's already done. I was a tourist to their home for most of my life, there's no fixing that. The only way I could think to even try was coming out here and trying to fucking kill myself, but somehow Lilian stopped me from doing that, so now I just have to--" Each labored breath rattles in Petra's throat, like forcing herself to go through the motion is physically painful. She swallows, her teeth clack together with the effort. "I just have to try a million times harder. I just have to-- to somehow be better enough that it makes up for all the bad I've done. But I'm so scared, because I'm really, really, not." "I'm a fucking walking mockery of what Jay must have wanted. And Dianna, and Elara, and, god, the dozen others. They fought for their home, away from all the fucking poison of Earth, and I still slipped in and fucking took advantage of it." "I came from space, you know. Well." Petra's eyes flicker away again, and she shifts her bodyweight around, lifeless instead of rigid. "Lived there, at least. For years and years. On Io with-- with all those others. That's why all this is...."
Angela	Cinder holds Petra. This may be the only thing she can really do here. How can she speak to a multidimensional war from well before her time? She wishes Yuri was here, she might not understand but she never had trouble speaking her mind even if she didn't have much to say. Cinder preferred to keep her mouth shut for other reasons entirely, an anxiety over saying the wrong thing. She's more frightened of saying the wrong things than she is facing down any Abnormality at this point in her life. And some of that is, surely, thanks to Petra herself. "I'm serious! You've saved a lot of lives here and it wasn't like you were just passing through, you stuck around. You made real friends." Cinder is at a loss beyond that for a moment so she ultimately tries to reassure her, "If you don't want to, you don't have to. I'd like to think they'd probably be glad you didn't have to fight but I don't know them so I guess that's just hopeful thinking." Cinder trails off for a moment and adds, "And maybe you can't understand them perfectly. But you can still respect them--I don't know." The sorrow is starting to affect her by proxy. She doesn't let go but does rest her head against Petra's shoulder. "They invited people along to...hear these final words." Cinder says eventually. "Maybe they needed some backup just to get there but--I think they wanted his story to be heard, and felt." ''I came from space, you know.'' "What was it like? Until I met you I hadn't even gone past the Outskirts."
Petra Soroka	Petra, for once, is held. At nearly the density of solid metal, Petra's weight leaning against Cinder is a struggle to hold up, but it really feels like she might just fall to the ground without Cinder. She snorts through the choked sobs, and silvery teardrops fall to the ground in perfect, hydrophobic circles. "L-Corp really is... the first place I've been happy as an Elite. Which is insane, if you think about it. I don't know if that says something about me, or something about you." A brief, faint feeling of warm fizzing washes over Cinder's arm where she touches Petra, like holding it over a soda cup. "Maybe both. You, and the rest of Control team, and Angela. I-- I can't say I haven't done alright, here." Even after that positive thought, Petra sinks right back into the atmosphere of suffocating misery when she goes quiet. Petra either doesn't need or hasn't bought any fans to circulate the air, so the air in the dark, muggy room is totally stagnant, like a physical representation of her mood. "... Sorry. I'm talking about all-- all these things that y-you don't even have the context for. It's just..." "What's the point in reaching out, if I can't understand?" Petra murmurs, voice shifting from hollow to miserable. "What could I even give them? A blank slate to talk at? Forcing them to explain it all over and over again, just to rub in that no one else is going to get it like they do? I was there, on Io. I saw the way everyone else looked at them. And the way they looked back. The whole point was to be something different from that." Petra reaches up to touch her hairclip, before remembering it's still not there. She clenches her fist, tension radiating from her arm into her body pressed against Cinder, then it drains away. "I grew up-- partly, a little bit-- in a facility on Io. The Instrumentality Foundation-- well, called Applied Ontology, now, but when I was a kid it was that. But that doesn't really matter. Or it matters a lot, and that's sort of the problem." "It was like-- weird, living a million miles away from the planet, right? Not like we didn't have a warpgate. But you could still feel it. The distance. There were a few colonies that everyone always said would get bigger, but they never did. So it was a whole moon with just a few thousand people." Petra sighs, trying to sort through the memories with mixed feelings. "I don't know, really, how to describe it. Like, there were the... mechs, the researchers and procedures and everything to make us psychic, you know, a lab. And there were all the other things kids need too, like classes, and art and music and everything. But mostly, it was a home. Just. Not m-mine. And just by being there, I kind of made everyone who'd want to know me out of the couple thousand people there hate me." "Well--" Petra chokes out a laugh, leaden with the effort of dragging herself out of reminiscing. "That makes it sound like it wasn't my fault. It was. And is. More than ever, I don't belong there. That's why I'm immune to so many Abnormalities, you know? The same thing that makes me useful here makes me intolerable up there." Petra finally slides down completely onto the floor, head resting on Cinder's shoes. She stares straight up at the ceiling, skin faintly glittering in what light filters through the curtains. "And-- and it's not like I don't like it here. And I know it's too greedy to want both. I can't even bring myself to want both like that, anyways. I just figured... I'd be a little closer, to where Dianna and Elara are, like they're a midpoint instead of still being so far beyond me. Yesterday just reminded me that-- I'm not. Anything like them."
Angela	Cinder worries for Petra. She and Yuri signed up together but they ended up in different facilities until Yuri was, relatively recently, transfered here. And she seemed... ...Older. Different. Quieter but with a kind of edge that she keeps hidden from her sight that Cinder almost didn't notice. She knows something, Cinder thinks, something that Yuri won't tell her. Maybe she believes she won't understand. Generally speaking, it is easier to get out into the multiverse than to visit the City itself. If her boss wasn't as worried for her as she was she probably wouldn't have been able to come. Is there an experience between them that has made it more difficult for them to understand one naother, maybe even impossible? Are they simply coasting by on past positive feelings? These thoughts are brought to her mind as Petra brings up that she likes it here with a double negative. She doesn't know if she should offer any advice at all beyond a nod and admission that the situation sucks. There are lives out there that nobody should have to experience, experiences that nobody should be pushed away from the rest of existence for having. She holds Petra and tries to dry her tears with her hand. The robotic frame is difficult to keep up, but Cinder's heart is already beating so fast. She feels warm fizzy feelings that bubble away quickly, and the stagnancy of the room presses in as it sees a moment it can work on burying Cinder too. She holds onto Petra all the same. If she can't be of help to Petra, even a little, what use does she have? It's a terrible thought but Cinder tells herself that's all the more reason to stumble on ahead.
Angela	"Hey, it's okay. You don't need to tell me anything you don't want to." Cinder says again. "A lot of people came here because they didn't quite fit outside. Even if it's not a permanent home--I mean it can't be, I don't know entirely what they're building up to but they're clearly building up to something." Cinder trails off for a bit there. The truth is, she wonders if someone like her can really understand Petra. She isn't a space psychic (or an anti-psychic), she's never been in a war. She does empathize with needing a place to feel real. ''I don't belong there. That's why I'm immune to so many Abnormalities, you know? The same thing that makes me useful here makes me intolerable up there.'' "I guess...if you grow up psychic and there's one person you can't read or communicate with the way you're used to, it's pretty isolating." Cinder says. Something about her once she was taken to the Nest made ''her'' intolerable to the world she had been taken from. "I think..." She says, knowing that it's lighting a match dangerously near her own desire. "There's a place I couldn't go back to either. It wasn't the same way as this but...I mean, I get why you'd want both. There's something L-Corp can give you..." Cinder shakes her head. "But we aren't the people you grew up with. And the kind of solidarity we can give you is probably nowhere near the kind people who can't help but be entirely open with one another can have." She looks to Petra. "I think you're pretty great. I only know the you I've gotten to know and I'm not trying to say old mistakes don't matter but...")] She scooches back a bit so Petra can lie down, pulling back so she can reposition without having to throw her off."It's a journey right? If there are parts about those two you want to be part of yourself, you can make it your own. Not exactly, but closer. i can't speak for them either, but I think you can do it. And--I think it's better to try and fail than to just give up, right? I bet they'd be upset nobody is even trying to understand more than people failing to. If I were in their shoes, at least, I think I'd want someone to try. I can't say for sure but..." She feels like she's blabbing and stumblingg over her words. She isn't being dishonest but she can't tell if her own desire to cheer Petra up is getting in the way of that very goal.
Petra Soroka	"I--" Petra starts to explain that no, she wasn't always unreadable, but it was actually worse before she was-- but she can already tell how much trouble Cinder is having. How would Petra even explain the emotional, narrative, and social dynamics of psychic children in space to her, much less the additional layer of Petra being dysfunctional? Would she even want to? Lilian's still the only one who understands. There's no point in stumbling through a bad explanation of things Cinder doesn't know anything about, just to convince her that Petra's heart is rotten. "... Yeah. Isolating. It was." The heavy silence after Petra's lame, halfhearted deflection is just long enough for her to recognize the dynamic that she's accidentally settled into. Petra is genuinely miserable, reflecting on a breadth of life experience that Cinder is utterly incapable of empathizing with, and Cinder... thinks she's smart, empathetic, and heroic, and wants to comfort her despite not understanding. It might only be a shallow imitation of the real thing, but it's at least comparable to the topic of their conversation itself. The rush of emotions that comes with that realization feels less like a flood, and more like water rising around her chest in a sealed room. It feels like faking it and tricking her, it feels like actually growing and experiencing new things, it feels like this fizzling conversation where Petra is incapable of saying what's really on her mind as her heart gets heavier is a damning prophecy for when she inverts the dynamic with Dianna and Elara. Most of all... Petra feels sorry for Cinder. "... I remember you talking about it. Yeah." Petra has no choice but to keep conversationally plodding forwards. At least she's not crying anymore; she even manages to give Cinder a faint smile, looking up at her from the floor. "It's a little funny, really. That we're both stuck between worlds like that. And that L-Corp is what ended up working out for both of us." Be positive. Say something positive. You can't keep this up. "Being entirely open is terrifying anyways, ahaha. Like I said, it doesn't suit me. You're-- you all are better for me, than that, so it's not a worse choice to be here, or anything." Petra rolls her head away, still resting it on Cinder's shoes, to look up at the corner of the ceiling rather than Cinder's face. "Lobotomy Corporation won't last forever. But it's not like the company's ever been what mattered to me. I'll fight for the people I care about whether the company exists or not." Petra snorts derisively. "God. What am I even saying. You really do have such a skewed perspective of me, you know? Talking about fighting for people-- you were literally the first person I ever saved from anything. It kind of feels like I'm lying to you accidentally, because of that. Even though I..." Petra stretches her arms up in front of her face, then lets them fall back to the ground, settling into the position a little more comfortably. "I try to live up to it, hah. I sort of... really like, that you see me that way." Is it better to try and fail? Is reaching out an inherent act of good, even if you don't understand, even if you can't meaningfully engage with the core feelings? Or does it just reinforce the divide, and remind them how different they really are? Laying here in her dark apartment with Cinder, Petra can't be sure. She feels better in some ways, worse in others. She feels closer to Cinder, and endlessly, irreconcilably hopeless. But at the very least, she feels different. "... Yeah. I'll try. Not too soon, while it's so fresh, but I'll try. ... Thanks for being here, Cinder."
Angela	Cinder doesn't want to believe that Petra's rotten. She does think Petra's heroic and empathetic. That's the Petra she's gotten to know. She can even think of a few people she definitely seems smarter than. But it is true that there is a wall between her and the Petra of the past. Is it beyond her ability to understand even if she had everything? It could be. But she wants to. But she can feel the wall that is, nonetheless, there now even if Petra doesn't signal it so directly by stating it out loud. She has nothing but faith that Dianna and Elara will understand Petra if she speaks to them but isn't it natural to want to believe in those tears, those honest pained exclamations--they must have wanted something in showing that battlefield to others. Cinder is going to have to content herself with a faint smile. Cinder can't read minds and falls readily for a faint smile. She isn't deluded into thinking she helped solve the problem, but if she's even slightly out of that pit she was in--she'll take it. A message like that... Between two worlds... A pale imitation... A match is quick to burn out in the cold and just as quick to consume it's wielder. The voice of the 4th Match Flame's whisper is faint with this proximity to Petra but she has heard the EGO speak to her enough to know what it's suggesting. "...Yeah, it's not really about the company. Gotta take it for all its got while its here right?" She could just leave right now if she wanted to but, "And we gotta get Angela out at least." She's pretty sure they're friends now too. Pretty sure. But then Petra turns it on its head and Cinder says "Well, I'm just that precious!" as she brings a hand to her chest, wholly intended as a bit of humor. "But you--have saved other people after. Even Chewie in a way--And even if it's safer for you here it isn't...completely safe." She smiles. "If you like it, then lie or not, I'll be happy to believe it." She bobs her head as Petra agrees to see them. Secretly, she also worries it could go badly--but really the only people who can really help Petra out of this... ...are those very pilots.