[OPEN] I fight the fever alone

[bemist]

WHO: Gebura and you!
WHAT: June catch-all! Maybe longer! It's a mystery!
WHERE: All around
WHEN: June 2024
WARNINGS: Graphic descriptions of violence, dismemberment, murder, gore and death. Also spoilers for Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina!



[ If you'd like a starter, just let me know! ]

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[transmit]

[ If a person didn't want forgiveness, then there was no point in pushing it. The only person who could decide that was themselves. ]

… If I ever do something like this, I sure hope you would. You have my express permission to.

[ His clear gaze flits to meet hers, and the hand on her shoulder gives a firm yet gentle squeeze. ]

But for your sake. I'll endeavor to ensure that doesn't turn out to be the case.

[ 'Am I still not allowed to bother with you, then?' ]

[bemist]

[ From the way she's uncertainly tense beneath his hand, she isn't used to touch. Not a touch that's only meant to convey support, and maybe that remains the case in her future. Touches were intentional and kindness, care, affection... weren't really present.

There are people she can trust now, the ones she'd spent a technical decade with, locked inside a corporation to the point of a meltdown, but the ones she'd met here? It's harder to grasp their intentions. Why they bother.

Maybe this is just how this individual in particular is, though, and her shoulders slump slightly beneath his palm. The exhaustion and the strain etch themselves into her face.

"For your sake" also sounds like words she's never heard before. She doesn't think she has. ]

You could just go about your business, but it's not like I can tell you what choices to make. That's your own right.

[ 'Do what you want.' ]

[transmit]

[ They're lofty words to say for sure, but Elysium's always been confident in his own conduct enough that he'd be willing to stake his life on it, much more, stake someone else responsible with ending it were he to go astray—because, he wouldn't. He's never been lost a day in his life. Perhaps he might eat his words one day, perhaps not, but from the way she goes taut underneath his touch, he's thinking that with any less confidence, he wouldn't be able to get through to her.

It is, he's willing to admit, a lot of persistence from someone you've barely known. But, Elysium isn't the type of person to put weight on that in the first place. Time is a luxury——and he'd said it before that above all else he trusts his own judgement. And said judgement considers her no less of a kind person shaped by circumstances, much like many of the wayward operators that had eventually found themselves with Rhodes Island.

Things were never so black or white. ]

So you've said. … so you've said.

[ Yet, there's no denying that there's a different feeling to it. He keeps the thought to himself. ]

But, er, sorry by the way. I don't know how it happened, but I didn't mean to intrude on something so personal of yours. I hope you can trust me when I say I'd rather have learned it from your mouth.

[bemist]

[ Kali (but no, as her appearance flickers, the scars etching themselves into her face with a certain kind of care that definitely was not how she earned them in reality) glances around at the blood-spattered walls of an apartment that had never really felt like home to her. Just a roof over her head.

"Home"... she wonders if she's ever actually felt it. The facility was still work. Lobotomy Corporation had been hell. The Library, despite the almost ethereal sense to it, was still a death trap to those who chose to enter.

After a pause, her gaze (once again a pair of colors) flicks back to Elysium and she exhales heavily. ]

You wouldn't have learned it at all. I've only ever told one person about it.

[ In all those years. And that was because she sensed Roland, in his grief over losing his wife, as one of the only other people in that group also from the Backstreets, would have understood how life was there. ]

... Though I'd appreciate it if you didn't speak about it to anyone else. It's a memory that's part of me but it's not something I need people to know. They can figure out the kind of person I am from how I act now, not...

[ She gestures at the bodies. Not at her tear-stained cheeks; go figure, those had stayed the same. ]

[transmit]

[ He would've looked away from the scene if he wouldn't have felt inherently disrespectful for it. That, and, he would've never ignored anyone in a million years following that kind of aftermath. ]

If I'm not meant to know, that's just how it is. … I maintain that my opinion on you hasn't changed any. People can figure out the kind of person you are from how you act now, was it? That's a good way to put it.

[ Which is to say: still kind, even with the added context, and that he agrees. Messed up of him, maybe, considering what he'd just saw, but his company literally takes in war criminals…… this is the level of forgiveness we're working with when it comes to the extremes people are forced to take. ]

… And, of course. I assume your coworkers know nothing about this?

[ Much like how he hadn't paid her tears any mind to begin with, he continues not to point them out, and only keeps the same hand on her shoulder. Maybe he won't avoid her after everything is said and done, after all. ]

[bemist]

[ She has to wonder, if Binah and Hokma know, if they'd still been asleep when she had been working with Roland. It's harder to keep track of the other Floors when she has her hands full not just with her own, but Briah in general.

Still, neither of them are here, so the point remains and she shakes her head. In agreement, of course. ]

They shouldn't. We don't tend to pry into each other's pasts and technically, we're not the same people from back then, anyway. The person who learned that power tends to strike down is still a part of me, though.

[ Not all of her, but certainly a substantial part that had dictated how she acts today. ]

... You must work with all types. [ It's a wry observation, if a tired one. He isn't treating her any different than normal, which is both a relief and a concern, because normal people should probably be concerned that a young woman just slaughtered a ton of people simply for trying to rob her. If his opinion hasn't changed, after that...

Maybe something's wrong with the both of them. ]

[transmit]

[ He thinks to Netzach's memory, to Netzach's demeanour; they weigh on his mind a different way than Gebura's does, and for better or worse, he's starting to get a better picture of their world. It feels a bit like overstepping his bounds too soon, but who was Elysium if not someone who oversteps anyway? Perhaps, the process has just been expedited. ]

I wouldn't say that. [ 'Type' implies a certain propensity. Were the circumstances of their world different, he imagines it would be more peaceful; strife itself is impossible to avoid, and there's no denying that the fraught and unpredictable conditions of it make it harder to believe one even has choices if at all. One could see it in Neo Tokyo and even hear it from the anecdotes from other Outsiders. Judging too soon didn't do anyone good.

'Simply trying to rob her,' though… That's not how Elysium would put it, but that's neither here nor there. ] Where I'm from, everyone's just trying to survive. … The world's a beautiful place. Cruel, but beautiful. Not everyone's so fortuitous to have options.

[bemist]

"A beautiful place"... huh.

[ Even now, she can't say such charitable things about where she's from. Not just the Backstreets, the place she hates most of all, the way the Sweepers just "cleaned" everything away on those nights. Trash, bodies, lives. The way people from the Nest had no idea of that kind of terror. The way that they struggled endlessly for an unfulfilling life.

... She doesn't want to be thinking about this while standing inside her old apartment. ]

I did want to change things. To make it so it wasn't just about survival. But...

[ She closes her eyes. ]

... Never mind. Get out of here, already.

[ And he will, of course, get booted out of the dream. Sorry, Elysium. ]