can_has_vodka | For lastvoyages: Twenty-ninth vision [video+spam]

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For lastvoyages: Twenty-ninth vision [video+spam]

[Arkady looks...very tired. Her eyes are sunken and a little glazed, as if she hasn't slept. She has a pair of chickens on the couch with her, both hunkered down drowsy, and a somewhat large basket of eggs on her lap.]

Um...Lady Bertina's been busy lately, and I'm not sure I can eat all of these. Does anyone have a use for eggs?

[private to Touko]
Come down for tea! I've a homework assignment for you.

I do hope Junko has not been giving you more trouble. Giving people trouble seems to be what she does in life.

[Pub Spam]
[Arkady has seemed subdued these last few days, only making appearances during her shifts, and not being social much at all. She goes quietly about her duties in the pub, her usual cheery distractedness gone, but still bent on looking after people as best she can.

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It isn't like I asked her to be there. [Touko grits her teeth.] Someone like me getting taken over by that freak... it doesn't make any sense.

It's no trouble at all. Would you like to talk more about it?

I do. I miss being part of the FreakAngels, their collective mind and connection to something beyond it. I miss being in a world where things are relatively predictable. Where people who do bad things are actually punished or exiled or otherwise dealt with instead of constantly being given more chances to do wrong. And I'm tired of being forced to be a neighbor of people like Junko.

Well, it's just...I'm so very tired of having to live with terrible people. There are some great people here as well, but there's also a lot of craziness and apathy and cruelty and selfishness. Including Warden selfishness. And meanwhile the Admiral is so far removed from mortal life that he doesn't understand at all how some of his actions do us harm.

Oh Touko. [Her face falls.] It's too bad you're not a huggy person.

I'm afraid that Syo is your Hyde. She can be dismantled, made to go away, but it's not going to be easy. As for why you...well, that's part of the difficulty. Undoing what caused her to develop means facing what caused her to develop.

Oh, well, I suppose we all have our rough periods in this place. But I may need a vacation.

He does not. Or, if he does, he is not allowed to express it to us.

I suppose it is a matter of whether your deal is important enough to endure these things. I would have left long ago if not for my own deal.

I know. It's hard being here, sometimes. A lot of the time. Considering the events and their inexplicable nature, and the people, and how events unravel, and how the barge residents respond to them. And the Admiral can be a frustrating master to have, more often than not. I was glad to go home. Being here again is.... an order I can't say I'm thrilled to obey.

[He shakes his head and looks at Arkady, reaching into the bouquet and offering her an exotic bloom.]

But we're here to make people better, and things better. And that's an immensely difficult task to have. But to say that you can do so makes you a stronger creature than you know.

It is important enough. I have a country to finish saving. And I should just do it uncomplaining because I am more than part doing penance, but...sometimes it gets so difficult.

[She smiles sadly as she mixes up his drink.] You're right, of course. I'll stick it out. One of the last things Touko needs is abandonment.

I suppose I shall sort out these things. Maybe take a small vacation. But I'll be sticking with looking after Touko.

["Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" is too harsh, even Touko knows that. Someone who's into nice and feelings and all of that is going to think you have to just let everything out, and if that isn't how Arkady thinks, Touko doesn't get her at all.]

That's what makes someone like that come out, don't you get it?! That's how all those stories go. If someone looks too hard into themselves, they never like what they find. I-it's just going to make me worse...

You're certainly allowed to complain. I think everyone is allowed that here, especially with how trying it can be. In the end, the result of your persistence is what will last.

Not being home is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. Harder than it was the first time around, even. I... forgot all the things I missed about it. I don't think anyone would mind if you left the barge for a short while and I returned - I could even help with that, if you don't have any other options. But we cannot be selfish. We have deals, but.... that isn't the point.

Actually no, it's nothing like that at all.

When there are bad things in your head, revealing them isn't comfortable, but it's the first step to cleaning them out of your head. It's not like letting monsters out of their cage. It's like digging into the nasty back closets of your mind. It's hard work and you have to look at all the nasty things as you pull them out, and then you have to let go of them and throw them away.

But the longer they stay locked up and festering, the worse the mess gets. It leaks out. Roaches, rats...homicidal Hyde-selves...

...all those stored up bad things give her power.

No. [It rushes too quickly out of her mouth, and her fingers tear at the outside of the cushion she's sitting on.]

She doesn't want the same things I do. I know what she's told you, what she told Adrian one time, but those are excuses. They've got to be. They try to make all those freaks sympathetic now, you've seen all those books about serial killers, right? B-but she wasn't even there for anything like that.

I know. I suppose that, whatever else I am, I'm at least half human, and humans rather like to whinge on occasion.

But Touko will be brilliant if she gets past all this. I have to focus on that.

I know. It's true. Well in some way it is, but I'm here to save people here as well as people in Britain.

[She brings over his drink, which is sludgy and brown.]

She will be.

Look. Nobody is excusing anything that Syo does. [Or that Touko does, but she glosses over that for now.] You can sympathize with a person's suffering without excusing what they do.

You don't want to live with her, I don't want you to have to live with her. But the problem is that she's rooted in that awfulness I mentioned. You have to get rid of her by getting rid of that. If I tried to yank her out telepathically....

[She hesitates.]

All the bad things would go tumbling out into the light at once, and it might well break you.

You can block her off, can't you? If you can open something, you can close it. I'm one except for her.

It will go badly if I do this. If you really want I will, but after that I'll make myself on call to put things back.

It can't go wrong. All you'd do is shut her up like she isn't there. If she can't get out, it's the same thing!

All right. But please at least stay seated as I try this. [She is all kinds of worried. She knows that quick fixes like this only really work on some minds, and even then she'd need the help of many of her brethren.]

[Touko curls up and tries to relax, but this is different from when Arkady took out the block Junko had put there, she can already tell. She wants a block just like that, but whatever needs to get put away has tangled itself around sense and function and even her own memory.]

Keep going. [She winces in preparation, waiting for Arkady to cut through these threads.]

[The glow intensifies, as did the pressure in Touko's head. Arkady is trying to pry loose the troublesome bits quickly and wall them off, but she knows there's no fast way of doing that without damaging Touko's mind. And walling off every bit of it without harming her mind requires her to wall off...well, who knew what? Writing talent, ability to walk, her entire childhood?]

[With tears in her eyes, she draws a curtain across the whole mess, "showing" Touko her efforts through a metaphorical mental image. She keeps hold of one end of it, in case she has to reverse it quickly.]

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For lastvoyages: Twenty-ninth vision [video+spam]

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