[ The point would be to protect them from what they would do given the information. Allowing Hei or Havoc to know about the Syndicate's true intentions early on would have caused them to retaliate, resulting in their demise. She would lie, lie, lie if it meant keeping them safe. Words cost nothing. She would give much more for them than lies and half-truths.
Amber stops her chopping to look at the other woman from the corner of her eyes. If she was capable of it, she would probably feel something similar to jealousy. Like someone with a tongue unable to taste being told about the most delicious dish, knowing all along that she won't ever experience it. It exists to her only as empty ideas. Home. Mother. What do they even mean? How do they feel like?
She swallows and lowers her gaze to begin chopping again, intentionally slow. ]
Warm, I suppose. Comforting. Safe. Maybe we're only grasping at air.
[The experience of emotions expressed not through concepts like "a mother's love" or "in a lover's arms", like "someone who always has your back" or "e tu brute?", but in the more clinical, physical terms.
Feelings of warmth, and comfort. Safety. Calmness. She's torn between the two, but not fully divorced from either. It makes sense, yet.]
It's like that. Like nothing can hurt you.
[Even though such a thought was illogical at best. A mother's love couldn't protect you, in the end- it was knowing that which made Havoc choose to leave Laura's in the middle of the night, when there'd been word someone had been poking round asking questions.
A mother's love-]
Do you remember any of that?
[The past. A time before the Gate, before the ME.]
[ Amber mimics the words as if knowing how to pronounce the syllables would help her understand the sentiment better. It doesn't, because here as in every place, there's always something capable and likely to hurt her and hers. Temporary and conditional safety she can understand, but not unconditional security. The unconditional love of a mother.
She notes with some disappointment that she has run out of makeshift leek to chop, that she no longer has anything with which to keep her hands busy and buy her time to respond. ]
No. Do you? Now.
[ Now that she has regained what she paid to have the power to manipulate space itself. ]
[It's something a Contractor could never truly feel- Havoc knew that. Nothing was every one hundred percent- whether it was safety or trust or anything else. But that's what it felt like to her.
Like nothing could hurt you. Nothing like Macha, or the CDC.
Silently, Havoc slid over some of the meat she was slicing. She knew about keeping busy, too.]
Yes and no.
[There had been advantages and disadvantages to never belonging fully to one government, one group, like many Contractors did. Less chance to go through the ME wringer had left her with a better grasp of her own past- before Regression, at any rate.
She could remember it now. Those memories simply didn't come with much in the way of love.]
[ They may be keeping up a conversation, the bare bones of it at least, but the real exchange happens wordlessly. The way each of them works quietly, slowly and intently to keep the time passing. Any moment now, Hei or November or Misaki could suddenly find Macha's air toxic to breathe. Any moment now the punishment could hit them and neither Amber nor Havoc would know anything.
She thinks it's better this way, this keeping their attention on helping them recover no matter how useless a soup may be in helping failing organs, because there's nothing to be done to stop their cuffs being turned off.
The slice of meat is taken with a grateful nod, and Amber carries on working. ]
[Thats the point, isn't it. There's nothing they can do to prevent it. They've been assured it won't end in death, only pain. Pain, Havoc fears in a deep, rooted part of her, is very similar to the pain all of her victims went through. The sudden realization that the air around you rejected you, left you clawing with nothing to breathe, pressing in on you, crushing-
She'd stopped chopping, gaze hyperfocused momentsrily on nothing until Foxtrot nipped at her heel, snapping her out of the spiraling thought. Blinked, the line of her lips thinning, before she used her knife to flick a piece of meat off the counter, sending the little creature scampering off across the floor of the rover after it.]
Mother, father, grandparents, two younger brothers.
[Listed off, the members of a family she remembered like a distant dream. Each loss and return of memories or feeling felt like starting all over again... So she'd died how many times now? Left all that behind years ago, once the Gate called her name, back when she'd gone by the one given by a mother, like a proper human being. But still...]
Once. I think.
[Unable to even fully trust that. Could she have gone under the ME after all? We're they something implanted for a job that just never got taken out? She supposed there was no way to know for sure- not anymore.]
[ Now envy is an emotion more alien to her than all others. Happiness is easy, sadness is easy and anger comes and goes without needing much thought. Envy is much more elusive, hovering between all three and not quite there but distinctly poisoning everything. But there's little reason too wish for something another person has when the coveted object can't be taken for oneself. Like a lover, a personal quality, a certain understanding of emotions.
She thinks she knows now. Maybe. Possibly. How would she know?
Amber chops a little slower, afraid somehow that she will run out of work too soon. She makes it a point not even to turn to Havoc. ]
[If Havoc could know, if she would ever say... she'd assure there was little to envy. Not in what she recalled. It makes the way she chops somewhat slower as well, not from fear of running out, but from the unpleasant recollection of something with negative emotions attached- now that she had the capacity to feel them at all.
But she groped about in her memories for something to say, something to captivate and distract. That's what this was all about. A bit of a farce... but a needed one.]
... you want them to pay attention to you all the time. Parents. Even if they won't.
[Flicked another piece of meat on to the floor, luring the alien pet back towards the counter to sit on its haunches and begin stuffing it's face.]
Siblings felt bothersome most of the time... taking care of them... being looked up to...
[To Havoc, she feels as if she's lived four lives. Her life before the Gate. Her life as a Contractor. Her life as a Regressor. Her life as a CDC Contractor. ... This must be her fifth one. It makes the past ones hazier each time. More distant.]
Grandparents were like a vacation... time in the country and being spoiled before you had to go home.
["Home", though she thinks Laura's house had felt more like a home than anything else in her world ever had. But what else was there?]
[ Amber wants to be able to understand emotions without becoming a slave to them, the way humans seem to be. She wants to know how others feel when being presented a gift, when told a lie, when betrayed by a lover. She knows only that one should feel happy, hurt and angry, but wonders still if what she knows of those three emotions is simply like jumping puddles compared with swimming in the sea.
She stops her chopping eventually, pausing a moment before giving Havoc a sidelong glance. ]
Would you die for any of them?
[ Because clearly, that's what you ask once someone starts telling you about their family, right? ]
Would you do anything at all for them? Everything in your power?
[Havoc was a slave again herself. One who had tasted freedom from the chains of emotion and yet sat bowed under the weight of a heavy collar once more. It was difficult for her to tell whether it was pathetic or not... To so desire to remain bound. To so cherish the yoke, no matter how it chafed and pained.
She met Amber's gaze, listened to the question- considered it.]
... It probably depends on the family.
[It's hazy and distant, the memory of a girl a decade and some gone, but she can still vaguely remember what the blood of her younger brother had tasted like. What the fire had looked like against the night sky. The opposite of dying for your family. Another drop in the well of guilt and remorse, for things she'd done and couldn't take back. Had trouble thinking back to before the Gate called, to years as a child. Would she have died for them then? That young, she wasn't so sure. But.]
... If dying would have helped Laura or her family, I would have.
[A family she'd fallen in to that had been warmer, felt more loving and like "home" than anything she'd ever known. She'd left in the middle of the night, left the more comfortable life with them behind for the cold and barren bed of a whore to protect them. Dying was only a few steps away.]
[ When the ability to experience such things as shame is removed, it is easier to meet another's gaze and hold it, no matter how uncomfortable it would be for most humans. But somehow, Amber feels the need to look down and away from Havoc's eyes. There's something in them she recognizes but can't name. Something she should understand but doesn't. Something she lost but not completely.
She doesn't remember a family, but she still remembers the hollow spaces they left behind in her mind, like the negative of a family picture with the important details washed out.
But she can read between the lines, nodding in understanding. ]
You could find someone else like her. Now that you're this way.
[ This way, she says, as if she can't quite say it, admit it, out loud. ]
[Havoc's voice was low, her gaze falling once Amber's did, returning to the chicken. The sound her knife made was soothing, blade on cutting board, the sounds of domesticity and a home.]
You can't just find someone else that easily.
[No matter what way you were. It's what made family "special". She'd learned that in those quiet days.]
[ Her instinct is to say there must be a way, because there is always, always one. But that mindset isn't for everyone. For most, one life is all one has. One family. One great love of their lives. Even if she would wish for a clean slate for her friend, a way of starting anew with a family to love, a home to belong in. Just because she lost it once doesn't mean she can't find it again.
Right?
Amber spares her a sideways glance, having stopped her chopping by now. ]
[ Amber, for her part, is content to do nothing else but watch Havoc, as if seeing her standing over a pot of boiling water is the most fascinating thing in the world. She needs to know if she would lie to her, even if this method isn't foolproof. ]
The ability to remember-- [ No, that's not quite it. ] To remember your life as your own.
[ Unlike the way she views most of her memories. Detached. As if watching it happen to someone else entirely. ]
[She answers quickly enough once the clarification is out there, though she doesn't look back Amber's way. Not out of the desire to hide, but simply because she was focusing. Cooking was soothing to her- once she'd begun to like it, and what it did to other people. What it could do.
Make them happy.]
I didn't go under for the ME much in the first place... one of the benefits of freelancing.
[A benefit most Contractors couldn't afford. But with offensive power like Havoc had possessed... even without a government sponsoring her actions, she'd been almost untouchable. Who'd want to risk their own life taking her down?]
I asked them for my ability to feel back, more specifically. Like humans did.
[Paused, hands in a bag of barley scrapping out what little remained.]
Do.
[Even she couldn't quite remember the phrasing- her recruitment had occurred where her death had, on cold concrete with shards of ice melting in her chest. It was all a blur. But she knew she must have specified something about it being unable to take back- or she knew as a Contractor she would have gone to the instructors first chance she had and voided the request.
What Contractor would willingly compromise their ability to survive that way?]
Once you know what the emotions are like... it doesn't feel like watching someone else's life anymore.
[Tossed a handful of the grain in to the water to thicken it, reaching for her last can of broth, mechanically cutting open the lid.]
[ It doesn't feel like watching someone else's life anymore. Like that one moment of clarity when she saw Hei smile, blinding. It felt like seeing a glimpse of a world in streaming colors after decades of seeing only in dulled black and white. It was jarring, frightening. It left her feeling as if she's standing on the edge of a deadly cliff, wanting only to get away, return to safety. It left her wanting.
How many years, decades, centuries, would she give just to see it one more time?
Now Havoc lives in that world, far removed from her own, no matter that they stand in the same room. ]
Why?
[ Having finished her chopping duty, she carries the cutting board with the pseudocarrots closer, setting it right beside the stove for whenever they're needed. If only to seem less invested in her question than she actually is. ]
[One foot in the world of humans, and one still in the world of Contractors. Even as Regressor, the spectre of her star had haunted her in the form of phantoms, agents of organizations she could only remember in snatches that wanted her dead whether she remembered a thing or not.
One foot still in that world, in the CDC, with her old comrades, her old memories. It wasn't true freedom, not true life like humans lived, maybe. But it was enough.]
Why?
[The broth goes in, a more savory smell beginning to waft out on the steam roiling off the water, reaching for a wooden spoon and beginning to stir. As she did, her gaze slid back over Amber's way.]
... I think you know why. Better than most Contractors.
[How many years, decades, centuries would Havoc give to have her life be color once more? No- How much would Carmine give? To live feeling like things had meaning and life to them, rather than simply existing in a grey, logical world.
How much would you give to drink from that cup once you'd had a taste?]
Amber steps away from the stove, leaning back against the kitchen table with arms crossed in front of her in a guarded pose. But her eyes linger on Havoc, curious but with a tinge of something that might be-- might be sadness.
There's too much at stake. But yes, she knows how frustrating it feels to hover always at the periphery, going through the day like a bystander in one's own life. People are always kept at an arm's length. Disconnect is commonplace. She knows that there must be more than this, which is why she wants so much to learn. It begs the question of whether she would ask the same of the CDC, if she can afford to. Yes, absolutely yes to the former, but never to the latter. ]
Better to die a free man than a slave.
[ A slave to what? One's own rationality, perhaps. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Amber stops her chopping to look at the other woman from the corner of her eyes. If she was capable of it, she would probably feel something similar to jealousy. Like someone with a tongue unable to taste being told about the most delicious dish, knowing all along that she won't ever experience it. It exists to her only as empty ideas. Home. Mother. What do they even mean? How do they feel like?
She swallows and lowers her gaze to begin chopping again, intentionally slow. ]
Warm, I suppose. Comforting. Safe. Maybe we're only grasping at air.
no subject
Feelings of warmth, and comfort. Safety. Calmness. She's torn between the two, but not fully divorced from either. It makes sense, yet.]
It's like that. Like nothing can hurt you.
[Even though such a thought was illogical at best. A mother's love couldn't protect you, in the end- it was knowing that which made Havoc choose to leave Laura's in the middle of the night, when there'd been word someone had been poking round asking questions.
A mother's love-]
Do you remember any of that?
[The past. A time before the Gate, before the ME.]
no subject
[ Amber mimics the words as if knowing how to pronounce the syllables would help her understand the sentiment better. It doesn't, because here as in every place, there's always something capable and likely to hurt her and hers. Temporary and conditional safety she can understand, but not unconditional security. The unconditional love of a mother.
She notes with some disappointment that she has run out of makeshift leek to chop, that she no longer has anything with which to keep her hands busy and buy her time to respond. ]
No. Do you? Now.
[ Now that she has regained what she paid to have the power to manipulate space itself. ]
no subject
Like nothing could hurt you. Nothing like Macha, or the CDC.
Silently, Havoc slid over some of the meat she was slicing. She knew about keeping busy, too.]
Yes and no.
[There had been advantages and disadvantages to never belonging fully to one government, one group, like many Contractors did. Less chance to go through the ME wringer had left her with a better grasp of her own past- before Regression, at any rate.
She could remember it now. Those memories simply didn't come with much in the way of love.]
no subject
She thinks it's better this way, this keeping their attention on helping them recover no matter how useless a soup may be in helping failing organs, because there's nothing to be done to stop their cuffs being turned off.
The slice of meat is taken with a grateful nod, and Amber carries on working. ]
Yes how?
no subject
She'd stopped chopping, gaze hyperfocused momentsrily on nothing until Foxtrot nipped at her heel, snapping her out of the spiraling thought. Blinked, the line of her lips thinning, before she used her knife to flick a piece of meat off the counter, sending the little creature scampering off across the floor of the rover after it.]
Mother, father, grandparents, two younger brothers.
[Listed off, the members of a family she remembered like a distant dream. Each loss and return of memories or feeling felt like starting all over again... So she'd died how many times now? Left all that behind years ago, once the Gate called her name, back when she'd gone by the one given by a mother, like a proper human being. But still...]
Once. I think.
[Unable to even fully trust that. Could she have gone under the ME after all? We're they something implanted for a job that just never got taken out? She supposed there was no way to know for sure- not anymore.]
no subject
She thinks she knows now. Maybe. Possibly. How would she know?
Amber chops a little slower, afraid somehow that she will run out of work too soon. She makes it a point not even to turn to Havoc. ]
Tell me how it felt. Feels.
no subject
But she groped about in her memories for something to say, something to captivate and distract. That's what this was all about. A bit of a farce... but a needed one.]
... you want them to pay attention to you all the time. Parents. Even if they won't.
[Flicked another piece of meat on to the floor, luring the alien pet back towards the counter to sit on its haunches and begin stuffing it's face.]
Siblings felt bothersome most of the time... taking care of them... being looked up to...
[To Havoc, she feels as if she's lived four lives. Her life before the Gate. Her life as a Contractor. Her life as a Regressor. Her life as a CDC Contractor. ... This must be her fifth one. It makes the past ones hazier each time. More distant.]
Grandparents were like a vacation... time in the country and being spoiled before you had to go home.
["Home", though she thinks Laura's house had felt more like a home than anything else in her world ever had. But what else was there?]
- It didn't last long, though. I was still young.
[When the Gate called.]
no subject
She stops her chopping eventually, pausing a moment before giving Havoc a sidelong glance. ]
Would you die for any of them?
[ Because clearly, that's what you ask once someone starts telling you about their family, right? ]
Would you do anything at all for them? Everything in your power?
no subject
She met Amber's gaze, listened to the question- considered it.]
... It probably depends on the family.
[It's hazy and distant, the memory of a girl a decade and some gone, but she can still vaguely remember what the blood of her younger brother had tasted like. What the fire had looked like against the night sky. The opposite of dying for your family. Another drop in the well of guilt and remorse, for things she'd done and couldn't take back. Had trouble thinking back to before the Gate called, to years as a child. Would she have died for them then? That young, she wasn't so sure. But.]
... If dying would have helped Laura or her family, I would have.
[A family she'd fallen in to that had been warmer, felt more loving and like "home" than anything she'd ever known. She'd left in the middle of the night, left the more comfortable life with them behind for the cold and barren bed of a whore to protect them. Dying was only a few steps away.]
no subject
She doesn't remember a family, but she still remembers the hollow spaces they left behind in her mind, like the negative of a family picture with the important details washed out.
But she can read between the lines, nodding in understanding. ]
You could find someone else like her. Now that you're this way.
[ This way, she says, as if she can't quite say it, admit it, out loud. ]
no subject
[Havoc's voice was low, her gaze falling once Amber's did, returning to the chicken. The sound her knife made was soothing, blade on cutting board, the sounds of domesticity and a home.]
You can't just find someone else that easily.
[No matter what way you were. It's what made family "special". She'd learned that in those quiet days.]
no subject
Right?
Amber spares her a sideways glance, having stopped her chopping by now. ]
Carmine. Was this what you asked from them?
no subject
Havoc was running out of things to chop, but that wasn't a problem. She busied herself with preparing the burner, starting the water boiling.]
- Which part?
[Being human. Being able to care at all. The family themselves.]
no subject
The ability to remember-- [ No, that's not quite it. ] To remember your life as your own.
[ Unlike the way she views most of her memories. Detached. As if watching it happen to someone else entirely. ]
no subject
[She answers quickly enough once the clarification is out there, though she doesn't look back Amber's way. Not out of the desire to hide, but simply because she was focusing. Cooking was soothing to her- once she'd begun to like it, and what it did to other people. What it could do.
Make them happy.]
I didn't go under for the ME much in the first place... one of the benefits of freelancing.
[A benefit most Contractors couldn't afford. But with offensive power like Havoc had possessed... even without a government sponsoring her actions, she'd been almost untouchable. Who'd want to risk their own life taking her down?]
I asked them for my ability to feel back, more specifically. Like humans did.
[Paused, hands in a bag of barley scrapping out what little remained.]
Do.
[Even she couldn't quite remember the phrasing- her recruitment had occurred where her death had, on cold concrete with shards of ice melting in her chest. It was all a blur. But she knew she must have specified something about it being unable to take back- or she knew as a Contractor she would have gone to the instructors first chance she had and voided the request.
What Contractor would willingly compromise their ability to survive that way?]
Once you know what the emotions are like... it doesn't feel like watching someone else's life anymore.
[Tossed a handful of the grain in to the water to thicken it, reaching for her last can of broth, mechanically cutting open the lid.]
It feels more... attached.
[The only way she could describe it.]
no subject
How many years, decades, centuries, would she give just to see it one more time?
Now Havoc lives in that world, far removed from her own, no matter that they stand in the same room. ]
Why?
[ Having finished her chopping duty, she carries the cutting board with the pseudocarrots closer, setting it right beside the stove for whenever they're needed. If only to seem less invested in her question than she actually is. ]
You almost sabotaged yourself back there.
no subject
One foot still in that world, in the CDC, with her old comrades, her old memories. It wasn't true freedom, not true life like humans lived, maybe. But it was enough.]
Why?
[The broth goes in, a more savory smell beginning to waft out on the steam roiling off the water, reaching for a wooden spoon and beginning to stir. As she did, her gaze slid back over Amber's way.]
... I think you know why. Better than most Contractors.
[How many years, decades, centuries would Havoc give to have her life be color once more? No- How much would Carmine give? To live feeling like things had meaning and life to them, rather than simply existing in a grey, logical world.
How much would you give to drink from that cup once you'd had a taste?]
no subject
Amber steps away from the stove, leaning back against the kitchen table with arms crossed in front of her in a guarded pose. But her eyes linger on Havoc, curious but with a tinge of something that might be-- might be sadness.
There's too much at stake. But yes, she knows how frustrating it feels to hover always at the periphery, going through the day like a bystander in one's own life. People are always kept at an arm's length. Disconnect is commonplace. She knows that there must be more than this, which is why she wants so much to learn. It begs the question of whether she would ask the same of the CDC, if she can afford to. Yes, absolutely yes to the former, but never to the latter. ]
Better to die a free man than a slave.
[ A slave to what? One's own rationality, perhaps. ]
I know.