deercountry | my mast ain't so steady

I won’t, yet.

[ until she has a more thorough reason to seize her to safety, 2B’s response is a standby yet. she follows the woman’s flopping gestures, gathers her state and words into one concoction of assimilation. woe receives a thorough stare between both eyes, before the androids lift her chin to inspect the so-called “lab”.

she is not as bad as her visions have pictured her, but she is not in health. 2B perceives the dull details and finds all the more reason to stay. ]

—You were ill, where I saw you. With many others. [ 2B pauses within a brush of her silver hair against her cheek, pulling it back with a slip of her fingers behind the shell of her ear. ] Are you studying blood, Saint of Woe?

[ Woe's lip curls reflexively at the yet, more snarl than sneer, but it flattens to a thin purse as 2B goes on. She cannot help herself, Woe must remember. No matter how human her surface appears, or how delicately hesitant that seemingly unknowing tuck of hair is, Woe can feel her difference acutely even - lessened as she is.

(The currents of energy upon her are so strange. It tastes the absolute purity of artificial sweetener at the back of her mouth. ]

I am. [ She nods - there is no reason to lie. ] Since it seems like no one else has bothered to do it around here, even being up to the gills with the stuff. Not correctly. They can't even culture it! Barbaric.

-- and I am not ill, by the way! So whatever you're thinking, delete it, or clear your memory banks, or whatever it is that you do.

Memories make us who we are. [ woe has triggered a memory by speaking of them; it brings a melancholy veil behind 2B's mystery, of all the times the 9S she'd come to adore would be gone, an upload of what made him then and there impossible to return to. most times, by her own hands. who knew, that such emotional strain could damage something meant to be artificial? artificial, but functioning as her creators had wished. ] I won't, but I do want to—

[ the thing with an android's memory is the detail. it's all uploaded, pixel by pixel, at full percentile, recorded from start to finish. she remembers everything she sees, hears, and learns with superhuman intensity. she never forgets. unless that is— her systems are wiped. there's a fear of being wiped as much as a human would fear ceasing to exist. death. being forgotten and forgetting in the process.

she remembers the vision, she remembers her voice. she knows what she saw. ]

Understand.

[ she settles with that; a genuine, even gently presented request. ]

[ Why create a construct with simulated feeling? Woe can think of a few reasons, starting with making them easier to interact with. Hollow dolls and raised corpses always evoke an unsettled feeling, even in the most hardened frontline soldiers, as much as they pretend, but no one's physiological response can conceal itself from her. There is a reason the House that devote themselves to flesh magic even now prefer living human servants and abstractions of meat over humanoid constructs; why only the miserable little bone fiddlers make human patterns, defleshed and fragile, in their flaunting of all social mores.

It's one of the very few things about them Woe doesn't entirely loathe. She doesn't give a damn what people think of her work, either, although they come by for much pettier reasons than she does.

Memories. Now she's thinking of the past, and she is also so cross when she does. She reorients to the shallow now over the depth of all that ugly history, regarding the blameless creature before her. ]

Don't, then.

[ She could wrest her pretty head off her mechanized torso and do it manually, crudely, but that seems excessive. She takes a shallow breath and draws the edges of her cloak around herself, expression setting into a smooth, indifferent mask. ]

This place is a deviation. This blood, an infection. I am learning its mechanisms so I might deconstruct it, to - understand how it has transformed us, and why the sea carries a pathogen that returns others to a parody of the slimy little form we all were transported here within.

[ She explains with greater calm and thoroughness than she would for any human being. ]

I am not supposed to be here. I want to leave. Do you understand?

[ 2B's opinion deviates from so many others, including mercymorn, the moment she expresses her desire to leave. it was natural, to want to go home, to return to a life left behind so abruptly. she imagines that all humans, if they had been stationed on the moon, wanted to return to their earth, their home, and that's why the concept of battle androids had fabricated in the first place. but such assemblies were lies.

2B did not have a moon crowded with human life just waiting for earth to be retaken. she didn't even have bunker. 2B had nothing where her home once was. yet here, in this trench, she's given purpose that was promptly taken from her. perhaps here wasn't home, yet, it was work. it was so much work to keep their faces still moving, still soft and bright with color, and being alive to watch the cycle grow rather than diminish.

she wants to be close to them. there is loss much worse than returning home alive. there is extinction. she knows this and applies it, gravely. her eyes are sharp like two sculptured blocks of ice in a sea so aqua. ]

I do. [ but that bares a greater question. the flopping, fleshy tendril she was lacing together, and the people she has yet to see— ] And of your progress?

[ There is no home for Mercymorn to return to. There is nothing there except the end that she worked so hard to achieve, unfinished and imperfect and ruined as it was. She does not want to be, but of course, she cannot explain this to the construct, given her proclivity towards tender solicitous care directed at anything human-shaped.

The irony of her name is not lost on Mercymorn. Ironies so rarely are. She simply does not care for them, and never has. But it sags something in her, like a thread plucked to send a whole garment slouching. ]

There are some minor obstacles. Trivialities.

[ Such as: her souls do not sit anchored as they should. There is a gap; a void; a disconnect. It is like the abominable static of God's disregard. ]

This world teams with monsters. You must be keeping yourself busy, I expect, with that blade of yours.

[ It's almost as if she's asking how the construct has been doing, but of course, she isn't. ]

[ mercymorn may one day be surprised at how many uploaded emotions this very construct can ripple through. but until then— 2B can feel a small widening of her eyes that can no longer be hidden behind her military visors, but it may just very well be a jut of attention toward what the woman is asking her. virtuous contract is a lovely close quarters weapon; pearl white fabric weaves at the hilt, and the hard forged chrome iron of its edge glints like a dragon's mouth of teeth. her delicately gloved fingers ride the blade's dull arch behind her. ]

Their destruction is my duty. [ she puts effort into pushing back the strain of tragedy, of humans, becoming monsters, of others like herself, falling and becoming targets to her true designation. she didn't have to hide it, maybe . . . maybe there's some sort of good it could do. she doesn't have to terminate who she loves constantly. they're gone when they're like that, she reminds herself. execution is a mercy. the illusion puts her at ease, for now, and allows her to keep talking. she doesn't want to think too much about it. ] You'll be needing my service if you intend to remain in your subjects, I'd . . . Assume.

[ it was less of an offer, but one, nonetheless. ]

[ A beautiful woman with a sword offering herself up to Mercymorn's service. Something still raw and bleeding in her twitches, reflexively, her fingers half-curling at her sides as a profound sadness flits across her widened eyes. ]

There are others who need it more, little android.

[ She is not little. She would be taller than Mercymorn even without her heels, and Mercymorn has felt the unyielding strength of that deceptively slim looking chassis. But the diminutive creates distance. Mercy sighs, heavily, and shakes her head. ]

I suppose a demonstration - yes. That's simplest.

[ She extends her palm out flat over the water. The tentacle beneath its surface flexes and lifts itself, a long, sinuous, dripping reveal. Mercy twitches her fingertips again, just once, for effect - and the entire thing peels, one tissue layer at a time, into delicate cellular ribbons. They billow in an invisible wind, bloodless and gleaming, before she begins to reweave them. ]

I do not require a sword to dissect meat.

[ —that does not compute, twofold. she is not little. au contraire, exactly as woe herself contemplates, she is on the higher scale of female heights to utilize the most of her combative prowess. long legs for greater strides, wider kicks, long arms for effective swinging, and altitude for the efficient use of her mass. all 350 or so pounds. and what of others who need it more than she does? that is false. they all need it. the sick ones, perhaps even more. contradictory if she is a part of that group. 2B analyses the muscles of her face before they are gone from full sight— she identifies a level of surprise: eyes wide. there's something else. she's felt her own do it. she's seen in anemone's eyes, when speaking of fallen comrades and the likeness of them in 2B.

she pretends and acts like she doesn't see it as soon as she formulates the possibility.

2B chooses to watch rather than interject. she is not opposed to carnage so raw. she's seen so much of it, she's done and could do just about anything with it. there are numerous methods of killing with bare hands alone hardwired into her as much as breathing was. this was not one of the methods she could ever formulate. ]

How do you do that?

[ there had been nothing in the human records of such an ability, and 2B never took an interest in what media humans regularly consumed to know the existence of magic or its possibility. for now, she only knows that blood grants abilities in trench. nothing more, nothing less. ]

Edited 2022-08-24 19:30 (UTC)

[ Of course 2B does not flinch. She is a machine built for slaughter, underneath the still preposterous confection of her appearance. The gratification Mercymorn feels at her subsequent puzzled, open question is misplaced, she knows, but there is a degree of slight smug triumph in the lift of her chin anyway.

She hates attempting to curb how she feels about anything. It's an unbearable rasp against her soul, the rub of a zipper backing not properly sheathed in soft fabric at the back of her neck, and she tears at her self-consciousness about 2B's observation like ripping that zipper out. ]

I am a necromancer.

[ She embraces the satisfaction of so announcing herself. Whatever else she is, however diminished and disconnected, she is a necromancer. She reknits the tendril slowly, allowing the process to be witnessed at length, the beautiful unification of flesh. ]

A magician with power over thanergy and thalergy, over soul and flesh and bone. Death and life energy, to you. I have nothing to fear from the beasts of this world. They really ought to be afraid of me, if only they were clever enough to be.

[ as much as it is a part of her that 2B has been told time and time again to curb and veil, her eyes are captivated. she thinks, she assimilates the words: thanergy, thalergy. she cannot find matches in her memories or vast library of human vocabulary that meant something to the beings of her time. she circles the fluttering, monstrous brew with her heels ticking beneath the slosh of trifling little puddles of sewer water.

it is beautiful, in a way. like a spiral of water twining and twirling if physics and gravity didn't exist the way it did, laying things down so flatly on the earths they walk on.

she wants to touch it; yoRHa is not here to impede her, and her paleblood amplifies her motive. her hands do hover, but they always seem a palm's length away from making contact. curiosity did kill the cat. ]

"Magic", [ she repeats that like an unknown concept for her tongue. how were humans able to harness such energy? biological mutations? evolution? oh, it must be that and so much more. ] it seems our worlds have advanced in very different ways.

[ 2B is the result of their dedication and technology over thousands of years. necromancy was mercy's. it was fascinating. what made it tick, and move like she did?

9S would have a blast with this, and for a split second— the android is smiling. ]

[ The android's eyes may be veiled, but Mercy knows what wonder looks like. 2B circles, she reaches out hesitant hands. She smiles, a delicate and lovely crescent that transforms her features like rippling moonlight breaking out from clouds to play across smooth, still water.

It reminds her of other times. Everything does when you've lived so long, but most of the reminders these days are dull or irritating or hateful. This, this -

(The walls around them could be smooth and shining, metal buffed silver, and everywhere columns of refracting glass, splays of warm white light all across upturned faces as she shows them the new miracles that God has given her.) ]

You may touch.

[ Soft, pale skin grows where rough papillae dominated. She fuzzes it over with downy hair, the lightest dusting, and expends a dash of thalergy to add heat to the network of tiny blood vessels spread through it. The affect is that of a deboned forearm, perhaps, or a curiously undulating throat. Something about her voice sticks curiously in her own, light and high. ]

It would seem they have. [ She clears it with a small but sharp cough. ] You are no doubt a feather in your maker's cap.

[ the necessary skip needed to merge her hand and the space is given. may. if she may touch, then there is nothing to worry about and nothing to really contain, although she couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was that made her wait. she didn't want to think it was fear of the unknown— that was far too human a worry. she clips it away and hopes to never see it again, for she knows little of how to actually deal with it.

her gloved fingertips brush; the next touch comes from an ungloved hand once she pulls the leather covering until it was bare. touching things, actually feeling them— this was new to her. she lacked interest in the past. mission. the mission. focus on the mission. she didn't have time, nor concern to consider something as banal as touch. it was the same as bathing, or looking up at the sky. she didn't need to. they were all extra luxuries humans indulged in. she was not human.

but here she was, pressing skin to skin, assimilating that it felt soft. it felt alive despite still forming, being molded into whatever it was that mercy willed it to. the question of what it meant to be alive beckons her. 2B stores it away, just as she did with her questioning over fear.

the android's head turns, sharper than not, as if the words had surprised her, or briefly caused her to search for an answer she did not have. the results are instantaneous, and the strain on her lips is more evident, now. she's been having far more difficulty in holding back the curves they make. she's never felt it so heartily. it bubbled up and broke free of her confines so forthwith that she didn't stand a chance.

now, the split-second smile quickly buried beneath the thinning of her mouth to straighten it lasts much longer. it feels strange, like she's unused to it. but it feels nice, in spite of the literal hole they were in. ]

I'm proud to be. [ to be made in the image of something that could do and feel all this— it indeed felt like a curse, sometimes. other times— it was a blessing. she is staring one right in the face and feels that hot jittering boil within her chest and surge. ] . . . Thank you.

[ The android looks at Woe. The woman looks at Mercymorn. The first coherent thought that comes to her, plucked from a tumult of them, is, sharp and quick and emphasized: fuck.

A pointless, ugly thought, beneath her, at least in this moment. She will change her mind again, as she always does, mercurial to the polite and unstable to the accurate. Something vestigal and atrophied tightens in her, wound wretched and quivering around an unforgiving spindle.

The flesh under 2B's hand warms further, like a blush. It relaxes, but not in a way that makes it unpleasantly slack, and pulses lightly, a sinuous thrum like the responsive answering hitch of a heart. ]

It is only an observation.

[ Quiet, neat. Tucked in like a shroud. ]

So you see that you have no cause for concern? Or to linger?

[ the flesh almost seems like a welcome, a conscious strum between two things that live in an unusual way. the slip from the curvature of her palm then to the lingering air below the molding meat was caressed as if saying goodbye. her conscience, by the time she brings her softened gaze back to the work and her hands, tells her to wait. just wait a moment more (was that a conscience, though?).

one thing was true: she shouldn't be lingering. she's not sure about concern— the flashes are memories she can still return to with ease.
they are studies, is what puts her in repose. helping, advancing, in unsavory conditions. after this stretching pause that seems more than thoughtful, 2B makes her way over to face the saint of woe, towering in comparison, but maintaining a certain distance so as to not need to look down upon her. it is not something the woman needs nor deserves, she thinks. ]

Should there be anything to make your conditions more favorable, I can do it.

[ she's made for missions left and right; she would be off her case, but also offering something to gain in the shadows. ]

[ The tendril slinks back into the waters with barely a ripple as 2B approaches Woe, who only needs to tilt her chin slightly at this angle to meet the place where the android’s eyes are concealed by a veil. She has always approved of veils, when done properly, but she wonders fleetingly what might lie past this one - surely, her creators say fit to give her eyes. ]

There is nothing I need I am not able to fetch for myself.

[ Food is no difficulty, nor any other small supply. These sewers and tunnels have proved full of baubles the people of this place covet, and she assumes she has greatly enriched a whole series of merchants with her indifference to haggling over the minutia. As for subjects - that is, itself, a subject for another time.

She tilts her head to the left, blinking in the dark. ]

Is that all you came here for? To - see what aid you could offer?

[ 2B pauses to answer, but fairly briefly— she already knew most of the answer. the rest was in articulating it with the knowledge of a "vision". ]

I was concerned with the data I received of you. I wanted to confirm, [ if she could call it data— through her military veil, 2B fixates on the woman's shadowed profile. dark, yet transparent with detail. ] but my aid comes either way.

[ if that was a concern. ]

[ That elicits another furrowing of Woe's much-furrowed brow, her chin hiking up in reflexive challenge. But she can't find the offense in 2B's words, however she interprets their tone, and an uneasy ripple of something not articulated makes its way across her face. ]

Inculcated altruism.

[ The idea does not seem to necessarily please her, but the roots of that discontent run deeper than can be perceived from where 2B stands. ]

What data did you receive about me?

[ a kink at the bridge of her nose rebels, but 2B smooths it clean in a matter of seconds. of course. wasn't she created to fight for mankind? it is what she knows how to do, it was her responsibility to uphold. (there is something in her that does not like this. she ignores it, for now. feelings should be prohibited as she worked, after all—) ]

It was vague. [ but she has no trouble recalling the vision's detail: ] Images of you bleeding from the nose, covered in growths. There were tubes and pumps of different colored fluids, and bodies held by the flesh you've made. The message was 'Why stop in her fervor when no one thinks to look?'

[ 2B neatly places both her hands in front of her, weighing in the folds of the bouncing frills of her hunter's dress. ]

So, I looked.

[ Woe exists as far from 2B's stoic implacability as it may be possible to exist. Her feelings churn and roil and shriek like tea kettles, depending on the minute, and in this particular one she flashes through a whole series of them like sheets of lightning across the clouded expanse of her surface. Her mouth is a sour-bitten rosebud curled tight, the creases about her eyes starkly drawn, and there, in the centre of all the conflicting feelings she has about that - ]

And you a stranger.

[ Her voice is soft. She focuses on the android's clasped hands, swathed in girlish fabrics that are cut for a hunter's stride. She takes a swift, heaving breath, pushing out at all the fine bones of her, and shakes her own hands out underneath the cover of her cloak. ]

I will stop when it is done. And I have no intention of allowing growths [ ugh ] or more than a minimal amount of bleeding. Does that satisfy you, and whoever - whatever - sent you this 'data'?

[ a trade. she recognizes one that is being met without too much reluctance. there is willingness if anything, and— there is a strain that has always been on woe's features, creasing them like fluted balls of paper that were once clean sheets. her words are fine, now. warm fabrics neatly smoothed, or maybe even ironed down from any harder kinks.

she dips her head. it's a supple, acknowledging nod. ]

I wish you progress in your studies. [ yes. it satisfies her. woe will have her sewer system laboratory once more, to herself. there is . . . one thing? before she parts the puddles under her heels: ] Though I'd like to see you again, in good standing.

[ It would straightforward to disillusion the automaton. All Woe has to say is that she has no intention of remaining here, let alone seeking out a place of good standing in a world constructed on the most unstable of sand. That all of this is her third best effort at an escape, that she will be quit of this city as soon as she has the means to be.

But that would only assure the android’s attention, if Woe has understood the nature of her correctly, and she thinks that she has. Human beings so rarely understand; she cannot expect an android to.

And how bad could it be, to appease her? Not so terrible a thing as all that, if Woe intends to never see her again, and so: ]

Perhaps you will. [ She nods back, light and dipping. ] Good luck.

my mast ain't so steady | august catch-all

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cw: suicidal ideation, suicide

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cw: gore

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