deercountry | the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

Entry tags:

the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: January event catchall
When: January
Where: The Snake Den and around Trench

Content Warnings: Eye trauma, blood, swearing, artful robot nudity, will add as they come in

a. i will trust the artist molding me [the snake den]

Anna doesn't really need much help right now cutting loose at the Snake Den. Madam G has been on her list of Pthumerians to check out for a while, and even if there had been some kind of reluctance to begin with, now that she's here mingling in a borrowed suit she feels downright comfortable. It's like she's ten years younger, and though her voice is still smoky and she's still missing an eye as far as physical age goes, socially she's just. Free, right now. It's nice.

It's nice enough that, when she's not striking up conversation with other people, she decides to indulge herself in the open mic. Borrowing an electric bass from backstage, she walks up, sits down, plugs in, and grabs the mic. "This is one from back home," she says, "By a band called Silversun Pickups. It's about finding freedom and acceptance and love in the places and with the people that everyone else tells you to stay away from. They'll say that the only way to be who you are is to file yourself off. That you need to hold yourself back to make other people comfortable without ever worrying if you're comfortable." She's talking very passionately for someone who doesn't think of herself as a motivational speaker. With a confident look, she finally leads into the song. "Let's bury that lie, Trench. This is called 'The Pit'."

And she starts playing, and she starts singing. And when she doesn't need to be playing and her hands are free, even she's not really sure how she does it, but she finds a way to channel her androidinous self to modify her own voice—just for a little bit, just to test it out. Just to see what happens, before she snaps back into the final lines of the song. And regardless of how it's received, once she's done, she puts the bass down and gently thanks the crowd. Her heart-simulacrum is pulsing faster than it should be as she gets off the stage, and she waits there in the wings in case she happened to inspire anyone with that performance.

b. the echo of what is and what will be [the shedding ceremony]

This is... not a good month for Anna outside of that, so far. For her time at the Snake Den, yes, she's still resonating with A2, and she's still who she thinks she is. But it never really takes long for her to start shedding her own skin again, and damn her brain but she can't stop fucking picking at it long enough to avoid the transformation.

The first time it happens, Anna emerges in a pure white dress that she's wasting no time in staining red. Her hair is longer, cleaner, and in lieu of a katana she's brandishing a blood-red shortsword in her battles with these beasts at the edge of the city. Taking zero precautions against pollution or corruption, she swings her blade right at the neck and lets the blood spray wash over her. When it stops, she hunches forward and shrieks out a strangely melodic note while the beast falls over dead. Her back straightens, and it's clear even from whatever distance anyone may be watching at that she's no longer entirely who people might know. The flower blossoming from her right eye is a good early warning sign, but you'd better act fast, because her good eye is a blazing red and she's rushing towards her spectator with that bloodblade at the ready.

The second time is much less interesting by comparison, but it's not doing her much good. Because the second time, she's just... a normal 29 year old. Both her eyes are fine, she's fully organic, and she doesn't know how to use a sword. In fact, she's taking her time and walking slowly through the streets of a town that she's starting to get to know better, wondering what her life even is anymore. Her Omni helps her keep connected with back home, sure, but nobody can get in touch with her no matter how hard she tries. And she woke up, for lack of a better word, with this katana that she's got on her back, and the first friendly-looking person she sees, she just asks outright, "Hey, uh. You have any idea why I would have a sword if I don't remember ever actually owning a sword?"

c. i am creation both haunted and holy [wildcard]

((got anything else you want to do? hit me up here or at

roseward!! also: source for the suit image and lyrics for the cover.))

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Kainé listens to Anna's story. She's surprisingly patient for somebody who has only shown distress, rage, or depression so far. And that story hits her in the gut, not for the way it resembles the story of Gestalts and Replicants but for the way it resembles something much worse.

"You don't get it," Kainé continues. She'll address Anna's story later. "It was fucked from the beginning. Shades decided we were just their shells. They attack, we fight back. But when you kill a Shade, the copy gets sick and dies. It was all falling apart. Sooner or later, it was all gonna break. I just broke it sooner." She sneers with grim pride.

"I killed the big boss Shade, all the others needed him. They start going nuts, and when they do their copies get sick. And no fixing any of that once the boss is dead." Kainé pauses, lets that sink in. "A2's humans ain't on the moon. They're dead, and I did it. I'd do it again, too."

She lets out a nasty little laugh. She's accumulated more blood and regrets than she can count, but its strangely comforting to know that she, that everybody, was doomed from the beginning. It makes what she did truly her own.

Edited 2022-01-21 09:21 (UTC)

Yeah. She really doesn't get it, does she? This time, she just listens from the moment that Kainé starts talking and tries very, very hard not to get caught up in her own thoughts about stuff. This is heavy, even if it is enlightening. Even if it does fill in even more gaps. If Anna's talking to the reason that the lie that is Project YoRHa was created, that makes a lot click. She keeps those realizations to herself, though; it feels less important to talk about how Kainé is filling in puzzle pieces right now.

"Can't say I blame you," she says, finally. The whole situation was unsustainable. It's exactly as she said: It was all going to break eventually. "Once you know the only way something can end, you don't really wanna waste time waiting for it. Might as well make a choice while you still can." It's complicated, though. It's deep, it's philosophical, it's way over her head. She doesn't want to think about it too hard. Instead, she offers a cautious look to the other woman.

"You don't look sick," she says, her own way of asking a question she's not sure she has the right to ask yet.

Kainé scoffs bitterly at Anna's concern. She agrees with what the woman has to say about her story, but she's not looking for that sort of sympathy.

"Just fuck off. I don't get all this A2 shit, I don't know if you're her, or she's just—" She struggles to find the language for Anna's strange, disturbingly familiar, state of existence— "part of you, now. But this android bitch was built to ass-kissingly loyal to what I fucking destroyed. And that's you. Why the hell should I listen to you, or believe you won't kill me first chance you got?"

Kainé really is grateful for Anna's help in the hotel. But she doesn't need her. She doesn't want to need her. And she sure is hell can't trust her further than she can throw her.

"'Cause this would've been my first chance?" is what she does not say, though it's the first thought she has. Kainé has a point, and even an idiot could tell that Anna hasn't done a great job introducing herself and getting past these initial... problems that she didn't even know were problems.

Instead, she tries not to be combative about it. "It's up to you if you want to listen to me or not. All I know is that all this stuff you just told me about androids is brand new to me, and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing about you that's any different from anyone else here." That's probably a good thing to say right now, right? She has no idea. She's guessing and just hoping that it doesn't end with anyone hating each other. That's her bar, she guesses.

She looks in front of her and gets off the frame to stand on her own two feet. Her back turns like she's ready to actually leave, but she's not going anywhere quite yet. "If this is the last you ever wanna see of me, fine. I just think you deserve to not freeze to death out here."

Kainé doesn't know what to do about this, where she should go from here. She's lost, she can admit that much. She thought that she could make it on her own, or maybe that she had to, but...

"Stop, goddamnit!" There's far more desperation in that exclamation than she would have liked. Maybe it's because she's a fish out of water here that her isolationist instincts are briefly overwhelmed. Or maybe she's just been out in the cold for far, far too long.

"You're not explaining anything! What the fuck are you? For all I know, she could take control of you."

Okay. That's progress. She turns back around, and her face is as neutral as she can make it. "I'll try to explain it," she offers, "But it's gonna sound like bullshit. So stick with me." And hopefully, Kainé will. Anna slips back into a little more of a teacherly tone, sort of like she's giving a guided tour of her own life. Some odd job skills never die.

"What I am is a normal girl from 21st century Earth. I like playing music and helping people and doing tech support. I'm from a city called Recollé where people from other realities had their souls intertwine with our own until our bodies and memories and who we are started changing."

She recognizes that's not a great thing to bring up, so she continues quickly. "I got her sword skills, most of her body, and this patchwork mess of her memories that I still don't have the whole story on. I shouldn't still have her riding shotgun inside my body now that I'm not in the city anymore. But I'm finished changing, and this is combination of both of us is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life. She can't take my body over. That's not how it works."

That feels like it should be the end of it, but she has something else. "And even if it were, she is exhausted. She's lost everyone who matters to her in the name of some fucking... forever war that's just one hand playing against itself, just getting androids killed to gather more data to build better androids to kill more androids." Her hand twitches at her side, but she ignores the impulse to curl it against her chest like she usually does when she talks about A2 too much. Instead, she looks at Kainé and asks something as sincerely as possible.

"Does that make any of it any clearer?"

Kainé listens. She hates feeling as though this woman is trying to save her, but she hates being this scared and insecure even more. Her existence, her memories, the similarities to her own story all rattle her. But what unnerves her more is how this moment reminds her of another— not a memory, just the barest glimpse of familiarity, a familiar itchiness she's felt inside her mind for the past few years.

Anna's story is not her own, but Kainé understands enough of it. And A2's story as well. Bodies and minds altered, futile struggles, loved ones ripped away. No wonder they stuck that poor bitch with her memories, of all people.

"So she's just... gone?" Against her attempts at stoicism, that feels terribly sad. But fitting, if A2 had that much in common with her. She can't let more sadness in, there's too much already, but there's an inherent pathos in the story that threatens to crawl into her heart and give her a new thing to mourn.

"Well," and that's a complicated kind of question, but that Kainé is asking that instead of anything else is a good sign. "Her actual body, her actual world, they're probably gone, and maybe for good. But her soul is still with me, in here." She raps on her chest instead.

"I said she shouldn't still be inside me, but despite whatever laws of the universe govern soul magic, she's still with me. In a world that's ten thousand years earlier than her own. And, like, I don't know, K, maybe—" and she stops, corrects herself. "Kainé, maybe I'm a bleeding heart. But I don't like the way her story ended, and if I'm carrying her soul with me, I want to at least show her that it's not the only ending she could have."

Those words settle, and she looks away, ready to hear the disgust over saying something so sappy and idealistic.

The words hit Kainé like a blow to the gut. The world, gone? Her world? It's true that it was far in her future, long after she and all of humanity had perished, but subconsciously she found the idea that something had come after, even if it was just as futile and miserable, comforting. All snuffed out. Probably, anyway. But luck was never on her side.

Finally, she manages to get something out, hoarse and monotone. "It's not her anymore. Don't pretend it is."

Anna was anticipating a lot of things, but coming for her objective reality is something even she couldn't see coming. The pleasantness drains from her tone almost immediately, and her instincts take control of her tongue.

"Then who is it? Huh? Whose nightmares keep me awake at night? Whose heart rewired my body?" She pushes off the wall and finally gets closer, and she pulls her eyepatch off her head to reveal the black-gold obsidian glass eye in the socket. "Who did I lose my eye for, if it wasn't for her."

Kainé knows damn well that what she just said wasn't fair. It was downright cruel, just lashing out at the same kind of pain that festered in her. Anna's body is marked by that alteration of self, just as Kainé's had been.

"You're the one talking like she's a different person. Or are you saying that you are A2?" It's unfair, but it's also unfair to minimize what was lost.

"I'm me and I'm her," she says like she's had to have this argument with herself a thousand times over. Her eyepatch dangles, the band balled up in her fist. "Two souls. One body. Part human, part android, but all of it makes up who I am now. I don't care if you don't understand how it works, but don't sit here and tell me that it isn't real."

She's lost too goddamn much for none of this to be real, but at least that's not something she'd blurt out. No reason to blur the line further.

Unexpectedly, Kainé doesn't offer a retort. She just stares forlorn at the flower again, her mind on something else. Something in her heart that cuts her like broken glass, or perhaps several things that have all begun to blur into one for her.

She doesn't understand how she still has so much hope. So much surety in who she is. Maybe that part's Anna. It's hard to believe that the android that contains parts of Kainé, that is perhaps a warped continuation of her, could be so strong. If that's what she had been.

"They say when somebody's gone, they're still always with you. What a crock of shit. You can't ever fill that hole."

But she gets up. Flexes a left hand of flesh and blood. "I need to get the hell out of here."

Anna takes a moment to let Kainé get to her feet, and while she does she thinks about the appropriate way to respond to that. The problem is that she can't think of it right now, because she's right. And it sounds so... it's such a certainty when Kainé says it that Anna's not sure she can figure out why it's somehow the reason she's standing up and getting ready to leave.

Whether it's the shack, or Trench, or just this conversation, Anna's not sure. In the silence, she puts her eyepatch back on and smooths her hair over it. Back to normal. "You could stay at my place," she offers, taking a chance on the more charitable of the few possibilities.

Kainé doesn't understand that paradox either, or how this conversation might have led to this. She isn't even close to being sure how she feels about this conversation, or the person she had it with. She just knows that it's stupid to continue on like this.

Kainé just gives a non-commital grunt in response to that offer. "Gotta get my things." Can she really do this? Can she really live among others? Can she really find a reason to live, instead of a reason to persist?

"Sure." All right, well. That's not the worst possible outcome. Maybe this is the reason people talk about not looking gift horses in mouths. She jerks her thumb over her shoulder. "Want help, or should I wait outside?"

Stupid question, Kainé probably doesn't have much to collect. But it's fine. It also gives them both a chance to be private for a bit, not that Anna feels like she needs it. If anything, just the idea of being around someone else regularly seems as though it'll make things easier for her. She just hopes the same is true of this other woman.

"I can put shit into bags, thanks," Kainé gripes, but without real anger. She's just as surprised that this is happening, but it'd be too awkward to try to take back now. She turns away.

"I'll be out in a few minutes." And without turning around, she begins packing up her valuables. But there aren't many of those, so mostly she's spending those minutes looking out the window, wondering how her brutal, sad little life had led to this point.

"All right," Anna says, and heads outside to give Kainé some space. Sighing, she looks for another steady structure to lean against, flicks a cigarette out of her pack, pricks her finger, and lights the cig with a small blood-fueled spark.

She's really gonna have someone living in her home with her, huh? She can't remember the last time that she had a roommate, least of all someone who's this similar to her. Maybe they'll get along. Maybe they'll hate each other. Maybe it doesn't matter, because Kainé is gonna get a place to stay closer to civilization, and that's the part that matters. Anna blows a plume of smoke ahead of her, away from the shack. It'll be fine.

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the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

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