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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Anna doesn't understand how anyone could really be comfortable living like this, but she doesn't understand a lot about this woman, does she? Just 'cause it's how it is right now doesn't mean it's how it always has to be, right...?

"Yeah, me neither, dude," she says, electing to stand so she doesn't accidentally, like, ruin something by putting her weight on it. At least she's standing near what seems like a sturdy piece of the structure if she decides to lean, but this just seems... depressing. It's easy enough not to be judgmental, but she's bordering on concerned.

"But that's no excuse for not having a sturdy roof over your head and working windows and all that," she continues. "You're gonna freeze to death out here. You could at least isolate yourself in a place that won't kill you."

Kaine's gold eyes flick listlessly up to Anna's face, utterly unalarmed. "So fucking what? I'll just come back." She thinks she'd prefer it if she didn't, though. There's nothing here for her to live for, and she's so, so tired.

But grandma wouldn't want that. Emil wouldn't want that. So she at least makes a token effort to live here, killing the Beasts out on the outskirts of town more out of habit than anything. She was hardy enough to survive in worse conditions. She doesn't need to pretend that she's something she's not to keep this going.

"I'm used to it." She didn't need to offer any kind of explanation, but Anna had helped her. She deserves that much consideration.

Oh, okay. That response clicks it all into place; Anna recognizes this. And she sighs, because it means she's gonna have to act like the people who pulled her out of it, if that's what she's gonna try doing.

"Why the hell would that change anything? I'll come back if I die but I still do my best to stay alive," she says, with no anger in her voice but a firmness to it instead. "Probably hurts like hell to die out here anyway. You could at least do it in a place with four walls and a roof."

She could push harder, but she doesn't want to yet. It won't help, in all likelihood. Not this early.

Kainé would be decidedly bemused if she realized just how similar she is to Anna, and in particular to the android whose soul she shares. But she's at least primed to the idea from her interactions with Emil.

Speaking of which, his staff leans against the sofa, and a cut Lunar Tear flower sits on a vase on the table. Even so far away, she needs to remember. She'll cling to ever last bit she can of the warmth that once was in her life.

"And what the hell is there to live for here?" Her voice is more morose than angry or irritated.

"I'm just another outsider. Another freak. I'll fight for the poor bastards, keep them from getting killed. That's enough."

She could say something, but she takes a moment to look around the room first. There has to be something she can grasp for, metaphorically, to help keep Kainé alive and ticking. Motivated to keep going. God, it feels so weird acting like this when she's not even sure if it's because K is part of who she is now or just because Anna doesn't want to see anyone else end up like her.

Her eye settles on the flower, one of her earliest shared memories, and she thinks she might have it. "We're all outsiders here," she starts, "But I got two souls living inside me, my body is made of metal and blood, and my family kicked me out for being a dyke. You wanna talk about outsiders and freaks, I'm your girl." And as if that's not enough, she adds, "Besides. You wouldn't be keeping that Lunar Tear alive if you believed yourself."

Kainé stares at the flower. Past that flower, really, into memories where every kindness could provide only brief respite from hurt. For the last three years, she's lived only to protect Yonah. Now Kainé didn't have that, the last thread connecting her to a meaning, a purpose. Everything else is just autopilot. Is she really strong enough to find something else?

Kainé doesn't understand all of what Anna is saying, but she understands that she's been through hell. Enough to know that, when Anna expresses her desire to help her, she can't just claim it's all bullshit. It's what she'd felt when she met Emil after all. Her eyes briefly flick over to that abandoned staff.

"...Android, right? Fighting to save humanity, or some crap like that."

But that doesn't mean she's ready to trust somebody who has her memories and acts as though they're hers. It's an uncanny feeling, knowing that somebody else claims for her own these moments that she hadn't wanted to share with anybody.

"That's what she was supposed to be doing, yeah," Anna says. There's always a critical part of her whole situation that she leaves out, and now it seems more important than ever not to bring it up. "Until one day my soul started resonating with hers and everything about me started changing."

She doesn't need to give Kainé the whole rundown anyway, she doesn't think. It wouldn't do much good. "Place I'm from, we were never really supposed to meet the people from our memories. This is the closest I've ever gotten," she says, ignoring her conversation with 2B at the riverside given how fleeting that was. "A2 doesn't really know much about you, all told. I think I wanna learn more myself. From you." God, even if she's sincere she sounds pretty lame. And she won't get anywhere just by saying she wants to learn stuff, will she?

"But until then, I'm basically an open book, if you got anything." A second's pause. "About me or her."

"People are supposed to do a lot of things," Kainé drawls, it being clear that there's a lot about this story that Anna wasn't telling. Fine. It's not like she's going to tell hers either. And definitely not here, in this shitty little rundown shack.

Even so, she can finds herself once again curious about this bizarre woman with memories she shouldn't have. Something to keep going for after all. Goddamnit. She hesitates a moment. Yeah, she's not talking about the shit that really hurts, but she might as well say a little more. Might as well come out swinging, kicking and scratching against this connection that tries to hook into her.

"I don't like androids much. Bastards thought we were nothing but empty shells. They'd been lying to everyone since before anybody could remember."

Ha. Getting seen right through, huh? Makes her feel like the empty shell here. Not that either of them is—her thoughts can't get sidetracked right now.

"That's not the way I remember it going," she says instead. "Androids damn near revered humans. Fought a whole forever war to keep humanity safe and protected on the moon, or at least that's the story they got fed." A pause to consider something; she looks upward slightly, like she's trying to remember. "Guess that fits with the constantly lying thing. But, like."

Hrm. How best to approach this. She didn't... remember any androids stretching that far back, but this conversation is just making her realize how many gaps there really are in her knowledge of things.

"Like, for what it's worth, I don't think that shit. About people just being empty shells or whatever. Not to get all touchy-feely and shit, but I just don't think people are built that way."

All of that is new information to Kainé, but at this point she's just going to take every weird revelation about her world in stride. Everything had already been turned upside-down a long time ago for her. But "A2" really must be from her future after all, as if the memories weren't enough of a give-away.

She shakes her head. "I don't mean that. By my time, there weren't any real humans left. This disease killed most of them, long before I was born. The ones that were left, uh..." god, all of this information came so suddenly, the specifics are tough to keep track off.

"They were taken out of their bodies, became these ghost things called Shades, and they all went to sleep for a long time. Left androids behind to take care of things until the disease was gone. And then they had copies made of them, recreated every generation. The androids ran all their shit behind the scenes. I'm one of those copies."

She doesn't need to tell her all of this, but it's a hell of a lot easier than talking about herself.

"Eventually the Shades woke up. Half of 'em were crazy and just attacked us. The rest wanted their bodies back, didn't care that they were ours too. They didn't try to talk to us. We were just empty shells."

"Oh, shit," she says, gracefully.

And once she's had a moment to process it, she starts talking some more about herself, her situation—not because she thinks it'll help what she actually came here for, but because it, like so much else here, sounds familiar.

"I guess I was made to be a vessel like that, too," she says, "And maybe that's what the idea was? The end goal for it was A2 just... taking over my body, and me losing everything I am to her. I don't think she knew that was the plan, I think that's just how the experiment was set up." She turns to her side and leans her back against the frame instead, and her eye focuses on a point a little below her eyeline.

"But I'm my own person, and I guess I was strong enough to stop her from taking over entirely. Now we share our body, except I'm still the one in charge of everything." She looks up, glances over. Realizes she's been talking too much about herself again. "Anyway, uh. I'm glad you made it out of there okay. And, like... listen, there was this one time in a soul research lab where I just got into a lot of shit with a lot of random souls. Maybe your Shade bumped into me and that's why I know, like, fragments of stuff about you."

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.

the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

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