(closed) i could've been anyone, anyone else

[devilmind]

Who: The Operator and Junia the Vestal
What: The Operator copes poorly with Mother's Mercy. Junia helps them confess.
When: Mid-February
Where: Junia's church in Cassandra

Content Warnings: self-harm, burns, suicide, discussion of unhealthy/abusive parent-child dynamics



[ Ever since they arrived in Trench, the Operator has spent much of their time in Junia’s church of the Holy Flame. They’ve been living there for the past month and, though the arrangement had been intended as a temporary stopgap, they’ve felt no urgency to leave. Instead, they’ve simply done their best to ensure that their residence there isn’t a burden on their host. Tidying the space, replenishing spent incense, and keeping the braziers lit is the least they can do in exchange for room and board. Even when their chores are complete, it isn’t uncommon to see them tucked away in one of the church’s quiet corners, kneeling in meditation.

As February draws on, though, they become less and less inclined to leave the church at all. Before, they would often venture out to explore or conduct research at the Archaic Archives. Now, they spend ever-increasing hours in meditation, new wings folded, neat and unused, on their back. Even the prospect of flight, which had seemed so exciting to them on the first day, now holds little appeal.

It might be easy to assume that they’re still suffering the effects of the second, less pleasant chocolate they’d eaten, which had driven them to such paranoia and terror that they could barely move. But those effects have long since passed and what they feel now isn’t fear or even the embarrassment at their rather public meltdown. What they feel now is a deep and gnawing guilt.

It had started with thoughts about Rell—inescapable after their day spent in the grip of paranoia that the Man in the Wall was coming for them like he had for him. They remember their last encounters with Rell, how frightened and bitter and exhausted he’d been. The Operator feels like they understand him now more than ever. A day spent merely in fear of the Lidless Eye had drained them completely. But Rell? He’d held the entity back for centuries.

…Only for someone who’d never even set foot on the Zariman to tell him that he was wrong. Delusional. That he was responsible for all the suffering and madness he’d fought for centuries to contain. And the Operator? They’d let the Lotus say those things. Of course they hadn’t told her that they had seen it just as Rell had. Of course they weren’t willing to risk that she might think them mad, too.

Did she even truly believe that there was no Man in the Wall? Or was she just trying to keep them in the dark? Again.

Pain like a knife lances through the Operator’s chest, catching the breath in their throat. Yet still, they don’t move. Kneeling on the stone floor, they recite the same silent litany they have been for the past week to try and dull the ache. ’I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. You were only trying to protect us.’

Prayer is a poor substitute to the true means of relief. They’d discovered it a few days earlier and it makes itself plain in the state of their hands: cracked and peeling, marred by blisters, patches marbled with red and white. In a place like this, it isn’t hard to find opportunities to burn themself.

It’s a fair trade, they think. They accept a pain they can ignore to cure themself of one they cannot. Except, it isn’t a cure, not really. A cure would be permanent and the fire only silences the pangs for a few minutes at best. They’d thought that with mediation, they could cure themself of the root cause—their traitorous, ungrateful thoughts towards the Lotus—but after days without results, they are coming to accept that that is no solution either.

They sigh. They’re only delaying the inevitable, they know. They’ve already done enough damage to this body to necessitate its remaking, even if not for its internal suffering. Still, they feel silently humiliated by the thought; they’ve been dissipated plenty of times, but never by their own hand.

They rise from the floor, tired beyond measure. They’ve barely slept in the past week, kept awake by their own racing thoughts and the swells of agony that accompany them. It’s good that they’re doing this now—if they waited much longer, they might not have had the strength for it.

There is no self-pity nor much display of emotion from them at all as they head outside the church. Indeed, to the Operator, their actions don’t feel like giving in to some darkness or despair. It simply feels like a practical, if a rather regrettable solution to a problem, one they understand well. Something is punishing them for their disloyalty toward the Lotus. It demands penance—and so the Operator will give it, as efficiently as they can.

They do their best to make sure that Junia isn’t about as they step out of the church and walk around to the back. They don’t see her anywhere, but then, they aren’t currently at their sharpest. They don’t want her to be upset by what she sees. There’s a good chance she wouldn’t understand it.

They walk far enough to be out of easy view of the street and find a stretch of hard-packed ground suitable for their purposes. The pain within them now is a deep and abiding ache, somehow disapproving. The Operator frowns. ’I’m doing what you want,’ they think, irritated. ’Leave me to it.’

No matter. Their next actions are sure to put an end to the pain, one way or another. All that remains to be seen is how long the relief lasts.

They take one last look around to make sure they're alone—then push off from the ground and into the air, buoyed up by the beating of their wings. They ascend in a tight spiral, a balancing act between gaining enough height to ensure their fall is fatal and remaining out of sight from any passersby. Either way, they’ll need to fall as fast and hard as they can. Anything less risks crippling themself rather than dissipating. Not only would that hurt a good deal more—it would also leave them incapable of trying again.

Finally, they reach the apex of their ascent. The altitude feels dizzying, though that’s probably just the fatigue talking. Even so, it’s certainly high enough for what it is—a weapon, to be turned against themself.

They don’t waste any time with hesitation. The Operator is, above all, a being of conviction—that is the source of their pain and its remedy. With a final beat of their wings, they reorient themself in the air, turning their head back towards the ground. Then, they simply tuck their wings against their back, close their eyes, and wait.

The rest is predictable. They feel a rushing of wind followed by an instant of bright, splintering pain—and then they’re gone. Their body unravels, not into viscera and shattered bone but into pure Void energy, into scattered sparks of golden light. Even that fades quickly, leaving nothing but undisturbed calm in its wake.

The calm remains for a long few moments…

…and then, again, there is light. It seems to tear its way out of nothing, a brief, shimmering blaze that solidifies into a familiar shape almost too quickly for the eye to follow. One moment the Operator is gone—and the next, they are there again, lying on their side on the dusty ground.

A quick inspection will show them to be unharmed—and, apparently, unconscious. ]

Comments

cw: child abuse, religious trauma, burns

[holyjudgmental]

[Junia doubts.

This is not a new thing. Doubt, laxity, frailty, sin - these have been the shadows across her soul since she first saw herself cast against the revealing Light and the cleansing Flame and perceived her own weakness, her wretched state of indelible error. She had been a stubborn, indecent child, prone to fits of hot, silent tears and hotter shrieking tantrums, and it had been the work of a whole nunnery to set her right. Her small closed fists had been pried open and in them had been placed the lash and the brand, the book and the Word, until she could serve at least adequately to purpose - but her small closed heart had remained so, curled tight around that ever-damning doubt.

Cedar is doing no less than what they ought. The sacrament of the Flame is a trying one, but they are suffering an affliction of the soul, and sometimes such things must be driven out by pain and blood. She has said nothing. Uttered no word against their righteousness, done nothing to tempt them towards her own unspeakable failings, but - she has sucked air between her teeth at the sight of the burns. She has curled her still small hands into small closed fists and set her jaw hard enough to ache. She has watched Cedar conduct themselves according to the will of the Light and she has abhorred it.

It is this sin she reflects on as she emerges from the edge of the wood with a basket of scavenged brambles, shading her eyes with a gloved hand as Cedar flies once more, and even here she is perverse: she is glad to see them once more at play, untethered from the earth, and there is a moment where she dearly, fiercely wishes that they would not land. That they would fly from this place, and from her, and go to one of the heathen lands where none had ever heard of the purgation of fire.

That is not what happens.

She has never run so fast in her life. It is not enough. The memory of her panicked dash will forever be a fragment to her, the jumbled sensation of her boots digging into turf and her eyes fixed on an impossibility of divine light, the bruising thud of her knees next to Cedar's body (but how?), the little, shuddering cry she lets out, like a cracked bell, like a falling bird.]

Cedar, Cedar -

[Her eyes are searing, wet. She fumbles at their shoulders, nearly maddened enough to shake them, but she is a vestal, she knows better, she knows better (she knows nothing and she never has) - the air is thick with the perfume of dying flowers as she leans over them and brings a gloved hand to their face.]

Cedar?

[devilmind]

[ Dissipation has always felt the same to the Operator. There is the flash of pain that scatters them, the stretch of numb weightlessness that follows, and then, finally, the disorientation of reforming. It is never a comfortable experience; it always leaves them feeling hazy and off-balance for a time, and when it happens in battle, it always takes effort to push through. But it can be pushed through. Certainly, it has never before reduced them to unconsciousness.

As the Operator gradually wakes, the first thing they become aware of is pain. That in itself is wrong. Dissipation hurts—reforming should not. Through it, a voice calls out to them and a gloved hand caresses their cheek. The cloying scent of flowers fills the air. Their eyes open, but all they see is the sunlight streaming from above and a blurred shape in between—someone looking down at them. ]

Lotus? [ It is the first word out of their mouth, barely more than a whisper. Then, their brow furrows. No... The Lotus isn't here. And she never called them Cedar. ]

Junia.

[ Relief washes over them. Shame follows close on its heels. Why should they be relieved not to see the Lotus? What's wrong with them? Don't they want to see their mother again?

They shut their eyes, face going rigid with a fresh wave of torment. They realize, slowly, that the pain is not new. It is the same pain they had felt before, the same pain that had driven them to dissipate themself in the first place. Whatever is punishing them is not appeased—if anything, they've made it angrier. It still wants something from them, but what? They've burned themself, denied themself, shattered themself—what more can they possibly give? ]

I'm sorry, [ they murmur wretchedly, eyes still pinched shut. It's not even clear who they're talking to at this point: Junia or whatever lies behind their closed eyelids. ] I swear that I am...

[holyjudgmental]

Hush.

[Junia's voice is quavering from the exertion of her run as she runs her thumb over Cedar's cheek once, then twice, a clumsy, shaking gesture that feels too heavy. She leaves behind a smear of dirt, then pulls her sleeve over her hand to rub it away, mindlessly.

There are no signs of harm to Cedar that she can see, but those are not the kinds of harm that lead to such a thing as she witnessed, unmistakably. Her vision is blurred with the sting of her foul blood such that she must wipe at her eyes with the edge of her hood to clear them.]

Cedar. [As if she is a wretched echo.] I am here.

[And what consolation that must be, to have Junia, and not their Lotus.

She brings her hand to theirs and laces their fingers together, as she did when she came to fetch them from the serpent's den, and squeezes as gently as she knows how. The leather of her gloves is thin enough to allow the heat of her skin to bleed through them, and softer than her own true skin beneath it.]

Are you able to stand?

[devilmind]

[ The Operator is no stranger to fighting through pain. In battle, they and their Warframe are united in it. Every strike, every bullet, they feel as surely as if it were their own flesh and blood being pierced. They have learned to rise above that pain in the heat of battle—to view it from a distance as something temporary, inconsequential. The figment of a dream.

But this pain is different. It seems to come from within, a saboteur peeling them open from the inside. The Operator can't see its beginning or end, the same way they can't see their own. It refuses to be dismissed—or ignored.

The Operator tries instead to focus on other sensations. They still feel the softness of Junia's glove on their face—and then one of her hands, squeezing theirs. Distantly, they remember their walk home from the Snake's Den. Junia had had such faith in them, then. What must she think now? How must she feel? The Operator is suddenly reluctant to open their eyes, but they force themself to do so anyway. They meet Junia's tearful gaze and feel the guilt within them grow.

This punishment should have been theirs alone; Junia should not have had to witness it. Apologies rise up in their throat, but they swallow them. If they want to make this up to her, they can start by doing something other than wallow in their misery. ]

I... I think so. [ Saying the words, they try to rise. The world spins and lurches around them as they push themself upright and for a moment, they sit there, breathing hard, waiting for it to settle. Then, slowly, unsteadily, they try to stand.

They make it halfway before the combined forces of pain, exhaustion, and dizziness force them down once more. An echo of a past weakness—another of the Lotus's gifts of omission. A sound tears itself from their throat—a snarl of frustration, on the edge of tears. ]

What's wrong with me? [ they cry, burying their face in their hands. They want to disappear again, to be nothing but light and Void. Their atonement hadn't worked. Their thoughts are still full of ingratitude and spite. They can think of nothing else to try, no way to cure the sickness within them—

Only how to silence it for a matter of minutes. What other choice do they have? ]

Junia. [ They turn their gaze again to her, tearful and pleading. Their hands, newly unburnt, throb with memories of heat.] The fire in the church. I need you to bring it to me. I can walk, I just—

[ Junia will understand—maybe not the cause, but at least the treatment. ]

It's the only penance it accepts.

[holyjudgmental]

[Junia does understand. For once in her miserable waste of a life, she understands nearly perfectly, and she stares at Cedar in that fury of comprehension with still-sopping red-hot eyes, ringing all around with the irritation of that damnable sting of lilies.]

Absolutely not.

[It's an outburst so petulant that if she were standing (as she tried to help Cedar do, only to be borne down with them and their terrible, sad weight) she might have stomped her foot. She shakes her head wildly, as if trying to dislodge some biting insect, and rakes her teeth over her lower lip not quite hard enough to draw out yet more of the poison in her blood.]

I cannot - [no] I will not -

[Even as a child, the other children knew that Junia was of no use for anything of this nature. Where the other girls would huddle together in comfort like ducklings, Junia always found herself, somehow, exterior - somehow estranged, always, from the kind of understandings between people that seem to form the weave and weft of true companionship.

Where she came from, a place that never was or could be home, she had sat in the center of a circle of light and been alone in it. She kneels here in a world that is also not a home, with a child who is not a child and certainly not hers, that she cannot, will not help, and there is a howling, wild thing inside of her, a thing that ignites her dark eyes like coals.]

You cannot be given penance for a sin unconfessed. [Her voice is near to a hiss, words forced out low and scalding through her teeth as her breath hitches shamefully in her chest.] You will not set yourself to it without my leave. I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. I am the senior Sister of our meager order and I forbid it.

[devilmind]

[ Without her leave? The senior Sister of their order? Something flashes in the Operator's eyes, something glimpsed once before in the hotel-that-was-not-a-hotel—ancient and furious, older than Junia, older than her order, older than all her rituals and rules. For just a moment, it glowers up at her, a hungry, hateful Void. She really thinks she has the authority to forbid them from anything?

Pain washes over them anew. Guilt follows. Junia is not their enemy, just as the Lotus is not. She simply speaks out of her own piety—and distress. Even so, their anger sticks in their throat, and the long struggle to subdue it makes itself known in the rise and fall of their breath, heavy and unnatural. They are so tired of taking orders—

Another round of slow, steadying breaths. The Operator cannot meditate away the pain, but the anger, they try to put in its place—to return it to the Void and find peace in the emptiness it leaves behind.

It is still a long interval before they speak. ]

Fine. [ Their voice is quiet and controlled, their jaw clenched. ] Then I'll confess.

[ They meet Junia's gaze again, unsmiling, yet biddable. They'll swallow their anguish. Do what must be done. The same as the Tenno have done for centuries. ]

Is there anything I must say first?

[holyjudgmental]

[This is not the first Void Junia has stared into. When the unknowably deep wells of rage open in Cedar's searing eyes, she meets them with her own narrowed, with her lips drawn back slightly over her small, sharp teeth.

She knows full well that Cedar could, with all the effort of raising a hand, obliterate her on the spot for her pride, her presumption. She is acutely aware of the vulnerability of mere flesh against such wrath as she has witnessed Cedar call on. It is not courage that steels her against this knowledge.

It is, instead, a certain bewildering ache, one she feels even more so when Cedar tempers their fury, submits under her authority. Her blazing eyes widen and go out, as if plunged into cold water, and she swallows heavily around something that catches in her throat.]

You do not need to say anything.

[She curls over them without meaning to, without thinking of it, as if making a feeble attempt to shield or warm them.]

Nor to confess, if you wish not to. [Said like a confession itself, shamed, guilty (and yet: sparks beneath, defiant, as if flint set to steel).] Whatever you have done, whatever you believe you have done - surely, the Light has witnessed your repentance.

[devilmind]

[ The words should be a comfort. Their repentance is enough; they have no need to confess. But the Operator only shakes their head, gaze falling to the ground. Even if Junia absolves them—even if her Light forgives—it does not change the fact that there is something within them that very clearly does not. ]

It still hurts. [ Their voice is barely a murmur. ] Something knows the disloyalty in me. It wants me to—

[ To what? That's the problem, isn't it? The Operator doesn't know what else it could want. They have done everything to try and purge themself of their treachery, to atone. And yet, they are still condemned to pain, so deep and personal that there is no mistaking it as anything other than punishment.

Junia's words still ring in their ears: 'You cannot be given penance for a sin unconfessed.' Perhaps... there is wisdom in that, as much as the Operator wishes otherwise. Their anger, their obscene, undeserved bitterness—ever since they first felt it, it has been something to bury. Unearthing it feels like a sin in and of itself. But then, what do they have to lose? They can't be any more condemned than they are now. ]

Maybe I do need to confess. Maybe... that's what it wants.

[ Slowly, their gaze rises to meet Junia's once more. She knows more about this than they do. The Tenno are an ascetic order, much like Junia's own, but theirs has no rites for confession. Why would it when its members have spent most of their lives without voices? ]

Tell me. [ Their voice is calmer now, more resolved. ] What are the words?

[holyjudgmental]

If that is your wish.

[A submission of her own. A relenting. Junia lets out a soft breath, looks up at the sky above, the pale disc of the strange winter's sun set in its vast grey. She is a vestal, not a priest. She should not take confession - but does the Penitential Word not say that in extremity even the lowliest of faithful may hear a true repentance? Do the Verses not say that nothing is beyond the Light?

Does Cedar not need her to listen? Do they not still hurt? She is a vestal. Is her duty not the easing of pain, the curing of wounds?]

'Bless me, oh Light, for I have sinned.' Then you will tell me when you last confessed.

[She knows the rites, the sacraments. There is no one else. There is no one else to judge, and there is a dizzying possibility that lies there, one that fans the sparks finding their homes in the tinder-nest of her heart. For if there is no one else to judge, then only she stands in judgment, and could her hand not be stayed, if she sees fit to do so?

She brings her gaze back to Cedar, a warmer light than the pale one above, and she contemplates the nature of absolution.]

We are veiled in divine grace. Speak, then, and be eased.

[devilmind]

Bless me, oh Light, for I have sinned.

[ The words feel strange on the Operator's tongue. They have never invoked any kind of divinity before; more commonly, they are the divinity being invoked. Still, their voice is steady and clear. If this is their final chance, they will not take it half-heartedly.

Yet, there is a hesitation as they consider what might count as their last confession. Have they confessed before? Certainly, they have never confessed to Junia's Light. If they've confessed at all, it's been only to themself—and, once, to the thing that dwells inside them.

Distress flickers across their face at the memory. Instinctively, they know that it would not do to count that as their last confession. The Lidless Eye may be its own kind of divinity but it is not one that should ever be invoked. ]

This will be my first confession.

[ Immediately after this, there is a pause as they struggle to find the words—or perhaps, the strength to say them. It doesn't last long; the silence feels like vacillation, like cowardice. The Operator can't abide it for more than a few seconds. Like leaping out into a chasm, they begin to speak, no notion of how they might reach the other side—only that they must try. ]

I have turned against the Lotus. Our mother. She sacrificed everything for us—her family, her people— [ A short, sharp intake of breath, like bracing for impact—and then, in a rush: ] I think I hate her.

[ For a long, terrible moment, the words just hang there. The Operator stays stock still, tears pricking at the corners of their eyes. It feels like the sky will fall, like the very planet will swallow them up for the evil they've spoken. But it doesn't. The hideous words fade into silence—and more tumble out to take their place. ]

I don't want to. I know she loves us—that she was only trying to protect us. I just—she's always lying to us. And every time we think we learn the truth, we find out she's just hiding something else. [ Anger sparks anew within them, but this time, there is no punishment on its heels. The only pain they feel is their own shame, and even that is not enough to stem the tide of their words. ] I didn't know what I was. Just... this thing that she loved. That obeyed her. No name, no memories, no face. How—how could she do that to her children?

[ They know the answer already: because she'd wanted to protect them. From the pain of truth and self-awareness; of memory and choice; of sentience itself. Hadn't it been simpler then? Hadn't they been safer? How can they resent what had only been done out of love? There is still anger burning in their chest but already the horror of what they've said has begun to smother it. Their eyes widen and then shut tight. Have they forgotten? This is a confession of their wrongdoing—not an attempted justification of it. ]

I'm sorry, [ they whisper. ] She did what she had to do to keep us safe. Even if it was a hard choice, I shouldn't—I shouldn't blame her. Not after she gave everything to save us.

cw: child abuse

[holyjudgmental]

[In a towering blaze, Junia does not think she hates the Lotus. She is certain of it. Thoughts of the sin of disobedience and dishonor towards one's mother are far from her as she burns in this freezing air and watch Cedar torment themselves with guilt over a mother's failures. It is abominable, to betray one's child, surely a sin that outweighs any that Cedar has committed.

And yet that is not right. The mother is over the child as surely as the sun is over the earth, the king over the people, the priest over the congregation. It is not for a child like Cedar or a vestal like Junia to question this divine order.

(Sometimes she dreams of fingers in her hair, of a tired murmur above her; sometimes she dreams of those fingers turning to brands, of the smell of singing hair and skin, of a voice that cracks like a lash.)]

...I despised my mother.

[This is not the proper form. This is not what one says, this is not what one does. Junia brings the gloved knuckles of her hand up to stroke across Cedar's cheek, her voice curiously soft and low.]

Both of my mothers. Blood and verse. My first mother, for giving me to the second, and the second, for - for not being my first. I did not understand, when I was young. I thought much as you do. How could she have done such a thing to me?

[Anger gives way, slowly, to - something else. Something cool and stinging on the scorched places inside of her, a different kind of burn on burn. She makes a little noise in her throat, a hitch, a tremor.]

And yet - if truly I despised her, and thought her to hate me, or to be indifferent - why would I be so hateful? Should I not, then, have been glad to see the last of her? If I loathed her so, why did I - why do you miss her?

[In the consuming dream, Cedar had fought with every ounce of their might to make their way back to the Lotus. Junia does not hate a woman she has never met. She keeps brushing her hand across Cedar's cheek, over and over, as if in a trance, or trying to place them in one.]

If you hate her so, why do you forgive her?

sorry for the delay, busy week at work!

[devilmind]

[ This is the Operator’s first confession. They do not know the proper form or how a servant of the Light might absolve a sinner. Still, they stiffen at Junia's touch, expecting something worse than... a brush of her hand against their cheek? The words are different too—not liturgy or a demand for penance, but Junia's account of her own mothers. Of her hatred for them.

The Operator listens in silence. They try to imagine Junia as a child, given to a new and unfamiliar mother by the old, despising them both for their betrayal. In some ways, it is the reverse of the Lotus's choice: abandonment, rather than imprisonment. Even so, it's all too easy for them to imagine Junia's hurt. Hadn't the Lotus made the same decision, in time?

The thought brings with it a fresh shock of sorrow. Her absence hurts them, even now. It doesn't make sense. Do they hate the Lotus or do they miss her? How could it be both? Do they hate her at all? There is an ache inside them and this time, it has nothing to do with punishment. ]

Maybe I don't hate her. Or... maybe I love and hate her at the same time. [ Their arms wrap around themself. Speaking these things aloud still feels like a leap into the dark, at once terrifying and exhilarating. But Junia is listening and her light touch against their cheek carries no condemnation. Perhaps they'll still dash against the bottom, but it won't be Junia that crushes them. They speak and, slowly, the coiled spring of their shoulders begins to unwind. ] I want to see her again, more than anything. But... I don't want to be lied to anymore. I don't want to be controlled. [ A shaky sigh. ] That's how she's always protected us—how she's always loved us.

[ They love her for her love of them—and they hate what she has done in the name of that love. It is a paradox, unreconcilable.

Their gaze turns up toward Junia, searching. Hoping. ]

Did you ever stop hating your mother? Does the feeling ever just... go away?

[holyjudgmental]

[Do you ever stop hating your mother?

The question stills Junia, her hand unmoving on Cedar's face, her eyes still red-rimmed and almost childishly wide. Despised, she had said. Loathed, her own words echoing back to her.]

Yes.

[With surprise that comes as a near-question, but is not. A hate that had once felt part of her very marrow slipped from her, and she cannot recall precisely when, or how, and yet when she reaches for it - all that is there is a face not much older than her own is, now. Faded and harried, always, a face hunted by fears a child could not truly understand.]

And no. Sometimes. [She brings her hand down to Cedar's shoulder, presses lightly.] When you're young, before you know so much - the world is simpler. The answers seem so clear, so certain. You know more, and understand less.

But then, as you grow older...you begin to comprehend. The terrible choices that they make. Mothers. So you know less, and understand better, and even if what they have done still... [she bites her lip, eyes downcast] It is not a sin to be hurt, Cedar. Nor to forgive. Nor to not.

[They are poor words of comfort, tangled too deeply in her own confusion of feelings. She wishes, fervent and perverse, that someone was here to say the right things, to unweave this web for both of them.]

I know, a little. What it feels like.

[But this is the best she can offer Cedar and their misery: her own wretched heart pried out of her to share its ugliness and doubt. To offer the solace of being known, for what good it does (and what good it would have done, when she was small and struck low in her guilt; when there was no confession safe to give, only to carry).]

[devilmind]

[ As Junia speaks, the Operator does not see any wretchedness within her—nor ugliness, nor doubt, nor any of the vices she so fears. She is someone who has known the same darkness as them, both within and without, and has found a path through it. She, too, has known the terrible choices mothers make and she has survived them—accepted them—while the Operator still fears to even acknowledge their existence. And if she has walked this path and come out the other end, isn't there hope for them, too?

The Operator is not a child in the way most people mean. They have existed for centuries—perhaps for millennia. And yet, they had spent so much of that time locked in ignorance, no will of their own. If they totaled up all the years in which they'd had a choice, in which they'd actually had to think at all, would they even be out of their teens? This thing they call hate—for the Lotus, for her choices, for her lies—is it just part of growing up? Perhaps they are only starting to understand—even while the things they know seem to make less and less sense.

They want to go back to the way things were with the Lotus. They never want to go back again. ]

I'd forgive her for everything if she asked. If she meant it.

[ They say the words and, for some reason, out of all the things they've said, all that they've confessed, it's those that finally loose the tears from their eyes. They let them come. There is no longer any pain forced upon them, no judgment except their own. They are not ready to forgive the Lotus and that's terrifying and painful, but it's true—and it's theirs. ]

[holyjudgmental]

[Cedar begins to weep, and Junia's hand comes up as if to, somehow, stop the tears - to cover their eyes - to hide them, and their frailty, and the heart-stopping terror of it. Crying always makes it worse, tears like rain for the cruelties that draw them out, blossoming punishment and terror and dull red condemnation -

There's no one here but her. She comes back to this, again, and again, and always, as if caught in crystalline looping fragments, or lost in that winding false dream once more. There is no one but her to raise the lash, or spread nettles under threadbare blankets, or stoke coals around blunt-tipped iron. There is no one but her to do otherwise.

Tentatively, soft-gloved hands find their ways to Cedar's shoulders. They slip down them, draw them closer, settle the heavy weight of their divinity against rough-spun temple garments and the aching bones underneath them.]

I know.

[She was never a good sister. (The faint smell of milk, downy hair, a tiny hand curled around her own chubby finger.) Junia makes a quiet sound, a half-remembered hushing, a wordless benediction.]

You are a gentle Light, Cedar. You have a pure heart. There is nothing I may absolve you of.

[devilmind]

[ It's almost enough to make them laugh. Out of all the things they've been compared to, "a gentle light" is not one of them. 'You are a fire,' the Veil says. 'As feared as you are respected.' But what would the Veil say if they could see the fearsome Tenno now? They sink into Junia's embrace and their tears flow all the more freely for it, breath shaking like guttering candelight. The Lotus has never held them like this—has only ever touched them at all to inter them in their ship's somatic pod—but there was a mother before her who did. For centuries, the Operator had thought the Lotus to be that mother returned—until that, too, was shown to be a lie.

The first time Margulis was lost to them, their grief had burned an empire to the ground. The second, they hadn't even been able to mourn—only to accept that it was for their own good.

So they cry now. For Margulis and for the Lotus, for what has been done to them in the name of a mother's love, and for their own desperate, doomed desire to forgive all of it. They cry until they tremble with exhaustion—and even then, they have a final confession to make. ]

Then absolve me of this, [ they whisper, fighting their own faltering breath, ] that I dashed myself to pieces in front of my friend for no good reason. [ Their breath hitches in their throat, almost a laugh, almost a sob. ] I'm sorry, Junia. I should have just told you...

[ She was right. All the penance in the world didn't mean anything without a confession. ]

[holyjudgmental]

I should have asked.

[Junia's own repentance comes unexpectedly to her. She should have asked. She could have asked, and she knows this with a clarity so stark it baffles her she did not know it before.

Junia presses Cedar closer and fans her hands on their back. She has strong arms, well-muscled shoulders. She's never used them for this purpose before, and yet they serve her well in it. Perhaps this is what people mean when they speak of things coming naturally to them.]

I absolve you. You were- you were in pain, and you sought to ease it. I should have asked what troubled you so.

[There is a part of her that would rebuke Cedar still. She knows this in the same bafflement of epiphany that she understands that she could have, should have asked. The part of her that is as angry as it is frightened; the part of her that wept like this, a long time ago, and was not-

Those are thoughts for another day.]

I am sorry, Cedar.