deercountry | you can keep on getting better [open]

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you can keep on getting better [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: May catchall
When: May
Where: A bar in Cellar Door, other locations to come

Content Warnings: Light alcohol use, conversations about humanity and murder, blood, vampirism

a. if you want, you can buy yourself a drink [at the bar]

[anna's made plans with a couple people to hang out this month. it's not a tense environment at all, and sometimes she can even be seen on the tiny little stage playing some chilled out bass grooves for the patrons. no concrete songs, really, mostly just improv for vibes. when she's not on stage, and most of the time she's not, she's nestled herself down into a booth down near the end. it's quiet, well-lit but not obtrusively so. people around here know her and know that that's basically her seat, so any conversations that happen there are as private as they're gonna get.]

[she's expecting a few people to show up as she nurses a beer that's so weak she might as well not be drinking anything at all. probably for the best that she's sober for these talks, whatever they end up bringing with them.]

Hey. Glad you could make it. [she tilts her drink at her guest.]

b. no you'll never drink like me [for kainé]

[there's always been a few problems with going out and hunting beasts, no matter how confident and comfortable it makes anna feel. no matter how many lives she saves, she's always putting herself at risk of corruption or injury or beasthood or all three, and one of these days it's gonna sneak up on her. all at once, extremely loudly and incredibly close.]

[anyway, when she comes back home this time, it's clear that she's been in better shape. she limps her way into the house, and she's at least cognizant enough to fix her roommate/girlfriend with a sheepish little look as she holds her side. the cloth there isn't dripping yet, but it's clear that it didn't start as red as it is now.]

Motherfucker out there got the best of me. [she's talking like she's not in pain, or like she's trying very hard to pretend she isn't.] I think I stopped most of the bleeding myself. Don't suppose we've got anything here that can help seal it up before I go to the doctor?

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[It's been a while since anyone addressed Paul as a lord, even as a half-wry joke. He knows her well enough by now to understand she doesn't mean anything disrespectful by it, if only because if Anna intended to disrespect him, she'd do him the courtesy of being direct about it. He also understands it's not deferential, and why would it be? He's not her lord, not even close.

He doesn't know how to feel about it anyway, a dilemma that plays out in a flicker of wistfulness before he schools himself back to calm. She listened politely to him, and the very least he can do is offer her the same after a question like that.]

I don't know what a call center is. Or tech support. [He admits with a slight shrug, a twist to his smile like he took a bite out of his lemon wedge.] I do know a few things about war.

It doesn't sound like she would miss it. Or does miss it. [He keeps his gaze and voice steady.] Did I ever tell you that we made machines like that, once, where I come from? I don't think I did.

[there's a lot there on his face that she gives him the grace to pretend she's ignoring. it hits, though, and she makes a mental note not to joke about that with him. unsure why, but she doesn't need to ask questions.]

[besides, he's given her something else that seems more polite to comment on.]

I don't think so, no. Were they combat androids too, or just kind of general purpose ones? [it feels like she doesn't need to ask that, though. before taking another drink, she pauses, fixes paul with a look that seems far too casual to meet him after how he brought arrakis' androids up.] I mean, I can take a guess. I'm something of a war specialist myself.

[There's another world on just the other side of a choice where they're talking about call centers instead, and for a moment Paul wonders if it would be possible to slip sideways into that skin. Is that version of himself better off, lighter?]

It was a long time ago. Thousands of years. [He shrugs, barely.] I don't know if they were androids, although I'd imagine some of them may have been. Most of the records of that time are lost.

[Or were purged, to be more accurate, but he remembers her defense of AI's right to exist without having to debate it, so he leaves it unsaid.]

I guess I'm curious about what it would be like, to be a thing like that. There aren't any left where I come from to ask about it.

[so that's what he's driving at? well. anna never signed up to be the ambassador for android rights, but she's certainly made a big enough deal of it with paul already, so she sees no real problem with giving him a little more context. she keeps a pleasant look on her face as she lowers her drink back to the table.]

Well, if we're honest, I haven't had the chance to talk to A2 in a long time. I just have her memories to go off, and when I saw her in the Winter Mourning, I was too afraid to say anything. But I know that she started off built for combat. Literally programmed to be a good little soldier who fought and died for her commander. [the pleasantness falls off her face around the time she says "good little soldier". parts of this story still hit too close for her liking.]

Then she went on a mission to Earth's surface with her squadron and had to watch her friend get shot down on entry. She was second in command, so she became the new leader, and she was... just as powerless to watch everyone die around her. [she's going into a more involved story, isn't she? great. can't keep a handle on her words. she'll skip the flowery stuff, then, she decides.] But I already told you that she found out the whole war was a lie. And she had to watch the woman she loved sacrifice herself for a cause that she still believed in, but that A2 knew was just bullshit.

[she exhales. they're not her memories, but they're intertwined so deeply with her soul that every time she talks about it, it feels like she was there.]

I don't think that answers the question you were asking, but that's just... what it was like for her. Content with it all until her soul broke through the code. My guess is it's the same thing with any android.

No. [Paul stands his hand to forestall her, shaking his head.] That is what I meant.

[She answered the question-within-the-question. The part that he cares about most, even if he should be devoting himself to the technical and the practical. A2's manifestation in Anna is an existential threat, or it's supposed to be - but Paul is finding that even those threats seem less pressing than they once did.

But watching everyone die. Watching the person that you love die for a cause that doesn't matter. Those things are the threats (the warnings) that preoccupy him more and more, that wear him as thin as the worry spot inside his lip.]

And then she came to you after her world ended, if I understand what happened correctly. [He doubts he does, but he hopes he understands enough.] Do you know...do you know when she broke from her programming? If it was all at once, or if it came in pieces?

[anna shakes her head with just a little regret showing on her face, in her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth. though she's glad she was able to answer the broader questions, she fears she doesn't have much more to give him when it comes to specifics.]

You have the timeline right as far as I know, but I don't think I know exactly when she broke, no. [a thought occurs to her.] I don't put much faith in coincidences when it comes to this stuff, though. So if she's anything like me, then it probably happened when somebody pulled her out of the cave she was living in and showed her the world outside that she never knew existed. And once she had that realization, she could never go back inside the cave, because who would believe her, right?

So I think the break happened all at once, like getting a hole punched right through her chest. [is the sentence that she wants to say. the words trail off slowly, and she inhales suddenly, closes her eye. lets a shudder run through her like the leviathan had run kainé through. she needs to get control of herself.]

[once the feeling passes (once she's shoved it all back inside her), she lets her shoulders and fingers relax. and tries to continue like it didn't happen.]

And she spent the rest of her time before she found me trying to piece herself back together with everything the new world had for her.

[Paul finds a fascinating point in the air several degrees to the side of Anna's shoulder as she is run through by that ripple of emotion. Studious unseeing of vulnerability comes more readily to him these days. He bears witnesss to so much of it.

Like getting a hole punched through your chest. He could touch his own unshattered sternum, brush fingertips over a scar that seems so small for what it is.]

It sounds like she'd fit in well here.

[He keeps much of the bleakness out of his voice, but not all of it, observing her under the veil of his eyelashes, faint troubled lines along the sharpened hollows of his face.]

But you'd be missed. [Dropped like a smooth stone into a still pond.] I know that's not my place to say.

[And yet, he still has the temerity (he always does) to ask:] Is that what happened to you? She pulled you out of your cave?

[anna is coming to appreciate many things about paul even from this short conversation. the grace he affords her to ignore what she doesn't want either of them to dwell on. the sincerity behind saying that anna would be missed if she were gone, taking her almost by such surprise that she doesn't know how to respond to it. and the welcome audacity to keep asking more questions that prevent anna from dwelling too much on the first two things she likes about him.]

[if nothing else, she can give him a grateful look at the implication that she would actually be missed if she left.]

A little bit, yeah. But I think the thing that really pulled me into the sunlight was... this one time, like a month after I started changing, when a friend of mine let me try on this magic ring of hers that let her fly. [she turns one hand up at the wrist, palm towards paul.] I know, but you're gonna have to get used to weird stuff like that with me. But what happened was... I mean, I tried the ring on, and I flew. I saw a restaurant that I'd been going to for years, but I saw it from 40 feet in the air. That's kind of what made it all connect, you know? That I was living in a world that was so much bigger than I could even guess.

[That look of gratitude strikes a chime that hangs inside the curved cage of Paul's ribs, a weakness that he's found touched on more than he ever would have imagined, once upon a time. Her story of flight does much the same thing, a tale he leans forward to as he listens as if pulled towards her by invisible thread.

So many people so willing to count themselves out before the end of the story; so many people who never knew what it was like to be free. He is too easily attached.]

A change in perspective. [He breathes, the implications of something profound in it.] Sometimes, you have to walk into the storm.

[His gaze drops again into his drink, like he's said something he shouldn't have, clearing his throat very quietly before he goes on.]

Part of an old proverb where I'm from. It's not always enough to imagine a storm inside yourself, sometimes you have to...embody it. To engage in the experiential. Enact the metaphor, to put it another way.

...do you ever think that's what the gods mean for us to do, with the things they set before us here? The trials, the transformations, the logic of all of it. If they're trying to take us to something.

[anna nods along, agreeing with the metaphor. it's an easy thing to relate to, and the idea of embodying the storm is one that may stick with her. he's making good points, raising good questions. like he's had a lot of thoughts on this on his own, and she can't be surprised by that. nobility probably has a lot of time to spend contemplating destiny like this.]

I'm not sure. [there's a bit of a grimace on her face as she remembers something from back home, though. and she recognizes what she's about to say, but it doesn't have to mean anything. it doesn't have to mean anything as long as paul doesn't know that she knows.]

There was one person from back home, Clarence Vanderweele. He found some way to unlock power that basically turned him into a god, and he started looking at the other people like me and deciding which of us were going to be strong enough to survive in the world that he wanted to create. And anyone who wasn't strong enough... well, he just let them vanish.

[she's leading to something, but that much should be obvious. and maybe it's not quite the question that paul asked anymore, but this is where the words have taken her.]

I think a lot of times, gods just do what they want. Maybe some of them want to lead us to be better, but I think it's more likely that they treat us like pieces in a game. You don't think about the emotions of chess pieces, right? [mm. she doesn't like that she just said that.] But powerful humans know everything about the way we think. They can make people follow the beat of any drum they want. It's the difference between leading us somewhere and yanking our chains to pull us in step with them.

[There's another saying where Paul comes from, one much less esoteric, and as Anna speaks it rings in his thoughts like a bell.

He tilts his head slightly as he listens, wariness brushed across his face like watercolors. His brows knit together, a faint line forked between them. He sips his drink, sets it down and aside, and looks at her levelly, a small quirk of the mouth passing for a smile. With a note of quiet approval, he says:]

You've thought about this.

That's a good thing, for what it's worth. Too many people go through life without thinking about anything past their fingertips.

[He means that, even with his suspicions thrumming like current-bearing wires. She hasn't said anything that wouldn't make neat, explicable sense in the context of what she's told him before, or the conversation so far. Neither of them have so much as alluded to the roof Paul lives under.]

So if we are game pieces...which do you think is worse? Indifference, or intent? An alien divine that cannot understand what it asks of us, or a human one that does?

[(A good liar lies, they say. A great one tells the truth. He likes her more every time he learns something new.)]

Oh, intent. Always.

[she says it like it should be obvious, but maybe it's only that way because of what she's been through. the history of her world, and the history of her family, as well. she trails a finger along the edge of her glass. could be a good time to pull it back from talking about someone Else and instead start talking about things closer to home.]

So my grandparents grew up in the middle of one of the worst fascist regimes that my world's ever seen. And neither of them liked talking about it much, and I never really wanted to know either, you know? But my little sister, Beth, she soaked up information like a sponge. So one time when Oma was over for a visit, she asked her what it was like growing up there.

[there's a level of detachment here that makes it somewhat easier to talk about. it's half-remembered statements, it's the general vibe of the whole conversation. she doesn't remember her grandmother's actual words anymore, not after everything else she's been through in the intervening 15 or 20 years.]

And Oma said that it was just... so clear what the man leading it all was doing. Who he was trying to blame all the country's problems on and what he intended to do about it. He didn't try to hide his intent, he just... took advantage of people who wanted an easy scapegoat to blame everything on. And he hammered that point for years, until... [sigh.]

Until it worked. Until he whipped an entire country into a frenzy that left millions of people dead, because he convinced them that they were all subhuman. And he could do it because he knew how to take a country's fear and direct it all in one place. And the history of my world is full of people like him. I don't think an indifferent, blind god could do something that horrible if it tried.

[Paul flattens his hands on the table as Anna speaks, that knit-brow apprehension back in place more tautly than ever. He feels contained, pressurized, his seams creaking quietly under unseen but growing weight.

He knows the man Anna tells him about. He reads all sorts of things at the Archives, and one of his research paths led him down a long and bloody series of human tyrants and their atrocities. He didn't sleep those nights. He laid awake with stagnant sea and choking acid between his teeth, dreams churning undreamt inside his skull.]

I'm sorry that your family endured that. That your world did. I wish I could tell you the future turns out differently. That we improve ourselves, and learn to act when we see tyrants like that rise. [He speaks quietly, with a inflection of something only shallowly buried.] All we learn is new ways to destroy each other.

[A moment stretches into a longer silence than it should. Paul runs his fingers up the side of his glass, dampens them with condensation, and then, absently, like a habit, rubs his thumb between his eyebrows along the crease of thought there.]

Do you think God is blind because of their indifference, or indifferent because they're blind? Choosing not to see, or not being able to - there's a distinction, isn't there?

[that's... admittedly unexpected. she raises her eyebrows at him and feels her other eye going wide underneath the patch, too.]

Just how many more people are gonna surprise me, knowing all this stuff about Earth?

[but the look fades, and she tries to force a smile instead, but it's the knowledge that it never really gets better that sits heavy in her chest. she's aware. she's suspected it for some time, and it's really accelerated in the past, oh, let's say four years or so. it's a shame that this boy from some future world has to be the one to confirm it for her. she almost laughs, just parting her lips as she looks back down at the worn wood of the table. her fingers trace a pattern that she has a much better perspective on from where she's sitting. it probably just looks directionless to anyone else.]

There's a difference, yeah. But I don't know how much it matters. When my parents disowned me in the name of God, I wasn't thinking too much about whether God was watching and letting it happen, or paying attention to the blood-for-oil bullshit everyone was praying for instead, or if he really just wasn't even looking at all. [she gently pushes her glass through the thin line of condensation that she'd been drawing on the table. she'd love to say she could keep eye contact with paul while she's doing it.] All I saw from my perspective down here on the great cosmic game board was a door slamming in my face and an empty bus back into the city.

That's the problem, you know? We could sit here talking theology all we want, but in the end the only thing that matters is how it affects you and me. [now she can look up at him. she isn't begging him to understand her or anything; in fact, if she had to guess, he knows what she's saying pretty well. welcome to the rerun of annalise lehmann's crisis of faith, originally airing all throughout july 2010.] Either you feel like you were lied to your whole life, or you feel abandoned by someone you trusted to be there for you, but either way you end up alone.

[The door is a handful of seconds away. Anna wouldn't stop him from standing up to head towards it, with any pale excuses he might make. He had thought he wanted to talk about this, to better understand, in whatever way he was able to understand. He was wrong. He often is. His feet are already bracing on the floor so he may rise.

But she looks up at him, expecting nothing, and he is fixed in place by the absence of demand. The difference in their ages has never struck him like this before. He is a man grown, head of his House - but he feels like a boy, the one she saw him as when he walked into this place. She is worn, and tired, and she has set her heart whole and beating between them without asking for anything back.

His hand steals across the table, almost as if at someone else's will, and he leaves it open by hers, fingers splayed to be taken up, if she wants them.]

They shouldn't have done that to you.

[Not for God, whatever twisted logic led them there. Not for anything.]

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have - [he shakes his head with a hard swallow, his voice clotted with an echoing empathy] - you're right. That's what matters, when it comes down to us.

I want there to be a reason. I want to understand. [he's the one who can't meet her eyes, now] Sometimes, I think - if I could understand, then -

But that's not something anyone else can tell me, is it? Or can tell you.

[it shouldn't be so touching to hear that. she should be hardened by now. but she sees paul reach out a hand, and despite herself, she takes it. one thing that she never heard enough of when she had the original crisis was how they shouldn't have done this to her. how her parents were wrong for what they did. it was twelve years ago and she's mostly over it by now, but any sort of kindness that anyone elects to extend to her will always, always be appreciated.]

Why are you apologizing? [she almost looks confused, but she does understand why he's doing it. or she thinks she does, at least.] I'm the one who brought it up. I'm just not very good at figuring out why people do things, and that goes double for gods.

[she squeezes his hand. looks down at the table, then back up to him.]

There's someone from back home who said one time that he thinks all our lives are unfolding in the right direction, and that stuck with me. I don't know if that means there's a reason behind everything we've been through, but I think it means that you and I are both here, now, having this conversation because it's where our lives have taken us. [and very suddenly, she almost looks... there's a combination of shame and embarrassment on her face.]

I know that's not what you're looking for, and maybe it's stupid to listen to the words of the guy who wrote seventeen songs about partying as hard as physically possible, but... I don't know. It's helped me. Knowing that I'm in the right place, going the right way. Once I stopped being stubborn about it and got some help from my friends to guide me, at least.

[Paul knows how little of Anna is still human. She told him herself. But the hand that clasps his is warm, the intent that moves her to squeeze their fingers together warmer still. He almost didn't expect her to take it. He barely knows why the impulse moved him to reach out. Everything balances on a grass-blade's width, twisting slightly in a chance breeze, and there is the faintest tracery of surprise around his eyes at all of it.]

I think you're better at figuring people out than you think you are.

[He looks at her like he's watching a something open, a bud or a shell, drawing slowly back to reveal the first hint of the delicate thing it protects.]

Maybe the gods, too. [He brushes his thumb along the outer curve of her hand, a light, companionable touch.] As for what I'm looking for - I think your song writing friend might say that finding other things is part of the unfolding.

[Now it's his turn again to glance away, voice softer, wistfulness not quite filtered out of it:] I don't think that's stupid. It got you this far, didn't it? Despite everything else, you're here, head above the waves.

...and I'm apologizing because... [His brow furrows lightly, troubled, someone on the cusp of an understanding.] Someone should.

[shit.]

[she's not that drunk, is she? christ. she's not crying but there's the tingle in her nose and she can see the corner of her eye getting a little blurry. no, dammit, she's not gonna cry in front of someone who's, like, a decade younger than her and also royalty. but she'll at least allow herself the vulnerability, the knowledge that she wants to.]

[she clears her throat ungracefully and pulls her hand back slowly, then wipes at her eye for what she's going to pretend is an unrelated reason.]

Yeah, well. 's one of a whole list of things I never got from them, so. Thanks. [hoo boy. dammit, atreides.] And thanks for thinking I'm all right at reading people, too. Always had problems with it, but, you know. Just kind of... try to say what's in my heart, or whatever the fuck's inside here anymore, and see what happens from there.

And if the words of the guy who put out an album called I Get Wet can help you out? [she fixes him with a smile from one side of her mouth, again almost like she's embarrassed to say it.] Well, hell. Works for me. Be sure to hit me up if you ever need more inspiration from, you know. A culture that I guess has been dead for a while, when you're from.

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you can keep on getting better [open]

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cw 1940s germany/the holocaust

cw 1940s germany/the holocaust

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