day 44

[inflori]

[ His voice, even in his head, is tired. Exhausted and extremely irritated, even, with the petulance of a mind not yet fully awake. Petre was pulled from his comatose state just as suddenly as he fell into it, the stress of a broodmate being ripped from him having lifted from his symbiote. Now it's ready to keep going, but it hasn't given Petre the same courtesy just yet. He'll get there eventually. ]

( Why do you have to be so loud? )

[ ... All of you, he means. Ugh. ]

Comments

cw suicide

[inflori]

Well, that idiot just died. He killed himself. What kind of an asshole does that do his brood?

[ There's no mourning for Aoba, some part of him thinks it would be unfair toward Angel, who had no choice. Who will suffer twice as much when she wakes up and realizes another one of her broodmates is gone. ]

cw still suicide

[erbier]

[ There is a part of her that thinks Aoba is weak, another part of her that admires his determination. Suicide was an act of defiance in the face of Dreus's laws... An escape from the destiny he had mandated for them, but a true embrace of their powerlessness...

But this is not that world. The bonds of brood change everything. It raises the question: what kind of asshole does this. ]

A selfish one. [ She answers gently. ] But we are all for the better now to be rid of him.

[ She extends a hand for him. ]

And you have weathered it well.

[inflori]

[ Selfish. Yeah, that's the word Petre wanted to hear, unable to put his finger on it before it took shape around her tongue. Selfish. That's it. That's the worst offense against a monster that demands everything from everyone.

Then she washes it over with another compliment, a cool hand over feverish skin. Does he want to look at her for more than necessary? To make it look like her touch is something he's wondered about?

(He remembers his state when she came to him and held him in her arms, making sure no one got hurt.) ]

I guess. 'That how you feel about the guys from your brood?

[ He moves closer, too distracted to be intentionally malicious: ]

About Kylo?

[erbier]

Ren and Steven are both extremely selfish men. Rather than die themselves, they've let our brood die instead.

[ An answer she gives without much emotion. She has had time to reflect on this, on them. She and Sam had made all attempts to bridge their stubbornness, but they had both, in mutuality, frittered away all that they had been born with. ]

But does it matter, how I feel for them?

[ They were gone, and Steven may as well be. ]

[inflori]

Does it matter how I feel about Angel?

[ Is his quick, thoughtless reaction, an answer given from impulse when he is yet incapable of taking a step back and ordering his emotions to step aside. There's a lot to learn on that front, and this conversation will prove to be a lost lesson. ]

Of course it fucking does. I hate Kylo - [ Ah. ] - Ren. He was a fucking liar and I'm glad he's gone.

[erbier]

Hm.

[ What would Angel think of the pair of them. She'd understand, Ilde knows. Angel had always understood that survival was a treacherous game. ]

He lied to you, did he? That was not right of him.

[ She expects that's not the whole story at all, of all his particular sins being false was not one of Kylo Ren's favored. ]

[inflori]

Stop it. You're talking to me like I'm a fucking baby.

[ He knows that tone, that - whatever she's doing with the angle of her head. Just because he knows (thinks) it's happening now doesn't mean he's ever been able to detect it in the past. It's probably because he's so prickly. ]

Don't act like he didn't lie to you, too. That asshole even lied to himself.

[erbier]

I do not feel lied to.

[ The implication of a shrug. She finds so often that other hosts don't understand her feelings, her ability to juggle conflicting emotions without much strife. It was a skill hard-earned through years of hardship, she compartmentalized well, so long as she was able to keep her icy guards in place. ]

I always found him very earnest in all things, if... misguided.

[ She herself is misguided, so is Petre, so she says this without the implication that it is necessarily a detriment. ]

It was difficult, when he was first gone. He had always been there. But I am unburdened without him now. Our circumstances change our point of view.

[ There, does that make him feel more adult? ]

[inflori]

So how is that not lying to himself. [ Being earnest, but misguided. A dozen people would have the same thing to say about Petre, but here he is, blissfully unaware. ]

... But that's the thing. We keep changing. [ And it's a concept Petre had never thought about, not once since his creation under Diana's hands. His was a simple mind, and now, having collided with many others, and the circumstances that forced him to cooperate and cohabit with others - trustworthy and otherwise - it's slowly been morphing itself. Into something more, and probably something worse in the long run. ]