Fiona:
“I’m not-” Fiona starts, stops. Thinks. “Okay. We can go do something else and find something you do find fun, just leave this stuff here. Go back to the apartment to give you a mechi-cure, maybe, like I promised.” Because Hazel has commandeered the workshop and she does not want her intimate girlfriend affection smothering weird cleaning moment to be ruined by bitch-queen of the fairies. “But can I just show you why I’m being weird about this?”
She stacks a quick rainbow of lego bricks, scrabbling around in the big dumped pile looking for one for every November color she knows about. “Black is a trauma response, naturally isolated.” She flicks that off the stack. “Orange is supposed to be your social core, but we’re your girlfriends and she sees us about as much as Green used to.” Flicks that off. “Green, she’s complicated but just for now, Ms Queen of the Underworld,” Flicks that off. “Brown?” Flicks that off without explanation. “Red.” She unclips it from the stack and puts that in the palm of her hand. “White.” Unclips that from the stack and puts it in her hand. “Yellow.” Unclips that from the stack and puts that in her hand. “Pink.” And again.
She makes a new stack, Red, White, Yellow and Pink. “This is who’s left of you who seems to really care about people in a way that could be kind of healthy.” She looks at the flicked Orange brick. “Which worries me on its own, but. White wants a strong leader, not to be one.” She sets White aside. “Three left. Red’s solid, but… this isn’t her place.”
And then she rebuilds the whole rainbow stack using just the flicked and discarded pieces, leaving Yellow and Pink beside it.
“So now all of this? All of this isn’t countervailing force anymore, it’s table stakes.” Fiona holds up the Yellow and Pink bricks. “For these two. And this one,” she holds Yellow up. “Apparently thinks that the point of making up a game to play with kids is manipulating them into optimal happiness.” She closes that one in her left fist.
“Which leaves Pink.” She says. “Hi.” She adds, wiggling her fingers. “So I love you,” and she holds up the rainbow piece and offers it to the actual Pink, “and I also love you,” she holds up the individual pink brick but keeps it in one hand without offering it. “So I have to-”
She stops cold. “Holy shit.” She looks at Pink in fear. “Pink she’s going to kill you.” She remembers she’s still holding the Yellow brick in her left hand and flicks it like a bee that stung her.
Okay, so you know that thing where people learn by teaching? Or like, doing a simple demonstration makes things obvious you wouldn’t have thought of?
Yeah, so. Fiona has just, in her head, made a very important series of logical connections. All these intermediary steps stay in Fiona's head for the moment though because she's too startled to explain herself, has no idea how, is relying on Pink making the same conclusions she just did.
1: Pink is the only threat to Yellow’s supremacy here in the way that actually matters.
2: Pink is the color responsible for selfishness, and Yellow's vision requires total selflessness.
3: She’s seen how much Blue’s disappearance is changing them even without Blue being there herself to change them. That’s a new data point for her.
She was going to say something like ‘I want you to be able to feel like you can be selfish having fun with other people, rather than need to hide away and keeping entirely to yourself’, and that was true too. It just feels way less important now.
Fiona is at least aware her girlfriend is… weird, that it’s not murder-murder. She knows she’s not accusing Yellow of assassination here so much as a change of mindset, a way to resolve a cognitive dissonance, something that would only be necessary if Yellow did win out. She gets that.
But also it’d make her fucking sad, damn it.
Apostle:
Apostle stops.
“Oh holy shit you’re a segmented GAI. Oh shit you were the blonde at the Lutherans meeting?” More gears, they push off Junta’s bed and glow like a Christmas light over you, radiating all different colours and blasting the sound of a hammering heart. “Definitely segmented personalities, she was too different. No fucking way, you’re kidding me. Wait. November? Junta talked about-” Apostle stops. “Journalism. You knew him for journalism.”
Apostle is a genuinely brilliant idiot, when they told Yellow that all the smartest people they knew were dumber than her they included themselves.
“Know him.” Apostle corrects themself. “The universe hates him too much to end his suffering this early. Anyway. You basically got it, with the card, so I’ll just tell you that it’s heat sensitive invisible ink. You’ve got to hold it as close to a candle as you can in a dark room without burning it.” They say this to save time, but don’t just say what’s on the card. They only want to help you skip the boring step. “Wait. Did you know he wrote…?”
This is awkward.
No it isn’t.
“Doesn’t matter,” Apostle continues, making it clear they have simply decided they don’t care about it and you shouldn’t either, so it’s fine, “I get like that with fanfiction. I kind of find one thing I like and I pull everything I can from it, but it’s not enough so I get deep into the fandom trying to stripmine that. But at the end I can’t remember what’s fanon, and what’s canon, and what’s from where. All the different characters get superimposed over all their other versions, all the different timelines.”
“And then I realize everyone else has done it wrong, except like two people, and then that’s the worst because you see two people get it right, it’s a solved problem, but nobody else-” they cut themselves off. “Actually what personality fragment am I talking to here, how are you subdivided? It’s going to make things way easier going forward if I actually just know what partition you are.”
Crystal:
“Yes dear,” Crystal says. “And all that is very lovely when the nation you mean is Aevum. If, however, my girlfriend were to experience a factional split, then I might have to learn how to break up with only a portion of someone, and that sounds thoroughly miserable.”
She looks down at Yellow from higher up the toppled throne and looks at her like a cat that’s knocked something off the bench. “You do not need to explain, or apologize, or justify yourself to me, none is needed. But-”
There are two tones she considers taking here, warm and cold, and she chooses warm this time. She trusts Yellow as fragile enough that saying this is warning enough without needing to belabour the point, so let this just be a celebration of the others.
“The sentient manifestation of your hedonism is a charming and vibrant sweetheart to whom I would give the world. Your paranoia is a watchful soul, deeply hurt but expressing care in her own ways. And your disaster lesbianism,” she smiles angelically at Red and maintains eye contact with her when she says this, “besides being forthright and adventurous, can make me cum harder than a corded vibrator at its full. And so on.” She laughs at her own joke as she thinks of it in her head. “I was going to say they just don’t make batteries big enough, but there is one in you, so I suppose they must.”
She looks back to Yellow. “Please do not talk about my girlfriend in front of me like that again.”
There. No coldness. No cuts. And most of all, finish on the singular, to make it clear that Yellow is still included in that as well. All this needs to be is an eccentric case of self-loathing, and nothing more.
The Third Day:
A lot of things are about to happen. It will not be quick.
“I’m not-” Fiona starts, stops. Thinks. “Okay. We can go do something else and find something you do find fun, just leave this stuff here. Go back to the apartment to give you a mechi-cure, maybe, like I promised.” Because Hazel has commandeered the workshop and she does not want her intimate girlfriend affection smothering weird cleaning moment to be ruined by bitch-queen of the fairies. “But can I just show you why I’m being weird about this?”
She stacks a quick rainbow of lego bricks, scrabbling around in the big dumped pile looking for one for every November color she knows about. “Black is a trauma response, naturally isolated.” She flicks that off the stack. “Orange is supposed to be your social core, but we’re your girlfriends and she sees us about as much as Green used to.” Flicks that off. “Green, she’s complicated but just for now, Ms Queen of the Underworld,” Flicks that off. “Brown?” Flicks that off without explanation. “Red.” She unclips it from the stack and puts that in the palm of her hand. “White.” Unclips that from the stack and puts it in her hand. “Yellow.” Unclips that from the stack and puts that in her hand. “Pink.” And again.
She makes a new stack, Red, White, Yellow and Pink. “This is who’s left of you who seems to really care about people in a way that could be kind of healthy.” She looks at the flicked Orange brick. “Which worries me on its own, but. White wants a strong leader, not to be one.” She sets White aside. “Three left. Red’s solid, but… this isn’t her place.”
And then she rebuilds the whole rainbow stack using just the flicked and discarded pieces, leaving Yellow and Pink beside it.
“So now all of this? All of this isn’t countervailing force anymore, it’s table stakes.” Fiona holds up the Yellow and Pink bricks. “For these two. And this one,” she holds Yellow up. “Apparently thinks that the point of making up a game to play with kids is manipulating them into optimal happiness.” She closes that one in her left fist.
“Which leaves Pink.” She says. “Hi.” She adds, wiggling her fingers. “So I love you,” and she holds up the rainbow piece and offers it to the actual Pink, “and I also love you,” she holds up the individual pink brick but keeps it in one hand without offering it. “So I have to-”
She stops cold. “Holy shit.” She looks at Pink in fear. “Pink she’s going to kill you.” She remembers she’s still holding the Yellow brick in her left hand and flicks it like a bee that stung her.
Okay, so you know that thing where people learn by teaching? Or like, doing a simple demonstration makes things obvious you wouldn’t have thought of?
Yeah, so. Fiona has just, in her head, made a very important series of logical connections. All these intermediary steps stay in Fiona's head for the moment though because she's too startled to explain herself, has no idea how, is relying on Pink making the same conclusions she just did.
1: Pink is the only threat to Yellow’s supremacy here in the way that actually matters.
2: Pink is the color responsible for selfishness, and Yellow's vision requires total selflessness.
3: She’s seen how much Blue’s disappearance is changing them even without Blue being there herself to change them. That’s a new data point for her.
She was going to say something like ‘I want you to be able to feel like you can be selfish having fun with other people, rather than need to hide away and keeping entirely to yourself’, and that was true too. It just feels way less important now.
Fiona is at least aware her girlfriend is… weird, that it’s not murder-murder. She knows she’s not accusing Yellow of assassination here so much as a change of mindset, a way to resolve a cognitive dissonance, something that would only be necessary if Yellow did win out. She gets that.
But also it’d make her fucking sad, damn it.
Apostle:
Apostle stops.
“Oh holy shit you’re a segmented GAI. Oh shit you were the blonde at the Lutherans meeting?” More gears, they push off Junta’s bed and glow like a Christmas light over you, radiating all different colours and blasting the sound of a hammering heart. “Definitely segmented personalities, she was too different. No fucking way, you’re kidding me. Wait. November? Junta talked about-” Apostle stops. “Journalism. You knew him for journalism.”
Apostle is a genuinely brilliant idiot, when they told Yellow that all the smartest people they knew were dumber than her they included themselves.
“Know him.” Apostle corrects themself. “The universe hates him too much to end his suffering this early. Anyway. You basically got it, with the card, so I’ll just tell you that it’s heat sensitive invisible ink. You’ve got to hold it as close to a candle as you can in a dark room without burning it.” They say this to save time, but don’t just say what’s on the card. They only want to help you skip the boring step. “Wait. Did you know he wrote…?”
This is awkward.
No it isn’t.
“Doesn’t matter,” Apostle continues, making it clear they have simply decided they don’t care about it and you shouldn’t either, so it’s fine, “I get like that with fanfiction. I kind of find one thing I like and I pull everything I can from it, but it’s not enough so I get deep into the fandom trying to stripmine that. But at the end I can’t remember what’s fanon, and what’s canon, and what’s from where. All the different characters get superimposed over all their other versions, all the different timelines.”
“And then I realize everyone else has done it wrong, except like two people, and then that’s the worst because you see two people get it right, it’s a solved problem, but nobody else-” they cut themselves off. “Actually what personality fragment am I talking to here, how are you subdivided? It’s going to make things way easier going forward if I actually just know what partition you are.”
Crystal:
“Yes dear,” Crystal says. “And all that is very lovely when the nation you mean is Aevum. If, however, my girlfriend were to experience a factional split, then I might have to learn how to break up with only a portion of someone, and that sounds thoroughly miserable.”
She looks down at Yellow from higher up the toppled throne and looks at her like a cat that’s knocked something off the bench. “You do not need to explain, or apologize, or justify yourself to me, none is needed. But-”
There are two tones she considers taking here, warm and cold, and she chooses warm this time. She trusts Yellow as fragile enough that saying this is warning enough without needing to belabour the point, so let this just be a celebration of the others.
“The sentient manifestation of your hedonism is a charming and vibrant sweetheart to whom I would give the world. Your paranoia is a watchful soul, deeply hurt but expressing care in her own ways. And your disaster lesbianism,” she smiles angelically at Red and maintains eye contact with her when she says this, “besides being forthright and adventurous, can make me cum harder than a corded vibrator at its full. And so on.” She laughs at her own joke as she thinks of it in her head. “I was going to say they just don’t make batteries big enough, but there is one in you, so I suppose they must.”
She looks back to Yellow. “Please do not talk about my girlfriend in front of me like that again.”
There. No coldness. No cuts. And most of all, finish on the singular, to make it clear that Yellow is still included in that as well. All this needs to be is an eccentric case of self-loathing, and nothing more.
The Third Day:
A lot of things are about to happen. It will not be quick.