Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

Roaki certainly didn't give Quinn much information when she finally spoke. The look in her eyes—pain, terror, hate—said that truly horrible things had happened to her. 'They doubted me' gave away only a fragment of what Quinn was sure was a much deeper and darker past.

But through all these conversations, all the interactions they had, there was one throughline that Quinn had arrive at. She'd thought before, and said to Doctor Follen, that it was winning that Roaki cared about. But that wasn't quite right. Winning was just how she reached what she really cared about.

She wanted to be strong. Or...maybe she just wanted to not be weak. Quinn wasn't sure quite yet which it was, or even if they were separate at all. And it also explained very neatly why she felt being a pilot was so important. Quinn remembered her first time in Ablaze with a jagged clarity, and that feeling of barely restrained strength that had run through her even before she'd phased had felt very good. She could easily see how it could become intoxicating to someone like Roaki.

"If you don't mind, I have another question, Roaki." What would Besca say? How would Besca say this, if Quinn were like this? What would she do?

An answer jumped out at her, and a moment passed as she weighed what she was possibly about to do. It could help. It had helped Quinn before when she was upset. But, given how Roaki had acted up to this point, it could also very much hurt, and she wasn't quite sure which. Was it worth it, now that Roaki was starting to open up to her?

She thought that maybe it was.

So, air still moving unfamiliarly and uncomfortably across her eye socket, she hunched forward and, for the first time since the Henkersmahl...

She made eye contact.

"What is it you want?"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn sat stock still, frozen in place, stunned by the sheer force of the fury that was now pouring out of Roaki.

And anger rose to match it within her. Both her own, and the deep and seething rage that she recognized as Quinnlash's. How dare she say that about her—their—family? The sudden surge of fire that burned bright and hot through her body drew a harsh gasp from her during Roaki's speech. And it wasn't just anger, but a complex cocktail of anger, self-loathing, searing guilt, and—even worse—a nagging doubt.

Maybe it was true. Maybe they didn't need her. Maybe they were lying to her, and they really did hate her.

She fought to wrangle it all down, but it was stubborn and would not be silenced quickly. For the first time she was glad that Roaki wasn't looking at her, so she couldn't see Quinn's face struggling to settle itself against all her instincts.

But fought it she did. Struggle to settle it she did. This wasn't like the Henkersmahl. This wasn't Roaki trying to provoke her. By the time she'd finished speaking, Quinn had managed to force the anger back down into the pit in her head that it so desperately wanted to crawl back out of, ignored Quinnlash's boiling resentment. And though that powerful urge drained out of her, the rest—guilt, fear, doubt, self-hate—remained. Then the last thing Roaki had said seeped in through the cracks:

If you’re gonna beat me, don’t be me.

So it was Roaki's family that had done this to her? Quinn couldn't think of any other reason for her to react so violently to just the mention, just the thought, of the word. Another painful piece of kinship between the two of them, it seemed. That hurt, that scarring that they each bore on their shoulders, it all came from the same source, didn't it? Why? Why did these things need to happen? To her, to Roaki, why, why, why? It wasn't fair!

Trying to ignore her inner turmoil, Quinn's voice when she spoke was quiet, so quiet—a stark contrast to Roaki's—and only shook the smallest bit. "It's my turn to ask a question. Remember, you don't need to answer if you don't want to."

And now, finally, Quinn got the chance to ask the question that she'd wanted to ask since the beginning, the one that she'd tried so hard to work around to, though now she was almost afraid to know the answer.

"What do you mean, 'be you?'"

Her clamp on the storm of negativity inside her was creaking and straining, and she could feel heat building around her eye as her voice's trembling grew stronger. Still, she kept it as gentle as she could.

"What did your—what did they do to you, Roaki?"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn opened her mouth to say...something. She didn't know what she'd say to that, what she could even possibly say to such a horrible thing. Her mouth went dry as she realized that she really, truly had nothing to give.

Luckily, Roaki saved her from that with another question. Quinn almost smiled; that snapping voice, one she'd been so afraid of just days before, was almost comforting somehow. She sounded a little bit more like Roaki now.

But any chance of that smile was lost with what she'd actually said. And a grim and foreboding question it was. It truly seemed like she just...didn't understand how...no, it wasn't even not understanding how 'love' worked, or friendship. It was more that she just didn't understand relationships as a whole. A strange mixture of dread and anxiety began to bubble up within her, along with a tiny seed of anger that was slowly germinating, despite her best intentions

"I wouldn't say," she began carefully, "that she's afraid of me, or that I did anything to them. Deelie—" Should she say this? Was it a violation of Dahlia's privacy? She didn't know, but she had no way of stopping now that she'd committed. Only way to go was forward. "—well, Hovvi was Dahlia's home. When it burned down," a shard of guilt dug into her, edging into her voice, "she lost everyone. She lost her dad, she lost her home, and she lost her best friend, all her friends." The guilt was joined by a low note of grief, forming a horrible harmony which spat out, "And all she got in return was me," with no small amount of spite.

"...When I made it out of Hovvi, I was..." She swallowed heavily, anxiously running a hand down her braid. "I was destroyed, both physically and mentally. I spent a week comatose. By the time I woke up I had the implants, because it was the only way I wouldn't be—"

She nearly choked. No. Dragging up all the memories of Hovvi and the immediate aftermath was already crushing her enough as it was. She wouldn't be able to hold it together if she...no. She wouldn't acknowledge it. She couldn't. Not right now. A few seconds passed before she felt like she could properly speak. "—I could barely walk. It was weeks before I stopped waking up screaming."

"So we started to lean on each other. And Besca took care of us, so we both leaned on her."

A deep breath. She tried to dig out those fragments from her heart, and was met with...minimal success. They would be there for a long time now, she knew. Her voice was starting to thicken, just a little. She knew that she was going to cry today. She was going to cry for a long time. She just hoped it was after she'd left Roaki's room.

She shrugged helplessly. "We're a family now, that's all."

Amygdala Circuit

"…What happened to your eye?"

Quinn sucked in a sharp, pained breath. She should've expected it, she really should've. But she somehow didn't, not so early out of the gate. She hesitated, her last breath half in and half out of her throat. Her eye flickered for a moment with...not with terror, per se, but certainly with some kind of deep discomfort, like a poison that lay beneath her had floated briefly to the surface.

Still, her hands were already behind her head. So she could at least cut that agonizing part of the process out.

"I did mean what I said at the...Henkersmahl, I think it is? I don't really know what happened to it." She paused, rewound. "Or...no, I know what happened to it. I just..." She finally managed to untie the knot and, for the second time in as many days, let it flutter down into her lap like a windless flag. This time she resisted the urge to run her fingers across the scar tissue, to see how expansive it was. She just sat there, hands clutching tightly around the strip of black and yellow fabric. "I just don't know why."

"I was...twelve? Thirteen? Something like that, I'm never quite sure. And it just...went. Burst right out of my head." She shuddered and, forgetting her resolve to not, dug her fingernails lightly into the sleeves of her t-shirt. She hadn't thought of the sheer pain of that moment for some time now. Tried not to think about it. She could practically hear the shrill screaming, all the pain and the heart-stopping terror, ringing through her ears. "My...parents dug it out and bandaged it up, then gave me the eyepatch and I've been wearing it ever since."

After a few shaky breaths, she let the arms down again and rebalanced her voice, purging the tremble as best she could. "I've never seen under it myself. Too scared to look."

"What about you? How did you lose your arm and leg?"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn linked her hands behind her head and leaned back, hmming as she pondered what to ask.

A deal of it, though not all, was putting on an act, though. At least to an extent. She knew what she wanted to ask. She'd known what she wanted to ask since last night. She was less wondering about that, and rather pondering how to ask it. What she wanted to know was what had happened to Roaki. Hell, she was almost desperate to know what had happened to her. Why she was like this. Why she'd already been missing limbs. What had been done to her, and who had done it. But asking it directly...she knew that if someone she didn't know asked her about her childhood, she would have a bad response, and she had no reason to think Roaki would be any different.

So instead, she needed to take a slightly more indirect tack and hope that it didn't blow up in her face.

Her hmm ended, and she let herself fall back forward until she was looking at Roaki again. Again, not directly—she seemed to have an aversion to meeting Quinn's eye—but that general direction.

"Honestly, Nothing in particular. I just don't know anything about you as a person and I never really got the chance to ask."

She lapsed into a momentary quiet as she thought. Roaki was so scared of people taking from her that it seemed almost paralyzing. She remembered in crisp and horrible detail her own terror of being left alone or sent home those first few days, when everything felt so tenuous; like anything she did wrong would get her sent away from the Aerie and Besca. Roaki was...she wouldn't think of an innocent line of questioning, Quinn was sure. She didn't know what Roaki would think, but she didn't want to take any risks.

"You don't need to tell me anything if you don't want to. And..." Her voice caught. It had seemed to innocuous just thinking about it. But saying it was...it was scary. She could feel her body tensing and the instinctual and elemental part of herself, deep down—perhaps Quinnlash as well, perhaps her alone—wanted her to close off, to ignore the rest of the world and stay safe and secure inside of her head.

But the rest of her knew that if she did that, she would never reach Roaki. Never, never, never. And the thought of that hurt more. So she fought off that animal within her and finished the sentence.

"...And anything you want to know about me—anything—I'll answer as best I can, 'kay?"

With any luck, that would be enough—if only just enough—to get her to open up, even just the smallest crack.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn shut the door.

She was tense as she did; the room's four white walls immediately felt like a trap. But with how the station had reacted to Roaki, she certainly didn't want to leave a way open for other people to come in or listen in, no matter how small.

That daunting task done, she took the seat that sat across the room from the bed, using the time it took both to calm herself down from the seething fear that briefly bubbled up behind her eye and to prepare herself for what was to come.

Just like before, seeing Roaki like this was like a punch to the gut. Well, at least she didn't sound as openly hostile as she had. But on the other hand, Quinn might have preferred the anger to the panic that had flashed through across her face. Roaki...really was terrified of her, wasn't she?

And though she obviously didn't like it, there was little wonder why, Quinn reflected. The first interaction the two of them had after Roaki went through something horribly traumatic—both at Quinn's hands and otherwise—had been marked primarily by Quinn's intense and violent anger. Of course, it had been anger at how Roaki had been treated, how people reacted to her, and not at her, of course. But a first impression was a powerful thing, and for someone who had been through something so horrible, that was...not the greatest she perhaps might've made.

At least Roaki seemed less like she was going to crumple in on herself than she did last night. As afraid as Quinn was of the Board's retribution, one look at the girl in front of her immediately reaffirmed to her that no, there was absolutely no way Quinn was going to let her be tortured like that again, and neither was she going to let her willingly walk to her death if she could at all help it.

So today—and tomorrow if she could, and the day after, and the day after that—she would be as comforting as she possibly could. It was the least she could do after causing all of this, and the poor girl certainly didn't anybody else yelling at her.

Quinn didn't know exactly what had happened to her that would turn her into what she was today, other than a feeling of deep familiarity and creeping unease. Still, regardless of any of that, she knew if the first impression she'd gotten after she'd woken up on the Aerie was someone yelling at her, her life might've gone a very different and very unpleasant direction.

She'd been given every chance and welcomed with open arms. It stood to reason that she should do the same for others. So although she didn't really know what to say, when she spoke, it was as calm, kind, and gentle as she realistically could be.

"I thought that...maybe after last night you might like someone to talk to? And I'd like to talk with you too. It gets boring and lonely in here pretty quick with no company, right?"

Amygdala Circuit

With a sigh, Quinn rubbed her eye with her index and middle fingers. "Yeah. She was like that last night too."

She lapsed into a brief silence while she thought over the issue before she spoke again. "Winning is important to her, I think. It seems like the only thing she thinks is important. Winning and being a pilot." Not for the first time, she wondered what it was that had been done to Roaki for her to think like that, and who had done it.

She immediately jumped to how she'd stayed on the Aerie away from a bad family. But a moment later she dismissed the idea out of hand. The Board would never let Roaki be a pilot, not in a million years. And...it made her feel bad, but the idea of her in a Savior made Quinn a little uncomfortable too. So if that couldn't happen, then...what?

Maybe should could ask Besca or Dahlia, but they wouldn't be back for a while and she was too antsy to just sit around and wait when the clock was steadily ticking to the Board receiving the notices. "Could I..." Hesitation again. She knew that the two of them had been seen by a lot of people walking through the Aerie, but it might still cause problems if she were seen—

No. That was stupid. Roaki's life was more important than whatever reputation she'd started to garner. And the only people that would see her would be medical staff that had probably seen her last night anyway. The only worry was that Roaki still didn't like her, and Quinn being there would only make her more upset. But their...conversation last night had been both upsetting and eye-opening. Maybe she couldn't ask her family about her yet. But she could ask the girl herself.

"Do you think I could see her?"

Amygdala Circuit

He was proud of her.

That thought was enough to headstart Quinn on the process of collecting herself again. It took her some time after that torment of a conversation for sure. When she finally checked back in to reality, she was sweating bullets, and the tears had drawn thin, then stopped. She exhaled slowly, doing her best to slow her racing mind and heart. This had snowballed so far out of control that she'd nearly forgotten the thing that she'd wanted to ask him to begin with. And, encouraged by the warmth in his voice flooding back, she pressed on, voice stronger than it had been before:

"Well, there's...there is one more thing I wanted to ask about." She rapped her fingers nervously on the armrest of the chair, and the series of sharp clicks from her fingernails seemed to be helping her a surprising amount. Something to keep in mind for later, she thought.

"...I'm sure people have started yelling at you about Roaki by now, right." It wasn't spoken like a question, and it wasn't meant like one. Her voice steadily began to take on a bit of a rarer tone than most: she was fretful. She was worried over Roaki, and she certainly sounded like it. "I just wanted to ask..." She stopped her fingers' steady staccato, "...what do I do?"

Emboldened by having finally asked and Doctor Follen's renewed warmth, she forged on with a hint more confidence. "I'm afraid that the Board will do something to Besca, or to you, because I'm not listening to them. So...is there anything I can do?" Nerves boiled in her gut as she waited for a response. After all, if Doctor Follen couldn't think of something—Quinn thought he was the smartest person she knew—then things were really, really bad.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn was quiet for a long time as she looked into Doctor Follen's gentle eyes. Her own eye betrayed the storm inside her, mind churning and grinding like a broken machine, filling up with sparks and smoke.

Things being the way they are, 'just because', is the logic of storms and monsters.

To define yourself by what has happened to you is cruel and unfair.

She opened her mouth, trying to find something to say. She couldn't; the smoke was just too thick. She closed it again. She knew he was wrong. She knew he was wrong so deep in her gut. But she just...couldn't find a way to explain or justify it. A distant and buried region of her mind clogged with smoke and sparks knew that meant something, but the rest of her overwhelmed it, crushing that part of her beneath an avalanche of renewed guilt.

We are not monsters, and we are not guilty. Decide for yourself what you are. Be what you do.

The smoke cleared, just a little. The sparks spat out the smallest bit less furiously, and that distant, muffled piece of her whispered into her ear as though from a great distance: be what you do.

And then again, still just that frail whisper, but persistent, insistent. Drag light into the future, no matter how dark. Set the night ablaze.

She took in a slow, shuddering breath, completely oblivious to the fact that tears were starting to creep down her cheek as her brain collided with itself. She knew she was at fault. That feeling of being at fault—that knowledge that she was at fault—crashed into that idea that what had been done to her and to Hovvi didn't reflect on her, but on the Modir that were hunting her. It seemed so easy. If she thought of it logically, she knew it was true. But still, that guilt bit into her ankles and dragged her down into the muck.

She suddenly realized she was crying almost dazedly—when had that started?—and as she sat up straight, or at least straighter, she swiped an arm across her eye. The crushing despair loosened. But...it still hung over her. Not as lethally, but more than enough to keep the weight pressing down. Like a wire around her neck that was still choking her, even if she could breathe now.

"I'm being stupid, aren't I," she mumbled through the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry...I'll—I'll try harder."

Amygdala Circuit

The long period of silence shook Quinn.

His smile had gone. He'd stopped talking. He'd shut the door. She was getting really nervous now. Nervous that she'd done something wrong. That she'd given him the wrong answer. Her heart began to race as he walked over to her and sat down just next to her. Her eye was wide and scared.

And then he'd started to speak.

She'd never really heard much about Westwel. Besca had talked about it a little every now and then, but it was obvious that she didn't ever really want to. That it hurt her to talk about it. And the last thing Quinn wanted to do was make Besca upset.

It was awful. Horrible. So terrible she almost forgot to breathe. Nineteen million people. It was no wonder Doctor Follen had taken some time to work up to it. It no doubt hurt him just as much as it did Besca; he was just better at covering it up, wasn't he?

But it was fitting he'd mentioned a lightning bolt. Because the final question he'd asked..."The Modir attacked you. Why do you believe that is your fault, and not theirs?"...it hit her like that selfsame bolt.

"Because I—"

She paused. Thinking over the question. Why? Why? Why did she believe it was her fault? Well, because...because...because it just was. Her face was drawn and pale by the time she spoke again. "...They...they were only there for me. If I hadn't..." She trailed off again, voice miserable. Why? Why? Why?

"If I..."

She dropped her head into her hands, muffling her voice. "I don't know," she finally said, almost as though it had been dragged out of her. "I don't know why it's my fault. It just..." She grappled desperately against herself and the guilt that infested her, trying to force herself to understand what Doctor Follen was talking about, what revelation he'd found after the fall of Westwel.

And, evidently, not succeeding very well at it.

"...It just..."

But still, she was...shaken. Why hadn't she blamed the Modir? She didn't understand. Shouldn't they have been the first on the chopping block?

But they weren't. Ablaze wasn't. The swordsman wasn't. Because she knew deep down—deadly certain, as sure as she'd ever been about anything, that the one to blame was her. Maybe the Modir had done the damage, it was true. That, at least, wasn't her doing. But if she hadn't been there, they wouldn't have either. And Modir that weren't there didn't destroy a town and kill all of its inhabitants.

She took her hands from her face, but refused to meet Doctor Follen's eyes in favor of staring shamefaced at the ground, wishing she had a better answer.

"...It just...is."