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all of a sudden you're a hostage to things you thought you wanted
( open for messages, action, overflow. )
( open for messages, action, overflow. )
( open for messages, action, overflow. )
( open for messages, action, overflow. )
no subject
He's right where Elan wants him, drawn taut between an increasingly tenuous commitment to his expressionless facade and the knowledge, however inchoate, that there are things he values -- has valued -- with his life. The "with" is critical: In that moment, when all Four can bear to let slip beyond his stillness is a sincerity he can't account for, Elan feels that he understands him. This is a person who wanted to live and who was compelled to suppress it. The reasons are as various as they are immaterial: Sheer force, necessity -- love, perhaps (that, too, is a curse). Immaterial, because neither Elan nor Four need to know the first thing about Four's prior motivations for that one, well-timed push to land just like Elan intends.
He knew speaking so frankly about Four's situation would hurt him. Showing Four care will hurt even more.
The hand that had been tapping away at Four's desk clenches now, as if what Four says has struck him. Elan lets a beat or two pass, eases some of the tension in his posture, and takes a single step forward, that same hand extending to Four's. There's a moment of hesitation, right where Four can see it, before he touches the glove -- searing against his fingers as he expected. ]
No, [ he says quietly, ] I don't think you will.
[ Touch is so rare for Elan that the heat radiating from Four's skin prompts him to inflect his voice with a tenderness that's as good as the real thing. Unconsciously, his fingers tighten against Four's, and he finds that he likes that they're hot enough to hurt. He doesn't stop to ask himself why he's putting on this performance, or why he wants Four to stop being such a fucking hypocrite. Instead, he says, ]
Why do you pretend that you want to die, even now? Peil's contracts are my contracts. If you have the courage to admit the truth... I'll change it.
But you have to tell me. It's worth that much, at least.
no subject
click. vision correction — 40% progress.
click. voice correction — 70% progress, malleable, stay attuned to variations.
click. facial correction - 40% progress, in line with vision correction.
click. memory erasure — 81% progress; the earlier memories are always the most tenacious, but some of these may be negligible as the contract is already signed.
click. permet injection cycle — 2/|||. subject responding successfully.
click.
coming back to the present reminds him of the first time he regained consciousness after the initial permet injection. it drops him like a shift of gravity no amount of training could prepare him for and leaves him no better prepared than if he hadn't just disconnected for however many seconds. was he expecting answers in himself? he wasn't. he didn't that person doesn't exist. is he pretending? is he lying? is he telling the truth? what is four's truth?
the press of elan's fingers atop his own feel inordinately heavy for how perfectly matched they are, and four is certain the permet is edging on burning him, but he's frozen in every aspect. words. movement. all but the involuntary proof of life: heartbeat like a bird's wings, breaths uncharacteristically audible, heat radiating off of him like a small self destructing sun.
his lips part but nothing is forthcoming.
but he can't do it.
he closes them, pressed thin, the strings holding him up just so tighter than ever.
what elan ceres hopes to gain from this, four hasn't a clue. come to think of it, he has no idea what his stakes are with peil, who is ordering who, though the confirmation that the contract is his does say something. it neither makes four feel better nor worse.
i don't...i don't...i don't
i do—four's hand slips out from underneath elan's if he lets it when four's legs give out on him after all. if not, his arm stays strained against the side of the desk, his fingers trembling and burning underneath his like something infected and caged; and maybe he is. though he walked into it of his own accord. something about that rings true even if he can't explain why and wouldn't try.
with his head bowed, it's possible to see down the back of his collar how the white-red lances up his spine. he feels sick, sicker than he's let himself feel in weeks, having worked minimum effort into a fine art. so much for that. or is that not true either? then where has his appetite gone? his piloting remains above reproach, his reactions almost inhuman. he's tired. he's not tired.
tell me it's worth that much —
unintentionally, four conflates elan's sentences. it's not what he meant, not really. but he hasn't the wherewithal to parse his own mistakes or lack of understanding even if he'd gotten it right. what elan ceres suggests, he cannot do. on the tip of his tongue: leave. painful pressure pushing apart, inside his head, but he's not even in a mobile suit. i don't understand.
when he collapsed, the way his arm hit the table caused some of the books to topple, splaying in disarray like their new and perhaps not long-lived possessor. the way the edge of one of them fell, caused it to hit one of his earrings, and its lackadaisical roll brings it just shy of the edge of the desk. out of the corner of his eye, four notes it, dimly ready to catch it if it falls. nothing in peil is cheap. not the body augmentation science. not their jewelry. not their checkups. not their mobile suits.
well. almost nothing.
the clones cost money but their lives are as they were created to be: disposable.
outrunning the permet lifeline was always a losing game. four knows that in the back of his head heart hurt. he knows. but why dwell on it? he can only do what is in front of him, what is asked on paper. elan ceres says he can change it and four believes him but the memories taken from him rebel the way ghosts often do; you can't.
it doesn't matter that he can't remember why. on the ground, four's other hand curls in a fist that he knows is useless.
he's tired.
i'm l—that's all. )
no subject
He senses it coming in the other's breaths, the barely-there movement of his lips. The heat from Four's skin becomes unbearable. He lets the hand he's holding slip away, attention traveling from the books as they're knocked over, down the nape of Four's neck, to the glow of permet just under his collar and the fist clenched against the floor. This is something Elan wanted to see, for his own sake. In his mind's eye a much younger version of himself does exactly what he's told, mimics his tutors' behaviors in miniature, and is pristine in every moment of his childhood's debasement because he knows it won't pay in the short- or long-term to resist or make things difficult. He'll be freer than anybody when they're through with him. Freer because richer, more competent, more well-connected, more.
When Elan looks down at Four, he knows it's a lie.
His non-position at Peil's brought the bully out in him for lack of anything better to be. The chats, books, this visit -- all in the service of carving out a space for himself, however small, where he can exercise his authority over someone. It's pathetic, but Elan can't say it's beneath him when it's a defining feature of the people who made him the man he is. The thought almost turns his stomach.
Slowly, Elan crouches until he's almost at eye level with Four. He studies the fine, red-white lines pulsing under the other's skin, right at the edge of the cravat; the sheen of sweat on his skin; the set of his mouth. I did this; I did this; I did this. Within the nothing that he feels, he's conscious of his heart thudding against his chest, growing stronger every minute that passes. He wants to leave; he wants to stay. He wants to shake Four senseless; he wants to pull him close. He wants to taunt Four for collapsing; he wants to tell him he's been heard. He wants to do them all, all at once -- anything to avoid whatever's beyond the nothing that characterizes his existence, broken only by amusement and play-acting ambition. (But is that true? Why would he have done something like this, if not to...?)
His hand's back on Four's, Elan realizes, palm burning up against the other's fist. It's the sting that does it. The solution to his contradictions comes in the form of two fingers sliding under the glove to rest, painfully, against Four's skin. ]
no subject
elan's fingers are like ice laid across a burn still livewire. four's focus goes pinhole finite. he really can't breathe.
what does he want from him?
what does he want, period?
it's not a question four has had come up before, knotted and tangled in his own questionable choices and actions therein. typically it is more than enough to leave no room for anything else. the chats, books, this visit -- all of it changes meaning without giving four any kinds of answers at all; and if an answer is a door opened, this might be a window from many stories up. sure, you can see out; and yes, you can leave.
what happens after that is anyone's guess.
but you have to tell me.
he trembles. there is a willful violence in four's limitations. the things he thinks won't hurt as much if he does not admit them are not necessarily true, and the things he thinks he should be saying are not necessarily right. nothing comes out anyway, not what is asked of him and not what isn't. some of that causes duress too; four bites down on his conditioned nature: to reply when spoken to by those of peil whether elan ceres or aught else. in this way, the overwhelming nature of the permet, is a cursed kind of blessing.
the hand, once a fist, still burns but it rests in a limp fold of fingers against the floor. his other hand goes to cover his own mouth in case he's sicker, just trying to catch enough breath to be quiet again. stop listening. stop seeing. four isn't without pride but in this moment he can feel the plea in every part of him. when he tries to withdraw his hand, it's a weak motion, and the way elan's fingers pressed in, the glove keeps him from doing so.
if he admits that he wants to live, won't it hurt more? be harder to breathe? the burn more unbearable?
self preservation takes as many forms as self destruction.
where four's successor and peer in the wings exhibits this by holding back in piloting and risk taking, four builds himself a false world made of one step in front of the other. parallel to this but never truly touching: the books he is reading and the words and ideas in them. questions, but not his questions. because four is sure. so very sure.
of his purpose. of what he's willing to sacrifice, because why would he be here otherwise. of the pointlessness of being lonely and wanting someone else with him.
not that he is lonely. not that he wants to live. of course.
breathe. be quiet.
it's mortifying, on his knees with his head bowed and a sting in his eyes that blurs his limited vision, and no one is more surprised perhaps than four himself when his voice steals out, softness undermined by a hoarseness that would make anyone flinch, )
Why?
( the fact of the matter is that it's not his place to ask and inwardly four recoils at his own question, alarmed, furious —
— afraid.
it's worth that much, at least. elan ceres' words will echo in his head for the rest of his life however short. at present, four riles against it however silently: no.
it's not. )
no subject
[ Quiet, gentle -- cool like Elan's fingers against Four's skin. He pretends to have misunderstood Four's intentions and takes the other's hand in both of his. If Four lets him, the hand that already clasped Four's will turn it, hold it still at the wrist as the other carefully peels the glove away. Permet is dreadfully beautiful for how it pulses in the lines and wrinkles at the surface of Four's palm. Together like this, even in the pale light of Four's bedroom, Elan can tell -- the other's fingers are longer, more delicate; Four's whole hand gives the impression of being slightly smaller than Elan's own. The contact is burning him but it doesn't matter. If Four stays still, Elan will trace the fleshy pad just below Four's thumb with his index finger. Four should be able to see how red it becomes; but instead of drawing his finger away, Elan will add another.
And if Four refuses him: Well, he'll press and rub the hand that had been holding Four's with his free one, as if putting some feeling back into it -- or prolonging the pain.
Why? Elan doesn't know. His first iteration was botched, and he felt nothing. His second iteration botched himself, and he felt nothing. His third did -- such a good job, sometimes a better one than Elan, and he felt... next to nothing, when he'd heard how his exit interview had gone; when Three had finally, after a life's exertion, fallen to pieces. Just a blip of understanding, the researcher had said, and a deluge of data -- then gone. Unsalvageable. The next should conserve his strength.
(Elan supposes that wing of the research committee's responsible for Peil's decision against rolling the clones out in parallel. Why wasn't he consulted about this? Why isn't he consulted about anything?)
Elan knows that if he gives Four any more than what's already been said, the other's likely to deflect, to latch onto whatever Elan adds and bear them both away from his initial request. That, too, is for Elan's own sake. He still feels nothing. In spite of how raw his skin has become, the sweat collecting at his hairline, his heartbeat -- less noticeable against that dull permet sting (or its echo) -- he insists to himself: He just wants to be surprised, to (see himself) break character. To resist vicariously, retrospectively. To extract just a bit more authority. To feel less gratuitous, less alone. ]
no subject
— that he tries to avoid moments like this.
stillness to put statues to shame, four watches his point of new origin remove the glove, watches his fingertips grow red and raw with a promising burn, watches the glide of them along his own palm afire with permet and the weakening constitution of its vessel. he feels it, the sting of cold cutting through the heat like a single arrow flung through the eye of a needle.
an attempt to read elan's face is as laughable as it is hopeless. four can't even see properly to begin with at this point, vision spotty in a way that reminds him of his beginnings with peil. it takes him longer than it ever would have before to withdraw his hand, shaking violently. a knee-jerk part of him suggests apologizing, while another part demands prolonged silence. still another part is too messy, makes chaos of four's neatly stored boxes of extraneous thoughts and feelings. all of the rooms of closed doors find themselves flung open, keyless and foreign even though they belong to him.
something is unraveling.
in another timeline, a witch from mercury pulls at the thread which is somehow four's labyrinth, minotaur, and way out all working against each other, the liminal space where neither fiction nor reality will do. in this one, it is elan ceres himself. the red of a dead star unwound to form a path but for what? elan ceres asked him a question. elan ceres offered him something. there are enough rote ways to reply. yet four can muster none of them.
the hand he reclaimed curls against his own chest, the room so unpleasantly full of his breathing that he wishes he could get it under control or just let go. don't notice me. it was easy to tell himself that was the most benign way to coast through this legal identity borrowing. simple. to call it a tactic rather than a personal preference. a want. four slumps forward, from crouch to all but kneeling, his other palm flat on the floor to keep himself from collapsing the rest of the way. if only elan ceres would leave.
because four will be fine.
until he's not.
it doesn't matter anyway does it?
there are others.
why he had asked and he wonders at the same time that he has no idea what elan ceres wants of him when he's been pushed to this point. would admitting that he wants...
...
...no.
even thinking it more clearly would be too much.
once, four's hair was longer. darker. he wore glasses. his frame was even slighter. once, four put his memory to dedicated use because physical books were nowhere to be seen in the conflict torn part of earth he came from. remembering none of this, four only knows his image as that of the man in front of him. peripheral vision shows the familiar nondescript shoes — expensive in that they are nondescript but undoubtedly made just for him, and clean. could it truly just be boredom that brought him here? is there any point in four of all "people", wondering these things?
his limbs feel impossibly heavy, and a sigh traps itself in his chest, swarmed by the strangle of other breaths vying for enough time and space to do four any good. his mind is as much a creature of passivity and habit though: if i can just wait...
until elan ceres leaves. until it's over. until.
to fight against the threat of passing out, four bites his tongue until he tastes blood, and it's true that sometimes the simplest fixes are the most effective; it works, despite its crudeness. no words come to him, but even if they did he isn't sure he could speak properly. the permet flares across his collarbone beneath the uniform, spreads up his neck and blooms in his cheeks.
when the roiling nausea from before resurges, it's instinct to curl on the floor with his head tucked, bare hand shoved against his mouth. his body convulses, a slender grotesqueness that seems as disgusting as it is practiced; the controlled sickness of someone who has done this before, and after four swallows, he gasps against his own palm. the heat of it matches with how it grows everywhere else, and there's no relief for managing to not vomit all over elan ceres' shoes or well pressed pants. even if four were completely alone, he would have held it in.
because...
...?
he shivers, head cloudy.
subtle: the permet in his hand is a touch less bright.
less subtle: his breaths still too loud and too fast. incongruous.
and there's the errant, automatic thought: this would probably be decent data, if he were back at peil's labs. )
it's sensitive narcissism hours
The extent to which his clones suffer, degenerate, are pushed to breaking point until they die or are made to die -- isn't unknown to Elan. Until today, his knowledge of it has come in the form of hearsay; reports shorn of those details that aren't pertinent to Peil's missions; numbers that he supposes their researchers take to be countdowns. The strange feeling that followed his third iteration's execution coils up in him again now, as Four wrenches his hand away from Elan's, brings it to his chest, his mouth, collapses and writhes on the floor in front of him. The sting that's left in Elan's hands pales in comparison to what permet, as a substance, has done and continues to do to the other's body, the burns it's left on his skin a far cry from that awful flush covering Four's face. And all the while, Elan watches -- surprised, as he sees him(self) break character, convulsing; as Four resists -- something; as the gulf between their respective positions grows wider -- or so it might seem.
For a brief moment, Elan has the horrifying thought that this -- Four's breakdown -- could have happened anywhere; could have been seen by people, important people; could have been timed by Peil just so, kept in reserve as a playing chip for a future in which they might wish to consolidate their control --
But that flight of paranoia's a mere distraction from the distress he's witness to now, a wretchedness Elan has -- would -- never let himself feel and that frightens him to his core. Abstractly, he'd known he could only pay for his own longevity in other persons' lives. He'd hardly given it another thought when he'd hacked that "S" on the Peil Grade's piloting evaluation into a "C" -- just in case. That was before he'd been made privy to Peil's life-sucking mobile suit technology, before the duels for Miorine's hand were instituted, before the perverted brainiacs at the company had seen a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in these circumstances to explore what they had sold to its executives as "human enhancement." Elan had shrugged and signed off on it all. He should have realized -- it would be harder to countenance suffering when it bears your own face.
Elan underestimated Peil. His clones, too, could eventually be used as a vector for control, manipulation, blackmail. Granted, they probably never expected Elan to bother with them, so -- Elan's done this to himself. (Distantly, he remembers there are three more of him, each superior to the last. Five isn't a threat. Six's resemblance to himself is uncanny, but his abilities are so far unremarkable. Seven. Seven is the problem. Seven, when they're done with him, might --)
It's Four's ragged breathing that finally snaps Elan out of his thoughts and back into the other's bedroom. He notices blood at the corner of Four's mouth and that, more than anything else, tells Elan that his request to Four -- the one that had set all this off -- is meaningless. Four will die regardless of what he wants. (And yet a little voice inside Elan reminds him, that's true of us all, isn't it?)
Again, Elan's hand seems to have moved of its own accord. He sits with his back against the desk's drawers now, eyes trained on the blankness of the wall ahead, as his fingers -- some less feeling than others -- thread through Four's hair. When he finally speaks, the emotion in his voice disgusts him. ]
We're both such suckers, aren't we?
[ Yes. Elan Ceres gets (almost) everything he wants. But he is still gratuitous; still, probably, alone. ]
elan ceres the solar eclipse
later, four will think about it. he'll start to have questions about the rest of that which makes up the world he knows and serves and look at his handbook and consider the history of messages, less sporadic than would be negligible. what is it you wanted? what did you mean "both" of us? why did you come here?
later.
but now, elan ceres speaks. his words travel the minimal space between four and himself but the space and time is elongated, perceived as sound underwater. the disconnect helps four. if he were "well", he might flinch back from his touch. on the threshold between consciousness and lack thereof, his only movement cages itself in his inhales and exhales that still seem to struggle to disappear. not wanting the slight weight of elan ceres' fingers in his hair to be comforting does not automatically void it as such. inconvenient. frustrating. confusing. maybe he did not want to admit it out loud — not only that there might be a part of him that truly wants to live, but to admit that someone could do that for him.
would.
life and non-life is easier in boxes that stay closed but that's not the nature of reality.
despite four's intentions, elan ceres will feel when the remaining threads of tension collapse out of him. his last coherency is the discordant sense of shocking cold, the quieting of the permet which fades until his wrists and hands are the only places it glows. )