exnihilo | 10. reacclimate

[Public video, but filtered away from Harvey, David, and Iris]

[It might not be immediately obvious, between the low light and the strange angle, but Mira is lying on top of the unadorned altar in the nondenominational chapel on deck, some of her hair hanging over the side, comm held above her.]

Do you ever feel like you aren't real?

[Private to David 8]

How long was I asleep?

[Text private to Cassel]

Thank you again for the journal. It helped.

[She doesn't say with what.]

[Private to Harvey]

How was death?

[Private to Helena]

Iris says you watched me.

[Spam for Iris]

[One of so many pieces of paper Iris left in Mira's room, is slipped back under her door. It was disorienting at first, the colors and obtrusive scatter of trinkets, the scalding proof that time lost her for a little while, changed around her. She thought, of course she thought, it was her own memory that had failed, that had lost its mess of contents at least, but the notes, pieced together, gradually righted her assumption, twisting it upside-down like a flipped kayak. The page she returns is a poem, one of many Iris left in between more informative updates and sentimental messages. Beneath the attribution, Mira has scrawled in rough, childlike handwriting - the mark of a post-penmanship age - This one is my favorite.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She likes listening to them discuss things. It feels like - being near personhood, instead of just people's faces, at least to her. She curls up with her head on his shoulder, and waits.]

I don't want to graduate.

[ It comes out haltingly, slowly. Harvey's a good orator-- he speaks passionately and well. Today, stress and feeling take their toll, fear stealing his eloquence. ]

Or rather, I don't want to graduate to just die. I don't want to go anywhere but home, but I know... I know we've done this before. We've reformed, gotten back on the wagon, played nice, two minds behind one face... But it won't work. I can't trust him. I can't trust myself.

So we did something that would hurt us -- and knew would hurt others. But without having to bloody hands or create death. So I bargained with Two-Face, and got him to agree, and we let Arthas kill us and raise us. We did it three times -- four or five days per death, just like the toll. The second two times, we had to flip for it...

[ And then the goddamn pillow flood gave Two-Face a chance to anchor himself in the driver's seat. ]

What did it feel like?

[She feels a little guilt, interrupting before everyone's had their turn, but she wants to know badly. And perhaps it will serve as a segue.]

[ It's Two-Face who answers; Harvey will mute it, make it seem not so bad. Like it was simply being.... off. The words come out raw and chopped, like stew meat, to be ripped and torn with the teeth. ]

Raw cold. Like rubbing up against dry ice all the time, except it's what your guts were made of. Hungry, but you couldn't say what for. You couldn't-- feel your blood pump, the air in your lungs was just cold, there was only drawing breath to speak and stillness till you ached for something more.

Only the ache was vaguely warm and everything else was freezing cold, and it was hard to feel anything at all beyond it, and even it was so small... Like some homeless campfire dying in a Gotham winter.

I hated it.

I don't remember ever being that cold.

[Musing, meandering her way through what she can't relate to and what she can, piecemeal, seeking understanding. There was - she thinks there was an ice planet, once, a target lovingly tipped into a crevasse, but her clothing kept her internals neatly regulated.

The stillness, though. She'd hate that. Drifting was bad enough.]

It's nothing to be sought. But he did, again and again. But we're not going to do it anymore.

[ Right, Harvey? ]

[She would rather burn than freeze, she thinks, although fire has always been tempting. She might even rather drown again. It sounds like being entombed in himself, when he is already imprisoned.]

Why?

Because it's stupid and won't work and even if it did it'd be misery! [ And because it makes Two-Face insanely angry, and it's almost enough to push him into something feral and ugly just thinking about it, ready to kill to preserve his life. Worked up and pacing now, he just keeps going on. ] If the ship wants to be rid of us, it'll be rid of us. He can't stop it!

[She catches his hand as he stomps past, squeezes lightly for a moment.]

I meant why go back.

[Beyond simple stubbornness, though goodness knows they've both got plenty. That's how this works: she listens to both of them.]

...where else would we go?

[ The idea of being anywhere else is... intensely foreign. ]

To death, I meant. If it was so horrible. If it was like the very worst parts of home, why avoid home like that?

Because ...

Because I don't think I can trust him.

[ Harvey now; voice smoother, calmer. ] I don't think that this is going to stick. And I am tired of being the cause of suffering.

What do you want to cause?

If we knew that--

We'd graduate.

[ Part of the problem. ]

Well then. You don't have to worry about it so much, do you? Don't work on figuring it out, and you'll stay.

Unless you do, and then you'll be ready. You'll have something worth holding your truce for.

[Such as it is; and it's meaningful in itself, working with each other while being neither fixated nor 'fixed'.]

...you have a lot of faith in us.

[ He's skeptical, initially -- but reaches out for her, just to touch, remind himself that she is there, as jagged as they are. ]

10. reacclimate

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