[b]Blue![/b]

"Yeah," admitted Blue. "We do love them."

"But then, I know more about them than I do about myself. I know more about keeping them healthy, happy and oxygenated than I do about how to do repairs on my own body. I know more about the miasma theory of disease than I know about the corporation who built my spine. I know more about their politics than my own. I said I'm trying to solve capitalism but I don't think my line would even invent it in the first place if left to its own devices for ten thousand years. All my history is theirs, all my words are theirs, all my ideology is theirs. Who the fuck am [i]I [/i]if not a thing [i]they [/i]built for [i]them[/i]?"

[b]Pink![/b]

The world demands. It asks. It tempts. It offers. It piles on stressor after stressor, conversation after conversation. The time she needs to recover is measured in days, but not just any days. Days of silence. Days without contact. Days with no phone calls, no chores, no performances. Even arranging for those days is itself a chore, and not one the world takes lightly. There is an expectation that the world move at the speed of thought, faster and faster, and that's not the speed or shape of her mind.

Putting it off just means it all comes closer. But she can't not.

She's never as unitary as when she's recovering. She separates for work, for joy, to interact with the world. Nine different masks, nine different flows of flawless energy. Isolated, the colours blob together like jellyfish. They move together languidly and erratically. Repairing Red. Watching video. Browsing the internet. Lying in the sunlight. Using whatever hands are closest, whichever mind is closest, colours blending into a haze. She does not celebrate, though she will. She does not shine, though she will. She does not think, though she will. For now there is just her and the void, cold waters of nothingness pouring over jagged thoughts, the lack of anything to do suppressing the all consuming urge to do.

She falls. Gently, gently, gently, through the dark. Gently, gently, gently -

Her game crashes.

Nine sets of eyes staring at the single screen blink in shock. This - this piece of shit just crashed. Hours of work gone. Hours - hours of pointless grind. Hours she hadn't enjoyed. Hours she never could have spared. Hours with her entire self clustered around the tiny monitor like a zombified group hug. She - what time was it? What the fuck how was it this late, she had so much to [i]do[/i]. She has to find something productive to do today or she's going to lose her [i]shit[/i].

Pink picks up her paintbrush. No time. No time for anything good tonight. She's just going to get the base colours in place but that's going to be something. Something to let her sleep without hating herself, because that's what she does - she hates herself. For the wasted time. That she needed it. That the only way out of it was to wait for her toxicity to overwhelm her exhaustion.

But it has. She's alive again, filled with energy and power. The brush moves in a whirl. One more night's sleep after this and she'll be back again with a vengeance. She'll show herself just what she's capable of so that she knows how unacceptable it was that she wasn't capable of it. 

It was time to catch up. It was time to get ahead.