Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn eyed the glass that Akihiro had set in front of her. She'd seen him pour a bit of a clear liquid into it from one of the bottles, she couldn't read it from here. Picking it up, she swirled it a little, watching detached as the pale green liquid sloshed around the sides. It looked just like the usual stuff, really. Didn't look like anything had been mixed with it. So, just like those months ago when it had been a bottle of crystal-clear water, she lifted it to her mouth and took a tentative sip.

She blinked.

It tasted like...like yuzu soda.

There was a vague burning aftertaste to it that she couldn't place, but it wasn't too bad, and it wasn't strong either way. So by the time Akihiro had come back with the menu, she'd already drained half the glass. Nothing happened. Maybe she hadn't had enough to drink, or maybe she needed to wait. Maybe both.

Either way.

She picked at the noodles, idly wondering whether or not she should, or could, eat them. Took another drink.

Idly flipping through the menu that Akihiro had set beside her, she closed her eye gently to his gentle gaze. She felt like she was suffocating. Drowning inside her own head. Falling back down in that well that she was trying so hard to crawl out of, and had been for so long. Enough that stringing words together came with some effort. "No, I'm—I can't—" A long pause.

"I—she—"

No more words came out. Her head dropped.

She took another drink.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn stared hopelessly down at the floor. If Roaki could've met her eye, she would've found not revulsion, not hatred, but pain. Deep, burning pain that ate at her newly-empty stomach and withered her lungs before breaths ever found them.

"...No. I'll...I'll come back later. I don't—I don't feel..."

She let herself trail off, and hauled herself to her feet, plodding to the door, pushing it the rest of the way open, and sliding out before shutting it behind her. As soon as she did, she fell against the wall, making her way wearily back through medical like she'd just been awake for fifty hours.

I'm sorry, Quinny. You can't go outside, you know it's dangerous out there! You can go when you're all grown up, okay, sweetie?

Her breathing hitched as memories kept seething up from the depths of her mind. She closed her eye tight and just stopped for a moment. This was a new pain. A different pain. A pain that stole her breath away. A moment after, she opened her eyes again and kept moving, managing to resume her feet proper this time.

Aww, Quinny, it's summer! You're going to get dehydrated, sweetie! Drink it all up, okay?

All these memories. They wouldn't go away. They kept playing back, over and over and over.

We're just worried about you, sweetie! Dad and I just want to keep you safe, make sure you healthy! So lie down for me, please?

Quinn had never, even right after Hovvi, wanted to forget something so badly as she did in that moment. So...how do I forget?

If she thought about it for more than a moment, the answer jumped out at her. She'd read online that people drank alcohol to forget. Besca wasn't drunk often, but...when she was, she always seemed so happy. Quinn didn't know exactly what the process was, but she knew that it couldn't be too hard. Just drink something alcoholic, right?

For a moment, she paused, and wondered if this was really a good idea. But then another memory tore through her mind, this one of her mom telling her a bedtime story. A painful twist jolted from her heart. And then her mind was made up.

Skulking around the edges of the station—she didn't want people to see her in this state—she passed through the commons, and eventually found herself at one of her favorite haunts: Tohoki grill. It wasn't noon yet, so it was completely empty, as far as she could tell. Everyone was at work, or at CB Danes, which was a bit less of a sit-down place. Chef Akihiro turned to her with a smile, but it quickly turned into a confused frown at the way she was carrying herself. And, as she slung herself down, the frown grew a little more concerned.

"I'd like a yuzu soda," she said tonelessly. And a moment later, she waved behind the counter, where a dizzying array of bottles was pressed up against the wall.

"And put one of those in it, please."

Amygdala Circuit

Seconds passed like they were minutes.

Minutes like they were hours.

The stream of awful acid muck poured from Quinn in a way that was horribly, blindingly familiar, and, when it finally finished with her—when her stomach finally stilled—tears were pouring from her eyes again. And the memories were still there.

She wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball in her bed now and do nothing for the rest of the day. But she couldn't. She just couldn't. She had so much to make up for. She had sims to do. She had to help Dahlia, whatever happened. She had to try and cause as little trouble for Besca as she could, and ignoring her training wouldn't do that at all. So she just had to...she just had to keep going.

She stayed kneeling there for a few moments longer, closed her eyes to the world.

Then she spat the rest of the stuff into the toilet, blew it out of her stinging nose, flushed, wiped her eyes, and slowly walked out back into Roaki's presence like there were a thousand pounds on her back. She righted the chair just as slowly, like all the energy had been sapped out of her. Sat down heavily, and placed her face firmly in her hands. Her voice was muffled when it came out, but it was clearly not happy. Not miserable, perhaps, but if not, then very close. And filled with pain.

"Sorry," she mumbled, pulling her hands away, sitting up straight, and looking at Roaki, trying to distract herself from the memories that were still lancing through her head."I was just remembering—something—I—"

She dropped her head again.

"Never mind."

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn knew already that Roaki had killed her family. She'd fought duels against them, after all, and duels (almost) always ended with someone dying. But still, the plain admission had her hiss in a breath through her teeth, and a part of her wanted to yell at the younger girl for it. Her own family—the real one, at least—was so important to her that just the idea of killing family drove a stake into her side.

But Roaki was talking, and she shouldn't interrupt, she'd asked the question after all.

...And besides that, there was a part of her—not Quinnlash—that yearned, that urged upon hearing Roaki's words, to beat her parents black and blue before squeezing their throats until they stopped struggling and turn them into past tense if she ever found them alive. But every time she tried to picture it, tried to want it, all she could see was

Her mom looking lovingly down at her as she pricked the IV into her arm.

Sitting with Quinn and smiling as the little girl excitedly talked about all the places she wanted to see when she was a grown up.

The way she gently stroked her hand down her braid when she had a nightmare.

I love you so much, Quinny.

Then, before she even realized it, she was on her feet with a sudden burst of dry-mouthed panic. The chair crashed to the ground behind her as she lurched violently upward, eye wide in horror as she held a hand over her mouth with a vague panicked gagging noise, using the other to steady herself against the wall. Bile crept up in her throat, and she thought she might be sick.

"I—" she choked out as her stomach churned, "I—I didn't—I—she—it's not—"

And she got no further before she turned, stumble-ran into the bathroom, and emptied her guts into the toilet.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn closed her eye as Roaki spoke. When she responded, it stayed shut, and it took on that same melancholy that it'd carried earlier, something that was becoming more common to hear from Quinn. But it was a bit different this time; it was underscored with a taut, bone-deep tension.

"The problem is..." She didn't want to admit how she'd felt before, that awful feeling of hoping they were alive. Hopefully she'd just forget it with enough time. "...They weren't in Hovvi that morning, the only reason I could leave cause they left my door open by mistake. They'd gone to do some...science thing in Queenshand."

She sighed heavily, then leaned forward and opened her eye. "Until today, I was sure they were alive. But the stuff I read said they were going back when they learned the singularity would hit. So I don't actually know if they were there or not."

She smiled lamely. "And not knowing is so much worse. Dumb, right? But," she went on after a beat of silence, "what do I do about it? Now that I know, I wish I didn't."

Her voice dropped to a whisper then, and she pulled her legs up, resting her feet on the edge of the chair as she curled her arms around her knees. "And...I don't think I can forget them. Could ever forget them. They'll always be...there. They're, like, burned into my head." She made a muffled sound of distress, but didn't start crying again. She'd promised herself that. No more crying today. "See?" She motioned towards the door, held slightly ajar, forgetting Roaki wouldn't look at her. "I still can't do doors."

Amygdala Circuit

Another long silence followed Roaki's question, with no answer immediately forthcoming. For a brief time, there were only Quinn's soft, hiccupping tears.

Then, a bit later, she gritted her teeth, swiped her arm across her eye, and spoke huskily, "I don't..." The word know was on the tip of her tongue, when she cocked her head to the side as a thought struck her. Because she did know at least a little now. "Or, well...they're, or they were, modiologists. Really, really good modiologists. The most famous in Runa, I think." And maybe more than that; she thought she'd seen some articles in Casobani when she'd run her search.

She rubbed her eye and socket with her hands, and when she pulled them away, she looked down at the floor and spoke softly, giving voice to the thought that had been lurking in the back of her mind since she discovered their modiology: "Maybe I was just a science project."

She wished she could talk about this kind of thing with Besca and Dahlia too. But Dahlia was either asleep or in sims, and she was awake—as seen today—she was certainly in no place to help Quinn work through her own problems. Besca was in the dorm to sleep for three hours and then leave for the bridge before Quinn woke up; they almost only talked over the phone now. So Roaki was...she gave a weak, weedy chuckle. Roaki was her only confidante, and there was something sadly funny about that.

She shook her head vigorously then, doing her best to banish the thoughts. "I didn't mean to lay all that on you." She forced another laugh, still pained but a little less so. "It's just...on my mind today. Sorry."

Amygdala Circuit

"Okay, sure. Why’d they do it?"

Quinn went quiet again, though this time for only a few moments, as she screwed up her courage, forced herself to think back to Hovvi, and her life. The discovery that water was supposed to be clear was a memory as crisp and clear as it was painful to look back upon, and she sucked a harsh breath in through her teeth.

"When I...when I was a girl--a kid, I mean, or, a few months ago, before the Hovvi Incident." she started slowly, voice stopping and starting as she fought to string her words together properly. "...I thought water was supposed to have a dark tint."

As she went on her voice grew more constant, but also unsteady, shaky, like it always did when she was really upset. Yet she still forged on.

"I had no way of knowing. My...my parents, they didn't tell me anything, they cut off almost the whole internet, they told me everything was normal. Including the water." She closed her eye, taking a few deep, shaky breaths in an attempt to calm herself. "It would've tasted funny too, though I didn't know it at the time, really. Bitter metal and salt brine."

One more deep breath. One more long pause. Her eye grew hot and stung as she fought back tears, holding herself together as her voice quaked.

"...Modium. It was modium."

"They kept me inside so nobody would know and I wouldn't understand." She clung grimly on to her composure, even as her voice grew thick and tears started to build around her eye. "They cut me open to check if my insides were okay." She wasn't sure if that was true, but it was the only thing that made sense. "I didn't—"

She stopped speaking abruptly, and finally, her composure broke. Her thin shoulders quaked.

And she began to quietly cry.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn took a long, deep breath as she walked over to the chair that she had become a constant tenant of in the past couple month or so. As it always was, the air in here was thick, stifling. Not physically, of course. But Roaki's soft monotone mumbling dug into her heart every time she heard it. And her thoughts still being stuck on her parents' possible untimely death didn't have her feeling any better. So, unlike usual--very unlike usual--when she sat down, she didn't talk for some time. Instead she just...looked at Roaki. Look at her, and wrestled with her thoughts.

When she finally spoke, it was after almost five minutes had ticked by.

Through the conversations she'd had with Roaki, there was one question that, no matter how she was asked it, she always skirted around. She'd talked about her parents, of course. She'd talked about being kept locked up in one room for sixteen years, never allowed to leave, never even allowed to see out of it. She'd talked about the compact operating table being wheeled into her room, and being put under, only vaguely recalling anything about what had ever happened. She'd talked a lot, at Roaki's questioning. Answered every other question she'd had. Except one.

What she'd never talked about was...the water. But it was on her mind now. And she couldn't get it off.

When she spoke, her voice was most unlike its usual state as seen by Roaki. Gone was the bounce in it, the cheerfulness. There was no anger or sorrow. All that was left was a deep melancholy. "You asked me a while ago why my parents kept me locked up, why they operated on me, and I never told you because I said it was too painful to think about."

She hesitated.

It was still hard to talk about. So, guiltily, sadly, she redirected it outward, in a strange kind of delaying gambit. "Do you still want to know?"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn wasn't a bodybuilder by any means, but the past few months had certainly been rigorous enough for her to pack some muscle on. Enough, at least, to gently wrap Dahlia's arm around her shoulder and carry her into Quinn's room, where she'd been before. She laid her ever-so-delicately down on the bed, being sure not to wake her. She stood there afterwards, looking down at her sister taking long slow sleep breaths, and her heart jerked in her ribcage. I'm sorry, Dahlia. I'm really, really sorry.

And it was making her training a little more difficult too. Dahlia and her sim spars had never been the most useful things, but now she found herself missing the kind of outside-the-box thinking you only got when you were fighting a real person instead of a collection of ones and zeroes. They still could spar; but she would never ask her sister to push herself more than she already was, and looking down at her sleeping form only made that feeling keener.

I wish there was another pilot on the Aerie for stuff like this.

Well, no point wishing for things that she couldn't change. She turned and left her sister, gently closing the door ajar. And she didn't really want another pilot, because being a pilot was painful, and she didn't want anyone else to need to be.

Speaking of sims, actually, she had her own to attend to today as well. She was already stretching the Board's patience. Better not their schedule too. So, shaking her jacket a little bit to resettle it back on shoulders properly, she left the dorms once more.

She was already in the commons when she realized that she was a little hungry, and should've eaten in the dorms. She could go anywhere she wanted, really, but it wasn't the same without Deelie and Besca. Another pang of that sharp, hungry guilt bit into her heart, sinking deep and twisting as she thought about what their lives would be like if she'd never come here. As she thought, she continued towards the sims, until she finally raised her heat to meet the hallway to...

...Medical?

She'd gotten so used to coming here in recent days that her feet had just taken her here on her own. But, she thought, if she was here...she fished the key to Roaki's room out from the chain around her neck. Might as well, right? Really don't want to miss a day, after all.

As she walked through the sterile looking-and smelling hallways of medical, she was barely given a second glance by those around her. She'd become such a regular fixture here, she was more or less expected. Still, it made it easier to get where she was going, at least; everybody knew already where she was going and that dissuading her was a really bad idea, so they just...cleared out of the way along the path to Roaki's room.

...Into which popped, after a moment's consideration on the other side of the door.

"Hey, Roaki!"

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia pulled away a little bit⁠—not far enough to leave Quinn's desperate embrace⁠—and smiled.

"Never sorry to me. I’m not sorry. I wouldn’t change anything. Made you a promise. ‘Cause I wouldn’t change anything."

Quinn stared up at her, almost uncomprehending. Didn't hurt me. Never hurt me, Quinn.

And just like that, the fervent energy that she gripped her sister with wilted and faded, and she just about collapsed into her, resting her face on her shoulder once again. Closing her eye tight, clenching her jaw, she tried her absolute hardest to not cry again. And she almost succeeded. Almost, but not quite. The love that Dahlia showed her. Her burning, cloying guilt. Her...her parents, and the new news that she'd been burdened with. She couldn't hold it forever. And once the first tears came, the floodgates opened, and she wept.

Even so, she kept trying to force words out through it. No matter what her sister said...she still wasn't doing enough. So she kept going, voice small and tremulous, like the pathetic child that she was, deep down.

"I⁠—hic⁠—I made you⁠—sniff break...breakfast. 'S...hrrkkkg...'s in the fridge." Her hug once again turned tight, but less out of desperation this time. It was more out of...

"I⁠—I⁠—I love you, Deelie. I⁠—heugh⁠—I love...love you so much."