poly_chromatic | Inside, she's screaming; Action;

Entry tags:

darker than black - yin

Inside, she's screaming; Action;

[Whether it's the Welcome Center, out in the stores, in her apartment, walking home from work, or down by the fountain while Yin watches for a while, today Yin is followed around by a ghastly array of grayish balloons, all with faces. With husky tones, they rasp out accusations that Yin seems to either not hear, nor care to listen to.]

You just stand there.

You could have stopped it. But you let it happen.

Others pay the price for your apathy.

Ignoring us won't make it go away.

It's your fault. You didn't stop it. And he's clearly upset.

Guilt-ridden, because of you. Useless, pitiful, unmoving Doll.

[Finally, she seems to frown a little, and tries to turn away from them.]

That won't change anything, either.

You can't change anything.

[Anybody have a needle?]

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[ He spots the balloons considerably before he spots Yin. Or hears them, rather. ]

[ Dimly, he's reminded of an illustration in a storybook. A gray cloud hovering above a gloomy-faced girl, pouring a deluge of insults on her head. Yin's silence rings like a scream, crackling in the air between each rasping word. A lot of people think BK201's conscience is a smudge of nothing, electrocuted to ash in wake of his profession; others believe he doesn't have one at all. Neither of those facts are true, although they're not necessarily false either. But the proclamations of guilt-ridden are a bit much. Hei is capable of experiencing guilt as keenly as anyone. What he doesn't do, is dwell unnecessarily on it. Because that's a self-indulgence. It solves nothing. The trajectory of his life is weighed in terms of assets/liabilities. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which spectrum angsty wallowing falls into. ]

[ At a shaded alleyway, Hei approaches Yin. Watching her with a quiet, wary interest, a strange sympathy stirring inside him. ]

I have ear-plugs, if you need them.

[They don't have to speak complete truths, just half-truths and worries. Yin knows Hei isn't likely that affected, but the fact he, a Contractor, is affected at all can't be ignored.]

[She even shakes her head to the ear-plug offer. She'll keep listening. And she's seen how the curses work. Likely ear-plugs won't work. They'll talk through them, or whisper into her mind.]

[ The best liars always sprinkle truth in with false. The better to weave illusions like sticky webs around the corners of your mind, to snag at the cogs of logic and mess up your fine-tuned clarity. Hei would know. It's a trick he's employed enough times on targets. He accepts her head-shake, his gaze steady on the balloons, hands relaxed by his sides. But inside, he wonders if a choice electric-voltage would make them go pop and presage wonderful silence. Unlikely, but it'd be a lie to say he's not tempted to try. ]

[ Instead, ]

Noise-muffling headphones will do the trick. [ A beat, then: ] No one should have to listen to that garbage.

[ Unless they're getting paid to. Freak. Monster. Killing machine. How many times had Huang, or countless others, hurled those epithets at him. Hei had absorbed them with a blank-eyed indifference, because his feelings, in those days, were secondary. All that mattered was completing X assignment, eliminating Y target, obtaining Z info. ]

[ How much things have changed, since then. ]

Spineless and unmoving.

Unfeeling, uncaring, motionless Doll.

[She shouldn't have to listen? Yin looks at Hei. He's probably right. But she doesn't care enough to try, or to make them go away. Oh, but she cares enough to have wanted to change in the first place.]

[ How does that line from 'Alice in Wonderland' go? You're nothing but a pack of cards! The equivalent here is: You're nothing but noisy balloons. Ironic and absurd, but true. He stays where he is, physically distant but alert. His flat gaze -- like his tone -- accepts no compromise. ]

Untrue.

[ Not directed at Yin, or the balloons, but a statement of fact. His fellow human beings have shown him more apathy and disinterest than Yin ever has or will. ]

[Yin's eyes widen, looking towards Hei. It's not a complete counter to their words, but the balloons are taken aback, quiet for a moment after Hei's argument, hanging slightly further away.]

Weak.

She would be alive if she fought.

[She doesn't care about that, though. Being City!dead was never a problem. But was she weak...? Yes. Perhaps her lack of a life merely highlighted that.]

[ Well, well. It seems a verbal negation silences the balloons' ugly clamor. He offers no reaction when Yin's eyes widen; he can feel her looking at him, at the fringes of his peripheral vision. But Hei keeps his gaze fixed on the balloons. There's no suggestion of anger; he seems to hover at his baseline level of irritability, like he's being sassed by a subordinate or someone infinitely deluded. Infinitely beneath him. ]

[ Finally, without looking over at Yin: ]

A load of crap.

She's stronger than anyone I know -- human or Doll. She fights even when there's nothing to gain from it.

[ Against her programming. Against the rigid cage framing her mind. Against orders and expectations. She is, in her own way, a marvel of unwavering determination -- and stubbornness. But never weak. Never anything but the exact opposite of a stereotypical Doll. ]

[Again, they shrink back. Perhaps, also, this time they look a little smaller. Slight deflated.]

[Yin stands there, silently as ever. Hei's really saying these things? It's not necessary. It's just a curse, and they would have left eventually. He could have allowed them to continue, and it would have changed nothing.]

[Him saying anything, though, changes so many things.]

Helpless.

Her mother died because of her.

[ No, it's not necessary. But there's something else fueling Hei's interest. The balloons are like distorted echoes of Yin's thoughts. Each word fans out and blinks into supernovas of nonsense, glowing in the dark. Grey matter gone rotten. He could file it away, if he wanted to. An eyeful of the way Yin sees herself, in her own mind -- but he doesn't. Because she's not a target. Because she's entitled the privacy of her own thoughts. But, most importantly, because these aren't real and rational arguments. They're twisted and misshapen and magnified beyond all clarity. ]

[ He watches the balloons shrink with a small measure of satisfaction. Their next words don't get as much as a blink. Like every other aspect of the double-identity Hei lives, the story of his parents is so painstakingly backstopped, custom tailored, and carefully rehearsed that the legend is what feels real to him, while the details of his actual childhood -- ( them selling Xing to the Syndicate -- him running away from home -- their deaths by 'mysterious electric-shocks,' seven years later )-- are suffused with the vagueness and improbability of an interrupted dream. ]

[ He's skimmed through the dossier of Yin's civilian history -- but briefly. None of that is relevant to him. Only the girl herself -- alive, functional -- holds any value. ]

[ Aloud, he says, ]

If she decapitated her mother, or shot her. Otherwise it falls in the category of 'accident.'

[Pai is waiting for Yin outside her apartment. She's tuned out her own balloons so completely, she doesn't even register they're speaking. She hears Yin's balloons perfectly well, at least.]

You should listen to them.

[She is, perhaps, more than a little cross than Yin will not protect herself against Hei.]

[Yin remains unresponsive.]

Pointlessly silent.

Useless.

Too passive.

But you realize the worth of what we say.

[This retort does nothing to deflate them, but they don't return to their previous size, either. They remain unmoved. One merely hisses out barely audible whispers as the others try again.]

But if not for her-

-her mother would have lived.

[And Yin remains still. The knowledge of this fact is nothing. She long accepted her responsibility in the accident, but Hei didn't have to say. He didn't have to speak to them at all. It's not Hei they're surrounding.]

Too impulsive. Now too passive.

She fails to balance.

You reached for emotions, but to what end? You still don't use them.

[Right, she's a Doll. Pai still isn't quite used to dealing with them, never really having needed that kind of reconnaissance on the battlefield.]

Listen and then do.

[She pulls a knife out of her shoe and hurls it at the nastiest of the balloons. The knife embeds itself in the end of the balloon's forehead, and the eerie thing screams in agony.]

Don't just let yourself be attacked.

[ He doesn't have to speak to them. But he wants to. Not for the keyhole's peek they offer into Yin's psyche, but for the chance to refute them. Feelings aren't always wisdom. Self-recrimination isn't always fact. He wants Yin to understand this, so she'll stop thinking of herself that way. But the choice isn't his. ]

[ Instead, he levels his gaze on the balloons. For a moment it looks as if he'll argue further. But he just reaches out, fingers splayed, and touches the closest balloon. The zzzzt fills the alleyway with a blue-tinged glow, and the astringent scent of ozone. The balloons can shriek all they want. It's preferable to their yammering. Anyway, a Contractor is hardly the ideal advocate for truth and innocence. They never play fair. ]

[ Ignoring the balloon's high-pitched shrilling, he glances at Yin. Quietly, ]

You use your emotions as much as anyone. [ She'd never have helped him -- not at PANDORA's headquarters, not with Kenji and his damn Doll -- unless she had a simulacrum of emotion. Without them, you are a mindless automaton. A true Doll. Yin is anything but. ]

[She stays blank, listening as the balloon fizzles out. The remaining ones shrink back, silent for a moment, smaller.]

[When Yin does speak, she turns to Hei.]

I know. [That's all she says, but it proves the balloons don't necessarily have all the insight into her psyche, or that they're even spouting things she fully believes. Twisted half-truths, weak brainwashing manipulation. Hei's breaking it.]

[One balloon gone, the others seem to shrink back, horrified faces frozen in terror. They still cry out their accusations, just a little quieter.]

I was not taught self-defense, or how to attack. [Even without her passive Doll nature, even if she wanted to attack, it would be pointless against the things that have been tossed at her.] I can retreat. [And even that she was only programmed to do when she could sense direct danger, or she was ordered to.]

You're capable of learning, aren't you? [It's actually not as snarky a question as it might seem. Pai doesn't know much about dolls -- they weren't used that often by her team in South America.]

[Yin nods. She still has no desire to harm Hei, though.]

[Harrumph.]

You will learn self-defense. [She won't push the issue regarding Hei, at least for the moment.]

[Yin nods once more. Learning self-defense isn't the issue, after all. How weak and frail her body has become over the years of barely consuming food to maintain a bare minimum existence for the benefit of her team is one. And the main one is, self-defense or not, she won't harm Hei. Well, as long as she knows it's him.]

We'll start with proper food. Come on, we're getting lunch.

[Yin doesn't consider how food is supposed to help. She follows quietly all the same, despite the fact she doesn't need to eat, and will point that out later.]

["Need" is clearly something Yin doesn't understand. The Doll is grossly underfed. She needs to put on some more muscle if she's going to take care of herself even a little bit.]

[Unfortunately, as City!dead, she would remain underfed, no matter what she did, but she followed Pai and would do as she said. For the most part.]

[A fact that Pai will have to figure out a way around once she realizes it. But for now, she'll just take Yin to the closest restaurant.]

[Yin follows.]

[Pai doesn't even wait for them to be seated before telling the waiter] Five steaks with mashed potatoes, and green tea.

[And Yin has no idea why Pai order so much. She just takes her seat and waits patiently, not moving the entire time. Some of the other guests look at her from time to time.]

[Don't worry -- the bulk of the food is for Pai. Only one steak is for Yin. Pai points to the plate and makes it very clear, without saying anything, that Yin is to eat the entire thing.]

[Yin daintily cuts herself a small bite, then proceeds to nibble on it slowly. She might not get through even a quarter of it before Pai is done with one.]

[To be fair, most people wouldn't be far into their own meal before Pai finishes hers. A childhood of deprivation makes a speedy eater.

She doesn't make conversation. Why talk with a Doll?]

[Yin's accustomed to silence, but this one differs from the companionable silence she shares with July, or Hei. It's not tense, either, like it is with some people that prefer talking. It's just different. Colder.]

[Much colder. Pai doesn't have Hei's warm & squishy feelings towards Dolls. To her, Yin has all the significance of a talking rifle -- of value only because Hei values it.]

[She's not even much of a talker at all. Her meal has gone no where, as well. She's taken a few small nibbles, her body just as uncaring for the meat as her taste buds.]

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