Vigor Mortis

Chapter 181: Patient Examination

“Jelisaveta, are you sure you should be doing this alone with her?”

I look away from the notes and ideas I’ve been collecting, glancing up towards the voice. Then I twist my neck to glance even further up, because Lady Vesuvius is absolutely ridiculously tall. Her radiant scales pulse with blob-like collections of color—’chromatophores,’ she called them—each too small for anyone else to see. Packed tightly together in beautiful collections of different hues, they expand and bloom when she wills them to, filling the membrane within each translucent scale with the color that she chooses. The effect is somewhat lost on me since I can see each individual blob of pigment, but apparently to normal human senses they all blend together to form a single, vibrant shade of whatever she wants. It’s still beautiful to my senses, though in a vastly different way than intended.

We’ve relocated for now, flying out of the city to think and regroup. Vita led the way, navigating for us without telling us where she was going. The answer, it turned out, was a poor village, the people there starving thanks to Ars siphoning in supplies from farmers far in excess of what the country he twisted could actually support. Vita touched down in the middle of town, fully visible, and while our presence was fairly obviously a source of panic at first, hunger won out over fear when Vita started giving out our travel rations. Or maybe Malrosa did? Either way, I’m definitely taking that as a good sign. We’re currently holed up in an empty home, as its previous inhabitants were already suffering from illness when Ars forced them to starve as well. They were dead long before we got here.

Capita is still unconscious, tied up more for ease of carry than any vain belief that rope would impede her. Lark is out in the countryside, hunting for game that we can use to build up food stores for these poor people. The situation with Ars’ soul plague, not to mention the mess we caused in the capital city in the process of killing him, are all entirely unaddressed. That’s a bit stressful, but I think it’s a lot better than the alternative, which would be rushing into an island-changing decision hastily.

“If I wasn’t sure I was the best choice we have available, I wouldn’t be pushing for this at all,” I answer Lady Vesuvius. “Vita and Malrosa need to talk about things openly and honestly. Everyone does, really, but most people aren’t severely traumatized demigods.”

“And you don’t think she’d rather talk to me?” Lady Vesuvius challenges.

I hold back a frown. I suppose, now that I’m thinking about it, that severely traumatized demigods are in concerningly high supply. Lady Vesuvius is tense, uncomfortable, and raw in a way that I haven’t seen on her since she turned herself into a giant dragon woman with a fucked-up soul. She also desperately needs someone to talk to, doesn’t she? Just like Lark did, just like so many people do. The more I look for it, the more I see it everywhere. I can’t really handle Lady Vesuvius’ issues right now since I’m so focused on the moth girl in the other room, but I should try to figure out how to help her as well. In the meantime… how to answer this carefully?

“She’d almost certainly rather talk to you,” I tell her. “But she won’t talk to you about the right things. Vita needs to talk to someone she respects, and she absolutely respects you, but she also wants your respect. She wants to earn that, and until she feels like she has it every conversation the two of you have will be based around that. Meanwhile, she respects me in sort of a vague way, but she doesn’t really care what I think. Or I guess more accurately she’s not afraid of me thinking badly of her, and that’s pretty much perfect for what I’m going for.”

Lady Vesuvius’ scaly eyebrows rise ever so slightly.

“Well-reasoned,” she concedes. “You’re more manipulative than I gave you credit for, Jelisaveta.”

I’m fairly certain she means that as a compliment, though it doesn’t sit right with me.

“I feel like manipulation involves a certain level of intentional obfuscation, and I don’t want to do that,” I hedge. “But yes, I suppose I’m trying to figure out actual conversational strategies to help people better. Or at least that’s the goal. I’m sort of making this up as I go.”

She lets out a noncommittal hum, glancing away from me as if deep in thought. That immediately sets me wondering as to what’s on her mind, though since this is Lady Vesuvius it’s difficult to tell the difference between genuine cracks in her mask and purposeful affectations, even for me. I probably shouldn’t waste my time trying to read too much into it, at least not right now.

“You’re a bit of an odd one,” Lady Vesuvius comments. “Perhaps you fit in with the likes of us after all.”

I blink, somewhat taken aback by that.

“…I feel like I’ve always just been the one bringing the human element to things.”

She scoffs, crossing her arms under her chest.

“If I wanted to keep the ‘human element’ around me all the time I’d still have skin,” she counters glibly. “It would rather defeat the point of being a superior lifeform if there were tasks that I needed more humanity for.”

…Okay, now she’s definitely just pulling my leg.

“Isn’t the entire reason you dragged me all the way here to Baldone because you needed someone who looks human for infiltration?”

Her lips twitch upwards.

“Needless details,” she insists. “I am biologically superior.”

“I know for a fact that I have sharper senses than you do,” I tell her frankly.

“And that’s by design,” she insists. “The sort of details you’re constantly privy to are debilitating rather than helpful, are they not?”

I let out a frustrated huff of air, doing my best to ignore how the question forces my focus towards the quiet, exhausted mastication of the grateful families outside, the rustle of wind through the barren fields, the scent of distant rain and all-too-nearby illness and fecal matter. Thanks to years of practiced experience, my facial expression doesn’t twitch or fade as my focus grows distant, though it does still hang a little. Most people don’t notice that sort of thing, though of course Lady Vesuvius is about as far away as you can get from ‘most people.’

“You know,” she says, softly enough to not exacerbate the overstimulation and close enough to bring my attention back to where it should be, “I could tone them down, if you like. Reduce their intensity. Your talent would eventually reverse any changes I make, but I could teach you how to reapply them.”

I sigh, slightly irritated that this conversation is happening now, of all times. I need to focus on Vita. But I can’t just leave this hanging, of course, even if the topic makes me feel uncomfortable. …No, especially if it does. Talking about uncomfortable topics is a pretty necessary skill for what I’m about to attempt.

“I appreciate that,” I say, mostly honestly. “But no thank you. As distressing as my talent can be, I’ve devoted too much of my life to controlling it to just get rid of all the problems with a few wiggled fingers.”

Lady Vesuvius gives me that too-knowing stare I was afraid of seeing.

“Jelisaveta,” she says slowly, “have you ever heard of something called the ‘sunk cost fallacy?'”

Yep. There it is. I repress another urge to sigh.

“Well, you know us inferior life forms and our constant biases,” I deflect. “Sometimes we just have to indulge in them from time to time. It’s a form of relaxation.”

She chuckles at that.

“We’ll talk about this later,” she promises. Damn. “I’ll stop taking up your time. Though Jelisaveta…”

She glances at the door, beyond which our resident moth woman is waiting.

“…I’ll expect a full report.”

She turns to leave, a scowl forming on my face as she strides casually away.

“You won’t be getting one,” I call out to her. She stops, but doesn’t look back. “If they want to tell you anything, that’s up to them.”

She doesn’t answer. I sigh, glance at my notes one last time, and open the door. Beyond the threshold, our Athanatos Lich of indeterminate identity stares at me with an inscrutable expression, waiting in a wooden chair. She’s less than half-dressed in her armor, which actually makes this the first time I’ve seen her in her current body without all of it on. Though her legs are still covered, her feet, chest, arms, and head are all free, revealing a startling amount of fuzz underneath them all. Impressively clean fuzz at that, much to my satisfaction. The room is sparse, the townsfolk having necessarily stripped it of useful things already. The furniture couldn’t be given to Ars or eaten to survive, though, so it remains. I take the chair opposite and sit down.

“So,” I begin, my heart hammering with stress, “how are you doing?”

She leans back in her chair, crossing her lower pair of arms as she rests her chin in a hand and an elbow on the armrest. That feels like a Vita sort of posture to me, though I’m not confident enough to make the guess based on that alone. I’ll need to ask them for a name that can be used to refer to the two of them collectively.

“I’ve been sitting alone in an empty room,” she answers flatly. Yep, definitely Vita.

“Well, I appreciate your patience,” I tell her, smiling a bit even though I’m not sure she’ll notice it. I am grateful, and it’s likely that she’s paying attention to my soul right now.

“It’s not a courtesy,” Vita grunts. “You’re just right. I need to figure this out. If you say you can help, then I’ll let you help.”

I don’t have the slightest fucking idea if I can help, but I’m certainly going to try. Vita probably knows that, and she’s willing to give me a shot anyway. I’m going to do everything in my power not to let her down. Not again. She glances at me and the expression in her eyes softens a little. Aw, shoot. I guess knowing about her empathic abilities doesn’t make them less embarrassing.

“So. How are we doing this?” Vita asks.

“Well, first I’d like to establish some things,” I tell her, sitting up a bit straighter. “Am I currently talking to Vita?”

“You are,” she confirms, nodding. “How can you tell? I can barely even tell sometimes, this shit is confusing.”

“Posture and tone, mostly,” I answer. “I knew Vita from before she was an Athanatos but I never knew Malrosa, and—well, actually, is there another way you’d prefer me to refer to the Vita and Malrosa from before your fusion? I think you mentioned that they’re technically different people from the Vita and Malrosa I’m talking to currently.”

“That’s… a good point,” Vita scowls. “I guess it is kind of confusing. Maybe I should change my name. ‘Vita’ is the name he gave his son, after all. I didn’t really care much about that until today, but…”

She trails off, her segmented sapphire eyes unfocusing into an even expression that I’m guessing is a far-away stare. My own gaze drinks in countless details: fists clenching; the subtle tension of muscles under her chitin, barely visible in the thin areas around her joints; the stiffening of her antennae; her clawed, bug-like toes digging ever so slightly into the wooden floor. It hardly takes a leap of intuition to conclude she’s more than a little stressed out about recent events. I give her a few moments of silence before noticing her tension seem to get worse, at which point I clear my throat and speak up.

“No one has ownership of your name just because they gave it to you,” I say. “And no one has the rights to your life just because they created you.”

“I know,” Vita answers firmly, and I get the distinct impression that I should drop the subject there. That’s fine. I’m obviously not going to be able to address every point of trauma in this poor girl’s life today, and it’s okay if she’s not ready to talk about some of it. It would be nice if I could help her quickly, but I know people better than that. This will take time.

“Well then,” I say, “we’ll stick to calling you Vita and Malrosa for now. Just let me know any time you’re not comfortable with that or want to change it for any other reason, okay?”

“Okay,” Vita nods.

“Relatedly, I think it would be useful to have a name that refers to the two of you collectively,” I continue. “Does anything come to mind?”

“Uh… I dunno,” Vita says. “I mean, I don’t want to be Melik, and no other names really…”

She pauses, thinking about something, and as she does I watch a series of subtle shifts. Her back gets a little straighter. Her eyes flicker a bit more expressively. She casually crosses her legs. She stretches her wings a bit, as if she just realized they’re sore. All these things occur while she’s thinking, and when she opens her mouth I’m pretty sure the two of them have swapped.

“Mal-Mal,” Malrosa announces. “We’re both still Mal-Mal.”

I… was not expecting a name that adorable. Okay.

“Mal-Mal?” I repeat. “Is there a story behind that?”

“It’s what my… it’s what our sister calls us,” she explains. “Our Athanatos sister. We love her very much, and while it’s a bit weird for someone other than Talanika to call us Mal-Mal, I think it works well enough for now.”

“I see,” I answer, smiling a little. “That works for me then, Mal-Mal. Although, please correct me if I’m wrong, but you just swapped to Malrosa, right?”

“Yes, I suppose I’m currently in control,” Malrosa confirms. “It just sort of happens. Sometimes we consciously agree to change who’s in charge, like when we were fighting Ars, but since then it seems to just… happen.”

“I see,” I say. “Is that problematic for you two?”

Her eyes shift. A frown? A thoughtful frown, maybe. She drums her fingers on her thigh, the hard chitin making a satisfying clacking sound on the dragon scales.

“I wouldn’t describe it as problematic,” she answers eventually. “We’re both somewhat baffled by it, and we both find the situation concerning. We don’t agree on everything, either. But all in all we’re still the same person in a lot of ways. It’s not distressing to be the one not in control, it doesn’t feel like we’re trapped or anything like that. We’re still there, just… in the back, I suppose. Vita wants us to re-combine on general principles, but—”

“—I’m not ‘distressed,'” Vita finishes, the mid-sentence shift surprising. “I can speak for myself, Malrosa. But yeah, she’s right. It’s… weird. We’re two people, but we’re not at cross-purposes. We’re both at home in our own head, I guess? Having a roommate in that head is a bit unwanted, but it’s not like I hate her or anything.”

“Malrosa said you wanted to re-combine though, is that true?” I ask. They’re treating each other like different people so I’m going to treat the two of them as different people, and that means not taking what they say about one another as anything more reliable than hearsay. I’m going to question, confirm, and let them each speak for themselves.

“Well it’s a bit freaky, isn’t it?” Vita asks. Interesting that she phrased it as a question.

“What do you mean?” I ask back.

“…Well, like… I’ve always been a bit weird,” she starts hesitantly. “Y’know, like ‘ah, just Vita being Vita again, freaking people out and not understanding why.’ People already think I’m insane. And if I walk up to them and go ‘whoops, I’m two people now, have fun figuring out which name to use,’ they’re just going to assume I’m even more nuts.”

“Well, I do find figuring out which name to use to be pretty fun,” I admit, trying to inject a bit of levity into things and immediately panicking about it. What if it backfires!? Thankfully, she lets out a snort of amusement.

“Only because you’re good at it,” Vita answers. “Everyone who isn’t super-perceptive is going to see the same Mal-Mal all the time, except now she’ll be doing loopy bullshit. It’s a pain in the ass I’d rather avoid. I can… I can feel when people are judging me, you know? I don’t usually care, but I can still feel it.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant,” I comment honestly, trying to encourage this particular line of conversation to continue.

“It really isn’t,” Vita confirms. “I used to be able to go through life not knowing or caring what anyone thought about me. I didn’t really have the luxury of caring. But now I get to constantly be aware of how everyone on the damn island—even people I thought were my friends—think of me more as a problem than a person. And I wish I could just not care about that, but it sucks anyway.”

“I’m sorry about treating you that way,” I answer firmly, “and about failing to discourage others from doing the same.”

“Your apology doesn’t matter,” Vita lies. “I get why it happens, I’m not stupid. I’m presenting myself as a problem to people. As a force of nature. We can’t reasonably expect to put ourselves above people and be treated as one of them simultaneously.”

I nod slowly, fairly certain that the last sentence there had been spoken by Malrosa. When she continues, though, it’s Vita talking once again, as if there hadn’t been an interruption at all.

“What I want to present myself as isn’t as a problem, but as a solution. I don’t wanna make things worse for people, that’d defeat the point of putting in all this effort.”

Again, I watch her body fill with tension, her gaze drifting away from me.

“…Maybe I shouldn’t put in the effort,” she says quietly. “It’s not like humans are ever going to trust me anyway.”

I don’t need to be able to understand her expression or her body language to hear the cold, insidious anger in her words. I allow myself a quiet exhale, glancing down at my notes. There’s a lot I could say in response to that, but her struggle with these sorts of problems is obviously stemming from a lot of trauma—trauma that I’m partially responsible for—and I can’t just logic that kind of thing away with a few words. Trust will have to be demonstrated, not just discussed.

“Well,” I ask instead, “why do you want to put in the effort?”

She… I want to say she ‘blinks’ at that, though it’s difficult to associate the concept of blinking with her complete lack of eyelids. The hexes of her eyes all just scrunch shut for a brief moment in an expression of surprise before she looks away again, her voice soft.

“…Because in Liriope, no one is hungry,” she answers simply.

“Can you elaborate?” I ask.

“The thing is, I don’t feel like I should have to,” she answers, letting out an irritated huff. “I feel like I should be able to go ‘hey, there are more than zero people currently starving to death, your society is fucked and it needs to be overturned right now,’ and everyone should just think that’s imminently reasonable. But it doesn’t work that way. Humans only care about their own problems, so the only people who care about starvation are the people too hungry to do anything about it. They will always be this bad, unless someone steps in and fixes it for them.”

“Is every human like that?”

She glowers at me, tendrils of her soul twisting with barely-restrained fury for a few moments before she finds an answer to my question, one that relaxes her a little.

“…No. I guess not. You were part of the problem before, but… you actually cared enough to change. You saw it and you changed. And there are people like Lyn, too, who become strong and immediately turn around to give that strength to others.”

A shift takes her. The smoldering embers of rage become cooler calculations, her face becoming more expressive yet less emotional at the same time.

“People are complicated,” Malrosa admits. “If not for cruel, heartless monsters, if not for the base evil of apathy, I wouldn’t be who I am today. But I wouldn’t be me without love and kindness either. We just wish we could live in a world that has the love and kindness without the evil, is all. We’re so strong it feels like we should be able to rip that dream out of fiction and into reality with our own two hands. What else is this kind of power even for?”

“But it turns out it’s more complicated than that,” I finish for her.

“Impossibly so,” Malrosa confirms, slumping slightly. “Every idea we come up with gets shot down, usually for good reason. I just feel… worthless. So horribly worthless. I can’t believe I came back here thinking taking over would be a breeze.”

“Well, let’s step back a bit from what you want out of society,” I suggest. “That’s not the kind of issue you’re going to solve in a month. Let’s put the focus on what you want. What does Malrosa want? What does Vita want? Not immediately, but in a general sense.”

“Is that supposed to be a less complicated question?” Malrosa snarks.

“I’m not asking you to plan out your life, I’m just asking you to list whatever desires and values come to mind.”

She fidgets with her hands a little, but stops the moment I take notice of it. Embarrassed about the habit?

“Well, I want to be safe,” Malrosa says tiredly.

“I need to be safe,” Vita adds.

“You’ve already mentioned that you’re the most powerful person on the island,” I point out.

“Yeah. I guess. For whatever reason, that doesn’t feel like enough.”

I’m not sure which one of them said that. Maybe both of them?

“I think that’s perfectly understandable,” I tell them.

One of them scoffs.

“Because we live on a horrifying death world that’s constantly soul-taxed by an unfeeling god of consumption?” she asks.

A part of the question still hurts to hear. A part of me still wants to jump to the defense of a religion I’ve already decided I can’t follow. It’s a rather unfair instinct, but I suppose unfair instincts are exactly the topic of the day. I squash it down, and focus on her.

“No,” I tell her. “Because you’ve spent your entire life constantly being unsafe. You’ve needed to fight for your life for so long, I don’t think the pre-merge Vita part of you knows how to feel otherwise.”

She doesn’t speak for a while, her whole body seeming to lock up while she has what I suspect to be an internal conversation.

“…Yeah,” Vita eventually admits. “Maybe.”

I sit and wait, getting the feeling that she’s still thinking. I’m soon rewarded for my patience when she continues.

“While we were living in Liriope, we teleported to another island for a while,” Malrosa says slowly. “The island once belonged to a species of sapient people called the obarians. Then a Queen of Liriope took over the island for resources, but left the obarians alone. She ruled them kindly, by all accounts, although those accounts are from biased sources so I can’t verify their authenticity. Regardless, she was killed, and when her mother took over the island in her stead she was not so merciful. To my knowledge, no obarians are left alive on the island. In part because I helped her kill the last of them. Men, women, and children that were just trying to survive. People that were like me. Like how I used to be. I killed them because I couldn’t afford to disobey her.”

She stares intently at me, her antennae drooping.

“Liriope, objectively, is full of terrible people. But I don’t hold a grudge. Even when they made me do horrible things, I… my home there is so beautiful. We are loved and accepted. Genuinely, truly loved, I know this for a fact. They know what I am, and even if they made Vita and I do terrible things, they… how can we hate them? They’re only evil in all the exact ways we are. We kill and slaughter and fight for ourselves and the people we care about. We’re evil people, but I would die for them and they would die for me. I can trust them. And that’s more important to me than the fact that they used me to tear an entire culture of people off the face of the world forever.”

I let out a slow, quiet breath. That’s… a lot to take in.

“It’s possible to find love and acceptance in more people than just them,” I remind her gently.

“I know,” Malrosa agrees. “I have my human family too. I love them. But… but they never made me feel like my Athanatos family does. They never understood.”

“So that’s another thing you want, then?” I ask softly. “To be understood?”

She shrugs lightly.

“Yeah? I guess so? I don’t really know why.”

“We can worry about the why later,” I reassure her. “What else?”

“Power,” Vita says immediately, as if she was waiting for her turn.

“More than the most powerful woman on the island?” I ask.

“Yes,” Vita confirms. “Like you said, it’s not enough to be safe.”

“I said power isn’t enough for you to feel safe,” I correct.

“Because it’s not safe!” Vita insists. “Even ignoring the Mistwatcher itself, there are still countless people stronger than me. This island is a pathetic fraction of the wider world, and being top dog here only makes it easier to see how terrifying the real threats are. People that even the Progenitor is afraid of.”

I nod slowly. I’m a bit terrified of the prospect of Vita not being strong enough, but this isn’t the place to voice my opinions. We’re establishing things.

“What else?” I ask.

She almost says something, but then hesitates, hugging herself with one pair of arms.

“…Um… this is private, right?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “You’re making sure no one can hear us, and I’ll never talk about anything you say here that you don’t want me to talk about.”

She nods.

“Then… I want Penelope to be okay. Because she’s really, really not okay.”

“I agree that Lady Vesuvius needs help. Nearly everyone does.”

“Why do you still call her that?” Vita asks. “‘Lady Vesuvius?’ She’s just Penelope now, right? What with the treason and all.”

“I simply think a person’s name is whatever they wish to be called,” I tell her firmly.

“I… yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense,” Vita mutters. “Feels like a stupid question for me to ask, in retrospect.”

“Well, it’s okay to ask questions here, no matter how stupid they seem,” I say. “I think it would defeat the point of this conversation if anything else were the case.”

“Yeah. Alright.”

Another pause.

“I like to fight more than Malrosa does, we think,” Vita says. “She likes to make stuff. We made our armor, but… I’m not really excited about it all that much anymore. She still is.”

“Okay!” I say encouragingly. “So there are some easily explainable differences between the two of you.”

“Yeah,” Vita agrees. “We have different opinions on food, too. If only a little bit. We’ll both eat anything, but… she has more preferences I guess. And I think I use our tentacles more than she does? We’ve noticed that when she’s in control she doesn’t unconsciously eat bugs.”

“Okay,” I nod. “All good things to be aware of.”

“Is… um. Is that enough, do you think?”

“What?” I ask, genuinely caught off-guard.

“Is that enough,” Vita mumbles. “For us to be different people, I mean.”

I lean back in my chair, trying to get my brain around why Vita is apparently self-conscious about all this.

“You and Malrosa both recognize each other as separate people,” I prompt for clarification.

“Yeah,” she confirms.

“Well given your history, I can’t possibly think of a good reason to argue with your self-assessment,” I tell her frankly. “Between the Children of Nawra and the possessions I don’t think there’s anyone alive other than Altrix with more experience in regards to being more than one person sharing a single body.”

“Yeah, but all of those things were very easily explainable,” Vita says. “They were weird to be a part of, but there was always only one real me, regardless of whether she was handing over control to someone else or slowly merging with their memories, I was just… some level of me. But Malrosa and I don’t seem to be merging. This doesn’t feel anything like that, and we don’t know why. We’d assumed it might be a soul-brain separation thing, since that’s what triggered it, but now our soul and brain are connected properly and nothing seems to be changing. I think we’re stuck like this, and we don’t even know what ‘this’ is! The most confusing part of all of it is how similar we are!”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I admit.

“Jelisa, I think it’s really, really cool that you can figure out which one of us is currently controlling things via posture and tone and whatever other bullshit you use to figure it out, but I guarantee you most people aren’t going to be able to do that. And if most people can’t tell us apart, if the two of us are so similar that we’re going to be constantly getting confused with one another anyway, should we even bother with the names? Should we bother telling anybody about a complicated situation that we can barely articulate? They’re going to think we’re just pulling it out of our ass! I have more than enough bullshit in my life already, I don’t need another fucking reason for assholes to assume I’m insane!”

She’s yelling by the end of her tirade, clearly exhausted from having held it inside until now. The answer seems obvious to me, but I guess obvious doesn’t mean easy.

“Do the two of you prefer to be addressed by different names?” I ask.

“I mean, I guess,” Vita grunts dismissively. “Malrosa certainly does.”

“Then you should bother with them,” I tell her firmly. “I think it would be helpful to let people call you Mal-Mal if they can’t tell which one of you they’re currently talking to, but—”

“I do not want most people to be calling us Mal-Mal all the time,” Vita… no. Malrosa says? Ironically, I can’t tell. “I’m fine with you calling us that, but not anyone I don’t know.”

“…Then perhaps a different shared name,” I conclude, taking the quick turnaround on that name in stride. “Not because you should try to pretend there’s only one of you, but because, as you said, people are inevitably not going to be able to tell and they’ll have to ask you first. Or they might want to address both of you at once.”

“Malvita?” she tries, wiggling her antennae. That seems like more of a Malrosa expression, and a quick look at her tendrils confirms that they’re pretty stagnant right now. “Vitarosa? No, those both sound silly.”

“You two don’t have to decide now,” I assure her. “My point is, I think the people who care about you will be happy to learn how to handle this alongside you. Don’t go thinking you have to hide yourselves if that’s uncomfortable for you.”

“Oh, I agree wholeheartedly,” Malrosa nods. “Vita was the only one hung up on that. If people aren’t used to dealing with a bit of strangeness around us, they’re going to have to get used to it because we all know it isn’t going to stop. Anyone that’s worth having a major part in our lives will be able to accept us.”

I nod.

“I couldn’t agree more. And actually, on that subject, I wanted to go back to talking about your family in Liriope for a moment.”

“Sure, if you like,” Malrosa acquiesces.

“You’re here on Verdantop in part to acquire resources for Liriope, right?” I ask.

“I’ve said so many times, yes.”

“And you’ve also said that your family is expecting results from you,” I continue. “That a big part of why you’re insisting on this conquest plan in a short time frame is for their sake. Could you expand on that?”

Her head tilts up a bit. Imperiousness? No, I think from the way her soul is glaring at me her current expression is suspicion. I guess that’s fair. To whatever degree you can understand my thoughts, Malrosa: yes, I’m going somewhere with this. Yes, it’s partially about talking you out of your current trajectory. But trust me, okay? Can you do that?

“I want to prove to them I can do this,” Malrosa says, and I take that as a yes. “I’m acting well outside the usual bounds of expectation for someone in my position. I’m a Princess, not a Queen. I’m also one that has clear ties to areas other than Liriope, and my loyalties are somewhat in question. All of these things would normally mean I’d never get my current assignment, but I asked for it and received it anyway. I’m being made an exception to the rules, and I want to prove I’m worthy of that exception. I’m afraid that if things go poorly, that exception will be removed and the Progenitor will send someone else to do my job for me, which… would get bad for you.”

“So… are you afraid that Liriope would put your human family in danger?”

“What? No,” she reacts with immediate surprise. “No, they… they wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Because they love you?”

“Yes,” she nods.

“And you know that for certain,” I press.

“Absolutely,” she insists.

“Okay. So… then what are you afraid of, exactly?” I ask. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but weren’t you at some point thinking about killing every single human that tried to stand against you? So if Liriope comes in and conquers the island in your stead but leaves everyone you tell them to alone, is that bad from your perspective?”

Her mandibles open, then close. One of her wings flicks with discomfort. She scratches the back of her head with one hand, the front of her chest with another, and fidgets with the fingers of the last two.

“It’s… certainly not ideal,” Malrosa hedges. “It’s not as though I want to see the island die, Jelisa. It’s just… well. I think Vita can explain this better.”

There’s a pause as I wait for them to continue. Malrosa’s posture remains stubbornly Malrosa.

“Okay, um, well I guess she doesn’t want to,” Malrosa sighs. “Or something. Anyway, I suppose the best way to say it is that it’s easy to get angry at Verdantop, and it’s easy to get terrified of Liriope. Not because they’re dangerous to me, but because they’re… a dream to me, I suppose. A beautiful place it doesn’t feel like I earned. Malrosa—old Malrosa, I mean—she was just a freeloader. I mean, children are sort of supposed to be freeloaders until they’re old enough to work, but still. She didn’t contribute, and old Vita, well… all she did was kill Malrosa. Hardly a good reason to be so lovingly accepted into her family, don’t you think?”

“So you think you need to earn the love you’ve been given?” I ask.

She lets out a huff of air, her belly rising and falling instead of her chest due to the position of her breathing slits. Athanatos are very interesting beings. So like us, yet so unalike.

“Well,” Malrosa grouses, “it sounds awfully silly when you put it like that. But I guess I do, kind of.”

“If you obtain all the resources Liriope requires of you without taking over any pre-settled parts of the island to do it, will the other Queens step in and do that for you?” I ask. “Will they kill us?”

“…No,” she admits with some reluctance. “They won’t. I might look like a total incompetent, but if we’re getting the resources we need they won’t step in.”

“Would you rather not look incompetent, or have a plan for Verdantop that takes more than a week for you to cobble together?” I continue to press.

“I would rather have a better plan,” she grumbles. “Fine. You win, Jelisa.”

“I like to think we’re all winning here,” I smile. “I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think it was the best option for you.”

“I know. That’s why you get to win. This time.”

I chuckle, even though I’m almost certain that wasn’t a joke.

“What happens now, in that case?” Malrosa asks. “Just assembling the raw materials needed from the forest won’t be that bad. Lumber, meat, water… all of that is easy to get with the amount of magical power we have at our disposal. It’s a couple tenday of work, at most, and not even the kind of work that will take up all our time and attention.”

“Well, I want to address two major things, I guess,” I tell her. “First is your anger. You, and if I’m reading the both of you right, particularly Vita, have somewhat of a temper. You’re justifiably bitter as a result of your experiences and you have a tendency to respond with extreme force in periods of stress. Do you agree with that assessment?”

“…Yes,” she confirms, glowering at me. “What of it?”

“It’s not a healthy or productive way to handle stress,” I answer. “And I think you know that. Make no mistake, Mal-Mal, I know that you are a victim. You have been a victim of horrible circumstances and unjustified oppression for your entire life. But you respond to this by making other people victims. By spreading pain. And while I know you try other methods, I’ve seen you try other methods, you also know that you’re not very good at them, so sometimes you don’t bother to try.”

“I almost always try,” Malrosa protests. “Trying is important. That’s the difference between me and the people I kill. That’s the difference between you and the rest of Site 4. Why you got to live. You tried. You did a shit job, but you tried.“

I do my best to show no expression, for what little good it would do me. That was a lot of problematic statements rolled up into one. I could argue against them. I could argue against them and win, I think. It wouldn’t be the point I need to make first, though, so I hold up my hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Okay. You try, but you often fail because you lack the skills needed to succeed. My point is that, like any skill, it can be trained. You can get better at deescalating so that you’re forced to use violence less. I think it would be healthy for you to spend time and effort learning those skills, and I think you’d find them helpful. They are good skills for a ruler to have.”

She relaxes a bit, her eyes briefly flickering a strange configuration. Some kind of nonverbal communication? She catches that I don’t understand and gives an embarrassed nod. Ah, it was a confirmation gesture.

“Okay. Great,” I continue. “Which brings me to my second point: you clearly want to do good. And I think that’s beautiful. I know a lot of people that would have lost all desire to help others after experiencing what you’ve experienced, but you still hold onto that.”

“It’s thanks to Lyn,” Malrosa says quietly. “She’s best mom for a reason. I’d be dead if not for her kindness.”

Note to self: talk to Lyn a lot more.

“And that’s wonderful. But I’ve noticed you tend to run into problems when actually going about attempts to help. Your early interactions with Lark are a good example. You often fumble when you mean well, because you struggle to understand people. I know that’s harder for you than it is for others, but you’re a very intelligent young woman. That’s a skill you can learn as well. And it’s very important that you learn it, because understanding people is a necessary prerequisite to being able to help them.”

“…Really?” she asks, tentacles twitching with annoyance. Vita, then? “People seem to overcomplicate it in my experience. People have needs, so helping them means supplying those needs. If someone is in danger, you give them protection. If someone is out of food, you give them food.”

“But first you have to be able to understand they’re hungry,” I tell her.

“What’s there to fucking understand?” Vita snaps.

“Well, when you were hungry, did people understand?” I ask. “In more than just the abstract, I mean. Did they really understand why you needed food? When they looked at you, what did they see? What did they think?”

“They saw a street kid,” she grunts. “A gutter rat. An eyesore that they’d prefer to not be seeing at all.”

“That doesn’t sound like understanding to me,” I tell her. “Do you ever look at humans and see an eyesore that you’d prefer not to?”

A crash causes me to jolt as Vita slams a fist into the armrest of her chair, shattering it into wooden shards.

“I am nothing like the kind of assholes who—” she starts to shout, but her words cut off abruptly.

She stares at me. I stare back at her. She closes her fist around some of the broken parts of the chair, crushing it to dust, as I watch the gears turn behind her eyes. The moment where, perhaps for the first time, she manages to dip her toe into the lake of real empathy. Of realizing the difference between understanding someone and actually caring about them. She collapses back into her half-broken chair, glaring at the ceiling.

“Introspection fucking sucks,” she declares.

“It does, yes,” I agree, a hopeful smile on my face. “But I think it’s worth it.”

“I tortured a child once,” she admits with a chillingly casual tone. “Killed him, brought him back, then tortured him to a second death. But the whole reason he was there in the first place is because I killed his dad. I taught Penelope animancy, too, and that didn’t turn out great. Do you know who Nugas used to be?”

Oh Watcher no, I’d actually just been really, really hoping Nugas was someone who looked like Vita’s old body as a coincidence and was obsessed with Penelope because of understandable reasons, like her being a giant woman that’s constantly naked. Vita gives me the most condescending look I’ve ever seen from someone with a bug face.

“Yeah you should get Penelope in here next and convince her to open up about that huge mess. She definitely needs to talk about it with someone. Anyway, after that, I killed Norah. She… was my friend. She found out I was an animancer and wanted to take me to the Church and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so… I killed her. And I could never understand why she wouldn’t just listen to me. She listens to me now, of course, since she’s a Revenant. So I guess I’ll never know, but based on what you’re saying… hungry people need food. What did Norah need? I don’t know the answer, but the bigger problem is that I never even asked.”

“I’ve talked to Norah, actually,” I tell her. “About how she died.”

Technically, I eavesdropped on her having a private conversation with Bently, apologized to both of them about it, and then received enthusiastic assurance that it wasn’t a secret and Norah didn’t mind if people knew, but those details seem somewhat unnecessary.

“Oh yeah?” Vita asks. “What did she say?”

“Did you know that she used to have a huge family?” I ask. “Her father and all of her siblings died in a monster attack.”

“I vaguely remember something like that,” Vita hedges.

“Once she became a Revenant, she felt like she had to believe you,” I start.

“Well, she did,” Vita shrugs.

“She did. She said the hardest part of that was coming to terms with the idea that her family never got to heaven.”

“What does it matter where they are?” Vita grumbles. “They’re dea… hrm.”

I see it again. The gears are turning. We’re actually getting somewhere.

“This is the part where I’m supposed to empathize, isn’t it,” she mutters. “I’ll admit that I might be bad at it. So… how do I get better? Just ask more questions about people?”

“That’s a start,” I nod. “From here, I think the best course of action is for you to go home to Lyn and Rowan, take a break, and let some of this sink in. Introspection isn’t really a one-hour affair, you have to let it seep for a bit.”

“Oh goodie,” Vita deadpans.

“And to practice some of these social skills, you’ll need to socially interact more. It’s good that, if nothing else, you certainly aren’t shy.”

“Doesn’t mean I enjoy talking to people.”

“Then find people you might want to talk to. When we get back, Vita, it would be good for you to try and make some more friends.”

Vita lets out a long-suffering sigh, slouching dramatically in her chair.

“Not a fan of the idea?” I prompt.

“Malrosa loves the idea,” she groans.

I chuckle, and she starts getting to her feet and stretching, apparently having decided she’s done with this conversation, at least for now. That’s okay. Things have gone better than I expected.

“More friends, huh?” Vita mutters to herself as she makes for the door. “Well, why not. Surely I can’t fuck it up four times in a row.”

She departs, leaving me to ponder those cryptic words alone. Four times in a row? What does she mean about screwing up a friendship four times in a…

Oh. Poor Lark. I hope she’ll be okay this time.