#yeah god fucking forbid i want to give myself the stability i NEVER HAD growing up. i’m the villain for wanting to KEEP the life i worked

[swiss-army-fangirl]

.

#i think one thing i really hope to get through to my parents when they visit me is that. my job market is Not their job market #i keep thinking of their frankly Awful ‘advice’ of ‘apply even if you’re not qualified’ #like. do you HEAR how stupid that sounds? ‘walk into a law firm and say ‘hire me’ even though your degree is in. culinary arts’ #it’s like that! #when i skip out on an application because i’m not qualified i’m not being timid or lazy #it means i DON’T have the required experience OR that hiring me in that job would result in a POORLY DONE JOB #i cannot in good faith apply to a position who’s expectations i cannot meet. #much less an engineering position where that could lead to dangerous situations #it doesn’t seem like they believe me when i say no one in my field is hiring. and then i get hit with ‘well you chose to stay in fairbanks’ #yeah god fucking forbid i want to give myself the stability i NEVER HAD growing up. i’m the villain for wanting to KEEP the life i worked #so hard to build for myself after having to Leave it over and over and OVER again. that makes me selfish and you want to say i’m acting out #or disrespecting you. no. i want a Life that’s My Own. that i’ve made with my own two hands and my own decisions. #i just want someone to hire me so they can leave me alone. i’m so tired of being made to feel like i’m falling short #vent post #can you tell i’m 💫hormonal💫

[cloudbattrolls]

The Mirror Looks Back

Chimer Latrai | Civitrecce | Several Nights Prior

You hesitate before you knock on her door.

The building you’re standing in one of the many identical hallways of is very uniform for Civitrecce. Ask any troll to think of the tech city, and they’d probably imagine a tall gray hivestem just like this one, fifty floors tall with struts on the outside to balance it in the winds and roosts for flying lusii to roost on.

There are gardens around its outside balconies too, strung with netting to keep out the aforementioned flying lusii. Each lowblood is allowed to grow a certain amount of their own food. A lot of places don’t even permit such things (god forbid lowbloods be too self-sufficient) but given Civitrecce’s population and the financial strain of imports from the surrounding valleys, it was finally allowed about seventy sweeps ago.

Still, you saw what must’ve been a highblood’s raptor lusus swoop down on one, tear through its netting with what looked like metal-covered talons and wreck it, not even eating anything it destroyed. You wish you’d been in range to throw your trident, but it was at least ten floors up. Plus an incident is the last thing you need right now, though you grit your fangs at your own helplessness and the far worse loss to whatever poor troll is the victim. Probably just one of way too many this has happened to.

The troll you’re about to visit is a victim in her way, but like no other.

You’ve searched for any mention of someone else hatched like her in your many sweeps - any whisper that she wasn’t an anomaly - but you’ve never found anything definitive.

The door opens before you can knock on it.

Tabula Raisaa is a slight maroon, a foot shorter than you and a bit thinner. Her hair only comes to an inch or so past her ears, and her eyes are psiionic white, but were it not for the luminous glow, one would almost think they belonged to a ghost.

Her face is a copy of yours.

Or really, yours is a copy of hers.

“Heeeeeey...” You say, all your planned starts to the conversation going up in a cloud of smoke.

She raises a finger in a “wait” gesture and walks back inside.

You peer in after her, eyes wide with curiosity.

Her hiveblock is small, but...cozy, you suppose. There are notebooks everywhere, open and closed, old and new. A battered laptop is open on a table with a strong-smelling cup of coffee beside it, steaming gently. Strings of lights are strewn across the ceiling and walls. A white meowbeast - not a lusus, you think - dozes curled up on an old maroon couch with threadbare patches.

“Nice setup you got here. Didn’t know you were one for pets.”

A black dog with orange eyes snapping and snarling, trying to take your place.

You wince at the memory. One upside of dealing with Tabula: at least she has no recall feature.

Though...she seems to recognize you. How is that possible? You were ready to explain everything, now that she doesn’t have Cherie’s power sustaining her memory.

“I could be culled for not having a lusus.” she replies from a room you can’t see, tone sharp. 

Sharp? Tabula’s always dull, emotionless...

The girl who walks back in is anything but, arms crossed as she looks at you with distaste.

“I felt disdain was appropriate for you, so I drank some.” She says, chin up. 

Your fins ripple up and down in confusion.

“You can store emotions now? Also, what’d I do.”

Tactfully you don’t remind her that she once tried to kill you, and also she was on Cherie’s side last time.

At least they don’t seem to have done anything to her. 

She laughs, an eerie enough sound that your skin prickles a little. It’s like she learned how from recordings which...is about right.

“Can I sit down at least?”

“Why not?” She says, shrugging. “You’ve imposed yourself on me in every other way.”

Rolling your eyes, you plunk down near the meowbeast, which opens a sleepy yellow eye at you and then ignores you entirely.

“Look, I’m not expecting you to be jazzed about me, but I came here to make sure you were safe, okay? Cherie has popped up again and they talked about you in their usual creepy way, so I’m trying to be responsible toward you for once. Be a pal and don’t give me shit.”

“You’ve seen me, I’m safe. Since you’re still here, you want something from me, as if you haven’t taken everything I was entitled to already.”

She’s not being fair.

That’s your first thought, yet she’s not wrong. Chimera’s selfishness created you, not that you asked for that. Cherie claims Tabula is hollow, incapable of individuality, but just because she’s different doesn’t mean she’s not a person. 

For over four hundred sweeps she was a voice in your head, watching you live the life she should’ve had.

You exhale deeply. Just because you didn’t mean for her to suffer doesn’t mean you’re not the reason why.

Plus, though it stings, she’s not entirely wrong.

“Yes.” You admit. “But that was a recent thing, like, an hour ago. I originally came here to see if you were safe and ask you some questions. And if you don’t want me to, I won’t bring it up. Plus, it’s for a friend, not me.”

She takes out a vial from her sylladex - you see it flash golden - and drinks it down. 

“For a friend! That makes it better, doesn’t it? How you assume I’d help you. What do I get in return?”

Amusement enters her tone, the hard edge of disdain still pointed beneath it.

“I can pay you, or give you a favor. Also, how are you storing those? How do you even remember me?”

“Magic, Chimer!” She sings, entirely amused now as she twirls in place, her gray skirt swirling. “Magic, psi, and technology combined. Did you think you were the only one with all the tricks? Oh - but you gave it up. Silly girl!”

Disdainful Tabula suddenly seems a lot more appealing.

“Coooool. Okay, so, what do you remember about Cherie’s goals, if anything? Did they ever talk about their past, or how they felt about the spectrum?”

“Why should I care? They weren’t very funny.” she says, yawning, but then a watch on her wrist beeps and she downs another vial, this one gray. She calms, and sits on the floor, cross-legged.

“You haven’t asked me about myself in the whole time you’ve been here. I’m nothing but information to you.”

Her voice is even, non-judgmental. 

Perhaps that’s why your fists clench as you inhale deeply, fins pressed down.

“What should I ask you, Tabula? What could I ask you? I barely understand you, and god, I should, but I don’t. I owe you everything, and you don’t owe me shit. There’s no way I can ever pay you back, and I hate it. I hate that you tried to fucking kill me and I can’t say that makes us square, because I know what you went through. I hate that you stood with the person who imprisoned me and I can’t say that makes us square either, because you literally had no choice, and none of it would’ve happened if you’d gotten my life.”

It’s hard to glean an expression from those white eyes, but she drinks another vial. 

It’s fuchsia.

“Accepting you don’t understand me is something.” She says. “Cherie pretended to. I can’t remember everything, especially after I took the implants they gave me out, but I remember that much.”

You blink.

“Why’d you take them out? Didn’t they...I mean, didn’t you have to find a new way to hold onto stuff? Judging from obvious context clues here, you still can’t sustain an emotional state, no offense.”

“I don’t feel like taking offense.” She says, still calm. “I can’t take amusement again or I’ll get distracted, even though I just made a funny joke. The feelings consume me.”

What do you even say to that? To the girl forced to depend on others to react to the world around her? To know if she’d had your life, she wouldn’t be this way?

“That’s rough, buddy.”

Nailed it.

She gets up and flips through notebooks, doing this for a few minutes until she gets the one she wants and reads aloud.

“The storage and stabilization implants have control units in them. Must take them out so Cherie can’t get to me. Coloth tech, I think.”

Your lip curls in disgust.

“They walked up to me acting like they were all invested in lowblood rights, knowing damn well I was there when they tried their little timeline BS. Now this too?”

An idea hits and you sit up straight.

“Tabula, if I recorded your testimony, I could use it to - ”

“No.”

“Uh?”

“I don’t care about taking down Cherie.”

“Whhhhyyyyy?”

“They’re not my problem.”

“They’re gonna be all of Civitrecce’s problem if they get enough power. Whatever they want, it’s obviously not lowblood rights, and I doubt it’s an ice cream party.”

She looks at you with a gaze you feel scopes all your thoughts out, every plan and idea you’ve ever had.

“I can only hold so much at once, but I know what a maroon’s word is worth against a cobalt. No matter what Cherie does, things are already bad here for lowbloods. I’ve seen suffering tonight. I’m sure I see it every night.”

A sigh, long and drawn out, flows from you as your shoulders slump. She’s right, and it reminds you how removed you are and will always be from the problem. 

No matter how what you change, highbloods can do whatever they want. They won’t respect lowbloods unless it costs them to not. They’ll shove them in helms, tear up their food with lusii, use them for their plans.

Meanwhile you remain as untouchable as when you slammed Cherie into that floor. 

Tabula would die for so much as slapping a blueblood. If she was lucky.

With a brush of your hand you slide your hair out of the way as you lean back on the couch that really isn’t big enough to fit you, your legs sprawled out on her floor.

“Yeah. Thanks for being straight with me, though.”

Her white eyes blink, and her ears flick. 

“I don’t care enough to lie to you.”

“Still.”

In a world of endless politics and the pain in the ass that’s Cherie, it’s nice to have someone be blunt, no matter how frustrating it is at times. 

She downs another vial as her watch beeps again, this one more a bluish gray.

“If you want my help, my price is your happiness. A whole night’s worth of happiness, of everything you have and love. I think it would be especially strong coming from you.”

She walks over and you double take in shock as she sits in your lap.

A slender, warm hand lightly runs a thumb across your right fin, and you shudder slightly.

“Don’t forget; you came from me. You owe me.”

Do you have any right to find her creepy? 

You do anyway, but still, you nod.

As both of you know so well, a deal’s a deal.

#cloud writes #chimer latrai #tabula raisaa #tabula is a creepy mfer but in her defense she can't really help it #well she sort of can but she's also not /wrong/ #which is chimer's problem