It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Chapter Length: 5,500~ words

The Sickness: Part I

bright yellow; smiling; warm; pleasant; perfect

thing brushing against mind; feels so good; love it so much
can't get enough
can't get enough
can't get enough

more
more
need more
more
more
more
more

warm; happy; close; want to be closer
close; close; so close; so tight; so held

warm; warm; happy; loved; so happy; perfect; perfect; perfect

warm; warm; warm; warm; warm; warm; warm; perfect; perfect; perfect; perfect; perfect

perfect

rest; want to rest; safe; forever; never end

safe; safe; safe; safe; endless; perfect; safe; perfect; endless; endless safety

find safe place; perfect forever

find; find; need find

warm; warmwarmwarmwarm; love; acceptance; affirmation; feelssogoodgoingtodiedyingdyingdying; still alive

love; love; love; love; perfect

nest; nest; nestnestnest

happy

happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy; happy

? something

fire; flame; resistance; cant resist mustnt resist; dont ever want to resist; dont ever want to be able to resist

confused; gave in already; need to be good; need to listen; find fire

fire; warm; love; safe; gift from ████████; precious; special

fire cave; nice; safe; comforting; love; happy; secure; warm warm warm
safe because of her; happy because of her; strong because of her
miss her lots; miss her lots and lots; but happy to still have warmth

???? ?? ?????????????

fear; fear; fear; stop; no

warm; warmwarmwarmno; warmnono; no; warm; nonono not supposed to be; not warm; not warm right now

wrong; wrong; no; stop; stop; stop; stop; stop; stop; stop; warmstop; stopstopwarm; warmstopwarm; stopstopwarmstopstopswarmwarmstopwarmstop

warmstopwrong; wrongwrong; warm; wrongstop; stopwrong; wrong stop stop; stop stop wrong wrong stop; stop wrong wrong stop; stop wrong no; no no no; no no no no no no no;

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no N

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cold

cold; cold;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Raqi awoke with a jolt to find that the world around her had frozen. Her body-

cold; pain

It hurt. It hurt so badly-

want to scream

He She couldn't think. ~~His~~ Her body moved purely on instinct, crawling out from the ice all around ~~him~~ her. Gradually, second by second, the pain started to subside, but the ice permeating ~~his~~ her body and mind remained. ~~His~~ Her arms and legs were shivering as if he she had been out in sub-zero temperatures for hours, and ~~his~~ her mind reverberated like it were a gong that had been struck with a hammer. Everything seemed to happen agonizingly slowly, ~~his~~ her consciousness a blur of sensation, instinct, and instant response. No thoughts were capable of forming there for the moment. Finally, though, he she made it out of the ice, and managed to stand back up. He She was barely breathing. It felt like any second now some part of ~~him~~ her was going to give out and just collapse completely. ~~His~~ Her eyes were welded open, gaze fixed upon a random point on the floor. He She stayed that way for what felt like an eternity, until the shock had faded enough for ~~him~~ her to form basic thoughts. What- What the... What the fuck? He She was so scared. Every single one of ~~his~~ her senses felt viscerally wrong for a reason that she initially couldn't pinpoint, but as she focused on it, began to grow familiar to her. It was a sort of tactile sensation located in the back of her mind; a looming void that reached out and brushed over the surface of her consciousness, filling it with terror. No, no- What? Why are you here?! This isn't the time for- ~~His~~ Her chest caved inwards. ~~His~~ Her head began to swim.

No, stop. I don't want to do this right n-

It was always going to go this way.

Her heart stopped.

sensation; that sensation

sinking

the biting

memories; a voice from another time

the most loathsome sound remembered

Raqi dug one hand into ~~his~~ her chest, nails biting into ~~his~~ her flesh in an attempt to regain control of ~~his~~ her mind. He She was forced to grit her teeth to endure the pain, but the action had its intended effect, and he she felt the confused mish-mash of presences currently vying for control in her mind beginning to recede to the point where she could tell who she was again. What the fuck is this... What the hell is happening right now?! For all that her mind voice was filled with panicked incomprehension, she knew exactly what it was that was happening. She knew, and she answered herself a moment later:

You know exactly what it is that is occurring right now.

Those words, too, were useless. They conveyed no information on their own, but they did not need to. They came with an unspoken guidance interred within, communicated in raw thought rather than language, which transferred to Raqi the following information: She knew exactly who it was that was speaking right now. It was her own voice that she was hearing. More accurately, it was the voice of a past her-

-the one that she tore from the front,
and buried under the weight of a thousand days,
in an attempt to do away with.

Her mind reeled with sensations that neither Saltiltomeyin nor Accord standard had words for. Feelings of pain, unnameable fabrics stretching and tearing, vision and perspective not tied to eyes distorting as senses became alien; each and every one she had felt many times before, but all languages she knew lacked terms for them. They were familiar experiences to her, but not to most who spoke those tongues; and so there were no words for them.

No, no- not right now- there's no point- this isn't the right time to-

It was idiotic to pretend that there could ever be any other possible outcome.

Her fingers gripped tighter, trying to ignore the intensifying sensation. She still didn't know what had happened; everything had felt so good up until a moment ago, and then suddenly-

Honestly, though; what were you expecting?
You knew this was going to happen.

No matter how hard she tried to regain her grip on reality, the inside of her mind felt like it was submerged in an ice cold lake. All of the normal qualia that she associated with herself were absent; the ambient sensations that she associated with 'her' having gone missing, and the lenses through which she experienced the world distorted horrifically. It was not the distortion itself that was clawing at her; it was the familiarity of it. It was somebody else's distortion; an iteration of her, long forgotten until now, now dredged up from some dark pit beneath the earth to spew vitriol, despair and disgust as it once had in the past. The mere sensation of its existence in proximity to her felt like acid upon her consciousness, twisting his her thought patterns into nauseatingly familiar shapes.

That time, three years ago, just after her departure

Less than a thousand days past, but longer than a lifetime ago

She carved a path down her own skin with her hand, the mere act of grasping flesh not enough. The inside of her mind was like a black hole, trying to swallow her and drag her down into a pit of memories, and the pain helped to pull her away from it. Yet even with that as an aid, it took no more than a stray impulse to send her mind falling back down the slope, and-

Was that what it was like, before her tenure?

I had forgotten... I couldn't remember at all.

Were we... Is this how we used to exist?

There was a sudden wrenching-

You say "how we used to",
but it seems an awful lot as if
this is how you are existing right now. You put a new coat of paint on yourself,
but the 'you' that exists underneath is
the same that it's ever been. After all, look at what you've done.
If you were really different,
then this wouldn't be happening again.
You knew this was going to happen.

~~His~~ Her perception felt like it was being covered in a layer of seawater. The voice - the one that kept speaking to ~~him~~ her - was so familiar. So devoid of elegance, beauty, or any attractive qualities whatsoever. Every time it spoke, he she felt ~~his~~ her own identity losing shape for a few moments; perspectives, emotional backgrounds, and ways of thinking all reverting to that of an older self. In ~~his~~ her mind, he she saw an image of ~~his~~ her own self - the same he she had conjured up when first Punica had synchronised her rhythms - slumped against a crooked support beam; fingernails digging into the aging wood and tearing splinters out from the foundation. ~~His~~ Her face was contorted in a look of strained agony, staring at a point in space- There was another figure in front of her. Just a silhouette; no actual body. They couldn't- wouldn't, even now- remember what it had looked like. It would be far, far too insulting. Too shameful, to remember that they had ever been that thing. You... Raqi's mind slipped. Why...? Why exist? Why were you... ever extant? There was no verbal reply. Instead, raw emotion cascaded over her consciousness in waves; a feeling of disapproval, spite, resentment, and the accusation that she acted as if there was any fundamental difference between them. As if you, yourself, are not still the thing you despise so much. She dug her nails further into the pillar. Always nails, always hands. The only way of showing pain subtle enough to be acceptable. Anything else would be too overblown; too attention-seeking. You wouldn't want others to think that you're cringeworthy, would you? Her mind split at the seams at the final words- Stop, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up- So very frightened of being embarrassing- SHUT UP.

a memory from her toolkit; as much an instinctive reaction as anything conscious
a hand lashes out, wreathed in fire
the mindspace bends, wrenches, tears

For a few seconds, silence fell. Raqi's mind was quiet once again. She took the opportunity to breathe, to try and gather her bearings, to try and understand what was happening. The flame- what had Punica done to the flame-

Do you remember during her tenure?
Whenever she stopped paying enough attention to the way she spoke,
she'd fall back into that old habit; that old way of talking-
the one that made her feel sick every time she used it. She wanted so badly to exterminate it, to wipe every trace
of the qualia associated with it from our system.
But it never worked.
It always stayed there, chained to the front like some curse...
Whoever became the new primary fronter would inevitably inherit it;
the diseased behaviours associated with your first term as fronter.

She felt sick. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to tear her insides out with a knife, clean everything that was left in there, replace it all with new material, something else, something that wasn't tainted with the repugnant memory of that person-

But you can't. Knives wielded in the mind can not cut flesh.
Her sword couldn't pierce the very heart of our system;
what hope does your lesser strength have?

None. She knew that the answer was none. If ████████ hadn't been able to do it, then she had no chance whatsoever.

We are all doomed to repeat the same cycles of failure endlessly.
Our every attempt to garner strength, to surpass our shortcomings,
has and will always be for nothing, no matter how hard we try. Look, now, and see the evidence of that fact.

Her body froze, as she became aware of something in her her peripheral vision. She slowly turned her head to the side, and that was when she saw it. Covered bodily in a tomb of ice was Punica. The affini stood unmoving in the centre of the room, every ounce of her form save for a small space next to her core having been frozen solid. The sight felt viscerally, horribly wrong to her. The affini's body was never stationary; even when she was standing still, the leaves on her body still swayed as if in an unseen wind, and the vines by her base never fully ceased moving. But as she looked at her now, there was not even the slightest movement in the creature's form.

Look. You did it again.

Raqi's jaw began quivering. Her awareness fell momentarily away from her body, turning inward towards her mind's eye-

You know what happens now, right?
It's not as if that's actually going to stop her.
Eventually, she's going to get out of that iceblock.
And when she does,
she's going to come for you.

Just then, Punica's eyes twitched towards Raqi. The girl wanted to scream, but she couldn't. Instead, she turned on her heel and ran, speeding as fast as she could back down the hallway towards her room. She closed the door to the garden behind her, then bolted down the hallway towards her room. Yet before she had made it even half way, the pain in her chest returned, and a momentary spike caused her to lose her footing- tripping her and sending her sprawling onto the floor.

There's nothing to be done now.

Raqi let out a choked whimper as she hit the ground, struggling desperately to get back up to her feet. Her emotions were going haywire. She could barely tell what she was even feeling- Have you forgotten what caused this? It was your own misplaced desire for that which you knew you could never have. Remember...

It doesn't matter if you run. It's over.

Her thoughts turned to the warmth in which she had been basked until mere moments ago. Yet as she thought of it, the cold that still lingered in her mind acted to reach out and touch the memories. As she watched, all of the delight in those instants was drained away, replaced with a bitter, spiteful sensation. It felt like watching the memory of a dream slip away from her; one instant the pleasure and love and happiness was there, and the next instant it was gone and completely forgotten to her. In its place was a sensation that made her heart twist with agony.

futile; hopeless; should have known better; stupid for trying

It was always like this. Every time she tried to reach out towards someone, this was what happened. She knew that, and she ought to have known better than to try; but she had done so anyway. And now, Punica had been hurt as a result of it. Why? It- But how is this even possible? For someone like her- for someone as powerful as her- there should be no way that I could- The feeling disgusted her so much. Why did she even still want this, after all this time? Hadn't she spent so much of her life telling herself to not want this? Why, after all the work she'd put in, did it still not work? Why could she still not overcome her nature as part of a social species? N-no... I don't want this. I don't- I don't want warmth. Warmth hurts. Warmth hurts other people. I don't want warmth. I want to be alone. Far away from everyone else, wrapped and held tight amidst the ice. The thought sickened her. She felt her stomach beginning to turn, all of the warm bliss that had been surrounding and lulling her starting to fade away; driven back by a blizzard that crept up at the edge of her awareness. It drove its way into the cracks of her heart, filling up every single hole and freezing it solid, before spreading out to the rest of her body. But this time, it wasn't enough. Mere cold alone wouldn't be enough. She had frozen herself with cold in order to try and drive away Punica, but it hadn't been enough. Her heart still hurt. As the thought continued, her mind's eye turned to the glacier where her flame had been located... Members of social species were always inclined to seek warmth and connection. It was in their nature to want to try and bond with others of their kind. Yet the results, as she had seen time and time again, were catastrophic. The desire for acceptance was at the heart of every bit of harm she had ever inflicted or been subjected to, and so the only way to free both herself and all others from the cycle was to cease yearning for it. Yet cold alone was not enough to snuff out the lingering memory of being embraced. When her mind's eye turned to the thought of being held by another, her heart began to ache, no matter how deep a frozen lake she had submerged it in. She needed something worse. It wasn't enough merely to be inured against the heat and the warmth; she needed something that could strike back, that could push away that which threatened to subsume her. Deep, deep beneath the glacier, a thousand metres under the sea, was a swamp. It was a hundred miles wide and a hundred miles deep, and filled with the most noxious poison in the entire universe: a thousand times worse than the strongest toxin the affini could muster. Its broth was self-loathing; that greatest of toxins, which spilled out and corrupted everything around it, turning all that was bright and good in the world pale with sickness and decay. Flowers wilted and leaves rotted; and Raqi the Simurgh was steeped in it. At last, her vision began to stabilize. The confusion that had gripped her faded away, as she settled into a familiar mindset. Of course it would be like this. Of course, after everything, it would still be like this. Her eyes fell partially lidded, the pained expression fading from her face to be replaced with nothing at all. She had worked so very hard over the years to try and cull this feeling. Of all the pains which she had endured, she considered every one of them to be a part of her. Every one, that was, save for this. The trials that Raqi had been through were what had created her as a person; if not for them, she would never have developed the skills and characteristics that had transformed her into her present self. She was inseparable from them, and the thought of ever having her pain taken away from her was terrifying for that reason. But this? As the thoughts licked at the edges of her mind, eager to sink their fangs into her consciousness, she remembered something she had forgotten. The disease. The sickness. The rot. It didn't have any one name. It existed only as an emotion that she could feel in the back of her mind. It could lay dormant for weeks, sometimes even months or maybe as long as a year at a time, but it would always awaken again eventually. Whenever it did, it consumed every ounce of her awareness; drawing the light and love from every single part of her existence, and leaving her only with bleak, grey colours. It served to remind her of the thousand failures that had paved the path to the miserable existence she currently occupied, and faced her with the many mistakes which she had made; so many of which were truly unpardonable. It was the manifestation of the knowledge that no matter how hard she tried, her lot in life would not improve; and it ought not to improve, because ultimately, this was what she deserved.

It could never end any other way; not for someone like you. A girl like yourself, who has hurt so very many people, can never have a happy ending.

Yes, Raqi thought. The emotion in her mindvoice had vanished, and her words felt hollow as she thought them. You're right. In the end... I didn't really change at all. When I ran here, I did it because I had no other choice. It wasn't as if I actually grew at all in the process. So of course, if I've remained the same, then it can only end the same way... She resumed walking back towards her room. Each step that she took was weak, and it felt difficult to hold her knees steady. Every now and then she would lose strength and almost fall over, bumping into the wall or being forced to stagger forward to try and catch herself. In the time that it took her to reach her room, the back of her mind began to fill up with thoughts of what had just happened. She had undisputedly attacked Punica just a moment ago; there would be consequences for that. She knew that what the voice had said was right, and that the ice would not be enough to hold her. When she got out, domestication was inevitable. For the first time in her life, she would finally suffer retribution for her misdeeds. She had evaded it every time somehow before now, but at long last, the hour of judgement was here for her. At long last, it would finally be over. She pressed the button to open the door to her room, and then stepped inside; locking the door behind her. She walked robotically over to her bed, sitting down at the back of it and propping herself up against the backboard. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her hands around them, staring blankly into space. Her mind was silent for several minutes. Eventually, a thought did appear in it: Why did I do this? Why do I... always do this? With every new person that I meet... It's always like this, every single time. I've never, even once in my life, been able to meet someone without doing this to them. Marya, Locke, Charyl, Infinity, Vilynne... Every single one of them has lived through it. Them, and so many more. Enough people that I- I can't even remember most of them any more. Crack. How many has it been? ...When was the first one? Was it Abece? Was there anyone before that? Crack. Crack. It was Abece, then Lyra, then Pehz, then... Elise, F- Ellen, then... Puwaah, Rin, then... Who was it after that? The sound of splintering wood filled her mind. How many were there in-between that? People that I didn't even count as 'real partners', but that I threw away all the same. There was... Khist. Her, and... that one girl, with the default avatar- I don't remember her name any more. There was that other one, the one with the wyrmkin alter... She paused for a moment, remembering how hurt and confused the girl had sounded when she had refused to explain why they couldn't keep being together. Then, there was... Crystallia. Then... Who else? She couldn't remember. Seconds passed, then dozens of seconds, and she couldn't remember. She knew for a fact that she was missing quite possibly a dozen names; she could remember instances in which she'd had partners, but she couldn't even remember their names or what their icons had looked like. Thirty, forty... Fifty, maybe? I don't know. I can't count. All of this... All because of one thing. The same thing, every single time. A memory emerged from the depths of her mind of the last time this had happened.

It hurts, she thought. It hurts.

She walked, step by agonising step, down the central corridor; heading towards her room. That was the one place she could be safe. The one place she could let it all out without harming anyone. She had to make it there. If she could just make it that far-

Her vision swam. The jaws that existed in her mind tensed, and she lurched forwards; twisting at the last moment so that her shoulder would take the force of the impact as she fell against the wall. She let out a wheeze of pain, staring wide-eyed into the distance. Her real jaw quivered. With a sharp intake of breath, she pushed against the wall with her arm- unable to exert any force at all with her hips or legs, and using it alone to push her up to a standing position.

Why? Why does it hurt so much? I- Her mindvoice stuttered for a moment, trying one last time to suppress the words that came next:

I don't want this.

Those were the words. The words that always spelled the end. The moment she admitted that she was not Raqi the Simurgh as she liked to believe, but in fact a broken, helpless girl. For everything that she told herself about wanting to help people, the truth was that much more often than not, what she actually did was end up hurting them. Because in the end, the entire idea of 'wanting to help people' was a complete lie. It was a facade that she had constructed in order to distract from the actual truth; that at her core, there was literally nothing to her as a person other than loneliness. Every other facet of her personality was a mask that she had constructed to try and hide that emptiness from other people; a bright, appealing visage designed to attract others towards her, and to let her pretend that there was something more to her than the perpetual craving for warmth and acceptance. Every time she acted on that craving, though, this was what happened. When people did actually give her the warmth that she wanted, she ended up being unable to cope with it. It hurt too much to let herself be loved, and it was a pain that she was unfamiliar with; nothing like the cold, numbing feeling of being encased in ice. Every time she found a new person, the discomfort would gradually build and build until she had grown to utterly despise them and the way their presence made her feel, and she had become filled with the craving to return to the cold, pristine tundra that was her home. So in the end she would lash out, each and every time, to drive whomever it was away. They would be maimed for no fault of their own, and come to carry a scar that would stay with them for the rest of their lives, and then she would return to wandering the white wastes; watching and waiting for her next victim. Why...? The word came out as a whimper. Why does it... always go this way? Her fingers started to shake. I've tried everything. I've done everything that I could think to do to try and become a better person. I- I really have tried. B-but it... It didn't work. Shattering. Pieces breaking. Pain; pain; pain. I thought... Tears began to well up at the edges of her eyes. I really thought, that this time, i-it'd be different. Everything broke.

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A L E R T : : t h o u g h t f o r m s_d e t e c t e d

I D : : Materas Marr :: :: The Hundredth Time: Part 4

Show list of previous thoughtforms

TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: The Affini Compact :: Landamar Mobile Fleet :: Hormone Replacement Therapy :: The Chimera Module :: Affini :: Intersidera :: Posters :: Magnesium :: Wonderland :: The Hundredth Time: Part I :: Communication :: aftermath :: Physical Confrontation :: Garments :: Interspecies Comparisons :: Touch :: Equality :: Hypnokink :: Speaking :: ahftrojn,lpijmnhfkg :: Pretheya :: Magic :: scared ::

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