marcato | (no subject)

[Aunamee doesn't like to curse. Harsh, coarse language feels like poison on his tongue, and it only escapes his lips when he's too worn down to fight it.

But he agrees with Amanda completely.]

I've killed six men since my release.

It really does wonders.

[Amanda, on the other hand, swears entirely too much. Almost an unrealistic amount, really. She'd dropped more "fucks" and "motherfuckers" in the last five minutes before her own (homeworld) death than most do in a month.]

I've tried murder. It's not enough.

Edited 2019-12-01 21:51 (UTC)

Mechanized murder?

Or did you use your hands?

Hands. I don't have the fucking mental energy for traps right now.

I've found a certain amount of solace in my clockwork. How the gears fit together. How metal guides metal towards its inevitable destination.

Perhaps one day, you can show me how to create art like yours.

Life doesn't fit together like that. We're not gears. We're flawed and fucked up and we ruin everything we touch.

["We" is general, not "me and you."]

I try to work on my art now and it only feels like it's rubbing that the fuck in my face.

Edited 2019-12-01 22:34 (UTC)

[Inside the whale, Aunamee had been overwhelmed by his mistakes, his imperfections, and every one of his movements felt wrong. Eventually, he stopped moving entirely, crouched and fetal on the spongy ground, terrified of so much as blinking incorrectly.

He knows how Amanda feels. Or, at least, he thinks he does.]

We're better than the sloppy, ineffectual masses, Amanda. We're Her treasured priests.

[We're Her treasured priests. How many times over the years has Amanda reassured Aunamee with those exact words? The worst part is, Amanda believes it even now. She is one of the Fog God's most treasured. It just pales in comparison to what she'd confessed to Tsukikage, of all people: that she clings so hard to the Fog God because she wants, needs, re-parenting. That without her devotion, without remaking herself into what her substitute parents want her to be, she's nothing inside.]

Yeah. I know. But that's not everything.

[In the end, as deeply as Amanda and Aunamee seem to understand each other, there's so much to the other that neither of them would truly be able to wrap their heads around. They represent two very, VERY different paths to becoming psychotic serial killers: one almost entirely emotionless, and the other overly emotional to a genuinely unhealthy degree. Even the nature of their respective devotions, so similar on the surface, couldn't be more different.]

Edited 2019-12-02 21:30 (UTC)

[That's not everything. The words sound like static inside Aunamee's head. He stares at the screen for a long, long moment before touching his fingers to the keyboard.]

What happened to you inside that whale, Amanda?

[And then, after a nearly imperceptible pause:]

What did it do to you?

[It destroyed me, she wants to say, but doesn't.]

Does it even fucking matter?

Her love might not be everything, but it is most things. It's the most important thing.

Do you agree with me?

Of course I do. That doesn't mean it can fix me. I don't think anything can.

You're a brilliant engineer. An exemplary killer. You see the filth in this world that other people choose to ignore, and you do something about it.

Do you understand how incredible that is? How much better you are than the feeble-minded dregs of this peninsula? What about you needs to be fixed?

[She trusts Aunamee more than she trusts the vast majority of people, but that doesn't mean she wants him to know exactly what has her so fucked up. Not because she thinks he'd use it against her (she doesn't), but because he might look down on her. And she's spent so, so long cultivating an impression of authority around him. She's the one who reassures him in moments of vulnerability, not the other way around.]

When I was a little girl, my father would lock me under the stairs. I wad terrified of the dark, and he would leave me in there, alone. For hours.

Edited 2019-12-03 23:29 (UTC)

[In his home world, Aunamee had only one friend. His name was Daniel, ironically enough, although he wasn't very similar to the Daniel he knows in this place -- he was very quiet, very serious, and whenever he smiled, it was a fleeting, pathetic little thing that was gone again in an instant. Daniel's parents had kept him in a dark closet whenever he misbehaved, and while Aunamee knew he didn't deserve it, the years of abuse molded him into someone he had an easier time understanding.

For Aunamee, normal people are confusing. Broken people make sense.]

What became of him?

[Her biological father, a lifelong alcoholic, had died of cirrhosis while Amanda served time in prison for a crime she didn't commit.]

Doesn't matter. Point is, I replaced him. Twice.

[Once with John, whom Aunamee met in the form of a very convincing imitation, and once with the Fog God, the 'mother' whom Aunamee also fervently serves. So Amanda doesn't need to mention either replacement by name.]

Edited 2019-12-04 22:38 (UTC)

[He thinks about his old god, how it discarded him when he was no longer useful. If his dream was to be believed, it had lured him to his demise, twisting his thoughts until they told him the wrong things.

He thinks about the Fog God's reassuring words in his ear.]

No. You corrected the mistake.

Edited 2019-12-04 23:12 (UTC)

[He's not fucking getting it, or so it seems to her; he doesn't understand that she's essentially a needy, pathetic child without a real self to speak of. Someone who'll redefine herself as needed to conform to what her new parent wants of her, because she's a hollow shell who'll collapse under the weight of her own instability without their explicit approval.

Yet despite the reasons for her clinging, the fact remains that all her adoration for her parental figures is entirely real. That her capacity for genuine love in and of itself signifies her full personhood is an epiphany she may never have.]

I'm nothing. Inside. There's nothing there but emptiness, so I fill it with them.

I'm empty too, Amanda.

[It's a different kind of emptiness, but emptiness nonetheless. One almost entirely emotionless, and the other overly emotional to a genuinely unhealthy degree. ]

Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of you.

[She'd be more touched if she weren't such a fucking wreck...but hearing that he's fond of her does make her feel at least marginally less like shit.]

So where does that leave us?

Where we've always been.

We serve the Fog. We punish the people who deserve it. We endure.

I should have let myself die in that fucking whale, Aunamee.

(no subject)

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cw: child abuse

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