Work Text:
“Enter.”
The door slid open. Three people walked inside: one Star officer armed with a stun baton at the front and back, and one young, brown-haired Gestalt girl, freshly deloused and dressed in a prisoner’s jumpsuit with her hands cuffed behind her back and her head hung low. The two Replika escorting the Gestalt sat her down in a chair facing a wide, lavish, cherrywood desk.
And at that desk sat the facility’s administrator: an ADLR unit.
“Name and offence?” he asked, sounding bored.
One of the Stars stepped forward and held up a clipboard. “Itou, Erika. Hereby designated Worker S-23-A-2991. Sentenced to five years forced labour for indecency against the state.”
The Star handed the clipboard to the Adler, who started looking over it himself. “Welcome to Sierpinski, worker,” he officially greeted; he did not look up from his desk.
Erika swallowed dryly as she sat in her chair. Eventually, after a minute, the Adler set the clipboard aside and leaned across the desk on his elbows as he looked at her for several seconds.
“Your offence is strictly speaking… a moral one. However, we cannot have any citizen, especially one in active military service reflect badly upon our nation. Let us hope your time here will teach you… the proper way to conduct yourself.”
And then, the two Stars abruptly stood her up and walked her out of the office.
Her room wasn’t a room, and calling it a prison cell would afford it a greater privilege than it reflected.
A cage was the best term.
It was already late when her transport ship arrived, so she was led immediately to bed after being shown her assigned workers’ quarters. The bunk wasn’t even a bed, it was hard metal with the thinnest, smallest pillow at the end, so feeble and useless that having it at all felt like a greater injustice than having nothing at all.
Locked bars covered the entrance to the tiny bunk after she lay down in it. She did her best to lie on her back, folding the pillow in half to provide the barest of support for her head. All around her she heard the sounds of workers in distress after an excruciating day. People moaned, they cried, several of them coughed endlessly, and many just loudly shivered. She tried to get comfortable, but nothing would do. She took a long breath and sighed.
“Are we locked in here the whole night?” she asked, staying quiet enough to not be heard by any guards outside, but loud enough to be heard by anyone else in the room.
A few seconds later, someone answered. “Yeah, we are.” Her voice came from just a couple of bunks away.
“What if we have to use the bathroom?”
“...Hold it in as best you can.”
“Ah, I see…”
Someone new, a male voice, interrupted. “Would you two shut it up? If they have to come in, they punish everyone in the room!”
Erika swallowed again and kept quiet.
But then she remembered her, and she started crying. She covered her hands to make as little noise as possible, but her pained, heartbroken screams still reverberated across the whole room.
After half a minute, the woman from earlier called out to her. “Hey, hey, it’ll be okay.”
It took a few seconds for Erika to stop crying long enough to respond. “No, no it’s not okay, I shouldn’t be here!”
“None of us should, sweetheart.”
“I want to go home!”
“I know… I know…”
“I’m going to die here…”
“...Hey, girl, what’s your name?”
She sniffled loudly as she continued to try and bring herself under control. “Erika.”
“Well, my name’s Alina. Come see me in the morning, and I’ll help put your mind at ease… but you have to make it through the night nice and quiet, okay?”
Erika choked on her breath as she tried to answer. “Okay… okay…”
“Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”
Erika took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“...Good girl… now… just try to sleep as best you can.”
In the morning, they were woken up, their cages were searched, they were taken to the showers, and finally led to the mess hall for breakfast.
Three light-brown, rectangular, bread-like loaves, a can of what looked like cheap, processed tuna, but may as well have been dog food, and a glass of black coffee made from grounds so old and reused that the water was partially transparent and the resulting liquid sour like licking a battery.
Erika walked around with her small tray quietly calling out Alina’s name until she answered back. She sat at a table alone by the corner, and when Erika approached her, she stood up to meet her.
For a few seconds, the two women looked at each other. Erika, filled with despair, fear, and anxiety, and Alina, tired, worn down, but still carrying some fire.
Alina hugged her, and Erika cried over her shoulder for a minute.
“How long have you been here?” Erika asked as they both sat to eat.
“At least a decade,” Alina asked. She paused to take a swig of her thin, sour coffee. “Truth be told, I lost exact count long ago.”
“I see…” Erika took a look at one of her pieces of bread and bit a chunk off; it was stale and also tasted somewhat sour.
“I’ll teach you all the tricks and advice I know,” Alina said. She ate parts of her breakfast in between her words. “For one, you’ve got to learn which protektors are friendly, which are neutral, and which are out to get us.”
Erika nodded.
“Have they told you where you’re going to work, yet?”
“No…”
“I’ll… talk to the overseer. Pull a favour, see if I can get you assigned to laundry, like me. If you don’t mind occasionally inhaling industrial cleaner fumes, it’s the least back-breaking work there is here.”
Erika took a breath and sniffled a little. “Thank you…”
Alina also took a deep breath before she leaned across the table on her elbows. “So, what was her name?”
Erika blinked a few times before she slowly met Alina’s gaze. “I… I don’t know who you’re talking about…”
“I can see it in your eyes, sweetheart. It’s the same reason I’m here.”
“...Ariane. Her name was Ariane.”
Alina nodded. “Ariane… that’s such a pretty name.”
Erika sniffled. “She’s the most wonderful girl ever.”
Alina reached over and gave her shoulder a rub. “I don’t doubt it at all.”
“She… doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Oh… oh sweetheart…”
“She’ll never… know how I feel…”
Alina reached for the younger girl’s hand and squeezed it. “Hey, you will. Somehow, sometime, somewhere, you’ll be able to tell her.”
Erika squeezed her hand back as she looked at her. “Does she know? Yours?”
Alina nodded but sighed. “Unfortunately, there’s no chance for me to see her again,” she said.
They both went quiet for a while. Eventually, Erika gave Alina’s hand a shake.
“Hey,” she called out.
Alina looked at her.
“Somehow, sometime, somewhere, you’ll see her again.”
And Alina smiled.
…..
They were suddenly called to the mines.
They were going to assist an excavation team led by a newly arrived Replika.
Alina caught a glimpse of her briefly as she operated her drill.
LSTR-S2301.
The Replika looked her way, and for but a moment, Alina thought she saw a ghost.
“...Lilith…?”
The LSTR unit turned and walked away.
.....
“...You made it.”
Elster wasn’t surprised to see Isa in her family’s old bookstore. She looked even worse for wear than before, with the majority of her face, including one eye, bandaged up, but, she smiled when she saw her, and stepped to the side, revealing an almost identical-looking brunette Gestalt sitting on a chair behind her.
“You found her,” Elster said. She slowly rested her rifle on one of the bookshelves and walked toward the two siblings. Isa still smiled, but now, she also cried happily.
“This is my twin sister, Erika.”
Erika stood up. She was just as beat up and bandaged as her sister, and she didn’t smile like her, but she still greeted Elster with a short bow.
“What are your plans?” she asked.
Elster was taken aback. “What do you mean?” she responded.
Erika clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Are you… going to save her?”
Eyes widened. She understood.
Her visions of the school, the train. Her friends she spoke of.
“I’ll try, but…” Elster paused. She looked away, unable to meet their eyes. “I may only be able to fix the damage I’ve already caused.”
She still couldn’t look. Eventually, one put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m glad she has you.” It was Erika.
Elster slowly turned her head back toward the siblings, but kept her gaze low, toward the ground.
“If it helps, in a way, this is also my fault,” Erika claimed.
Elster slowly looked up as she blinked. Now Erika was the one who couldn’t meet her gaze.
“We were both fated to be assigned to Sierpinski,” she started to explain. Isa stepped forward to be at her sister’s side, hugging her from the side. “But, someone discovered… a poem I’d written for her… he decided to approve her application to the Penrose program, and I arrived at Sierpinski in chains, rather than my uniform.”
Elster slowly exhaled and nodded. The hand on her shoulder tightened.
“He taunted me about it as the gendarmes arrested me. Said it was what people like me deserved. To know the woman I loved was doomed to die slowly in space… but… at least she had you.”
Elster gave a quick nod to Isa, who let go of her sister and stepped back. She then hugged Erika, letting the girl cry quietly into her chest.
“I’ll save her, I promise.”
“...Thank you.”
She faded from her grasp.
No pain, or regret, or torment.
She’d given her peace.
Elster looked at Isa, who handed her a tarot card: Death.
“It can also mean new beginnings,” she told her. “Death doesn’t have to be an end.”
Elster nodded. She was about to turn and leave, but Isa stopped her one last time.
“Oh, and, were you looking for this?”
She looked and saw an iron key in her hand with a hexagon enclosed in a ring at the end.
Elster nodded and took it from her. “Thank you,” she said.
Isa left as well.
She found her peace.
Elster stopped and took one last look around the bookstore. She walked behind the main counter and saw a small shrine containing pictures of the two sisters, along with a few sticks of incense.
She lit the ends and took a moment to take in all the feelings.
Maybe she could find peace too.
…..
They’re at a busy, bustling cafe by the water on a bright, sunny, Vinetan summer day.
Ariane told a great joke; she and Isa laughed.
She held Ariane’s hand just under the table. She rubbed her thumb over her knuckles.
Elster returned with a tray of drinks. “Sorry, there was a bit of a line up,” she apologized.
Everyone got their drinks as she took up the final seat at the table.
Ariane reached for her hand as well. Elster took it, feeling the cool, metal ring on her hand.
Isa smiled. “I’m glad we could all get together like this,” she said.
Ariane cried a single tear of joy. “It’s all I could have ever wanted.”
Erika looked across the table at Elster and smiled at her.
Elster briefly looked up and saw a quartet of birds outlined by the sun as they flew by.
She closed her eyes and felt upon a familiar scene, not a memory.
Two reunited lovers danced upon the beach as the final crests of waves splashed against their ankles.
The life they always wanted. The life they deserved. The life they were denied.
She smiled.
Perhaps, this was peace.