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Honestly, Rodya isn't cut out for this job.
No one at the company considers her competent, which is a godsend. Wings forbid anyone start giving her harder work to do than separating heads from bodies every so often, and occasionally having hers reattached. She's made a reputation for being well-adjusted, though -- hell, they put her in a dungeon with all the worst parts of herself and manifested her trauma as an insurmountable monster complete with ex-partner cameo, and she turned out fine.
It just... wasn't that intimidating. Rodion Raskolnikov killed a woman years ago and ran away to become a different person. It's that simple. It's not like Sonya was ever scary -- honestly, she figured he'd be dead by now. His bleeding heart must've been a little more ruthless than she remembered, or something. No, whatever way you tell the story of the two of them, it sounds like it would make a good story: he was an idiot altruist and she was a selfish douchebag; she was a desperate idealist and he was a moralizing douchebag; they were doomed lovers fated to stand at each other's throats- ew, never mind. Let's stop there. Whatever it was they were, she was the one with the axe and he was on the sidelines. It wasn't a good story, actually. It was just business and tragedy. The Golden Bough got it wrong. Sonya wasn't important. And Rodya was never very good at lying to herself, so it's true without a doubt.
But how could the Golden Bough have gotten it wrong? She's absentmindedly paying attention to the tour of K Corp as she rolls it over in her mind, and she watches Yi Sang close off his soft underbelly in layers of perfected, folded steel. It's easy to gain a reputation as well-adjusted when your job is determined to break everyone who works it down to their base components like this. She never had to build a shell to get through that dungeon.
It's a core difference between Rodya and her companions, every one of them -- Yi Sang is defensive because he's uncomfortable, and it's obvious. He's outside of his own skin most of the time, brain working too fast or too slow for his body -- probably both. He's been gliding along the surface of deep, dark water as though nothing could fix him but nothing could hurt him either. But in all that lazy drifting, he forgot that this was here at all. Now he's building walls too late. Maybe that's the difference -- that Rodya had hers up already? No, that doesn't sound like it. She was never guarding against her past. She never feared it.
Between his fits of blind rage and visceral terror, it was easy to get the sense in Calw that Sinclair was less afraid of Kromer than he was the Sinners themselves. The fact that there were 12 others watching his history unfurl. Sinclair transmuted the fear of voyeurism into anger at it, by the end. That's one way to do it -- believe it's all unfair. You're in the right, and someone's against you, so nothing that's said about you matters. A gambler doesn't think about fairness any more than they think about luck, so she can only understand by proxy. And Sonya always cared more about right and wrong than she ever did. Rodya could only think about her next meal.
Yi Sang is getting the jump on the anger, anyway. Rodya isn't sure it's any less vulnerable to have your back towards twenty-four prying eyes than it is to expose your back to the woman atop the pile of bodies -- or whatever your nightmare may be. If you care, there are enemies on either side of you. If you don't give a shit, the enemies don't exist. One is preferable, she thinks.
Dongrang is explaining something about chicken while Samjo nags at him too-fondly. Rodya hasn't been paying attention since they got through the doors of this big shiny building, because she's still thinking about fried chicken and she hates being in a place this clean. Feels like she's dripping grease down the halls. Their fault for letting her in, she reminds herself. She's swindled her way into fancier places than this, she just prefers the part where they trash the place.
Dante has never seemed comfortable in anything -- their own skin, this job, their amnesia, whatever it may be. They always look like they're missing something, and they probably are. Gregor is much the same, poor thing -- all soft smiles to pretend he has no sharp edges. He can't reconcile any of it, so he still looks like that ratty teenager hunting for approval that the Bough showed them, in a way. Rodya steps closer to the both of them, since she has it on her mind -- Dante's been gripping their coat too tightly, as though it can protect them from the lecherous eyes of medical personnel on their head. Gregor is receiving looks that are too curious when they aren't hooded with disgust.
She puts a lazy elbow over Gregor's shoulder, and brushes invisible dust off Dante's coat -- with an additional body as a shield (yikes, a little too accurate to her day job), Dante can at least cut out the off-beat stutters of their minute hand, which are only making the rest of the team more annoyed or more discomforted by this atmosphere. Gregor more obviously sighs and pats Rodya on the shoulder gratefully. They have an understanding about these things -- she grins and blows him a kiss, and he mostly just grimaces. Well, they'll work on it.
But more to the point, everyone on the bus, even Vergilius, even Charon -- they're all uncomfortable. Every Sinner has a weakness, and they're all going to have those weaknesses systematically exposed, one by one. But Rodya... Rodya has never been uncomfortable in her life. It seems like that must be what the Golden Bough missed -- that in the same moment as Rodion Raskolnikov's axe drew blood that night, Rodya wasn't the same person anymore. When she showed up at the door, she was one person, and when she walked out she was another. That moment might have been everything for the woman at the door, but the Golden Bough was speaking to Rodya. She takes heads off torsos every day at this point, if only to feed Mephi. She doesn't go hungry, either. She hasn't spared a thought for what the Yurodivy was trying to do since her first kill.
Confidence makes a good gambler, and a good gambler she is. Confidence makes a good friend, and she's that too. Confidence keeps you alive long enough to think about this kind of thing. So no, she doesn't know discomfort like they do.
When Dongrang pulls Dante away, they come back ticking anger that has the increasingly familiar resignation of someone who knows they're not being listened to anyway. It's all curdled up into shame around their shoulders, and that off-beat tick of their internal mechanisms has started up again. It's setting everyone's teeth on edge. She can tell what they feel at a glance, and as a fellow worthless person in a place she's been told over and over she doesn't belong, she coos and pats them on the back until they stand a little straighter. She has an axe and cannot die, and they are neither -- it's easier for her than it is for them to believe that it doesn't matter what the researchers are saying or who's staring.
But her uniform still itches around the shoulders, and she still came here for a reason. She still joined this company because she wanted something. Some would say only the man in the seat of power, at the top of it all, is truly free of pain or fear -- she would say the Head must be scared for their lives every minute. After all, the world would be a much freer place if whoever's running it didn't have enough paranoia to demand control. Even so, when you simply take what you get like the poor person she is, that still doesn't mean wanting for nothing.
Samjo leads them to an elevator, and she doesn't even have to cram in to fit, which is a first with this crew. Means she doesn't have any good excuse to use Greg's head as an armrest, though -- damn Wings and their budgets for nice internal infrastructure.
Limbus Company promised her everything she's ever dreamed of. The unobtainable. The sort of dead-in-the-water hope that will kill you to entertain.
If anything, Rodya's scared she might get it.
--
On the other hand, maybe Rodya has never been comfortable in her life, and that's why the Golden Bough could never faze her.
She grew up poor and she stayed poor and she is poor. Luxury, comfort, is for the rich. The illusion of comfort is for the stupid and naive. Adaptation is for the strong, which she isn't either. She's tracking her poverty onto the clean white floors of K Corp, after all.
Hong Lu always seems comfortable. (Rodya has no illusions that he really is.) Sinclair was dragged out of his ordinary life. (A life built on blood, whether he knew it or not.) Ryōshū has learned to pretend the fire is her friend. (Better than pretending it isn't there.) Rodya is staring at a fridge in a K Corp laboratory, all casually stuffed with food, and thinking about how she can't die, so Limbus Company doesn't actually have to feed her.
The fridge is one of those minifridges, not even a fully stocked container, but it has so many things she used to have literal dreams about back before she became an axe murderer. Sugary peach rings, practical boxes of fruit leather in exotic flavors, not one, not two, but three flavors of ice cream. Nut clusters, fancy chilled coffee in bottles, individually packaged pastries. Chocolate, in all sorts of variations. And beyond that, the kind of practical shit you could keep in your pockets to live off of for a week in the Backstreets. There's a strawberry-flavored bar of compressed vitamins. Everything is untouched, like it was bought yesterday, or like nobody in this lab can be bothered with it. Nothing is out of date -- it could be either.
Gambling is about sitting on the edge between having it all and having nothing. Any time she's ever had wealth, she cheated for it. Any time she's ever had wealth, she's been on the edge of losing it. The pockets of Limbus Company are deep, but they still never seem to have enough for the newly minted quasi-immortals that are bound to stay with the company until their contracts are up. The Head could afford to feed every Rat in the City, but the Head doesn't do jack shit.
And it's terrifying, right? Anyone would be terrified. What do you do when you can't die anymore? Living in a world where no penny goes unpinched? You starve. Rodion starves. A full-body prosthetic is cheaper once than feeding yourself for the rest of your life. Death is cheaper than living for even one more day. But her life is free now. For now. So why pay for it? Why eat?
Like one of Pavlov's dogs, doing as expected of her when a stimuli is presented, Rodya grabs Dante by the arm and forgets that some people aren't obsessed with food. She's so earnest in her want that it forgets to be a joke. Within a moment, she becomes a glutton, a thief, and an open wound.
She drags them to the fridge and starts pointing things out -- wordlessly, at first, just picking up packages and assessing how many could fit in the two of their uniforms. It's a surreal amount of food. It's like she's outside of her body, for a moment. That woman who showed up at the door is thinking about how much it would take for a Wing to notice and punish her for stealing, and the woman that left is thinking about how mortifying it is to be hungry at all.
Okay, so Rodion didn't die when her victim did -- fine. So Rodya badgers Vergilius for food and it's only mostly a joke because she remembers how it felt to be seconds away from starvation, sure. But Rodya is a well-oiled machine, and it's always been mostly a joke. Gluttony, not desperation. Thoughtless vice, not Rat scavenging. The woman she was and the woman she is can get what they want by hook or crook, but it has to be together. She might be an animal driven by need alone, but she knows damn well how not to look like one.
This Rodion? She doesn't recognize. This Rodion has ripped her mask off because it's one more layer between her mouth and her next meal. Everyone is staring at her -- enemies in front and enemies behind. It's like the rest of the Sinners don't recognize her either.
"Dante," she chirps, not drawls -- panting like a dog, forgetting not to care -- "they have those little spicy crackers! Ah, I haven't had those since I won a date from a guy at W Corp-- he was a loser, obviously, but he bought me anything I wanted for a day, and those little things are divine. These people haven't even touched the bag! They wouldn't miss it, I bet-- ooh, and look there..."
But she yammers on, heedless of the sharp eyes that make her think of those days in the Backstreets -- make her fall further into the distant, writhing memory of a world where she needs to eat more than anything else. (This is a world where she must eat or die too, her other self whispers traitorously. This is bad, but if she was really starving, she'd be worse. They'd get rid of her like a dog gone so mangy you have to put it down before it bites off your hand.)
"Those fruit candies -- you see them, in the big square shapes? You can only get those as a U Corp export... Hahhh, Feathers are something else, huh? I only see the wrappers on unflavored energy bars in that trash can! What is the rest here for, anyway, just to make me hungry? Ugh..."
She feels that faraway world climbing up her throat. She bets these people don't need to eat either, regeneration ampoules and all. A Nest's obsession with sustainable food is a pet project. None of this infinite chicken is feeding Rodion Raskolnikov, anyway -- it's all to play pretend. Dongrang stares at everything like a pet project -- his stern but obliging secretary, Dante's head, Yi Sang. His shelves upon shelves of awards. Hunger is only an inconvenience to these people; they don't care if they never eat again.
(Yi Sang understands more than she ever thought he could. The walls he's put up now hide nothing from her -- something happened to him, and he didn't want to live anymore. Even still, he wanted to eat. That sprouting potato, spoiled milk, feeding on worthless scrap -- he still wants to eat. It's not good that he's so deep in his own head that he doesn't notice her babbling about the employee fridge.)
She bets the soldiers -- the "security," sorry -- know hunger, though. Those drones that follow them drive them like cattle, fearful and impressionable. Pain is not the same as death. Dying is free, and pain is endless, but if you die, you don't get to eat anymore. If you're immortal, you don't have to eat anymore. But even so, maybe you will again, someday. Keep living, maybe you'll make it. Survival is the only option, and the only outcome those full-bellied bastards will accept, and so...
<Rodya...> Dante ticks with anxiety that's obvious even to people in the room that can't hear their voice. Normally, she'd be more than attentive to their overflowing emotions, but right now, she's thinking intermittently about stomachs filled with green ooze or barbeque chips, so it doesn't register. Dongrang walks up behind her instead, and places a hand on her shoulder that doesn't make her flinch the way it should.
"Samjo, there should be plenty of extras in the storeroom. Will you get some for our guests?" His voice is smooth, calm, unbothered, like it always is. Rodion thought she had better survival skills than this, but she only whirls around when he promises food. Maybe being immortal isn't all bad -- she really wasn't in danger, so it's not a problem, right?
"Ahh~ Really, Wing researcher, sir? Then can we get some of those-- ooh, and those, these too... no take-backs, okay?" Ryōshū is looking at her like she wants to put her cigarette out on her hair just to see it burn. Samjo sighs, a long-suffering sigh, and steps out, tossing his lollipop stick in the trash as he goes. "Ah, and lollipops too," she calls after him. "We'll all look like your mini-secretaries... haha!" Rodya elbows Dongrang conspiratorially. Dante has since stopped hovering quite so near her, evidently more focused on avoiding Dongrang than keeping track of her antics. Doesn't matter. She scored.
Maybe watching K Corp's soldiers fight desperately to keep living is why she's thinking about starving again. Maybe that's why she's thinking about her contract and the chains that bind it. Maybe that's why when Samjo hands them plastic cups filled with more plastic packages, all wrapped up like a goodie bag you'd get at a child's birthday party, she grins like a child at a Nest birthday party and stuffs it into her pockets without saying thank you. She retreats from the fridge, leaving it hanging open, and leans drunkenly on Yi Sang's bony shoulder -- or pretends to, his bird bones couldn't bear her weight -- and says something inane about chocolate until it seems like he can almost hear her talk. Everyone is staring. Let them stare. Both of them are going to eat today. Samjo nudges the door back closed for her.
Yi Sang... it makes her feel a little better if she pretends she's doing it for him. He's the one that really isn't eating, out of the two of them. All that really guarantees is that she's not likely to steal his share if he offers it, though -- he and Gregor and Dante, and sometimes Outis if the moon is in the right phase, they bear the weight of her unvoiced anxieties, on a good day. But today is a bad day, so she can only pretend to be a good person.
Maybe she's high on fear, like those K Corp lapdogs. There's lazy happiness bubbling up in her all fizzy and golden and empty, and the scoffs and glares from the other Sinners only make her cling to that high more. Rodion will gladly be a weak person, so long as she doesn't go hungry. She feels invincible with food in her pockets. She feels like she's already in the mouse trap, waiting for the metal to snap down.
Everything you could ever want, huh?
It makes sense that the winter never scared her like this damn job does. Of course Sonya would think it's "honorable" to die a Rat, unjustly starving under the heel of the City, martyred; of course it's a "sin" to live on as a glutton. Of course she feels like she's one bad turn away from becoming the kind of woman she killed. But Rodya was always a selfish, greedy person anyway. She gave up on the better world of the Yurodivy so long ago that even a supernatural torture chamber couldn't remind her what it felt like. She's poor enough to know that you take the meal in front of you or lose it forever.
Rodya doesn't want to die. Still, she'd kill Rodion Raskolnikov if she could.
Because even with everything she could ever want, she's still hungry.
--
There are Feathers of the Wing, Workshop Fixers, and self-righteous revolutionaries sharing space with her right now.
It's suffocating. The air is thick with a different kind of tension than she remembers from Gregor and Sinclair's dungeons and what's emanating off of Yi Sang now -- the stress of one's selfhood bearing down, near its breaking point. That kind of atmosphere... it's honest, at least. It's painful, but painfully human. All thirteen of them are painfully human together, in those deep recesses of their suffering. Afterwards, they can laugh or cry about it all together. Because whatever happens... they're coworkers, at the end of the day. Or something like that. (There must be a more romantic way to put it, right?)
This tension is all stale, recycled malice. Ironically, it's all the people in this room who haven't died before -- none of the Sinners, that is -- that are staring at each other and performing like puppeteered corpses. Talking, not saying anything. Rehearsed fits of passion overtaking them, lethargic emotions being exhumed from their living graves. Explaining whatever grudge got them here just well enough to pass as human until the moment the Sinners kill them or get them killed.
It's not only the meaningless, endless, worthless meat that made her sick about the K Corp laboratories. It was this -- she felt it rising like bile: politics. Samjo on Dongrang's leash, Dongrang gliding through with deliberate, provocative superiority, Shrenne fighting back with a scrappy rivalry that gave way to apathy. Niko and his mockery of a life lived fast and sweet. Ran and her mockery of steely-eyed rebellion. Everyone and their sugary blankness, wading through the complex politics of the Wing like thick molasses.
Nothing matters to any of them. They want to act like it does, but they're playing parts like they're expected to in the expectation that soon, someone will kill them. Everything has too many layers of meaning to understand, and you can only see what's right in front of you, and anyone who thinks they know better is someone you're best off running far, far away from.
If there's one thing that connects all of the Sinners, it's that they're all dragging along the ghosts of people who thought they knew better. They all failed or refused to see the point of a war, or a cult, or a revolution. Somewhere in the process of being dragged through the City like limp meat, they all gave up on that kind of moralizing bullshit a long time ago. Maybe they've learned to care about other people now, if you're giving their "sin" a generous angle. Maybe that's the big lesson at the end of all this -- what matters is your bonds with other people, and if you can hold onto those... but the idea of a big lesson at the end is so poisoned already. And Rodion cares about others as a way of coping. She's not naive enough to think that makes her a good person.
People like Dongrang, who don't give a shit about people but think their "cause" makes it all worthwhile, either have a noose tied around their neck or a sword hanging over yours. They're doomed or you are. They walked into someone else's grand design or you're walking into theirs. Which he is, Rodya doesn't know yet.
An explosive conveniently misses certain people here. Meursault and Don Quixote's bodies grow cold while the crowd marvels at the spectacle of such an earnest death. Don Quixote is like that, she thinks with a pang in her chest that reminds Rodya her heart is still beating. Whatever is making Don Quixote tick, whatever is wrong with her... it's impossible to know why it left behind that scorching sense of utter investment in something. Whatever she's seeing when she jumps into the fire like that, it isn't the people in this room. But it passes for real care, sometimes. Enough to restart warm blood flowing through Rodya's body, which was starting to remember that cold winter night down to its fingertips.
That lazy, golden warmth, the kind that Dongrang was able to cultivate so easily in her, is starting to fade. Even still, she's hysterically glad it isn't her body cooling on the walls right now, because the food is still in her pocket. Most of the other Sinners gave theirs to Dante for safekeeping, if they cared. She remembers that Don Quixote took great pains to do so, but Meursault's had to be rescued before he could throw it away because he doesn't eat that stuff. No food was harmed in the making of this terrorist attack. It's almost funny; she feels insane for thinking about this.
She's studying how everyone reacts. Desensitization to death isn't indicative of anything in particular in the City. In fact, Dante's continued revulsion, Sinclair's tight grip on his uniform, and Heathcliff's insistence that the clock turn as soon as possible are signals that this company is the exception that proves the rule. She smiles slightly, detached -- they care about each other, just a little bit, somehow. Nobody outside their party looks surprised. So it's politics after all, and the Sinners are nothing if not a replacement for a body count. As she moves on from looking at the blank, death-mask smiles of the researchers, she sees Outis studying them too.
As much as a war veteran should be no stranger to this kind of backstabbing, Outis almost looks genuinely unsettled. Maybe it's happening to all of them; as they spend more time on this bus, with people who don't have enough agency to do this kind of thing, they become oddly vulnerable to the smaller tortures of the City. Outis... she'd like to pretend she's in control, but the only person who seems genuinely unperturbed by the explosion is Faust. Even Outis can't leverage any politics here.
Dante turns the clock. The Sinners move on. There are more dim grey hallways to walk through, and more robots to dispatch. She swallows the bile in her throat down as best as she can, and tries to put the politics aside and focus on the food in her pocket.
Her gaze turns to Meursault, walking in front of her, once again immaculately put together after being scorched and half-dead minutes ago. Out of everyone, he reacts best to a revival -- better than even Faust does. Rodya thinks it might make him happy that things are the same every time after he comes back to life, from his cleanly pressed shirt to his neatly parted hair. He seems like the kind of man who would like routines, but who likes efficiency better, and appreciates not having to re-dot his I's and cross his T's every time an enemy manages to strike him down.
He's also predictable, if it wasn't clear enough by that description. Rodya doesn't know what makes him tick, but she sure knows how the ticking sounds. He's the perfect mark.
"Hey, Meursault," she warbles, hooking a lazy arm around his neck which he endures with practiced stoicism. He obviously wants her arm off his skin. She doesn't care right now, because there are fizzy golden bubbles climbing up her throat and ready to choke her if she doesn't start acting like Rodya is supposed to, and fast.
"Yes, Rodion," he replies. She pouts.
"Don't call me that, Meur, I've told you a hundred times. Ro-dya, dya~... I just want to hear how it sounds coming out of your mouth, just once, c'mon..." She prods at his cheeks, laboriously clean-shaven unlike the stubble she always plays with when she's teasing Greg. They're very different people.
"What do you need?" He presses on, disregarding her attempts at banter. She's briefly tempted to blow a wet raspberry, but she has the remaining sobriety to know that would end this conversation. Meur doesn't have infinite patience. Instead, she sighs, continuing to limp exaggeratedly along with half her weight on his body as they trod through the facility.
"Well... I just want to know what you think of all this. The researchers, the Workshop... I mean, you're the one who just died," she prods. "How do you feel? Tell me your wisdom, oh great Meursault! Hm? Hm?"
He's unfazed, as usual, by the extra weight, continuing to walk at the same even pace as though she isn't even there. What a trooper. She'll remember to lean on him if she's ever actually injured long enough for it to matter in the future. "Am I supposed to have thoughts?" he deadpans -- or, well, you could call it a deadpan only if he had any comedic sense. Rather, he just says it. Rodya, feeling he's being difficult and knows exactly what she wants to hear, pouts silently for about half a minute before realizing that has no effect on him.
"Yes, Meur. This is tactics talk, okay? This is important." Maybe he was a bad mark to have a normal conversation with after all.
"In that case..." he pauses for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts. "That explosive was not intended to hit the Rosespanner Workshop. The Workshop knew about it in advance, and so did Shrenne. Ergo, Shrenne set the explosive, and the Fixers are working on her orders only. Shrenne must be working with the terrorists. It is possible the terrorists are also working for her. However, that possibility is around 27%, while the prevailing 73% indicates some kind of personal connection through which Shrenne has been encouraged to betray K Corp."
Before she can interject a word, he continues. "Our contract is with K Corp, so we would be held liable for not defending Dongrang from danger. The Rosespanner Fixers would not have defended him, given their contract is presumably with Shrenne. In this case, Don Quixote's actions were in line with my interpretation of the facts. I admire her increasing dedication to the job after the incidents at the checkpoint."
Rodya stares at him blankly.
Cute...
He obviously doesn't get what makes Don Quixote tick, but that's okay. You'd think with that understanding of what drives the researchers, he'd understand his own coworker of several months at this point. Maybe the idiosyncracies of such a unique personality are beyond him? Gossiping about people's relationships is what Rodya thrives on, successfully suppressing Rodion in her psyche, and she loses a minute or two to thinking about Meursault and Don Quixote. Donqui admires him, doesn't she? Not enough to emulate him, or maybe she just can't suppress herself enough to do it, but she thinks Meursault's 'dedication to the job,' in his own words, is phenomenal. And he never says anything unnecessary, so she can't be disillusioned with him. Adorable.
When she's done thinking about their tiniest Sinner and her relationship with the largest Sinner like they're unlikely animal friends, Meursault has in fact pushed her arm off his shoulder, and he's back to staring forward as he walks. Ah, right! She let the conversation drop. Lucky that Meur doesn't care about those things anyway.
"You seem experienced with this sort of thing, Meur," she remarks, taking a few skipping steps to catch back up with Meursault's more controlled pace ahead of her. "Get a lot of the office politics at N Corp?" That's not where she got her experience with this, of course. The Yurodivy was disgustingly idealistic and unified -- she was the only one to strike a break through it, back then. She just watched the masters from below. All the bastards bleeding them dry, they were beholden to bigger bastards of their own. She watched them kill each other to try and get ahead in a race that would kill them in the end too. She watched them like this; like bloated corpses waiting for their burial, inflicting their suffering on everyone else until the moment of their death.
"It is beneficial to understand people in order to execute the contract efficiently. Others seemed less interested in completing the work," Meursault replies, impassively vague. She gets it. He doesn't really have to say more. She imagines him being puppeteered around half-dead too (as though that's not what they do in this company as much as any other) and feels sort of ill.
"But you cared more about the contract, hmm?" It's a weak reply.
"I completed the work."
Right. He would never try to get ahead, would never do all of this sick politicking. They probably thought he didn't have the brainpower to do anything other than what he was ordered. For her, she thinks that all that is worthless, rots you, breaks you down, but for him... does Meursault think that way? Is that why he doesn't engage with the deception, the betrayal, the sickly effort? No... no.
"Why? I mean, why not set a bomb to kill your coworkers, get promoted, never have to work again? Why complete the work over and over and never change?" Her question is fraught with a sort of desperation. She thinks she knows why. But she needs to get the sickness out of her blood.
"It never occurred to me."
She laughs, a little bitterly. He's a good man. He's better than her and her axe ever were. "But you saw it happen, didn't you?"
"Coming up with that plan myself is beyond me." He says it like it's a fact. Rodya's heart aches for him and Don Quixote. Quixote's conviction that her spirit needs to be beaten down, that it is good for it to be beaten out of her. Meursault's conviction that he is fundamentally simple. That because when he hears someone speak, he does not read into it (the way she does) to see a hundred hidden meanings (the ones she sees) he is only fit to do as he's told (she never could).
"Well, it's not worth all the trouble anyway," she sings, covering her shakenness with a veneer of nonchalance, patting him solidly on the back in a way he (deliberately) doesn't react to.
God, her mood swings are getting bad. She thinks about taking out one of those energy bars from her pocket, but the idea of spending the food makes her heart pulse in a way that makes her dizzy for a second. No, that's not an option, then. She'll just have to endure. Maybe talk to people less. She thought it would help, but she's too fragile to show to anyone who will be able to read into it. (God, be able to. She's a monster.)
They end up killing the traitors. It helps.
--
Rodya has been thinking about that storybook tale that K Nest believes in.
It's an interesting story. A little bit too on the nose for the employment she's currently engaged in -- one person's sacrifice, one being's pain can save everyone. At the price of sorrow, we can all be free.
She glances sidelong at Dante. They've been staring at Yi Sang too much to notice her. They look the same as always. She isn't so sure how she feels about that.
But it's a hopelessly idealistic story, too. It's childish. It's all about your feelings, your experience, something only Nest eggs can afford to think about. Themselves. Not how to survive, but how to feel okay. They can afford sorrow. It's a special kind of privilege that is also a special kind of suffering, and she feels (feels) ill when she realizes how internal she's been lately. She's immortal now. She can afford to think about her own sorrow. Her own happiness. Her own damn sanity.
Sonya would hate all of this. See, that's why she's the worse of the two of them by miles. She has feelings. He has a purpose. He was always all purpose, without a thought to himself, and stories like this, stories about stars and tears, would mean nothing to him. But that doesn't matter to Rodya. Sonya doesn't matter to Rodya. Rodya is her own woman, she sees herself, she knows herself, she is her own "other" to perceive her own "self" and does not need other people to understand her because she isn't a damn Nest egg.
She glances apologetically at Sinclair. He catches her eye, and looks confused, but not bold enough to pursue it. (Too busy thinking about what other people think of him to do all that.) (No, stop it. Not everyone is your enemy, Rodya. You care about these people.)
When everyone starts talking about why they joined Limbus Company, Rodya can't focus. The energy bar in her pocket keeps making her want to make a quip like, "For this, of course~!" and she can barely think about the real reason. Mostly she can think about how getting food makes her want to work for anyone, and how not getting food makes her want to tear her skin off her bones, and Limbus makes her feel both of those ways. The others feel something deep in their bones that makes them continue in the exploitative quest for senseless violence that is life in the City. Mostly, Rodya just couldn't see any other way to live.
But it makes her think about stars, because hell, do Nest eggs all have this kind of self-justification that makes their pathetic little lives worth living? The Sinners who speak up, who talk in vague non-answers about what Limbus Company promised them, she understands -- at least on some surface level, because she's known them for a good few months now. But the idea of what Dongrang, or Samjo, or Shrenne are living for -- perfection, or healing, or waiting for the fairy tale to come true -- that's insane, isn't it? She's the normal one, isn't she?
The things she could do, with a power like Limbus Company's -- the fact that she's thinking about it is wrong, right? But...
Dante's power is real. It makes her sick enough to think of them like that that she can't entertain it for more than a sentence, but it is -- she's felt her blood rush back into her body enough times. It's not some bullshit like... like the stars' tears. It's technology. If Sonya had his hands on the money, the power, the science that Limbus Company obviously has, he and she would act the same, like always. They would both... try to grab it, with their own two hands.
Sonya to heal the world. Rodya to... to cut off the Head.
"To feel special," he had said.
Sonya always knows how to tell her what she wants to hear.
He accused her in those words exactly. That the only reason she wants to save the world is to be selfish, ultimately, like she always is. It's disgusting, how much she has clung to those words. It's awful, how badly, how desperately, she needs them to be true. She needs to be the antithesis to his thesis -- she does need to feel special after all, needs to feel like she's nothing like him. But he was always kind, and so altruistic, and such a fucking idealist, and of course, of course he would tell her something that would make her feel just like she wants to feel. Like they're nothing alike. Like what she wants isn't... isn't... to fix everything too. Once and for all.
She hated him, hates him so much. Hates that his last kindness to her was to give her a way out.
Fucking hell.
And then Yi Sang speaks up.
"Simply..." he starts. His face is blank, dead, taxidermied. "I walked for so long that my feet hurt. A shower of rain poured down as well. The bus I saw then looked rather inviting."
"Hah. That can't be it, can it?" Ryōshū cuts in, biting. Her words scorch and scald Rodya's skin -- they should hurt Yi Sang too, shouldn't they? Does he not care? Does he not care? All of them, every one, baring their souls -- even the damn war veteran almost cracked her shell. And he can't stand to be around them for long enough to say a single vulnerable word. All he can do is pretend, pretend he has never felt a thing in his life, and it makes Rodya feel like taking an axe to his chest just to see him bleed.
"We all..." Ryōshū continues.
"That's enough of it." And there's Faust, always on Yi Sang's side, or no one's side, or the damn Head's side. Rodya can feel herself breathing heavier, more raggedly. There's a pit in her stomach that no food can fill. Her skin is hot, so hot. No one notices. Or they don't bother to stop her, like Sonya didn't, because they want to see her fall -- or no, no, Sonya was kind and wanted the best for her. No one stops her because, like Sonya, they want to give her this last excuse to hate herself. No one stops her because they know she needs to feel like a monster. No one stops her because Rodya is special.
She doesn't reach for her axe, because -- because then she couldn't talk to him. (Because it would hurt Dante all the more, and she cares.) No, she does it the old fashioned way. Like a damned Rat.
Rodya leaps forward and punches Yi Sang in the face.
It's not satisfying. He crumples like wet paper when someone hits him, she's seen it before -- he doesn't stagger back, or anything, just takes it, and then falls to the floor without even a hint of feeling the pain. He looks up at her with those glassy, dead eyes, and she drives her fist into his skull again. Right into his eye socket. She's standing over him, ignoring the burn in her hand (probably broken), ignoring the sting in her eyes (too weak), ignoring the ache in her chest (too guilty). He reaches up to cover the eye she hit, and she reaches down, slaps his hand away, pins it so she can see the damage she did.
His eye is bloodshot, now. One sign of life in his damn body. She can see it, if she looks closely enough -- the way his breathing hitches like hers, the way his face twitches in pain, the habitual tremor running through his body (thin, too thin). She can't decide whether she wants to kill him, eat him, spear him on a stake, or hold him until it goes away. Hold him until she doesn't feel anything anymore. Something, anything, to get the guilt out of her chest. Instead, she stares at him as he stares at her, seething hot breaths onto his face.
His hair is greasy and limp. When you get close enough to him to touch, you can tell he's dirty. His uniform is stiff with old dirt and blood, his skin is covered in a fine layer of grime, there's dirt collected under his nails and in the deep creases under his eyes. With her hot, rough, calloused hand over his bony wrist, Rodya can feel he's cold, clammy to the touch. His pulse is sluggish through his veins, nowhere near the fluttering mouse-beat it should be under this kind of stress. If Yi Sang wasn't immortal, she realizes, against her will -- he'd be dying.
His wrists creak under the pressure of her touch. He's so breakable. So broken. Nothing like her neighbors -- their thin, grimy faces held all the spun-sugar hope that Sonya gave them, even as it melted to nothing in the snow. Yi Sang isn't hopeful, or afraid, or angry, or starving. What gives him the right? Damn Nestling. What makes it okay for him to kill himself?
Her lips feel cracked, her throat parched when she finally speaks instead of just staring him down. It's a struggle to get out the words. "You..." she rasps. "You want something. You must. What the fuck is all this for if you don't want anything, huh? Why are we dying for you?"
He coughs before he can speak. She didn't even hit his throat. He's just weak. "I do not desire anything."
"You do," she insists. "Fucking say it. Say it before I rip it out of you." This isn't Rodya. This is the woman at the door, with an axe, ready to make herself special. Ready to save the world. This is a Rodya who wants to save the fucking world.
"If I could--" he coughs again. His expression hasn't changed, no matter how much the contortion of his body makes him flinch in pain. "If I could fly--"
She slams her broken hand into the hard tile floor beside his head, and he flinches away harder than she's even seen him flinch. Good. Good. "That's not a fucking-- you can't! That's not -- you want -- Yi Sang."
She cradles his head in her hand, all red and contorted with pains of her own. Rodya thinks she might be tearing up. She's so far outside her own body at this point.
"You want to live, Yi Sang. You want-- you joined this company so that-- you eat, so you can--" Her words aren't coming out right, and her voice cracks. A stray tear falls onto his uniform collar. "You're afraid of me because you want to live."
He doesn't respond.
"You want to live!" She almost screams it, shaking him by the ear. "So just-- so-- stop. You--"
She can't do this. She lets him go, leans back, ends up kneeling on the floor with a broken hand. Wipes away the tears welling in her eyes, gets blood on her face instead. Wipes that too. Pretends they're not watching her. Pretends the hand won't heal and they won't carry on marching Yi Sang towards all the reasons he wants to die. Pretends she doesn't care about anyone at all.
By the time Dante reaches for her shoulder, she's placed the mask firmly back on, and Yi Sang is rising to his feet in tandem with her, both of them pretending not to wobble on unsteady legs. None of this happened. The Rodya that wants to save the world, the Yi Sang who wants anything, anything at all -- neither of them were here.
--
Dante rewound both of them. Her hand doesn't even hurt anymore. She doesn't want it to, because she doesn't fucking-- she isn't fucking-- suicidal like a greedy, worthless, shaking, dying, dying, dying, dying Yi Sang. What a fucking luxury, to give up and die. She's grateful that she gets to live.
Thank you to the great and almighty Company for allowing her this life. This food. The endless service of this clock. She will repay it with her life another hundred times, and never with her tears, because she's not a fucking coward who can't handle the sight of little Sonya. She will cheat her way through this torture chamber in the best effort she can to make sure they don't realize that she was a mistake. She can even have little fucking meltdowns for them, like a good girl.
Everyone has been avoiding her. Her expression never really settled back into Rodya, and still looks stormy, like the reflection in the window on a winter night. The face she saw reflected in Yi Sang's eyes, in the tax collector's. A disgusting, hopeless liar. She doesn't care. Once she's out of K Corp, she'll feel better. Once they get a square meal, she'll feel better. Once Yi Sang faces his trauma down and fails, like all three of the ones who've done it before did, she can rest easy, knowing that none of them will ever, ever change.
When they walk into the room that houses the Singularity, she sees Dongrang and Samjo and almost doesn't want to watch them killed, slowly, one after the other.
Almost.
She tunes out most of the ensuing conversation, too focused on the feeling of her hands trembling and clenching, trying to feel like she can at least approximate normality. God, what a freak. Had to make yourself known all the way through the last two Bough pickups, too -- fretting over Gregor and Sinclair, loud and shameless. Is she going to react this way every time she's asked to do her job? Is she going to care too much every time? What a joke. All that pride, that she didn't show her weakness in J Corp, meaningless. Herself, she can handle. Other people make her feel like she's some thing hiding in a person's skin, and they're all going to find out if she doesn't do something.
It takes everything she has not to cry when Samjo dives into the pool of tears. God, but he bought it, didn't he. He bought what K Corp was selling. He ate out of Dongrang's hand. He is nothing like Yi Sang -- didn't Samjo say he worked his way up to this post under his own power, too? Really lived the dream of the City, that you can have anything if you work hard enough? He cared so much, and now, he's dead. He didn't want to die.
But he would've died for the company if they asked him, wouldn't he? They robbed him of his personhood. He didn't deserve it, but he died, because of something he did. Something he cared about. He died how he would've wanted to.
She's never cared about a mindless Nest worker like this. She feels sick-- rage and despair and hopelessness and rage and rage and rage boiling in her hot, hot hands.
He was nothing like Yi Sang, she thinks, and then looks over at Yi Sang.
But it's in Yi Sang's eyes -- he's shaken. More than that, he's cracking at the seams. He can't stop looking at the place where Samjo was. Just like when she held him down and hit him, the twitches of pain show in his face, and she can see blood at the rims of those dead fish eyes. He can't look at Dongrang, or Dongbaek. He keeps looking at Samjo. The echo of Samjo, dead in a moment. Dead for no reason but pure cruelty, pure apathy.
Yi Sang doesn't look like pure apathy in this moment. Yi Sang looks like he's grieving.
She feels dizzy, lightheaded, like she's going to be sick. That's what the look was, in his eyes, that she hated so much. The look of someone attending a funeral. The look of someone who is still attending a funeral, every day, as Dongrang begins to play the rest of the scene like a stageplay. Enter Dongbaek, who is always going to kill Yi Sang. She is fragile, painfully human, cares so much but can't care anymore or it'll break her, and she always smells of flowers. The smell makes bile fill Rodya's throat.
"You're right," Dongbaek says. Rodya's ears stop ringing in time for her to hear it, a snippet of conversation devoid of context. "I wanted him to die. But I'm sure he wished for the same."
"He wouldn't resist while it dug into his heart." Dongbaek's hands are shaking too. Rodya bets if she put hers over them, they'd be cold, clammy, like Yi Sang's. Dying. "It was unpleasant," Dongbaek chokes out. "It felt like I was granting your wish."
Yi Sang won't speak. He's not looking at her. Samjo is gone, for some reason, and there's a woman in a raincoat who smells like flowers. Like a fever dream. Like a funeral. Dongrang reads the eulogy. They'll all go inside to eat the refreshments any moment.
When pressed, he can't say it, that he wants to die. He can only wait. Until someone does it for him. Until eventually, some way, somehow, it doesn't have to be his fault. Anything to get the feeling out of his body. Anything to free him from the curse. Anything, anything at all.
Rodya's stomach lurches, and she almost throws up right into the pool of Tears. Her fists clench. She needs to get the feeling out of her body. She needs to be free from the curse. Anything, anything at all.
She wants to kill Dongbaek. She wants to rip her chest open and see that sluggish, dying heart beat. This is about Rodya, somehow, it's always been about Rodya (because she's so special) and this is hunting her, hurting her like nothing else could until now, and she wants her axe, and she wants to save Yi Sang from an evil woman. She needs the winter to nip at her fingers, she needs to leave bloody fingerprints on the glass, fogged up with her hot breath.
It's burning in her. She's burning. Burning, burning, burning. Samjo was there, and now he isn't. Dongbaek is there, and soon she won't be. Yi Sang lost her years ago, and she has no right to come back, so of course here she is, ready to die, all too ready to die even as she claims she isn't. Here she is, offering herself up to be killed before the altar of the Company. All thanks to the great Company, before which no operation can truly fail! Before which all evil people will have their heads removed from their bodies, no matter what the right thing to do is, because that's how we harvest the most Tears, that's how we grow the great golden tree, somehow that powers the blasphemous star that keeps them all alive!
Dongrang is so happy. So happy to see his dear friends dying before him. So happy to be the last one standing. So happy to be special. If she can choke it down, maybe Rodya will be able to say that she doesn't want to be like him, maybe she'll just become the unapologetically good person that Sonya wanted her to be so desperately. She's figured out what kind of person Dongrang is -- he wants to die too. Hahaha, haha! They all want to die!
Becoming a Wing executive, that's a kind of death. He knows it. He's attending Samjo's funeral, too. Attending Dongbaek's funeral. Attending Yi Sang's. Attending his own. This is it! One last show, one last performance where everything falls apart. Burn everything which made you human, the voice that kills you says. Then, you can die. You can die, and they'll go to heaven while you burn in hell. That's what you deserve. Embrace it. Burn in hell.
Rodya just wants to live. All she wants is to live. All she wants is to live, and eat, and live, and live, and live. And somehow, there's only one person here she can save.
Sonya would let all of them die, she thinks, hysterically. No perfect solution? Best not try to solve it at all. But she has an axe, and her hands are covered in blood, and she hates them. She hates everyone here so much. She hates Yi Sang, and his life, and his feelings, and the stench of death that's everywhere around him.
But, she supposes, they're fucking coworkers.
They fight Dongbaek.
--
There's a hole in Yi Sang's chest.
When Dante revives them, she can see it. It's the same place the Golden Bough stabbed through, when Dongbaek put it through his heart, but it was there before that, she's almost certain.
She feels stupid, blind, for not noticing it earlier. She wanted to hate him so badly it's frankly unreal, and by the time she took her fist to his face, she couldn't see a thing, because she was too hungry and too self-absorbed. He was never full of apathy, he never wanted to die. She said it earlier, didn't she? Eating sprouted potatoes and drinking spoiled milk, joining up with Limbus Company, staying on the edge of death but never dying -- somewhere, in that big, raw hole in his chest, he wanted to live. He needed to live.
She shouldn't have cut him off, when he said that he wanted to fly. That's just... how he talks. He can't get out two words straight, maybe because he's just naturally this way, maybe because he can't stand to say what he means out loud or else it becomes real. He can't stand to say what he wants out loud or else he gets hungry.
Being hungry is awful. She wouldn't wish it on anyone. To seal yourself up so you don't have to feel it, to try to live as though you really can just go on living without trying -- and he can! Glory to the great Company -- it... makes sense. Somehow. She can't do it. She grew up poor, she thinks, bitterly, so the hunger is in her blood. Is that unfair? She feels like it doesn't matter. She can be unfair.
But to fly... to be free. She's trying to interpret it. Free from... the things they'll all see, soon enough, when they reach the Bough? Rodya doesn't know Yi Sang, doesn't know a thing about what he's experienced. He decided not to share a lick of it. For all she knows, he's not even from the damn Nest. (Unlikely.) All she knows is that he had some cushy Wing job, and now he's here.
To fly. A dream that can't be realized. He wants to want something that can't be true, so he doesn't have to want it anymore, maybe.
She thinks her expression has settled into something less unstable and more neutral, cold -- you know, like her profile in the manager's handbook, that sometimes she will settle into these emotional states that there's nothing you can do anything about? Haha, yeah! Like that. Like she's just... bipolar, or something, whatever. She feels less like the anger is going to swallow her whole. She feels less like everything is her enemy, and more like hot shame crawling up her throat, that she could take such a loud, violent role in this whole thing. That she saw food and couldn't keep it together.
Heathcliff taps her on the shoulder, and she jumps, but doesn't punch him in the face. (Good lord, Rodya.) He looks... sort of angry. She can read his expressions, they're easy. Angry, but pensive, and a little unwilling to talk to her like this. She relaxes her shoulders and gives him a tired, not entirely fake Rodya-smile. "Something I can do for you, Heath?"
They're a few steps behind the front line, solidly middle of the pack. She's not stupid enough to think no one cares about what the unstable woman is talking about right now, but at least it's not happening somewhere where the entire crew can stop and listen to her hash it out. Heathcliff sighs loudly and drags his feet along the clean tile floor. She frowns, but doesn't press him. Needs time to formulate his thoughts, probably? He's not the best at "feelings talks."
"You... listen, all this shit's been stressful. I don't like bein' here any more than you do." Oh, Backstreets bonding! She can do that. She nods, slowly, languidly, but waits for him to finish.
"Just... don't take it out on the bloke, okay? He's been in a bloody bad way for a while, and..." He drags his hand down his face, sighing. "Guess it'll all come out one way or another. Not like everything's peachy for him, being here. You know that, I don't have to tell you that." He gets more tense as he keeps speaking. Poor guy. She should save him from himself.
"Well, I did give him a good beating earlier. I think I deserve a reminder, hm? You can tell me things I already know, it's fine," she hums. How is she supposed to play the rest of this, though? I was having a hunger-induced breakdown even though I have two people's worth of food in my pocket, sorry? The two of them clearly care about each other in some way she doesn't understand yet -- cute, but she doesn't have the mental energy to start thinking about unlikely animal friends again right now -- so 'I hate him because I think he's had an easier life than me' definitely won't go over well.
And it's not... true, either. She doesn't really think that, right now. She just... doesn't know what to think. And, you know. It'll all come out eventually, so why speculate?
Heathcliff huffs what's almost a laugh. "Well, whatever. Point is..." He scratches the back of his neck. "You gotta hold it together. Don't think the rest of us are so keen on holding it together without you, n' you're good at that shit. Keepin' us calm." He's saying it with surprising tenderness now, but Rodya doesn't miss the way that the idea of an 'us' grates on him. "If I'd whaled on him back there, think he could've taken it. Not from you, though. So don't pull that shit again."
"And eat something," he adds, with an unusually piercing glare. "Don't think I don't know."
She does think he doesn't know, as a matter of fact. But that's silly, given that he absolutely does and should know what hunger means. She just... thinks she's special. She forgets to be Rodya for a minute, blinks at him wide, and his face deepens into a scowl. His hand fists in his pocket, and she hears a wrapper crinkle, but he doesn't hand his food over to her.
It's a relief. She's not sure she'd be able to handle the concept of self-sacrifice any more right now. Instead, he walks away, joining his usual spot in the front line without another word.
She needs to pull it together. He's right. This fucked-up team is full of fucked-up people, and she isn't one of those people. She's capable of being normal, as much anyone on this bus can be, and who else is there for the Sinners to lean on if she's beating up their frailest member without a second thought? Ishmael? But they need someone to have a good attitude, to not hate everything all the time. She can do that. She's the only one, maybe, who can do that.
So she pulls one of the damn chocolates out of her pocket and pops it into her mouth. It's bitter. The type of thing that Nest eggs like, because they can have as much sugar as they want, any time that they want it. Self-torture, like dark chocolate, is a luxury. A sign of maturity. She almost spits it out, except that it's food, and it's chocolate even moreso, and it regrettably tastes good underneath the layer of ash coating her tongue.
The way it relaxes her, to have something in her mouth, makes her feel sick. She pulls out a package of fruit candies next and starts devouring them. The crinkling plastic wrappers are loud, too loud, and make her feel dirty and obnoxious as she walks down pristine white halls eating as mush sugar as she can stuff into her stomach. It's not like she isn't sick of sugar, too. Sick of Sonya. Sick of idealism, hope, the future, saving the world.
But she wants it anyway. She eats it anyway. Because it tastes good. To rot her teeth, and to fix something, anything, if she can't fix herself. To be happy. For five minutes, an hour, one day.
Rodya finishes two plastic cups full of more plastic packages and still feels hungry.