[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ Leerin ✮ ✮ ✮

I knew I’d messed up—messed up so bad that I didn’t know how to apologize.

Well, maybe that—the enormity of the things I had done—wasn’t exactly the issue. No, in the end, it was probably more that I had never been expected—or, perhaps more aptly, allowed—to apologize to anyone, save my parents and the occasional older member of our family.

Zentaris did not apologies, except to those older family members who had demanded an apology for the smallest of slights—even for those slights that were imagined or falsified. We did not apologies, unless those Zentaris more important, more experienced, more worthy than us demanded it.

The number of apologies I had issued over the years for things I felt nothing but satisfaction for was innumerable. No, I did not feel bad for ruining my cousin’s birthday after he had begun calling my friends with irregular deviations deformed monsters who should all be put down. I had apologized, and appeared to all the world as though I meant every word, when really, I would ruin that stupid party again if it meant we could leave even a second sooner.

There were yet more times when apologies had been forced off my tongue for nothing at all, the resentment of being forced to take accountability for things in which I had no part a painful reality that had wrapped itself even more firmly around my ability to whisper sincere words of recompense more than the burden of my upbringing already had.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I wanted to scream it into the void—let it echo off the stone that surrounded the city, glistening far below us, and hope it made it into the hearts of everyone I owed apologies to.

I couldn’t make the words leave my lips, my tongue a heavy thing within my mouth that wouldn’t move, no matter how much I clenched my jaw, willing it to loosen and let words fly free. The unfortunate thing was, I wasn’t even sure such words would make a difference, even were I able to summon those sentiments from the bottom of my soul. The problem once again circled around to all those forced apologies—to all the insincere words that had ever been dragged out of me. Darrian, in particular, deserved all the apologies in the world; yet, he knew how easily I could lie, so, why would he ever believe me sincere, especially when my brain and misery will inevitably lead me to do more horrid things in the future? Apologies mean little when the behaviour itself continues, but my brain was a rotten place—a trash heap of self-hatred that I could not escape through anything less than scooping the garbage out of myself, that garbage splattering over the people I love in cruel words and actions that I wished I could stop, take back, apologize for and yet could never seem to manage to do anything for.

I supposed I could leave the garbage to further fester within me—leave this weight of filth that had been shovelled into me by my parents to consume me.

My parents had never raised their fists to punish me for bad behaviour or apologies that hadn’t landed as honestly as they wanted, but fists were in no way the worst abuse that could be slashed over anyone’s soul—especially not that of a child. Simeon—whose terrible parents had raised open palms and aimed pinching fingers at their ill-behaved, entitled youngest daughter—once told me that violence was a deep wound, felt through to the soul the moment it landed. The injury lingered there, aching while it healed, burning when the knife of abuse was plunged back in by yet more violence—when different sorts of violence twisted and thrust, deforming the wound all the more.

A scar would always remain for physical violence, but the moment true friends found out about it, they would rush you to the hospital, seeking to save your life—to make sure the damage within wasn’t too great.

The damage of emotional abuse, however, was softer—subtler. It was a thousand pricks with a needle, coming forth in the shape of a bruise that would fade despite the damage to nerves and tissue below that physical manifestation over skin. It was a million slashes of a knife over the skin, leaving raised edges that would never heal, no matter how much you wished to erase the reality of what had been done to you.

No one took someone to the hospital for surface level scars like that—not unless they thought the person at risk of snuffing out their own life, anyways.

The gaping wound of physical abuse required immediate attention, while the subtle damage of emotional abuse could be pushed aside—left to the victim to deal with however they saw fit.

They could leave.

They could tell.

They could do… something.

The problem, I generally thought, was that we were all children, too smart for our age but impossibly inexperienced with the world. Yet, at the same time, we all knew what would happen if anyone told the authorities about the abuse several of us experienced: nothing, or everything. There was no in between. There were Coral and Simeon, brushed aside as problem Dyads, and then sent back to their abusive homes—only this time, their abuser would know they had told, and their abuse would intensify. There was also the possibility that some of us would be removed to orphanages, and we all knew what sort of violence went on in those places.

Better the violence we knew than the violence we didn’t, especially when the fear several of us were able to instill in our terrible parents was enough to still their hands and tongues—occasionally, anyways. Plus, at this point, we were—theoretically—months away from all being free. It wouldn’t be that easy, but the possibility that it could be that easy was there, lingering in the shadows of the future.

Sometimes, I tried to make myself see that future—tried to make myself imagine what it would be like to be free and happy. When was the last time I had been happy for more than specks of time? I had no idea. Probably, it was around the time I had been forced to apologize for letting one of my cousins be kidnapped.

I hadn’t been with her—I hadn’t even been expected to be with her—and yet.

And yet.

And yet, every time that girl now did something bad, the blame for it was placed on me.

It is easier to place blame on a child, rather than on the parent who wasn’t paying attention.

It is easier to blame to quiet child, who has been broken and refused to do anything but apologize, apologize, apologize, than to work to help the child who had been broken by cruel hands and came back a cruel thing herself.

If only Leerin had been with Ceerin, as she was supposed to be, then Ceerin wouldn’t be like this.

If only Leerin were a better cousin.

If only Leerin were better.

If only.

If only.

[Corrie:Leerin? Are you alright?]

The message startled me, my gaze sliding off in the direction that the papers checkpoint seemed to be located at. Coral, Polianna, and Mikhail’s stalking function showed that they had barely moved since we had managed to get back on the aethernet… what? Almost eleven minutes ago?

They might very well never get through to the city. That was mostly going to be a nuisance for Mikhail, as he might really need access to a Virtuosi Rig to fix the errors in his Censor at this rate—Halen had reported that, upon checking in with Mikhail after they emerged, several more of his functions weren’t responding properly.

It was weird. Generally, Mikhail annoyed me—he was too happy, despite how miserable he had every right to be—but I knew enough about how Halen and Emilia managed his difficulties with his Censor to know that this number of failures in such a short period of time wasn’t normal. Even back when our Censors had first been installed, Emilia spending all her free time coding functions to try and help him and Simeon in particular, I couldn’t remember it being this bad.

It would be terrible for his ability to use movement skills to fail, whenever we left this place. If they failed while we were on an aetherstream… Well, the slidelines could be dealt with, Mikhail just riding tandem with someone else, although even the tandem skill’s hook could fail on his side… then again, by the time we got to any slidelines we’d have to be back in Seer’ik’tine, at the least, and Virtuosi Rigs would be easy to access there, and—

“Leerin,” Coral repeated into my mind, her voice coming through rather than just a message of text and vague concern, “are you alright?”

✮ ✮ ✮ Coral ✮ ✮ ✮

Normally, I couldn’t feel emotions from this far away and it was strange to be able to. Part of me wondered if it was due to the stalking function. Perhaps, having the emotions of my friends and former classmates laid out before me through the stalking function was allowing me to latch on to them more easily? Then again, that wouldn’t explain how I had been able to feel Darrian’s rage earlier, it was easy to see that Leerin wasn’t doing well. She hadn’t been doing well for a long time—since long before this trip, since long before we had even met, I suspected—so that wasn’t surprising.

Actually, when Emilia wasn’t busy apparently invading some sort of murder-torture house—because, of course, that was where she had somehow found herself—I would ask if she had intentions of further refining the stalking function. It might be helpful for someone like Leerin to always have their mind monitored, at least a little. Plus, Emilia could create something to compare Leerin’s mental state over time? Assuming Leerin consented to such a thing, anyways.

Halen had suggested creating something like that for me, some years back, but it had seemed too intrusive to me—something that was fine to do for short spurts of time, such as during our prank war or classes, or with people I didn’t know, as I had done on our way through the station. It wasn’t something I wanted to do with my friends as a default—not without their consent.

Already, my mind could see far more of people than they generally liked. The people in our class accepted it well enough—Emilia’s side because none of them had ever thought I would do anything malicious with what I learned of their emotions; Halen’s side because he had flat out told his friends that if they had a problem with me, they were no longer welcome to talk to him.

Regardless, creating a database of everything I ever felt from specific people seemed a step too far—and realistically, my mind and Censor both already remembered things quite clearly, less well-kept records rarely more than a thought away. It was why I knew that every time Leerin felt like this it was that she wanted to apologize but didn’t know how.

She had never talked about it with anyone, as far as I knew. Through my empathy, I’d been able to glean that her cousin knew something of the reason why she almost never apologized, no matter how terrible whatever she had done was. I also had the feeling that he didn’t know the whole of it.

When Darrian felt a mixture of sympathy and frustration for Leerin’s inability to take accountability for her actions, it was something more benign—an anger at his family that was there, but not so hot as to be blistering. He thought all the adults in his family to be cruel, but it wasn’t the level of cruelty he thought even my own parents to be.

When Leerin wanted to apologize, there was frustration, fear, shame—so much shame that I had eventually needed Halen to tweak the function that helped me pull what I felt into words to lessen the effect Leerin’s shame had on me. It was a disgusting thing—all shame was, really. It was this insidious thing that ate away at a person more than any other emotion. It crawled under the skin, always lingering and ready to pop out and scream negativity at the person. With so much shame of unknown origin—at least to me—lingering within her, I didn’t doubt that Leerin would struggle to ever truly be happy unless she sought help from a professional.

Perhaps some of it was traumatic knots, but these would inevitably be the sort of knots that only a million trips to a knot therapist and a therapist for the mind could ever hope to heal—and even then, after years of feeling out so many people and being granted access to both their explanations of their feelings and their knots, I thought I had a good grasp of when a person would struggle to ever find peace within themself. Leerin, unfortunately, hit many of the marks that seemed to correlate with someone who would have profound difficulty ever pulling free of her misery.

How could anyone be happy when they hated every fibre of their being? When they thought their entire body and soul a disgusting thing? When they had spent years being degraded by their mind and parents alike, each word a scar over yet more scars, until all the remained was a deformed mind and soul?

The worst thing was that after years of living within the ability of Halen’s function to pull apart the most minute of details about nearly identical, and yet infinitely different, emotions, I was almost certain that Leerin’s shame wasn’t something that belonged to her; instead, it was something that had been forced under her skin with a scalpel of apologies for things I doubted she had ever needed to apologize for.

That was the thing about Leerin’s inability to apologize: it was a drag over her emotions—a push and pull of knowing she needed to apologize and an inability to do so, all while her shame and fear bubbled and boiled, her soul flaying within her as she waffled.

I had never really thought Leerin fond of me, the girl the only person in our class who didn’t like me for my Dyadism virtually from the moment I stepped foot in that classroom. At first, it had been sad but not unexpected—after all, I had been shocked to find so many people accepting of my Dyadism at that school. How ungrateful would I be to take one student disliking me entirely due to my Dyadism to heart?

Now, however, I knew it was because Leerin didn’t talk about her feelings.

Leerin didn’t want to do such and such things.

Leerin didn’t want to be here.

Leerin didn’t, didn’t, didn’t do actions.

Leerin never ever talked about her feelings—about the why of the situation and why she didn’t want to do the things. Those reasons she kept buried within herself, churning and cutting her with every breath she took.

Leerin didn’t like me because she believed my abilities were real and she didn’t want someone to be able to see the festering rot of her soul. Once, I tried to befriend her. Never again. I would be nice enough to her—would reach out at times like this, knowing she would never accept my question of whether she was okay for the perpetual offer of help that it was.

People who didn’t want help couldn’t be forced to accept it, and I wouldn’t waste my time trying, nor even point out to Leerin’s friends how much she was suffering. They didn’t deserve to pull themselves apart trying to help her either.

Still, at the very least, my question managed to pop Leerin out of her spiral—that was good. Generally, when Leerin couldn’t force herself to apologize through words, she did so through actions. With any luck, she would at least be more tolerable for everyone else, as they split their group in two.

Now, we were split into three groups, plus Emilia’s group… and Olivier de la Rue’s, unknown as it was. Technically, Olivier de la Rue’s students were something of a group as well? As perhaps were Nivel Hyrat and the child he was still working to get through the city? And who really knew what was happening with Cameron Fulbrun, who according to the tracking skill Emilia had slapped on her hours ago, was wandering through the city, seemingly without concern for anything that was happening.

“Cameron has always been strange,” Polianna signed, her icy glare pointed at the Drinarna officer manning the diplomatic checkpoint. “There’s a reason Emilia isn’t ruling out her either being on the corrupt side of this, or being an innocent party, or being undercover. There is no way to tell until she does something to prove what side she is on.”

My girlfriend’s eyes slid towards me, and even before she asked that I use that ability, I already knew the words about to slip off her free hand by the hard set of her lips—by the clench of her hand around mine.

We had come to that point, after all, where we had given the Drinarna a chance enough to let us in. Now, they were just stalling, and regardless of how much I disliked doing that, it was time.

Taking a deep breath, I let Polianna’s hand go, the adorable girl stepping forward to be the entitled diplomatic brat she was, my abilities simmering within me, ready to work, my hand already slipping into my pocket to grab the red handkerchief that lived there—this was, very likely, going to cause a nose bleed, after all.