(Log) This may be the worst month she's ever had

[failedpromise]

Who: Cortana and ...you?
When: First prompt is on the eighth, other two are on and after the eleventh.
Where: Various
Summary: Cortana has some lighthearted fun while shopping for clothes. Then several days later, everything goes to hell.
Warnings: First prompt is unlikely to have anything, second and third involve loss of bodily autonomy, extremely traumatic memories, dissociation, general distress, with potential for considerably worse to come up in threads.


A) (March 8th)

Cortana needs more clothes. She already has some simple white blouses and a few bottoms, as well as several gifted items and an assortment of socks and underwear, but it's a very basic, plain selection -- if she's going to keep going to hangouts and parties, she wants more color.

...Also, one of the graphic tees caught her eye. It was funny.

So that's what she's doing right now, looking through the graphic tee selection at the department store nearest ADI headquarters, picking through and occasionally holding one up that says something silly or interesting, like 'home is where the Wi-Fi always connects' or 'It's okay if you don't like me. Not everyone has good taste.' or has some stupid joke on it. She seems genuinely amused by the dumb puns and overused sarcastic quips: every so often, she'll even fold one and put it in her cart.

She might have a few sets of ridiculous colorful leggings in her cart too.

B) (March 11th)

Gus the bus is something that Cortana is at best only vaguely aware of. That said, when the bus that's supposed to take her home comes scuttling instead of rolling toward her she's immediately on guard.

Not that that will do anything to help her, as she doesn't realize that what she actually needs to do is run...

B1:

She wishes she could say that this is her first experience with a loss of autonomy, the betrayal of moving without choosing to, of not being able to stop no matter how much she wants to.

But as Cortana finds herself boarding the bus and taking a seat, as she sits frozen in place while the bugs crawl over her body, as she is trussed up in gossamer silk, all she can think of is High Charity and her inability to even speak her mind as the Gravemind did as he pleased.

She doesn't scream -- at least she still has that much control of herself -- but it's a struggle not to sob as she tries to will herself to do something, anything, to break free before she is cocooned in white.

B2:

She 'wakes' at the same bus stop where she started, but makes no effort to move, even as relief washes over her. It's-it's too much, and all she can do as she lays there in the soft morning light is curl up and cry.

C) (March 12-15th)

In the days after her encounter with Gus, Cortana really isn't doing well. When she isn't working or trying to put on a brave face while interacting with others it's all too easy for her to slip into an almost fugue like state, the barrier between reality and her thoughts eroding like iron tossed in the sea. She doesn't even fully notice the pull that brings her to the library: she finds herself at the door and the only reason she can drum up for wanting to go in is a yearning for something to serve as a distraction.

At the sound of his voice, she audibly gasps.

"...Chief?" The question trembles in the air.

Her pace picks up for the first time since her experience as she searches for him, unable to bring herself to accept that it's likely just a trick or turn away. She's missed him, she's sorry, she wants to see him again, even if he's not here just the sound of his voice... she doesn't want it to stop.

When she reaches the back of the library she manages not to cry, though that's likely numbness as much as it is anything else. Instead she finds a little corner to tuck herself into, sits down on the floor, closes her eyes and just ...listens.

Comments

[failedpromise]

And she absolutely appreciates that, and will remain as close (and as clingy) as he seems able to tolerate without obvious discomfort.

"Something, more like." The bus ...didn't seem sapient. "But it reminded me of someone."

[worthallthis]

"What happened?" Winter asks. That doesn't sound like something he can punch. He can maybe guess-- he's stalked that bus. Or rather, it's stalked him a little, he just does his best to stay out of range.

[failedpromise]

She looks away from him, studying the ground as she walks. "The bus got me."

"I didn't know it could -- it just took control and there was nothing I could do." She speaks as though she's trying to justify what happened.

[worthallthis]

He's seen the message on the network about it, it's one reason he's tried not to let the thing get too close, resorting to rooftops on more than one occasion. "It's magic," he says sourly. "Of course there was nothing you could do." He gives her hand on his arm a little pat. "It didn't hurt you. Just left a mark?"

[failedpromise]

She stiffens for a moment, utterly silent. He's right, it didn't really hurt her.

...Except in a way, it really really did.

"On my chest." She says. Needless to say, she doesn't attempt to show him.

[worthallthis]

He didn't mean it to tell her what it did or didn't do, it was part of the question about the mark; it's just an artifact of not being great with tone, still.

"I cannot punch a bus," he grouses. "I would, if it would help. I have one of them that marked me, too. Not on my body, though."

[failedpromise]

"The bus isn't what I want to punch anyway." No, that honor goes to the fucker currently haunting her memories. The real source of her trauma.

She freezes, squeezing his arm tightly when he mentions being marked. The thought of her friends going through anything like what she has -- it's a nightmare.

"What happened?"

[worthallthis]

He shifts enough to reach into a pocket, pulling out the little silver pyramid. It fits easily on his palm, and it's clearly marked with spiderweb patterns on the side. "I've tried getting rid of it. Destroying it. Handing it in to ADI. It keeps coming back."

[failedpromise]

She stiffens, staring at the pyramid. One might think, given the intensity of her reaction, that she recognizes the object, maybe even sees some significance in it. But no, it's just the horror of a fear potentially being realized.

"The Web sure seems to like targeting us, huh?" She fought so hard on High Charity to keep her friends from having to suffer such horrors. Now, here in another world, she feels powerless to stop it from happening.

[worthallthis]

"Maybe. Or maybe it's just the one most active right now. We've had more, different entities active before." He puts the pyramid away. He's had his time of being furious about it. Now he's just kind of resigned. He hopes the Web and the Stranger have fun duking it out over him, somewhere in the invisible ether. "Steve and I found it in Dogtown while we were exploring. It doesn't seem to be doing anything except existing."

[failedpromise]

"Yeah." She mimics a swallow. She doesn't want her friends targeted by any entity; with trauma at the forefront of her mind, she can't help but make associations between what's happening now and the horrors in her head.

Please, she thinks to herself, don't let anything happen to him.

Nevermind that plenty of stuff happens to all of them basically all the time. Right now she's not thinking of haunted dolls and crumbling living spaces or even a bus full of crawling spiders but hallways coated in pustulent flesh, the fetid breath of her tormentor gusting over her as she screamed and screamed and screamed.

[worthallthis]

He waits a beat, hoping she might say more, then prods gently, "Is the bus what disturbed you? I know it. Must be very stressful having a mark like that."

[failedpromise]

Cortana almost answers yes. It's on the tip of her tongue when she stops and sighs instead. She looks away, shaking her head.

"Not really. At least, not completely. It's complicated."

[worthallthis]

He tilts his head a little. "Do you want to talk about it?" She might not. But if she does, he should give her an outlet. That seems like the thing you do for your team. (When your team isn't a bunch of HYDRA assholes, anyway.)

CW: Really gross metaphors

[failedpromise]

She sighs. Normally, the answer is no: she doesn't even like to think about the Gravemind, and every reminder is like a knife stabbing through her.

Now though, she can't stop thinking about it. It colors everything around her in the same revolting shades, so that no corner of her life is free of creeping rot and dripping pus. The feelings swell within her until she's fit to burst and it's a struggle to keep them inside.

"There's a ...being in my galaxy. A sickness." She vomits them in the form of words. "It's ...the entities, they aren't anything close to being as bad, but they remind me of it-him." She shivers.

[worthallthis]

Winter listens, frowning a bit, trying to imagine something worse than powerful entities you can't confront and shoot and throw your worst fear at you. "Did you defeat it, in your universe?" he asks after a moment.

[failedpromise]

What's worse? How about that on a galactic scale? Where stopping it even just temporarily often requires destroying part or all of the world you find it on? Fully sapient and not only aware of the harm it causes but actively enjoying it?

...Not that Cortana is explaining any of this. At least, not right now.

Cortana looks downward, watery eyes focused on nothing. "In a sense." It took everything she had. "But as long as a single spore remains, he can come back."

Her hands ball into fists and she makes a little angry noise, because she could have done it, she could have wiped the galaxy clean of every last piece of that filth, she'd had the power...

And she'd wasted it instead.

[worthallthis]

He looks at her warily, sidelong, at the fist against his arm. "In a sense," he repeats. Then, after a pause, "What happened?" Hell, maybe they can use that knowledge here... somehow.

Nevermind that destroying the world to get rid of the entities isn't an option. He doesn't know that's the requirement, here, if that would not even work, if they're extra-planar. But she did seem to want to talk about it either way, so he's going to ask.

[failedpromise]

"I stayed behind on an enemy base during a mission. I thought I'd be safe -- all we knew then was that the Flood was a sickness that infected organic life and the Gravemind was some sort of intelligence that came from it -- I wasn't even corporeal, it shouldn't have been able to do anything to me!" An outburst Winter probably wasn't expecting, but he did ask what happened.

[worthallthis]

He does flinch a little at the near-yell, but doesn't pull away, either, keeping his hand on her fist against his arm. He asked for this. He's just going to brace himself for emotions. He can do this.

"It. Did do something to you?" he guesses, because whenever you say shouldn't have clearly it means it did, anyway.

cw: extreme distress, mention of nonsexual violation

[failedpromise]

His flinching seems to bring her out of her rage just a little, just enough for a flash of guilt to cross her features. She unclenches the fist against his arm.

"It..." She closes her eyes, struggling to continue. "He..." Her nonexistent stomach lurches, twisting itself into knots. She's stuck somewhere between sobbing and retching as she remembers the skin crawling closeness of being trapped with that thing. The next words are barely above a whisper.

"...he violated me."

Re: cw: extreme distress, mention of nonsexual violation

[worthallthis]

Winter has no idea what that means. Or rather, he has like six different ideas of what that could mean, though most of them don't apply to a bodiless AI. Which just means his brain comes up with six more different ideas that could apply to a bodiless AI.

He wants to punch something. There's nothing to punch, and it would probably alarm Cortana anyway. His voice is flat when he says, "You killed it. Him. Right? So you were safe?"

[failedpromise]

"The Chief rescued me and we worked together to blow him up and fire a superweapon capable of destroying all life in a radius of several light years on everything that remained. The Gravemind is a result of a disease called the Flood accumulating sufficient biomass to become intelligent, so it was important to make sure no infected survived." Not that the infected are really alive anymore, per se. It doesn't take long to make people into zombies.

...Not that she's. Actually explained that.

"It took the Chief over a month to save me. Do you know how long that is for an AI?"

[worthallthis]

Yeah, Winter doesn't really like that a lot. But he also knows he's lacking in a whole shit-ton of details, and also that isn't this universe. There's nothing he can do about it, and it's not like Cortana can do it again here. Or shows any sign of wanting to.

"Probably a very long time," he says. Even for a human(-ish) person, a whole month can be a long time. He can imagine a lot of terrible things that can, and frankly probably did, happen to him over the span of a month with HYDRA. "The Chief did come for you. He got you out."

[failedpromise]

Perhaps at some point she'll explain it to him. Or he can consider that the thing is called the Gravemind and put two and two together.

"Oh it's a long time, alright." Especially considering Smart AI have such short lifespans.

"But you're right, he did get me." She's halfway between smiling and tearing up again at the memory. "Even though his superiors didn't want him to."