(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

[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."

[worthallthis]

There are some things Winter is good at putting together. This may not be one of them. After all, names come from weird places; he has no idea his call-sign actually came from a poem, after all.

He is, however, also good at not thinking about something if he needs to, which is what he's going to do right now. It's not important. "Defied orders to rescue you, huh?" Sounds familiar. He's pretty sure Steve did that, for him. "That doesn't seem much like the bus, though. Or did the. Gravemind. Do that thing with controlling you that the bus did?"

[failedpromise]

Well, Winter might not be good at putting together the death themed name with Cortana's absolute terror of zombies, but he's doing quite well with the rest of it. Got it in one, buddy! Though the sharp intake of breath and way she draws in on herself in response to the question probably aren't remotely satisfying, given the circumstances.

"He took my voice, near the end." She looks anywhere but Winter. "I was too close to death to stop him. Guess he finally got tired of me insulting him." She tries to sound triumphant about the last bit, but her voice starts to break.

[worthallthis]

All he had to do was extrapolate. And draw on his own experiences, for that matter. His mouth makes a flat line, but his hand on hers through his arm is still careful. "You know. They used to muzzle me sometimes. HYDRA. Nobody likes their toys being able to speak too much, I guess." The mask he uses on missions with ADI is easier to speak through, and more comfortable, but these days he hasn't even been using it all that often.

"But you got your voice back. Got all of you back. Because the Chief came for you."

[failedpromise]

"Not all of me."

How does she even explain the breakdown of body and mind, the agony that tormented her for years, mortal injuries that killed in slow motion?

She's quiet.

[worthallthis]

He's silent a moment, too. She might not have to explain, really. He's not whole, himself. He might never be. She doesn't know about the Words, and what he knows they do to him, because nobody knows except Kate, Yelena, and Steve. And it's probably not the same, she was never human and different things can certainly be used to torture an AI than a human, but maybe it's... congruent.

He stops walking, instead, and turns towards her. "Cortana. May I hug you." It helped Yelena. It even felt nice, then. Maybe it will help her, too.

[failedpromise]

Winter probably understands better than most people, a fact that is more distressing than comforting -- she doesn't want her friend to have been hurt like that.

Still, when he offers the hug she tries to smile. "I think I'd like that."

[worthallthis]

It's not the same as in the library, the positioning is all different, and he thinks he's recovered enough now that he'll be okay. It might not be as easy as it was with Yelena, but he can do it. He opens his arms to tuck them around her, pulling her gently up against his chest.

[failedpromise]

At least this time, she doesn't start to wail. Instead she just rests against his chest and - very loosely, very carefully - attempts to hug him back.