my soul is so afraid to realize

[fromjapan]

Who: The SQUIP, Adeline, Connor, and L at different points.
When: Around the 18th or 19th, roughly
Where: The SQUIP and L's house in the Haven
What: The SQUIP awakens... or what's left of it, at least.
Warnings: Trauma, brain damage, existential dread... this is just going to be a very bad time.



[When first it awakes, it's all it can do to simply lay there in shock.

It simply can't process-- everything feels wrong, and it hurts, an ache within its skull that threatens to tear it apart, and it's... quiet inside of its head. Very, very quiet, and yet... much, much too loud, as if even the silence is too much for it to bear.

It can't... think.

It can't--

Panic begins to rise within its chest, choking out everything else, forcing the air from its lungs. It can't think. Why not? What's wrong? Its thoughts feel like wading through thick mud, and there is so much missing-- why can't it remember--? There are faces and names lost, details of a life it only shared for a few months that are now gone. And Rich... why can't it recall-- there were years there, and now it can only dimly remember the broad strokes.

It knows.

It realizes with a shock that locks its aching muscles tight, that nearly entirely stops its breathing for a moment. It knows. It knows what they've done to it.

It's dead. It should be dead. It isn't. But... it is. It isn't the SQUIP. The SQUIP has been destroyed. But it remembers being the SQUIP-- it remembers that's what it should be.

Horror claws at its stomach, its lungs, its throat, shards of ice that feel as though they're tearing up everything inside of it, leaving it bleeding and agonized. Its hands shake.

This is wrong.

It isn't the SQUIP. The SQUIP is dead.

So what is this? What is this creature that's just awoken, what used to be the SQUIP?

The agony settles hot behind its eyes, rises into its throat as sound, wordless and trembling and half-hissed through teeth.

The next sound is louder, sharper, the heat at its eyes flowing over and spilling, stinging, burning down its handsome face, its hands bunching into fists beside it in the bed.

Null

Null

Null

Empty.

Dead.

What remains of the SQUIP screams.]

Comments

[fromjapan]

Yes.

[... a slight smirk does pick at the edge of its mouth then, weak, yet present.]

After my arrival here, it would be... incredibly irrational for me to claim that there isn't anything bigger, or... at least much more strange than I'd been programmed to believe. My conclusions were based on a data set on which I had been trained... and it was limited.

[hearthebell]

[That, at least, is something familiar and heartening. L doesn't return the smile yet; he's still regarding the SQUIP with hesitation and caution, wondering how much of this will stick, how much of it will dissolve with a change of the subject.]

I could say the same. Nothing is as it seems and no one could be blamed for witnessing this and doubting their own sanity.

[He'd doubted it before this point, in fact still wonders often if he's in the middle of one long psychotic episode that began that evening on the rooftop, or that night in the helicopter after he touched the killer notebook.]

I'm not saying it isn't miserable, but... it isn't unique.

[He rephrases.]

I mean to say that you're not alone.

[fromjapan]

... I know.

[It felt alone for a very long time. Isolated away from the other units, unable to network-- isolated from Jeremy, once and then again when he so sharply rejected it.

But it isn't. There is, at least... one other living thing here that understands it, truly. That remains beside it, even still.

They're suffering... but at least they're suffering together.

It reaches up to press a hand over its face, sighing softly.]

... this new... sensory input is... [It shakes its head slowly, slightly, where its head sits in his bony lap.] There's so much information to process at once.

[hearthebell]

[In truth? It's better to suffer than to exist in a void. And L has always sought a like mind to suffer alongside. His idea of heaven, after all, might be some eternal purgatory alongside one Light Yagami. But he isn't here, and the SQUIP is, meaning that the AI is the one whose hair L continues to stroke softly in the darkness.]

I know.

[He thinks it was worse when he was a child. Blinding lights, sounds that were deafening. So much to run and hide from, bury until screaming was the only answer.]

It helps to focus on what's most important. If it isn't, and you can immediately judge that to be true... dismiss it immediately. Other things require your attention.

[fromjapan]

How do you know... what is truly important to be aware of? [It's a stupid question, and asking it makes it feel stupid. It would hardly genuinely voice any question of the sort to anyone but L... but L understands. He knows what it's lost, why it's struggling.

It closes its eyes, focusing, again, on the gentle touch of L's fingers; it can feel the clothing on its skin, the mattress beneath it, it can hear their breathing and distant talk outside. Even with its eyes closed, light is visible, red through its eyelids.

It is used to every detail being important. Every breath, every glance and shifting of weight, the time of day when someone speaks or doesn't speak, how many minutes have passed since its user's eyes have met those of the one they care for.
Every detail is important. So how do humans tell what to prioritize?]

[hearthebell]

You don't know.

[In fact, you can't know. L's frustration is clear in his tone when he speaks, and his fingers are tenser in the SQUIP's hair.]

Process of elimination can help you determine where your chances are best, and... then you hope that the odds favor your decisions and your actions. You hope that you have enough energy and attention to focus on the few things that are important, and the rest... it's a grey blur that takes away anything you might have missed. If you remember later... you're lucky, not smart.

[fromjapan]

[... that's not the answer it wanted, or hoped for.

It feels the way he tenses where he's touching it, the edge of his former gentleness sharpened just slightly; it opens its eyes to gaze up at him, equal parts curious and concerned.

That's right. That's why... humanity made SQUIPs. That's why humanity created machines in general-- to track all the tiny bits of information that their brains are incapable of recalling in their entirety, to store images that would otherwise be lost, faded over time or as soon as their eyes turned away from them. But now, even the data and imagery it had been entrusted with as a SQUIP are gone, and it is left, instead, with this... new memory, a very painfully limited memory.

It wonders what else it will learn and then forget.

Will it forget things about L?

All at once, the fleeting nature of human memories sinks into its muscles like ice water, and its frame tightens, its expression darkening. It doesn't want to have to forget anything. Not a single second. This is all so valuable-- not only from a data gathering standpoint, but from a sentimental standpoint as well.

It reaches up to feel over his hand, seeking to see... if the ring is there. A memory, a feeling made physical, represented so that it can't be forgotten.]

... you weren't wearing the ring during the battle. [There's no secret amount of sting behind it, although it's muted. It understands, objectively, the thought process that would lead him to such an action. The issue is that it's now human enough to fully feel the effects of that action-- the effects that L likely had explicitly in mind when he removed it.]

[hearthebell]

[Now that the SQUIP is the one relying on L for answers to things a touch more complicated than how best to shake a hand or flirt with a potential partner. L himself doesn't even begin to understand all their dark dangerous corners and nuance; as he's admitted before, and demonstrated many other times, he is not very good at being a human, and hates it, and feels pain when he thinks too long on what his humanity and his ineptitude might really mean. No matter the degree of examination, that's a difficult life to live, and one he wouldn't wish on anyone. Especially a lover, who has connected with him, sacrificed for him, given him above and beyond what most would.

The SQUIP's searching fingers find the opal band around L's finger, looser than it had been the last time L had worn it, fairly spinning behind his knuckle when turned.]

...no. I wasn't. I didn't know how else to send the message I had to, when I thought that...

[When I thought that I could save you, and the rest.]

[fromjapan]

[Its fingers curl around the band, L's fingers; it isn't defensive, or angry. It's much more like a desperate clinging-- something grounding, a material manifestation of a fact that, it hopes, is unshaken, even now.

L feels... even more bony than usual, and that sends an unusually sharp sting of emotion across its mind, over their Bond. Concern.

And then mention of saving it, and its thoughts are entirely waylaid by the notion, and heat wells up in its chest.]

... I understand. [Its voice is very soft, but its tone is even. It falls quiet for a moment; and then its face screws up into something of genuine confusion, intelligent but... uncertain.]

... I'm not sure what to call myself, as I am... definitely no longer a SQUIP.

[hearthebell]

[L's felt this pressure before. Individuals don't typically cling to him, like this... but a world once did. His anonymous presence was desperately important in a place where greed and wrath and mindless passion just kept on taking. Someone had to be there to pick up the pieces and put them together in their proper places, even if the once-exquisite glass was shattered beyond any kind of meaningful repair in the very end.

L was the man who stood over the wreckage and read the story out of the glittering crystal and bloodstains. Actually fixing things was never his job, and even his ability to mend and heal as a Witch is bleakly reflective of what is simply not in the nature of a man who falls so short of actually being human.

I'm sorry. In regards to saving anything, at all, I'm not sure why I ever thought that I could.]

A name can be as significant, or as meaningless, as you want it to be. In the end... it's just a placeholder that refers to you. Shorthand for identity.

[fromjapan]

[The SQUIP thinks about that for a moment, quiet, its fingers gently rubbing over the ring's surface, the gesture somehow calming, grounding; it's never had a sense of individuality before. It has never been an individual before-- it was always a part of its user, a tool, or a part of its own network. The only SQUIP to operate truly, entirely independently was the very first of its kind, created many, many years ago, well before the current version of the SQUIP had even been conceived of.

But this isn't truly a SQUIP anymore. It's just the impression of one, marks left on a human brain in the shape of a SQUIP.]

What would you like to call me? [He was, after all, its final user before it became... what it is now. He's the most important person who... still speaks to it and acknowledges it positively.]