Indifference Impossibility

"So, you know that we're out there, swatting lies in the making. You cannot move fast without breaking…you can't hold on or life won't change."

In the silence of the prison, now devoid of the children led on by Yaldabaoth, the sound of her book closing echoed off the walls. Slim fingers ran over the cover as she stood aside her recovering Master. The damage that the God, the Beast, had done to Igor had been substantial. Lavenza could still see his eyes droops every once in a while, his thin limbs seeming even more fragile than usual. It almost send a pang of guilt through her. She had been hurt by the attack on the Velvet Room and torn apart but at the same time, she could not give way to ignorance of what 'she' had done.

What 'they' had done.

Justine and Caroline had assisted Yaldabaoth in tricking the children, keeping the truth of the Velvet Room locked up, and piloting the world to what the beast would have them believe to be the final end. It had only been by the virtue of the Hero that the Beast had not used what was left of the golden haired girl to sail humanity to his biased conclusion. With Igor safely out of sight, the now fallen God had expertly weaved her and her abilities into his plan so that he could manipulate fate. The manipulator, using her to manipulate them.

Still, guilt was not something that Lavenza was used to feeling. Igor had once told her that the Velvet Room had a responsibility to those blessed enough to cut through the veil and grasp the skill of the Wild Card. Perhaps, she mused, this was why she so constantly found herself thinking about what had happened. Perhaps this was why she felt this unfamiliar tug at her heart when Yaldabaoth manifested himself in her memories. He had hijacked their dedication to these special people and used it for his own destructive purposes.

They could've been saved. All of these children, these Persona users, they all could've been saved. None of them had to suffer like this…her grip on her book tightened as her brow furrowed. From day one, the Beast had been controlling their destiny and driving them down the path of their own destruction. She had helped him do so. She had taken a baton in each of her new hands to slam violently towards the kings in Yaldabaoth's chess game, instructing these misled user down a path that she internally was screaming to avoid.

Lavenza's eyes squeezed shut. She wasn't used to feeling these rushes of emotion. She wasn't made like Morgana, existing from the pure emotion of hope. Lavenza existed like her brothers and sisters did, brought into existence by Igor to serve a purpose of assistance. Just like those before her, she was created as a doll with a personality and great power. But a doll with an external personality did not necessarily entail the kind of emotions she now felt…emotions so strong and conflicting that she had always been so sure were exclusive to human beings.

"Lavenza."

She jerked to attention, turning to her thoughtful master. Igor was still pale and ill from the encounters with Yaldabaoth yet somewhere retained his sharp posture and mysterious aura. Quickly she curtsied to the elderly man, who simply chuckled in response and waved off her actions with one gloved hand. Confused, the young attendant held her book close to her heart—lately, it had been oddly comforting.

"Do you remember your sisters and your brother?" He asked. Her eyes widened slightly; what an odd question. But she knew the master always had a direction he was going so she nodded compliantly. "Ah yes…Elizabeth, Margaret, Theodore…previous attendants who did me so well in times of need. Lavenza, could you solve the riddle that I have for you?"

"I can only try to the extent of my power, Master." Lavenza replied immediately. Igor chuckled, almost knowingly, and placed his gloved hands underneath his elongated nose and closed his eyes.

"Why do I have so many attendants, Lavenza?"

"Because we are needed to assist you, Master."

"That is not quite the right answer, Lavenza. After all, just one of you can handle all the tasks of the Velvet Room. Why would I need four of you when I would only need one?" Lavenza paused; her master raised a good point. It was not as if a single attendant did not have the power to cover the position. "Four of you I have made, yet only one of you is here. Why do you think that is?"

"I…I can only assume you have tasked them to elsewhere, Master." Lavenza replied, voice breaking for the first time. The direction of this conversation was unfamiliar, almost intimidating. Igor had never spoken to her like this before. "There are, doubtlessly, dilemmas of our concern to be addressed elsewhere than in this room alone."

Igor chuckled; the sound was almost affectionate. "Dear, dear Lavenza. Every time I make a new one of you, they start off with this same kind of confusion. Dolls with personalities and powers drawn from the sea of the human consciousness, born at the age they are and unable to be anything else…or so I thought, when I originally made the first. Yet dear little Elizabeth is no longer with us."

"Elizabeth is deceased?"

"Elizabeth is elsewhere. She found something out about herself." Igor closed his eyes, as if remembering memories of decades past. "Lavenza, with my first doll, I learned something interesting. You are a personality as I craft you, but once you are born you will inevitably run into the real world. You will run into those who you guide, and you will inevitably begin to experience emotion that you previously could've never known. Fear, anger, love, even…guilt."

"…Master." Lavenza looked away shamefully.

"Why do you look away from me, child? I've come to realize that all of my creations will eventually begin to experience such things." Igor sighed. "In a way you are all like my children, really. And I am the weary parent who must watch you all experience new things and try to make your new sense of it. Even when to make sense of these experiences and emotions, you must run through a complex maze."

"I don't know how to stop feeling it, Master." Lavenza said quietly. It was no use hiding it anymore. "I get this sensation of my heart squeezing in on itself, only to remember I do not truly have a heart. I feel this nausea in my stomach, yet it cannot be since I do not truly have a stomach. I can feel the blood pounding in my veins as I watch the Hero rise to the challenge, and yet that cannot be for I do not have veins. I am a doll, Master, and I exist to serve a purpose to others. Yet I have these dark emotions that I cannot comprehend the source of."

Igor was silent for a moment, hand descending to tap carefully against the table in a rhythmic pattern. In the back of her mind Lavenza considered the man's words. Elizabeth had 'learned' something about herself and she had left. Goosebumps crawled over her skin; would this be the final guillotine? Would she be cast out of the Velvet Room for these usual thoughts? She had not seen her sisters and brother for a long time. Perhaps they…

"Please do not be ridiculous, Lavenza. You will always be welcome in the Velvet Room. You are a resident here. As are all your siblings." Igor said absentmindedly. "But you are so confused right now. We don't have any guests at the moment, so perhaps I could give you an assignment to take your mind off this…"

"An assignment?" Relief flooded into the blonde girl.

"Yes. To fix the mistakes of the Velvet Room." Igor shook his head. "Our run in with this Yaldabaoth character was significantly damaging to our purpose. The fact that we allowed not one, but two guests to be manipulated by imitations of ourselves is simply not acceptable. It is our purpose to help these humans work against such forces, not to help external forces manipulate them. They are simply too valuable to be given away with such ease."

"What shall we do then, Master?"

Igor raised his hands, clapping twice. The feel of a presence hit Lavenza like a ton of bricks. Her hair flung back and forth as she looked around with wide, confused yellow eyes. It was an unusual power—extraordinarily powerful, yet dull and unmotivated. Like a dead man walking. Turning on her heels to face the door once behind her, the answer to Lavenza's questions were answered with shimmering blue prison bars.

He hadn't been there before, that was for certain. Light brown hair lay against brick wall, looking erratic and unwashed—untrimmed bangs blocked out dark and empty eyes. The teenager's body was limp in the ripped up uniform. With the levels of dirt and blood that had accumulated on the surface, it was almost impossible to tell that the uniform had once been a crisp white. The gold baubles across the breast seemed to be almost rusted over to a red color. In the far back of the cell, Lavenza could see a dark red mask with a long beak. It had been broken in half.

"Master, this is…"

"Goro Akechi."

"But Master, he…" Lavenza paused to try and tie her thoughts together. Sometimes it was hard to piece together all the memories from when she had been two. "…he was killed. In Masayoshi Shido's Palace by….himself. More precisely, by Shido's cognition of him."

"Lavenza, when one dies, where do they go?"

She was thrown off by the question. "When they die? Their spirit dies out and becomes part of the world around them. Becomes part of the soil, grows the grass, fertilizes the hope for a new life."

"And how does a spirit do this when they are not in that world?"

Lavenza paused.

"When one physically dies in that world, they either come here or they drop out into the reality beyond the Velvet Room." Igor said. Lavenza felt that squeezing sensation at that not-quite-there heart again. "It is rare for people to die in that world, at least physically. It is a land of Shadows and Cognitions. The sea of the human consciousness is not equipped to deal with actual physical death so it sends the living to back where they can die…or to us."

"Why to us?" Lavenza voice was quiet, as if she was almost afraid of her question. Igor extended a hand out to the brunette in the cage; Akechi flinched violently in response. "M-Master?"

"They will come to us…" Igor said slowly. "…when the Velvet Room has made a serious miscalculation. They will come to us when they still have a service from us that that they need, or a service that we need from them. And I believe that in this case it may very well be both. I've always wondered if we could make use of a contract with someone who resides both outside of and within the Velvet Room…"

Lavenza stood uncertainly in front of the cage, its prisoner now hissing in pain and beginning to writhe like a wounded animal. Reaching out to touch her hands against the bars, she was surprised to see them dissolve in front of her eyes. Igor watched the girl carefully from behind as she approached the bleeding and confused boy. He snapped his eyes up to stare at her—a dark red gaze from a face that she now realized was covered in blood. Still she did not flinch; she was an attendant of the Velvet Room. She had no time for indecision. Only to guide, only to learn.

She offered her hand. He stared at it like he didn't comprehend it.

"Goro Akechi." She stated, her voice clear and confident. Somehow she couldn't help but feel that this was the right path; her words flowed out of her like smooth butter. "I am Lavenza of the Velvet Room. I seek your hand of assistance. You, the child misled, can still go down the path of rehabilitation if you contract yourself with us. Become one with us, and prevent this from happening again."

"Contract…?" His voice was hoarse, out of use.

"Yes. Swear your temporary allegiance to us and help us against those who would misuse the Velvet Room." Igor interrupted. Lavenza still had her hand withheld. "In exchange, we can grant you the right to continue living and rectify that which you have been misled to do."

"Living…has done nothing for me…" Akechi spat, blood splattering out with a cough. "Why would I want to…"

"For them."

Lavenza was surprised for a moment to hear the words coming out of her mouth. For them. She had not even intended it, but once she had said it, she realized it was exactly what she had wanted. To protect them. Those people who had fought so hard to keep life from dying out, those people who had surprised the world so much, those people that had saved her and unlatched the bonds on the boy before them. She could feel that squeezing sensation at her heart—her guilt. She could feel that nausea in her stomach—her uncertainty. She could even feel that sensation of blood pounding through her veins and in her ears—her exhilaration for the rectification of both her mistakes and the mistakes of the boy in front of her.

The boy whose bloody, dirty hand clasped into hers.

"The contract is sealed. Lavenza shall be your guide."

Blue flame ran down from her fingers across his. Whorls of thick blue curved over the white fabric, previously red cuffs bleeding into a dark black color to match the new color. Previously white pants darkened into formal black slacks. The red mask behind Akechi burst into flames and faded away just as quickly; across his face burned the shape of a blue butterfly, settling across his cheekbones and curving over his light brown hair and dark red eyes. The base of the abdomen curved elegantly over his nose, sharp metal antennae curving down against the wing in a U pattern.

He stood, far taller than the young girl, gazing down at her with some modicum of distaste. Lavenza realized that, to some amount, she shared that distaste. That she was sharing a feeling that she had thought exclusive to human beings, that was not the domain or business of a doll. She closed her eyes—maybe, in some way, Yaldabaoth hadn't entirely wronged her.

If he had, then she wouldn't be able to share the exhilaration and hope that reflected under the ex-detective's expression of distaste.

She closed her eyes with a smile.

"This place is tightly bound to your fate. Nothing here happens without a reason, no feeling is felt meaninglessly….welcome to the Velvet Room. I…am Lavenza."