#should i tag sola? i kinda doubt i’ll ever need to use that tag again LMAO

[even-disco-baby]

SOLA — Her Innocence, Sola— the anti-innocence— turns to face you. In the distance, you hear the tattoo of propellers, turning, sucking all the air. A strong wind whips her long, dark hair around her face. Her simple black gown billows behind her. The same gown she wore the day she resigned.

She has your eyes.

“Hi, Kim,” she says simply. “You don’t look well.”

PAIN THRESHOLD — Her voice is so familiar, and yet the moment she stops speaking, you cannot recall its sound, no matter how hard you try. And you have tried. Innumerable times.

AUTHORITY — What makes her think she would even *know* the difference between you looking well or unwell? She’s being presumptuous. She doesn’t even know you.

INLAND EMPIRE — She never will.

“I’m doing great, actually. Never been better.”

“Hey, I’m trying my best.”

“I’m *not* well. I’m so fucking unwell. I can’t take it anymore. Please, help me…”

“I’ll live.”

SOLA — “Hm…” She smiles apologetically. “Well, that’s all we can really ask for anymore, isn’t it?”

EMPATHY — She wishes more than anything that this was not the case. That you could ask for the world and have it.

RHETORIC — She tried to give it to you, and this is how you repay her? You’re gonna be in *deep* shit trying to explain that insignia you stitched onto her jacket.

“Um, about the jacket. It’s not what it… well, no, it *is* what it looks like. But I don’t— it’s— there’s nuance.”

“Is that really all you have to say to me?”

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Where are you going?”

SOLA — Her Innocence looks away from you, toward the wind. “Away,” she says, her voice distant and strange. “Yes… I’m stepping down, you see. The world doesn’t need me. It never needed me, really. It’s best for humanity to think for itself. No… it already *does* think for itself.”

She turns back to you with a small smile. The thought brings her peace.

PAIN THRESHOLD — But what does it bring *you?* She’s leaving you forever. Abandoning you for lofty ideals.

AUTHORITY — Let her go. Let her see how little you care. Don’t give her any satisfaction.

HALF LIGHT — Stop her. You won’t be able to live without her.

VOLITION — You have already lived almost all your life without her. You don’t need her. You have *never* needed her.

“What if the world *does* need you? Who are you to make that decision for the entire world?”

“Fine. Go. It’s none of my business.”

“So you’re just going to leave me behind again.”

“Please, don’t go. *I* need you.”

SOLA — “What else is an Innocence appointed to do?” Her smile turns wry. “You see? This is why I’m stepping down.”

Distant propellers turn and turn in endless circles. She glances toward them.

YOU — “Fine. Go. It’s none of my business.”

SOLA — “I suppose not.” Her voice and her face betray nothing. No sign of remorse.

YOU — “So you’re just going to leave me behind again.”

SOLA — “That was never my intention,” she says softly. “Surely you know that.”

INLAND EMPIRE — You will never truly know. No one will.

SOLA — She stares out at the horizon through the tendrils of hair that almost seem to threaten to swallow her. Her expression is strange and ambiguous, shifting every time you try and look directly at it.

YOU — “Please, don’t go. *I* need you.”

SOLA — She looks at you, and her eyes are full of what might be genuine sadness. But they could also be full of anything else.

“Oh, Kim… You must make do with what you have. I don’t know what else you want me to say…”

RHETORIC — What?! There are a million other things she could say! Forty-one years worth of possibilities! She could say *anything!* Anything at all… Even if she’d only left you a single word, it would be better than this…

VOLITION — It’s pointless to wish. Please, no more of this. It’s too sad.

“You could say that you’re sorry.”

“Say that I turned out all right.”

“Say that you’re proud of me. That you love me.”

SOLA — “Then I’m sorry.” She closes her eyes. “It was terrible of us to leave you alone.”

Her voice is utterly calm and emotionless.

PAIN THRESHOLD — No… Wrong, all wrong…

YOU — “Say that I turned out all right.”

SOLA — “You’re a good man despite it all. That is all I ever hoped for you.”

Again, there is no warmth to her words. No conviction.

VOLITION — Lieutenant… Please, don’t do this to yourself.

YOU — “Say that you’re proud of me. That you love me.”

SOLA — “I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished. You wear that jacket well.”

Her eyes have nothing behind them. A pair of two millimeter holes in the world.

“I love you.”

PAIN THRESHOLD — Your lungs seem to constrict at her words. Your chest hurts more than it’s ever hurt. This wind is hard to breathe in.

YOU — “No! Don’t you fucking get it?! You don’t love me!”

SOLA — “Then I don’t love you.”

YOU — “You should be *ashamed* of me!”

SOLA — “Then I am ashamed.”

YOU — “I betrayed you! I betrayed everything you stood for! I’m a fucking cop!”

SOLA — “Then I am betrayed.”

She proclaims it as dispassionately as she proclaimed her love.

YOU — “For god’s sake, *say something real!*”

SOLA — She just looks at you. The propellers keep on turning.

DRAMA — She can’t speak for herself, sire…

LOGIC — Of course she can’t. Of course…

PAIN THRESHOLD — Your lungs feel like they could collapse. Empty, crumpled, dark. Hot tears prick your eyes for the first time in what feels like a long time.

SOLA — “Do you understand now?” she asks gently.

LOGIC — She cannot speak for herself because you do not know what she would say.

There are many memories that you have been slowly recovering, little by little. Your mother will never be one of them. Her, the revolution, the aerostatic brigade— they all died before you could even comprehend loss.

AUTHORITY — You did not become a detective so that you could find your lost mother. You became a police officer because you did not want to end up like her.

VOLITION — She can neither forgive you, nor condemn you. She is dead, Lieutenant. She can only be what you make her.

RHETORIC — You’re asking your own echo for answers…

SOLA — “Humanity must think for itself,” she says again, turning again toward the wind. “What point is there in asking me where to go from here? I’m a failure. We all failed…”

RHETORIC — The revolutionaries failed their children, and the children are failing their parents, and all of them are dying, dying, dead… What’s the point in any of this anymore? I cannot argue in favor of any of it.

VOLITION — There is a point. There is a way forward. But you won’t find it here, Lieutenant.

“I hate you. You made me everything I am and then you just *left.*”

“I miss you… How is it even possible to miss someone you never met? It’s like someone ripped a part of me out and all I can do is bleed.”

“I don’t know what I am. I need you to tell me what I am.”

SOLA — One last time, she turns back to you. She slowly bridges the gap between you and reaches out a hand to cup your cheek. Her fingers feel like your own.

“You are whatever kind of animal you choose to be,” she says, so quietly that you don’t know how you can hear it over the distant roar of engines. “I cannot make that choice for you.”

EMPATHY — She died hoping that you would grow up with the freedom to choose to be whatever you wanted. Instead, the world that raised you hardly let you dare to want anything.

VOLITION — But you can still make a choice. Humanity can still think for itself.

#disco elysium #kim kitsuragi #swap au #should i tag sola? i kinda doubt i’ll ever need to use that tag again LMAO #anyway um. yeah. #tbh as fun as the swap au stuff is i wasn’t all that interested in it until my brain was like. SWAP DREAM SEQUENCE #and now suddenly i have like. lore for swap kim. #his breakdown isn’t bc of a breakup it’s over a crisis of identity #at first when he wakes up and starts inspecting stuff like his jacket and his notes #he starts finding out things abt his mother (a revolutionary aerostatic pilot who died and passed down the jacket to him) #and at first he’s like ohh i see im investigating her disappearance! #but he’s not. she’s dead. she died when the moralintern crushed the commune #kim grew up resenting both his parents for dying in a failed revolution #leaving him to grow up alone as a gay disabled seolite orphan #he became a cop and drank the moralist koolaid bc he didn’t want to be like his parents #and also bc he wanted to not be so powerless (and to be able to take shit out on other ppl just like canon kim) #but also just like in canon his experience in the rcm was just more of the same shit #he felt constantly humiliated and like a hypocrite and just compartmentalized hardcore #then he came to martinaise and saw the scars of the failed revolution and finally just snapped and broke down #he doesn’t even know what kind of animal he is other than he doesn’t want to be it anymore #so he pulls harry’s epic mind wipe binge and etc etc #anyway. coughs