The Second Commission [on going]

Chapter 2 - Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope

"Marie," you called softly into the phone, she was an anchor, a piece of reality. She existed out there where time and seasons moved. Real life.
"Hey bean, how are you doing?"
"Ah, you know? It's the same old thing. Enjoying my super fun supervised internet time," you smiled brightly up at the attendant hovering. She made no motion to acknowledge you. You sometimes entertained the idea of 'accidentally' opening a porn page just to see some emotion from the robotics operatives... you'd probably lose the one hour you felt alive a week. But would it be worth it—just to know you could still wreak havoc?
You sat with your knees up on the computer chair. There were four others enjoying their internet time, all chatting quietly; remembering who they were. It was hard to move your voice up any octave, sometimes it felt like you were talking underwater. Monotone was all you could pull off.
"Oh, how exciting~! Have you been able to draw anything yet?"
"Eh, everything falls flat, all I have is charcoal. Too brittle to stab anyone with and nontoxic so I can't, you know, hurt myself either—Think I could pull it off eating enough paper though." You gained the eye of the supervisor. An 'innocent' grin peeled over you. Your smile had become sinister to look at, you had tried to pull one in the mirror just to see if you could anymore and scared yourself with it. You wanted to tell her to lighten up, but last time you did, you lost your phone call.
"Oo, that place really is making you dark, huh?"
"I have no idea what you mean~" you smirked and opened your emails like you did every week. You skimmed your job offers, had to postpone the good ones. But you couldn't give them any kind of concrete dates. You had until the clergy's cheque ran out, and even then, your affairs were in your dad's hands now. He could simply start paying for your time here without you knowing. As it was, you were at the mercy of him and the hospital. "What's going on out there?" You asked as if she were sitting at a window you were too short to see out of.
"World's pretty shitty at the moment, Bean, I'm sure if I told you about it you'd want out so you could march on capitalism all by yourself."
"Mmm, probably right. But could you imagine me uncaged right now?"
Her laugh was bittersweet, "you're our last line of defence my sweet bean, you need to be ready for the call so you focus on you for now."
"Ew, you're not supposed to make it cute," you grimaced with fondness. "Just let me out like some unhinged Tasmanian devil and I'll, I donno, one person army a troop of fascists."
"Rah, rah, unhinged bean, lover of the... lightning Macqueen..(?)"
"Might be a reason why we're in art and not music, huh?"
"I mean, it started off well," She sulked.
"Eh, I'll give you that. How did that virtual date go, With that girl from Korea?" Your mouse hovered an email. You became stock still.
"Nice actually, she was very sweet, she wanted to do a little collaboration piece as like a way of getting to know each other."
You were quietly still hovering the email. "Collab, huh, you two serious then~? That's very cute."
"What's wrong? Your voice is doing that spacey thing again... they didn't put you on that stuff again did they?"
"Nope... no... He is just doing the macarena."
"Way to throw me under the fucking bus, Pittore, I wasn't even doing anything... What are you looking...? Ah. It's from Papa Emeritus the fourth, who the fuck? The audacity. Oh, it's got to be Copia." He then fell into a fit of laughter. "He never, never, wanted that job. Oof, that fucking sucks for him." He spoke as if that was news, it wasn't news. Perhaps he was locked off from the parts of your brain that hid those moments at the cathedral.
"I'm sorry, Bean."
"Hey, we don't get to decide how our body deals with trauma. I get a dancing antipope..."
"And I get agoraphobia," she sighed softly. You imagined her looking around her apartment tiny outer city—maybe you were both caged.
"We'll get there in the end, Marie, little steps." You stared at the email. Were you going to open it? Would ignoring it help? Or would facing your fear change things? Would Copia confirm the drug haze or—you swallowed. Would he make it real again? What did you want more?
It said 'Papa Emeritus IV'—did this confirm there was a Papa three? Was the email even real? You massaged your head and ears, trying to fight the low tuning fork hum that had entered your right ear. You hadn't seen that hum for months... it didn't fucking bode well.
"That doctor still peddling family to you?"
"Yeah, if your mental health is fucked, use the ol'slap a child on it manuver." You chuckled.
The attendant cleared her throat behind you and you sighed.
You forgot comedy was illegal here.
"Pittore, I know your whole thing right now is to go against everything I say... so don't click it. It would be super duper fucking bad if you clicked that button. Really bad."
You closed your eyes, steeling yourself from scowling at nothing. Imagine creating a fictional character just to reverse psychology yourself into clicking a thing? A thing you couldn't believe was real?
"That's... Freudian as fuck. I've been looking at other hospital retreats for you. Have you thought about going outside the country?"
"I don't really think much of anything," you confessed. "Some place with a nice beach?" You wondered out loud. In the corner of your screen you saw you only had ten minutes left of computer time. You couldn't live without knowing anymore. You clicked the email.
"Yesssssss!" Terzo celebrated.
You couldn't help but give him an extremely blunt look.
"I mean, nooo, donttt... Pittore you're so fucking bad~"
You massaged your forehead again and looked back to the screen.
"There seems like a nice one in Tasmania, Australia," you could hear Marie clicking away on her end of the call.
"It's shaped like a vagina..." you murmured softly and felt your heart tug all the way to your gut. That had been Terzo's future, or at least the one you had laughed about together.
"Oh, you are sad. Hey, a mental hospital while hijacking a lover's brain isn't too bad. Gives me uh, fucking introspection." Terzo nodded to himself.
"Are you good, _____?"
"Yeah. Just something... we.. I..."
"Oh, I see, nope to Tasmania. It's a big world beanie, there is a place for you in it somewhere~ we will find it."
"There is a place for us both," you just had to be free first. You both had to be free. You grabbed your orange bottle and popped one of the pills.
"You know you could have just told me you needed space, ______... I—I'm sorry." And he was gone.
Did he.. or you.. have to guilt you like that? You cleared your head and read the email.