Unfettered Soul [Arlette, Antonetta]

Frustrating. That was the only word that was suitable to describe everything about this experience. Naturally, Arlette understood why this was all the way it was. She wouldn't tell the Vandenreich they ought to handle things any differently, but that didn't change how much extra work she had to go through to prepare to meet her sister.

Facing Eliane had been easy, in comparison. After all, Arlette understood perfectly well what Eliane was like, and she despised her other half in a way that managed to cut through her typical pragmatism. By contrast, Arlette cared for Antonetta, wanted her to be happy and to find some greater meaning than what they'd been made for. She and Wolfina were something far better than herself and Eliane had ever been, and that remained firmly in Arlette's mind as she entered the cell, her expression seeming at least somewhat lighter than normal despite the same plain face she always had.

"Antonetta. I'm sorry this is how we're talking again. My plans didn't work out."

There wasn't any point in trying to pretend something else was the case.

"I think they worked out just the way you intended."

She shot back from her bed. It was a boring cell which had little in the way of mental stimulation. Her eyes stayed on the wall though like it was more fascinating than seeing her older sister after however long it had been. The only people she had seen were Vandenreich personnel, little more in her eyes than trash, seeing someone that she perceived as betraying her was worse than people that were dismissed as worthless.

"You're out free, we were collared and caged. It seems like to me they worked out just fine. You and Eliane are just like each other."

Antonetta said to the wall in front of her. It wouldn't break from her words but she knew that she could get under her older sister's skin. She'd break if she poked the right spots.

"Hardly. If it had worked out the way I intended, you'd be living a quiet life with Wolfina here, without needing to worry about Claudia. I'd probably be dead. Eliane would definitely be dead."

The notion that she'd left them in that position hardly made Arlette happy, but she understood what Antonetta was like. She wasn't going to take this kind of bait so easily, even if the words did sting in no small measure. All that she could do was meet this kind of manipulation with honesty.

"I'm working to get you out. It's taking longer than I want, but it seems like things in Africa have held up a lot of my paperwork."

She didn't think it was worth mentioning that, all things considered, it was probably for the best that things had gone this way. They realistically would have still been in Africa otherwise, and being caught in that would have been far worse.

She tensed as Arlette explained what she wanted, a feeling of seething, what they thought was best for them. What they wanted. Antonetta hated it. Noble ideas, justified actions, selfish desires. That's all the two of them preached. They stained the glass to look pretty before tying it up in a cute bow.

"Whatever you say, Arlette. You know best after all."

It was delivered to sound a little mocking but her bitterness carried far more through it than anything. She had been her for weeks without any news, deprived of everything she enjoyed in favour for four walls. They spoke so badly of their mother but before either of their meddling she had far more freedoms to enjoy than this "looking out for her" that her older sisters were doing.

The bitterness that had bled through Antonetta's words was scathing, and if she were a less sturdy woman, she might have actively reeled back from it. Even as she was, she had to pause for a moment to collect herself, reorient her thoughts away from her emotional response to such a thing.

"What do you want, Antonetta? Tell me."

For all of her care, Arlette wasn't the type who had asked such a thing before. She knew that much was true. But the way she asked the question to Antonetta didn't come off as simply some gentle sort of question, the way a big sister would. It came off far more naturally for her, the tone of Arlette at her most fundamental. The voice of absolute pragmatism that Antonetta had heard countless times before.

"I don't want to be here. Around all of you."

She answered, in the way that Arlette would understand. A realistic answer that was achievable. It was devoid of idealism or dreams which she had sustained herself on all her life until everyone around her decided that they didn't like playing along.

"There's no point to being around either of you when you're both just like Mum. Selfish women that act like they know better, use people close to them however they want. I was stupid to trust either of you."

"I've never used you. You can insult me, but do it in a way that's honest."

Arlette was many things, but manipulative wasn't one of them. She was direct, brutally efficient, and that had always been true of her. The one point of pride she could ever take in herself was that she'd never been like Eliane, or like their supposed mother.

"You're my sister. If I saw you as a tool, I'd have left you there to keep someone else in her good graces. But I didn't, and I wouldn't."

"You did leave me there! You left us there."

She felt her anger boil over, rolling around to stumble to her feet and glare at Arlette. She advanced with every intention to force Arlette to step back until she was trapped between the wall and herself until light blue eyes could stare the taller woman down. It didn't matter how much taller Arlette might be compared to her, right now she was staring down a powerless mouse.

"You left us and deprived us of our freedoms to be treated like animals. You are the only free person here while we're all in the hands of your red haired friend. You might not think that you're using us but the only person here that's benefitted from any of this, Arlette, is you! So tell me, how are you not using us?"

Given her current state, Arlette wasn't capable of simply pushing back against her sister physically, but she doubted that she would have anyway, in this situation. Much as she would have preferred to simply tell Antonetta she was wrong, it was rather obvious why anyone would feel that way in her situation. Arlette, however, did not falter from meeting Antonetta's gaze with her own. Even if she was not a physical match for her younger sister, she still had her iron will.

"I left you, yes, but not to be used like some common surveillance tool. Do you think I'm free? I could barely even walk until recently, and the Vandenreich doesn't trust me. The paperwork to see you here was far from convenient to have pushed through."

Arlette hated this situation as much as Antonetta did, even if it was for different reasons. The agony of seeing it all through, and for what? Her sisters to hate her? She almost thought it was funny.

"We've always been treated like animals, Antonetta. I'm doing this to change that. If you think I've been using you, then use me back. I didn't do all this for my sake. Do you really think I'd suddenly betray you? Claudia has never been anything more than my employer, you know that. But you and Wolfina have always meant more to me than that."

"No! We weren't animals, we were assets, you made us collared where our lives hung on a button press, don't act like you understand a moment of what it was like after you'd left. You saw us as things to tolerate and Eliane saw us as things to play with."

"You're the one that's not in her cage or with a leash on. So you what? Sold everyone out because the red hair boy is better than mum? If you're wearing an invisible leash then you've just changed who holds it, so you're either being coerced by that trash or you're actually happy to be used by him. How stupid!"

She rambled in a huff. Infuriated by this whole situation of being stuck here because of other people. Powerless to do anything but vent out her frustrations to her older sister because the only thing she could influence in her life right now was whether she sat in this cage or made them find her corpse in it.

"I loved you all but you didn't care. I was happy then, I didn't care if our family was a sham, it was real to me!"