Chapter Text
There were few things Cinder’s diagnostics could do to surprise her anymore.
She’d seen everything—or at least, she thought she had.
This warning is new.
There, written across her field of vision in big bold letters, are the words: WARNING. BLOOD PRESSURE AND HEART RATE DANGEROUSLY HIGH. ENTERING REGRESSIVE MODE.
Regressive mode? Cinder furrows her brow. That’s not part of her system. Or, it shouldn’t be, because it’s hard to deny the words when they’re staring her in the face.
She sets aside what she’s working on and stands up from her desk, littered with broken portscreens. It’s like every portscreen in the palace chose today to malfuction, and if she has to manually restart one more, she going to vomit. It wouldn’t kill her to take a break.
Finding Iko isn’t that hard. Cinder goes to her room to collect her own portscreen, and there Iko is, sprawled out on Cinder’s bed. Cinder distantly remembers that Kinney will be visiting soon, escorting Winter on her latest ambassador mission.
“Iko?”
Iko is stretched out on her bed, painting her synthetic toenails. “Yeah?” She doesn’t look up, just sits back and admires her freshly colbalt toes.
“Can you run a check on my diagnostics?”
“Of course. Is something wrong?”
Cinder shakes her head, then cuts it off with a shrug. “I’m just getting some really weird warning messages.”
Iko glances up, concern in her eyes. “What kind?”
“Something about my high stress levels.” Which is true. After abdicating her throne, Kai jumped at the chance to hire her as his royal mechanic. The official title was a lot more flowery, but he only ever referred to her by her first name. But the point is that the job is tough. Something’s always broken, and more often than not she’s on her feet all day.
“That doesn’t sound too far off.” Iko jokes. “Anything else?”
“My diagnostics said I was entering ‘regressive mode,’ whatever that means.”
Iko’s jaw drops. “You’re an age regressor?”
“Yes? Maybe?” Cinder gets the distinct feeling that she’s being cornered. Her shoulders hike up around her neck. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that you feel younger to help cope with stress. It’s like reliving your childhood, but better and safer this time.” Iko clambers off the bed, which takes her twice so as not to ruin her pedicure. “Are you telling me you haven’t seen the net dramas?”
“There are net dramas about this?” Somehow Cinder can’t imagine net dramas about adults acting like little kids getting very high ratings. In fact, it sounds like the exact thing Adri made a point of always turning her nose up at.
Iko nods excitedly. “It’s one of my favorites. It’s called Under a Thousand Stars. One of the characters, Stella, comes back from an intergalactic war, and she’s so traumatized that it strains her relationship with her lover, Hansen. But her therapist ends up suggesting age regression as a coping mechanism. Apparently it’s very groundbreaking. All the magazines are raving.”
So this was a thing. A common enough thing to air on a net drama. That was…vaguely reassuring, she supposes. After all, it was better than Iko having no idea what she was talking about or viewing it as disgusting.
“So, like, what does she do? What does it feel like?”
Iko’s practically vibrating with excitement. “We should watch the show together! That way you can see for yourself!”
“How about tomorrow night, okay?”
Iko’s expression goes sly. “Oh, silly me. I forgot you have a date tonight!”
Cinder’s never been gladder that she can’t blush.
Iko furrows her brow, snapping back to the problem at hand. “That’s okay, right? The warning messages aren’t urgent?”
Well, all-caps warning messages are usually time sensitive, and all the information about her elevated heart rate didn’t bode well, but she decides to ignore it.
After all, she doesn’t feel any younger. She feels like she always felt.
Part of her wants to ignore that fact that those words even showed up on her screen at all, but at the same time, she knows she can’t. As a compromise, she’ll ignore it for now and deal with it later.
The rest of her work day goes by incredibly slow, so she takes some of her downtime to run searches on “age regression.”
A good chunk of the results are centering around Under a Thousand Stars, which she’s about to filter when one article title catches her eye.
“Under a Thousand Stars: Everything You Need to Know About Therapeutic Age Regression for the Upcoming Season.”
She skims the opening, which is just detailing the plot points from previous seasons, until she gets to the numbered list. Thank the stars articles have easily skimmable layouts, because she thinks she’d croak if she had to peruse a scientific article instead.
- Age regression is more often than not non-sexual.
Apparently they’d interviewed a number of regressors, many of whom had wanted to remain anonymous. Cinder cringes. Stars, there’s a sexual stigma on this too? Just wonderful.
- Age regression is not role play.
True regression isn’t playacting. At least, not completely. Some regressors enjoy acting a little dumber, asking questions real kids would ask, but for the most part, it’s genuine. One regressor states that being in her headspace makes her more honest, and it’s easier for her to talk about through regression-related issues with her significant other while regressed.
- Age regression is a therapist-approved method of coping.
They went all out for this article, huh? Just from skimming, Cinder can pick out five liscensed psychiatrists vouching for the coping tactic, and that’s not including the calvacade of consultants the show had during the writing process.
- The bond between a caregiver and a regressor is very special.
Trust. Trust, trust, trust, trust. It’s all about trust. There are so many mentions of “trust” in that single paragraph that the word is sounding weird in Cinder’s head. Apparently trust comes with being a regressor, if you want a caregiver. The mere mention of it makes Cinder feel overly vulnerable, as if someone is hanging over her shoulder as she’s reading.
She thinks she trusts Iko that much. If anything, Iko’s enthusiasm had served to make her feel a little less insecure. Still, she hated the idea of pulling her best friend aside on a whim for this, because it didn’t seem like regression was set to a regular schedule that often. It seemed like a major waste of time, and probably totally boring for the caregivers.
- Regressors come in all different shapes, sizes, and personalities.
Cinder closes the article without reading the rest, unsure if she can handle any more. It’s too much to take in at once. Maybe she’ll search for it again later, but she doubts it.
Her workday comes to a close, and Cinder forces herself to get excited about her date with Kai. The regressive mode alert has faded from her field of vision, so it’s easy to pretend like it was never there in the first place.
~
It’s a quiet night. Kai is exhausted from a series of conferences with world leaders, so they pick out a movie at random and order an assortment of snacks. The movie isn’t good, but she and Kai amuse themselves by cracking jokes about it. It lasts until the climax, which is so unbelievably dull that Cinder finds herself nodding off against his shoulder.
Her dreams are not kind to her.
She finds herself back on Luna—in one of the poorer sectors to be exact. Civilians surround her, staring at her like she’s their savior.
It’s all so hauntingly still, as if she’s waiting for the shoe to drop. When she opens her mouth to speak, there it is.
Wolf’s sweet, kind mother, brutally shot down by Lunar guards, crumples at her feet, and when she falls, like dominoes, so do the others. Their bodies crumple like paper, curling around each other, as if they’re only asleep. Men, women, and children, all with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes.
All her fault.
Two figures rise up, staggering their ways over to her.
The first is Queen Levana. As she walks, her glamour flickers in and out, giving flashes of her scorched skin beneath her perfect façade. Her expression changes as well. Joy to rage. Joy to rage. And over and over again.
The other figure is Alpha Steele, the one whose death is the freshest in her mind. She can still smell the stench of his blood as he dies not five feet from her, his wolfish grin creased with red.
She didn’t want either of them to die. She didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did. It was an accident! She’s not a killer; she’s not Levana.
Cinder turns and runs, but finds her body uncooperative. She runs like people always seem to run in nightmares, as if she’s wading through honey. Her heart slams against her chest from the exertion, but when she turns to look over her shoulder, she’s horrified to find that they have already caught up to her.
The smells are overpowering. Blood, sweat, burning, rust. They each take one of her wrists and stare, their gazes unrelenting.
She tries to pull away from their grips, but suddenly something is forcibly holding her in place and she’s screaming and thrashing and calling for someone to help—Wolf, Iko, Thorne, anybody?
The arms release her, and the jolt of pain she gets from colliding with the floor knocks her into semi-consciousness. She’s staring down a lavish carpet. The ballroom where Alpha Steele had died had been tile. She’s not there.
“Cinder? Are you okay?” A voice says from her right. It’s Kai. He’s not touching her. “What’s wrong?”
“Steele.” Cinder rasps. She drags her hands down her face, if only to confirm to herself that she’s not bleeding. Her eyes confirm she isn’t, but her spiraling anxiety says she can never be sure. If she’s not bleeding, why is the scent of blood still so strong?
“Steele? Cinder, he’s long dead. There’s nothing to worry about.”
She jerks her head in his direction.
Terror is etched across his face. She can’t blame him. She’s just as scared.
The urge to vomit climbs up her throat, which she forcefully gulps back down. Part of her wants to laugh, but that part is drowned out by every other part of her, which wants to break down screaming and crying.
So this is the “regressive mode” her processor was warning her about.
Everything feels so foggy, like the world and even her own feelings are too big for her to handle. Every part of her is screaming for rest, begging for permission to break down utterly and completely.
She feels helpless. Scared. And so, so tiny.
“Get Iko,” she decides, before her lungs decide they aren’t getting enough air. Just saying that is a herculean task, and they’ll be getting nowhere if she can’t communicate. Iko will know how to help, and if she can’t, they can at least send each other comms.
Kai scrambles for his portscreen and hastily types a message. His gaze keeps shifting between her and the screen, as if he’s too scared to look away from her. Even so, he stays rooted where he stands.
Cinder wraps her arms around herself, gasping like a fish on land. It takes everything in her to not let her breathing spiral into hyperventilating.
Iko arrives within minutes, practically kicking down the door to enter. She drops beside Cinder, her hands hovering. “Will it overwhelm you if I touch you?”
“Is this what it’s always supposed to feel like?” Cinder asks through gasps for air. A red light blinks its warning in her periphery, warning her that if she stays this panicked, this overwhelmed with energy, it’s going to cause an automatic shutdown.
Iko flattens her palm against Cinder’s back. “No.” Her voice sounds different, like she’d either downloaded a new inflection pack or a new voice altogether. It’s remarkably soothing. “It’s okay, though. It’ll all be okay. Shh.”
“You didn’t see them.” Cinder chokes out. “Didn’t smell them. Oh, stars, the smell.” The memory brings the nausea back with a vengeance. She coughs violently, gagging on her own spit. Her body is wrought with dry heaving. Her stomach squeezes, trying to force up food that doesn’t exist.
“It’s over now.” Iko assures her. “It’s all right. You’re a good girl.”
As a cyborg, she can’t cry, but her body desperately needs her to. It’s Iko’s comment that sends her over the edge. She sobs without tears, rocketing between that and gagging. Her cyborg parts keep her from looking like a mess of snot and tears and vomit, and she couldn’t be more grateful. That would be one loss of dignity she wouldn’t be able to take.
Iko sticks beside her, keeping up the soothing touches and whispered assurances.
“Iko? Is Cinder okay? What’s going on?”
There’s a telling pause, so Cinder knows Iko is thinking the same thing she is. How can they explain their way out of this? The answer is that they can’t. So, within twenty-four hours of finding out she’s a regressor, now Kai knows too.
Talk about some rotten luck.
“She’s…regressing.” Iko explains, haltingly.
“Regressing?” Kai blinks in shock. “What does that mean? What’s wrong?”
“Honestly, do none of you keep up to date on the net dramas? Under a Thousand Stars?” Iko dramatically rolls her eyes. “Here. Wrap her up in this.” She dives for the bed and yanks the covers free.
Cinder feels herself being wrapped in the blanket more than she sees it. Kai pins down her arms first, which is a smart move on his part, because if her hands were free, the pressure of someone’s arms on her chest would prompt her to start swinging.
Instead, she’s left, half-panting, half-sobbing, and utterly helpless pinned to Kai’s side.
“Shh.” Iko soothes. She takes Cinder’s face in her hands and gently thumbs Cinder’s cheeks, as if she were a real girl with real tears to cry. “Take deep breaths with me, Cinder, okay?”
Cinder wants to laugh. As an android, Iko doesn’t need to breathe, and for her to even pretend like she can, she probably had to download a breathing sound effects pack. It’s kind of silly.
Iko makes a clear, deliberate pattern for Cinder to follow, making big, exaggerated motions.
In, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four.
“Good job. Keep that up.” She swivels her head toward Kai. “It’s not really my place to explain for her, but Stella always has worse dreams after falling asleep in her smaller headspace. It just makes everything feel so big in comparison.”
“And Stella…this is the character from the net drama?”
Cinder crafts a rhythm from their conversation. The cadence of Iko’s voice is in even beats of four, while Kai’s is less steady, but much slower. In…out…in…out…
Iko explains the basics, little more than what she told Cinder, but Kai has a dozen questions. When did this start? Will she be okay? All to which, Iko tells him, it’s not my position to say.
Cinder’s breathing evens out, and Iko smiles. “There’s a girl. How about I get you a juice box?”
Juice sounds nice. Juice sounds very nice. Cinder bobs her head, too exhausted to speak. She’d probably fall back asleep if the thought of dreaming again didn’t terrify her.
Once Iko is gone, Cinder is left with nothing but her thoughts and Emperor Kai, who just laid witness to the worst breakdown she’s had in years. The thought is enough to bring the quiver back into her lips.
“I-I’m sor-ry,” she gasps out through hiccuping sobs. The most humiliating thing about this is how right Iko is. The pressure, the warmth, is all helping her calm down. She can’t work herself back up into her previous state, but she sure as the stars can keep sobbing about it.
“Hey, it’s alright. Shh.” He looks so startled.
For the first time she can remember, the emperor looks at a complete loss for what to do. She can’t blame him. She’s sure the last thing he wanted to deal with tonight was his girlfriend having a complete meltdown.
“I can’t say it’s how I expected to spend my evening with you, but that’s okay. No big deal.” He readjusts his hold on her so she can rest her head on his shoulder.
They sit there in silence, letting the seconds tick by until Iko returns with Cinder’s promised juice box.
“I’m here for you.” Kai promises, and in that moment, she finally starts to feel safe.