"I'm just so.. *frustrated,* y'know?" Venus sighed. "I-I work so hard, as hard as I can, and what do I get out of it? I'm barely scraping by. I'm stressing myself, I don't know how to drive, I don't know how to keep a job-" Her voice hitched, just slightly. She took a breath, and continued. "-I don't even know how to keep myself from melting down every time something doesn't go my way."

Venus wasn't looking at Mars. She couldn't bring herself to. The only light in the room was beaming straight into her face and all around her, highlighting only the highest peaks of the room. It had a tendency to make everything seem more dramatic. The harsh lighting made the sour expression that she could only imagine was plastered on his face all the worse. He was judging her. Surely, he was. She couldn't conjure any reality in which he didn't hold profound contempt for her inability to function like an adult.

She flinched as she felt his hand touch her shoulder. His hand pulled back for a second, before redoubling, slipping just the edges of Mars' fingertips under the hem of her tank. She did her best not to think about her shoulders, her chest, her fat. Her hands, which had been working so deftly on finishing up Ratchet & Clank, entirely from memory, slowed to a stop, like putting invisible brakes on a steam engine. She squinted, and tried to seem nonplussed, her thumbs shifting to idly move the sticks back and forth, watching Ratchet move in circles instead of turning to face her friend.

"I just.." She started, pausing for a moment to collect her words. She knew the right ones, but they couldn't be said, not right now. "I feel like I'm missing out on something. That everyone learned but me. Like I was sick on the worst possible day and now I'm stumbling through life without the information I need to be capable." She hoped that would be an appropriate substitute for her actual feelings. 

Mars was quiet for a moment, letting his skin press flush with hers for a bit, before replying. "This world isn't made for every person," Mars began, "It's- It's not made for *any* person. It's a system that views people as numbers. It's a cold machine, and it doesn't stop when you stumble. It just calculates the losses as acceptable."

"But *you* function,' Venus said, with just a trickle of venom in her voice, just enough to give way her feelings. 

"You don't see me 24/7. Not the way you see yourself. I've stumbled. I've fallen. I've been where you are now." Mars took a moment to look her over, basking in her presence, the topmost portions of her being highlighted by the steely gray light of the television. Her eyes seemed so black there, so wet- like a dog's eyes, vacant save for a boundless pit of want, right in the center. "..More or less." 

Venus pursed her lips, into two lines so small that the fuzzy details of her face now seemed to blend in with each other. She was mouthless now, inscrutable. 

It was quiet for a long time. Mars wasn't sure if he should continue. If he should push the boundaries further, to insist- *demand* that Venus acknowledge herself as worthwhile. He retreated instead, but left just the barest touch remaining, the extended fingertips, pressed ever so gently against her shoulder. If he cut the tethers now, they would drift apart, but only one of them was grounded. Venus would drift, further and further, into space. But he couldn't grip her. Not the way he wanted to.

Mars only realized Venus was crying when she spoke, words coming out in choppy, limp sobs. "I-" she failed to start, her voice cracking, forcing her back into herself. "I never even got to be a little girl."

The words weighed heavily on him. He knew Venus' past. Anyone close enough to her knew. Venus was a weapon- made in a laboratory, fully grown, implanted with false memories, constructed just haphazardly enough that when she collapsed and realized her existence was a lie, it would be on the battlefield.

Only the battle never came. Her project was quietly dismantled. Were it not for the swift actions of a researcher, she would have died there- drowned in the vat she was grown in. 

"They don't care about that. Nobody does. They all got to live it." Venus said, not moving her hands up from her controller, not even to wipe the flowing tears from her face. 

"I care," Mars said, but not confidently.

"You don't understand, though," she replied, "I can't tell people how I feel. I can only imagine the looks they'd give me. Why would a monster like me ever want to be a little girl? For what sickening little purposes would a changeling want to be a child?" Venus' hands, clenching hard into the plastic between them, slowly began to petrify, turning into sharp claws that dug little grooves into her controller. "They think I'm a freak. That I would only want to be a girl for some horrible little nefarious reason. I don't! I *don't!* I *Don't!*"

Venus began rocking back and forth, seething, breathing in deep, back, forth, back, forth, until she rocked forward into Mars' palm. Quickly, Mars leaned down, and wrapped himself around her. He felt tiny stony spikes dig into his body, all over her body, but didn't stop, breathing deep and clutching her tightly.

"I know," Mars mumbled, "I'm sorry. You didn't ask to be made like this."

Venus sobbed, openly, into Mars' arm. "I just wish I had the- the stability, or- or even the chance to have had a bad childhood. With a bad father. One who's rude, or hit me, or molested me, or gave me beers to keep me quiet. Anything would have been better than this.. this hollowness. I wish I had anything."

Mars clenched tighter, squeezing her to the point where the spindlier of her stony outcroppings broke apart against his flesh. Some dug into him. He didn't stop holding her. He was doing his best not to cry, himself.

"You know," Mars mumbled, making the breaking of his voice sound like an intentional half-chuckle, "..I always thought I'd make for a pretty terrible dad."

(work on this later)