2017-07-02: Hatred
- Log: Hatred
- Cast: Lily Keil, Loren Voss
- Where: Lacour - Market District
- Date: July 2nd 2017
- Summary: In Lacour for different reasons, Lily and Loren cross paths. It does not go well.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Before the fateful attack on Old Petra, and before the Lacour Arms Tournament begins, the city the tournament is named for bustles away. The arms shops, predictably, are very active, and despite having some interest in them Lily Keil has largely avoided them for exactly that reason.
But Lily is here in the city. And Lily is weighing the markets, on a path towards them walking from her inn. She's dressed informally for her, in black with a white button-blouse, with a violet scarf. She isn't carrying her ARM. There's little reason to bother here. She's thoughtful...
Because, in part, she's stopped at the wall of a bar, leaning against it with her head back, eyes closed for a moment. She's catching her breath, isolating herself from the crowds as best she's able. It's clear to look at her, however, from the bulk underneath her clothes...
Lily is very, very heavily bandaged. They extend barely up about her throat. Her hands on the other hand offer no such clue, because they're gloved as always.
There's a patio though. Lily stays where she is anyway, hand resting on her satchel. She's working on her breathing, mostly.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It was luck, in the end.
Certainly, it was possible that he could have kept lurking about excavation sites or attempting to trail the mage across the continent as he similarly moved, but eventually there would be suspicion. He needed a better story, and he needed more certain information.
The time Loren had spent seeking information among the refugee camps of Adlehyde hadn't been wasted -- he'd gotten some valuable intelligence from the refugees he'd been treating while playing the part of his cover. But in the end it had only been word from that apothecary, Jacqueline, that had given him more of a trail to work with.
It was almost a little bit funny.
So in order, he'd wrapped up things in Adlehyde and headed north, brushing aside any questions with some mumbled comment about 'his education'.
The Destroyer of the Diabolo Golem, using the name Ethius, is participating in the tournament in Lacour.
Loren, AKA Thomas Blackwell, medical student from Bledavik, hasn't been in town long. Just long enough to get his bearings.
Or try to, anyway. This place is packed, wall to wall with surface-dwellers, odd sounds, smells, garish colors. It's a far cry from the events in Etrenank.
When someone nearby starts shouting -- an argument, some fight about to break out about the forthcoming first round matches, perhaps -- it rasps against his nerves, already frayed.
Disgusting. All of them.
...He can't take much more of this.
Ducking out of this lane of foot-traffic in an attempt to find somewhere less busy, somewhere he can regroup. He pulls up against a stretch of wall and leans against it. Briefly, Loren closes his eyes and takes a breath. Damn, damn, damn...
How the hell does van Houten do this when he can't?
And then, belatedly noticing the presence of someone else nearby, he opens his eyes and straightens, turning his head to look at the person he's unwittingly joined here.
"...Keil?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Luck.
Luck, fate, something... They're all so often at play in things like this. Lily Keil hasn't mentioned her presence in Lacour to many; she's still a woman on the run, after all, part of why it's so difficult to follow her. But here it's simple; it's easy. Her shoulders rest against brick, her long hair ruffling in a breeze.
The presence of another person gets no visible response, but she notices. There's another read of feelings, of... not quite distrss, not quite anger...
She can't pin it down. It just roils that darkness already about her. If Loren could feel Malevolence, he would sure feel it now.
But someone looks at her, and then... Says her name? Lily opens one golden eye, turning her head to look and see who this person is before she closes it again, as if closing a door.
Her eyes open again as she looks him over. "Blackwell," Lily answers. At least he used the right name with her. "I imagine medical study in Lacour is more my style than yours."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Luck has more power than people give credit. Of course, there's a range of probability -- it's impossibly to make something out of nothing. But if there's even a possibility that something can happen, then, under the right conditions...
To his mind, that's luck. That space where perfect prediction fails.
Loren can't feel Malevolence. His spiritual senses are shuttered. What he can feel though is the perception of another body near to his, the vague sense well-cultivated by the millenia of human socialization.
And here's luck again. Sort of. It's Lily Keil, person of some interest.
She's just not his target at the moment. And he's distracted and overwhelmed, already gaining the vestiges of an oncoming headache from the noise alone. And thus, he comments flatly as he leans back against the wall:
"So you didn't die in Adlehyde. I had wondered."
Strictly speaking, no, he hadn't wondered.
Though he does glance at her sidelong. "...Maybe I should reassess that."
A lot of bandages there.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily doesn't know, of course, that 'Thomas' is trained in battlefield medicine, too. Not exactly like she is, of course, they have different approaches, different training regiments. But that doesn't matter for now anyway. To her, he's Thomas Blackwell, medical student from Bledavik.
Lily can't identify the spike of feeling as being from him. She couldn't isolate it from all these people to begin with. It just gives her a headache.
So neither of them is at their best.
"Really? I think it's almost the first time a man from Aveh has cared whether I lived or died." A roll of her eyes. "No, I didn't. I was too busy on the front lines to die. Stabbed one of their commanders in the heart. I could tell you stories."
A beat, "...I'm not dead anyway; these are more recent. I've been fighting Metal Demons." She doesn't... move very freely, if he notices. She's stiff. "I doubt you care which ones."
Bragging is too much work.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
As it should be. If Shevat were to discover their hand in maintaining control of this region, it could jeopardize everything. And with the black Gear still slipping through their fingers, the invasion of the Metal Demons, the mage capable of blowing up an ancient Golem with a spell no one should possess, a mad cult in the region, and a hundred million things beside, they can't afford to lose control.
The world depends upon it.
But right now, Loren Voss has an Emperor-damned headache and is tired of this shit.
There's pointed things he could say, that even in his current state he manages to bite back on, opting instead to utter a, "Really?" as he slumps against the wall. She says that she was on the front lines in Adlehyde.
If only she knew.
"I'm sure you could," he mutters, reaching up to slip his glasses off. "But I'll pass." Eyes still closed, he pinches at the bridge of his nose as he leans his head back, trying to ward off the worst of the tension headache he's rapidly gaining.
"Yes. Very good, I'm so happy for you," he says, as dryly as can be. "...Are you always this friendly?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily could helpfully talk about a number of those things. ...She won't. But she could. She wouldn't want Solaris to keep 'control' regardless.
But she doesn't care that much about waiting on a reply, letting her head shift back forward so she can lean against the wall again.
Glasses. She spots the movement from her peripheral vision, staring through the crowds rather than at them with a vague readiness that she can never entirely turn off anymore. It doesn't matter.
She doesn't know. She doesn't know how close she came to fighting 'Thomas' that day.
She hears him muttering though. "...Prefer to be closer to the battle?" Lily asks immediately, darkly. She knows that kind of mutter. It's largely foolish, in her mind. But he snarks further at her and--
"No," she answers his question, turning to look at him again archly. "This is much more talkative than I tend to be with near-strangers."
Her left arm doesn't move that much. The right shifts her hair back behind her ear. "...I don't like giving war stories to civilians anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The glasses dangle from his fingertips as he holds the posture for a long moment, long enough to find that pressure point and really press in. Long enough to take a steadying breath.
Damn. There are days when he wants everything to hurry up and be over with.
"Don't be stupid," 'Thomas' mutters, before finally standing up straight and dropping his hand away. He squints, his vision bleary for a moment -- and it might even be mistaken for him having actual difficulty seeing the crowd without his glasses for a moment.
He really doesn't need them. Not to see, at any rate.
But he slides them back on, carefully adjusting their sit on his face.
"...Wonderful. Then I must be especially lucky," he sighs in return.
Staring in silence at the crowd -- noisy, chaotic, horrible -- as it passes by before the both of them as they attempt to similarly retreat from the world, it's a few minutes later that he glances over her way again.
"...Whoever did the bandaging did it wrong."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily's eyes are uncovered gold, staring out at Loren, for the moment, considering his expressions, his answer... Much of it means nothing to her, though. It's gibberish; Leon is the one who understands how to deal with people, who doesn't have so much trouble with it as she does.
"Maybe not. Just an impression I got, with how annoyed you were with talking battle." A shrug. She doesn't know. It doesn't really matter. Why should she care?
But he sighs, and Lily shakes her head, looking out over the crowd again as well. "So you must."
But then she too stares at the crowd, which feels to her like something that ripples, oil on water. It passes by, and it's still there, but shedoesn't have to be in it. Lily maintains the same degree of silence, closes her eyes again.
'...Whoever did the bandaging did it wrong.'
"Is that so?" Lily asks, without opening her eyes again. "I'd have done it myself, under other circumstances. But these weren't the circumstances. I should probably have brought a sling, but..." A half-shrug. "Why, are you suggesting I let you practice?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's got no interest in seeking the battlefield, for the glory and joy of it. No, the battlefield will find its way back to him, as it always does. "I'm not interested in that," he says, a touch sourly.
Once, it would have been different. Once, he would have been more eager to bring victory and glory to the Empire. Things have changed a lot since he entered Jugend, though.
...He'll still do what he needs to do, everything that's required. He has his part to play. But doing it eagerly? Joyfully? Of course not.
He must be lucky, Lily agrees. Loren's eyes narrow as he stares nowhere but out at the crowd.
"Naturally."
Of all the people he had to run into here...
If he were in a better frame of mind, if he weren't distracted, perhaps he would have been able to twist this to his advantage and press her for some information. As it stands, though...
'Thomas' shakes his head. Just a touch, he peels away from the wall to look at her. "I've bandaged enough limbs to know how it's supposed to go. Are you moving around like that, too? ...You're going to reopen the wounds. What was it, a sword? Claws?"
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It's interesting from Lily's perspective; so many obvious things are... Not obvious, with Thomas. Or they aren't what she would expect. How much of it is her being bad at dealing with people conversationally, and how much is him?
She's not going to ask. It's not that important. But she hasn't walked away yet, either. She certainly could've.
She wouldn't call it joy in battle, though maybe sone glory, when once she could get so little. But her feelings are complicated. There are other reasons she leans into violence as a rule.
Lucky. Naturally, of course she'd do her own as a rule. Not that she's expressed to him the depths of her medical talents. But...
Thomas moves to look at her and Lily raises an eyebrow, pale as ever, looking at him--maybe through him a little bit. "...I suppose you've had ample opportunity, even being a student," she allows, and only then does she pause. "Heh." The small moment of a laugh is more than she's ever shown to him before. "Yes, I'm moving around. I have things to do. Recovery time is a luxury." A pause. "It was Lady Harken's scythe."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be fair, 'Thomas' is not precisely giving Lily as much to work with as another person might -- he's a bit tightlipped aside from his sass, and beyond his eyes, his expression is perhaps difficult to read. Only his body language outright speaks volumes to someone equipped to read it, and even that tells a story first and foremost about a person who is just extremely weary at this point in time.
And taking the opportunity to take that out on another person.
Or try to.
The look that she gives him is strange. He had perhaps underestimated her a touch the last time -- or, no, he'd just been careless and out of his element. That was it. One blue eye squints as he eyes her.
"Of course," he says, feathers slightly ruffled. More than just a student at this point! But he'll spare her the corrections -- they'd get him nothing good.
Here, she'll receive a look from Loren that might suggest to anyone watching him alone that she's just sprouted another head. "It's a luxury, maybe, if you enjoy bleeding out," he says, the eternal complaint of a medical officer -- people who won't sit and let the damn thing heal right -- rearing its head.
Lady Harken. He knows that name. Of course, few people wouldn't.
"I'm impressed. Your limbs still seem to be attached."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Quiet people are difficult that way. Loud people will take up most of the space, but another quiet person... Well, Lily can read certain kinds of body language, and they're mostly the dialects of health. The weariness in Loren is easy to see for her.
The prickliness is easy, too.
Regardless of what happened last time, this time she continues watching Loren as he keeps position off of the wall. 'Of course' is a nonstarter, it doesn't matter as something new. But he sure looks at her funny, and she lifts an eyebrow.
...To be fair, she isn't revealing her magic. She must instead just seem insanely reckless, completely unconcerned with her own health and safety to a suicidal degree.
And well...
"I've done a lot of bleeding in my life," she says simply, flatly. "And I am remaining on light activity for the moment."
Lily nods. "Yes, it seemed a little too easy. But I suppose it wasn't." A beat, "My arm just about wasn't. But enough fire and most things leave you alone."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To say the least of it. He knows from the intel he has that she's not just a soldier, but a medic -- she should know better than this.
He's actually a little offended, for the sake of his profession. He has had some passing contact with Aveh soldiers, but what on Filgaia are they teaching them in Kislev?
The hilarious point of fact being that, unknown to him, they share a common talent. And just the way he can be a little... free in combat under the right conditions for the simple logic that most of the damage he receives he can recover from, the same's true for her.
But it's also likely he'd be offended if someone pointed THAT out as well.
"Light activity with that sort of bandaging?" He's not really even speaking as 'Thomas' at this point, not trying to weasel anything out of some unaware surfacer. He's just annoyed. "You'll be doing more bleeding soon."
And she goes on. Oh yes, she goes on.
Loren, perhaps understandably, stares at Lily. If he'd given her a look like she'd sprouted another head before, well.
There are no words that can express his disbelief in this instant. The look in his eyes will have to do.
Emperor. Are all Lambs this suicidal?
And thus Lily earns the flattest:
"What."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily doesn't even look repentant about this. There's not so much of a hint that she's just blustering, though she's about as hard to read as 'Thomas' is, and that certainly doesn't help. What they teach in Kislev...
Lily's had to insist that some soldiers stay still herself. It's not lost on her. But there is that little truth, the secret to her extreme fortitude.
"Like I said, I don't have time to lay around on bedrest. I have things to do... And I've had worse problems than these wounds." She half-shrugs again.
She goes on, all right. But she had to add that much. "Considering that I drove off Lady Harken--I doubt I actually killed her--yes, it was easier than I thought." A pause.
Most people are not as suicidal as Lily Keil. If he looks, that alone shows in her eyes, a complete lack of fear, a sort of hollowness that suggests something... else. It may be unsettling.
"I only needed one arm to finish the job," she follows up simply. "It was me or an entire town full of people. And I accomplished the mission. That's all."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Under any other situation, Loren would be able to dismiss this firmly as 'not his problem'.
The only problem with that is, right now? He's kiiiinda angry.
This is a significant accomplishment since as of recently only one other person has managed to evoke actual anger in him and he's dead.
(By comparison, for instance, he merely loathes/fears Elly.)
There's not much joy in what he does. Whether he'll ever attain glory, he has no way of knowing. But if Loren does have one thing that matters with his life's work at the moment -- matters to him, matters beyond simply fulfilling the aims of the Empire of Solaris -- it's a sense of professional pride as a medical officer.
He once again fixes her with a long stare. "I feel sorry for whoever has to sort you out," he says. Sharply, in fact.
There is nothing, nothing as annoying as the soldier who goes and does something suicidally reckless... and succeeds.
He just has no words at the moment.
It might be easy to mistake his reaction at a glance for astonishment. Eyes slightly widened, his stance somewhat leaned back, shoulders squared. It's anything but, though.
The universe, Loren decides -- and not for the first time -- is manifestly unfair.
He misses it -- at least misses the meaning of it. As young as he is, it's not a look he's familiar with. Not yet. Not that degree of hollowness.
"You're mad," he settles on finally, shaking his head.
Supreme frustration reaches a breaking point and he approaches her suddenly. One hand snakes out for her wounded left arm, seeking to plant itself there and apply firm pressure. "Alone? Without any support? It wouldn't have mattered a bit if you'd died."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily for the most part just doesn't care in this sort of mood, in what 'Thomas' has brought out of her. It might've happened regardless. But between the two of them, between what she needs to do...
Lily's pride as a medical officer didn't save the Black Wolves. Lily doesn't think of that exactly, but it informs her, fuels her.
Loren stares at her, and gives that sharp remonstration that prompts a roll of the eyes from Lily. "Sure. I'll be sure to tell him so." Does Loren's intelligence mark Lily being a part of the crew of the Yggdrasil? Or has that not filtered in yet?
But Loren stares at her a different way, obiously shocked, and Lily looks flatly at him in return, her black hair largely held against the bricks in how she's standing. She waits in silence for him to figure himself out, until finally he does, apparently washing his hands of her.
Except he doesn't. He approaches faster than she's prepared to react to, and grabs her wounded arm. When he does, his fingers sink into it, the wound easy to find. She stops short, her breath catching as she clenches her teeth. "Y-You--" she manages to get out. What he says there...
Lily moans in pain before it turns into a cry that gets through her teeth, an amount of sheer pain only known to someone who knows the body. She gets another handle on it, "I wasn't alone, you fucking asshole! And that's--"
"Ridiculous--pompous--little shit--" It's worse. But she has training to avoid acting impulsively under pain, and... Sometimes she seeks it out.
Alone, it doesn't matter if you die. Exactly the thing to say to special forces. Her detachment turns to hatred in that moment, right there, like a spark. And that means...
There's a flicker of shadows at her other hand, which could easily be the light, and not the sense of sorcery. Her eyes, it must be a mistake, look... darker.
She grits her teeth again harder, dizzied. "Gt.." She wheezes.
"Hey--Hey, get away from her!" Lily didn't hear most of it, but there's been shouting for a long few moments now.
"Leave that woman alone!" Someone dressed in gear that suggests a warrior glares over at Loren. "Do you think you can do that on a crowded street and no one will say anything!?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
All Loren knows is what's in the official broadsheets -- he doesn't have the time, support, or even inclination to dig deeper than what had been necessary to find her the first time, particularly with what's been going on. Among her crimes was only listed Piracy, though it probably wouldn't take much to link her to the crew if he (or someone else) did some digging these days.
That alone would likely elevate her ranking in Gebler's current backlog of people of interest somewhat, of course.
They say that nothing is as irritating as seeing one's own flaws reflected in another person. 'Thomas' narrows his eyes as Lily rolls hers.
Just one more straw, the man said, loading up the camel.
Undoubtedly, she wasn't expecting it from him either. His grip on her arm is surprisingly strong, his thumb and forefinger easily finding their way into the wound where the bandaging binds it. That, he hadn't intended.
It really only adds fuel to the flame.
If he weren't so furious, he might have sworn aloud. Light duty! This isn't a 'light duty' injury! Blue eyes stare into hers. "What is wrong with you?" he hisses, shifting his grip a few degrees as she cries out -- if he had wanted to, he could have pressed in. But it would have been wholely pointless, to say nothing of unfair. You don't kick a wounded dog.
Changed position or not, it's still not likely to be pleasant for her.
"Then there's no reason--" He sputters. "--Ridiculous? You're ridiculous--"
Someone's shouting. But what 'Thomas' is mostly aware of is the odd shift in light at her right hand, the sort of awareness that's drilled into an officer during their basic ether training. He almost, almost would have sworn...
Someone's shouting. He glances to his right -- her left.
Damn, they've attracted attention. A lot of attention, by the sound of it.
...This could be bad.
He has enough control not to shove her against the wall. Loren instead directs one final glare her way as he releases his grip on her arm.
He has nothing to say to her. This time, it appears, he has finally washed his hands of her, walking away even as accusatory shouts follow him down the street.
He's done.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
There are a lot of things that might elevate Lily's ranking in Gebler's backlog. Her being a member of the Yggdrasil crew is definitely one. But not the only one. And some of it doesn't require as deep a dig as she would hope.
Seeing one's flaws reflected in another person... That mirror can be seen from the reflection, too. Lily Keil sees a lot in Thomas Blackwell, or at least in his words. ...But she sees things reflected that aren't her. Things she gets irritated with regardless.
Who is this kid to tell her how to handle her wounds?
Caught more than enough by surprise, there's nothing Lily can do about it; Loren is stronger than she would have expected, and while she's strong herslf... He easily outmuscles her, especially with a grip on a vulnerable point like this.
Golden eyes stare back into blue, even if they're slightly glazed, dark somehow. Maybe like the way the red in bloodshot eyes is so dark in hers.
"Good... question," she gets out, and feels her stomach turning, even as she answers what's wrong with her. He shifts his grip and it hurts a little less as a result, but that's still a lot of pain.
"Plenty--" She's ridiculous. Lily freezes again and can't move through it. But there is shouting, and Thomas still has a hold on her... Until one more glare that she can barely, dazedly meet, before her arm is free again. "Ah--"
The shouts follow him down the street, but the warrior steps up to Lily, and she was the one most likely to pick a fight with him. He's done. ...In the end though...
Most people don't even bother to look at hm. It's not important.
Lily herself slumps against the wall, slips and trails down it until she's seated on the stones, her skirt shifting to reveal more of her boots with the awkward angle.
"Are you all right? He must've gripped you hard--" Blood trickles down Lily's glove from the wound that wasn't all absorbed by the bandage. "What--"
Lily stares after Loren, forcing herself to, until she can't see him and then looks up at her rescuer, "Doesn't... ma..." She's out of breath. "Doc...tor..." Huff, "I just need a doctor and for people to... leave me..."
Shit. How could she be so careless?