2017-08-21: Past and Present

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  • Cutscene: Past and Present
  • Cast: Leon Albus
  • Where: The Great Aveh Desert
  • Date: August 21, 2017
  • Summary: After the escape from the Guardian Temple, Leon watches the sun set.

The sun wavered, deep red and immense on the western horizon, as Leon Albus watched it.

It had only been hours since he and Lily rushed into the Guardian Temple. It felt like days. He felt like a different person than the man who watched on one of the Yggdrasil's sensor stations, when Fei Fong Wong was struck down by the Quarter Knight. He didn't have a good answer about why he and Lily rushed out, then. He had more of one, now.

He didn't know what the change within him was. He didn't know if he could call it a change, exactly. Maybe it had something to do with the Guardians -- with a display, despite their alien nature and their seeming weakness, of kindness. He didn't understand what Malevolence was, but Dan Dairam let him see it. He let Leon see the thing that, without a doubt, would have killed Lily. And, then, he ended it.

Everything felt clearer after that.

He knew why he helped Fei, then. He would like to say it was because it was the right thing to do -- and maybe it was -- but Fei was with them. He was a friend and someone who looked to him. It bothered Leon, still, because he knew he didn't deserve it... but, for the first time, he wished that he did. It was an important change.

And that, maybe, was why he didn't mind her presence. Leon looked down, as he sat on the opened cockpit hatch of his Gear, and watched Elly van Houten talking with Fei. They were still near the rover they took -- and no sign of the Yggdrasil, or aany of the complications that could bring. She was Gebler, Lily had told him. Once, that would have made him decide to end it quickly. But, that had changed, too. Leon's eyes regarded her, before he looked back out at the setting sun.

He knew a lot hadn't changed. He still had to focus on Gryndille. He felt conflicted, more than ever -- because it felt like everything needed him to be something he wasn't anymore.

Sitting on the hatch of the Gear that he piloted in Kislev -- taken by Aveh, and then recovered again by him -- he wondered if he could be that person again. It felt hard. It felt like something he had no right to. But, resting against Weglaff for the first time in months -- and holding onto another relic of that life, and who he used to be -- Leon felt something different. He felt something he hadn't felt since the Black Wolves died.

It no longer felt impossible.