2018-08-22: An Awkward Sort Of Silence
- Log: An Awkward Sort Of Silence
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: Volgran Forest
- Date: August 22nd 2018
- Summary: Loren runs into a problem on the way back to the encampment at last. That problem is Lan-shaped.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"So anyway that's how I've been doing. I never want to have to wear a long skirt again." That story had no business being anywhere as long as Lan made it, and yet it's kept her occupied (and blathering) almost since they ran into one another again nearly fifteen minutes ago. In the manner of most of Lan's stories, it started with an entirely ordinary beginning before veering slowly yet inexorably towards weirdness.
Worse yet, she apparently seems perfectly happy to assume that they're just going to coalesce right back into an adventuring party. She didn't even bother asking where he was going!
"--Oh right!" Lan interrupts herself before she can get started on another Highly Riveting Tale. "Are you headed anywhere special right now? I'm kind of between towns right now. And jobs."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It just sort of... happened.
It is probably in a way his fault -- he'd put off a return for weeks, afraid of what might await him back at the encampment, until sheer necessity made it unavoidable -- and of course the situation in Glenwood had gotten worse, necessitating a detour, and then...
And then somehow, from out of nowhere, there had been Lan Lilac.
He's been only half-listening to her story (how did the squirrels tie into this? he doesn't even know) while attempting to delay and further detour the approach towards the point where a 'large silvery bird' had fallen from the sky some months ago.
If she shows up in the camp, they'd probably just kill her on sight, and that would just be wasteful.
"Uh," he says, walking past the same tree they've passed possibly three times already. "I'm just... er."
Think, you idiot!
"Somewhere... south of Lastonbell? I think there were some villages to the south, away from the frontlines."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Oh, right! Because you're going to be a doctor. You're visiting your residences." Hadn't that been something she'd heard him say about medical training, a long time ago? It was either Thomas or someone else. (But it was probably Thomas.)
Not for the first time Lan wonders what drives someone like Thomas to become a doctor. It's not like he really seems to care overmuch (or at all) about his fellow man. Could it be he just wants to make good money? Surely there are things he's more suited to than healing...
Lastonbell seems like an agreeable enough choice. She's not really paying too much attention anymore. "Hey-- is it a tradition in your family to become a doctor or something?" she asks suddenly, turning her head to glance at him as they walk.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There is a pause that would possibly be suspicious to anyone else.
Couple with a sidelong glance, before his attention settles on Lan again. "...Right," he finally answers, brain catching up to him.
Idiot. Can't you even keep your story straight?
They continue to walk in silence for a moment or three, past the great trees of the forest.
...Which way was south? They're not getting closer to the site, he's pretty certain, but...
"Uh. A tradition?"
Was there a family career tradition? He knows where they'd expected him to go, but. He didn't.
"No," he says at last. "Why do you ask? Is it a tradition with your people to do the same job?"
If he can think of anything that's a tradition, it might be the military, though that hardly counts. Most families had had at least someone in the military.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Clasping her hands somewhat awkwardly behind her back (her bag's in the way), Lan meanders along by Thomas's side. It's kind of surprising to think that maybe Thomas really does just... want to be a doctor. Maybe he's the kind of person who cares too much and then becomes gruff or easily angered to hide it.
She shakes her head. "There's no tradition like that in my family, though I guess there are some families who are well-known for things. There's a family in the village that's been making really good cactus wine for about three generations now, but that's not exactly a job by itself. Just a recipe passed down."
"I guess I was just curious," she continues. "About why you'd want to be a doctor when you don't like people all that much."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be honest, it's less 'wants to' and more 'was naturally good at it' and so the decision, like many decisions in life, was more or less made for him anyway. Maybe it would have been easier if he'd decided to be a researcher anyway, back then. Maybe it would have been a better life. Or maybe not.
It's too hard to untangle, in the flow of time.
"So your family doesn't do anything in particular either." It's perhaps not the kindest way to phrase it, but...
"Hmph. I suppose there are worse things to hand down." Like curses, for example.
"...What?"
His hand grips the bag slung over his shoulder before he stops, turns towards her, and looks her right in the eyes. "What does that have to do with anything? Do you have to like people to take care of them?"
When he gets right down to it, does he like people? Even for him it's not a matter he has a simple yes-or-no ready.
"...So what did you leave home for? Was it to make money or find adventure, or something like that? It seems like half the people I meet are after one or the other. It's foolish."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Even if it's unkind, Lan still doesn't seem to take umbrage. Maybe she understood what he meant, or maybe she just doesn't disagree. "Oh, definitely. Like a really ugly heirloom." She... may be deliberately screwing with him now. Lan hides a smile with a turn of her head.
When he turns to face her she's managed to school her features. Whatever answer she'd been expecting, the one he gives her makes Lan stop and regard him. "I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter too much. It's just..." Out of character, maybe? How can it be, when she doesn't really know that much about him? "...I wanted to know a little more about you," she finishes, raising her hands in a 'what can you do?' sort of gesture.
"And I left because of our village's tradition of going out into the world when you're of age, and also because I kinda-sorta broke one of our other traditions." There's a trace of apology in her voice, but it doesn't seem meant for him, especially when she follows up with, "What's silly about wanting a better life?" It's something she learned from her mother as a child: people are awfully eager to heap scorn on those who want an easier life, no matter how easy or hard their own may be.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He snorts, as if he were actually amused by the joke she tosses his way but trying not to show it. "Still a sight better than the faces I've seen some families pass down," he remarks, and this time opts to take a right rather than a left. He's certain this should still take them away from the campsite, but...
Also not entirely convinced this will take him towards the edge of the forest in the direction of 'Lastonbell'.
"I don't seem the type, do I? Is that what you're getting at?" But he just shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders, turning his hands towards the heavens as if similarly indicating towards the same sentiment as she. "...Fine. It doesn't matter what you think."
He doesn't mind it, honestly. There's a certain pride to be had in his work. He has a natural talent for it. He can support people, he can save lives.
It just... isn't the same as being the one leading the attack, so to speak. A part of him...
He never was going to be able to surpass him, even before his brother had died and dashed everything to pieces.
"Going out into the world?"
Most people, back home, wouldn't leave if they didn't have to. He only left because there was no other option. But he's seen on the surface that people tend to leave home. Maybe it's because their living conditions are so wretched, there's a chance of something better elsewhere.
"...You broke a what?" It's not so much judgmental as it is oddly curious. She doesn't really seem the type.
But it's her other question that pulls more from him: "Shouldn't it be a better reason? If you're leaving your home, you could die out there, alone. Between monsters, natural hazards..."
He pauses, dwelling for a moment on the memory of a figure in a black coat.
"Other people."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"I'm not making fun of you," she reminds him. Sometimes Lan wonders if Thomas even knows the difference. "But you're right. I guess it doesn't really matter what other people think... I just wanted to understand a litle better." In the end, humans are the ones that are complicated. Talking to spirits is way easier...!
That's why it takes her a moment to actually... decide whether or not she wants to tell him the truth. Does he deserve to know? She's pretty sure he wouldn't use it against her even if he did... What's he going to do on the moon? Little Firelight is a long, long way from here.
"...My village..." she begins haltingly, because Lan has never told anybody this. Maybe not even Asha. "My village had a medium enshrined." Geez, how is she supposed to explain this to someone who is like the Outsidest of Outsiders?! "Long story short, I stole something because we weren't using it to help other people. This." Lan's hand migrates into a fold of her loose top and emerges with a familiar metal slab. He'll recognize it, because he's seen Lan summon her patron Guardian with it.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He closes his eyes, as if under a great strain. "Did I say you were making fun of me...?" he utters, shoulders sagging. Most people do, though, if they're not dismissing him entirely. Or ignoring him.
It's why, really, he doesn't like being back here -- it's too cramped, too hard to avoid other people. At least on base in Aveh there was always a weight towards people being on the front lines, and at least the people in medical kept to themselves back there. Here, it's different -- isolation in a packed crowd. Even a ship of the Tzadkiel's size ends up being cramped when fully staffed.
Maybe he'll get lucky and he'll get assigned to a medical bay by himself.
But is that even what he really wants...?
He continues to push on through the foliage. I don't know what I want anymore.
And pauses, craning his head back towards Lan as she explains where she comes from.
An enshrined Medium? He'd read about that, somewhere.
Something alights in his blue eyes. He turns back towards her and raises a hand as if to indicate she should hold up. "You stole it, didn't you," he states simply, moments before she admits to as much herself.
And then he just sighs.
"So, what, then?"
He's turned away, pushing through the green. "Are you going back someday? Or are you going to stay away forever?"
What would happen if he gave up and went home? ...If he could go home, at this point.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"You get defensive pretty easily, you know," Lan counters simply. "Most of the time, I think you think I'm making fun of you." She doesn't, at least not more than 'a little bit'.
Honestly, she wasn't even completely sure he was still listening to her... but he turns and stares, as if she's done something awful. (Sometimes Lan wonders if she really has.) Guilt burbles quietly between her ribs. "I wanted to do something. It was right there. And I felt it in my chest, this pull, before I stole it." Can Thomas understand that? Would he even try?
"And... I don't know. People will be furious with me, probably. I might be kicked out for good." It's kind of hard to imagine, really, but what else can you do with someone who would steal from a shrine?
She slowly rubs her thumbs against the metal, gazing down at the tablet. "That's... kind of why I asked. I wondered. I felt a need to do it, but... I can't do much medical stuff. And here you are, going to school and studying and doing a lot of work for it, but you don't even really..." Lan trails off. Care? Want to? She lifts her head to gaze at Thomas, at his freckles and his angry faces and his blue eyes--
blue, they were blue
Lan digs the heel of her hand against her left eye. It was a long time ago. He hasn't been back. "..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"So you say," he grouses, as if the topic again wears on his nerves. "Honestly, I don't think a girl like you understands how to make fun of someone." He, at this point, is a well-weathered veteran -- on the giving and receiving end. (though mostly the latter)
He had found a strange stone tablet. It had, even then, been as if it had called to him. So he'd taken it from the temple, and spoken not a word of it.
I should have turned it over to the labs, he thinks, and not for the first time. Even here, he could almost swear he feels its pulse in the bag.
And he thinks again of Luceid, and of the nature of a 'god'. What is a Guardian?
He'd begged the Guardian to take his life later for sparing him 'then', as he stood impaled by a nightmare.
...No. No, I refuse. It shouldn't... I'm the one in control of you, he thinks to the stone slab in his bag with sudden intensity. I'm not holding to an agreement to something that only claims to be a god...
His gaze again focuses on Lan.
"So you can't go back."
And in what might be a surprising show of empathy, from him at least, he says: "Neither can I."
That had been the real agreement he'd made. He wasn't coming back, not until he'd fixed things.
"...Huh."
So she'd felt a need to do something and then...
"I don't hate it. It's what I'm good at."
That's not entirely true. He hates that he can't do more than offer aid while someone else takes the glory. But, what can he do now?
And if he's being honest, he doesn't know what he wants in life beyond the obvious. The obvious few. Maybe it's enough to go with the current of his life, and from there...
There's more than one way. Sieze glory, or die, as they said.
She stares at him, then. As if seeing a ghost, or struck dumb.
No, his eyes were an unearthly shade of blue. Loren's by contrast are merely akin to the sky. But there is a similarity there.
"What?" he asks, as she rubs at her eye.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
So he can't go back either. Lan doesn't even think to ask if it's because of his attitude.
Instead she makes herself take slower breaths. It's fine. "It's fine," she repeats out loud. "I just thought of someone who..." Who what? There's not really one verb that fits. "Who really messed me up, the only time we fought. Your eyes are blue, and they reminded me of his."
Lan starts walking again, though it's a shade slower than before. She's looking at her feet as much as she is the forest in front of them. "Yeah, it was a bad time," she remarks a little distantly, before clearing her throat. "But... you know, I'm glad you don't hate it. Being a medic."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be honest, 'his attitude' would be a fair guess, even if it's not correct. He could always go back. He could probably quit the military if he wanted to. The loss of face would be enormous, but he could do it with his social class. It would just cost his family what little social currency they had left.
And then what? What would he even do with himself? There's no other options in life that he can see.
"Somewhat who what? Don't start saying something and then trail off," the terminally self-unaware young man says, taking a step back towards her.
Someone who really messed her up. He wrinkles his brow.
Blue eyes.
Normally, it'd mean nothing. Many people have blue eyes. It's not an uncommon trait.
But when Loren thinks of blue eyes, at least in connection with recent pains and recent failures, one face comes to mind.
They really had been beautiful eyes. Beautiful, terrifying eyes.
She keeps walking. He's rooted where he stands. "...What? Who? What did he look like?" It's just a shade shy of a demand, everything else she'd said abandoned by the side of the proverbial road.
"How did he dress?"
The Major would probably dock him points for style at this point.
"Did he use a sword?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
They'd been beautiful eyes. But Lan hadn't been able to appreciate them at the time. "He was... I don't know his name." She can only think of him as a stranger. The stranger. "Why?" Her toes brush through low grass as she walks on. "He was in a black coat. I just remember his eyes." And the way his hands felt-- she exhales slowly, turning to look at Thomas and stopping when she realizes he'd stopped.
The stranger's eyes and the black un-sea that spewed forth thousands of hands, her own hea-- "A sword... yeah," she nods, right hand straying to the thick scar that doesn't quite peek out from beneath her top. "He used a sword. --Thomas," she realizes mere moments later. "Have you..." Met, fought, survived "Seen him before?"
What will she do if he has? What will she do if he hasn't? He can't have, right? The stranger would've killed him. ...Or worse, she remembers.
Outwardly, she's gone pale beneath her tan, but Lan is holding on anyway. She's staring right at him. "Why? Do you know who he is?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
In a black coat...
Azazel had been preying on Lambs on the surface. That's how they had found he existed in the first place. Not all of his victims had died.
Keil had run into him, even before the Major had crossed blades and identified the threat properly. There had probably been others.
He's looking at one now, he's fairly certain.
He doesn't answer her at first, silence gripping him firmly.
Met, fought, survived. All of the above.
Tried to flee from.
Because he knows he's--
Both hands curl into loose fists.
"I've met him," he says, looking away from her.
"But I don't know his name. You were lucky, huh..."
He doesn't have a scar to show for it -- thank his talents, thank Solarian medicine. But he can remember if distantly how it had felt when the phantom had run him through.
"I got away."
It's not a lie, anymore than anything else he's said has technically been a lie. It's just also not the whole truth.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lucky. "Yeah. He almost killed me." But he didn't. Because... because she had... She must have run away. She just doesn't remember it. She must've been too injured, too panicked to register any of it. It's normal.
She gazes after Thomas, probably remembering his own meeting with the stranger. "..." It must be luck. "I was pretty wrecked," she offers, not sure what to say to him. "But I'm back to normal now. I met someone who helped me back to a town."
The silence when they don't speak feels crushing. "...I'm glad you got away too," she tells Thomas's back.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"..." He'd almost killed Loren. But he didn't, because he'd thought that Loren was already dead. "But you managed to run away." He'd tried. It had been useless, the nightmare continuing to swallow him up no matter what path or direction he turned. And then he'd had to fight.
"That's... good," he manages finally, because what else do you say to something like that? 'Congratulations on not dying'? "I managed to run before I was hurt too badly," he lies.
Someone helped her back? Didn't simply finish her off?
Silence, thick and awkward, settles in here in the trees. Only a single strand of birdsong dares rupture the relative quiet of the forest.
Before a loud crash a distressingly short distance off rings out too.
More muffled is the Solarian oath that follows, which Loren's ears quickly pick up on.
They're closer to the landing site -- or the camp at least, though it won't help since a clearcut won't hide ANYTHING -- than he thought.
Think fast, Loren!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Sometimes Lan supposes that really is all somebody can say. 'I'm glad we lived.' It's funny because it's kind of pathetic.
She hadn't thought ruminating on her own failure to get horribly murdered would be so awkward. To be honest, she hasn't really gotten the hang of a lot of things. It's quiet here...
Until the crash echoes from beyond the treeline. "Uh?!" she yelps, heart leaping into her throat. It's too soon after talking about the stranger for her to take any kind of loud noise well.
"Come on," she hisses, dashing forward to grab clumsily for his hand. Lan barely slows down before she's trying to hurry them both in the opposite direction.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Sometimes, just surviving is all you can do.
But that's not what he wants. It's not enough.
He seethes in silence. He'd known of course that he hadn't a chance -- that's why he'd run. But to have that proven to him, beyond a shadow of a doubt...
If he could kill Azazel, he'd do it without hesitation.
The sound is sudden enough that even he jumps. Someone must have dropped something back on site -- what, precisely, he won't know until/unless he investigates. But it's probably unimportant.
What is important is Lan's proximity to their camp. If she sees anything, he'll probably have to kill her.
He can see it now. The faint glint of silver through the trees. It's still a long ways away but...
They must have extended the camp perimeter. Damn, damn, he almost walked her right into the camp--
She grabs his hand while he's still juggling his options, a demonstration that would make his tactical instructors raise a weary palm to their faces.
And she runs, with him, in the opposition direction.
He doesn't argue. He puts up the complete opposite of a fuss.
"Probably-- something bad," he says, between breaths.