2019-01-29: The Paths We Take

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  • Log: The Paths We Take
  • Cast: Riesenlied, Leah Sadalbari, Loren Voss
  • Where: A Highway Village
  • Date: 29th January 2019
  • Summary: Riesenlied visits a nearby town to New Petra, but discovers several people whom she has a strong emotional reaction to...


<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Riesenlied has been making... steps forward in her recovery - though she's largely still wheelchair-bound, she's been taking the time to have trips out to nearby villages within the Adlehyde region, those closest to New Petra that they have relationships with. They trade water, food, supplies; there's something of an amiable trade deal, given the crops and vegetables that the Outreach have been able to grow in favour of items like berries, medical supplies and even just information.

This is one such village, perhaps too small to even be properly named, little more than a highway town; there's a quiet chuckle from Riesenlied as she nods to a couple to say, "It has... been a long time. I am grateful you've been able to thrive even with the concerns from out west..."

It's rather a pleasant, pastoral sight; the sand digs softly against the wheels of her chair, and Riesenlied herself, of course, is highly visible - ever more draconic, in the garments of the Fereshte as she's often seen.

Perhaps something Leah would note herself, too, as she has the last few times. Riesenlied does not quite know the gravity of those she would meet today...

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

Leah Sadalbari, perfectly trustworthy scholar, has... been up to something else. The marks of it remain on her person; frankly, she is best served at the moment by laying low, recovering from their business. ...But she just so happens to have dragged a certain medic out to a little nothing village instead, pleasantly travelling towards it and indicating that there are particularly well-made textiles here.

She brooks no argument, despite still being pale, clearly under capacity and bandaged with obvious injury; half of her face is covered in said bandages, her hair held close for that reason; there are some obvious tears in the coating of her mechanical parts, another bandage along her jawline concealing the metal within. Her gait, as always, is uneven, but she is in ordinary clothes--loose-fitting, for the moment, lovely indigo.

"So you see..." Leah begins to finish what she's saying, as she steps out of a single building, glancing 'coincidentally' with her single visible eye towards Riesenlied, and her chair. She says nothing immediately, instead continuing, "There are a lot of hidden gems like this out in the Badlands. You haven't tried the pie they make with the local berries, either."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

She's up to something. It's true that until recently he hadn't spoken with her since just before the date of the accident, but you don't know someone for nearly a good half your life (certainly through your formative years) without getting a feeling for the ways in which they move through the world. ...And besides, she's much like his brother was. Inscrutable, and yet, a complete pain to put up with.

"And this was important enough that you had to come out here instead of recovering back in the ward," he comments. His uniform has been exchanged for the outfit he'd had crafted back on Lunar, but it fits in just as well around here. He looks more the Drifter than Leah does, exposed metalwork or no.

"I know some of the people," and he bites back the tail end of the statement, which /had/ nearly been 'on the surface, and corrects himself with a visible wince. "Some of the people around here," he huffs, then continues with the original statement: "put stock in fresh air and sunlight, but that's no replacement for proper medicine."

Though if you watch him, he's paying somewhat more attention at the mention of pie.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

There's an amiable little chuckle from Riesenlied as she nods towards the woman, nodding. "Ah, a pie? I'll think about bringing one back for Janey and Mikaia, of course--"

Rather coincidentally, someone off in the distance mentions pie. Riesenlied flits her glance and catches Leah's singular glance. There's about two seconds of pause as everything catches up with her. The indigo clothing is certainly different, but she remembers the kind Drifter who's come through the Fereshte once, twice, and also...

At that time...

And also--

"M-Mister Thomas?" RIesenlied stammers, as she looks and pushes her wheel towards them in more hurry than before. A knot churning through her stomach, as she pushes and--

Her wheel grinds as she skids into the sand and it starts to dig deep, sending her sliding down and precariously to her side!!

"A-Ah!"

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

Oh, yes. Leah's up to something. Even more clearlyt han usual.

"Yes," Leah answers Loren pleasantly about how important it is. She looks... Well, she could be an ordinary woman, if not for all the metal. Not as much a Drifter, no. "Ah, but it is good for you." She smiles, faintly, and has that smile until she looks at Riesenlied--

She noticed the matter of pie. She hasn't forgotten. But more important, for the moment...

"Go and help her," Leah says to Thomas with a gentle firmness, gesturing towards the difficulty Riesenlied is having with the chair. She does not approach immediately. She is, after all, apparently unwell. However...

It's the same eye as that time. The very same; the other changes do nothing to hide that same strange serenity.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

"I'll grant you that," he grouses, "but it's still better to recover in--"

That voice rings out. He slowly turns his head. He remembers that voice.

And indeed, here she is. Riesenlied, Metal Demon apostate... if she can be termed as such now, with the obliteration of the Photosphere and the elimination of her kind as a threat. He stares at her, as if to ask in silence both 'what are you doing here' and 'what do you want'.

Before her wheelchair hits a bank of sand and starts to tilt precariously to one side.

'Go and help', Leah says, before he can as much as start forward on his own. Yet, still at that request, he hesitates a fraction of a second. Then nods.

Then steps forward to right Riesenlied's chair and push it out of the softer earth.

"This isn't a good place for a wheelchair," he mutters, scowling as the wheels stutter over rockier soil. ...If you can even call this 'soil'.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

There's a quiet wince from Riesenlied as she recovers from the jostling her chair's gone through. She looks arguably worse than when Loren last inspected her, back when Wayside was still standing. More and more of those scales cover her body; her legs straight up look... reptilian, ending with large, long talons.

She bites her lip, as she looks up towards him and-- towards Leah too. If she were anyone else, she might have more been able to miss the breach of metal at the seams of her face, but--

Her arm... plunging through Siegfried's chest armour.

Riesenlied realises a moment later that her pupils have shrunk, that she's hyperventilating a little-- but she focuses on Loren as she murmurs quietly, "Are you... all right? I-- are you /both/--"

She hesitates, as she realises what she's asking of the people who were involved in the death of her father. Some part of her is screaming at her for it. Yet...

"... you were hurt... really badly."

She remembers how mortified she felt at the time.

She bites her lip.

"... by my father..."

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

Leah leaves behind the matter of her recovery entirely, dropping it casually to focus on Riesenlied instead--and on Loren, for that matter. She glances him over, with his stare, at his hesitation... and then waits. It's true, of course; this isn't ideal ground for a wheelchair.

If it were anyone else--well, if it were anyone else, would they be here? Leah watches Riesenlied's reaction. There is no cruelty in her expression, but neither is there real engagement at first--she is /watching/, distant, to understand... until that question. Then she is evaluating in a different way.

"...Even now, you would ask after our health, after what happened?" Leah asks, as if she finds it unusual. Because... Well, naturally.

"Is it kindness, or avoidance?" Leah asks gently. Then, she shakes her head. "...May we move to a more shaded spot? I don't want either of us to overdo the exposure, and I believe... we have things to talk about."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

It's as if whatever sickness had distorted her body has spread. No, that's exactly how it is. Beyond scaling, transforming her into...

Even Solarian children grow up with stories about dragons. That scowl tips past mere annoyance and into an expression born of out-and-out perturbation. His hands leave the handlebars of her wheelchair and he rounds on the weakened Metal Demon, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he takes in more fully the extent of her changes.

Then she asks if he's all right.

An expression, like a picture, can sometimes say a thousand words. His own paints a portrait of disbelief.

Leah's reaction is the more diplomatic of the two. Loren's... well.

"Thanks to a medical miracle, yes. I suppose I should count my blessings, though."

He glances away.

"It's more than I can say for some of the others."

Those who hadn't escaped the Tzadkiel, at least.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Is it kindness, or avoidance?

Riesenlied hesitates for a moment; she's not certain what it is. It all feels like instinct, like a powerful compulsion she wants to answer-- no, needs to answer. She withers for a moment as she feels the pulse of the Medium, quietly hidden underneath the shawl of the capelet she's wearing. Something hurts, inside--

Loren speaks his mind otherwise, then she pauses further. Leah asks them for a shaded spot, and she looks to shuffle her chair over towards a nearby side of a building with an awning. The ground there is more solid, and she has no trouble.

Unbeknownst to her, the further changes were brought upon by Solarian technology. Krelian's nanomachines, forced into her system by Alhazred's hands. Stirring, prompting further feelings, something shifting within her--

"I... could hear them. From when the ship was split in twain... there were many lost. I--"

She bites her lip, trying to bite back tears again. It's all a bit overwhelming right now. Filtrating claws of anger and vengeance and despicable thoughts that don't feel /hers/ trying to inch their way to the surface.

"... I didn't know you were... part of Gebler, Mister Thomas." A pause. She looks towards Leah as well, biting her lip deeper as she visibly struggles through what may as well be a suppressed panic attack.

"But I was still... /afraid/, of all the hurt that had been visited. To you, to those onboard... to father."

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

It's true; many, many died on that ship when it was destroyed. Loren nearly did, himself. Leah, well--Leah hasn't answered the question of whether she's all right yet. But then, there's a reason she brought loren...

And it wasn't just to needle him about her recovery.

"I see," Leah answers, as she takes up beside the wall, under the awning. All that conflict--she doesn't need Riesenlied's empathic abilities to see it. She doesn't need such power to understand conflict here. Panic, maybe...

"That's true. Many were lost. And many more /could/ have been lost, had things continued as they were. And yet, your first thought is our safety--not the anger you would have the right to feel."

"...I'm fine. The injuries I sustained were not so significant as those that gave me these limbs." Leah gestures to the obvious mechanical portions of her body. "Fear is a natural reaction to the sheer violence of that moment, particularly given your ordeal shortly beforehand. What I will say is..."

Leah glances to Loren; she recalls the /anger/ she felt, the break in her composure as she fought for his life. But she remembers it as if handling it with tongs, a dangerous truth that need not be embraced just yet.

"I am not a part of Gebler. My role is different. And while I believe that what we did--what /I/ did--was necessary..." Leah moves to meet Riesenlied's gaze. "It was not my intention to do so in your presence. Forcing you to witness it was an unkindness that perhaps it would be better if you had been spared."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Leah directs them for a shadier, more secluded spot. So much the better. He glances Riesenlied's way, then, without much else in the way of warning, steps behind the wheelchair to grab the handles and help her along. "You'll want to look at the left wheel," he comments after a moment. "There might be some grit in it. It's not turning properly." It's possible he might be a little more acquainted with how these devices work.

Whereupon once they reach their destination, he abandons her chair and leans up against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

...There were many lost, huh. He outright grimaces, closing his eyes and turning his face away from her. Maybe he didn't have the best relationship with the people on board that ship. Maybe they didn't like him too much, either. But he'd still known them, their routines, patched up more than a few of their wounds on Lunar. And they'd talked to him. How they couldn't wait to get home. Who was waiting for them. What they wanted to do in life. And now...

"..."

He exhales a breath.

"It's Loren. Loren Voss. 'Thomas' is just a cover."

Opening his eyes, he gazes on Leah of all people. How can she remain so calm in the face of... this? Before his attention skims back towards Riesenlied, who reiterates her statement that she felt so afraid for them all. For her father, too.

"Was that before or after he nearly killed me?" he snipes, before -- probably thanks to Leah's presence -- he glances away, if in a distant sort of mute semi-apology.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Riesenlied quietly nods to Loren as he comments on the wheel; it's definitely not ideal, moving around like this. But some part of her is deeply stubborn about getting something better...

"Thank you... I'll-- look at it."

... because she's scared of being in a wheelchair forever, maybe. If she got more comfortable with it.

Leah not being part of Gebler was very surprising to her, but... she also does not understand Solaris' myriad allegiances. Kent, after all, was in the employ of Gebler, and he was not a skydweller. Neither was the shaman they had...

But should she be feeling the anger she has the right to feel? The anger she clearly sees Loren feeling now?

It's there. It isn't as if she were some kind of saint that were immune to feeling such human emotion, Hyadean or not. Yet, perhaps still... it is the sorrow that comes out ontop. The sorrow that would have her questioning uselessly why things had to turn out the way they did.

And that's a sorrow that Leah addresses, even if indirectly. That things have to be the way they were. That they were necessary.

Loren says his true name. She purses her lips for a moment. She would've been happy to call him Thomas, but now it feels as if they've been forcibly transitioned to a new stage of their acquaintance. To something more raw, with less facade, perhaps.

"... I want, so very much, to say that he changed-- that father saved me, that he saw the light at the last moment. That it /wasn't/ necessary," Riesenlied works through what comes out as a channeled murmur, like it's something that she can't believe, something that's too naive for her, who is often seen as naivete incarnate.

"But..."

She furrows her brow, as Loren snipes at her. It prompts a rather hard tremble for a moment.

"It's easy, posthumously, to forget everything that had happened. The endless pursuits for Mother. How many times I've had to tell myself I'm doing this out of a love for father, for my brethren... how much I've had to tamp down the disgust at the settlements we've had to assault. Because Arctica won't come back just like that; King Justin won't come back just like that..."

She slumps now, so, so weary.

"And when he learnt of how I'd turned away from him, he didn't take it sitting down either. He tried to kill me, and Noeline, and everyone in Wayside... even before you pursued us, on that day."

Her eyes look so bleary as she shakes her head.

"But as to when you ask whether it was necessary or not... even in the face of all that... of all that he is, good and bad ... ..."

She finds herself placing her hands to her face slowly, as a strained little sob comes out.

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

Some things stay the same, when you know someone in your formative years. ...Some things don't; some things change in ways no one can expect. Some things change in ways that few would /want/.

It is Leah's job, of course, to be calm, just as it is Loren's to notice the issue with the wheelchair, and similar. But that may not explain all of it. She had mentioned, though--the difference between medical and command. The nature of sacrificing lives for goals.

It would illuminate some of the truth of Solaris if the Watcher explained the ways in which she differs from Gebler, but she doesn't. Instead she simply says, "As far as Gebler goes, I'm technically retired, due to injury. Much like your Tainted."

A change in relationship--will it be for the better? They will have to see. In the meantime, the blue-eyed woman watches Riesenlied quietly as she speaks. She works through her feelings, reacts to a snipe--

"...it is easy," Leah agrees, "To forget the sins of those we love who have died. Who have been taken from us."

"...It was necessary for me. I could claim that it is because of what he threatened to do to our people--it would be the politic thing to do."

"...But it was really because of him." Leah inclines her head to Loren. "It would have been my mission regardless. But I was not going to allow him to take that one life. But it isn't comforting. I don't /expect/ it to be comforting. Just as the others lost won't be comforted here."

"...It isn't my place to offer you something soothing. I do not have a warm hand to extend to you. Your father was my enemy, killed many of my people... and I am the one who took his life from you."

"It would be natural, for you to hate me. we do not think in cold logic for those we love; we think in passion, in emotion. ...But I don't believe you will. You had the strength to go against everything you knew for what you believed in. ...There is little 'natural' about a Hyadean seeking peace, if you ask anyone for a thousand years."

"I seek an end to war, Riesenlied. A new path for human and demon, skydweller and surfacer. I will not ask you to join me. But I wanted you to know it."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

It's a difference that is difficult -- for him -- to grasp. She had deemed the loss of the ship acceptable, simply for the sake that no further lives were lost. A sacrifice, for the greater good. She had felt that day a success. People had died. The ship had been destroyed. He had felt that day a failure.

It's the difference between medical and command made plain. Command's job is to sacrifice soldiers, if needed, to ensure victory. Medical, to enable soldiers to make that sacrifice.

If he notices -- or is troubled by the reaction his barbed comment provoked -- he gives no sign of it, his attention directed instead down the alley, like he'd rather be somewhere else. "Fortunately, he was stopped there." It would be nice to say 'we', except he's not the one who put a hand through Siegfried's chest. "I don't want to think about what he would have tried if he hadn't been." Engaged by the rest of the fleets, perhaps? Found his way to Etrenank? The defense systems would hold, of course, the gate aside, but imagining that scenario play out is a sobering exercise.

Leah, by contrast to the angry young medic, manages a calm route, amidst the emotional eddies threatening from all sides now.

"You're right. Dead people don't come back. And the scars they leave never fade," he remarks, from the sidelines. "No matter how hard you try."

Something deeper than just the lost ship. Something that Leah alludes to, perhaps.

To forget the sins... Loren bows his head, his expression for now unreadable at its current cant. ...of those who have died.

Is that how she does it?

His silence and current posture maintain. Until the point where Leah says it was because of him. He lifts his head, something like shock flooding his expression. He blinks, pushing his glasses back up his nose, staring at Leah and Leah alone.

...Does she feel responsible for him? Because of his brother?

Riesenlied makes a particular noise. Loren glances away from both women again, his silence now maintaining. ...What else is there to say to that?

To any of that. An end to war...

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Leah says that she is not unlike the Tainted. To be quite honest, Riesenlied was expecting a different story - how she'd walked a different path of life that convened with those of the skydwellers, but... retired, due to injury. Her eyes flit towards the metallic parts of her for a moment.

Just like her, metal is growing over her body. Causing her harm, perhaps, in the long-term. Just like her scales.

Leah says that it was necessary for her. Like Riesenlied, she finds layers in which she could say -- because of politics, because of the threat he represents. But it wasn't what that was about. It was because she couldn't let Siegfried take that life. Take Loren's life. She bites her lip a moment as she looks to him.

"I... would not have expected warmth or comfort, no," Riesenlied concludes very quietly as she works through those sobs, as she pulls her head up and tries to compose herself again. Loren continues, speaking that it's fortunate that he was stopped there. That it could've been worse if he wasn't.

She can /feel/ something trying to shape her. Both ends of her head are starting to stretch as if she were going to turn draconic again. Her body screams at her to elongate, for her wings to spread, for her arms to turn to forelegs.

The darkest word dances at the tip of her tongue.

-Accession-

She fights it.

Because Leah does hit on a key irony of her mission: that her mission of peace is not always a mission of emotion. Because the temperance, patience and understanding that she so desires cannot come from just a pure listening of base instincts.

"... all we can do, as those left behind by the dearly departed, is protect ourselves with memories," Riesenlied murmurs to Loren. It almost sounds like something she's dwelled on for a long time, those words.

But she's not ready for what Leah says, still; she blinks a few times, as she... hesitates.

"Why... do I feel we will not be allies, though our goals align?" she lowers her head, furrows her brow. "Gebler has pursued us -- the Outreach -- before, for bearing wings. Perhaps still so, now. I do not know the ways of your command. I do not see you leaving us alone to our mission of aid and relief..."

<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.

'Fortunately.' 'Dead people don't come back.' '...No matter how hard you try.'

Yes, there is more here, for all of them. But Leah has a feeling--an intuition as much as a knowledge, when it comes to Riesenlied, the /qualities/ that she must have in order to be the person that she is. It is not, precisely, the Solarian way to engage in this sort of thing during injury, to step in...

But she does things in her own way; things that others cannot, or will not.

But in this, there is a similarity; metal peeks out of Leah's form, most obvious in her hands, in one of her feet, despite the draping attire. Only one eye is visible at all; her jaw clearly has some reinforcement. Her silhouette is... /different/. But rather than the dragon of legend, Leah is shaped as something... else.

"...That is one lesson." Leah does not look to Loren as he looks away, but there is the slightest movement of a hand at her side, fingers pressing together in a gesture that could imply some reassurance. "I have learned... another path." Pause.

Leah looks into Riesenlied's eyes--at least, as best she can, one to two. She waits for her answer, and indeed, "Because you are canny enough to be a leader to your people. Our goals align, but our methods do not. Occasionally, we may have common cause. But I would not be surprised if it is less often that we have the chance to speak this way."

"...Truthfully, Gebler's pursuit of you is not mine to alter. I am outside its command, though i have some influence. There are reasons that we shepherds do as we do. I can give no promises of safe travel, of being left in peace on your mission."

"...But it isn't my goal to destroy the surface, either. What I offer you is a certain amount of parley. Should you wish to speak to me, I will endeavor to make it possible, without further violence in that moment. This is a time of great upheaval... and you can expect it to worsen."

"Someone to care for those lost in the changes is not something I, personally, will oppose." She pauses, then, and looks back to Loren again. "...So you see, it wasn't /only/ the cloth and pie, mm?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Riesenlied starts to change. Loren notices it only when he lifts his head to stare at Leah, glancing over at the apostate Metal Demon when Riesenlied herself replies. For a moment, he watches in some strange mix of disquieted fascination. Before he looks away in the altogether. He's not watching her at all -- let alone closely -- when her body begs at her to change.

His thoughts are for the moment elsewhere.

'Protect ourselves with memories', huh.

He'd give anything to erase those memories. Erase his brother's entire existence.

Everyone wants to forget /him/ anyway. Everyone, except...

This is a lesson. Is that why she brought him here?

He may be naive. He may be far too honest. But he's not /stupid/.

"Another path, huh..."

He doesn't look back at Leah.

It's what she'd said to him, if not wrapped in the garments of peace, someday. Things are going to get worse. Of that, he has no doubt. That's fine. As long as he's still living, he doesn't want war to end.

It's selfish and he doesn't care.

He shakes his head; he shrugs his shoulders in a shallow gesture.

"Seems that way," he says, in the end.