2019-08-13: Disconformity
- Cutscene: Disconformity
- Cast: Loren Voss
- Where: Lake Macalania
- Date: August 13th, 2019
- Summary: Loren awakens in a crevasse and tends to his wounds. Something, though, has changed. Something has been lost.
BGM: (Drakengard 3 ~ Keiichi Okabe - Iniquitus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1rCW0bGW8U
He had been lucky, in the end.
Lucky that when he'd fallen, he hadn't ended up at the bottom of the crevasse. Lucky that the outcropping of ice had been where it had been. Lucky that he hadn't been buried by the landslide he had caused. Lucky that the injuries he had sustained weren't life threatening.
Lucky that he'd fallen in a way to minimize his exposure to the elements.
He had woken, eventually. If he had been so inclined it's likely he could have worked out how long it had been.
But there are other things on his mind. He has just fallen a distance to land on a hard surface, so there are unquestionably other things on his mind.
So he has pulled himself up -- carefully, and only out of necessity; no one's going to swoop in and save him -- against the ledge and sets about going through the same process he would go through for anyone else.
Ribs are probably cracked. Not broken... probably. Probably, significant bruising. Environmental damage. He ticks the factors off one by one.
No internal bleeding. ...Probably. He can't be absolutely sure, but he's found none of the warning signs.
And so he draws a slow breath and exhales, closing his eyes as he tilts his head backwards. His awareness shifts inwards, gliding across damaged tissue -- or so, at least, he imagines it. He can't /see/ what's inside; Ether manipulation doesn't give him extrasensory perception like that. But he knows what's damaged and where it is and how it /should/ be and that's enough.
In the crevasse, green light briefly plays across the glaze of ice.
When it's done he lingers like that, his gaze tilted upwards towards the sky as seen above the tear in the lake that is the crevasse. It's really blue.
...He's going to kill her. Permitting someone like Van Houten to live is the same as just /accepting/ that there are those who will always be forgiven and those who will always bear their sins. He'll kill her when he next sees her, before she gets the chance to atone. And that will solve the matter.
His rage is tempered, perhaps, by the fall. But not gone. It smolders like a banked fire.
He remains in that posture for several moments still, gaze heavy-lidded towards the sky.
By inches his left hand reaches for the blade at his hip. The blade that should be there.
He finds empty space, and very nearly rises to his feet in the next moment, a course of action that would have put him in a precarious position considering his current location.
It's still more than he can stand. He twists where he lies, trying to see if it is by any chance at the bottom of the crevasse or perhaps pinned into a wall or, maybe...
It's not here. It's-- his brother's-- the only thing that's left from-- Leah will--
The thoughts jolt past like stray static. He has a hard time following any of them. Did he hit his head on the way down? --Impossible, he would have noticed.
...Why, the thought arises next, had his brother's sword ended up in his possession? He had broken it, but the damage to it that had allowed it to be broken... what had caused that?There's a gap; he probes at the incongruity, the part that doesn't seem to follow.
Oh.
Now he remembers. He sinks back against the stone like a marionette with its strings cut, the enormity of his sin settling across him once again.
He had borrowed his brother's sword that day -- for good luck, on that training exercise with the rest of his team. He'd been nervous but also excited to finally get to pilot a Gear live, without the simulators. And then... when he'd messed up...
/They all died... because of me./
He sits in silence, still thereafter.