2019-08-30: A Return

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  • Log: A Return
  • Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
  • Where: Thunder Plains
  • Date: August 30, 2019
  • Summary: Loren heads back from his trek to the lake and crosses paths with Lan. Lan asks a burning question. Loren explains what he knows.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    In much the same way he departed, he had made his return trip. The only thing that stands as a sign of what he'd gone to do is the sword at his hip, the stone on its hilt shining free.

    The journey back across the Thunder Plains has not been kind -- but it never is. No one is spared the full weight of the eternal storm's wrath.

    At least Loren is in one piece as he reaches the southern exit, his clothing plastered to his skin. It becomes probable -- likely -- that he had done the trip in one shot, that he hasn't sought out a traveler's inn along the lightning-ridden road.

    At least it's not possible to catch a cold in a land as warm as Spira...?

    But even stoicism like this has its limits; he makes his way for the traveler's stopover that rests on that land outside the storm and once again pushes his sodden bangs out of his eyes. Someone may be due for a haircut soon...

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    He's been acting weird lately. Well... for a while now, really. Lan doesn't really know what to do besides try to support Loren, and follow the orders given to her. At least the moon is pretty nice overall, and the living's easy enough. Case in point, she's through with her latest assignment and she even found time to buy some new, less ratty clothing with this week's spending money. A hot bath after being soaked to the skin out in the rain, washing her hair, and then new clothes? What more could a girl ask for?

    She's halfway through a bowl of soup when the door opens and a very familiar (and probably soon to catch his death of cold) figure drips across the threshold. "Mmmf--*cough*" Lan chews hurried and swallows before trying again. "Loren! You look like you went swimming." She waves a spoon at him from a cozy alcove, the bowl settled on her knees still piping hot.

    It is severely unfair how comfortable she looks.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    While it's true that 'Loren' and 'acting weird' are mostly synonyms at this point, it's also true that he's been acting even more strangely than usual lately. To start with, there had been that incident nearly a month ago, when he'd come stumbling back from a surveying mission around Lake Macalania.

    ~~~~~

    He had dug through the rubble as best as he could, searching in vain for the blade in the wreckage. But it had become dire -- the weather took its toll. Fleetingly, he had considered just staying there, letting what would happen happen. But...

    Getting back out had taken time, effort, most of his reserve supply of Rosesol. He had wasted a lot of precious heat and time. Someone who could use fire Ether might have had an easier time but--

    --she had told him to find his fire but--

    But he'd made it at last into the forest and out of the life-stealing cold nearer to the lake and had slumped there against a tree. The scabbard that hung from his belt was empty.

    ~~~~~

    Change cold for wet and this is sort of (sort of) a mirror of that moment. He stalks across the room towards her, his gaze oddly focused on her.
    As he nears the table his hand rests on the sword's hilt. He draws it free--
    --all of a couple inches. "I found it," he says, as if this explains what on Filgaia he's been doing over the last few days.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    She still remembers him that day. Sodden, nearly frozen, and in his own way inconsolable. Not that he cried - Lan doesn't think she's ever seen him shed a tear - but ever since then he's never really been quite the same.

    Because it was his brother's sword.
    Because he lost his brother's sword.

    Loren practically stalks toward her, strangely focused, and Lan's knuckles briefly go a shade lighter around the handle of her spoon. She's a Drifter, after all - the body remembers what the mind forgets, and Lan isn't really one to let herself get run through in the middle of an inn. Or the middle of dinner! But it's Loren, and even if he might lose his temper long enough to make some gestures, she doesn't really believe he'd ever actually harm her.

    There was just something about his eyes, is all.

    "You found it," she repeats, blinking once. "Wait, you found it? You found it!" she crows, as if she's got any right to be elated for him. The bowl and spoon are hastily forgotten on the floor as Lan pushes herself to her feet to throw her arms around him, sopping mess that he is. "Congratulations! I'm sure Engil is happy now, too!"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He'd done something unexpected when she'd found him.
    When she had, in a sort of desperation given his current condition, taken him into her arms, he had wrapped his arms around her. It had been out of his own desperation.

    On that day, something in him had buckled and snapped. Again.

    He remembers. In Jugend, when -- no, it was after -- when he'd --

    No, that's a lie. He can't find the memory, even now.

    And after that day, he had continued that descent. Some days functional, some days not so much. And then, quite suddenly, like a fever breaking, he had come out of it.
    And without much word to her otherwise, he had head north.

    And now he's back, the water streaming off him pooling onto the floor.
    The sword sinks back into its hilt, home again once more.

    Even now, though, he still blinks as she rises from the floor, steps back a step as she approaches him, and attempts to free himself when she flings her arms around him.

    Unlike that day, Loren... doesn't want to be hugged again this time, it seems. "What are you-- Engil? I--"

    And this is when the manager of the little traveler's inn descends on, well, him at least and unceremoniously drops a towel overtop him.

    "You are dripping on my clean floor," she reminds him, with all the authority of a queen. "Rent a room and clean up or get out."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    It's not her best memory of him, maybe. It's still one bitterly dear to her.

    And the days after had been hard. Some of the hardest ones Lan had known since she met Loren. Sometimes nagging him to eat, and then sometimes coaxing him into even just a few conciliatory bites of a nutrient bar. If Lan hadn't known that his brother's sword had been lost, she'd have thought him gravely ill. But with that knowledge came the sad reality - there was nothing she could do for him. He'd either get through it on his own, or he'd grieve himself to death.

    So even if she doesn't know exactly what happened - he'd disappeared without a word - how do you find a single sword on the entire moon?! - she's happy for him.

    Loren squirms out of her arms and Lan accepts that he's gone back to being a space person. Fine, that's normal for him. Normal-er. Less worrisome, at least.

    "He's with me," Lan tells the innkeeper, and opens up her coin purse while Loren continues to drip on the floor. "One hot bath and an extra blanket, please?" She'll try shoving him towards the hot water if he doesn't pick up his feet soon enough!

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He had found it, in the end, where he'd 'left' it.

    Where he'd attempted to kill van Houten, that is. It had been partially buried in the snow and ice near the remains of that hill, point down as if someone had placed it there as a memorial.
    He had realized then that -- particularly given Lily's words -- it had been a memorial. Van Houten must have done it, and he hated her all the more for it.

    It made those weeks of agony almost a joke.
    Almost, because it wasn't just about the sword. It was because he couldn't be forgiven.

    Unlike her.

    However right now he has instead Lan hugging him for some reason, which is no longer a thing he can put up with.

    And then a towel is dumped over his head.

    "I'm-- you-- don't talk to me like--" he sputters, to the innkeeper's ultimatum.

    Uh oh.

    But the good news is that money talks.
    Any attempts to get him off to the room (and a bath) post haste are probably well-timed ones. At least once he's ushered off to the baths he starts to get the idea of what he should be doing with himself, rather than make his and Lan's collective lives more difficult.

    A WHILE LATER, IN LAN'S ROOM

    "...So what are you doing here, anyway?" he asks, looking far less like he managed to escape drowning by inches. His clothes are still damp; he's bundled into one of the robes on loan to guests. Fortunately, it's a good enough fit.
    He kneels on the floor, slowly pulling items out of his bag, which also got quite damp. The Medium, his medical supplies, a syringe marked with red warning messages in Solarian, assorted Spiran traveling supplies, his medical computer...

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    At least while he's getting warmed up, Lan has plenty of time to smooth things over with the innkeeper. By the time he's out, she's even managed to talk (or buy) their way into extra towels and dinner for him.

    As he sorts his belongings, Lan lies across the bed on her stomach, chin propped on her elbows as she watches him. She can read most of the Solarian now (though she doesn't always understand the more obscure words). "I finished following up on some leads and wanted to check out a rumor I heard. There are walking cactuses here somewhere!"

    Lan, apparently, has yet to be ambushed by a Cactuar.

    "What about you? You were in an awful funk for days and then you just, poom, snapped out of it and left with barely a word. And then you come back dripping, with your brother's missing sword. Did you get a vision of it or something?" To Lan, such a thing would hardly be unheard of - but to Loren, it's probably like asking if Engil himself whispered in his little brother's ear.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Anything goes as long as it works. Or something like that, at least.

    He glances up from his pack, gaze resting on her a moment. "...Walking cactuses?" He sounds, for the moment, dubious. And then he just shrugs, as if it was no matter. "Spira is pretty weird," Loren concludes, shuffling a few more items out of his bag and onto the floor. ...Ew, a nutribar wrapper. His mouth curls in distaste, and he tosses it to one side. ...The notebook's half-soaked; he dutifully cracks it open and sets it down near enough to the heating sphere so it can start to dry.

    The pages will never be the same.

    "...I'm fine," he insists, shaking his head. His shoulders tense, though.
    "I went back to where I lost it and there it was. That's all."

    His hand reaches into the bag once more and closes around one final object. He hesitates, lingering like that.

    She'd... when he was like that...

    He hesitates still. What if she had the wrong impression...

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    "Walking cactuses," Lan nods. The guy who told her about them might have been drunk, but he'd definitely seemed to believe his own story! And that weird rash had definitely seemed like it could've been made by a thousand needles.

    When he seems less than impressed, Lan just moves her shoulders in a shallow shrug and continues to watch him dig. It's not until he gets defensive that she narrows her eyes a little. "After that long? You were so messed up, I was really worried about you," she complains.

    He's lying to her, Lan realizes. Sure, it's hardly the first time, but...

    Her mouth tugs down into a small frown. "It makes it hard for me to support you properly when I don't know what's going on. You know that, right?" She somehow manages to say it without sounding accusing. Just like she's stating a fact.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "...It's complicated," he says, staring down at his bag as if it somehow held the answers to all the mysteries in creation. "Look, I got over it. Isn't that what's important?"

    He doesn't meet her eyes.

    He slowly begins to pull out the apparent last object in the bag, only to hesitate when she effectively calls him out. Sure, it's not an accusation. But...

    He lingers like that for a moment more, the object held in his hand. "..."

    He draws his hand out of the bag, his hand curled into a fist around the object.

    "What... do you want from me?" He lifts his head, looking over at her. "There's nothing to say. Just more of the same old garbage. I just... realized it all again." He looks away. "I can't do anything to change things, and neither can you. So you shouldn't even try." A pause.

    "But... thanks, all the same. For looking out for me."

    He rather suddenly tosses the item in his hand over to her. "Here. I thought you might like this. I found it in the forest."

    It's as cold as ice and looks as if it were carved from it, cracks and all.
    Even in her hands it doesn't melt.
    It's a ring.
    It fits her finger perfectly.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    It's complicated. The most non-answer of non-answers, but at least he said something. At least he's trying. At least he's functioning again, mostly.

    It's just kind of sad that it seems like this is how they'll always end up - with him pulling back into that weird 'gruff professional' front and Lan having no idea how he thinks of her anymore. It's not like she wants him to fall in love with her - please not that - but the brief moments when they almost seem connected, like friends rather than comrades, just make her happy.

    She listens quietly as he tries to explain a bit. It's that enormous weight on his shoulders again. Like a rock tied to his heart, drowning him in bitter grief. Something glitters in the air and she barely manages to get a hand up to catch it. "--Cold," she mumbles, turning the ring over in her fingers. Magic, she knows, as if it weren't already obvious. "...Thank you. And you're welcome."

    She tries it on to admire it before tucking it away in a pocket inside of her bag. Ice can be so beautiful, like the pieces of glass her mother had painstakingly saved to make windows for their home. Loren's so weird, bringing back a magic ring for a girl he doesn't even particularly seem to care for.

    Lan hesitates, unsure of too many things, before deciding 'to hell with it'. After all, didn't she just call him out for keeping secrets? "I want you to be my friend," she tells him sincerely, trying to meet his eyes. "Maybe you can be a little less stubborn about some stuff too, but that's all I want. It's all I ever wanted from you." She sits on the edge of the bed, fingers intertwined between her knees, and gazes at him. "So tell me what's really wrong."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "It was in a spring," he says, as if this is an explanation.

    It had just been chance. Just chance, and he'd thought maybe, she'd like it.
    The last time she saved his life, Leah had given him some advice about gifts and when to give them.

    Loren turns his head towards her, meeting her eyes.

    'I want you to be my friend', she says.

    She'd called him her friend atop the Photosphere.

    He'd...
    She's a Lamb, a part of him still protests. The Major had said-- and he should have something more than this. Something more suited to his class, his blood, his...
    But he...

    ...really doesn't have anyone else who will even look at him. Just those linked to him by familiar bonds. And her.

    That's all.

    "Oh," he says, as if this somehow hits home for the first time, hunching his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest. "You..." He lapses into silence, gazing into her eyes. "..."

    He's reminded in this moment, of all things, that he's really only wearing a robe. He withdraws that much further into it -- as much as he can, given its size and the fact that it's a nearly perfect fit -- as if he could escape the outside world. Even only this much exposure suddenly feels like far too much.
    Solarian culture is generally relaxed about such things -- daring cuts are often in fashion -- but he feels outright exposed, naked almost.

    "...I said there's nothing you can do about it," he says, glancing away from her, breaking the eyecontact that they've managed. "When I saw her, I guess I realized it all over again," he says.
    Who's 'her'?
    "I'll never," and he has to take a moment, as if to vocalize it is to catch his throat aflame, "be forgiven." He closes his eyes, shoulders slouching under the weight of it.

    "Leah probably told you. The training accident. It was my first time flying live. I messed up and everyone else..." He trails out. His jaw trembles, and he grits his teeth as if he could thereby endure the agony of the memory.

    "...Don't you see? There's nothing you can do," he whispers, at last.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    "I...?" she echoes, but he doesn't elaborate. The way he looks like he wants his bathrobe to swallow him whole is more distressing anyway - it's still unsettling to see him show discomfort that isn't expressed as anger or indignance. He can only bear to look at her for so long, even now, and Lan stands up as he seems to slouch under the weight of his sins, real or imagined. She drags the blanket off of the bed and drapes it around his shoulders in a whoosh of bedlinen, cocooning him in fabric and settling down on her knees behind him.

    Never be forgiven.
    The accident.
    Behind him, her eyebrows furrow. This is the first time she's ever heard about his own training accident--

    Even Lan can, occasionally, put two and two together and get warning sirens. This isn't right. Something's wrong, something's very wrong. Something inside her chest and brain feels like paper being shredded, like white noise she's heard before. Lan closes her eyes and leans forward, her front against his shoulderblades, and loosely wraps her arms around his shoulders.

    He doesn't have to meet her eyes this way. She doesn't have to try to pretend everything's all right. "Shhh. It's okay, Loren." He is Loren, right? Did... there's no way Engil would have been that angry, right? Loren can't be possessed by his brother's spirit or something, can he? "...It's okay. Surely there's someone who will forgive you. Even just one person. Even just me."

    What's she going to do, what's she going to do--?!

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    The story that Leah had told her had been different.

    Among other things...

    Among other things, it had been his brother.
    Engil had died in that accident. Everyone else had died except Leah.

    But to see him now, talking about a similar accident...

    She drapes the sheet around him and he doesn't struggle against it; one hand untangles from himself to reach out for a trailing end to tuck it in, pulling it tighter around him as if he could vanish from the world like this.

    He's being childish. He's a soldier, and he has the temerity to act like a toddler hiding from imagined monsters. But, he can't, he can't, he can't.
    Just when he'd thought he'd reached through to the other side of the storm, he's slipped and fallen back in.

    He can't...

    His memory is full of holes. He's aware of it, of the way when he tries to think back on things he should remember -- not the countless meaningless gaps everyone has -- that he comes up empty.

    But then he comes across the things he can remember, and they're raw enough despite the time that's passed that he feels as if the events had happened just the other day. They consume him.

    He remembers the questioning, days of it, after he was released from hospital. The final verdict, his expectation that he would be removed from Jugend, and then... nothing.

    Nothing but the shame, the guilt, and everyone else's hatred.

    He folds up on himself as Lan pulls him in, arms encircling his lower legs, his face pressing to his knees.

    He should...
    He's a captain! He's a First Class citizen! He-- he has his pride as a man! He should--

    But there's nothing he can grab onto. It might as well all be dust in his hands.

    His tension, his willingness to fight back -- both bleed out of him. He's slack against his legs, and if Lan weren't there behind him, he might have outright collapsed.

    "Even... just one person, huh..." he breathes, voice barely above a whisper.

    It's not enough. He knows it's not enough. Even all the life in his body might not be enough to win forgiveness.

    And yet he still wants to believe that: the idea of just one person.
    And of that being enough.