2020-09-28: Astrobleme

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BGM: (Final Fantasy VIII ~ Nobuo Uematsu - Drifting) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nYmBj8PWbM


The lights are dimmed in the Solaris shuttle as it makes its retreat from the Kattelox site. Debriefing to follow upon return to Assyria, they'd been told.

After that... Well, there hadn't been silence.

Conversation -- muted, or at least intended to be but then unfortunately amplified by the confines of the craft -- wafts about him. It's almost funny. It's about such normal things at this point. He's been unintentionally overhearing where others are going to eat tonight. What they're planning on doing on their next day off, their next day back in the capital. It feels like a parody, like what had happened out there... hadn't.

He'd picked up already from the earlier, actually-relevant chatter a few worthwhile things: the bulk at least of the Drifter presence had rushed the gate, likely to escape Megaman Juno. Azoth was missing, perhaps caught up in the exodus, or perhaps remaining on site to be retrieved later.

There was no word about Lan.

Loren, himself, hasn't said anything, and certainly not to his own seatmate. Neither does he move: he keeps his gaze fixed dead ahead.

It's easier if he at least pretends like he can't see anything but that patch on the back of the shuttle wall. He even can almost pretend that she's not sitting next to him. Almost. But not entirely.

His seatmate is Major Leah Sadalbari, retired. The Watcher. Her nature doesn't abide pretending.

She must have seen.

...She must have heard.

What Lan had offered him, that is. Was she wondering why he'd been offered that? Was she wondering what conversations they'd had in the dark, wondering what exactly they were to one another?

He's still-- trying to figure that one out.

Because. You're my friend.

She'd said that. It wasn't the first time she'd said that. So why are his hands shaking, and why can't he stop them?

Loren tries to take a deep breath, and finds that he can't do even that.

...if it were with you, I feel... I would be happy enough to run away and be... together.

Of all things he's left to think about Anat's words to him, not all that long ago. --No, it's not so strange, is it.

...Come with me.

Because it's not so different. Of course he'd run away. It's not so different.

His hands are still shaking. He thinks he's going to drown.

"You have a lot on your mind," the Watcher says then, and, oh ha ha, it's the joke of the century: his hands finally stop shaking. In fact, he's gone entirely rigid, a fine imitation of a statue in the seat next to her.

He has a lot on his mind -- yes, of course he does, that small, failing center of himself protests in rejoinder. But it barely makes an impact on the rest. He has a lot on his mind, as she'd said. He doesn't say a word back to her. He still doesn't move.

Minutely, she shifts in the seat. Where another might sigh, perhaps, she betrays only the slightest of movements.

"And more ahead of you," the Watcher finishes.

...That's right, isn't it. After all this--

After her.

There's going to be a lot more ahead.

He closes his eyes and bows his head.