2021-03-10: So, What's Stopping You?
- Log: So, What's Stopping You?
- Cast: Seraph Boudicca, Dean Stark, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: Celesti - Outskirts
- Date: 2021-03-10
- Summary: Boudicca fled from the Drake of Celesti, leaving Ida to try and purify it alone. Her Seers search for her, and for the reason she would abandon her duties in the face of a Hellionised Seraph.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
At the edge of the Celesti Wastelands is an absolute scrub of a tree.
It's all gnarled and twisted, too close to the contaminates of old war to stand tall and proud like its leaves suggest it might have, given more resources. Regardless it is large, and this itself must be testament to its age, in a place where life fights for every inch. This tree has survived decades of challenges. The vines creeping over it are only the most recent trial it tolerates; scraggly things half-yellowed, they do their best to take what nutrients they can. It's not enough, but it's never enough, out here.
It is probably not a good idea to climb this tree.
And yet, on one of those high-up branches, fluttering in the wind...
Caught between one twig and another...
There's a long green ribbon, trailing like a banner.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
And underneath this scraggly, desiccated, only barely alive tree walks up one Dean Stark, who stands beneath its branches and plants his fists on his hips in an impressive impression of one Rebecca Streisand.
"Boudicca..." he says in a stern, also very Rebecca-like voice.
(He studied hard for this part! There's no one he knows who's better at scolding someone out of bad behavior than her, but it's not like he can make her take over his responsibility. He'll just have to be *extra Rebecca-like*. And... Ida can be a stand-in Avril...? He hasn't actually thought this out very far. It just seemed logical in Dean's head.)
Speaking of Ida--
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Finding Boudicca was no easy task. The Wastelands are vast, and the war destroyed most of the region's infrastructure, including the roads. Fortunately, Boudicca's Seers had a secret weapon--Azoth, who has a complete sensor profile of the missing Seraph. With him acting as a bloodhound, Dean and Ida were able to find her hideout.
Ida's car sits some distance away, parked and ready in case they need to make a quick getaway. Azoth, of course, is on lookout, and not just because of the Drake--it might be the newest threat in these wastes, but it's far from the only one. Ida, likewise, has come armed. She wears a long leather-like trenchcoat, secretly reinforced using Kalve's Hyadean artifice. It blows in the wind, just like that ribbon.
Ida is silent for a long moment, glancing up at the ribbon, and then down at the tree. "So this is where you were hiding," she murmurs.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
There is no Boudicca here. There is only tree.
...
no one believes that, do they
The tree is silent for a good few moments, even in the face of Dean's STERN VOICE. But in the silence after Ida finishes murmuring, a voice emanates from it. Trees, of course, do not have throats, or lips, or vocal chords; regardless, the tree is speaking.
"Yes," it says, and if it is possible for a tree to sound defeated, there it is. "Anent this place I go."
The wind whistles. The tree is silent.
"... forgive me," says the tree, and who knew trees could lower their voices? "I know it to be cowardice."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
It definitely helped a lot to a) have Azoth's tracking abilities (Dean has not quite connected yet that he's a robot; that's a conversation for another time) and b) Ida's car and driving skills. It would've been much, much harder to find Boudicca otherwise, and according to that rascally lightning Seraph or whatever, there's not a lot of time before it's too late to save this poor Seraph-turned-Hellion. So, no, nobody believes that there is only tree, *Boudicca*.
"Yeah, it is cowardice!" Dean shoots back when she admits as much. "And it's not like you! You're not the kind of person who'd just abandon someone in need because you're *scared*. You're better than that!" He looks at Ida, gives her a nod, and lowers his hands as he looks back at the tree. "So why don't you tell us what's wrong? We're here for you," he concludes in a gentler voice.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida tucks her hands into her pockets, and nods. The wind catches her bangs as well as her coattails, blowing them to the side. She reaches up, and combs a stray lock behind one ear.
And then Dean comes out fast and aggressive, and Ida has to take a breath to steady herself and avoid an instinctive reaction. While it's true she didn't appreciate Boudicca just bailing on her, she knows Boudicca wouldn't have done so without a damn good reason. And so, Ida takes up a more comforting counterpoint. "Cowardice is not merely experiencing fear, Boudicca," she says. Ida reaches around back, draws an ARM from her holster. It looks like it could be the long-lost twin of Devil's Due, but it's made of cold black metal that reflects the light in a strange, oil-slick rainbow. A single, spherical gem sits in a socket on its grip. There are spaces for more.
"He's right. You're better than that." The tree doesn't have eyes that Ida can meet, so she makes eye contact with a gnarled knothole at about eye level. "...I know you've faced down Malevolence, and managed your fear." She pauses, takes a breath. "Was it the form it took? A Drake? A fallen Seraph?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Luckily, trees don't have any real points of articulation to show how those words land. Trees can't really look away or shuffle uncomfortably or close off. Their limbs aren't THOSE kinds of limbs.
"You think too highly of me," that voice emanates again, drawn thin like a reedy chord. "What I would--!" The sound peaks and gutters out, to a hollow. "... that is... a Drake, yes. Whence Seraph made anguished, to become a worse thing, still. But you know, I think, their need."
A beat of silence: "I did not." And these words are less gnarled than the others, in the manner of that tree, and they fall like a gavel.
The breeze stills; the ribbon falls into the dry twigs of this twisty-twisty tree. "This is not the first I have fought. I did not know how to save -- Abilene. I tried to reach her... all I could do was bring about her death. I heard them and at once I heard her, do you understand? Oh, I felt as I did --"
Those words wobble, and tumble into no words at all. How can she say what has no words for the telling, how small a girl is cutting down the woman who taught her everything she knew? This bitter graduation is ineffable.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Could it be that in the good-cop-bad-cop dynamic they're establishing... Dean is the bad cop?? Well, he *is* taking his cues from Rebecca, after all... He looks again at Ida as she brings out her ARM and asks her if the problem was the form the Hellion took, then looks back at the tree.
"Yeah, they need to be purified, right?" Dean says of the drake's need. "So what's stopping you?"
And so Boudicca explains. She explains, and Dean's expression softens in sympathy. He doesn't know who Abilene is, but he does remember her name coming up from a conversation not too long ago, shortly after the trial at Hoel, about whether humans were worth saving. Abilene had been worried about humans, and if she'd gotten infected by Malevolence... maybe she was right to worry. Still:
"Oh, no, Boudicca... That must've been so awful... But it's not going to be like that this time, okay? You have the power to save them now! It must hurt so bad that you couldn't save Abilene back then, but--that's why you can't just run away now! Me and Ida will be right behind you, too--" or more accurately, in front of her, shh "--so you're not alone this time, either!"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida steps forward, and rests a hand on the tree's gnarled bark. It's a poor substitute for a hand on Boudicca's shoulder, but the warmth still lingers in the cold of the wind. She lets Boudicca explain herself.
Not the first she's fought. That would make sense, given what Ida knows of her time as the Beast of Lohgrin. But the name. Abilene...
Ida's gaze goes distant as she tries to remember where she heard that name last. It's familiar...
Realization strikes her like lightning, sending a tremor of fear and anguish through her. "Abilene," Ida echoes. She glances at Dean, who doesn't seem to make that connection. "Oh God, Boudicca, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..." She leans forward, closing her eyes and bracing her forearm against the tree. She touches her forehead to the rough bark. "I--I can't imagine what it must've felt like to lose her like that. Your own mother, taken from you by what every Seraph fears." She opens her eyes, rises, and blinks back tears of her own. "And now, to know that those taken can be saved, if caught in time..."
Ida glances at Dean. She nods, slow and somber. "We swore to fight this with you," Ida says. "I--I tried to cleanse it alone, but I couldn't. Maybe none of us could. We need each other."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
What's stopping her?
Or, rather, the tree, which is still Boudicca. She hasn't left the tree one bit. One might wonder here why a tree, of all the flammable things.
Maybe it's not about the tree, but what it's wearing.
"I..."
Trees, of course, do not have personal pronouns. And lo there is light and it becomes her, perched on one of those high branches, dry vines shifting to tangle over her instead of the trunk they clung to. Her ribbon weaves to her braids in the forming; she cheats, of course.
Somehow Boudicca manages to perch up on that precarious perch without sending the entire branch toppling down, because despite being in heavy full plate she is the air and that isn't terribly heavy at all.
Now she's a person she can look away, she can shift her arms in towards her core, she can hug her accruements to her. "Yes," she confirms, a deep frown on her face, "Abilene was like a mother to me. For a hundred years she was all I knew. She raised me, and I... I brought her to the plagued village which brought her low." All clad in vines she defends herself, weakly: "... I wished to help."
She swallows. "You will be with me..." And here there is the guilt of letting them down, written on her, in just the way a tree isn't. "... I am sorry. I ought have trusted you... I did not think. I was afraid..."
There's a word Dean used and it is not quite the word Boudicca uses, when finally she summons the courage to look down to her human friends. "Can we... truly save them?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Her own *mother*? Dean shoots Ida a wide-eyed look--he hadn't known that's who this Abilene was to Boudicca, and his sudden grimace makes that clear--but he doesn't interrupt Ida. He does shift from foot to foot, but his own discomfort is only momentary. What's important is supporting Boudicca and letting her know they've got her back. So when she flashes back into existence in the tree's branches after what Ida says, he nods and looks up at her.
"Yeah. We can do this if we all work together," he says. "We need you, Boudicca. And even if that weren't an issue, we can't just leave you here to be miserable all by yourself." But... so that's how it happened. Dean can see how and why Boudicca might blame herself--how it would still traumatize her to this day.
"You always want to help. That's what's so great about you," he reassures her. He follows with a smile. "It's okay! It's no wonder you were scared, when that's what happened to you. The important thing is not to let it hold you back from doing what you know is right."
Can they save them, though? "We can if we don't give up!" he declares. "You can do anything as long as you don't give up!"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida looks up as Boudicca manifests, her brow furrowing as she sees the vines. They're perfectly ordinary to her--a parasitic creeper native to Celesti, clearly suffering along with everything else in this blighted place. But the way Boudicca enfolds herself in them seems... significant.
There's so much Ida could say here. You didn't know. It's not your fault. You had no choice. But she knows, deep down, that guilt doesn't work that way--nothing she can say will ease the burden Boudicca bears. There are no magic words to heal that trauma.
"You panicked," Ida says. "The question is, what will you do now? Dean is right. Ragnell herself confirmed that the Drake has yet to complete its metamorphosis. There's still time."
Ida's lips curl into a little smile. "And for what it's worth... you saved me, you and Dean. Together, we can save that Seraph."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Some stories are very, very old; the kind written in archaic script, passed down through illuminated manuscripts painstakingly copied in monasteries, knowledge so fragile to the loss of pillaging or tragedy or censorship.
There's a story they tell in that village, a woman cloaked in vines. A woman from the wildlands no man dared to settle...
They need her, echoed then and now. Time flows like a river, and history repeats. But here a gnarl in hist'ry's weave -- not just what they need from her but what they do for her. They can't just leave her here.
The question Ida poses is one Boudicca at first does not answer in so many words; rather she slips down away from the trunk of the tree, and with a woosh she tumbles down, and somehow the vines are no worse for wear. A little looser around the tree, perhaps.
She lands on her feet, of course, but gravity plays favourites. She lands, and turns to Ida and Dean, reaching out her hands. Both hands. She has two of 'em!
"You are correct... my will is not yet forfeit," she says, looking to Dean, and it's... kind of like saying she won't give up, in a Boudicca sort of way, probably. "If there is time," she replies to Ida, "let us use it to bring about a better outcome. What I could not do alone..." She squeezes their hands, looking between them. "... perhaps we might accomplish it together."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Two hands, for two friends! Dean accepts the one Boudicca offers him without hesitation. When she agrees that she hasn't given up yet, he gives her a warm smile and a firm nod. "Ida's right. If we helped her, we can help that Seraph." He offers his other hand to Ida to complete the circle, then nods again.
What they couldn't do alone, perhaps they can do together. "Yeah! Exactly!" He grins and squeezes her hand back. "Now let's get back out there and find that poor guy! We gotta find him before we can help him, right?"