2022-08-18: Snowblind Friend
- Log: Snowblind Friend
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: A ruined traveler's inn near Macalania Forest
- Date: August 18, 2022
- Summary: And There Was Only One Bed. Too bad it's not that kind of story.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's a little like swimming. Floating, maybe, under the surface of a deep lake. Her senses are shrouded. ...It's so quiet.
Lan doesn't want to move. Her right side is warm enough, but the left is much warmer, the temperature of a human body. The kind of warmth that means she's in bed with someone, which is good - isn't she in Macalania still? It's so cold there. Surely without someone else, she'd freeze, because she's so weak.
...Why?
Because...
Lan slowly blinks up at the ceiling. Oh. Because she'd been killed again. Someone must have carried her again. Lor--
She gasps, lungs expanding, and can't get a hand up to cover her mouth when she coughs.
Pain blooms, white and red and burning, radiating from her lower chest. Lan sucks in a breath through clenched teeth, struggling beneath the blanket. Loren. Where's Loren. Where's Azoth? Are they okay? Where is she?
Groaning quietly, she gets her hands out from underneath the blanket to gingerly search for the wound she can feel is there. Is there, but her shirt isn't, but a bandage is, but why does she need a bandage, if Loren is okay he would have fixed it, unless--
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There is indeed the warmth of another person next to her.
It hadn't been a decision Loren had come to lightly. But even after shoring up the ruins of the wayfarer's inn as best as he could, there was still a draft, to say nothing of the inherent temperature of a room that had gone without heat for nearly two years. Her situation was precarious. She'd lost blood, and her body needed to focus on healing. And so, out of necessity, he had...
He jerks upright alongside her, the realization of what he'd done jolting him fully into wakefulness. "--Shit!"
He'd fallen asleep.
This is bad. It's really bad! Her situation is still precarious, if she needed help and he wasn't awake to give it, he...
He rises to a seated posture in the bed, taking a breath to steady himself . How's her color? Body temperature? Pulse? All of these things can be quickly ascertained with a glance, or a touch of the hand.
Oh thank the Emperor, she's still alive, but, she doesn't really look...
...good?
Lan groans, shifting her hands.
"Lan?" he hazards, not certain if she's actually awake. Damn it, where's his kit, did it fall on the floor? All he can see is a much-aggrieved-looking cloudbear, one eye turned upon from where it's curled at the foot of the bed, as if he's to blame for disturbing it somehow.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
'Shit!'
He sits up, taking the warmth of the blanket and her modesty with him. Oh. Yes, she was... Lan calms a bit, the hand pawing clumsily at the dressing flattening over it instead. She blinks again, and turns her head towards him. "...You made it," she murmurs, her pale gaze climbing his body until she can meet his eyes.
And then she shivers, the cold too much for bare skin, and drags at the blankets until they're nearly to her nose. "Ffff. Cold. The Medium..."
Moor Gault. She doesn't carry it next to her skin, like she does Rigdobrite's. She needs her backpack--
She's so cold. Lan takes another deep breath through clenched teeth and rocks toward Loren, trying to turn onto her side and find that precious warmth. "Come back..." She reaches for him with heavylidded eyes and a desperate, quiet discomfort. "'s cold."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He glances back when she speaks, and there is surprise etched across his face as their eyes meet for an instant... before his gaze drifts and he about-faces with alacrity.
"Y, you're awake," he utters, attention focused on the wall.
She murmurs about the cold, and with haste, he tosses more of his side of the blankets over in her direction. --Shit, it is cold. He shivers involuntarily.
"Listen," he says, trying to navigate himself out of this sea-storm he's sailed into, "you were badly injured, so I had to-- it's not what it looks like, I swear, I just--"
He's turned, looking back at her where she's buried herself under the blankets.
"Do you need-- I can get some painkillers. Or a sedative! I can get you a sedative!" he blurts out, only to flush when she asks him to come back (and under the covers??).
When she was unconscious, he hadn't even thought anything of it. She was a patient, her body was a body. There wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. But now that she's awake, everything is cast in, well.
A quite different light, to say the least.
"Let me," he says, rising onto his hands and knees, then catapulting himself over the bottom of the bed. "Let me get my kit."
The bear has by now scattered entirely, removing itself to less chaotic corners (at least for now).
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Not what it looks like. ...Yes, she was badly injured. "Killed again," she corrects him mindlessly, voice muffled beneath the blankets. "Just like before..." What will happen to her now? Will Solaris have its hooks in her all over again?
Loren practically throws himself off of the end of the bed, blurting out something about sedatives. "Noo," Lan whines. He's taking all the warm with him!! Thrashing weakly, she crawls into the space he vacated, dragging the blanket with her and curling up in the warmth of someone who didn't lose so much blood.
Everybody knows the bed is warmer where someone else was sleeping.
But the warmth won't last forever, her chilly skin soaking it up and cooling the sheets in turn. "Come back," Lan begs, curling in on herself, arms sheltering the ache at her middle. "It hurts. I'm cold. Come back..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He shakes his head vehemently. "No, you're not dead." Not if he has anything to say about it.
Though the situation is bad. She's weak. They're stuck in a drafty enclosure with no heat to speak of. The only food he has are his remaining nutritional bars -- ice and snow or not, he's got his doubts about the stores here nearly two years on. And eventually he'll run out of supplies and medicine.
All in all, there are only a few ways in which this could get markedly worse!
But even he has to cling to what he's managed and what still could be.
His kit's on the floor, as expected. He snatches it up and turns back towards where she lies on the bed.
Lan has coiled herself and the blankets up on the bed, desperately seeking the heat he's left behind. In... her current condition...
Silently, shoving the kit up against the headboard, he climbs back in. Loren moves gingerly, as if expecting this were all a trap about to be sprung on him at any moment but--
He's back under the covers, and feeling deeply, thoroughly uncomfortable about every bit of this.
"Don't... move too much," he says at last, staring up at a ceiling lit only by the soft glow of a repurposed Sphere. "You'll agitate the injury."
There's further silence.
"Do you... need help with the pain?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's too tired to turn over again just yet, but some of the awful, shivering stiffness eases when he pulls the covers up over himself. Lan pushes herself backwards the inch or so it takes to make contact - her back along his side - and continues to catch her breath. It's better, a little. It's miserable. She doesn't want to be here, in the snow and the ice. She wants to die in Little Firelight, she wants to see Hicalu one more time, she doesn't want to die at all.
She thinks she's being silly but Lan can't help it. She nearly died, again. If it hadn't been for Loren, she would have. She sniffles quietly, arms cradled empty against her chest beneath the blanket. "It hurts," she repeats, softer, because Lan doesn't know how to say that it hurts because she nearly died, because Azoth is her friend, because Loren is her friend, because she misses her mother, because she's so cold it feels like she'll never be warm again. Because there's another hole in her middle, and she doesn't know what's hidden away inside of it.
That's what happened with the Stranger and she didn't learn what he'd done to her for so long...
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The seriousness of the situation aside, this is intensely awkward.
For him, anyway. Lan is probably beyond feeling all that weird about this, and the bear, well, who knows what an elementally fused experiment feels about this? Probably, it would like them both to stop messing around so it can get back to having a warm place to sleep.
She bumps up against his side. She feels clammy, even through his clothing. ...Is she crying?
Well, great. Now he feels awful.
Loren hesitates, briefly. "Hey, uh..."
He reaches overhead for his kit. He's out of his depth as far as emotions go, but as for physical pain -- well. He's still able to deal with that, at least for now.
A couple tablets should do. He has more powerful options, but it's better to save them for if he really needs them... and they could do more harm than good.
"Sit up -- carefully -- for a moment. Give me your hand -- the left," he says, sitting up himself. Better she doesn't choke.
He'll hand over the tablets first.
And then -- with a little Ether to draw some out of the ambient ice covering the inn and collapsible cup to hold it in -- water.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Even if it's unneeded, Lan can't help but cry. Everything went so wrong. She ought to be happy right now. She's alive. Loren doesn't seem to be hurt. Instead, she sucks in a deep breath despite the discomfort of doing so and covers her mouth to muffle a silent sob.
It takes a little more prodding to get her to sit up, but she does, the blankets clenched to her chin and wrapped as far around her back as she can get them with her clumsy arms. Tears still rolling down her face, she holds her left hand out silently for the medicine he gives her and looks down disconsolately at her lap. "..." She's stiff and moving hurts, but...
Lan swallows the tablets obediently, sipping the water he gives her. It's cool and clean, and does a lot towards clearing her head a little bit. She should say sorry. She should say thanks. She should ask him if he's really all right.
Instead, she buries her face and cries into the blanket. Quietly, at least - she doesn't have it in her for loud sobbing or anything - but it hurts and she's cold and Azoth is her friend and he impaled her and now maybe he's like that forever.
Lan cries until she's out of tears, until the tablets dissolve in her stomach and bloodstream, until it doesn't feel very important anymore.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Oh no, she's crying even more. He'd looked, after all, when handing her the pills -- carefully adjusting his gaze so he didn't see more than he intended, this time around, for all that it mattered after doing some minor surgery on her earlier but it's FINE it's FINE and HE'S NOT GOING TO THINK ABOUT THAT NOW.
Because she's still crying.
Is it that bad? The pain? Maybe he should have given her something faster-acting after all.
"It'll-- it'll kick in quickly," he murmurs, having lain down again (he's thinking about the heat, thinking about how cool she'd felt). "Just..."
Just, what? Stop crying? Stop making him feel even more awkward and anxious? He's not the one who got ventilated, he's just the one trying to put the pieces together again.
And speaking of ventilated, he still needs to check how she's doing...
So he doesn't do anything. Loren lies there, staring at the ceiling in utter silence.
There's a 'tupft' sort of sound after a moment more, followed by the sensation of something small settling in at the base of the bed again. Loren knows better than to go and check what it is.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Eventually, everything comes to its own end. Even a good cry. Tears dry up on their own, and leave you feeling raw and puffy and tired and if you're lucky, a little better.
"...Sorry," she finally says, wiping her eyes with the blanket. She doesn't look back at him yet, watching the bear make itself at home near his feet. "It was... everything all at once." She chances a look back at him, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. "It was too much."
But the pains are a little better now, less sharp and burning, settling like a bonfire into banked coals. There are still so many things to worry about, but maybe a little less urgently. Lan gingerly eases her body back down onto the bed, shivering anew when her back comes in contact with the now-cold sheets. Face curled into a moue of discomfort, she pushes herself onto her side facing Loren, arms curled tight against her chest beneath the blanket. "Did you get hurt?" she asks, pale eyes cloudy at the edges. "I don't remember... What about... Azoth?"
Because she wants to know. Because he was hurt, too, even before Lan was.
She scoots up slowly until she can rest her cheek next to his shoulder, knees and thighs and the backs of her forearms as close to Loren and his warmth as she can get.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Of course, it wasn't just Lan's agonies in the end.
It was the pain, and everything else, the 'everything else' part of the bargin the thing he understands the least. Loren glances up and over at her, his gaze lingering there, but he says nothing. There's nothing to say.
There's nothing he can say that's worth saying.
Instead he stays where he is, holding his position even as she eases back under the blankets and alongside him.
"No," he tells her, and it's the truth: he didn't get hurt, not in any way that's worth mentioning.
As for Azoth...
"I don't know." Maybe he's still out there. At any other time, Loren would feel that it was his duty to go back there and retrieve Azoth but... truth be told, he doesn't feel like it. Even if command would prefer he let Lan die and save Azoth, that's not what he's doing.
And he has no regrets about it.
"...How's your breathing? Any pain?" He should check the bandage, he thinks, not without an inward grimace of what that would entail, now that she's awake. But first, he's better off checking to make sure she's not... actually experiencing a collapsing lung or something.
Though he strongly doubts she could have cried like that with one! ...Still, best to be thorough about it, and at least he can ask her questions now that she's awake.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He didn't get hurt. "That's good," she sighs, a little more tension leaving her. "I mean... you don't look hurt but you're a medic. What if you got hurt and you had to fix both of us and that's why I'm still injured." She worded it strangely but she thinks he'll understand.
Lan takes a tentative deep breath. It's uncomfortable, and it hurts, but not like that first coughing fit did. "...It's a little painful. I think the bottom rib is hurt." Their anatomy lessons seem like years ago. ...They were, weren't they. "I don't feel any bubbles. ...I'm sore."
"...I hope he's all right. Even so." Because Azoth couldn't have wanted to do that. He couldn't have. It's the 'overrides' again.
It had to be.
But if Azoth took her down so easily... how is Loren here and unhurt? ...Because he's Solaris, her memory supplies. "Was he like that because I was there," she doesn't really ask. It's more like a confirmation. "Because it was so soon after the battle." Her arms uncross slowly, one hand spreading out flat over the bandage, the other curling into the material at the edge of his jacket. "I was..." She looks out past his face, at the dim and faded room, eyes shaded by her bangs. "I messed up. If I had left..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
His initial reaction to all of that, coming out of her at once, is to blink, glancing sidelong for all that he can't see her very well (at all) at this angle.
His immediate reaction after all that is to laugh. Not loudly, not even because her comment, as oddly worded as it is, is all that funny, but it's laughter all the same. He lies there, eyes tightly closed and shaking as he essentially cracks up.
It's been a stressful while for him, too. The future looks pretty uncertain, too. But perhaps this is his own way of venting and coping with the situation.
And besides, if Lan can bust out a sentence as disorderly as that after nearly dying and crying her eyes out, well... maybe things will be alright in the end.
But he straightens himself out before too long, taking a deep breath to get himself back on the right track again. He's still got work to do.
"...Yeah. I didn't heal the wound," he explains, turning his head towards her. "Or, I guess... I healed your insides, but not the outsides. Not all the way. You've got a hole in you, so don't move too much -- you won't bleed to death! But," he says, continuing to try to explain the situation to her now, "it's better that rest of it heal naturally from here. At least until we can get out of here." If he'd just sealed her up, he would have trapped air in her, and then he would have been left to do some needle punctures to fix that before it killed her. Lucky him, she had a hole big enough to ventilate things on its own, as long as she didn't dislodge the specialized seal on her chest.
Besides, her body's still in bad shape, even if he knit her parts back together. Better she get some rest and it finish the job itself.
The liver had been nicked, too, which hadn't been fun to deal with. But it's resolved now so that's alright.
Thank the Emperor he'd restocked on Rosesols before organizing the group to defend the outpost.
Lan has her own concerns, though.
"...Maybe," is what Loren tells her, hedging. He's never seen Azoth like that before. Maybe that's who he really is -- it'd make things a lot easier for Loren if he could believe that. Maybe he's just a machine that's two maintainence sessions away from murdering all humans. Maybe Solaris just set him up to kill everything that's not on their side. Maybe even a machine can 'goof'. Whatever the truth is, Loren's not in a charitable mood.
The fact is, though, he can only speculate about Azoth's 'reasons'.
"...Why didn't you?"
It's not the right time for a comment like that. But he's never been all that good at gauging that -- social ostracism, it'll get you every time. And it's been on his mind ever since that moment. "It seemed like you were hesitating."
Because he's pretty sure -- well, mostly sure that -- Lan was trying to protect him from Azoth.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He's... laughing?
Most of the times Lan has seen him laugh, it's because something was darkly amusing. Or he was being sarcastic, or fatalistic, or... but this time, he's just... Like she told the world's funniest joke. ...Was it that hard to understand?
But she's relieved, anyway.
He looks different when he laughs like this. It reminds her of... the Lost Woods. Yes. Even if that Loren hadn't laughed much, had been thoughtful and curious, they were both... less twisted-up.
So when he turns to look at her, Lan is gazing at him with something akin to unexpected nostalgia. Soft eyes, barely parted lips. Like she saw someone she knew once.
And just like that, he's on to explaining her injury. "...If you say it's okay, then it's okay." There aren't a lot of people on either world that Lan would trust to leave a hole in her midriff. Should Loren be flattered or something??
"...He sounded like he was in pain," Lan explains after a few moments of ordering hazy memories. "Like it hurt." And even if she isn't a healer, Lan just can't let it go. Her fingers tug gently at his jacket, as if she could pull them closer together, bury her face and be held and be safe.
She's so far from home. So is he.
"I did. I wasn't sure if he would stop attacking if I left. If he'd follow me, or if he'd turn on you. And I couldn't... just leave you to that." Running away, abandoning someone... "It would have felt worse than dying."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Even if she had asked him, right then and there, he wouldn't have been able to tell her why he was laughing. It's stress. It's sheer relief. It's both, neither, and then some.
For just a moment, just a little bit, he's able to let go in his own way.
It just ends for him the moment he turns his head to look at her, and takes in the expression on her face. When... when she looks at him like that--
Loren flushes. His pulse has doubled. Panic overtakes him -- alarm is what what she'll read on his face, plainly enough -- and he... freezes. There's nowhere to go, after all. He can't abandon her like this, even if he's suddenly left reeling by this and wondering if he's terribly misread something about this whole situation, perhaps even about Lan herself. Didn't she say that she didn't... like people like that?
It's probably to his good fortune that she's perhaps more likely to be looking very confused right now, instead of how she'd looked just moments prior.
"I'll... want to check it. Later," he adds, hastily, because he'll need a moment to reorient himself. This is terrible. This is the worst possible time to be wondering if she's...
If he's.
"..."
He wants to say 'so what if it hurt', but even he knows to hold his tongue. "There's nothing I can do about... uh," he says, trailing for a moment as her fingers find his jacket (an accident, right??). "About him." And he'll stick to that. He's a medic, not a mechanic. Even if the situation had been different, he was always better equipped to handle Lan's wounds rather than Azoth's damage.
But that's what he had been afraid of. That she'd thought... Bitterness coils in his stomach in great ugly loops. "Even if he had... I can use Ether. I still have my shield. I don't think..." Maybe this is unkind, even he is given to think, closing his eyes. It's just that... he's not that pathetic. Right?
"...Forget about it."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Suddenly, he turns red. He freezes up. "...Are you okay? Did you remember I don't have a shirt on?" That's a likely cause for him to go all weird, right? "It's fine, because we've got the blanket. Think of it as, as a really big shirt we can both wear." Yeah. That'll make him feel better! "My old one's probably ruined... but if we can find the things I need, I could make a new one." It would be a crude affair, to be sure, but it would maybe help Loren out a little. And, honestly, Lan is all for anything that makes her less cold right now.
But she's quiet when he explains that he can't fix what's wrong with Azoth. It may be true, but... what if Azoth is out there, hurt? What if he's sad?
What if he's still broken and Lan can't fight?
And Loren takes her concern the worst way he can. It actually takes Lan a few long moments to understand what he's so upset about - because who would be all right with being abandoned to fight something that should be a friend?
Lan sighs and stubbornly reaches out yet again, putting her arm across him and burying her face in his shoulder. Hugging him tight. "It was never about that." She's too tired to yell, and she thinks it would hurt if she tried. But oh, how she wants to. "Leaving a friend to fight on their own... it's the worst thing. You have Ether and a sword and a shield and you're smart enough to find any weaknesses Azoth has and use them." Lan takes a breath and coughs - just once, wincing faintly - but stubbornly continues anyway. "I wouldn't have left Leah either. Or Gwen. For the exact same reason I wouldn't leave you. I care about you, stupid."
Okay maybe it's mean to call him stupid after calling him smart but Lan is reaching the limit of how much thinking she can do on painkillers.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Oh no, now he's even redder.
"L,look, I--"
'Think of it as a really big shirt we can both wear'.
Sometimes you hear something that... manages to tip so many switches within you that it sort of results in an emotional null set. Loren stares at her and blinks, but hey, look on the bright side! ...He's not embarrassed anymore.
"Uh... yeah. There are some blankets." And he has surgical thread if it comes to that. And scissors. "The old one... yeah, it's ruined."
Just keep him disoriented enough and he's just about tolerable!
Let... Azoth take care of Azoth, is Loren's thinking. Or whoever it is that comes down from command to collect him. Someone will, eventually, but as far as he's concerned, that's not his problem. Seeing that he and Lan survive, on the other hand...
He's still insecure, as a person. As a man. Some things have changed, but this part of him hasn't, even if, realizing that now isn't the time for this he belatedly tries to bury it back whence it had came.
Too late, though.
There's one side benefit for Lan about this (his body heat aside): Loren actually emits a tiny squeak when she pulls him into a tight embrace. Like a cat that doesn't want to be held, he's gone rigid, tensing against her. Now what-- what does he do with his hands, where does he, what's even...
She explains. Oh, does she explain. "Don't... don't press yourself," he manages, zeroing in on that cough of all things. "Look-- look, I said... you shouldn't have..." Loren sighs, though, some of his initial tension retreating and making it somewhat less like hugging an unyielding tree trunk. "Just forget about it."
There's no rancor to that statement now. If she were able to look and see, she'd find that he's actually smiling -- a little uneasily, sure, but no less than genuine for it.
Even if he's still not sure what he's supposed to do now, let alone what he should do with his hands...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan's secret superpower: weaponized absurdity.
If Lan hears him make a noise like that, she apparently has the common courtesy not to remark on it. She just stubbornly clings to him the way she would Hicalu, or Gwen if the redhead seemed okay with it. Lan likes hugs, and she misses hugs, and if nobody else is going to provide her with one she will find her own, damn it. ...Something like that, anyway.
"Fine," she sighs, when he cautions her. "I'll be good."
But like this, she's finally able to soak up enough warmth for it to start to do her some good. "...Wish I had my things," Lan sighs, but if wishes were horses, woodpeckers would ride. ...Wait, that's not right. Braggarts? ...Whatever.
"...Hey Loren?" she speaks up, after a few silent moments. "Thanks for saving me." If he weren't there, she would have died. If he weren't there, she would have run. If he weren't there, Lan wouldn't have been there. If he weren't there...
Well, she would be lonelier, for certain.
Lulled by the sound of his heartbeat and the rhythm of breath, Lan slips under again shortly afterward. She needs rest and time; Guardians willing, she'll have it.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's weird, but it feels... nice to be thanked like that. Even if he doesn't say anything -- just makes a noncommital noise in her direction.
He never does figure out quite what he should do with his hands.
This is unfortunate -- for him, at least.
When Loren eventually stirs, himself, many hours from now, he'll find that he's rather resolved the issue himself in his sleep.
Blearily, he considers disentangling himself from around her, but not only is he still tired but it's... pointless, isn't it? The damage, so to speak, is already done. So he just sighs in the manner of the defeated in the direction of the universe in general, and closes his eyes to go back to sleep.