2023-07-02: His Flaws
- Log: His Flaws
- Cast: Loren Voss, Leah Sadalbari
- Where: Etrenank
- Date: July 02, 2023
- Summary: Loren, still grappling with what he had learned from his brother's journal, encounters Leah. They have the opportunity to talk, and so he asks her about his older brother.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's funny how you can have known someone from the very point where you started making memories, and only realize, long after they're gone, that you know little-to-nothing about them, truly.
There are a lot of things he can't talk to his parents about, but this, more than anything, tops the list. They can't know about this: it would break them, full stop, if he asked after what he'd found. If he just asked after his brother they'd probably just think he'd gone mental again. Which had left Mirza, after a fashion. And, sure, she'd imparted in him what she knew about his brother: stories from before he was born, mostly, most of which he hadn't heard.
Engil was not the perfect son -- sure, he knew that even before he'd found the notebook. But he'd still never guessed at some of what his brother had gotten up to. Climbing the walls just to get into the neighboring garden to dig up one of their flowers? It had put Engil in a new light, though it didn't explain why he'd gone as far as the notebook had... suggested he might have.
And going through his brother's papers had given him no fresh insight. Loren might have been able to request access to the personal computer, but he doubted he'd find anything personal or revealing there.
He should leave this alone. He really should -- nothing good will come of this. But, even so. He really wants to know why.
He's taken an unorthodox step, in that he's left the house and the yard, and traveled to the beating heart of Etrenank's commercial district. Shopping isn't his aim: on the upper levels of the district is the start of a walking path; follow it and it will eventually take a pedestrian nearly the entire length of the Second Class area, giving them a good look at Etrenank and... the sky.
There are trees here. Not as many as there are in Arabot Plaza. Not as many as there are in First Class gardens. But every so often, a walker will pass by a tree. There's a game on the EtrenApp about them: see if you can tag (digitally) all the trees on the walkway as you pass them by. But that's not the reason why he's here.
Why is he here? ...Because he feels as if he is going to lose it if he spends another moment trying to dig into this mystery that he can't seem to solve and can't ask anyone about, and at least if he's walking...
This is the sort of thing Lan would do he thinks, darkly, hunching his shoulders as he begins to walk the distance. Ugh, she's rubbing off on him.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It's funny. ...It's funny, too, how Eternanking is a tool of the state. Obviously; EternApp collects data about where its users are going as they tag all the trees. It also encourages exercise, sharpens the right kind of skills, and... Well. Many other purposes.
Always, in Solaris, there are more purposes.
...Which is to say, of course, that through various means, including a photograph taken of one of the trees, Leah Sadalbari knows exactly where Loren Voss is. And as he walks the distance, he will hear the familiar step-STEP, step-STEP of her gait. She approaches from elsewhere on the walkway, and makes he r way over to him.
"You're slouching," she comments. Her hair is blue, as always.
People give her a wide berth.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It was whim, really. If he's walking up here, he might as well take a picture. Maybe he'll even play along, knowing all too well that he'll get a little graphic in the app on his device that will congratulate him on his accomplishment. As if this is important and it means anything.
But it takes his focus off the thoughts running through his head, if just a little bit, and he'll take that.
He becomes aware of a familiar sound by inches. Not many in Etrenank use prosthetics -- not up here, among the Second and First Classes, he corrects himself. Usually they get such significant wounds, when they happen at all for the elect, treated in a way that eliminates nearly all sign of the injury in the first place. Only on rare occasions are they forced to replace rather than regrow limbs and body parts.
He doesn't turn around. Loren knows who it is.
"I know," he tells his sister-in-law. He doesn't straighten up.
"I didn't know you were here," he says, finally turning to face her. "You're not on leave, are you?" It's probably not chance. It's almost never chance.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
He doesn't straighten up. Maybe that's notable.
Not many use prosthetics, and fewer still prosthetics quite like hers. They are heavy, ungainly, and undeniably powerful. The adjustments that had to be made to her body to accommodate them were considerable. It could only be her, even before she speaks up.
"I'm never on leave," Leah answers simply to that question. Perhaps it's even true, in more than a metaphorical sense. "The Ministry I work for doesn't take breaks."
Step. Step. Step.
She makes her way to a conversational distance.
"Tell me about what you've been up to," she says.
If the EtrenApp happens to short out in her presence on all phones nearby, that might be a coincidence.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He has no way of knowing if that's actually true. But it feels like it is.
"That's not healthy, you know," he tells Leah, giving her a look that might be a touch long-suffering. In this moment, he's just her brother-in-law. He's not her responsibility in a way that overpoweringly matters in the moment, as far as he conceives of it.
Yet that also doesn't mean that her rank -- and role -- don't matter, and so he also doesn't press further than that.
As usual her questions are about him.
What's he been up to? "Not a lot," he says, shaking his head. "I've had dinner with father now and then. I caught up on reading." And he finished some model kits but he doesn't feel like he wants to talk to her about that like he's twelve again and not a grown-ass adult. "Mother hasn't been able to get leave," he adds, but there's no rancor there; he'd expected it. "We've talked over video."
He regards her, again.
"What about you?" he says, before he can stop himself. There's something that's a little bit...
Not 'off', precisely. Not 'amiss'. But also not not either of those two.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
"No," Leah replies almost amiably. "It isn't."
It's like she doesn't appreciate his long-suffering nature at all!
Leah indeed wouldn't think much of model kits from Loren. That much is true. Father, though, "It's good that you've been able to see them. They do worry about you." Mother hadn't gotten leave... yes, that makes sense. But as he looks at her, Leah looks back at him; she wonders what it is that he sees. He actually asks about her. And while she could refuse the question...
There's something to be said for initiative.
"Busy, mostly." She pauses. "I've been making some visits to old assets and enemies. Keeping track of what still needs to be done."
"That happens to be a great deal," she continues. "But soon I'll be done with what I'm doing."
"...How does it feel, then, to be 'home'?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
His mother is a base commander up north -- well, on the surface, that is. The responsibilities required there, combined with her particular leadership style, combined with the degraded view of Voss in general (in spite of the years, in spite of everything) mean that it's a rare thing for her to be home at all. Mostly, he's visited her rather than the other way around.
He has absolutely no idea how his parents' marriage still works, come to think of it. Perhaps that's better not to dwell on.
"I know," he tells her, when she remarks that his parents do worry about him. "They want me to quit." Whether it's inherently dangerous work or he's just unlucky, the outcome's the same: he's had a lot of close encounters... that they have heard about.
He's had more that they haven't, and if he has his way, they never will know or he'd never hear the end of it. ...More than he already does, that is.
"Huh. So that takes a lot of time?" It sounds like paperwork, one of the more dull parts of his job -- though there is some satisfaction in knowing what's accounted for and where it's gotten off to. Sometimes, he feels like he's the only thing maintaining order for their medical supplies wherever he's stationed. It's a chore, sure, but it feels like no one else even cares about it sometimes...
"And then what, you'll start the next project?"
She has a question for him, though. How is it being home?
He shakes his head. "...I don't know. I should be happy to have time off, but it feels...." He feels strange, is the word he doesn't say. He knows what his parents want him to do. He knows what his brother would have told him to do. He doesn't know what to do. And that was even before he'd found--
His gaze lifts to meet Leah's sole eye and he is confronted by the fact that she is someone who also knew his brother very well. Loren hesitates, visibly, before he blurts out, "Hey, uh... I was talking to father. Do you... when Engil was young, what was he like? I mean-- you met him at school, right?"
Did she know? Could she have known?
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah doesn't talk about her own parents, often. Just Loren and Engil's parents. But then, does Loren ever ask?
"They do," she says. "But you haven't." That isn't an indictment--is it? After all, she's encouraged him, in her way. Right? Of course right. But...
"It does," Leah says. "Travel, paperwork..." She moves it along without really going into detail. But 'then what'?
"I might take some time to myself," she reflects.
It feels strange, he doesn't have to say. She can tell that sort of thing without trouble. It's her job, after all, to know people. And when his gaze lifts, Leah's single eye focuses on his again. He hesitates, before...
"When he was young?" He was always young. He never became not 'young'. Leah knows that, these days, is familiar with it, has gone over it again and again. But that's not what Loren means.
"I did," Leah says. "...My parents weren't happy that I went for the military," she reflects. "So a lot of my social connections would turn out to be at the school, instead. He was one of them. They couldn't really complain. I was a good student, ran with the right sort of people..."
"I was sixteen. And he was always full of energy. Like a fire, bright and bold. ...That's part of what drew me to him, I think. I was quieter; he was ambitious. He had a lot to do, a lot to say, all the time."
"He talked about you, you know. He wanted to blaze a trail for you."
"...He always had another idea, or another thing to try, or another plan."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He never has asked about her family. Or all that much about her, beyond her responsibilities towards him and his own towards her. But it has turned into that sort of relationship, hasn't it?
As much as she is family -- one of the people most dear to him -- he is also terrified of her and what she might do. Be forced to do. Or do willingly.
'He wanted to blaze a trail for you.'
It's as if some string deep within Loren's chest has been pulled tight. He doesn't gasp for breath: his heart and his lungs continue to function just as they should. But he looks as her in the moment as if the air had become rarefied, his shoulders tight and tense.
People do that sort of thing all the time. He knows that -- everyone, in time, sets down a path for others to follow after them. And it's not a surprise that Engil would have... thought like that. He was always thinking like that. What was next. What he was going to achieve.
It made it very hard to be the young brother, sometimes. Even if their parents never compared the two of them like that -- at least not where he could hear it -- even back then it had gnawed at him. How was he supposed to achieve anything if he was always the one following behind?
"I... see," he says to Leah, finally, averting his eyes. "So... he wasn't too different than at home."
The star student. Talented swordsman. Engil had risen quickly through the ranks to Captain. Skilled pilot.
And then it had all come tumbling down. What do people say of Engil these days -- when they dare speak of him at all? Even if there are fewer who would speak ill of the dead, thanks to no less than the woman before him, what's left of his legacy? Is it better to never be spoken about again than to be spoken about in fury and hatred?
Once, Loren himself had sought to forget. These days... well, it seems a more bitter thing than that to be the only one who remembers.
But this still doesn't help him answer the question his brother's very legacy has posed. What would have driven his perfect brother to have...?
He wishes he had someone to talk to. Just one person, someone he could trust with anything.
"Was there..." He has to pause, to think about this, trying to thread his thoughts as carefully as he can, on the fly. "Was there anything you found... difficult about him? I'm-- just wondering," he adds, a touch hastily. "No one wants to talk about him anymore. And... it's different. When you're brothers."
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah sees that moment, and she does not have to see a gasp for breath to recognize the tension there. But then, there would be; what's strange is not that Loren feels that tightening in his chest, but how calmly Leah seems to discuss the matter, given what happened when last it came up, in the Ice Shrine.
"...No, he was largely the same wherever he went," Leah says. "The same person, in different situations. He wanted to change the world, not change himself to adapt to it. I suppose we were always different, that way."
To be forgotten? ...Is it what he would have wanted? Certainly not. But it is not what he wants that reigns, now. Those who remain make those decisions.
Leah looks down, then, to her hands. Her mechanical, leather-covered, cold hands. Loren speaks of what was difficult...
"And so you want to talk to me about him." It's ironic. She can appreciate, on one level, that irony.
"...No, it's a fair question. Disagreements are part of life. We lionize the dead, but if we didn't have those little points of tension, the memory wouldn't have much to hook into. I don't want him to be remembered as perfect any more than I want him to be remembered as one failure. ...I suppose there's the matter of whether he's remembered at all, now. Regardless."
"...The point is that yes." Pause. Leah looks up to Loren again. "He got into his own head a lot. When he was working on a problem, sometimes he'd share it with me--but more often he'd track it himself. Take it all on his own shoulders, leave me behind..." She trails off.
There is something almost, almost achingly human in her expression, that peeks out behind the Watcher's mask, something wistful in her single eye.
"Maybe if he'd leaned on me more, it would've been different. But he always wanted to make sure he was pulling his weight."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Back in the Ice Shrine, it hadn't been a shade of his brother as the one to hold him back. It had been an illusory Leah.
That tracks. What Leah says, that is -- wherever Engil went, he was Engil. Loren, though... it might only be his perception of himself but it never entirely feels like he is the same person from encounter to encounter. Brash, even bold when dealing with someone below him. Obedient, even meek when dealing with someone above him. Even when he lets his guard down, he's not the same person from encounter to encounter and -- yes, he knows that circumstances and situations will have their due. He's no fool. Yet, the way that he seems to himself to swing so wildly seems so different from Engil.
Who, regardless of the circumstances, was always stolidly Engil.
Maybe it's like Leah says. Maybe it's because Engil really did want to change the world and not himself. Not like Loren, who claimed to want to change things and instead continues to find himself twisting to conform to the shape the world desires.
...Is Leah like that, too? He almost wants to ask, the very question might be nakedly evident in his eyes. "...Yeah," he says instead. "That's who he was." Fire roars ahead to claim. Earth endures, is slowly reshaped. And water, too, takes the form the world imposes upon it.
"You would have... even before all that, he would have been a classmate." A peer, in other words. "It's different," he reaffirms. Love is love, and he's not going to dwell too long on their relationship, sure, but she would have seen him as an equal, and then been closer to Engil than anyone else could have been, to his eyes. It's different than being brothers, and certainly different than being the brother he had idolized. Even now, he can't help but shake the feeling he's just being sour about it when he does try to focus on the flaws his brother had -- 'too confident', 'too focused'.
Is Leah's answer any more honest than his own assessment?
"...I don't remember that," Loren says, furrowing his brow. Did he ever see his brother worrying over a problem in the way she described? "But..." Maybe he was just too young, though. Maybe he was never looking for it in the first place.
But the notebook is evidence enough that what she's saying is true. ...That's why, he decides, the realization coming over him. He stares at Leah for the moment, lost in his own head. Engil had put it down the notebook because he... also didn't anyone he could talk to. Or, at least, no one he thought he could talk to.
Was it because Engil thought he had to be perfect? Because he didn't trust anyone, really?
There's that look in her eye, and that drags Loren out of his own head and back to reality. If Engil had leaned on Leah more, would it have been possible that he might not have...?
Maybe Engil had feared, just as Loren so often does, that he wasn't pulling his own weight.
"I'm sorry," he blurts out, only to look away, shoulders tensed. He's not the one who should apologize -- insofar as their faults might be shared. And yet, there are times when he can't help it. There is still guilt, tangled in his core: he had only been a kid when it had happened. Even under the strangest of circumstances, he would never have been there, and had likely been far from both of their minds at the time.
Yet it's possible to feel guilty about it -- for living, even if there were no other way but to have lived. For being the shadow to his brother's flame, even now. And because maybe someone has to say what Engil no longer can.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Maybe--maybe--Leah would answer, if Loren asked. Instead, she regards him thoughtfully for a few more moments. The question is as plain to see as anything ever was for her; lacking her second eye never seemed to dampen her perception of people. But liquid is not the only form that water takes. Loren has seen what happens, when it freezes over.
Perhaps when a heart freezes over. Has it?
"Right."
But before all that... "Yes," Leah agrees. "It's not the same." There are other details, of course. Some she openly elides; is her answer more honest? ...It's hard to say.
"He would've always put on his best for you," Leah points out.
And then Loren stares at Leah, and Leah looks back to him. Is she really just enjoying a walk down through her memories? Or is there something else, here?
Regardless, the reverie is shattered by that apology; Leah blinks once, tilting her head at Loren; for the barest instant, it might seem that she was actually thrown by this reaction. She has heard many apologies for this, many statements of sympathy, but here, now...?
"..."
Leah's eye sharpens, as she regards Loren again. "...You are," she says.
Leah shakes her head, and looks out towards the sky. "You shouldn't be."
"For all the people in this world who should be sorry..." Her hand curls into a fist, mechanical and cold.
"You are not one. Not for that."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Earth warps. It shatters. It rises up... and crumbles away. Water, though -- yes, it doesn't merely flow. It evaporates and becomes invisible. It freezes and gains many of the properties of earth.
And it may yet again melt.
'He would've always put on his best for you,' Leah tells him.
At that, he can't help it: he laughs, just a soft huff of a sound. "Did he ever tell you about the time he pushed me into the reflecting pool?" he asks, before even that settles out into the expression he typically wears these days.
"...I know," he says afterwards, shaking his head. "Maybe... that's part of the reason why." Maybe. He can't know it -- no one can know it, now -- but he can tell himself a story about the reasons and pretend it's truth. It might as well be.
Engil was someone who wanted to change the world.
Engil was someone who bucked at tradition.
Engil was someone who felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He couldn't have spoken to anyone about what he'd thought about. He wouldn't have spoken to anyone about it. And so, Engil hadn't.
Almost, almost he wants to tell her, too. What he found.
But the moment rises like a whistling wind before it, too, is gone. What good would it do, now? Might it only hurt?
The apology isn't born of guilt alone. It's also an apology, in a way, for repeating the error of his departed brother.
She, of course, reacts as she would: for all of her earlier implicit statement that she is molded by the world, she is predictable here.
Loren shakes his head. "Even so..." He's not so softhearted as to say, 'someone should be'.
Even if he is softhearted enough to think it, if just in this moment. As much as he tends to only reflect on his own pain, there are times when Loren Voss looks to the outside world and realizes he is far from the only one.
He's looked away, further down the path that stretches ahead. There's a lot he wants to ask her. There's a lot they should have talked about over the years. But between her work and him avoiding her, between their shared and separate obligations and the secrets they hide from one another, the time has never materialized.
"...Do you need to go soon?" he asks her, looking back at Leah and thinking, again, that he's seen the sort of air that trails her now around patients he's treated. "If not..."
Only later will he realize where he'd seen it, specifically: on those who were dying. And by then it will be too late.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah doesn't laugh. But she smiles, faintly. Just for a moment. A brief thing, that may not even be artifice. She can imagine that, after all. Naturally he wouldn't have mentioned it, but...
Siblings.
But he knows. And maybe that's why. A story.... It's a story they could tell. But what would differ, in the telling from each of them? This?
Leah spots that there is something... but she doesn't know what. And perhaps it's better to let go, in a case like this. Soon... It won't be her concern. He'll have to handle it on his own.
Even so, Loren says, and Leah watches him again, wonderingly. He doesn't say it... But she can imagine it. And perhaps because of what she knows, she allows it for now. It is enough.
Does she need to go...?
"I suppose not," Leah decides, at length. She should. She should leave, without giving Loren a chance to realize what is on her mind, if he could. He's not so imperceptive as to entirely fail to notice it. And yet...
"Not yet, at least."
Maybe it's already too late, now. But she doesn't leave just yet.