2024-03-22: Lavender Eaves
- Log: 2024-03-22 Lavender Eaves
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Energy Nede - Lavender Town
- Date: March 23, 2024
- Summary: Loren and Lan share information and comfort while taking shelter from the rain.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There's no questioning it: Energy Nede is at once wholely familiar and extremely weird. It's the little touches here and there that always get Loren the most: the cleanliness and the order remind him of Etrenank. But things like the rain and the wildlife do just the opposite. It manages to catch him off-guard with all the little touches of 'home' and then sucker-punch him with all the stark differences.
And worse are the ways he's caught himself thinking about all of it. Would it have been different, if...?
But some things are useless to linger upon.
It's raining on Lavender Town. It's an apt name for the place, he'd decided after checking around the city center and taking in the preferred color scheme. Did the name come first or was it the choice of paint?
Such considerations -- as well as whether there's anything they can glean from this place -- fall by the wayside when (speaking of the rain!) the sky opens up and it starts to pour. Here Loren runs for the relative safety of a shopfront.
"Oho! A visitor!" chirps the shopkeeper inside. "Care to take a look at our local souvenirs? Take one home for your friends!" She gestures for a display that is apparently not all that far from where he stands.
Loren starts to say something but in a rare moment of tact, doesn't. Instead, he turns his head for the display and just about bumps into a display of plush toys.
They're Ghastlies, to be specific.
Loren, regarding the display like he really has seen a ghost, backs away.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The sudden downpour isn't unique to Energy Nede. Lunar also experiences them. Plenty of places on Filgaia still receive rain as well!
Lan doesn't dance in it anymore. Not because it's any less wonderful, or any less miraculous to a child of the Badlands, but because she sees a lot more rain these days and if she stopped to celebrate every time she would start having to budget Rain Dancing Time into her schedule maybe, and also Lunatone doesn't like getting wet.
It's safe and dry inside of its Pokeball at her hip, but Buneary is still nestled into Lan's arms as she sprints for the safety of the closest open door.
Loren backs up--
--right into her, making the rabbit Pokemon squeak in alarm. Lan takes a step back - she should've watched where she was going a little better. "Oops! It's okay, see, you're not hurt at all," she tells it, bouncing it gently like it were a fussy infant or something. Looking up, and with a little more volume, Lan prepares to apologize to whoever she just Lanned right into. "Sorry, I shouldn't have gotten so Loren??"
Oh boy! It's one of the people he's been avoiding ever since hearing about his behavior during the Azoth Retrieval Mission, who surely heard him say deeply racist and/or embarrassing things!
Lan Lilac is there, behind him, holding a Pokemon whose adorability levels should be criminal. She's staring. At him.
Why is Loren here? Is he really safe from the Stranger's influence just because Solaris found no traces of his Ether in him? Can Lan hurt him just by being near him? What if Leah knows something about it that Lan doesn't? She had told Lan to control herself - or Leah would do it for her.
What if Lan can't someday?
Outwardly, her eyes are a little pinched at the corners. "I-- uh, what are--" Should she run? Where to? ...Why should she?! It hasn't happened yet, so surely that means it won't, right? Leah is just being cautious. She's always been cautious!
She's never been that way without reason, and Lan knows it. She deflates a little.
"Is it okay for you to be here?" she asks instead, not sure how exactly she means it.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be fair, Loren has long since gotten over rain as a general phenomenon. What's set him off-balance is more...
If he squinted, he could almost mistake it for home. Except for things like the rain. The breeze. And the sky itself. Energy Nede itself is a construct, or so he's learned, but in spite of its orderly wilderness it's still very different from growing up in Etrenank. For all these brief moments where he could be forgiven for mistaking the world around him for 'home', this is anything but.
And he's here for any reason but to be a tourist, whatever the shopkeeper here might think.
...Not that he has much money to spend, anyway. In spite of Command not being able to help much for funds and resources beyond the most basic of the latter, it's not as if someone can starve on Energy Nede or fail to manage to earn the coin they use for nonessentials.
Getting paid for defeating another person in a Pokemon battle was a strange learning experience for Loren (and it's still very weird to wrap his head around).
More to the point, though, he's staring down a pile of ghosts. Well. Ghost Pokemon, which still make him feel very uneasy even if he's been assured that they're just as friendly as the other Pokemon he's befriended. He's allowed to feel strange about ghost-types! That's his right!
...The fact that what's spooked him is a plush toy will, for the moment, go unremarked upon.
Largely because he has a much larger issue to contend with, namely--
"Uh--" he utters inarticulately, whipping his head about so sharply it's a wonder he hasn't injured his neck. "Lan??"
He looks at her like he's seen a real ghost and freezes for the moment where he stands.
Then slowly, gingerly, he begins to back away. Of all things, it's the recording of his own voice that rings in his ears still.
"I'm-- I'm not-- I need to, uh," he starts, panicking now, "give my Graveller a... bath...?"
This is a statement that makes no goddamn sense, be it presently or ever.
Loren begins to move slowly but inexorably towards the door to the shop, his gaze on Lan the entire time as if wary of any sudden movements.
The shopkeeper, completely baffled by this turn of events squints. What the hell is going on in their store???
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
That can't be good for his neck. She doesn't remark on it because-- because he looks at her like--
Is he remembering the way the ink had flowed down her clutching arms, climbed his strangled neck, brushed against his gasping lips? Did Leah tell him something about the Stranger's Ether that he didn't mention to Azoth? Is he afraid of her now?
He says something even Lan knows is a lie. Azoth said that message was from Loren. Couldn't he tell her himself?
Was he afraid to come near her?
Pap pappap.
A soft paw patting her cheek makes Lan blink and look down at the Pokemon in her arms. Buneary is worried about her. "..." What is she doing? That... can't be right. Loren has a lot of things to be afraid of or worried about, but not her. "...You can't give Graveler a bath. It's a Rock type," is what Lan starts with, because she's reasonably sure that's still true.
She has enough coherence to know that wherever they try to talk this out, it probably shouldn't be in a... souvenir shop? Stuffed animal adoption center? She gives the shopkeeper a wan smile and a little wave. "Hi, sorry, we'll uh..." Lan flounders for anything to say... and gives up!
As if she's afraid he'll bolt, Lan snatches up Loren's hand and hurries outside, pulling him along the side of the building where they can stand beneath the eaves of the roof and talk while staying mostly dry. "I just... I got your message. From Azoth," she says instead of anything useful.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
This is the last thing he wanted to have happen! Shouldn't she be back on Filgaia? What's she doing in Energy Nede, let alone Lavender Town!
In another timeline, if certain things had not already been said, he might have even gone so far as to say those sentiments. As it stands, he looks at her with stark terror. She's going to say something about what he'd said. She's going to say it, and he's not going to enjoy it.
All told, it's a weird thing to be worried about considering he's the one who took a lot of drugs and attacked her (not even necessarily in that order) but this is where he's at, mentally speaking.
But maybe he can still escape. You know. Before it's too late.
He can't give Graveller a bath, she points out, intruding into the height of his panic. It's a Rock type, after all.
"Uh," Loren says, freezing in place as he struggles and fails to find a counterargument. This gives Lan plenty of time to take him by the hand and leads him back out. He's stunned enough that she gets away with it, following along in a largely-compliant sort of manner.
(to be fair, this might have worked even if he hadn't been struck dumb by her logic)
But they're back outside, if protected from the downpour by the eaves (more or less) and it's here that Lan tells him that she got his message.
He looks over at her blankly.
...The one from Azoth.
"Oh-- right. Right," he says, tearing his gaze away from her and towards the blank wall of the building just across from them. "Good. Great. Glad to hear it," he continues in the same clipped way.
He's silent.
"Things are... good?" he ventures, as his own silence begins to gnaw even at him.
Which is a hell of a thing to ask of her, all considering, but here we are.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
His message. Via Azoth. About the Stranger's Ether.
He's so uncomfortable, she realizes. Re-realizes. Lan is in fact so worried about how he's acting around her that she's completely forgotten to be upset with him about taking drugs (which she told him not to) and being racist (which she also told him not to)!
Something is so wrong.
He's seen her being consumed by the black ribbons before. What changed, this time? A new thought occurs to her. The way he's acting so clipped and distant. ...Are they being watched? She knows that he's a captain now. Maybe his squad or whatever is nearby. If they see him with her, will he be in danger? Shouldn't he leave...?
...He doesn't. Lan stands there, back straight, a rabbit in her arms. Staring at him. Quiet.
She didn't think it would be this uncomfortable between them.
Things are good?
Lan's mouth opens a little, like she's too stunned to speak. Like she's thinking of what to say to him. "I... what's going on, Loren?" she finally asks, because she just doesn't know what else to do. "What did Leah tell you? What do you know that I don't? If you... if I scared you I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I tried to stop..." She tried, but nobody else was calm so Lan couldn't become calm and she cut Azoth's arm off and he took that Drive stuff again when she told him how much she hates it.
She swipes roughly at her eyes. "I tried to stop but I couldn't. Leah said something about... if I couldn't control myself... is that what happened?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
This is not the situation he wanted to be in. There's a reason -- well a few reasons, really -- why he'd asked Azoth instead of doing it himself.
Leah had not been very impressed by his decision, once she'd found out.
Even he knows that's not the right thing to say. But what is the right thing to say? Should he just stay silent? Should he try to run away?
But he doesn't run from her this time, in spite of everything. Or maybe, it's because of everything.
What's going on?
"Nothing!" he blurts out, hunching his shoulders then turning towards her. "Nothing's going on! It's fine! I--"
Loren is not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but even he can realize when the calculus of the moment does not quite add up to the solution he'd thought it ought to. "...I wasn't scared of you," he says slowly, some of his initial caginess beginning to drop away as he looks at her -- really looks at her.
"I don't think I was scared of anyone."
He remembers an extended moment of euphoria. He remembers Lan's ribbons and Gwen's ARM and Lily's sorcery, but it was so much noise against the glory he'd attained. Yes, he'd been monstrous (he's certain of that) and yes he'd said something he's still regretting, but in that moment he'd held light and power and fury in his hands and against him the world had seemed to tremble.
But he tries to think about what Lan had done -- to really pull up any images of what he'd seen and what others had done or anything -- and instead draws up a blank.
"You used that... those ribbons again. I remember that." He pauses. "...What do you remember?" Loren says, and that in itself may speak volumes about what his experience had been.
But he still hasn't clarified anything about Leah.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Her eyes are hot but she isn't crying yet. Buneary's warm, soft presence is soothing, even if the Pokemon itself is mostly just confused and concerned. "You weren't scared then. I remember that. You took two doses of Drive and you went crazy and said some really unhinged stuff, but you weren't scared." She remembers that much! "I was scared for you. I wanted to..." She reaches out for it, the part where the clear memory of that battlefield began to blur.
"I wanted to... keep you from taking back Azoth. Gwen and I knew you didn't want to but you had to, so... we thought we could..." Lan looks down at Buneary, meeting its worried gaze briefly. "We tried to stop you. But Azoth was already like that." She doesn't elaborate, because it's hard to find a way to speak about Azoth's chains.
Lan's pale eyes are a little distant, but she's still here. Standing under the eaves with him and a new Pokemon, dragging her fingers through the silt of her memories. "I was close to you and he attacked me and I cut his arm off. I didn't mean to." It poured out of the shallow wound he'd managed to inflict, but it burst free of the scar the Stranger left. "I didn't mean to. I couldn't control it. All I could think about was the, the time at the lake, at Macalania, and how I nearly died. The red on my clothes." Buneary looks more and more agitated, its quiet little coos pitching higher as it reaches for her face with its paws.
Tears well in her eyes, finally. "I'm sorry. I just remember everybody yelling and I was so scared because I couldn't stop. I tried to stop, Loren! I tried and I tried and then Leah got there and you took Azoth away and Leah said that if I couldn't control myself, she would do it for me and then she--"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
That's why he hadn't asked her to travel with him, as much as he'd wanted to. It's one of the many reasons why he hadn't tried to repair things between them: it was better, in the long run, to let it all be as it was. Invariably, he'd thought, they'd clash again: if not over Azoth, then again some other time.
And he'd wondered, still, in spite of everything, if it might be possible to harden his own heart in preparation for the day he knows is coming.
Leah had promised him as much. The actions of that man cannot be permitted to undo their plans.
Regardless of the hostages he might take.
But that's right. He hadn't been scared even before he'd taken the Drive. He'd been tired, yes. He'd been resigned. But he'd also prepared for that moment.
His shoulders tense as she mentions 'some really unhinged stuff' but the implosion he'd been anticipating never quite arrives. Instead, Lan talks about what she does remember.
...Is it too much to hope that she doesn't remember, precisely, what he'd said to her...?
"...Yeah. He was. The moment I found him, he..." Loren speaks quietly, glancing askance at Lan. But even saying that feels like too much. Like he shouldn't be talking about the horrific demonstration that had occured the moment he'd gotten within a few feet of Azoth and the control code took over. Even if he'd wanted to turn away, his very presence had caused Azoth to be chained again. He's no programmer, but what electronic shackles did they apply to Azoth...?
But Lan goes on. She cut off Azoth's arm? He doesn't remember that, he thinks he doesn't remember--
No. That's not quite right. It plucks at some ghost of memory within his mind, something that his body and subconscious cling to in spite of his state in that particular moment. Fear. Wrath.
Greed. Was that when--
Furiously, he shakes his head, as if to shed that twilight memory that rises from the depths of his darkness to haunt him.
And he looks at Lan who has recalled that moment in Macalania. And he looks at Lan, who is apologizing for attacking him like that. And he looks at Lan, who has started to cry.
It's not, precisely, that he's not aware of what he's doing. It's not that he moves without some sense of volition. But it's also true that it feels like his body is moving on its own when he reaches out for her to try to pull her close, as close as he dares.
His own words rise from the depths to echo in his ears like a chorus of mockery. It takes everything he has not to jerk away again.
It's not like that. It's not like anything. He doesn't like seeing her like this-- never has.
That's all.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She didn't want to cry, even though there's no shame in doing it when you need to. But Lan can't help it, overwhelmed with the flood of remembered emotions and her own dread. He'd said he wasn't afraid of her then. But is he afraid of her now - now that Leah has no doubt warned him about what could happen to his mind if Loren were to get infected again? If Lan even can do such a thing?
He reaches out, then.
For her.
Buneary scrambles up onto Lan's shoulder as she tilts against him, wrapping her arms around his shoulderblades and burying her face in his shoulder. "I thought about the time in that buried temple, I forget the name now, with the stained glass panels. How you... how you forgot everything. Because it touched you. Because you were already forgetting everything and that was just, the last straw I guess." Her breath is warm and damp against rain-chilled skin.
Lan smears her face against his shoulder. "I was worried you were scared of being erased again. Like maybe Leah told you... maybe that was why she checked for his Ether. Because if any got into you again..." She isn't making sense. ...But she's not bawling or anything either. That's a good sign, right?!
Fear or not, erasure or not, she seems happy to stand there, taking comfort from him.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He shouldn't be doing this.
The thought comes as a flood even as Loren puts his hand on her sholder and pulls her in towards him. No, he shouldn't be doing this, the thought repeats, and it makes his arm and his hand shudder-shake as he nearly halfway draws back. He shouldn't and even so he still wants.
It's something almost primordial, rising out of the depths of his inner sea. Here there be monsters, yes:
but even a monster just wants to exist.
And this is what stands firm against 'shouldn't', in the end.
However hard it might try to fight. Does she feel his hand trembling against her shoulderblade?
Still, it's against his shoulders that she spills everything she's feared since they crossed purposes outside the rift: that she was afraid that he was avoiding her lest he suffer a repeat of that moment years ago when his memories had been wiped clean.
He doesn't say anything. Not immediately. She thought that's what he was afraid of? He'd been afraid that-- that he'd got what he'd wanted when he'd tried to cut ties with her. That, even if that's what he'd told her, she'd listened. That he'd been left alone again.
"...I wasn't afraid of that," he says at last. "I was worried about you. What Leah said was..." He shakes his head as he thinks back and grimaces.
'...no matter who that man takes as a hostage...'
His fingertips linger just over her shoulder a moment more and then his hand gives in at last to the inevitable and falls away.
"...You need to be careful around her," he says, as quietly as he can.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's solid against him. Warm, strong arms around him; planes and valleys in the back underneath his hands. All familiar qualities, even if he's rarely had occasion to know for himself how they feel. Lan hugged him now and then, when she thought he needed it (or when she needed it instead), whether or not she thought he'd return it in the moment. Whether or not he'd appreciate it.
It's different like this: with her the embraced and him the one who reached out.
Lan shivers faintly, not because she's cold but because she's afraid of what could happen in the future. Afraid of what it could do to her and to him and to them both.
He was worried about her. She holds on to him like a she needs a place to rest, like all her worries might bleed out of her (into him?), like he's the only port in a storm.
Like she really, really needs a friend.
Her tears and breath sink into the shoulder of his clothing. There's a Pokemon uncomfortably close to his face, making quiet chirrup sounds. Loren's hand falls away, but Lan continues to hold him. "...I'm getting scared of her," Lan admits, into the darkness between them. If she doesn't open her eyes this stays private. It's just them. "I mean, I always should have been but-- it was different when I was there. When I was still dreaming. And then I was afraid of her taking me back, but not... not scared of Leah. ...Does that make any sense??" Lan sighs, a huff of warmth against his neck. She shuffles her feet a little, but draws back from him slowly. Still in his space, still too close to be mistaken for anything but some kind of intimate.
Her voice is as quiet as his own. "Her legs... did she get new ones? She doesn't walk the same anymore. And her eye - she has both of them again. Is it fake?" She doesn't think she's going to like the answers. But if... that change means something...
Her eyes are red when she finally looks up to meet his eyes again, but she's pulled herself back together a little bit. She can go on. There is something to do, so Lan will do it. "How much can you tell me?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's always been strange, being this close to another person. Or, well-- maybe not 'always'. There was a time when it wasn't so strange. There was even a time when it wasn't so strange being so close to her.
But feels like lately, or at least, over the last few years, it's become stranger. And of course, he's considered the obvious reason and of course that's not what's going on. It's just that--
It's just that it's become complicated, somehow.
Somehow.
But she's close to him now and her body is solid and real in a way that he's far more aware of than he'd like. Even through her clothing, he can feel the contures of flesh and sinew: he can feel the warmth of her body. Even the chill of the rain can't entirely steal away the heat that a body makes, burning for the extent of its lifespan.
She has begun to hold onto him, and he's acutely aware of that, too. He does not try to move away, even if his hand departs from her shoulder. The rest of the world seems to be little more than a dull murmur; even the raindrops are an afterthought.
The only thing that's served to ground him and keep him tethered firmly to 'reality' is... well...
...the little rabbit-like Pokemon on her shoulder that is way too close to his face. With any other animal just about, he'd be worried about it being so close to his eyes, but...
What he doesn't say to Lan is that he's already afraid of Leah. Or that, technically, he's been afraid of Leah for years, but now he's really afraid.
Instead, Loren says, "...No, it makes sense."
Because it does. He's had various reasons to fear her over the years, but only recently have those fears taken on a very different quality. The Leah his sister-in-law has become has lost all sense of restraint: the only thing that matters to her now--
"Her... all of her, I think. Her wounds and everything she lost," he answers her disjointedly, some tension finally leaving him to confess just this much in a place where maybe, he can't be overheard. "--Almost everything." He pauses.
"...I don't know what happened."
But he can guess.
"But she can no longer die."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
There was a time when Lan could do this more often. Most of her life had been like this: if she wanted to comfort or be comforted, it was as easy as reaching out. And then she turned seventeen, and she left the village and her family and the ease of lifelong relationships behind.
It's why Lan keeps reaching out; it's why she's always carrying her Pokemon even if they don't need her to. It feeds the part of her that still longs to lean shoulder-to-shoulder with someone she's know for years, to rest her legs across someone's lap or let them do the same for her. To be close to someone.
She thinks, sometimes, about the visit to the bookstore in Etrenank. How he had angrily shrugged off her attempt at a thank-you hug, and how the man selling the books had smirked at them and she didn't yet understand why.
And now he's worried for her. He reached out to her on his own.
And he has good reason to be worried. "...All of her? You don't mean it's... skin and bone and stuff now?" Of course Lan has heard of legends like that - but they're legends. There's no living healer who can repair damage that severe. Who can regrow eyes and limbs. It would be... it's unimaginable. So many people could be saved, if it were that easy!
Loren can watch as her eyes widen in comprehension, narrow again in misgiving... and crease at the corners when it really sinks in. That Leah might be immortal now. "W, wait. Like. Really can't die. Even if someone kills her. She's--"
It goes against everything she knows about the way of things. "Everything dies. Maybe even gods." Their beautiful, beautiful world. "What-- did she do?!" What does this mean?
It's not like she wants Leah to die, but...! Lan reaches up to coax Buneary back into her arms, where she cradles it close. "I don't understand!" she murmurs, as if suddenly acutely aware that being heard talking about Grigori would be dangerous to their health. "If she couldn't do that all this time... what changed?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's been different for him, of course, and not just in the way their cultures vary so widely. For as long as she's known him, Loren has been a tightly-wound and buttoned up person: only in recent years (absent that period when he was without memory) has he begun to let down his guard around her.
This remains the case even in spite of recent developments: the fact that he'd invited this moment and has yet to retreat (however tense and nervous he might be) persists.
Even if Loren had reached out to her because he's worried about her.
In Etrenank, it's possible to regrow organs and limbs, but there are caveats. It has to be a fresh wound, and you need to have enough sample tissue for it. It can't be something complex like an eye or the brain and spinal cord. Generally, there can't be significant tissue damage like third-degree burns. All of these had disqualified Leah, yet...
"...Yeah," he tells her, coupling that statement with a clipped nod. "She's 'whole', but..."
For all that her body is 'repaired' it feels to him almost like something else was traded in exchange. Like...
Like maybe a soul, as trite as the statement sounds.
"If someone kills her, she'll get back up again."
There's probably ways she could die for real, for good. But they're extreme things, and for good or ill, he doesn't like thinking about them in the context of his sister-in-law.
He certainly wouldn't want to put it to the test.
"I don't know," he hisses back, a rough undercurrent of frustration threading into his words. He doesn't know-- but he can guess. And he doesn't like what he's guessed, less than he likes what it means or implies.
He turns his head away from Lan sharply. "I said, I don't know. I can't just ask that!" he utters, struggling to keep his voice down. "But she's different now. She's focused now. And if she thinks you might get in the way..."
He lets that threat hang in the air, scarce daring to voice anything more.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She remembers the length of time he'd spent in treatment after the fall of the Photosphere. How he'd survived even after being grievously run through. And how even with Solaris's miracles, he'd been in a coma somewhere and she hadn't been allowed to visit him, even just to see that he was alive with her own eyes. Leah had visited her occasionally at the Voss estate, where Lan had been left between 'interviews'. She had been kind to Lan. Distant as always, and very very busy, but kind. She had been the main source of reassurance that Loren was still alive somewhere. That she would eventually return to the surface.
Leah had been someone that Lan considered a friend. Even after waking up and leaving Solaris, even after asking Loren to join her, even after opposing Solaris's efforts again and again, Lan had been able to sit at a table with Leah and drink tea and eat sweets. Leah had still been warm, even when she had told Lan she was dying.
Dying. He doesn't know, he says again, agitated. "She told me," Lan begins, and winces at the realization that she's going to upset him further, and also break a promise. "She told me she was dying. And not to tell you. Because it would hurt you either way for her to die, but to know it was coming and not be able to stop it..." she trails off. "I said I wouldn't tell you, but. Well... she's not dying anymore." That renders the secret null and void, doesn't it?! "It can't be a coincidence, can it."
Lan nods slowly, long hair swaying. "She felt different. I don't know if she would have hit me to snap me out of that, before, but..." She doesn't think Leah even hesitated. "Loren, this is really dangerous..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
They'd opted to regrow his damaged abdominal organs based on tissue samples. The wound had been terrible and the damage extensive, but it had been a fresh enough injury and everything was still mostly intact enough to take samples. It had been judged better than the alternative option of surgical repair, which even with enhanced regeneration medicine would have seen him out for months. Even with the lead time for tissue growth, they could do regrowth more quickly.
But even that was still at the very bleeding edge for wound repair. Maybe, decades from now, even wounds like Leah's would have--
But Leah hadn't had decades.
"...What?" He moves to back away, as if trying to put space between them -- to look Lan in the eyes. "She was...? You're sure--" he starts and then stops, gazing at her in disbelief. "Why did she-- why didn't she--"
Leah isn't dying now, that's true.
But he still looks nothing less than betrayed as he stares at her. Did Leah-- had she thought that little of him that she was just going to die and let him find out about it after the fact that she'd known it was coming?
That someone else was, again, going to vanish from his life without even saying goodbye?
That she didn't want to hurt him fails to do much to ease the wound.
And it isn't as if he can confront her about this now.
It's really dangerous, as Lan says.
"I know," Loren tells her. "That's why you can't-- you have to stay out of our business. I mean it. I don't know what she's going to do anymore."
Or what he's going to have to do, for that matter.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
So Leah hadn't told him, even after.
"I'm sure," she nods slowly, regretfully, because what reason would Leah have to lie to her about something like that? She'd said it was to spare Loren's feelings. Lan understands that instinct, but... to not give somebody the benefit of their last days with a relative? To let them miss out on the importance of time spent until it's too late to explain it?
The way he stares at her, betrayed...
If Leah has really become so dangerous and unpredictable, then it's become twice as important for Lan to avoid painting a target on her back. "...I'll try," she says to him, because Lan doesn't want to dreak a promise. And she doesn't want to finally see what Leah Sadalbari looks like when she's pushed. "I'll be careful."
Because even if it is what may get her killed, Lan wants to save their world. Their world, not just hers.
She'll be careful, and she'll do everything she can! And Lan will hope that that is enough, and that she won't pay a too-steep price for her foolish dreams.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She'll try, Lan says. She'll be careful.
She does not say, Loren notes, that she'll abandon her ambitions of challenging Solaris. Nor does she say that she'll try to keep her distance from him or anything like that.
He notes these things and his awareness of her exact phrasing makes its way onto his expression as he frowns deeply. But Loren doesn't say anything about that.
Instead, what he says is, "...Good. I'm glad to hear it."