2024-05-29: Confidence
- Log: Confidence
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Eleanor Klein
- Where: Gunsmoke Desert, Ignas, Filgaia
- Date: May 29, 2024
- Summary: After the events of 2024-05-24:_Alien_Ether, Eleanor and Lan trudge home. Despite their dismay and how badly this could all go, they affirm their intent to save Loren.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
'We'd better go.'
They had come to the Gunsmoke on foot, because Lan is confident in her ability to navigate and survive safely here. They weren't supposed to be here very long, after all. And technically, they haven't been. They're already leaving. Lan was quiet for a while after they'd parted ways with Loren.
She's thinking-- well, she's worrying. Rationalizing.
But Lan can walk and do that at the same time, so at least they won't be stuck out here after nightfall.
But eventually, she can't stand it anymore. "You felt it too, didn't you," she doesn't really ask. "It was him. And Loren didn't even..."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor is confident in Lan's ability to navigate here, too. She did expect to be here a little longer than this, though...
Eleanor was quiet, too. She wasn't going to goad Lan into talking before she was ready, annd Eleanor had a lot to think about, too. So on they walk, until--
"I did," Eleanor says. "Not as strongly as you did, I think. But it was him. And Loren..."
"Was he unaware? I'm not so sure."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan really likes that about the other woman. Eleanor knows when to ask questions, when to speak, when to let others chew on their thoughts in peace. (Maybe she's born with it; maybe it's something they teach you in finishing school.)
"The curse reacted to something like it inside of Loren. I saw some of the usual things that come back to me when it gets excited, but I also saw some stuff that had to be Loren's. His brother, some stuff that had to have been the Stranger messing with him. He'll stick you in an nightmare and let you endure it over and over." Lan doesn't know that Eleanor got stuck in a timeloop. She would certainly commiserate.
She wants to think he's unaware of it. But he'd acted... funny. Even for Loren. "I think..." she draws the idea out, testing it like ice she isn't sure will bear weight. "I think he didn't want to think about it. ...It wouldn't be the first time."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
It's definitely something Eleanor was taught. Manners are not innate, but a learned discipline meant to make others feel important as appropriate!!
"I see... His brother, and..." Eleanor nods. "I remember," Eleanor says of the Stranger. "He once stretched out my perceptions of time. I thought I might go mad. Maybe I would've, if I were someone else."
But Lan tests the idea, and...
"I could imagine that," she admits. "He's... good at denial, unfortunately."
She sighs. "But it's dangerous. What would Solaris do with such information?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan makes a face, half of sympathy and half of how uncomfortable she's made by the idea of enduring time kompression. "I... at least I never had to deal with that." Would she have preferred it to being systematically taken apart and remade, over and over? ...Lan will pass on deciding, thanks.
"I can't really blame a person for wanting to escape from everything that makes them miserable. But he's just making himself unhappier. I..." Lan pauses for a moment. "I keep trying to make him see that. But he's afraid of so much that he won't try. And now it's..."
The uneasy feeling in her gut stirs. "They already know a lot. When I was sleepwalking, I told almost everything I could to our commander. They know what the Stranger's Ether is like. He told me they have a test for it - that they'd tested Loren for it, after I lost control of it in a fight a few weeks ago."
Lan stares at the ground as they walk. That means Solaris believes it to be contagious.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor tries not to dwell on it; she's used to horrific visions of blood and terror. How often does she have the one about the coming end of the world? ...Too often.
"Often, fear makes us take actions that would seem obviously wrong to a lucid mind. ...Running towards that which hurts us, instead of away. I see it in him."
That uneasy feeling... Eleanor nods. "I see. So that's what they believe..."
She hesitates. "...Lan," she says. "This may mean..."
She hesitates. "I had a vision. Of Loren. ...Loren, doing something that I believe was going to kill him. I don't have any details I can call to mind. I don't have anything useful. But he seems so certain in this vision..."
"I'm afraid," she admits. "I'm afraid for him. I know he can be more than what he seems to be. But will he even have the chance? ...How can I help him, if I don't know what I need to prevent?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan listens as they walk. Even so deep in thought, her feet are sure on the baked earth. "He has a lot to be afraid of. He's miserable there, but if he defects his parents will be punished. Even more than they were after his brother's accident. --How much do you know about him? Loren, I mean," she clarifies.
"His older brother died in a Gear accident that killed and maimed other people, destroyed some Gears, and everybody blamed Engil for it. So they punished his parents for it, and everybody shunned Loren for being related to him." Lan kicks a stone, but there's hardly any force behind it. She's practically just moving it out of her path. "So he has to stay, because Solaris could make his parents into Worker Bees. Slaves." Or worse.
But she looks up and over when Eleanor hesitates before divulging a horrible vision. "But... but they don't always come true, right?" she reaches. "Maybe it was just, just really dramatic and maybe stupid of him but he'll be okay...?"
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor, in her flowy desert clothes, walks as smooth and sure thanks to her long time in ARMS now. Once, this much walking might've tired her out, but...
"I see... Not much," she admits.
Then Lan explains. "Oh..." She nods, but her expression grows sadder. "TO be punished for your brother's accidents.... That's terrible. No wonder he's so unhappy." To lose a brother, and be punished for it? Eleanor can only imagine.
"And a family to care for, yet..."
Eleanor hesitates. "I could be wrong about what will happen," Eleanor says. "I only know that in the vision he is prepared to die. ...But..."
She sighs. "They come true. Unless something happens to change 'fate', they always come true."
"With the actions of others, 'fate' can be changed, but... I don't even know where to start." The frustration doesn't quite boil over, but her eyes are tight as she considers the matter. "I don't know what I can do."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
That's why Lan can't give up on him. One of the reasons, anyway. Their closeness during her long stint as one of Solaris's special anti-Metal Demon assets might have been engineered, it might have been coincidence, it might have simply been inevitable. But that can't change the fact that Lan decided she is his friend.
But Eleanor says that her visions come true, unless...
"If it's up to us to change it, we will. We'll find a way." But her stomach's flip-flopping inside of her for real now. Lan is still upset from learning that the ink in her became the ink in Loren, after all. No, she didn't. She would remember, Lan tells herself. She would know.
...Wouldn't she?
She stops walking for a moment, turning to Eleanor to offer both arms for a hug. "We can figure it out. Don't give up before we've even begun, okay? Even if we have to stick to him like glue, or tie him down and exorcise the curse from him, or just make it too frustrating for him to even think about doing something that could get him killed!"
And if Lan hugs Eleanor a little tighter than is comfortable, it's probably because Lan wants to be reassured just as much as Eleanor does.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor has to wonder if this new development is linked, somehow. She has to wonder a lot of things. But when Lan turns and offers her a hug, Eleanor hesitates only a moment before she steps the short distance to Lan and hugs her. She hangs on a little tighter than she needs to, herself.
"...Yes," she says. "I'm sorry. I get... fatalistic, sometimes. So many of my visions are just of death and misery. It wears, after a while. And I thought we were getting somewhere, on Nede, until..."
Until they weren't.
"Thank you," she says. "You're right. We'll find a way. You're not bound by 'fate' the same way that I am. If anyone can do it, it's you. ...And I happen to know a lot about exorcising curses!"
She is reassuring herself, too, but--
But a hug does help her anchor in the real world, instead of just in her own mind.
"I won't give up, either. I promise."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
In the end, it may all go back to the Stranger. To Etrenank. To blue.
"It's okay to worry. And nobody can be all fired up and confident all the time. It's not healthy, to not cry when you need to." Lan pets Eleanor's hair, her dusky cheek resting against the shorter young woman's temple. "It's okay to cry if you're upset. I cry all the time!" She doesn't have to sound so carefree about it...! "It's okay to be sad and scared. But we can't be like Loren, too scared to try."
She's content to just stand there with Eleanor for a bit, sharing strength and comfort. "We'll keep trying everything we can. We won't give up until it's over, even if we get really discouraged." It takes a lot of hope to form a star in one's heart.
She squeezes one last time for good measure before giving Eleanor her space. "I now you won't. I promise too. Even if we fail, nobody will be able to say we didn't do our best." Well, at least Lan seems to find that comforting...?
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
<poem> "...I suppose that's true," Eleanor admits, and sighs. It does help. "I do too," she admits. "Maybe... best not out here though, hm?" A pause, as Eleanor says, "Right. That's.. the distinction."
Eleanor occasionally needs hope like that; she is meant to guide, and to protect, and support, but the Light has to be tended now and then to keep shining.
"...Okay," Eleanor says. "Yes. That's the key, isn't it...? We'll know."
She smiles. "The first time I averted one of my visions, it saved Gwen, you know. I was so sure that I was going to lose her. And then... Thanks to everyone, she lived."
"So there's no sense in deciding it can't be done for Loren just because I don't know where to start!"
Eleanor brings up her hands into fists at her shoulders in in a triumphant pose. "Right, Lan! Let's go! We can do this!"
...Lan did say something about being fired up and confident...