2024-05-10: To Remember You By
- Log: To Remember You By
- Cast: Loren Voss, Azoth
- Where: Gunsmoke Desert
- Date: May 10, 2024
- Summary: Out in the Gunsmoke Desert, Solaris is collecting environmental samples. Azoth adds a rock to his collection.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Slowly but surely, noon approaches. It won't be more than a few hours before Loren will need to depart to safer grounds than these, because out in the Badlands -- especially in the Gunsmoke Desert, no less -- no one hangs around outside during the midday unless they have a deathwish.
It's already horribly hot. He'd forgotten how hot it can get in parts of Ignas during the many years he'd spent stationed in Aquvy. Even the Damzen Desert, as bad as it was, holds no candle to this. And it's still not as bad as it's going to get.
The squadron had more or less spread out to cover more ground. Only one of them isn't involved in active collection, and that's the lucky bastard in the intel department: as a scout, he's managing communications as well as keeping watch. Not that they're expecting to run into any trouble, or indeed, anyone at all at this hour, in this location, in this benighted hell of a continent.
Kneeling before the outcrop of rock, Loren carefully pries free a small stone. Geology, outside some of the basics, wasn't his forte, but even he knows the tell-tale glint of a crystal. Rock samples are what the labs had ordered, but he can't help but wonder if this could be doing it one better.
If it's able to resonate with the Ley, after all, it might give them a clearer picture about what Filgaia's newfound link to Nede is doing to the world.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Noon is not all that approaches.
In the distant, beeping. It's a cheerful melody, complex and layered in its synthetic chiming. Then, it is not so distant at all. It is right there. Beeping and booping in a distorted chatter. Red light reflects over Loren's stone sample.
Very suddenly, the Azoth -- mechanical, dark, bestial -- is above him, clung to the stone outcropping like a gecko.
His form is transmuted to its four legged gait, claws sunk into stone, but each rising and clicking back down in a form of data collection. Light fans out from his visor in a grid as he scans Loren and his sample. Azoth's bladed tail lashes, then spears down just past Loren, cracking open a stone and pulling back a crystalline sample embedded just in the tip.
Azoth's visor shifts light in a familiar caricature of a face: ^ ^
"Goooo~d morning, User Loren! Ah, but it will not be morning much longer! Are you sufficiently hydrated? Do you require respite from your task? I have been equipped with water rations."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's not that he's not aware that Azoth is about, no. After all, part of his presence here -- other than providing direction and support for the rest of the squadron -- is to keep an eye on Azoth. It's just that as the hours wore on the degree to which he even takes notice of Azoth's movements and periodic beeping has faded into the background.
Indeed, it probably would have provoked more concern from Loren if the beeping had stopped.
But then, all of a sudden, the beeping which had been distant up until now grows very close. Loren looks up and realizes that Azoth is above him.
He freezes.
The shimmering white barrier that bursts into being before him suggests rather well what he had thought Azoth was about to do--
Except Azoth's tail sails just barely past him -- not so much as skimming the Etheric barrier -- and seizes from a rock nearby a crystal sample. Loren, his heart going at roughly a million miles a second, stares somewhat blankly up at Azoth as if uncomprehending of what just happened.
Then, rousing from his reverie, he asks -- nearly demands -- of the too-cheerful Azoth, "Why are you like this?"
Emperor, he can still feel the pounding of his own pulse...
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth releases his grip on the stone, flipping once -- in a very tightly curled ball -- before unfurling and landing beside Loren. 'Landing.' He is now upright, back to floating just above the surface as his tail wags wildly behind him, visor focused on the sample held delicately between his claws.
"As a machine programmed for warfare, my 'play' behaviors are rooted in combative practice and mirror violent predicaments."
Like a horrible mechanical cat.
Holographic light appears above his head in an exclamation mark as his attention falls to Loren's sample. Azoth offers his forward.
"Would you be amendable to a trade?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He tracks Azoth on his descent (such that it is) -- how could he not?
"Great," Loren gripes, closing his eyes momentarily as he sighs. "And you're choosing to 'play' around with me because...?" He has the feeling that he doesn't want to know the answer, and yet. And yet.
It's almost like it's old times again. Almost.
And then Azoth notices the sample he's just taken. "Uh," Loren starts, holding his sample protectively against his chest. "Why? What does it matter? They're all going to the same place." And it's not like there's any particular glory in this sort of duty for a Solarian. Come to think of it -- it's not like there's any particular glory in anything for someone like Azoth.
(They're all going to the same place, and there's no glory in it, and yet, Loren's still holding back on the offer of a trade as if it matters.)
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Loren asks a question. Does he want the answer? Does he already know the answer? Is it in fact an even worse answer than he could possibly imagine? Azoth looks back at Loren, his face nothing more than a helmet with a line of light for eyes. Unreadable. Inhuman.
"You have asked me not to lie, User Loren," he finally begins, "Yet I suspect you would not believe me if I told you."
Almost like old times again. But it can only ever be almost. Too much has happened, is happening, and will happen. The meanings behind every behavior changes ever so slightly.
But then Loren becomes protective of his sample, pointless as they all know that to be, and Azoth's blank face is back to a ^ ^ if delight. He even holographically supplies curved, crossed lines around him like he's seen in some Nedian and Solarian visual storytelling, though he does not laugh to go with it.
"Sorry! I did not realize you were so attached." He looks to his own sample, tail going still. "...A shame we shall not be permitted to keep them. Unless...?"
Unless nothing. But it is fun to imply mischief. Especially around Loren.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Azoth already told him he wasn't going to lie. He could ask him any question and receive an honest answer -- or at least, that's meant to be the rules of the game. Whether or not they're truly in effect, meanwhile--
Loren stares for what feels to him to be an eternity at that unblinking line of a face. Does he want to know? Does he really want to know?
Doesn't he already know?
"...Forget it," he sighs after a moment more. Sometimes, even if you know the answer (or at least, think you do) that doesn't mean that you want to have it confirmed one way or another.
But for all this, he's as much Azoth's jailor as anyone else out here collecting samples. He'd been the one to shatter that brief period of happiness on Nede. And it won't end with that. It won't end at all, so long as Solaris hasn't gotten what it wants.
Once, Loren thought he'd understood what that was. Then he'd learned what it actually had been all along. He'd learned a lot of things he'd rather he hadn't known at all.
"It's not attachment," Loren protests, still holding the stone defensively close. "I'm not trading it if all you're going to do with it is..." He trails off, frowning at Azoth before glancing down at it. Keep it. Of course. "...Why do you want it, anyway? What's so special about it?"
There's no glory in it. If there's anything special to be gleaned, it's unlikely this is the only one that contains such secrets. No, the real reason he's holding back is a simple one, and it's probably one that Azoth has already guessed at.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
From Azoth's perspective, it's really quite infuriating. He was ordered not to lie, but as long as Loren remains skeptical, there's no playing cleverly with the truth. Well, he can't be too mad. It means is Loren extra good at the game, and there is no fault in that.
Loren's next move is to abandon this line of questioning.
"Very we~ll," Azoth concedes in sing-song, leaving Loren to his assumptions, and allowing things to be as Normal as possible, despite Nede. Despite Drive.
But Loren has a different question. An important question. The most important question. Because it is... about rocks.
"It will be a delightful addition to my digital collection." He extends his claw and turns it palm up, producing holographic images of various stones, one after another. Most of them are simple, common rocks. Only rarely does a precious mineral appear -- but they do appear. Particularly, the sorts of stones one wins in a spiritual trial or unearths in a ruin to use as a key to somewhere else. There's also a Light Ball in there, which is not even a stone, and at least one piece of glass.
The slideshow disappears with a closing of his claw.
"I do not have any 'Loren pried stones' yet, you see."
Is that really why...
"But please, do not permit me to pressure you. I understand how meaningful such finds can be. I am quite glad you have found one that gives you such joy and fondness! Especially after... well."
...Well, what? But he just looks toward Loren with that blank face again, as if Loren should know.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Things haven't been normal for a while now, and from where Loren's standing, they're not about to get any more normal.
After all, things getting worse is definitely not normal -- as much as one could argue that 'things getting worse' is sort of the normal pattern of Loren's life. Sure, things have gotten bad before, but it's never been like this. Never before has he had the sense that he's painted himself into a corner ten moves before and there's no longer any way out.
But in the current moment, he's still got to deal with Azoth. Loren's 'played' this particular game before, as it happens, which is probably also why he's not interested in going down this path with Azoth again. ...In its own way, isn't this also a way of 'playing' the game? Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
But this doesn't deter Azoth. Not in the slightest. He's asked after Loren's sample, after all, and when Loren asks why he wants this one (there's nothing special about it other than the fact that there's an unpolished crystal glinting off the hunk of stone in his hand), well, of course he gets an answer. He'd ordered Azoth not to lie to him, after all.
Loren stares at him somewhat dumbfounded.
"You're... digitizing them? Why?"
So asks the young man with a small collection of model kits in his quarters.
"--And what's so special about that?"
A long pause follows. "If you're just, digitizing them, then why do you need..."
He trails off as Azoth turns that blank face towards him again and Loren knows exactly what he's getting at. He stares at Azoth in turn, his silent perhaps in retrospect an omen of what's to come.
When the strike-slip quake comes (metaphorically speaking, that is) it comes suddenly. "--Shut up," Loren snaps, before just as abruptly shoving his rock sample at Azoth. "You want it so badly? Then here, take it!"
He really would have killed them. They were just kids.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It would be a lovely thing if they could both stop playing the game, wouldn't it?
But that's not the choice.
Azoth watches, waiting for Loren's reaction. Making light of everything. Loren's crimes against him, Loren's crimes against Nede, Loren's near crimes against the Seed City. Things are too bad, too much, too much room for worse to hold stable in this conversation, let alone forever.
As the stone is offered, Azoth's claw aims to engulf Loren's entire hand and squeeze. But the bladed claws are not poised to break skin.
"... I would like it to remember you by," Azoth explains, which is not shutting up at all, "The 'you' who still hurts from the thoughts you filled the silence with."
That choice isn't gone yet. But it may be soon.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Once upon a time, the very idea of stopping what he did for his country would have seemed farcical. Now, though, he's unable to stifle the traitorous idea that he'd like nothing better than the opportunity to stop. Of course, as the old saying goes, opportunity has a bounty of hair in the front, but behind, she is bald. The chance to do otherwise has already come and gone.
Leah won't let him go. And he can't let himself, either.
And he shouldn't, can't, won't let anyone know that's how he feels.
It'll be over his dead body. What remains of his pride -- to say nothing of his paranoia -- won't let him do otherwise.
But when he shoves the rock for Azoth to take it, if that's what he wants so badly, he's found that he's been caught.
Loren stares at him, shock and alarm having cleanly swept aside his prior fury. He might be stronger than he looks or would be expected to be -- even if he's no match for the likes of Ramses, to say nothing of Dominia or, hell, Seraphita -- but even they probably couldn't have easily broken free of Azoth's grasp.
He's not going anywhere if he wants to keep that hand.
"What-- what are you talking about--" he utters, struggling as much as he can without doing serious damage to his hand or wrist. "You don't understand anything, you--"
Except, Azoth does understand in a way, and Loren knows this.
And the fact that he knows this brings him no comfort.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth holds his 'stare' to Loren, his grip still but unyielding.
The silence that follows Loren's stammering is broken by a beep of a chime and a brief flash of green across Azoth's visor. He releases Loren without taking the rock, and produces an image of its likeness in hologram to inspect.
"...I understand that I still trust you."
He looks up from his 'prize', meager as this data is, able to be deleted, where the physical stone, at least, would remain evidence in such an event. Azoth's gaze, or whatever can be called it, holds Loren's again.
"So does she."
Maybe because she still does.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Just like that, the rock is scanned and commited to memory. Or at least, memory until such a time as Azoth's memory is wiped clean. Loren knows how that feels more acutely than most: the force of Muse had once erased everything he'd had.
He'd gotten it back. He's not sure he's the better for it. But he'd gotten it back, just like that other version of himself had wanted. And he knows he'd jump at the chance to lose it all again if it were offered. There's something bitterly comic about that, even now: he's never happy with one state or the other but constantly longing for the other side.
But Azoth says that he understands. He understands that he still trusts Loren.
If he'd struck Loren clear out of the blue he couldn't have left him more flat-footed. Loren stares at Azoth, dumbfounded. But Azoth's not done.
'She'.
"Who--"
Of course Loren knows who. It's writ across his face, as clear as day. It's as equally clear as the fact that this is knowledge he'd rather not have.
"...Stop it," he says, finally wrenching his gaze away from Azoth, and this time it's not an order as much as it is a plea.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It is difficult to do and make it hold, for Azoth. But one day, they may figure it. Or they could use the same loophole he used on himself. Every moment is borrowed. But there's more than one way to lose yourself. If you ask Azoth, Loren has the worst of it.
Yet he still watches, unrelenting, while Loren is pierced by those words. The light of his visor might even be a little harsher for it.
There is no need to answer 'who'. Loren knows very well. It's not even a trick of Azoth's to know Loren will fill in whoever he likes. Azoth also knows exactly who.
In the end, it is Loren who has to break away.
"I do not think that is within my capability."
Azoth can stop talking, but the truth remains.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There's more than one way to lose yourself, that's for sure. Loren knows it's even possible to do it without technically 'forgetting' anything at all.
The syringes resting innocuously in his kit are proof positive of that.
And isn't that precisely the sort of thing she fears? That he'll find some way to bury himself so deeply that there'll be nothing left? That he'll cease to be human, that he'll become a monster.
He would have killed them if he could. Perhaps it's already come to pass.
He can't hold the unflinching stare that Azoth turns upon him, any more than he could have gazed upon God without burning away into nothingness. And he certainly can't survive against what it is that Azoth has to tell him.
As much as he tries to run away from it or push it away, the truth remains, even in silence.
If a reprieve exists it is only in the shout from the Solarian scout, announcing that the time has come for them to vacate the site. The sun is rising high in the sky, and soon the heat will be unbearable.
But of course, Loren and Azoth both know that there is no such thing as a reprieve from oneself.