2019-12-29: Asset
- Log: Asset
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Leah Sadalbari, Loren Voss
- Where: Damzena Desert, Solaris Base
- Date: December 29, 2019
- Summary: Loren gives his theory to Major Sadalbari. The Watcher sees opportunity.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's the morning after a certain late night conversation between a couple young adults on staff (so to speak) at -- approximately, at least -- when there is a knock on Leah's office door.
Loren had confirmation that the Major is in fact in -- an early arrival, in preparation for a later expedition -- and had made good haste over there with Lan. Who, it should be noted, is still in her nightclothes. Then again, it's not as if dropping by her room for a change of attire would have affected very much. The rumor has already spread...
(And technically speaking, her nightclothes cover more than her dayclothes do.)
"Major? Are you in?"
He already knows she's in.
"I need to talk to you about something."
Pause.
"It's important."
Enough that he didn't risk sending her a message, in case it was intercepted. If Lan is compromised, if he's right about this-- He's trying not to think about the next step. It shouldn't matter, their security is what's important. But he's still trying not to think about the next step. There's still hope, isn't there?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's really amazing, sometimes, just how much good a solid night's sleep can do you. So can the presence of a trusted friend. Between them and Loren's loaned pillow, even the floor of his personal quarters was a comfortable place to sleep. Even if he'd offered her the bed since he couldn't sleep, even if nothing /would/ ever happen, and even if the other soldiers in the base won't ever believe them, Lan can't just sleep in his bed. Even if there's no way it could prevent rumors from getting started, at least Lan can believe that she did her best to preserve his reputation.
...She's fairly certain that's not how the situation is supposed to go, is it??
At least her nightclothes are fairly modest, and her long hair is neatly brushed after being in a braid most of the night. The only hints that this isn't just some breezy Lamb summer fashion are Lan's bare feet and lack of accessories.
And even if Lan slept well, it doesn't mean she's forgotten Loren's strange epiphany after she'd confided in him. In fact, the rush for Leah's office so soon after waking up is even more concerning. "Hey..." she murmurs to Loren outside the Major's door, sticking close to his side despite all her efforts to salvage his reputation, "Are you sure...?"
Are you sure it will be okay. Are you sure we should tell Leah. But she can't ask him either question because she knows the answer to both already.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah is in fact 'in.' The things Loren confirmed are true; the Major has plans. Perhaps he's beat the rumors to her, for once; maybe maybe not. But when he mentions he needs to talk, it's important...
Inside, standing behind the desk, Leah's single blue eye regards the door thoughtfully. In one hand is a can of oil; the other is empty, and more than empty, the 'flesh' stripped from it at the fingers where she adjusts them personally, exposed metal like bones showing. Ordinarily, she would not see others during something like this. However...
No message; the sound of Lan's voice, outside, murmuring. 'Are you sure?' Leah detects, she thinks, in that distant way that pads through her awareness. Important.
"Come in," the blue-haired woman speaks, and they will see her setting down the oil as she does.
Ghoulish, skeletal fingers wet with some dark liquid may not be the most reassuring of sights.
"Close the door behind you."
She debates cutting the electricity; it would be too obvious, to meddle now. The surveillance agent on duty...
He won't be missed much, if it comes down to it.
"And explain."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The full weight of the fallout, alas, is a thing he will only truly appreciate with time.
He doesn't answer Lan. He doesn't even listen to her. All Loren does is nod at Lan's remark, before Leah bids them enter.
He closes the door behind them.
Then and only then does his gaze land on what Leah is doing at her desk. At the 'degloved' hand. Shock, visibly, crawls across him; for a long moment he stares at her, at her hand. Almost he feels like he can chase the memory, the information he should have about /why/ she has become like this, but it eludes him, slipping away like a fish under the black glass surface of a lake.
And he shakes his head, rattling away the sense of unease and alarm, all the little things that don't matter. Even if his gaze does still linger on her hand.
"Y-yes," he utters, straightening to proper regulation posture when addressing a superior. "Major. Please excuse me for the interruption but I'm afraid this is urgent." He pauses, as if wondering after someone else, perhaps, listening in, but then charges onwards.
"...You're aware that Asset Lilac has had an encounter with Azazel, correct? Based on what she has told me, I think..."
He glances over at Lan at last.
"...I think she's compromised. By him."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He doesn't answer her, because there's really no good answer he can give. Lan knows.
She follows him into Leah's office quietly, caught between the desire to keep her head down and the tiny sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, this can be remedied.
Lan, of course, knows that Leah's arms are artificial. She's just never seen them stripped down like this, to the 'bones' beneath. It's unsettling. But it's still Leah, after all. She simply glances from Leah, to Loren's unusual reaction, and back to Leah - there's just things to worry about all over the place! 'See?' she mouths from behind him. It's just like they'd discussed weeks ago...
Honestly, if there's only one thing Lan can find to catch hold of, it's that he calls her by her 'scientific name' in front of her face. "It's 'Lan'," she reminds him, because even she can be a little petulant now and then. Lan's pretty sure she's earned it, at least just this much!
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah does not move her eye from Loren's, in the moments that he stares. He stares at her hand, still; he goes through the shifts of emotion, the sweeping away... and it is quieter, then, his gaze at her hand for a few moments. Her face, on the other hand, remains entirely even. This persists, naturally--though at this point she looks to Lan's eyes behind, and while she doesn't nod, the measured look may be enough to suggest that she saw it.
She is utterly calm, through the next few moments, not quite expressionless but close to; the severe lines of her face take on a hard cast in the artificial light of the office. Windows, after all, are for offices that are meant to exist and be known.
'...I think she's compromised. By him.'
"Is that so?" she asks, and looks to Lan in the next moment, to judge her expression. ...No, /Leah/ does not look; the Watcher observes, because that is what this set of expressions mean. She considers both Loren and Lan evenly, and takes a moment to think. She is silent, as she apparently considers the problem and in fact considers the amount of time necessary, the time until shift change...
"Have you told anyone else of your suspicions?" The Watcher asks Loren first. "It is vitally important that I be aware of /every/ person who might be involved in this matter."
"What leads you to this conclusion?" She swivels her head slightly to focus on Lan without actually having to move her eye. "And Lan," she says, using her name. "Do you believe this to be the case? If so, for how long would you say it has been true?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He works to collect himself as quickly as he can. Did she notice? He sees no sign in Leah's face -- but that itself means nothing. You don't become a Watcher by being easy to read. He's not an idiot -- he knows better. But he can't let /himself/ be seen to be a liability, even if...
"No. No one," Loren answers, immediately. He didn't even dare speak his suspicions fully to /Lan/, lest someone somehow overhear -- had implied instead that her dreams and memories might be more than they appeared. "I came to see you as soon as I could confirm you were on base."
He's silent, watching her -- his gaze has shifted upwards, to Leah's -- the Watcher's -- face proper.
"Two things. First, her recounting of her encounters with Azazel. It's unusual that he hasn't simply killed her, correct? Most of those he encounters are killed or suffer severe wounds."
...Well, technically she /did/ receive the latter. But as one of the non-elect, to then /survive/ the wound...
"It seems that he wanted something from her, based on her recollections of her subsequent encounters with him. ...As I said, it's unusual."
He's being clinical. Dry. Detatched.
His gaze averts from her when she asks him to call her by her name. Imperceptively, the young captain's left hand twitches, as if in an abortive curl in towards the palm.
"...The second part is his Ether and what it is capable of, particularly if we take his consorting with /her/ into account."
He pauses before clarifing. "Omega-08."
Neriah.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's not often that Lan sees Leah's other side come out. While maybe she isn't completely terrified of the Watcher - because even if Leah herself is pretty scary all on her own, she's still /Leah/ - Lan also can't truly say that aspect of her is comforting, either.
As opposed to the Watcher's lack of expression, Lan's face is marked by it; eyes pinched by a heavy cocktail of fear and other, more nebulous emotions, mouth set in a thin line. She isn't really sure what to do with her hands.
It occurs to her, more obviously now, that she might die. No, that the other half of Leah may have to kill her. Surely they wouldn't make Loren do it.
Surely not...
"I didn't-- I don't know for sure," Lan shakes her head slowly, but doesn't look away. "But I keep having nightmares. I keep remembering things that I can't... /place/, like I know it happened but not /when/ and sometimes not even /where/. I know Asha died - I know the stranger killed him. But I don't remember ever /meeting/ Asha either. And... I remembered last night," she continues, looking down at her hands. "I remembered it. That Ashansi was maybe never real, except when he was dying. That he died, and I couldn't let him go. So I made him part of me, but the Stranger was the one who made him in the first place."
She's not making sense, is she. Lan shakes her head and tries again. "I mean that... I don't know. Since before the Photosphere. I can place that much."
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
No one else knows. The Watcher's head inclines. She does not show displeasure at this answer. She does not show anything; it is hard to judge her thoughts at all, near-impossible, and that is /not/ meant to be comforting as a rule. ...And not here, either.
She is aware, after all, that it is not, just as she can see Lan's pinched eyes, her unplaceable hands--
Unusual; his power. She didn't know; she drew a conclusion.
"...So, you suspect, because you know that he has great power, and the power to influence minds, and there is a fact in your history that you cannot fully explain. There is something that seems real, but is not; you believe this has offered him a gateway into your person, and you continue to dream. ...Yet you call him still the Stranger."
"You have taken in part of Azazel, and it is possible that he can control or influence you as a result."
"...And yet," the Watcher says, flexing her skeletal fingers, "Ashansi... What is he to you? What /was/ he to you, in these memories?" Mulling the matter over, the partially mechanical woman looks between both of the others.
"...This is one of two things," she says then, straightening her back and nodding once.
"Either it is a manifestation of your fears, your fears /of/ him and his nebulous power that convinces you he has something he does not have... Or it is an opportunity."
"You will not mention this to anyone. I will handle the matter of the surveillance. Come up with another reason that you are together in this state." Referring to their clothes, naturally. Well, Lan's. "It does not particularly matter save that it is one that you can both live with. Keep it simple."
".../No one/ will know. This includes your superiors. I am classifying this material code Grigori, effective immediately. If failure to disclose this knowledge would lead to injury or death of another agent, /you will withhold this knowledge still/. Am I clear?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
What will become of Lan?
That's the thing in the end -- he doesn't know.
But he can guess. The pragmatic option comes readily to mind. Maybe it's for the best -- for all their sakes. Maybe...
His left hand finishes its slow curl in towards his palm. He's reminded of his epiphany of weeks ago. Of course it comes home now.
"Yes. "
It might be for Lan, what Leah says, but Loren answers all the same. "I've seen what he's capable of. It isn't beyond the pale to think that..." He trails off. "Even her placement with us," he finishes at some length.
Maybe even her meeting him in the first place. Maybe it's all part of the line he couldn't until now begin to see.
"As I said it would be straightforward to determine if he actually existed," Asha that is, "but..."
And it's here that Loren -- as the Watcher continues to address Lan and Lan alone, as she wonders what Ashansi was to Lan -- that he finally actually trails off into full and total silence. In other words, this is when he actually shuts up.
His gaze passes from the Watcher to Lan and back again, wearing a complicated expression.
An opportunity?
He doesn't ask it: his face asks it for him.
And then the Watcher hands down her ultimatum.
"I won't," he says at last, a little hastily. "I'll--" Then he pauses, taking in Lan's state of apparel. He makes a small choked-off sound. Perhaps the weight of the situation has hit home, in a sense. Of the rumors, that is.
"I-- I don't... sleep-walking?" he offers, a touch desperately. Before even that dies on the vine in the face of the Watcher's words. A chill settles over him; ice water might as well have washed down his spine. He ceases his earlier protest utterly and nods.
Even if keeping this secret leads to injury or death. Even--
Wait, what was that about the surveillance? Horrified realization blooms brief in his gaze before he grits his teeth and assumes an expression that -- nearly -- might be called an iron-clad mask.
"Understood, Watcher."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
/If/ it's true. /If/ she's compromised. And Lan still can't say, not for sure, just /how/ she knows it's true. Why Loren's theory didn't surprise her. Why she's so sure that there's a part of her out there somewhere, still under the Stranger's thumb.
Because she couldn't let him go. She couldn't let him die, just for her.
"We were friends. I don't have any siblings, but... it felt like I'd known him forever, even though I know I didn't." That's right. This isn't the first time she's woken up in a room with a boy. But she knew who Loren was this morning. "He loved me. He was always trying to teach me things, make me stronger. Sometimes he was with me, and sometimes he just wasn't, but I never remember the hello or the goodbye." Lan swipes a hand down the side of her face.
"The last time I saw him was in a place that doesn't exist. A floating castle with the roof cut off, swimming in starlight. The Stranger was there, and they were fighting. Asha kept trying to get me to run away. The Stranger..." It's curious. /He'd/ been curious. He'd said a word Lan still doesn't know, and tried to cut the cavalier down. "I call him the Stranger because it's what I've always called him... because Azazel isn't his name."
She covers her mouth when the Watcher orders them to keep it a secret, no matter what. No matter /who/. It's so cruel. Even if she knows it's necessary, and /why/. And because in some small, quiet part of her mind she knows that if she'd let Ashansi die for her, if he had accomplished his last goal... she would have been free. It was the cruelest thing she'd thought anyone could ask of her.
And now this.
"...I'm sorry," Lan says again, softly. Helplessly.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
The pragmatic option. It would be simple, wouldn't it? Cut their losses, and resume. However... There are complications there. Leah knows them; Lan might, though she may not realize it. And the Watcher, of course...
"Yes, it's quite possible that even that was planned. It isn't even a strange possibility; one could accomplish that with far less power than he has demonstrated, even unto the point where the victim would be unaware."
"I will take Lan's word for it, that this person exists only in her memory, but it may be worthwhile to see if he was compiled from /other/ memories, or has any basis on a person who she knew." Who you knew, Grigori's turning to Lan as she says that says.
"...Friends. Yes, that would make sense; no beginning or end, but a presence. The mind can fill in blanks, or can /accept/ blanks; it is rather more malleable than people would prefer to think." Perhaps dangerous to say in this context, but the Watcher is nothing if not dangerous.
"A fantastic locale... and he was trying to help you. Interesting; it /implies/ that this was not entirely at the volition of our subject, though it does not confirm it. As for your title..."
"The Stranger is as good as any. The simple truth is that our military needed something to call the subject, and we are in the habit of giving things names. It is only an alias, in the end. A code name."
She looks between the both of them, and inclines her head.
"I know," the Watcher tells Lan, when she says she is sorry. "If it consoles you at all--this is not a kindness I am performing. It exposes both of you to risk and to danger. But there is nothing 'helpless' in it. You see, if you /are/ compromised, Lan--if we have one of his unwitting agents in our possession... Then that's the best lead we've yet had on his presence. We can wait for him to act, and through that action, make our counterattack. ...Knowing it's coming, we're more likely to come up with a countermeasure that doesn't require either of your lives in the process."
"This 'Stranger' is incredibly dangerous, as you both know, even before his association with Omega-08. A chance to end that threat /must/ be taken, whether it falls within the rules or not."
"Let us hope that this friend's wish for strength for you is a true and accurate one," Leah says then, looking between the others one more time. She is perhaps at least partly human again, though nothing about her appearance has changed. "Lan, I will rely on /you/ to come up with a pleausible reason that you were in his room last night in your nightclothes. I suspect you'll be better at that." 'Sleepwalking.' Really. "...And I will have one more directive for you, before you go about your day today."
"Still. It must have been a difficult realization. Today, go about your work as normal. I will arrange leisure time for you both soon, to recover from your ordeal, before we further our strategem."
She doesn't answer Loren's realization in the moment at all. She just nods, firmly, to both of them.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"I'll look into it with her," he says, on the subject of whether it might have been possible for anyone -- at all -- to have seen Ashansi.
It could just be lingering trauma. Could be. In any other situation, he'd agree. It could just be that and nothing more.
But he's experienced Azazel's power. Twice.
And the extent to which he appears to have affected Lan is...
'We were friends', Lan says, of Asha, and Loren's expression becomes no less complicated. The other night had been complicated -- not in the sense of 'it's complicated' the way it's so often in rom-vids, but simply...
It's complicated. Because of who she is. Because of who he is. Because of everything else. Because it's no longer so easy to keep people at arms-length.
He listens instead, as Lan explains things about the last time she saw the man who never existed, in a place that couldn't exist.
Everything's become complicated.
Everything's becoming complicated, as the Watcher makes it clear what the terms are, what is expected of them.
Explains that this isn't a kindness. This is an advantage.
"..."
Only someone like the Watcher would be able to think like that. Or take those risks. He, for his part, simply nods. The sobriety he has put on display falters only when she asks /Lan/ to come up with something more plausible. He almost, /almost/ opens his mouth to protest. But this is no longer the time or place to do so. Instead, he falls into the role of soldier. It's much less complicated, to play a well-worn role.
"Understood, Watcher," he repeats, punctuating the statement with an academy-perfect nod. "In that case, we will return to our duties." Or at least, he will.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"He was always kind. Kind of dumb. Kind of crazy." In the end, if that's everything of Ashansi's legacy... well, it's not such a bad one, is it? To have died doing something he hopelessly, stubbornly believed in. To have died /for/ someone kind and a little dumb and a little crazy. Even if she couldn't love him the way he deserved to be loved. Even if he constantly doubted himself, and thought Loren was his rival for her affections.
Even so, even so. He died a hero, and if he sleeps inside her, maybe Lan can be a hero too. For him.
"...Why wouldn't it work? All I have to do to make people believe it is wander a few different places at night." It's easier to grasp for the small things. Things Lan can do. And while she's fundamentally honest, there's no harm in letting people form their own conclusions... with a little help.
"..." She's quiet for a moment, as Loren affirms their instructions. As Leah tells them both that this isn't kindness.
It's not like she was in any less danger before, is it?
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
All very complicated. But then, that's life, past the veil; Loren's life has not been simple for some time, and all the less since Leah returned to it. But will he realize that particular connection?
"...A kind friend is good to have," Leah says simply, and it could be the Watcher saying it. "Memory or phantom or otherwise."
She considers, though--sleepwalking... "That's true," the blue-haired woman answers. "If you're willing to commit to it, then that would work just fine. It's more effort, but it has advantages."
Small things; small things add up to being big things. But once they both seem to understand.
"Good. And Lan... What I have to tell you regards the other matter you brought to me, the personal one. I believe I know a way forward."
"...Good, Captain. You understand your duties well in this case. I look forward to exemplary performance."
"Dismissed. I will see the two of you when I return from my mission."