2020-05-29: Only One Truth
- Log: Only One Truth
- Cast: Loren Voss, Leah Sadalbari
- Where: Damzena Desert
- Date: May 29, 2020
- Summary: Leah pays Loren an unexpected visit. Her aim is simple: to break his reality.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
'Ben Lyon' is recovering from injuries, officially. Nothing bad enough to lay the poor enlistee up for months or require serious magical intervention (or Lefanu's undivided attention), but he'd need a few days to be as right as rain again after that encounter. Just bad luck, being his first official outing. Or maybe good luck, considering that he's not either dead or in a serious world of hurt.
Loren Voss, on the other hand, is already just fine. The unfortunate nature of his situation though does mean he has to keep up appearances, which has meant a couple days on Windfall island without the luxuries of things like...
Well, things like 'his computer' or kits or any of the little bits and pieces that make the dull moments roll on by that much quicker.
He's been bored out of his mind. Fortunately, he won't have to fake it too much longer. And perhaps once he can cut to the chase, he can...
It's not strange for an injured man to engage in a bit of swordplay towards the end of a short convalescence. With nothing else open to him to do, that's what Loren is working on.
The military short sword is poorly balanced. It's smaller than what he's used to. It was meant for a larger man than him. But so it goes.
Little by little in life, he's learned to make do.
He shifts into a lunge, aware acutely of the ache that is rolling up his shoulder. Maybe he's got a little bit more left before he'll have to give into exhaustion and lie down.
And then, that's when he'll be left alone with his thoughts again.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It is a difference of moments.
In one moment, Loren is alone with his weapon, working on his swordplay. In the next moment he is not. There is little sense of where Major Sadalbari comes from, only that she has stepped from the shadows into his field of vision without the telltale sound of step-STEP her uneven gait. The blue-haired woman is dressed in heavy clothes which largely conceal her mechanical nature. She could be any soldier, really, lbeit only one missing an eye. Where did her injuries come from, some have to wonder. For what purpose is she this meld of machine and woman? For what reason?
The Major comes to a stop a bit away from Loren, and pulls a battered military blade. It is old, and in poor condition, but it appears functional enough.
She jabs it into the ground. "Good evening," she greets him, calmly, watching carefully his reaction as she puts back her hood.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She could be anyone.
He turns, jerkily, his gaze flitting across her and her hooded form. It's one of those moments where a hundred possibilities present themeselves, and one of those moments where the realization of any one of them is determined by the one to act first.
She draws a weapon, and in that moment, that's the only piece of information that actually matters. His shoulder protests as he twists and lunges for her, this apparent potential assassin in his room.
And only in the moment after -- another moment upon moment -- does she draw back her hood.
Major Sadalbari.
To say he goes ashen would be a good start.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Act first.
Loren's shoulder will protest more in the next moment; his lunge strikes in, and she begins to move. It is not that she acts at the last moment--she is not nearly so fast as that. It is just apparently that she began to act at the same time that he decided to strike; her hand grasps the sword by the blade, fingers closing on either end without closing about the cutting edge.
Grip iron, while he's ashen she pulls it from his grasp to examine it thoughtfully.
"Poor tools, but quick to action. Your time here hasn't harmed your initiative. No, it may have enhanced it."
She doesn't stop with little things like explanations or demands for apology at first. "This much is clear. But not all."
The Watcher looks over the sword further, and then offers it back, grip-first. She looks into his eyes with her single blue.
There is a faint shell of Ether that he may perceive in the next moment--wind Ether, roughly less than the size of the room, barely noticeable even to one who uses it. "Status report," the Major inquires.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
His shoulder sings a short little song of pain, in fact. She'll find it quite easy to simply tug the blade from his grasp; he barely puts up a struggle.
Loren's attention remains on her, as if he were attempting to prise some sort of explanation for what she's doing here and why from her expression. He's unlikely to find much of anything.
The Major isn't known for being easy to read.
"I-- I, I thought... I..." he stammers.
But she doesn't do much more than examine the sword for what it is.
"...The standard equipment," he replies, pulling himself at least somewhat together, then reaches out to take the blade by its hilt and carefully -- looking her in the eye the entire time, sheathe it.
'Status report'.
He's aware, dimly, of the slight shift in Etheric pressure in the room. It's hard even for him, a junior specialist, to discern.
Loren straightens.
"...Infiltration was successful. I believe there may be some suspicion about my story, but my injuries after the recent mission I took part in may help cement my claims."
He pauses.
"If I may, Major... there is something strange about the Odessa commander Lefanu. She appears to be human, but she is far stronger than most surface-dweller humans."
To the point that he was able to, essentially, hang off her arm as if it were an iron bar at the small cost of his personal pride.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
No, she is not known for being easy to read. Major Sadalbari gleans more than she shows when it comes to expressions; his stammer, his searching expression... the way he continues to look her in the eye as he holds the weapon. They're all small details. They add up.
"It would be hard to arm so many soldiers, particularly new ones," she muses at the matter of standard equipment. Not everywhere, after all, is an impossibly wealthy sky city. ...But some places can be made slightly more like one with the application of certain magic. Certain ways of cutting out observation by sound, a little white noise...
"Good," the Major answers. "Not that I'm pleased with your injury... But at least you can make something useful of it." Better not to be injured to this degree at all, of course. But he volunteers some information...
The Watcher considers it. "I will mark her for future observation. Continue to monitor her; learn what you can, but not at the risk of your cover. For now." There are certain known factors, and certain... unknown factors. But ultimately the report is a way to ease focus, to settle into routine--
"How long have we known each other?"
...So that she can break it.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"I imagine they lose a number of the newer recruits, too. One way or another," Loren says, his gaze not moving from her for a moment. "Losing someone can mean losing their equipment. Better to save it for the ones that prove themselves."
The deficiencies in recruiting from the fanatics rather than the capable are clear.
Still, there is at least some tactical advantage to it, he has to admit...
"Well, fortunately I'm equipped to handle an injury, Major. I'm maintaining recovery time to keep up appearances." But it might end up boosting his cause, as such. "The only thing remaining is to stage the appropriate altercation between outselves and the Black Wolves. Though, I'm thinking about how to enhance the impact of it..."
Of the point where he is 'unmasked'.
"Understood. I do not intend to maintain this long-term, but we may as well learn what we are dealing with. I also saw that she--"
And he might have continued on, had Leah not posed a question that comes in at an angle he never foresaw.
'How long have we known each other?'
It should be an easy question to answer.
Should be.
He instead stops dead, staring at her, into her. "What... do you mean by...?"
As long as he's been at Assyria Base. No, he met her before that. They were working together during that operation in Elru.
No.
Wait.
...When?
It's like attempting to chase down another figure in a heavy fog. Just when he reaches out to the memory, there's nothing there anymore.
He takes a slow step backwards, muted horror rising the longer he stares at her and still brings back nothing but ghosts.
<Pose Tracker> The Watcher has posed.
"Likely," the Major agrees with Loren's assessment. There is little that need be said on her part about it, and she doesn't; the logic is sound. Similarly as he mentions his ability to handle an injury, she watches placidly. The appropriate altercation...
The Major is prepared to move on from the matter of Odessa and the Black Wolves, for now. The lines of her face are hard as she studies Loren's expression. One of those lines is the pressed surface of her mouth; she is silent and does not stammer, or stutter, or explain further as he stops dead. The angle is intentional; the question should be easy to answer.
But it isn't, and she knew that it wouldn't be. The fog grows, instead, and the Watcher takes a step forward.
"How long?" she repeats. "I'll ask another question. Why do you look at me strangely when you regard my cybernetic limbs? What about them puzzles you?"
She stares into his eyes with her single eye.
"What happened eight years ago?"
"What is our relationship? What is the significance of the name 'Engil Voss'?"
"I am not asking questions for my health, soldier. Stop staring at me and answer."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
How long?
He's just as mute as before, caught out in this one moment.
She asks him another question.
About her limbs.
"I-- there must be some mistake, Major, I haven't..."
He's never been a good liar.
He takes another step back, his legs bumping up against the bedframe.
The rest of the questions come quickly.
What happened eight years ago?
What is their relationship?
Who is Engil Voss?
She doesn't give him a choice in the matter. And there is nowhere else left to run.
"I..." he croaks initially, still staring at her one eye. His throat, no, his mouth have both gone dry. He settles on the one thing he can answer:
"Eight years ago I entered Jugend. Is... did something happen then?" He pauses, shifting as if he would like to turn away. "My accident wasn't until... later." Right? Gear training doesn't start until the second year.
So why does it feel like the accident was eight years ago, now?
Who is Major Sadalbari? She knows him. He feels like he should know her.
"Engil is..."
He can only sketch the outline of it, the form of someone who had a face so like and unlike his own.
"I... had a brother."
He knows this is true. But he can't remember anything except the afterimage of a face. Or perhaps not even that.
<Pose Tracker> The Watcher has posed.
There must be some mistake--no, the Watcher doesn't think so. Things like this are not 'mistakes', innocent happenstance that could go either way. There is deliberation; there is intent. It is as likely mistake as it is coincidence.
The Watcher need not physically block the exit in this way, though it is possible that her Ether does so. She need not reach out to grip Loren, because he is already ensnared in some prison. This, the Major can see--and so, she must cut it down.
The truth will be what it must.
Her single eye is clear and sharp, a sea-blue that could drown. She does not so much as blink as she speaks or as she waits, her mouth a thin line, her featres all severe--even the curve of her jaw looks somehow sculpted of iron. And she waits.
'His accident', he says, and this is the only thing that touches her expression, the only thing that causes a thin twitch of her lips. It is, perhaps, the last thing that has done that in many years.
"'Your accident'," the Major repeats. "What accident is this? It is not the one that haunts you. I know this."
Engil is...
"Eight years ago, you entered Jugend. Eight years ago, Engil Voss was lost in a Gear accident, along with his squadron, with the sole, partial exception of the half of my body they were able to pry from the wreckage."
Leah's eye flashes with something like a silent rage, and for that instant she is Watcher and watching both as she says, "Engil Voss was your older brother. I am your brother's wife."
Present tense, she says, and in this perhaps she reveals something, but the Watcher is all calm again after this. The palpable aura of feeling may as well have never existed... save for one thing.
It did.
"Your memory has been compromised. Your demeanor has changed; the facts you recall are different from the facts of record. Your judgement is beginning to be affected."
"...I have seen this because it is my place to see truth. And now I share that truth with you, because you have forgotten it, and I will learn that 'truth' as well."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
If Loren ran, where would he go? Being courtmartialed would be the least of his problems.
There are rumors that circulate about the Watcher, after all.
Who is one and the same as Major Leah Sadalbari.
And more to the point, maybe he can't run, anyway.
The world has contracted to a singular point about the blue of her one eye.
His accident.
There's... something there, in her expression.
His accident.
"It's... in the records. You must already know."
But her expression is one that permits no evasion.
He wants to look away. He wants to hide. Every part of his body betrays that urge of his. But he's a soldier, whatever his fails, and so he instead slowly nods, and says:
"I... crashed during Gear training. In Jugend. The others were... they didn't make it." He swallows once, pushing back against the upwell of grief that comes with the recounting. "The, the details are in the report. I don't remember very much after the impact." He still can't look away, as much as he wants to.
"I'm sorry, Major."
And he doesn't really know why he says it like that, either.
<Pose Tracker> The Watcher has posed.
The least, to be sure. It would not be the first time the Watcher had dealt with even a First Class citizen. The rumors go that it would not be the first time someone disappeared who had known her in her old life. Running...
In the records. It's strong enough that he repeats it at first; this, too, is information. But it is information that is a problem...
And she has already shown all the emotion she plans to on this matter.
"I do already know," the Major answers him. "I am aware that you believe that to have happened. I can see the pain in your eyes, recalling it. But I tell you: it did not. Not to you."
"I was there, Captain. I recall the sudden stop; I recall the twisting of metal, and the heat of fire." The Major reaches up to her eyepatch--and begins to undo it. The scarring over that eye socket remains, as do many of her scars, too extensive to be entirely removed even by Solarian medicine, though there is something in it now, something that whirrs chillingly and focuses on Loren a little too closely as its aperture narrows against the added light.
"Look at these burns; tell me that they are not consistent with what I've indicated. Now, there are other potential explanations for my burned eye, or for the fact that all of my limbs have required enhancement."
"But this explanation is that what you remember happening to you did not. ...I don't believe you've simply cracked under the strain of your missions. My evaluation of your potential does not make that likely."
"I have studied your service record in detail. I know your grades for every year you served at Jugend, in every class, and in every term. I know which part of the dining area you sat in. And I know nothing of a Gear accident that involves you of this scale. ...You, meanwhile, do not remember the brother whose memory has haunted you since you were a child. If you had a brother, why would he be so difficult for you to remember? There are possible explanations."
"Only one is truth."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There are elements of the story that don't line up. He's aware of them -- aware too of the sense that something is wrong with him, more than in the broad sense of it. But at the end of the day he still has a job to do. He can't stop.
Even when he's lost more already than he's begun to realize.
Oh, it happened, she says.
It just didn't happen to him.
Any denials he might have offered die before they can even escape his lips: she undoes her eyepatch.
"Ah--"
He's a medic by training. Work in Gebler might have taken him elsewhere -- Gebler and Solaris always need information, always need people to play the role of information agent even if their grounding is in another field -- but his training has never let him down whatever part he plays.
Most scars can be fixed by modern medicine.
Most, but not all.
Take, for instance, the scars left by a high-speed impact. Metal. Heat.
His gaze settles at last at the thing that rests in her empty eyesocket.
There are a lot of things that modern medicine can give back.
But eyes are difficult.
She's making something up. There is another explanation, speaks the memory.
But instead his gaze finally slips from hers and turns downwards, at his hands. He stares down at his hands.
The answer is carved into his flesh. Or, rather, its absence is.
If he'd crashed, he should be... there should be a scar. Somewhere. At the very least there should be a scar.
But his body is unmarked and whole.
His hands shake.
"I... I remember... the crash..." he utters nonetheless, slowly shaking his head. How can he remember something so vividly that...
But there's no evidence of it.
The Major confirms this, says that she knows everything. Every piece of his service record. What his scores in Jugend were.
"What about," he starts, as if to test her on this, even now. "My grade in hand-to-hand. What was it?"
He'd had a close-shave with that one, but had received an adequate mark and passed. His instructor had told him he needed to apply himself more.
But perhaps this is a moot question, because, as she says, he can barely remember his own brother anymore.
There are a lot of little things that are slipping away from him. He's noticed.
Ultimately--
He drops down heavily onto the bed just behind him as if his legs can't hold him anymore, staring again at his hands. His expression twists: grief? Horror? Despair?
"Don't..." he whispers finally.
"Don't send me home. Please."
Something's wrong with him. Something's still going wrong. But he can't go home, or--
He doesn't even remember that, anymore.
<Pose Tracker> The Watcher has posed.
There are forms of proof that speak louder than words; the Watcher knows that the scars on her body can be one of them. Not enough on their own--but enough that it is worth the revelation that the eye socket is not empty, at least in this moment, to this operative, if the nature of his compromise is not what it could be. Bt he stares at hs hands--and he sees... or does not see.
"You clearly remember," the Major answers Loren's statement. 'But', she does not have to repeat, 'It was not you.' The fact that he remembers is itself notable. His question comes, though. And yes, it's a moot question...
"Adequate," she answers. "But it was close. There's a reason you've worked to improve since."
Many reasons, in fact. But Loren drops down... He whispers his request. And in that moment, the Watcher reviews her previous decision.
After all, her choice was made long before she set foot in this small room, long before she spoke a word to Captain Voss of this problem. And it remains the correct one. The one that must be.
"I will not at this time," she says simply. "You will continue your current mission, despite the difficulty this revelation may impose upon you. To send you back would not suit my aims; the ways in which the Ministry would help you would not align with my requirements... Or your hopes. But when you return from your work we will catalog the differences in the reports and in your memories, and you will have had time to consider other unusual aspects of your perception."
"In knowing there is a problem you may be able to track further information that will lead us to the source of that problem. I will see if you can withstand this, or not. We are all tested before we can be what we must."
"...But I will have the heart of the one who has touched that memory."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He remembers something.
But--
It wasn't him.
It wasn't him. Even here and now he seems to grapple with the reality of it, slowly shaking his head as she answers what he still remembers about Jugend. That was true: he hadn't stood out in many of his courses. He'd been middle-of-the-road at best, and had just gotten by. But hand-to-hand had been among his poorer-scoring areas.
It's one reason why he's had to apply himself to get where he's gotten since. Not only had he not studied the blade at Jugend, but he'd...
There can only be one truth, in the end.
Everything else collapses about it.
Even he's aware in some regard that he's being selfish -- foolish, even. If someone else had done what he is now doing, he would have declared that they needed to return for evaluation, for the good of everyone else.
But...
He's a selfish person. It's bred into him.
The Watcher levies her verdict.
When she says that she will not order his return, for now, Loren makes a sound that could perhaps be a shocked gasp... or a strangled sob.
He doesn't lift his head.
He doesn't say anything, not until several long moments after she's explained her intent, laid out what will happen.
What she will do.
"...Understood, Major."
He keeps his head bowed. He doesn't look up.
If his hands in his lap remain slightly damp, perhaps it will go unremarked.