2020-08-18: After the Stars Went Out
- Log: After the Stars Went Out
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: Damzena Desert
- Date: August 18, 2020
- Summary: Loren sees Lan back to base after her fit. She has an important question for him.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
What had started out as a perfectly enjoyable Guardianist festival ended as anything but. At least Lan has had time to come back to her senses, though she's still a little hazy on... well, just what had happened right before she found herself on the ground, with Loren's jacket underneath her head.
The trip back to Assyria Base is probably going to be... tense.
"..." Lan sits on a large rock at the edge of town, looking out over the rocky landscape. Her canteen, refilled here in town, is held between the fingertips of both hands.
There are still birds settled on the roofs, but not in a menacing way. The sky is no longer bleeding-red. Lan looks down at her hands and swishes the water around inside its container. The stars are very beautiful this evening.
<Posea Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Normally, it would have been a ride back -- via horse, or wagon, or whatever passed for transit in this part of Filgaia.
That had been before Lan had a seizure.
If he had been a normal surfacedweller, with the knowledge he has, he would have rented a room and deferred travel to later. There is no version of reality in which he is willing to risk her (or anyone) having another seizure mid-transit.
Some things you just don't do.
But he's from Solaris, and while it does take a little pressuring for him to arrange it, he has other options than to wait it out.
If transit moves quickly in the dark, no one will ever see.
"They're coming soon," he says, heading back towards her. "We're going to go out to meet them. The rendezvous is a little ways off."
Loren extends his hand to her. "Come on."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
A horse had always been a luxury Lan had never bothered with. You have to feed them, and in town they have to be boarded, and if they break a leg there's nothing to be done but mercy. She's not sure she could. So if Lan has to go long distances, she walks or occasionally hitches a ride. Her sandals have carried her across Ignas and back in the past.
But Loren won't hear of it this evening, so she waits.
At the sound of his voice she turns to look over at him. "...Is it really going to be okay?" seems to be what she decides on. "I'm sorry." She reaches out and takes his hand, letting herself be helped to her feet. Even if she feels fine now - save for a lingering 'out of phase' sort of feeling - it's nice to see him offering contact.
"I didn't mean to..." Black out? Ruin the festival? Scare him? ...Yes.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Horses are, quite bluntly, a thing that Loren doesn't like using if he can avoid it. They're unruly and hazardous, while apparently being incredibly prone to sudden injury and/or death. But in parts of Filgaia, they're just about it this side of walking.
Even under normal conditions, he would have been aghast about walking to base, besides. At night, across the desert?
(Lan, on the other hand, is more native in the environment than he.)
He won't have it under current conditions either. But he also won't have horse, wagon, or even train.
At least if she has a fit in military transit he'll have better options.
He shakes his head at her question. "It's fine," he insists. "It's a medical emergency. Stop worrying about it, and hurry up." He's gruff, but that doesn't necessarily mean...
Loren sighs. "I said stop it." He lets go of her hand and starts off, but not without a glance back at her.
"...How are you feeling?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Apparently she'd just... collapsed. Lan remembers a flash of black feathers, and an overwhelming pressure inside of her skull, and then... Looking up at the stars.
She follows him away from town, his fingers leaving hers as soon as she's steady on her feet. How is she supposed to not worry about it?! What if it happens again? What if something is really wrong, and getting worse?!
"..." She's quiet for a few moments. "I think I'm okay. Um, a little... sort of lightheaded. Is that normal?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Yeah," he says, after a moment. "It's normal."
Loren pauses a moment or two more. "I want to get you back on base. I can get a better look at you there. Your brain's probably fine."
The 'but' is silent, and weighs heavily in the air.
"...I said, don't worry about it," he says, glancing back at her again before picking up the pace. "If you collapse again I-- I'll carry you the rest of the way."
It won't be too much further, if they can keep it up. He just has to hope no one's out here doing Emperor-knows-what.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
If he says so... then she has to trust him. It's not like she has a lot of other choices. And... Loren has lied to her about a lot of things, but not everything. If he's lying now, it's probably just to make her feel better.
The evening air's become cool after the heat of the day, but not enough to be uncomfortable. If nothing else, it's better than trudging under the heat of the blazing sun or through a freezing desert night.
He says not to worry, again. "I'm s--" Lan bites the apology off, taking a deep breath instead. It's a moment before she speaks again. "...Thank you. For taking care of me."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"..."
'Thank you', she says.
He shakes his head. "Forget it. It's just-- look, it's... just what you do," he finishes, shrugging his shoulders in an overempathetic fashion. "It's what-- most people would do."
He turns his attention towards his communicator; by contrast to focusing her and what she's saying, it's almost a relief to do that.
"...Won't be long."
Indeed, it isn't. It arrives like a thief in the night, lights low and red as the short-range transport descends. Loren ushers her aboard soon after.
He barely exchanges a word with the operator.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Of course it's what you do! At least... it's what Lan would do. What she likes to believe anybody would do.
They wait in silence for the transport to arrive, a question forming on Lan's tongue. She can't quite bring herself to ask it, but soon there's no more chance for privacy. It's probably fine. She can wait until they're back at base. Even Lan knows it would just embarrass him more if she were to say it in front of the pilot.
At least it's more comfortable than riding in the back of a wagon.
Sooner than she thought, the lights of Assyria Base are visible.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He ushers her along once they arrive, into the facility without a single word to the operator.
Maybe he's overreacting. Maybe it could have waited, he permits himself to think, briefly.
It's followed simply by 'no'.
Not with her... pre-existing situation. Not with--
He'll pull whoever's up (and wake someone if no one is) for a more thorough analysis shortly, but for now it's just her and him in the main medical suite. He passes by the surgical theatre and leads her into one of the side rooms. Diagnostics. Truncated from what they have back in Etrenank -- if someone really needs a full sweep they're going up there anyway -- but enough of what they'd need for basic analysis on potential battlefield injuries or sudden accident down here.
He tells her to sit.
And before he does anything else--
"Was it... him? Was it related to him?"
Azazel.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The base is hardly home, but it's familiar - even the clean white walls of the medical bay, even if she wishes they weren't. Lan has a seat on the end of the examination table, long legs dangling off into space, and folds her hands restlessly on her knees.
Was it him?
In the end, it all comes back to the Stranger.
"I don't know." Lan closes her eyes, tries to call up the images she'd seen just before... "I remember... there were black feathers. I don't know if they were real." It's pathetic. How that was all it took to set her off. "I felt lightheaded. It was hard to follow what people were saying. I think... I felt like maybe I was going to throw up? Or I was just... there was a whining sound."
Here, in the stark brightness, it seems far away. "I don't... I hate this," she admits finally, quietly, staring down at the tile beneath her feet.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
What can Loren do but sigh?
"I should have figured," he says, shaking his head. Turning, he tugs a stray metal chair away from the wall and sinks down into it.
"There were a lot of birds," he says, resting his elbows on his knees. "Ravens, I think they are. One of them..."
It seems so stupid to focus on it now. One of them stole his ball.
"I don't know if it was him or... or something else." He lifts his head. "Maybe it wasn't related. But seeing the feathers reminded you of him, and...?"
He doesn't like it. Maybe he won't admit it, but he doesn't like it. In that moment, it had seemed too real. Like an omen, like the prediction of something...
"...We'll figure out what happened and deal with it. But first..."
He rises to his feet. "I'm going to get someone to do the neuro exam. We'll want to run some scans to make sure everything's OK."
He moves for the cabinet.
"And I'll need some of your blood."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She lifts her head at the sound of fabric rustling, watching him sit down as though he's tired. "It's not like... just seeing birds is enough. But there were so many, all together, and it was just... like I'd seen it before. It felt like he was there."
They'd said that the crows spoke with human voices while she was passed out. About a day of darkness or reckoning, something like that. The Stranger had never said anything like that to her. When he's spoken to her, it's never been about something so definite.
A day is not the same as forever.
"Maybe it's something else." Lan laughs, though it's not funny. "Maybe something else is just as bad, but we don't know about it yet."
Nyuuro exam. What a weird word. "That's... they're going to look at my brain?" she frowns, palms resting on the edges of the exam table to either side of her knees. "Won't the scanner you have work?" She's... fairly sure nobody will cut her open. Her fingers flex against the metal.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
In many senses, he's disagreeable. He's not good at sympathy, his bedside manner is poor. But when she says that it's not that it was identical to Azazel -- just similar -- and that had been enough to cause her one hell of a shock...
Yeah. He gets that. How many times has he had one of his stupid fits at the wrong time and locked up in terror before he could finally, exhaustedly, slip its yoke?
Loren just shakes his head and sighs.
"Ugh. I don't want to think about another problem," he groans, as she laughs about a situation that just isn't funny. "I've got enough to deal with right now."
He's already opening the cabinet when she reacts like she's just been told she has to jump off a cliff. "Well, yeah," he says, craning his head to look back at her over his shoulder. "The scanner's pretty good for most basic diagnostics, but if you've got a tumor in the middle of your brain, or something else really bad happened," non-traumatic brain problems are a bit outside his wheelhouse, "I won't be able to find it. ...Look," he sighs, turning to face her, "It's just for the sake of making sure. You'll just lie down for a few minutes while they run the ED-- the portable deep-tissue scanner. ...Oh yeah, and don't move. It makes it blurry."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
A tumor? There's... she couldn't have one of those, could she?? She grimaces a bit at the idea. At least the idea of just needing to lie still for a bit seems to calm her. "...Okay. If you're sure it's necessary."
It's just the same as giving blood. She doesn't like it, but Loren wouldn't be pointlessly cruel. At least not to her. Right?
"Hey," she asks, once he's done. "When I passed out, did you... Were you afraid?" It's a strange question. But it goes back further than this evening. What is she to Loren?
To him, has she ever truly been a friend?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He watches her for a moment, as if to assay whether this has calmed her, or if she needs him to explain further. "Yeah. Look, I want to be sure. I'm also going to need," and he turns back to the open cabinet, reaching within to pull out a few items...
...and once he's finished and washing his hands, she asks him something.
Namely, that.
"What... why are you asking?" Loren says, without looking back at her. He's straightened some, gone tense in the shoulders. "It was... look, I was doing my job," he continues, discomfited, shaking his head as he turns off the tap. "If anyone had been--" He turns towards her, hackles raised.
"What's this about?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She knows there must have been a more tactful way to ask, but Lan can't think of it. So she'd been a little blunt. He reacted a little better than she was afraid he would!
Lan bends her elbow obediently to keep the wad of gauze in place. "I just..." She trails off for a moment, trying to find the right words.
"I just want to know." It's not like Lan has asked a simple question with an easy answer. Of course the answer will be hard to get. "I spend a lot of time worrying about you. And while I don't really want you to be worried, it... would just be nice to know that someone cares about me. That's all."
Even if it's Loren's job to care for people who are having emergencies, it's nice to think that he puts as much into the relationshio as Lan does.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Lan clarifies, unfortunately (as far as he's concerned).
One would think that Loren had just been put on trial or similar, or something. "You don't... there's no need to worry about me," he says, shaking his head.
But she just wants to know if he feels the same way about her.
He shifts uncomfortably where he stands, his gaze moving from her and to the floor. His hands tighten into fists then relax.
Finally he lifts his head and looks at her again, exhaling out a breath.
"...Yeah," he admits, unable to hold her gaze. "I was worried."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
No need to worry about Loren? Has he seen himself lately?
They're both pretty messed up, honestly.
Lan doesn't really know what to expect from him. He's changed, little by little, over the time she's known him. Or maybe it's her view of him that changed. She ducks her head momentarily when he admits that he was. "I'm sorry. I don't want you to have to worry about me." If she could just... get over this or something, it would help.
She's debating the wisdom of trying to comfort him when there's a brief knock at the door.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Practically speaking, he knows. His situation is... pitiful, really. But it doesn't mean he wants people worrying about him even if... logically...
Which is much the same thing she says to him, ultimately.
Loren lifts his gaze and just looks at her for a few fleeting moments and then... sighs.
"Guess that makes the two of us, huh," he says, running his hand through his hair. Just about halfway, he manages a tired smile.
And then there's a knock on the door.
"Come in," he says.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Perhaps it's just universal that people can't survive on their own.
She holds his gaze for that few seconds until he sighs and admits... well, that he feels the same way. And smiles. Even if it's just a little bit, it's really comforting to see. Lan finds herself smiling back, the stiff set of her back easing as the door opens to admit the neuro tech. Maybe being in this together will be their saving grace?
Or at least going insane won't be quite so lonely.