View source for 2023-10-11: Do Not Treat Me Like a Stranger!

*'''Log: Do Not Treat Me Like a Stranger!'''
*'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Josephine Lovelace]], [[Character :: Riesenlied]]
*'''Where:''' Damzen City - Sandblasted Outskirts
*'''Date:''' October 11, 2023
*'''Summary''': ''Josie tries to slip away when all is said and done, but Riesenlied isn't having it. Josie relents and important words are had at last.''

----


 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    The dust, as it were, eventually settles: the machine that had so threatened Hannah (and the rest of them by proxy) is neutralized. Josie, ARMs holstered, shades her eyes with her good hand and squints at the surrounding area, doing a good 360 scan of the region outside the mine. ...Looks like it was just the one. And looks like, everyone else has the situation more or less in hand.

    It's not so much a lopsided smile but a lopsided frown that graces her features.

    If they ask, she'll just say it wasn't like the Trilobites were bound to come back after all that disturbance -- and she'd already taken out a number of them besides. Even if she doesn't check in with the miners, this job is closed by her reckoning.

    It's not, after all, that she's trying to ditch the scene while others tend to their hurts or that of others. And it's certainly not the case that Josie is trying to avoid talking to someone in particular.

    She's just nonchalantly leaving. To get paid. Yes.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
<poem>
    "W-waaait! Wait!"

    Ah, there comes the dangerous sound of someone who's very clearly got a lot of emotion in her voice. Unfortunately, Josephine leaving is something she can't do something terribly much about -- look at the Hyadean in the wheelchair very very very diligently pushing herself forward through sand and gravel and uneven terrain with as MUCH gusto as she can muster.

    "Josephine, wait!" she pouts, calling out. "I must speak with you!"

    Horns are FLAT. Emotions are low!
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    But a familiar voice calls out to her.

    Josie pauses in her stride nonetheless, glancing back over her shoulder to confirm what she already knows for certain: it is Riesenlied who harkens after her. It would be a simple matter to keep on walking: even if Riesenlied were unrelenting in her advance, Josie could easily lose her on way back into Damzen proper and beyond. Time was, Josie would have gone on to do exactly that and make good with her attempt to avoid what would certainly be awkward at its gentlest... and perhaps damning at its worst.

    "Fine," she says, turning herself about properly. "I'm waiting."

    Time was, yes, but that time has come and gone, too. She'll get nowhere running from what was, especially knowing for certain now that there are words to be had.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
<poem>
    Riesenlied is exhausted by the time she arrives at Josephine's side!

    She puffs, she huffs, and wipes her brow and has to double over for a moment, then take a moment to take a double-take at the Drifter. A long, pregnant pause. She hesitates for a moment, then starts to say something, and then-- well, the words don't come out. Then she tilts her head, thinks some more, says another-- no, that's not right either.

    "... I-- I just wanted to know if you were all right or not. That was all I wanted to know. I have been so worried, for so long," is what she finally ends up with, eyes a little teary.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    It's perhaps not the kindest thing she's done, to stand there and wait for Riesenlied to approach. But neither can she bring herself to do more than wait: it's not entirely out of her nature to run away from the past, as much as she in the same breath seeks to move ahead.

    Still, she doesn't abandon Riesenlied. As she had said, she's waiting, and this time around, she isn't going back on her word.

    Josie continues to wait, even as Riesenlied seeks out the right words to say. After all, it isn't as if...

    What finally comes out leaves Josie looking somewhat stunned, herself: she blinks at Riesenlied, as if she can't quite believe this.

    "Right as rain, if'n you were wondering," Josie says at last, deciding it might be best to opt out mentioning her duel with the Trial Knight -- or Seraph Liath, apparently -- or how she almost died struggling against Vinsfeld. Or how she got lost in pocket prison dimension for, like, a month. All water under the bridge, as far as she's concerned. "And you and your lot? You've been well?" It's hard, it seems, for Josie to quite keep that smile on her face. It might even start to seem like she's forcing it.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
<poem>
    "... yes. I have not had serious complications with my health," Riesenlied admits, which is about the best she can explain when her body is still withering away slowly; Shevat's had a good hand in giving her the best treatment with the nanomachines running wild in her body. "And Father is miraculously back from the dead, and with us."

    It's giving info to someone who last was seen betraying her. Is that poor secops? It is. Riesenlied doesn't care. Nothing about what she does now is private. That's part and parcel of being a public organisation.

    "... I could only hear scant rumours and remarks from the other Drifters," she utters. "Please. I do not care that you have shot at me in the past. Do not treat me like a stranger. I wish to know."

    Her lips press firmly.

    "Because I still care about a dear friend of mine."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    Serious complications, as it pertains to Riesenlied, Josie considers, just means that her health hasn't gotten markedly ''worse''. "Hm," she muses, putting a neutral face forward.

    Though that outright fails when Riesenlied mentions that Father -- and there can only be one person she means with a term like that -- is back with them. Josie's eyes widen: Riesenlied has managed to shock even the famously happy-go-lucky Josephine. "Wait-- do the rest of the Wolves know about this?" Surely they're not all on Siegfried's side now, are they...?

    But even a remark like that might as well be a sign by the side of the road: Riesenlied says that all she had heard were rumors.

    And Riesenlied says that she doesn't care about what had happened in the past: that the only thing she cares about is the well-being of a friend.

    "...Huh," Josie says, at length, at last. "Don't that beat all."

    Regardless of such remarks, the look on her face is no less than complicated, as if she were trying to affect a straight face and be concerned and ''smile'' of all things all at once.

    "You and the rest of those kids... you really are two of a kind. Or five or six of a kind, all told," Josie says, shaking her head. "If it were ''me'', well... I ain't the forgivin' type, right." She glances briefly up at the sky. "But I ain't gonna say... I ain't gonna tell you what you oughtta do." She breathes out a long, weighty breath.

    "But I figure, 'long as we're having it out here and now... I'll tell you the name I used to have." She pauses, almost as if she were having second thoughts. "Katriona. But make no mistake. I'm livin' for me and my sister both, now."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
<poem>
    "I still need to tell the Wolves," Riesenlied admits. "We have had a lot on our plate and there has not necessarily been time to get in touch with everyone." And for a surprise that should have her over the moon, Riesenlied certainly looks a bit... conflicted.

    It's not hard to see why. She's scared her father will turn up to be ephemeral, rushing off towards another battle or cause that has her having to pack everything up and chase after. As she has, so many times, in Ignas, as Josie has seen.

    "If I was not the forgiving type, then I would likely have remained a Metal Demon, never questioning more than what was allotted to me, what was ordered of me," Riesenlied mutters. "Wayside would not have happened. None of... this... would have happened. But even beside that, I forgive because I know there is more to your circumstance I do not know. And forgiveness is the path that lets me understand you better."

    She does listen -- her eyes widen, as Josie gives a name. "The fire..." she whispers. "... I see. ... what would you prefer to be called?" A swallow.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    Another uncharacteristically Josie expression graces her now: she furrows her brow in deep concern. "Huh. Well then," she remarks. "Best you do it, and soon though. Lest your old man come calling and they ain't ready for the visit."

    But what can Josie do but sigh, again, when Riesenlied gives the reasons for her being the forgiving type. "Right, right," she says, not unkindly. "Bein' kind and all that means you're willing to give sinners like me a chance. Yeah? I guess I've reason to be glad you lot are like that. But that don't mean I ''understand'' it, like, especially when..." Josie says, trailing off, only to shake her head. "But you get the shape of it. We just ain't alike."

    Josie isn't the forgiving type, and that includes herself, even if she has decided that she will walk the road of her life regardless of the travails that lie ahead. But even the largest of cities wasn't built in a day.

    "Josie," she says, flashing Riesenlied a grin at last. "I buried her under my name. I figure, it'll be less complicated like this. Besides, that means she'll get to see the world through my eyes, yeah?"

    There's a story she has yet to tell here: in whole it is the untangling of the complex skein of her life and who, precisely, she was and is. But perhaps this may yet suffice for the here and now.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
<poem>
    Riesenlied quietly nods at that; she's definitely conflicted, but she knows that there's a difficult conversation that has to happen. Best that she do that sooner than later. In case she needs the support... as she has, so many times.

    "I do not demand you to change. But if there is a part of you that wishes to understand..." Riesenlied reflects, perhaps knowing this is a bit of a tangent, but: "It is not as if I am kind from some Saint-like state of absolute, emotional neutrality. I do not believe anyone ''should'' be. You have heard people use this manipulation often -- that someone is only being kind to satisfy their own needs, or some such words. That somehow, it is insincere to receive a gain from how you behave." There's a bit of a tired smile. "But that is the truth of it. That I feel I gain more from kindness and forgiveness, than when I played the obedience game, from the long duplicity..."

    She shakes her head. "I digress a little. Josie it is, then." There's a faint and sad little tinge in her eye as Josephine says she'll get to see the world through her eyes.

    "We can only hope. But life is for the living. Take care that you do not live it solely for the dead."

    Somewhere within her mind, her memory of a dead girl of the Fereshte -- now freed of her frozen prison -- smiles back, inside of her.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
<poem>
    What can Josie do in response to that but lopsidedly smile?

    "I know you ain't. No one is, 'cept maybe God," she says, touching the Nisan-style cross around her throat. "And I don't mean that lightly or none. Saints is figures from a story. They're meant to guide -- not be something we gotta ''be''. So nah. I don't think you're a saint anymore'n I think you're doin' a high and mighty act or the like. You're just... you, Sunshine."

    She thumbs at her chest. "And I'm me, warts and all. Besides, it'd be a cold world if everyone in it were like me, yeah...?"

    It's just that whatever Josie might say, however optimistic she might present herself to the world, there's still that part of her that refuses it -- refuses it, especially, where it might pertain to herself.

    But everyone, as Riesenlied may be well aware of through her journeys over the years, has their own damage.

    What can Josie do but continue to smile?

    "Heh. Better live it for the dead, I figure, than not live it at all! But never you mind me. There's a whole world out there, and I've half a mind to seek it for my own sake as much as hers." She still has to find the direction of the path of her life, freed at last from the burden that has weighed her these many years. And she has, in the same moment, the space to simply be.
</poem>

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Chapter 2]]
[[Category:Chapter 2, Epilogue]]