2023-12-09: Promise (Denial)
- Log: 2023-12-06 Promise (Denial)
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Damzen City - Sandblasted Outskirts
- Date: December 09, 2023
- Summary: Lan has some questions about the implications of the amalgamation of Wels and the mysterious 'Millions Knives' container. Loren can't give her any answers.
===================<* Damzen City - Sandblasted Outskirts *>==================== Damzen City is a frontier town, and any approach to it makes this clear. The city proper is walled off, by high walls that offer protection from roving monsters. However, mining interests in the last few years have made the outskirts of Damzen grow well beyond the walls. The outskirts are a rougher part of town. Many of the buildings are small, bordering on ramshackle; others are merely tents and lean-to's. People pass through quickly, many working only temporarily in the mines or oilfields around the city. The businesses here consist of shops, boarding houses, and dining establishments of questionable repute and unquestionable low quality. BGM: Wild Arms 2 - Western Village
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Damzen City is not, as cities go, Loren's ideal place to be. Arguably, none of them really are: the most he can hope for is to go ignored and vanish among the crowd. But Damzen really ranks up there for one particular reason: of the cities he's visited in his time across Filgaia and Lunar both, it's definitely in the top five most lawless. Or at least, the top five where just existing is likely to get him into trouble he really doesn't want or need.
But Lan probably figured which base he was stationed at in the interim (how, he doesn't want to know or think all that much about -- especially if it was just a good guess on her part) and Damzen is definitely the closest. It would have been practicality on her part.
And it's not as if he could honestly stay away if she asked to meet (if he could steal away, if there wasn't something more pressing, if, if). As much as he'd love to try and deny it, well, he's long past that now, honestly: he wants to see her again too.
It's early morning in Damzen's outskirts (worse than the rest of Damzen), which is a step up from 'nighttime Damzen' at least because most of the troublemakers are probably passed out and the only ones about are merchants and laborers and other people trying to make a more or less honest living (relatively speaking, in his view). And it's still a ways until the heat of Damzen (again! another plus!) makes it nearly impossible to be outside -- in fact, it's still chilly enough that Loren's wearing a coat overtop the Filgaian-style traveling clothes he's identified over the years as being reasonably in line with what the average person tends to wear. He shouldn't stick out from his clothing, no.
Pausing near one of the signs directing foot traffic this way or that (not put up by any governing body, if he's to judge by the thick white greasepaint someone used to letter this one) Loren attempts a difficult task: so where, precisely, is he again?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She'd sent him a message, a few days after the battle. It had been years ago now that she'd been assigned to that base, with him and Leah. Assigned to him. It's not so much that Lan deduced where he must be staying, based on the location of the Watcher's latest gambit - it's just that she thought it was a place where they could both see each other, without being looked at too closely.
Especially if she ends up yelling at him in semi-public.
It's cold this early in the morning. Normally she would be waking up around this time, setting out the Flame Medium and boiling water for tea or coffee, huddling in her tent until the sun burned away the last of the desert night's familiar chill. Instead, she's wrapped in her once-white cloak and then her blanket over that, cocooned like a colorful caterpillar. She can fold all of it away in her bag once things have warmed up, but it'd be a pain to find someplace private enough to change her entire outfit just so she could wear cold-weather clothes in the morning. Also, her blanket is snuggly (a wonderful quality).
She found a bench where she could see down three avenues at once and promptly made herself comfortable there, feet tucked up on the slats and her chin on her knees. It's almost warm like this! If he can meet her here, maybe they'll go drink hot chocolate or coffee after she's done yelling at him for that... that...
Lan tries not to think of the Wels and casts her gaze around for something else, which is perfect timing for Loren to stop and stare at the sign a few dozen yarz away. Lan pushes herself up off of the bench with a shuffle of fabric and goes to meet him. She's still a little subdued when she gets there, clutching the blanket around herself. "Hey, Loren."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He hadn't given any indication of a response until a week after. Just because he wants to see her doesn't mean that it's easy for him to see her-- he'd been stuck at Moloch for far longer than he'd wanted. And then, even after the dust had settled, there had been the matter of what Leah had told him.
It was nothing new, of course. It was something he already knew. But it had crystalized the concept, as it were: it had made him for the first time think about the fact that he could lose what's important in the process of seizing something better.
But Loren had eventually responded. It had been a tight, terse response (as many of his messages tend to be) but it had been a response. He'd come.
He doesn't spot her at first, so busy is he squinting at the sign. Is that 'B' backwards? Who's teaching people to write around here? Why is this almost impossible to read even without the handwriting issues--
He realizes, in his own way, that someone's coming. He turns his head and of course it's her.
"...Oh. Hey," he says, feeling oddly uncomfortable in the moment. "How... are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
And if Leah is so driven that she would sacrifice anything to achieve the revival of God...
What could Lan sacrifice, to revive Filgaia?
He's never been one for small talk, even in letters. She wonders sometimes what his messages to his parents are like. He writes them, surely? Lan sends letters home, even if she can't stay in one place long enough to receive any back. She even sends money, although there's not really anything to use it on unless one of the traveling merchants visits Little Firelight or someone makes the long trip to November City or Baskar Colony.
There's something tight around her eyes, but she's... not yelling at him or hitting him or even throwing a shoe at him for his many sins! "I'm okay," Lan tells him, and then frowns. "...No, that's not-- I'm a lot of things. I'm not not okay," she hastens to correct herself, before he thinks she's got some kind of horrible problem or wasting illness or she's lost all her money or something! "I just--" Lan grasps for what she's trying to say, mouth pulled into a grimace. "I'm happy to see you!" Wait, surely that's good?
"...But I'm upset, too," she finally manages, and that seems to be enough for the moment, although she also doesn't appear to really be satisfied with her decision. "Because of what happened. Gwen cried! That wasn't your fault though."
What... is she even talking about??
You can't go that way.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
For that matter, what is Loren willing to lose? Leah has already lost so much and he doesn't doubt her for a second when she says she's willing to give up still more if it achieves her goals.
All he wants to do is protect what matters. All he can do is hope that whatever happens next won't rip it from his grasp anyway.
Even face to face, he's not the easiest person to talk to -- Lan would know all about that by now. If you want weary explanation of a subject dear to his heart or related to his area of expertise, he'll talk your ear off, and if you want sarcasm or complaining, he's all-too-willing. But getting him to talk about himself? Or talk about normal people things? It's a good thing Lan is a persistence predator, as it were.
Something's up now, though. He tenses, minutely: somehow, he doesn't think this is going to come to blows per se, but... they'd come to rescue him thinking he was in trouble and he wasn't and that's the sort of thing that sticks with you. "What?" he presses, already leaning towards the defensive.
It just so happens that her declaration that she's happy to see him fully disarms even his well-honed defense mechanisms and Loren stares at her, taken aback. "Uh," he starts, not sure where this is going.
She's upset, she says, and he sort of has to about-face back into that again, too. "About--"
Yeah, about that.
"You weren't supposed to be there," he says, looking away from her. "None of you were! We were trying to get rid of Siegfried, before..." His hands curl into fists at this sides, and it's a good thing perhaps she's left him feeling so off-kilter because he might had snapped at her otherwise. "...He's been targetting our installations on Filgaia. There's been almost nothing left when he's done."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Not only was he not in trouble, he was causing a ton of trouble for someone else. Even if Lan doesn't know Siegfried as anybody other than 'Riesenlied's father' and 'the first guy who very nearly succeeded in killing Loren' and 'terrifyingly powerful', she can't think of a good reason to try to kill him. Maybe there is one? But she doesn't know it.
Lan has let him babble on before, about things like constellations (the weirdo made-up Solarian ones) and the kind of physics needed to build a card house and once she got him to tell her about the different kinds of model kit when she wanted to know the difference between 'real grade' and 'high grade'. He's done the same for her, albeit with differing amounts of interest and snark. She likes it. It's easy to talk about things that aren't life-and-death, that don't touch the gulf between them.
"Not being supposed to be there doesn't change that you-- the Wels," she tries to explain, hands emerging from the blanket folds to make an aborted gesture at him. "The metal box. It made that awful noise and then--" Lan takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly. He knows what it did. She doesn't have to tell him.
'There's been almost nothing left when he's done.'
Lan's first feeling about it is dismay. Her first thought is 'Good.' She scrubs at her face with the corner of the blanket and wills it away. No. Broken and ruined bases aren't-- they're not enough, for starters, Siegfried could destroy every Solarian installation on Filagaia and the moon and the source would still be there, it wouldn't-- those are people, they're mostly just people that don't know any better or wanted a better life than being Third or Second Class--
Vaguely, she remembers that Loren's mother is a base commander. The creeping feeling in the pit of her stomach must be shame.
"..." She doesn't know what to do or what to feel. She wants to be mad at him. She was supposed to be. "I just... the way the Wels screamed. And that thing in the tube. It was a whole person. Solaris had a whole PERSON, just... frozen. Don't you think that's messed up??" she asks, letting her hands drop.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It had felt good to talk to her, then. It hadn't been about anything difficult at all, and she had just... listened to him talk, without acting like he was being dull or some sort of nuisance. Maybe she hadn't really understood it, but even at the time that hadn't bothered him.
Comparatively, talking to her about what's important is the most difficult thing in the world. There are things that he doesn't dare talk about with her, that he can't talk about with her. But they always come up, whatever he does. They can't not come up, with the way things are.
The Wels. She's not upset about the trick he'd pulled. She's upset about them.
"Huh...?" he starts, as if trying to wrap his head around it. No, it's not that he's blase, precisely, about the Wels. About what they are. He'd always thought they were some sort of monster, something that had arisen due to the sins of the Lambs-- but no, they'd just been people all along. But it still throws him, in the moment, that this is the sticking point for her. "You're mad about that?"
For him, the worst thing he'd done was lie. His acting could have gotten them killed. And so he may just sound a little less than contrite about having used the Wels in that scheme.
They're people, of course. Or they were people, once. A quick death would have been more merciful, but that wasn't what they had received, forcefully merged and melded by the screaming of that machine.
The Wels had screamed, too, of course. Loren grimaces, pulled back into that dreadful moment. "It was necessary," he empathizes. "If we'd thrown our people at him it would have been a massacre. At least the Wels, they--" He shakes his head. "They're... already like that, so... And I don't know! I don't know who that was!" He's starting to get truly defensive now.
It's largely because, again, he's lying. He knows what the man in the tube was. Leah had called him a 'trap' for Siegfried and his allies.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She may not like the lie that was told, but Lan understands the principle behind it all. To need to fight smart, to use every possible advantage because your enemy will definitely be doing it too, and they're also stronger and faster and tougher than you are.
"They were people once." She knows that he knows this. "I mean, are they still people underneath it? They probably don't think like people do, or maybe they just don't remember-- ugh." Lan gorans and shakes her head. "What would you do if that happened to you or me or Gwen?!" Or Leah, or... well anybody, really. Would it be better if it were with someone you liked? Or would it be worse?
Lan settles for tugging the blanket tighter around herself. "It's just. It's just that it was awful, and gross, and it's gross to do that to people, or used-to-be-people." Lan sighs after a moment. "And just as bad to have someone frozen." It's just deeply gross the whole way through!!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's logical, sure. It makes sense: as a medical officer, he doesn't want to lose lives that could be spared.
But it doesn't mean that it's good, or kind.
"But they're not people now," Loren replies, shaking his head. "They're... there's nothing that can be done for them," he states plainly, folding his arms across his chest. But what if it had been him who had turned, or Lan, or Gwen, or--
Family, like Leah.
Loren looks away. "I don't think 'I' would exist anymore, if I were a Wels." The same, perhaps tacitly, is implied to hold if it had been so for any of the rest of them.
He grimaces when she calls it gross, visibly bristling. "I'm not saying I liked doing that," he all-but-snaps, gazing at her again. "But it's not like we had a choice." Not that it had done any good, he thought bitterly, in spite of Leah's statement that it was not the loss it had seemed to be. But he's not her, and he can't help but find the sacrifices made not yet equal to the outcome. "We couldn't throw soldiers at him: he would have torn them apart. Or would you have rather it had just been Azoth?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He gives an answer that isn't an answer at all. "Even if you weren't you anymore. You weren't, when you lost all your memories. And even so, we wanted to care for you. We wanted you to be okay." Back then, after... Lan and Gwen had wanted him to be happy, no matter what that looked like - even if he would never be 'Loren' again. "We wouldn't abandon you, even if you weren't the same. And maybe it's not fair to say that, because you weren't running around attacking people, but I was still scared of what it meant."
Lan's hands make fists in the fabric of her blanket. He's not getting it. Right? He just doesn't get it. He's not... he can't really think like this.
"Even if we can't do anything to ease their suffering, we're not supposed to make it worse!" Lan has always envied Loren's talent with healing Ether and his knowledge. Even if his bedside manner is atrocious and the field medic's tool kit is often anything but gentle, he still knows how he could make people better. He has so much potential to fix things and people.
But he doesn't.
He just...
"There's always a choice! You know that!" Her voice is rising, but so far nobody else has given them much attention. It's just because she believes in him, is frustrated by him. "It would've been wrong to send Azoth out alone too, and you know it. Everything about what they're doing to him is wrong!" She's moving her weight from foot to foot, like she just can't contain all the unhappiness inside her body (or worse, is restraining herself from kicking him through a wall). "What else did they try? Don't you have Gears? Couldn't you send out a Gear someone piloted from far away?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He straightens initially, as taken aback, but then he shakes his head emphatically. "That's not the same thing! It's not like I became a... I'd only lost my memories, that's all. He grimaces again as she goes on, expressing that she'd been afraid, that Gwen (he assumes, from context) had been afraid at the time. And maybe, even he'll allow in the privacy of the space behind his eyes, that's with good reason: it's not as they could know that's all it was (that's that's what he'd wanted to happen) and that something else wasn't about to take up residence in what was left--
But Loren bristles all the same because he doesn't like where this is going. "...It's still not the same thing," he insists, unwilling to yield.
They're not supposed to make it worse. She could have slapped him for the same effect. "I said--" he starts, stopping immediately as if the next word isn't quite coming to him. "--All we could do is kill them anyway. That's all! Is that what you want?"
She's raised her voice and he glances about them as if checking to see if anyone is staring. Is that really more important to him than what she's trying to tell him? "--That's where you're wrong," he hisses in response, though he doesn't (immediately) elaborate why. Of course there's not a choice. If there was a choice, why would he still be...
He stares at her, as if he can't believe what he's hearing. Azoth isn't a friend. Leah had warned him about getting close: Azoth is dangerous. And, if Loren's being completely honest himself, between that mix of strange jealousy and wariness and muted resentment, not all of him is sure he wants to get close. Azoth had been honest with him, sure, which Loren appreciates in his own way (though 'appreciates' is probably not the right word). But it's an easy thing for him to listen to Leah telling him what he wants to hear anyway and a not-so-easy thing for Loren to connect with the robot as things stand.
"Why does everyone take his side?" he asks her, petulantly. "And it's not like I was advocating for-- you're not listening to what I'm saying!"
Why didn't they try Gears?
Why didn't they try Gears? They have enough of them to throw at the problem--
"I'm not the one who gets to make those decisions!" he snaps at Lan, heated now. "Maybe it could have worked, but it doesn't matter now!"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Is that what she wants?
Doesn't he remember? In the tomb of her ancestors, underground, they had found a guardian serpent that had gone mad from hunger or corruption or any number of things. She never had found out. "If we can't do anything else for them - if there's no way to help them, and they're suffering every minute - then yeah. It hurts to think of what it means, and whether or not we're really doing the right thing, but it's the best we've got!"
Lan had apologized to it; had regretfully, lovingly slit its throat and held it as it died.
"We have a responsibility to make things better." He looks around furtively and she seems to get the hint, letting the blanket fall off of her shoulders a little. Arguing seems to get the blood flowing, although it's not what Lan would prefer to be doing to stave off a chilly morning.
"'His side'? What are you..." She narrows her eyes as if she's trying to figure him out, as if he's an unfamiliar word on a page, "You can't be serious, right? He wouldn't have hurt me if he weren't under Solaris's control in the first place. He's stuck there, just like you are - worse than you are, because you could do something. I just - you keep doing stuff you know is wrong, following orders you know are pretty much just evil, for what?" It spills over, the poisonous anger that's always been so quick to turn to sadness. "Is this how you're going to save your country? By acting like a coward?"
It hurts to say it to him. But he needs to hear it, Lan thinks.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He doesn't remember. It's just one of an number of things that have blurred together in his mind, over the years. More and more everything seems to be of the same color and texture, as indistinguishable from one another as a drop of water is to the stream. But what she's saying isn't wrong. The kindest thing sometimes is to end pain and suffering, and...
He wants to yell at her, almost. To tell her that a few minutes more of suffering didn't matter. Or to claim that it didn't matter because they were beyond being people anymore, or...
Or whatever it takes for it to feel like less of a raw wound. He knows already, deep in his heart: he'd sold himself out by thinking it was a worthwhile trade to stopping Siegfried. And now he has to have faith that it was, because it sure didn't feel like a victory then and definitely doesn't feel like a victory now. And yet, thinking it is one thing. Admitting it to another person -- and all the doors that would force wide open as a result -- is another.
Loren has been and is in the business of pretending these doors are shut tight.
They have a responsibility to make things better, she says, and he can only say, "I'm trying to," through gritted teeth, and a part of himself feels as if he's again lying, lying, lying. All he has to go on is Leah's promise of a better world, because it sure doesn't seem like there are any paths forward he can spot than the ones he's tried.
"How do you know that?" Loren asks of her. "No, go on. Tell me. How do you know he wouldn't hurt you? He's great at acting put-upon," he continues, eyes widen as he vents but a fraction of his bile, "but how do you know any of that's real? How do you know he's not just some program, acting like--" He doesn't believe that entirely, himself. There is something, he has to believe, of a 'self' within Azoth, but it certainly isn't the self Azoth projects to the rest of the world. If only he could do the same. But no matter how he tries, Loren is unrelentingly Loren, for good or ill.
It might mostly be 'for ill', of late, as Lan states. He knows it's wrong, so why does he keep doing things like this?
Is this how he's going to save his country? By acting like a--
The expression Loren makes might have been more at home on his face if she had shoved a knife into his chest. But of course, Lan doesn't know what Loren now knows: that Solaris is beyond saving. That his brother had once plotted to turn traitor against Solaris.
Engil always had known what to do. Just like with everything else, his brother had acted and forged ahead (or tried to). Just like with everything else, Loren is the one found wanting.
The awful moment where he just stares at Lan like that comes to an abrupt end when he hisses at her, something cousin to fury flashing over his features, "...And what makes you think I can do that? I'm not in the government. I'm only a captain, and in medical, at that! I'm not him!"
Go on, call me a coward again-- tell me again how I can't measure up--
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She would have responded that of course a few minutes matters. Even if you were used to it, and even if it was just a new flavor of agony, you'd give anything to be let up off of the altar just a little sooner--
She's angry with him because... because he's come so far, already. Because he can't give up now. Because she wants to save the world, and show Loren all the good in it that he still hasn't experienced. Lan blinks back tears and can't seem to do anything except pull the blanket tight around her arms again.
This again. She just stares at him, the anger slowly bleeding out into frustration and tired disappointment. "He could," she acknowledges. That hurts, too. "Anybody could. Leah could. You could." It feels cruel to say it, because he knows what he did and neither of them can make it not have happened. Lan wants so badly to make it not true.
She wants it so, so much. To live in a world where everything is fair and she has saved him for him and the answers are always neat and apparent.
She doesn't flinch when he hisses at her, fury like steam in her ears. He isn't anybody important. He isn't 'him'. And it's a sign of how close they still are, maybe, that Lan realizes who he's talking about. The only 'him' that maybe ever mattered to Loren, the man whose ghost haunts him and Leah Sadalbari both. Her face softens, Lan's eyes growing wet despite her best efforts to not cry.
"You don't need to be him. Nobody wants you to be!" She throws an arm wide, finally, exasperated enough to give up on her trapped body heat. The end of the blanket flops onto the street and Lan doesn't care. "You aren't your brother! I sure don't want you to be him! I just want you to be you!" She's not making any sense, is she. "I want you to stop going along with things that aren't right. I want you to, to speak up! I want you to quit--" Gebler. Solaris. His country. His family. "...I want you to quit... doing stuff that's just going to hurt you," she manages to say instead. "I want you to do the right thing, even when it's hard and it scares you and you could get in trouble."
Yeah. That's so much better. Lan gives up on pretense and wipes at her face, letting the tears soak into her sleeve before they can fall.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Yeah, he could. He could, but that would be an outright lie, considering how long Loren's spent running from himself in the first place only to find there's no escape. But--
That's not really the issue at hand here in the first place. The fact remains that he did something in exact opposition to the creed he ought to profess, regardless of his affiliation. And he knows it. And he can't admit it, because that would mean admitting--
Lan catches on so quickly. There's no one in the world Loren has looked up to more, resented more, and felt the absence of more, than his older brother. Not his father, not Commander Ramses. No one else. And how could he have done otherwise? Everyone wanted him to be Engil, or expected him to be: that's been the pattern since the day he was old enough to realize how other people looked at his older brother. He's never been able to catch up to the shadow that stretches before him still: even though he's older now than Engil ever got to be, his brother is still miles ahead of him. He's not even a match for the way his brother is still loathed by some, comes the ever more bitter thought. He's just Voss, the disappointment. Just a nuisance, an afterthought. The one everyone else avoids rather than--
He's not his brother, Lan declares, throwing her arms wide. She doesn't want him to be. Loren takes a step back, as if she had revealed she was loaded for bear under that blanket, openly rattled. She just wants him to be him? She might be the only one-- even now, Loren doesn't want to be Loren.
Technique isn't what he's lacking, Leah had said. Is that what he's missing? The ability to act instead of... going along with it and hoping it all works out. Or standing by as things fall apart, as he loses again and again what's important.
"...I can't," he utters, shaking his head in the face of what she's asking of him. "Do you even know what you're-- my family, they'd-- Leah-- I can't!"
'I'm counting on you,' Leah had said.
And she'd also told him, 'Don't disappoint me.'
The right thing, Lan bids him. He knows what she wants: she wants him to come with her. He wants to. He doesn't want to. He knows exactly what would happen to him and to what little remains of the Voss family. Even if it's hard, and even if it could get him in trouble, huh--
He takes one deep breath after another, as if thereby trying to steady himself, somehow. "...I can't," he says a third time. She was right when she called him a coward. "You should better by now! If you want someone to do your 'right thing'," he says, watching her as she wipes at her face and he knows, he knows she's crying because of him, "then you should find someone else." He looks away from her sharply, as if he can scarcely bear to see it.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
His family. His mother and father who wouldn't understand - who would consider it treason, just as much as Gebler would. Betrayal on more than one level, their last dregs of social grace dissolved by their son's defection. They'd be punished. He'd told her so.
Lan had liked Loren's father well enough when they had eaten dinner together in the Voss family home. He was soft-spoken and serious and seemed to worry about Loren, even if he'd never quite seemed to understand Lan's presence in their home while his son convalesced. He hadn't been rude to her, at least. She doesn't bode him any ill will!
But there are so many more people at stake than just Loren's parents. There are so many more people at stake than the populations of Etrenank and Little Firelight combined.
"..." She wipes her eyes and nose and sniffles. She doesn't want to argue. She wants to eat and drink together and talk about something that doesn't matter at all. "I don't care about somebody else," Lan continues stubbornly. "I care about you! I want you to be--" She struggles for the concept, floundering briefly. "The best 'Loren' you can be. The you that you can be if you stop doing things you know are wrong just because you're afraid of what will happen if you don't. And," she continues stubbornly, "and maybe it's not fair to ask that of you but I don't want you to be one of the bad guys, okay?!"
Lan can't hold back any longer and finally drops her blanket on the ground, crossing the last few steps to throw her arms around him regardless of their disagreement or the public setting. She couldn't even say it was to comfort him. Lan wants to be comforted, to be reassured that he won't be lost to the things he'll do just because someone - Leah - ordered him to. "Okay?!" she sniffles too close to his ear.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It would spell the end of them, one way or another. Perhaps if their position in Etrenank's society were better, they might have been able to weather the storm of having a son commit treason. But Engil's accident had long since knocked most of those supports away: there are some who would even delight in ensuring that the family took the fall.
Would Leah even intervene in such an event...? Would she do anything for the sake of her deceased husband's parents? Or would she consider it just punishment for Loren?
Loren can't help but think about these things, to play out in painstaking detail just what would become of his parents. And for what? Running off with some girl from the surface world? For the sake of his 'morals'? --That's not it, but they don't know the truth about Solaris. Except, even that truth doesn't matter, never has mattered. Even if he told them or anyone, it wouldn't change a thing. Perception is all that matters. Everything else is meaningless.
Even if it feels like it should matter. Even if it feels like it should matter more than anything.
Loren doesn't look at Lan as she pleads with him. It feels like he... shouldn't. The best he can be? "This is the best I can be," he utters, still unwilling to look her in the eyes. The 'him' she sees isn't real. It has to be a-- a delusion, or something like it. "What you're asking... I can't do what you want me to do."
He stiffens as she wraps her arms around him, unable or unwilling to evade her embrace. Even in this, his convictions are lacking. Even in this, he's a coward.
She's crying. Something in his gut twists. He can't do this. The more she pleads with him like this-- "Stop," he says hoarsely, trying to extricate himself from her and push her away.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It must be so easy for her. It must seem like the simplest thing in the world. Lan already left her village, her mother and brother, and stole the enshrined Medium on top of that. She wasn't even really punished for the theft! All because she is cherished by her gods, beloved by her people. Has Loren ever been accepted, for better and for worse, like that?
He isn't listening. He won't even look at her.
"You can do something!" she insists. Even if it's just questioning orders, or messing up little things. He's got to be able to do something.
But he won't. He can't.
Her embrace may be a plaintive thing, earnest and shameless just like Lan is, but she only holds on until he pushes her away. Even though she wants to cling, to tug him along with her... she can't. Lan's gaze falls on the pavement at their feet and stays there. "..."
It feels like she's going to lose him, but isn't Loren the one who stands to lose everything? Aren't Lan and the other surfacedwellers fighting to keep from losing more than they already have?
She's hurting him. Isn't she. Her fingers curl into loose fists at her sides. She doesn't want to. "..."
Lan stoops to pick up her blanket, wrapping it clumsily around herself. Tears continue to spill down her cheeks. "...Please promise you'll try," she begs.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
In a way, he's jealous of her, too. Some people seem as the circumstances of their lives is that much easier, compared to his-- sure, he's a First Class Solarian, and grew up with all the benefits that rank entitled him to. Sure, he has adept control of a magic that is, comparatively, rare in this world and all others. But these barely seem like compensation for all those things he does not have and, it seems, never will.
If it were just a matter of dropping his responsibilities and walking away--
In this moment, he wants nothing more. If only the consequences would not fall so freely.
Leah had promised a better, brighter world should her goals be attained. He had seized it with both hands only so he could try to want something more than this. For a little while, it had worked.
He doesn't answer Lan when she pleads with him.
...She doesn't cling when he pushes her away. Did he want her to?
He doesn't know.
She's still crying, he notes, looking at her in silence as he wonders if this might be the last time he ever sees her. He turns his head sharply, tearing his gaze away. He's lingering. He's making this more difficult.
And Loren turns then, because what else can he do? He needs to end this before he does something he regrets--
As if this weren't the thing he regrets already.
"...I'm not going to lie to you," he says, before he starts to walk away. He doesn't look back.