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(no subject)

Who: Sorey, Zaveid, Dezel, Mikleo
Broadcast: Closed to those listed above
Action: Huntress
When: post Lailah's departure

Action. Huntress

[Sorey is just finishing up assembling their second engine when he feels it.

The abrupt lack of something, deep inside him, resonating like the strike of a gong. He smacks a hand against a bulkhead to keep from lurching forward and smacking his face into the wall, reaching frantically out for cords attaching his soul to his seraphim. Dezel, Zaveid, Mikleo-

Lailah.

She's still there, it's still there, but weak and distant. Like Edna's. The warmth of her fire has vanished, barely a flicker of what it was when she was here. Does that mean she's been sent home? Gods, Sorey hopes it does, prays that's what it means and not something...not something horrible.

To be sure he jumps to his feet and rushes out to check the ship for her. Maybe just- maybe something just happened, an augment glitch, maybe she just traveled too far from the ship for him to feel her (but he's pulled Dezel's wind across the ships before, it shouldn't have changed anything). He grabs his comm and hurriedly locks a broadcast; he has to check on the others, make sure they're okay, to see if they're still here.]

Broadcast. CLOSED

Guys?! Are you still here, is everybody okay?

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[Sorey shuffles back to the Huntress some time later, plunking himself down outside the shuttle bay to wait for Mikleo's return. Dezel had helped stave off some of his fear, but Sorey still can't help but worry.]

[Suffice to say he didn't find any clues. Mikleo returns to the ship some time later, venturing out to find Sorey waiting for him. His expression is telling, as is the fact that Lailah isn't coming out with him. It's pretty clear what must have happened.

He steps over and sits down right beside Sorey, shoulder to shoulder.]

I've... never liked how abrupt this always is.

Mmm. [It feels like a death. This is the first time it's happened with someone from home, though. Elize, Cole, Obi Wan...they've lost a lot of friends but Sorey at least has the comfort that they're back home, where they belong.]

I hope Lailah doesn't remember what happened here. She'd be sick with worry if she did.

Yeah.

[No sense in denying that. They hadn't done too well on their own last time, and they're still putting themselves back together after all of that. They've vowed not to let history repeat itself, but that's much easier said than done.]

...I've heard that no one remembers, so it's safe to assume. Try not to worry about it.

[He knows Sorey will, but, you know. Try.]

[Sorey directs a puff of air up at his bangs and nods. He knows; he has to try not to worry. Worrying does literally no good whatsoever, especially when he has no basis for it.]

...Dezel had to leave for his shift, but Zaveid is on his way over.

[That's good to hear. Zaveid's been a little bit better about not dodging them since both he and Sorey had a proper hash-out with him, so Mikleo's grateful that this means he's reaching out. With Lailah gone - clearly the one who's on the best terms with him since the hellion incident - it would have been easy for him to retreat on his own again.]

Good. I don't think he should be alone right now... I'm pretty sure he's known her longer than any of us.

[Not that it made her any less special to them - Sorey in particular, a Shepherd without a prime lord again - but still. Zaveid's lost enough, and it's impossible to forget now that he knows what he knows.]

It does seem kind of like everybody else knows everybody, huh? Lailah knew Edna, they both knew Zaveid...Zaveid knows Dezel even if Dezel doesn't remember. And Lailah knows Gramps too, doesn't she?

Maybe when you get old enough, you can't help but know everybody else.

[Mikleo is quiet for a moment, hesitant, before offering up a response.]

Compared to the number of humans in the world, there aren't that many seraphim. Lailah and Zaveid traveled a lot, and who knows what Gramps' life was like before Elysia... maybe they met because they were explorers.

That's true... [It probably really narrows down your options for company when you live thousands of years and can't speak with most of the human population because they can't see or hear you.] I wish we'd asked Gramps more about his life before us. Though he'd probably just blow us off again.

Yeah... I imagine we're still too young to know the really important stuff. "Wait at least another one hundred years!" he'd say, and smoke his pipe until we left him alone.

[It usually worked, too- and invited a number of debates about what the truth of Gramps' history might have been.]

[Puts on his most Grampsiest tone, even squinting his eyes and shaking an imaginary pipe.] "You two should concern yourselves more with how reckless you can be than the nonsense of an old man's past! Pay attention to the path before your feet or you'll just fall flat on your faces!"

[Pfft. Pfffffft. Mikleo tries to keep a straight face, but he ends up having to cover it because seriously, Sorey, that impression. Seriously.]

You're ridiculous. ...That does sound like Gramps, though.

[It feels good to laugh so Sorey chuckles along; it's always easy to laugh when he gets Mikleo to crack. ...even given the circumstances.]

It did, didn't it? I'm kind of worried he'll just appear out of nowhere and give me a good whack for that.

Sometimes I wish he would. It's not as if he can possibly know everything, but he has a way of making you believe that he does. I kind of miss that.

[Lailah had that air about her too, sometimes- the secrets that she kept were a burden to bear, but her reassuring presence had a way of leaving one settled, calm- like things were going to turn out okay, no matter what. After dying, when he'd woken up, hearing her voice in those scattered messages had done wonders to ease his concern about all he'd missed.]

[Sorey almost wishes Gramps would show up out of the blue too, though he's terrified of what his reaction could be when he hears about what they've done. He's not even sure he could manage to look him in the eye. Everything he'd warned them about humans, Sorey went right ahead and did. He's not sure he could bear the shame.

That's how it was with Lailah, too. She still had faith in him, unerring and strong, and that tore him apart almost as bad as her distrust would have. That all she could tell him was how grateful she was to not lose another Shepherd...]

...Mikleo, that's cruel. Why would you want him to show up just in time to scold me?

...Well.

[Mikleo lets that sit between them for a moment, internally debating. It's true, Gramps would've torn into the both of them for what happened, but Sorey usually gets the worst of it since he's more frequently the instigator and rebel. He'd definitely get the worst of it here, and he's already guilty enough. There's no need to punish him more.]

...Let's not tell him, then.

About my spot-on impressions, hm? [Sorey wouldn't dream of keeping something more serious from Gramps. Not like he wouldn't be able to tell the second he looked at either of them anyway.]

Hm.

[It's true, Gramps would know something happened. Sooner or later the secret would come out. Mikleo just doesn't like the idea of it- the fact that once again, Sorey would face the worst of it, even if Gramps has good intentions. And with how Sorey's opinion of humans has already been affected by his own weakness... yeah, he doesn't like it.]

Do you think, while scolding you, he'd tell you anything you haven't already told yourself?

[Sorey sighs and lets his head rest back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him.] I don't know.

He'd probably just say...what's done is done. And tell us to remember to follow our hearts next time.

Edited 2017-03-03 03:04 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds about right. He was usually wise about things like that.

[He could be stonefaced and stubborn most of the time, about the most inconsequential things, or so it seemed to them. But he'd always been mindful of their hearts, protecting them from themselves as much as from the world. Annoying as his rules had been, it'd kept them alive until they grew enough to protect themselves.]

But he'd want us to find our own way, instead of relying on him too much. And since we're doing that now anyway...

I've been thinking about that lately. [Lailah is always a huge proponent of doing things for yourself, as yourself, for every one of them. Sorey struggles to find that balance between duty and personal motivation every day, but she'd always been there with a kind word or a piece of advice to help him through it. She's far more patient with him than he has ever been with himself, that's for sure.]

Remember our dream?

You don't need to ask, of course I do.

[There's a reason it's their dream, after all. He glances over, though, waiting for Sorey to continue.]

I think I'm finally beginning to understand how much there is to overcome before we can realize it.

I don't think- I don't think Gramps was right, when he said humans should live with humans and seraphim with seraphim. If that were the case, people like Lailah and Dezel, who love humans and want to be with them, wouldn't exist. And I don't like that he always thought I would leave to live with humans one day without even talking to me about it.

...but I don't think it's right to dismiss how Gramps felt either. He's so old that even Lailah looks to him as an elder. And there was Sindra, who only came back in memory of Margaret, and the seraphim from the hunting ground cliffs who were ready to attack us to make us leave.

...I think until I accept the truth of their feelings too, I can't fully realize our dream with you. So if that means we have to rely on him and on Lailah's words and wisdom, then it's not so bad for us to take our time figuring it out.

[Mikleo falls silent at that, looking torn for a while as he debates how to respond. It's so much harder, now that he knows more of what happened in the past- why seraphim and humans have such a broken relationship, why resonance is so rare. Above all, why there are such a small number of seraphim who want anything to do with humans. Before, they'd assumed that resonance had been the primary factor- a lack of exposure to seraphim, a lack of willingness to believe. Now his eyes have been opened to a completely different problem: a lack of trust, because a once-peaceful coexistence had been shattered by the cruelty and greed of mankind.

"We have different values," Edna had said, when they'd discussed the difficulties of coexisting with humans, and he wonders what her experience might have been back then. She was old too, wasn't she? Like Zaveid, like Lailah. Maybe she'd been tethered, or knew someone who had, or knowing what had happened to the others was enough to justify how she felt about humans. Who could blame her? Who could blame any of them? If he hadn't been raised alongside Sorey, if he'd lived in that era and been chained to an exorcist with his mind sealed away, like some kind of soulless doll used to channel power...

...it's terrifying, and he doesn't want to think about it. How different their lives would have been, and... whether or not he could ever forgive it.

Hearing Sorey's words makes it harder to hold it in, but he knows it isn't time yet, nor is it his story to share. He only wishes it wasn't something he had to dance around, until Sorey found his own equilibrium again. Instead he hugs his knees close to his chest, gazing down at the floor between them, setting free a quiet exhale.]

There's a lot about the world that we still don't know. Not even recent history, nevermind what happened in ancient times. But history is where the answers are- to bridge the gap between humans and seraphim, it's important to know how it fell apart.

[Even with everything that Zaveid told him... even he doesn't know the whole truth. There's so much more to learn, and so many more questions he wants to ask, now that he knows what to look for.]

After we deal with Heldalf, we should go looking for them. Ruins, libraries, seraphim who're willing to share their stories. Whatever we can find that explains why we live apart.

[Sorey pauses for a moment; it's not- well, it sounds like something Mikleo would say. He's always so careful, always meticulous about gathering data and formulating a theory based on the evidence present (except for when he's disagreeing with Sorey just to keep him from getting ahead of himself) but this feels...different. It's not the answer Sorey quite expected from Mikleo.

Well. They're both changed by what happened.] I bet Mayvin would know where to start. He's been across the continent and the whole world; if there's anybody who can give us a headstart on uncovering the gaps in our history, it's him.