voice

[anklets]

[This query brought to you by a pretty handful of missing puzzle pieces, not that you'd know, since Lenalee has no intent to justify or explain that imagery, nor to keep picking at scabs until they fester.]

We've already seen how the smallest change made can rewrite the entire history of this world. People are unborn, warheads are undropped... because we've cut out the circumstances which led to their happening.

How do you think that it might be the same for us? Transports come and go so often here and no one knows why. Whatever we do, we are always altering chances, there is no reason not to consider they could also be our own. That someone arrived on a day no longer existing may suddenly leave, or return by new circumstance, or forget they were ever here before.

It may be that we don't "go home", just. "Never arrive".

[ about ten minutes after broadcast, through careful squinting and experimentation, the feed is locked from Gilbert Nightray ]

Comments

Voice; private

[anklets]

[Won't kid herself into thinking she'd seen his name and expected anything different, with how quickly they always fail to match up. ]

Yeah.

Voice; private

[maddeninghatter]

And Alice, too. And Ahiru. And —

[ Now he's angry. ]

Lock it from everybody, you selfish girl!

[anklets]

[Lenalee thought she had swallowed it down quite admirably, the ache in her throat that comes with trying to make it through painful words.

Maybe not so much. She can't be cross with Break for this one.]

Aren't I?

[maddeninghatter]

[ ............damn.

She's a kid, she's just a scared kid, trapped in a world she didn't make, afraid and alone. Forcibly orphaned, like all the rest. Too prickly to let anyone look after her, too determined to seem like the grownup she isn't.

Oz had probably worked his way under that frosty interior, brought a little bit of sunshine.... ]

Saying things like this....

[ He had just dressed her down, hadn't he, for wanting to save those pitiful few doomed Initiative people. She was wrong, of course, but a child can't be expected to know that. A child only feels loneliness and pain. A child blames herself when bad things happen, or when people leave her. ]

The way Time works... the past and the future... these things are too big for any one person to grasp.

[anklets]

[She is a child of war, but only of one war, so unfortunately it hadn't done much to set her up for anything other than. Everyone involved with the Order-- the Finders, the Science Division, those who supported the Church... they all already had their losses plotted out and planned for.

Here, it hadn't been clear what the extent of their losses could be until they'd spilled out in nuclear wastelands and then snowdrifts.

Her cheeks burn with all that is losing friends to something she doesn't understand. Death left no room to question, not like this Time and Chance business. There's no Earl here to keep her at a wary distance.]

It's... awfully fragile. [ as her voice is now ] If there's the possibility we may be part of the reason people keep coming back and going again, how are we meant to fight?

---->action

[maddeninghatter]

[ The tablet creates distance, which on the one hand is less awkward... ]

KNOCK! KNOCK!

[ ....and on the other, ridiculous. ]

dammit break 1/2

[anklets]

[Not having expected anyone to come seeking her out, less still Break, even less Break after the words they've shared, Lenalee is somewhere between tears and frustration. She dries her face with the worst kind of guilt bubbling in her, gasping, sniffling.]

[anklets]

Wh-What--

[maddeninghatter]

[ A knock is a formality, really; a preamble to his just appearing out of the shadows of her room. He is somehow straddling a chair with his hand outstretched.

He is smiling... ]

Now, now. Don't make such a fuss.

[ His fingers open, revealing a handful of gaily-wrapped hard candies. Misdirection is the magician's trick, so that perhaps she will not notice how his smile is really more of a fixed rictus. Because somebody like him can't be affected by a child's tears; nor by his own sense of loss. ]

[anklets]

[With cheeks shamefully red and still wet in streaks where she'd missed, Lenalee wishes there were a switch to turn tears off but apparently there only exists one to turn them on. She's struck by a childish feeling of exposure and covers her mouth until it stops twisting.

Why must he always appear? Like some jack-in-the-box... Offering sweets.]

I'm sorry. [ he likely won't care for this but she hates even more the idea of being coddled, and at least it is an honest apology ] I hadn't meant for anyone to think I intended blame. But the idea of changing so much and not being affected by it... Isn't that like something out of a fairytale?

[maddeninghatter]

And I'm sorry for being cross with you. I know very well that the person you're blaming the most for all this is...

[ He closes his hand and swings out of the chair, floating up on his toes and then down, so that he's half-kneeling, half-crouching right beside her. His fingers open again, but this time he's holding a handkerchief up to her. ]

...yourself. You're wondering what you could have done differently, hm?

[ Kids who don't like being coddled are the kids who never had the luxury of it. ]

[anklets]

[Well, she's certainly never been able to afford the finer things.

Before his voice has even faded from the air, something very big inside her gives way, though she doesn't realise it yet, though there is a hitch which runs through her fingers as she reaches for that cloth. She stares at it a moment, brings it to her chest. There is a ridiculous comfort in it she can take from, selfishly.]

Too much is breaking.