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

[anklets]

[Each name a little stab of its own, so it's with remarkable restraint that she holds herself until the end of it, bruising her knees with her fingers because maybe then her voice won't creak and crack, but it still does.]

It will hurt no matter when I ask, or where, or who. [ someone will have always just lost someone else, she has lived it often enough, don't waver, think towards the future, carry that weight ] I don't want to move blindly forward anymore.

[overclocking]

[ And he understands that, too. It's so easy to stop moving, when there's nothing ahead of you but darkness. But stopping is the same as burying yourself alive. All you're doing is wrapping yourself in it. ]

If you stopped running [ "Running," it's how Rosette would describe it. Perhaps for Lenalee it's something slower and more sombre than that. It seems fitting. ] right at this moment, what would you do?

[anklets]

[What she wants, desperately, is to set a light that


no one has to offer.]

I- [ the word is scratchy, cuts off into a lengthy silence which ends even more roughly. "running", that's right, she's still just running away-- but what if she stopped? ] I'm not going to.

[overclocking]

If you've already decided that, there's nothing to gain in asking questions like this. [ Other than more nightmares, maybe. ]

[ There's silence on the line for a long moment, while he chooses his words. The timing of this isn't a coincidence, he knows that much for sure. He's seen them together enough- in the VR room, in Las Vegas. No one stays up all night awaiting someone's return unless that someone is pivotal to their ability to close their eyes peacefully. ]

I'm sorry. [ Winces; she must be sick of platitudes by now. But he means it for himself, too, and Alice, and Rosette, and Mr. Gilbert... ] ... He was my friend, too.

[anklets]

There isn't nothing!

[She cracks and falls quiet, suspiciously so, pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes until they're wet and she sees stars. "That boy who Fell... I don't know what happened to him. I don't know anything!"]

And there's more to this than just- Oz.

[The final straw, of sorts.]

[overclocking]

I know there's more than just Oz. [ Voice quite suddenly flat, maybe even a little cold; he doesn't need reminding. He doesn't need reminding. ]

But if you're so determined to find blood on your hands, at least do it where others won't be forced to feel complicit. [ Feels another stab of anger for Alice, and desperately hopes she doesn't check the network tonight. ] I'm tired of listening to people cry.

[ It's impossible to violently hang up a tablet, but the abrupt silence on the other end of the line is pointedly curt, regardless. ]