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

video.

[debtor]

[He's never been sure what to make of time travel and timelines and he's only became increasingly wary of the way they've taken to casually mucking about in history, the longer he'd stayed in this world. He's at fault, too. He's definitely at fault. And what they've done now, what they've "accomplished", is unthinkable. It frankly makes him ill.

They erased the city they were trying to save.

...What she's said makes sense. It's terrible, but they have to face the possibility. They're part of the timeline here as well, after all - are they really immune to the alterations they've made? But it doesn't line up entirely, either, with what he's seen. Heard. He still doesn't know what to think; he only has one counterargument.

And he sounds calm enough when he responds. (It wouldn't do not to be.)]

It's to do with the Transporter, I was told.

It snatches us up, but it can't hold on forever, sometimes it loses its grip. When we return home, it's all... reset.

[And isn't that what happened to him?]

None of us really know, but...

[But troubling time-hypotheses aside, it's what prompted this that concerns him the most right now.]

Private.

Lenalee, where are you now?

voice forever

[anklets]

[She won't be showing her face today, not even to Allen. Particularly not even to Allen. There is too much in her face which she cannot mask and it is making her ill, iller than she has felt in months.]

We need to know what makes it lose its grip so fast on some, and so slow on others. [ that's all she says, at first ] I'm in the castle. I'm alright.

[debtor]

If nobody has an answer... maybe there isn't a reason why. Just like there isn't a reason it picks some of us and not others - it's the same as a lottery, isn't it? [ that nobody enters. that they have no control over. ]

Perhaps it's because the machine is faulty.

[Whoever built it, after all, cannot be infallible. Maybe they spilt coffee on it.

There's a pause, and then a gentle,]

Would you mind company?

[anklets]

[Everything is so tightly interconnected, it can't possibly be... just because.]

Faulty... [ apparently this wasn't really meant to be something said aloud, it's murmured so quietly ] Mn. In a little while, maybe.

[Once she's put back everything that has been knocked out of place.]

I had never much liked the idea of playing God, we're no good at it.

[debtor]

Let me know when.

[She sounds like she could use some help, picking up the pieces. But he'll let her have her space.]

No, we're not. We're not meant to be, are we? We're just people...

but that's why, no matter what, we can't give up. We just - need to find a better way.

[For a moment, he seems to be watching something off-screen - before returning to her, smile sad and bright.]

However it works, I don't think you can ever really say that they "never arrived."

that was exactly one too many edits, pol, unacceptable

[anklets]

Even if we forget?

forgive me for i have sinned 1/2

[debtor]

You shouldn't worry about that right now, [ it won't get you anywhere, worrying about something that may be inevitable, that they may never have control over. that may happen any moment. it's like death. ] because we haven't forgotten them. At this moment, that's what's important.

[debtor]

[He knows still, that that may not be sufficient.

But he's thought a lot about the people who have disappeared, who have been sent home or 'undone', civilians and Transports alike, and he's come to a conclusion.]

I don't want to forget. Not again, if I can help it. When I went home, I'd forgotten it all - we all had. But... that doesn't mean that we had never arrived, does it?

Even if somebody is forgotten, or has forgotten, you can't say that they "never were." That's a sad way of thinking. They existed, and everybody leaves a mark on the world. And every absence is felt, as well. The people who have left us, they've all touched many lives... and those lives have touched others, on and on— [ a breath. ]

that's how being alive works... everything is interconnected, isn't it? Every life matters.

...That's why I want to do anything I can to hold onto their memories. I want to remember because they were here.

my inbox was full of shoujo hobo, it smelled awful but looked fantastic

[anklets]

[These are words she had needed to hear. Desperately, perhaps. One can only go so long off fragments of the world. She thinks her cheeks are wetter now than they had been a moment before, but- that's alright. He shan't judge her for it, not even if he were around to see.]

Thank you.