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reach the residents
● ● ● REACH THE RESIDENTS
For any questions you want to ask Viveca or Degar and receive an IC response, please direct them here. Please indicate in the subject line who you are trying to contact.
// VIVECA
Hi, what can I help you with?
// DEGAR
Today was gonna be the day, but they'll never throw it back to you. And by now, you should've somehow realized what you're not to do.
Voice.
[The fights with the Transformers and Daisy attacking him on the graveyard. He had been more himself than he felt at the moment.]
Self-defense wasn't accepted the last time, why would it matter now.
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[ said rather dryly. ] When someone is attacking you and you defend yourself in order to not die, I count that as self-defense. Going to attack someone who is unconscious for something he did or might do in the future? I call that a premeditated murder attempt.
I hope that you can see the difference.
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Does that mean no late-night visit?
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[ she sounds so tired. what is it with these people and seeming to think that being badly hurt is somehow okay? ]
Unless you've also taken to late-night games of chess or shooting practice, then no. [ yes, she does meet with some to play games or practice shooting. yes, this is meant as a joke. ]
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[Unlike Viv, Aleksander sounds-- off. As if he's speaking in the dream, voice distant and unaffected.]
My nights are my own, and so is how I spend them. [Drinking heavily in his rooms, mostly. To keep the nightmares at bay.]
Thank you, Viveca.
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[ her voice is quiet, there. she hasn't forgotten about their conversation, about aleksander's realisation he wouldn't remember it all — that the alina here would be the last he'd be seeing her, the way she is, now. ]
Thank you, for your honesty.
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[The resignation to his fate that came, not from knowing it, but from feeling it. Every. Single. Second. Of. Eternity.
The widening chasm of despair and for that to be a distant memory as well. It might have been a trick of the orb that allowed him to see it, but it was the future waiting for him at the end of all things.
Nothingness.]
I did promise not to murder anyone, and to talk to you.
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[ just waiting for it all to come true — a destiny that's inescapable, one you simply wait and wait while knowing every day exactly what you're giving up. ]
You did. Not everyone who promises me something keeps it, though. [ so she's glad he did. she had taken a gamble, then — deciding to trust him, initially, and then again after his murder attempt. ]
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Not that he hasn't thought about it, in a million different ways, since learning that the regret can be changed.] It isn't a matter of good or worse, it simply is.
I would think you of all people would understand that, seeing as how you gave up your body to change yours.
[There's no spite in his voice, just the same tired, numbness that has been present since he switched to talking.]
Was it worth it, Viveca? Your sacrifice?
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[ understand it, that is — she understands better than most. it isn't a coincidence she decided to take the risk of bringing him to be a part of the team; he knows much that she does, too, the weight of a people oppressed on your shoulders, maneuvering from the shadows, making hard decisions on what level of sacrifice is acceptable, what the phrase for the greater good truly means. what it should mean.
then, softly, ]
... yes. It was. If I was taken back to that moment, I'd choose it all over again.
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He will see forever, but until very recently, he had no idea what forever might mean. The comprehension of a child - forever is the span of time between heartbeats. The dull waiting for the light to return as the shadows press in closer at night.
But now he does.
He knows.
Has already seen it, in the short seconds the orb trapped him in the eternal nightmare of Scorpion's Bend and the fate he will have to face eventually.
It makes food taste like dust and ash on the back of his tongue, the lives lived around him fading from already-faint to near-transparent. Why care when everyone will die soon?
It always hurts more if you care.
Viveca's words-- that existing alone inside a machine was worth it, even if it went on for eternity.]
Can you ever go back home, Viveca?
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But I think you already guessed that.
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[Is it pity, this vague ping of emotion that her words bring. Or is it more akin to empathy? Aleksander doesn't know, not anymore, if he ever did. It was all a weakness, to get mired in the banal soup of feelings. It was too human.
But he feels human, watching the darkness spread across the wall in his room, forever ringing in his ears and behind his closed eyelids.]
Could you try to have kvas brought in on the next shipment of supplies? And adventure books. Movies about it, about adventure and-- a rabbit. A girl falling down the hole and seeing a whole new world.
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[ she would refuse it, his pity; but then, she suspects he would refuse hers, too. perhaps what they have instead is a mutual understanding — of a changed future looming in front of them, even if it was their choice. ]
Of course. I'll have those for you.
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[His wooing had come to a screeching halt since the mission, the ever-present urgency calming under the nightmare that the orb had conjured up just for him. His own personal hell.
His future.]
Sleep well, Viveca.