reach the residents

[ximilian]

● ● ● 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.

▶ NAV

Comments

[cruelyethuman]

[He rarely allows himself to think about the emotions of others; fleeting and shallow as they might be. Because they are nothing like him, barely touching the surface of the world when he's destined to change it.

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?

[vivecai]

No, [ comes her answer, quiet and somber. ]

But I think you already guessed that.

[cruelyethuman]

[There is another long pause, from him this time.] Guessing and knowing are two different things.

[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.

[vivecai]

Yes... I suppose they are.

[ 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.

[cruelyethuman]

Thank you. [He doesn't need pity, no. And there is no trace of it in her voice, her very human voice as he sighs.] For your honesty. And for those things.

[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.