2022-03-28: What It's Like When Someone Cares
- Log: 2022-03-28: What It's Like When Someone Cares
- Cast: Milly Ashford, Emilia Eschonbach
- Where: Orbital Ring
- OOC - IC Date: 28 March 0096
- Summary: Two students of Ashford Academy- a first year and a, uh, fourth year- go back to get their things from the hotel after Sheryl Nome's atmospheric concert. Emilia slips up. Milly tries to make a bet. Information comes up that changes the calculus.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
In the few days since the Sheryl Nome concert Emilia has been...back to her usual self. Quiet, retreating, and back to not reaching out. For all the concert was a wonderful- even life changing- experience, the early return to Earth, the knowledge that she wouldn't be able to return to space again- surely Milly's trick couldn't work twice.
But worst of all the gorgeous yukata Kallen had helped her pick and the Sheryl Nome items Milly had bought for her- precious, valuable, meaningful gifts, the first she had received in years, the first she had been allowed to keep- were lost. And she'd learnt as a child that anything forgotten or lost was gone forever, and no effort would be expended to retrieve them. December 0090 had scorched that awful lesson into her forever.
It was her fault, though. She tricked Milly and Kallen into thinking she deserved anything. They'd surely know better now than to waste time and money on her.
So the fact that now she was on the orbital ring, again, for the second time in a week, was throwing Emilia for a loop. The second arrival had been no lest breathtaking than the first, but at least this time Milly didn't have to remind her to move out of the way. So now they were walking through the Orbital Ring proper, on a route Emilia remembers as being on the way towards the hotel.
She frankly has no idea what to make of this.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
There's no excuse for leaving a good memory behind. Milly has noticed Emilia's surprise at the fact that they're going back for their things -- but she put that whole line of thinking to bed with a playful, "It's actually cheaper for us to go up than for them to ship these things! Shipping something down the ring to a Britannian gets pricey unless you're using Tower."
Is it true? Hard to say -- but it's not implausible.
Milly doesn't press Emmy to talk too much -- she knows Emilia is always a little on the withdrawn side, and while she wants to push that, now isn't really the time.
As they arrive at the hotel, Milly asks, "Where'd you slip off to during the attack, anyway?" It's something that it's only occurred to her to ask *now*. "It definitely feels like things are getting a little rougher out there... this is actually the second time I've been in a situation like that." She seems to be holding it together pretty well for someone having that experience on the regular!
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
And that hadn't actually done anything to ease Emilia's confusion, despite the argument making perfect sense with her worldview. Of course Japan would charge extra to Britannia. Everyone would, if they could, and they deserved it. Wait, did Milly mean that the tickets cost extra too? Still,it had changed her mental tracks for a bit.
Still, as they get to Hotel, Emilia's still... expecting everything to be gone. Maybe to remind her the lesson, but that's not what Milly would do. Right? Maybe she would. Maybe Emilia's wrong and Milly is just enacting some elaborate plan.
But for once she dares to hope it's not the case, rather than expect it.
The question doesn't catch her off guard- she'd been preparing an excuse pretty early. Maybe she's overthought it, but... leaning into her known weaknesses has worked in the past. "...I froze," she starts, trying to get her halting cadence right. "I started panicking and.. I think I got knocked over. I lost track of everyone else so I... ran and hid." There's shame there, if mostly feigned. "...I'm sorry." A pause. "For causing you trouble, I mean."
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly strides up to the counter confidently, proudly. "Yes, I'd like all the effects from every room under the name Ashford." She slips her ID and bank cards across the desk, and gives a little more identifying information if pressed.
Only once she's done with that does she turn back around to Emilia, resting her elbow on the desk. "What, this? This isn't even the first time I've had to do this. Two years ago or so I had to meet a Duke's son to go see some hideous thing he was fixated on in Neo-Canada. The whole trip ended with him cancelling our reservations and heading down to Earth... I was staying at a hotel, so I had to come up and get my things again." Milly tells this story like it's funny.
"That's fine. I think that's even the smart thing to do," Milly says, on Emilia's excuse. "I'm glad you're safe." She knows Emilia's not quite ready to hear that Milly is happy for her in and of herself, so she adds, "It sounds like it'd make you pretty unhappy if we had to settle a wrongful death suit from your grandfather."
She's being oblique about it, but what she's *actually* trying to signal Emmy is 'your frustrations have been heard and I'm accounting for them.' (It's even true!)
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
The sheer casualness with how Milly handles the affair, like it's just normal. That she's done this before, that other people get to just get to go back for those few, precious things you had to leave behind. Or had taken from you. It was this easy, to them? This simple? And she wasn't worth even that... The anger boils under the surface.
Another blow... if Milly knew the truth, surely she'd think Emilia was an idiot. The thought, again, that Milly could really think that she's worth caring about, sits ill with her- and Milly's able to short circuit that a little, retarget her. Her eyes dart around the room, checking her surroundings, beforte giving Milly a tiny barely noticeable nod.
And then... silence, that Emilia feels she should fill. But with what? She has nothing to offer. So she leaps for that conversational vine she missed earlier. "Um, what... what was the first time? Like the concert." She immediately looks away, worried she's stepped on a landmine. "If it's... okay to ask..." Her voice gets quiet again, trailing off.
Emilia, you moron. Why would she want to talk about that?
The fact that Milly is the one who raised it doesn't occur.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Well, the first one wasn't quite this bad," Milly concedes, with a shake of her head. "I was with my family on business in Hong Kong during the last Gundam Fight. That was a little frightening, but not as bad as people make it out to be. This felt a little different. The Gundam Fighters did a lot to make the situation feel safer."
She thinks about that for a while -- it's been a long time, but... "I think about that trip sometimes. It was actually kind of a big deal for middle-schooler me!" she admits. Maybe seeing Emmy this vulnerable has her in a philosophical mood, for some reason.
Whatever conclusions it led her to, though -- those she's less interested in spelling out just yet. "This was definitely worse, but the first time is probably why I kept my cool." ... Mostly. She does remember calling out to Emilia with just a hair more distress than maybe she'd intended, when she lost track of her.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
The experience Milly describes is... Well, Emilia tries to imagine it, but her only other experiences are the concert, where at least most people weren't hurt, and...
She shakes her head a little, not wanting to go back into it. "Wouldn't it be a big deal no matter how old you are?" There's... Emilia's delivery is so flat all of a sudden. She's not even sure what she's feeling, but it's jagged.
Milly could keep her cool, and Emilia couldn't. Why would she be so wanting to keep around an impulsive idiot like her?
Emilia starts fidgeting, looking uneasy. She'd hope that question would last longer, and she turns to look at the elevators, waiting for the personal effects. No that's antisocial, she looks back to Milly. No, now she's staring. She looks down at her shoes. There should be words. Or something. Anything.
It turns out when all your conversational skills are based around 'getting out of one as fast as possible', moments like this are... impossible? Impossible feels right.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly... wasn't actually expecting the press. It catches her off guard, a bit -- and when she sees Emmy looking for somewhere else to be, she realizes she's going to have to actually take that one and run with it instead of just treating it like nothing small-talk.
"I mean more that it was kind of formative," Milly says, as they continue waiting. She glances back, asking, "Is this going to be much longer?" She gets an answer in the negative -- just another minute or two, apparently. So she keeps talking. "The Devil Gundam was about resetting the environment back to some 'better state,' and it decided humans were the problem. It got fixated on the way things needed to be."
Putting her thoughts in order for Emmy's sake is actually kind of hard. Milly doesn't introspect, despite herself; she just keeps moving. This is... a little new. Emmy's quietude forces the issue. "That's when I started thinking that things that stay the same start dying, I guess," she admits. "If you can't change how you think the world should be, it's going to get changed for you!"
Conspiratorially, Milly whispers, "I like to be the one getting people to change."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emilia nods- she can understand formative. It's just that Milly's formative was good. Gundam Fighters saved the day in Hong Kong. Getter Robo, on the other hand...
She's surprised to hear this bit about Devil Gundam, though. She'd always heard 'secret Japanese bioweapon', though from unreliable sources. Emilia looks up at Milly though. Things that stay the same start dying. If that's the case then...
"What about the people who won't change? Why are they still here?" That anger Emilia had ever so briefly in the club room when Milly introduced herself is there, for a moment. "Why is Brit-" She seems to have not realized what she was saying, the anger getting there before she can stop herself. She backs away from Milly, like she's expecting someone to take a swing. "I'm sorry!"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Unlike Emilia, whose family seems to loathe her, Milly has always been expected to be well-read and well-informed. Her grasp of the world has a *somewhat* Britannian slant, of course -- she's certainly no secret supporter of the Black Knights or Celestial Being. But she does read, and in the wake of Neo-Japan's ascent to the Ruler of All Known Space position, Raizo Kasshu's exoneration was interesting reading.
She sees Emmy's flinch for talking out of turn about Britannia -- and sees the backstep and the posture for what it is. "I'm not going to hit you for that." There's a twinkle in Milly's eye as she says, "If I were in the business of throwing a punch for every vaguely political allusion, I'd be in the Federation Assembly and my family would probably be happier about it."
Hotel staff arrive with their things; they've taken the liberty of zipping up the luggage and packing everything into it. Granted, that means they're going to have to actually sort out whose is whose when they get home.
Milly offers an offhanded, "Thanks," and then returns her full attention to Emmy.
"These things don't happen all at once. It's not like you have a heart attack the instant you settle down." She moves toward Emmy, rather than toward the bags, for now; it's a slow movement, relaxed, with open body language. "Sometimes it's a pretty slow death. But it happens."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Milly's casual, easygoing approach is not... the reassurance Emilia needs there. But it's more than she usually gets. Their luggage arriving- well, everyone's luggage, she guesses. It turns her head away from Milly, before the blonde advances. She freezes, looking at Milly, looking at her body language.
She doesn't step back. It's a conscious decision. She listens as Milly speaks again. 'But it happens' is simultaneously the best and worst bit. Sometimes it needs to happen faster. Sometimes it needed to happen 16 years or so ago.
Emilia's voice is very quiet- she goes back to the statement above. She wants to trust Milly. She wants to so bad. She has had reason to, but it might still be a trap. Trust is so easily betrayed. "....what *are* you going to do?" She asks. But she's asking. She's not quivering. She's not running. She's not freezing totally.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Well, first, I'm going to get walking, and so are you," comes the answer, as Milly snags her bag and gestures for Emmy to do the same. This isn't really a particularly great loitering conversation. "I'll tell you once we've got that part going.
It's once they've started moving -- once this isn't traceable to either of them, and when people won't get a whole lot of insight into either of them from the occasional dropped snippet -- that she starts things up again. "The first thing I'm going to do is: I'm going to guess you've been bitten by a shark or two in what used to be New Yark's political scene for speaking your mind." She's known some firebrands. The Ashford family has a tendency to adopt them, after all...
... come to think, with *that* conclusion, Emilia and Lelouch are actually a lot alike. Lelouch hides it better, but...
Maybe Emilia's the type of person to shake up the world with her anger, too.
That gives her a lot to work with, actually. She shoves a few things around in her conscious, practiced estimation of Emilia. "The second thing I'm going to do is ask you something, instead of pressing on it." There's a playful smile as she asks: "Do you like guys, girls? Both? Only the in-betweens? Neither? I keep tabs on Ashford students, and I've *never* broken confidentiality on this one."
She has to be going somewhere with this.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emilia nods, grabbing her own luggage, and anything else she's supposed to carry, such as Kallen's. So Milly isn't going to punish her? Or is she getting ammunition. When they're moving though- Emilia winces at the mentioned of 'what used to be New Yark'. That pain is still there, and real, and she's forbidden to speak of it.
It takes her a moment, but she nods. "Once." Her free hand subsconsciously goes to her cheek. She was lucky not to lose a tooth. That's what the estate nurse said. "And I... saw what happened to someone else." Grandfather was the ancient, scarred Great White of New Yark, after all. He wasn't known to hold back. "I... didn't do it again, after that."
And that question is like a gundanium wall across the maglev tracks. Emilia's eyes widen, and her mouth drops open in shock and she just stops walking. It takes her another 5-10 seconds to process: dangerous in a crowded place, even a high class one. When she finishes, she chases after Milly, desperate not to be left behind deciding that her best option is to pretend that the last question was 30 seconds ago, and she definitely answered it.
She's blushing. She's avoiding eye contact. She's nervous.
She's considering a question she's never had to consider before.
And she's absolutely gone quiet again.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly notes the pain. Notes the movement to her cheek, too. She decides to spare Emmy the emotion it wells up in her; it's offensive to her sense of noblesse oblige. "... I see," is all she says, instead, softly. "Well, Ashford isn't quite like that. ... It's pretty gossipy, though, so you might have some advantages if you feel the room out before you say that kind of thing..." Best not to lie and say it's a fully happy place.
More interesting is the stop. Milly runs a few things through her head about what that could mean. It could just be that Emmy considers the question itself scandalous. Then again -- the blush already tells her a fair bit. "Well, hm. I was *going* to offer you some insurance if you thought I was going to tell people every time you got upset, but I do need to know what you'd want."
Milly doesn't seem okay with Emilia staying quiet.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emilia nods. She wants to say 'She'll be careful' but not only will the words not come, she clearly just wasn't. She has to be smarter. She's already been the victim of Ashford's gossip- news of her total lack of status and importance spread faster than other schools. And the bullying wasn't long after.
The pressing on the question, though, her mouth moves a few times before locking up again. She wasn't allowed to express those feelings. Or have those feelings, maybe? Her understanding was 'she was going to be married to someone and that was that, so it's better to not have an opinion.
But Milly seems to keep putting the lie to that, ever so slowly. The fact that she had a right to a marriage interview, at least, was a surprise.
"....not sure," Emilia manages to force out, eventually. "But... when the older girls in the club..." She pauses again, trying to work it out. "Um, when they... pay attention to me... it's really nice." She looks over to Milly. "Does that mean I like girls?"
She's bright red, embarrassed and ashamed. There's so much she doesn't know, about herself, of society, of the world. She really is as naive as people say, isn't she?
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
In a couple regards here, Milly and Emilia aren't that different. In a couple more, they're worlds apart.
Milly looks at Emilia, a playful expression on her face. "All right, that's information enough for me, at least." Milly... doesn't actually voice some of this either, for similar reasons -- but she's perfectly happy to use herself as a bargaining chip, in this sense. That it's with Emilia and not Lelouch, like four years ago...
... well, please allow that Milly sometimes moves on multiple levels.
"It means I don't have to lean on Rivalz, Hathaway, or Lelouch... not that they'd play along." Tapping at her chin and then raising a finger, Milly murmurs with enthusiasm, "Kenji might!" Then lowers it. "... but you don't want that. You wouldn't even if you were pretty boy-crazy."
But she's getting ahead of herself. "If you tell me something about how you feel, politically, and I run off and tell everyone," she teases, tone suddenly... *unmistakeable*, we'll say, "I'll send you pictures of me in the bath. If that doesn't do anything for you, it'll at least tell you what you like and give you a little leverage on me... and if now you find yourself hoping I tell people you're two steps left of the AEUG, it sounds like you'll be able to answer that question you just asked me all on your own the next time it matters."
She smiles sweetly. "Call it collateral on a bet."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
You know when you offer someone something they could never have a conceived of and are unsure why you're offering?
Emilia stares at Milly, unable to comprehend the whole. Everything. She blinks. A lot. Her face is brighter red. Her mouth is agape. Most of the processes of her brain have encountered an error and must restart.
Eventually she manages to get out a few words, in no real order.
"What? Why? Bet!?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly brings her hand to her forehead, tapping two fingers to it and smiling with her eyes closed a moment in that 'oh, you sweet summer child' expression. She actually stops, because Emmy no doubt wants to.
"You're not going to trust me, so I'm asking you to bet on me instead. The rest is collateral, so if you lose the bet, you still get something out of it. Now, I don't actually think that kind of talk would get the rumor mill going any faster than anything else about you, but *you* think that, so I'm moving some risk off of you and onto me." ... She's as angry as Lelouch, and her emotions just as readable -- but she's not as canny as Lelouch.
Milly will just have to explain things for her.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Even spelled out, it's still a strange concept. Like, yes, willingly handing blackmail material is... well it establishes something. For Milly it's a bet, but Emilia isn't much of a gambler. Instead for Emilia, raised- occasionally- in the house she was, it's a transaction.
But with that in mind, she's able to talk. "...I still don't understand. Why is my trust valuable? My reputation isn't as valuable as yours, and I can do more to you with those pictures than you can do to me with what I tell you? The wager... doesn't make sense." It feels like a trap. She's fallen for traps like that in the past. Eventually you learn. "...And it only means I can talk about my political feelings under those rules. That doesn't cover anything else."
The problem with constructively bullying someone who has been bullied, they look for the bullying loopholes. And when you've had the fact that you're valueless driven into your brain time and time again, and the Britannian values of 'some people are born better, and deserve to take from you', well. Mix that with having little of your own, and having to *know* the value of a gilla, and how far you can stretch it...
A deal too good to be true sends up red flags.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Your trust is valuable because you're at Ashford, and I'm the Student Council president," Milly says. "And it's *because* you don't trust me yet that it's only your political feelings that are getting covered here." Normally she'd hate to spell this out, but Emilia has been so poorly done by that she needs a hand on understanding all the layers of sub rosa Milly expects out of this offer.
Milly breathes in slowly, then out. She looks Emmy square-on, with seriousness. "If I made you the same offer but with *blanket* placing your trust in me, you'd assume I was trying to get one up on you, because what I'm offering isn't that big... not that you're not already assuming that, but you're not running it all the way out."
She adds, "I think you're also overestimating the value of my title, but we'll table that." She makes a note in her head, though: Emilia isn't a gambler by paradigm, but a businesswoman -- and one who's overly leveraged. She can work with that... she just has to shift gears. "Lend me your trust, and if I don't repay it, you still win out."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Is there just some layer Emilia's not understanding? She can tell she's having it spelled out for her, but she just doesn't know some of the letters. And Milly acts like she's being so clear, which makes it worse. She's just... It's.
She can't even find the words in her own head, so she listens more as she tries to order things around. She gets somewhere, eventually. "Ashford is big," she starts, realizes how what she said could be interpreted, briefly hates herself, and tries to start again. "There's lots of students. They can't all trust you, and you can't possibly reach out to all of them. But if my trust is only valuable because I'm at Ashford, then presumably the trust of every student of Ashford is equally valuable, but you don't have the time to check on all of them." Emilia doesn't realize she may be arguing herself right into Milly's hands, but any inconsistency could be used against her. She simply can't afford to trust as easily as she wants to.
"...Not that big?" Emilia's eyes widen. She can't even find the words to voice the problems there. "If..." If her political beliefs reached her Grandfather.... If the fact she had photos of another girl on her phone reached her?? But she can't voice it. She can't. Voice it. The words aren't coming. And Milly might just do it to prove she means it.
She pulls out her phone, maybe she can type it? The model is fairly prominent, on the cheap end. But it has an attachment. What it does could easily be done by software- but if you have technically apt friend, they could- if you got to a blackspot, or had minovsky interference, you could remove it, or spoof it.
So when you absolutely, positively, have to record and upload everything that is done on that phone- any texts or images or internet use- shy of turning it into a listening device, it's easy to fit a hardware logger that would kill the phone if tampered with.
And the way Emilia's hands fit around it, it's like she's never had a device without one.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
One side effect of being a scion of a family with significant technological development resources: you know what things do. Milly's no tech whiz, but she actually has a couple of devices set up like this for Student Council use.
Seeing it come out here, on a personal phone -- that tells her a lot. "... Stop," she says, with a little firmness. Typing on a phone like that is risky. Milly can move to mitigate this, but... "I think I'm actually a little outmatched here... he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight." The advantages she'd had with previous situations like this aren't as present as she'd thought. She's fighting something a little more powerful than deferred maintenance, and fighting it from afar rather than up close.
"I'll keep your secret on this one and not leverage anything else out of you," Milly says, "*but* we're going shopping while we're up here." She pivots exactly 90 degrees, saying, "I know you can't stop using that phone, because that's suspicious in its own way... but we're getting you a prepaid phone. If you feel like you owe me for it, you can show up to the start-of-year student council meeting!" She dips to a whisper as she explains, "Getting a representative from the Fantasy Seduction Club to show up is usually like pulling teeth."
Ease it back to transactional. It's one thing to swing someone at the walls in their heart when they're the ones that made them; when there's more in their way than themselves, that's just pointless cruelty.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
When Milly tells her to stop- not teasing, not encouraging, just telling- she does, instantly. Not a freeze. An instruction followed. But Milly saying she's... outmatched? The whole tone of everything has suddenly changes, and she's not sure she finds this better. But it's different. Quietly, she puts her phone away in her purse.
Now that the bet is off the table she just has to... trust Milly. That she means what she says. But then Milly does lay out a transaction she can understand. Emilia gets phone, Milly gets bureaucracy dealt with. An easy deal. The first one though... If her concern was that Milly was wagering too much against her, discarding her outburst as having no value, she can handle it.
Emilia nods to that offer. "...Okay." It's not... bland acceptance. More an acknowledgement that the situation is something she can manage. She looks to Milly again, a little calmer, but maybe a little tired. Emotionally, that was exhausting. These moments have never been so long, so direct.
If only she realised that this was what it was like when someone cared, even a little.