2022-10-07: I never should have tried to live life as I normally do, I cannot handle the things which were so easy for me! I'll return to Elisa's side, and remember this slight as I recover
- Log: I never should have tried to live life as I normally do, I cannot handle the things which were so easy for me! I'll return to Elisa's side, and remember this slight as I recover
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Rena Lancaster
- Where:
- Date: 2022-10-07
- Summary: Yuliana tries to go for a walk outside, gets five steps, and runs into Rena. Rena tries her best, but Yuliana isn't arguing from good faith to begin with.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Sri Lanka isn't doing quite as badly as India is, in terms of infrastructure -- but it's a far cry from the glories of Shanghai. Colombo, its capital, is at least doing very well for itself; people here have a high standard of living, and the roads are all well-paved. There are lights for the streets, too. There are little cameras, on the lights. Some of them are there to monitor speeding.
There's Federation influence here, too, and as is the way of governance, all the buildings kind of cluster together. There's the general base, some specialised offices... the Nega Force has their own office building, of course. And, beside it --
Medical cleared Yuliana awfully quickly. Which is to say, Elisa did. It's Elisa who's signed off on Yuliana leaving Medical, too; her poor Yuliana is miserable all cooped up in a hospital bed, so it's fine for her to get some fresh air. Which means she gets to exit the front door of a deeply generic building -- a door opened for her. She's walking supported by a cane, right now, so perhaps it's no wonder.
The Institute for Continuing Study which Yuliana exits is one of those buildings it's easy to miss. There's a little plaque with the title, tastefully embossed near the key-card-entry doors, but it otherwise doesn't announce what or why it is in any particular way. Its windows are tinted; there is no signage displayed there. It doesn't look like a hospital or a laboratory, because it doesn't look like much of anything except, perhaps, a Generic Government Building.
Yuliana's the only person who's come out for hours.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena is passing through Colombo. She came through on the usual business of Londo Bell -- which sometimes involves stopping at a base or facility to see the transfer of materials or information to Londo Bell. Londo Bell, sometimes, has to go far afield.
She isn't at the Institute for Continuing Study for that. She was at a nearby office building -- rather nondescript, overseeing some foodstuffs for the machinery of the Federation -- and has finished. She steps out onto the street, looking around.
Which, as it happens, puts her in Yuliana's sights.
Unusually for Rena, she doesn't notice Yuliana immediately. Normally, she would sense someone familiar -- but that's impossible with this particular person. She turns her head, looking at Yuliana, and blinks once.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana makes her way down the stairs -- she's FINE with stairs, THANK YOU, shut up -- and the journey reveals a couple of extra interesting details:
- She's wearing a wrist brace on her right hand. It doesn't look like it's properly broken, at least; her fingers work fine,
- There are some regenerative patches on her skin -- over her forehead, most notably, though there's one peeking out from the sleeve of her dark suit where it's protecting part of her arm, and there are some bulkier patches to her clothes which suggest more dressings underneath them,
- And in service to that covered wound on her forehead, those characteristic bangs which covered half her face have been clipped away, revealing the long scar down her left eye and cheek.
Which all tracks quite well with how Yuliana exited Torrington. (Which is to say: compressed.)
Once she's on the street, she's able to pay attention to the annoying thing at the edge of her consciousness -- the gap where existence ought to go -- and her attention falls directly on Rena, out of her own office building.
She puts on a smile; she directs her way to her. Clip, clip. A little unsteady on her feet, given the sheer amount of drugs pumping through her system at the moment. They assure her it will help her heal much faster. That's why she has to lean on this cane for the moment. It's fine.
It's all just fine, because: "Lieutenant Lancaster," Yuliana greets her, and at least manages not to make her discomfort too obvious in her voice. "How nice to see you're still on your feet." She sounds conversational enough, sounds pleasant enough, but if Rena doesn't do something Yuliana's going to get close enough to plunge her into that horrific zone of silence immediately surrounding her.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena had a sense that Yuliana left Torrington with injuries. She lost track of her; she had heard about what she screamed at the Sleeves pilot. While she has little love for the Sleeves, Rena was rather bothered by that -- moreso after she saw the logs. She glances at Yuliana, her eyebrows lifting.
She didn't expect her to not approach. She tenses for a moment; part of her wants to walk away. She doesn't, because it would be rude to someone who was (ostensibly) an ally.
Ostensibly.
"Captain Dispersal," she says. "I... see you're back on your feet." She doesn't flee; then the silence takes over, like a faint buzzing in her head. Her eyebrows furrow for a moment. She stands up straighter, her head tilting to the side.
"You're on your way to a full recovery, then?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Ah! She's not a coward! Delightful. Yuliana has to find joy in something, right now, and Rena neglecting to exit her sphere of influence will have to serve well enough.
"Hmm? Quite so," Yuliana agrees, easily enough. "Unfortunately, many of my injuries were internal, so now they've opened me up to put things to rights there's little I can do but take the right drugs to help heal things up. Well, not to say the surface damage wasn't unpleasant, either..." That wound explain all the dressings, probably. "They say I'm not to burden myself overmuch, but if I spend one more day in bed I think I'm like to die in protest!"
This, for everyone keeping track at home, would be bad.
"I understand your ship was also tangled up in the fight," she says, gesturing to Rena with her bound-up hand. "I'm very pleased to see you well in the wake of it, Lieutenant." She isn't; her day would be much improved if Rena were the one stuck in a hospital bed. But Yuliana is a good actor, and she certainly sounds relieved. "Your comrades haven't suffered overmuch either, I hope?"
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena mostly represses the grimace. It is still an unpleasant distraction to stand so close to Yuliana, getting her field of influence over her. She looks at her, for a moment, noting the bandages; she also notes the scar she never got much of a look at, with Yuliana's hair combed the way it is.
"Just try to not overdo it," she says; it's an automatic nicety, not something she particularly feels.
"We did. We made it out all right... though the ZAFT forces slipped by," she says. "But that was a complicated engagement. Lots of things came up and went wrong. Everyone on the Ra Mari made it out well," she says.
She frowns for a moment. "At least, without any major injuries."
There was no small amount of upset. That includes her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Niceties are important to observe. One should always mind their manners, staring down the fangs of a predator.
You never know when they'll have to bow in return, after all.
Yuliana is a woman given to scars, but the one across her face, at least, is one she's always hidden away; that scar, more than any other, carries a different meaning. (Someone cared enough to arrange her face such that her mouth muscles still work, and her eye still works, and she even still has motion in her brow.) She feels a stab of self-consciousness with Rena just looking at her face like that, and doesn't connect it in the slightest with how Rena might have felt, once upon a time.
"ZAFT got past you? What a pity," Yuliana sighs, shaking her head. "But you're quite right -- it was a very complex battle. Much to do in the heat of the moment..." Like tell a sad little teenage girl you'd kill her parents a second time? Like that thing???
"I deeply regret that Torrington was so wounded," Yuliana says, and sounds sad about it, anyway. "If we could have saved the city from so much destruction, perhaps... it would have been worth it." The best lies have a kernel of truth to them; Yuliana was upset about Zeon hitting the city.
It is, of course, also a lie for a purpose, on top of being true.
She laughs -- short, and barked, and with a little sharp intake of breath which suggests that her ribs are having a fun time. "Hahaah, but... you know, I can't comment on any of that officially right now," she says, with a shade of a grimace. "They've put me on stress leave, can you believe it? I was at least going to catch up on my paperwork in this state, and they won't so much as let me file a 276K!" Which is, presumably, one of the innumerable forms which keeps the socialist machine of the REA running. There's an awful lot of paperwork involved.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena has less scarring than one might think. Some of it was Athrusa's fast action; some of it was Londo Bell having a good budget for plastic surgery. But there is a bit of a scar at her scalp, and the red-dyed hair hides some damage. Less, now, because it has grown out in the intervening months.
"You did seem..." Yuliana doesn't need to have Newtype senses to detect Rena Lancaster's displeasure. She can't keep the frown off her face. "...engaged with the enemy. The destruction was terrible. I don't... think anything would be worth the destruction to the city."
She shakes her head. Then, Rena blinks. "Stress leave? For--ah." She heard: for what she said to that pilot. "You're planning to take it, then? Get some rest?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Oh, yes, she's terribly bothered, isn't she?
"No," Yuliana agrees, and on the surface she's sympathetic, "nothing would have been. But our state would be a worthy trade for the city's safety, wouldn't you agree? And yet we are beaten, and Torrington still smoulders... this world is such a cruel, cruel place."
'This' world, as if there's any other.
Yuliana gestures, with her free hand, fingers spreading. She still has mobility of them around her wrist brace, at least. "You're a very optimistic woman, aren't you, Lieutenant?" Her question is gentle; the conclusion she draws around it, in that place no one can see, is not. "I'm afraid it's hardly a matter of what I'm planning to do! It's already been decided for me."
She shrugs, leaning a little more heavily on the cane to her left. "So of course, I'll be idle. It's the will of the Republic, after all." Well, she won't be doing any Federation work, at least. "Perhaps when I'm feeling better, I'll start work on refitting another Tiandong 3... mine was quite destroyed, you see."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Yeah. If we could have avoided that for Torrington..."
It's a cruel world. Rena can't argue. The concept bothers her; she looks down, her expression withdrawn for a moment, as she considers. Is she optimistic? It feels strange to agree, after that cynical thought that ran through her head. But, she supposes--
She looks up, and then she nods her head. "I suppose I am. I think it's better to hope for the best," she says. "People tend to work for what they hope for."
She hesitates for a moment, then, and her head tilts. "Is refitting a Wanzer really relaxing?" she asks. Rena frowns, after a moment's thought. "Ah--I mean, shouldn't you... relax? You seemed to have gotten very... on edge in that last fight."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"That's true," Yuliana agrees, when Rena supposes people work for what they hope for.
Just how true it is will be her little secret.
Yuliana pauses, though, with a light frown. "Isn't it?" She asks, and sounds quite puzzled in the asking. "Panel-beating is a great way to unwind! Rewiring a system so it won't blow up in your face or keep firing warning messages at you constantly is -- well, I suppose it's a difficult kind of puzzle to explain if you're not the type," she cedes, after a moment.
"I..." Yuliana pauses, and looks away, her right hand lifting, fingers curling over her mouth. "I confess I may be a little overfond of working," she settles on, downcast. "It's hard for me to imagine doing nothing... but that's not so strange, is it?" She sounds vulnerable, certainly, as she looks back to Rena.
"... surely there's something which keeps you up at night just the same, Lieutenant? Things it would be difficult to simply put aside?"
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Mm. I've got my own preferences, there. I'm more of a computer systems person, I suppose," Rena admits. She has made an operating system for a VF, after all. "But I do like programming combat OSes. I made one recently, in fact."
She pauses, though. There's a pesky temptation to be sympathetic -- and that Rena gives into all too easily. It comes with her aforementioned optimism. Believing in people is better, she thinks.
"It's not that strange," she admits. "There's... things that bother me. I'd be a fool to not be." She looks up at the sky, for a second; her eyes are on a few glimmering stars, which move too fast.
Spacecraft. Home.
"Someone from the colonies has a lot of difficulty putting things aside," Rena says. "But you have to, sometimes. Because... otherwise, the stress gets to be too much, and you become someone you don't want to be, I think."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Oh? Well done! The combat OS is one of the fiddlier parts of a machine, I've always found." Yuliana can sound supportive of Rena's own talents, at least.
She is, of course, aware that the Awakened tend to have an overabundance of sympathy. It's a very convenient thing to lean on. And there, the way she looks up -- Yuliana's already profiled her and the rest of her ship, so she can fill in the gaps of the details and get to what's really important, here:
What's bothering Rena right now.
"Hmm... of course, I suppose you must have had some complicated feelings yourself, back there," Yuliana sympathises -- appears to sympathise -- with the weight of Torrington. "Yes, that sustained burden on a psyche would certainly be heavy..."
Yuliana sighs, a hand brushing through -- not her bangs, her bangs aren't there any more, her fingers will have to go back a little more to find the rest of her hair. Her fingers fan over her face, in a gesture clearly lacking something. "Someone I don't want to be... sometimes it is very hard. I... speak without thinking, at times," she confesses, and certainly she sounds ashamed. "And I'm the sort of person who is plagued by misunderstandings and miscommunications... unfortunately, it's difficult for me."
Well, she certainly says her encounter with Callisto and Arriety was a misunderstanding.
"I don't think I'm working towards anything bad... since I've always hoped to see absolute equality in this world. But I've a terrible temper... I was angry normal people were being targeted, but... well, the burden, as you say." Rena never said that. Anyway.
Yuliana's arm crosses her body, hand grasping at her left arm, in an uncertain gesture. "The person you don't want to be... who is that, Lieutenant? Surely... surely it's not just me who... is like this."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"They definitely take some work," Rena says with a small smile. She doesn't want to overstate her accomplishments -- or maybe draw too much attention to herself. She was taught to not do that by her aunt and uncle, though she never understood why.
"Mm," she murmurs. She doesn't confirm it audibly -- but by not denying it, Rena admits that she had complex feelings on the happenings at Torrington. She frowns, for a moment, as she listens.
Someone who speaks out of anger; someone who has a lot of misunderstandings. Rena remembers one of those misunderstandings, and she still isn't sure of that.
She didn't mention a burden. Rena shifts, a little uncomfortably.
"I can see why someone would be angry," she says. "I--ah." She looks to the side. "...I don't want to be someone who makes things worse. I want to make my own decisions, be my own person, and do what I can to make the world better."
Not someone like her mother; not someone who shattered lives to her own ends.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Unfortunately, Rena captures Yuliana's attention just by virtue of existing, because Yuliana is something which eats women like her. Every cry for help, every desperate emotion, every effort to reach out...
That's just how she was designed.
She listens, thoughtfully, as Rena shares her own perspective. "Someone who makes things worse... yes, I can see how a person like you would want to avoid such a fate. You're a kind woman, Lieutenant." She isn't, Yuliana thinks, though she says it as if it's praise.
Yuliana hasn't forgiven Rena for any of her crimes -- but foremost, today, the way she saw fit to taunt her with choice when she should know very well the authoritarian nature of her people. That's how Yuliana thinks of the conversation, and it's one way to look at it, certainly. A way choked in cynicism and bad faith, all divorced from reality, from a woman who had no intention of giving Rena the benefit of the doubt from the start.
"You want to be your own person, mm..? A laudable goal. Yes. How nice..." Yuliana trails off, for a moment, looking back towards the Institute. The melancholy on her own face, for a moment, isn't even feigned.
"But I suppose... the world will accept you as a woman," she murmurs, more softly, and if she weren't ruining Rena's day by taking her into her emotional isolation tank she might not have been audible at all. Unfortunately, she's close enough to reach out and grasp her.
She'll choke on the difference between them.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
The damnable thing is Rena can't detect even the slightest emotion from Yuliana. There isn't a hint of the offense caused -- not that Rena would agree that it is justified, necessarily -- or anything else. She looks at Yuliana for a moment, trying to find something there.
Sympathy, of a kind, she thinks.
"I hope so, but..." She wonders, sometimes. "It's hard to be sure. I'm--ah." She shakes her head, her head tilting. She catches those words: 'accept you as a woman.'
Such a specific phrasing.
"I'd... hope so," Rena admits. "I think it's probably more important to accept yourself. But it's hard to ignore how the world sees you, too."
She frowns, her fingers curling some of her ash blue hair around them.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana laughs, as she turns back to Rena. It might not make much sense, with how downcast she's been. Did she say something funny?
"Hahaha... accepting yourself, is it? Accepting what is seen by the eyes in the black, in the endless expanse of 'yourself', stretching barren to the abyss? Accept it, you say!" Yuliana takes a breath, deep and shuddering, and leans, all a sudden, on her cane.
"Ahh... damn..." The manic energy of her voice all drains out, with her weary sigh. "What the world sees... oh, it hardly matters... there's nothing for it now, anyway." Is she really talking about Rena, with such a defeatist attitude?
(The same kind of attitude which assures Rena that Yuliana has no choice but to take a vacation, all in all.)
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena's head turns, staring at Yuliana when she starts laughing. It wasn't the response to that statement that she expected at all. Something makes her tense up, her blood running cold, and she she swallows hard.
"That's--that's not what I meant," Rena says, her voice catching. "I didn't mean to accept... accept something dark and terrible, just--just to not put too much stock into what others say."
She stammers a little, when she says that.
"Are... are you okay?" she says. "Do you need to sit down--or rest--or something else...?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Keh... you're too indecisive!" Yuliana hisses, in the wake of Rena's stammering. First she says to accept herself -- then not to accept herself!
Her left hand grips her cane, a shade too tight for comfort. "I'm fine -- you've just put me in a bit of a state -- don't worry about it," Yuliana puts the blame on her and takes it away, in a dizzying merry-go-round of fault.
"I... I had better..." She blinks her eyes closed, for a moment, shaking her head, as her other hand comes up to her temple. "... yeah, I'd better sit down..."
She's upset, for some reason.
And in the fortress of herself, there's no way for anyone to see just why or how.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena takes a couple of steps back. She can't sense the hostility from Yuliana -- which makes it more intimidating. Normally, she can sense it; she can know it's coming, and often sense some of the underlying causes. She stares at her for a moment.
"I'm... sorry?" she says, sounding confused -- and feeling angry with herself for apologizing. This woman had turned her anger onto that poor Cyber-Newtype; she had asked Rena to share things, and...
The urge to please ran deep within Rena, though.
"I can--do you need assistance, getting to a place you can sit?" she asks.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"It's," and Yuliana grits her teeth for a moment, but that might just be the pain, "not your fault, not really." And it isn't, but Yuliana still blames her, which is why it's so bitter to try and make Rena think she didn't do wrong here.
"I... it's just that I... I..."
She loops over her pronouns, for a moment, as she searches for some plausible explanation to divert Rena from the truth -- but Yuliana, who was never going to be operating at a hundred percent at this point in her recovery, comes up short. "I'm affected... afflicted... the treatments... sorry," is what she finally gets out of a system under strain, shifting the blame to her current condition at the last moment.
"I'm fine," she insists, as she starts shuffling off, because she can't precisely hurry when she feels like she's about to fall flat on her face. "I don't need help."
As it happens, she turns and heads right back towards the Institute, again, even though it doesn't look anything like a hospital.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena stares at her for a second longer.
"I--all right," she manages, lamely. She feels no small amount of confusion, watching her walk back into the Institute. But there is more than that, too. It's a cold feeling; one of dread, as she looks at Yuliana, and then the Institute.
It doesn't look like a hospital.
But what, then, is this place? Her eyes stay on it for a moment more. Her brow furrows, before she turns. She starts walking away.
But the unsettled feeling doesn't leave her.