2023-04-26: An Understanding
- Log: An Understanding
- Cast: Leina Ashta, Angelo Sauper
- Where: Ra Mari II
- OOC - IC Date: U.C. 0097-04-26
- Summary: Leina Ashta manages to intercept an increasingly withdrawn and unsociable Angelo Sauper on the Ra Mari II. The two talk... and come to an understanding. Of a sort.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
The past few days were doing little to improve her mood, seeing the vote-a-rama that resulted from the assassination of the Federation Councilors.
The name of the game was damage control, but imagine a burning tire fire at the corner of a Shangri-la junkyard. Every attempt to put it out just burns hotter right?
Then some whistling Aristocrat just walks on by and pours some old timey gasoline on it from the Middle Ages. Then when it looks like you're making progress-!
A fuel air bomb drops.
That's what it feels like. Still, she was trying to do her part to get things back to normal, which is why she's on the Ra Mari II. Bleary eyed from doing several days of damage control.
"Time to take a break." Came three hours past when it should have come. And yet her idea of a break didn't feel like sitting around in the gardens.
Instead, it came from an almost impulsive, absurdly self destructive thought. As she crossed over to the Sleeves side of the ship.
And sought out one Lieutenant Angelo Sauper. She knows this isn't a good idea, on the level of see tire fire fuel air bomb combination after what she heard from Banagher regarding his job training him, but...
The Captain speaks with the voice of the forsaken people of space,
If you can't hear them in every word he utters, maybe you should pay more -attention- to us while you're gallivanting past them all on your oblivious little adventures.
... sometimes one feels a small sense of responsibility for the people one comes across in the course of their daily lives.
"Good afternoon, is Colonel Frontal aboard today?" She asks him, when she does find him, and wherever that might be aboard the Ra Mari II, knowing full well the answer to the question that he's currently unavailable.
She's wearing a tan pantsuit, with dark blouse, and flats from her earlier meeting with the Captain. nice hairpin of a starling worn in the left side of her short hair.
It's nice, a little business like while not being too upscale.
"I thought I might check if he had a place in his busy schedule to continue our conversation."
Part of her wonders when the bomb will drop. Maybe now. That'd be a nice change of pace, skipping the anticipation.
<Pose Tracker> Angelo Sauper has posed.
B e f o r e
P a l a u
In one of several secret access points on Palau, a lone Petite Mobile is stranded.
He shouldn't be here. The Federation will be swarming this place soon, searching it top to bottom for the presence of Char's warped followers... and the Sleeves. Palau is no longer their home. It'll never be anything more than a memory... especially if they fail.
He shouldn't be here. It's foolish. But here Angelo Sauper stands, over the ruins of the governor's estate that once served as the nerve center of the Sleeves. The bruises embracing his ribs aches as he shifts; the pain is a familiar companion as hooded, violet eyes look down at a piece of rubble.
He shouldn't be here. He isn't sure why he is. He isn't even quite sure how he got here, save he left for Palau moments after its momentum finally stalled out. ... But he had to see for himself.
The mansion never mattered. Not to him. A gesture of excess from yet another filthy clout-chaser seeing Full Frontal not for who he truly was, but for who he looked like. What mattered...
He's in the rubble before he even realizes it. Manicured fingers claw and scrape and pull at chunks of debris. He works with a calm thoroughness that belies the obsessive way he pulls chunks of stone from impossible mountains of it for -hours- in the hopeless hope he finds--
A glint of metal in the wreckage.
Smeared with dirt and ash, fingers scraped and bleeding, sweat soaking once-pristine hair, Angelo Sauper blinks. He stares, for a long moment, as if disbelieving at what he sees. With trembling hands he reaches down to slowly pick it up.
A small, mangled piece of gold. The gold is thin and twisted - perhaps, once, it was some beautiful filigree - but the shape is at least vaguely cylindrical.
Like it could be used to hold something small. Something simple. A vase for a flower.
He stares at the ruined thing in his hand, for a long time.
There's more for you.
Angelo's expression snarls in an expression of pure, offended spite for three seconds before it all gives way to a futile, contemptuous laugh.
"....... 'More.'"
And Angelo tosses what was once a vase behind his shoulder, back into the ruin as he takes his leave of Palau one last time. He can't help but laugh. More?
He has less and less each day.
N o w
R a M a r i II
Angelo has been spending even less time around the Ra Mari II's public areas ever since Palau.
In a way, it's unsurprising; he did due diligence, obsessively learning the layout of the ship as best he could with his understandably limited access, and now that he has, there's very little reason he sees to fraternize with the crew. They're not friends. They're barely allies.
And yet still several interactions managed to slip through the cracks.
Now... he may as well be invisible to anyone who isn't a part of the Sleeves. But there is, at least, one way to find him -- one thing he does aboard the Ra Mari II that someone could set a watch to: at the beginning of every week, Angelo visits the garden. He takes a single rose. And he leaves. Every week. Without fail. If one wanted to find him...
...
A red rose turns in Angelo Sauper's right hand; his left is on the zero-g rail, paused -just- at the cusp of Full Frontal's currently empty office when he sees that face. Familiar.
From the meeting...
Violet eyes narrow.
Good afternoon, is Colonel Frontal aboard today?
His lips flatten into a line.
"No." The expected answer comes immediately. The annoyance in him simmers at a baseline, wariness more prominently bubbling to the free as he eyes the girl from Shangri-La.
"What conversation on earth is worth the Colonel sacrificing his time for -you-?"
There's just no shaking his sunshine nature bleeding through into his tone, though.
Especially these days.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Before the rescue mission Leina never had the pleasure of visiting Palau, not really. After being in Glemy Toto's care a trip to a Sleeves' fortress felt like a quick trip towards a worse sequel to that experience.
Amidst the firefight, she did see the lone rose upon the desk while marking places for cover. She didn't think much of it at the time. Perhaps merely that Casval Rem Deikun, growing up amongst the upper class had a fondness for roses.
Now, seeing Angelo coming on that rail, rose in hand.
She reevaluates that impression.
The answer is expected, and Leina tries her best to look thoughtful, as if she might be wondering where he is. The tone of his question though causes her to bristle.
In that same place where she might have if Beecha told her she's not welcome following his group around to have a chat with her brother.
She reminds herself whom she's dealing with, eyelids drop, and she takes a moment, "Well ordinarily I'd say that's none of your business, but you are his closest confidante, so I suppose there's no harm." The way she says that, it's quite matter of fact.
"We were discussing the nature of being a Vessel, and how it relates to his - 'being' I suppose."
It is in that moment that she adds, "And how he reconciles it with his feelings towards being an elder brother. I won't presume to know whether he actually enjoyed the conversation or not, but he did congratulate me on having more worth than a simple game piece."
She delivers those words so matter of factly.
It is a strange thing perhaps, for her to play on. To attempt to manipulate his feelings this way, but she does want a conversation. And sometimes one must bait the hook, so to speak.
Even if it is dyed green in color.
Her green hued eyes flick towards the rose, as she asks it, as in casual conversation, "Is that for him?"
<Pose Tracker> Angelo Sauper has posed.
Compliments. Even spoken matter-of-fact like the way Leina deftly phrases Full Frontal's relationship to the commander of his Royal Guard, they inspire a singular response in Angelo:
"..."
Mistrust.
One could rightly ask what -doesn't- inspire that kind of reaction in Angelo and they'd have every right to; but here it seems more pronounced, more kneejerk, the way the frown is immediately upon his lips, the way he squares up like he's expecting the other shoe to drop.
Like he's looking for the ploy that can't -not- be there.
His only response, at first, is nonverbal: the expectant lift of a pale brow as if to say 'Well?' in the aftermath of that matter-of-fact statement. And when it comes...
... that brow drops, so that it can furrow inward into a little, bemused knot.
"He praises you," he begins, slowly. "Even after you spit on his nature."
He remembers the meeting. He remembers what -everyone- says when it comes to the Colonel.
"I wonder if you even appreciate it."
He can't afford not to.
He might have more to say -- but Leina directs her attention towards that rose. For once, the open hostility that simmers so often in Angelo's gaze is pushed beneath the surface for a rare few moments: instead, it's honest surprise that blinks at his eyes, and causes lips to part. "Is what--" he begins, and then he feels the twist of the stem between his fingers. Oh, his expression seems to say, as he looks down. It's become so rote for him now -- for a moment, that rose might as well have been just as much a part of him as the hand he holds it in.
"..."
Again, silence lingers. His reflexive response is to tell -her- it's none of her business, as it is for most questions. And yet -- he thinks. What would even be the point? For something so seemingly innocuous for everyone else? ... Something that likely only matters for one person?
He is still looking at the rose when he answers,
"Yes," simply, and to the point. And, as if he feels the need to chase any attempt to leverage it, "I'm allowed to take them. I have an arrangement with the Captain." A second passes. And then:
"Why bother to ask him about that?"
Again, the accusatory tone can't help but percolate, as if it was just natural. But the curiosity is there, too.
To Angelo, it just feels pointless.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
The mistrust isn't unexpected. One doesn't survive in Neo-Zeon without it. In the end after all, what truly did Haman's Empire in? It certainly wasn't the Federation.
Angelo rightly points out her words, and her counter to that is simple, "Perhaps the man enjoys being challenged. He told me that most don't investigate that side of him, nor get that far within it."
As she utters more of what sound like compliments, and on this, she need not even lie. They are all words he spoke.
At first she does not answer his question, for it is rhetorical. The implication is of course that she does not, she waits instead until he answers on the rose.
There is a nod, with no hint of accusation that he doesn't. "Do I appreciate what he represents?" She asks in echo. There is a pensiveness of sorts as her brows furrow to think upon it, "To the 'forsaken people of space'?"
Just as he remembers her words towards Full Frontal, she certainly remembers his towards her.
Those seagreen eyes of hers fixate upon his for a time and, "As someone who grew up in the slums of one of the worst colonies on Side 1, I believe I do."
As if she were holding him to account on 'gallivanting'. There is a distinct pause, and she tells Angelo, "He represents salvation to you."
There is that switch from Forsaken People, to him. After all, she can read between the lines. "Why bother? You heard what he called me. Do you think I wouldn't have an interest in understanding the current leader of Neo-Zeon?"
As she gives him a 'really' look, "In our conversation he told me that a proper Vessel is crafted, not made through training or hard work. You could say that is a statement that's..."
A short pause, as if there was something uncomfortable about it to her, perhaps on a deeper level, "... very personal to me."
And just as quickly, she shifts off the subject, "It's quite the romantic gesture." She says now, of the Rose, whose presence she accepted with a nod not long ago, a fingertip sliding through the short, curly hair by her right ear, as she looks away, almost like she was looking at something, too personal by staring upon it.
"Rather chivalrous in a way. Like a knight towards royalty."
<Pose Tracker> Angelo Sauper has posed.
To the forsaken people of space.
To you.
Irritation doesn't -really- take long to billow into something more for Angelo; it's a bitter glare that he levels on Leina as he notices that deliberate shift in perspective tilting the focus on him. It's hard to say why, though -- but a suggestion that might fluster or alarm someone else seems to -rankle- him.
If he was a cat, hairs standing on end and a warning hiss might evoke a similar feeling as the look he all but stabs Leina's way right now.
"Then you -don't-."
Like the spotlight turning on him was the last thing he ever wanted.
It's enough of a sudden reaction that he doesn't -quite- parse what Leina is saying both before and after. The 'worst colonies in Side 1,' 'You heard what he called me.' The brief, red haze of anger clouds him to the words, but it isn't as if he -doesn't- hear them. It just takes him, for them to register. For them to click, and by then, Leina is speaking on Neo-Zeon. On the nature of a vessel. On...
It's quite the romantic gesture.
Rather chivalrous in a way. Like a knight towards royalty.
"..."
Angelo's violet gaze looks aside. Fingers slip off the guidance rail.
It's largely subconscious, the considerate way he treats that rose, making sure it's not in the way when his arms fold over his chest. His head cocks to the right.
"You couldn't imagine what the Colonel means to me," he says first, flatly, bluntly. At the very least -- he doesn't shy away from -that- much. "... This gesture is the only thing I can give him."
The worst colonies of Side 1...
"So you come from Shangri-La," he shifts focus, because really, naming 'worst' and 'Side 1' to a spacenoid worth their salt, and only one colony is going to come to mind. "And you experienced Haman Karn's Neo-Zeon." That much is easy enough to surmise from what Full Frontal told her. 'Glemy Toto's doll.' There's only been one Glemy Toto -- and even someone like Angelo can't help but know who he is.
Another cursed Zabi, doing what Zabis do.
"Then you of all people ought to know the muck of the colonies. And the way their would-be saviors have -always- failed--" us "--them." Angelo's wrist flicks against his bicep, as if in a little gesture all around them. "These people on this ship, with all their formless ambitions, are only going to fail. Just like they've failed, every time before. And people in Shangri-La will continue suffering unseen in the slums, every day, before and after."
He tilts his head, considering her.
"The Colonel is the -only- one who can truly change this disgusting system without falling into the same filth as all the rest of us."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It takes a moment, the full force of Angelo's irritation is a powerful thing indeed. The way he looks at her, she understands perhaps better than ever what Banagher has gone through being trained by him.
Arms crossed loosely, she does not keep staring. The fact that he acts like a cat hissing at her is not lost on her.
Familiar with the ways of cats in her time with Buer, the less friendly of the two, she does not challenge him in this moment, instead her gaze drops.
Cats act this way out of fear. And so she simply drops the conversation thread in this moment. Sometimes it is the best way to interrupt the behavior.
It's only when Angelo starts speaking again, the way he speaks of the rose that she looks back, "You're right." She says more softly, "I couldn't. It's not a kind of devotion I've experienced - even if I think yours is admirable."
And indeed while she may not like Full Frontal, she can respect why one might be loyal to him to this degree.
Curious, she hasn't spoken the name Banagher once tonight, but at the same time she's not here to yell at Angelo for something Banagher did to himself against her STRONG objections.
He invokes Shangri-La, and is met with a nod, because indeed she expected he'd get that right away, "I did." She doesn't share the prisoner part, or unwilling part. It's not necessary.
Angelo flicks his hand in an all encompassing gesture as to every single would-be savior. Including the people on this ship. And something softens in her eyes as he finishes speaking. "I care about the people on this ship. Many came from a similar place I did - or worse." A beat, "Some much worse. Don't mistake that for me believing in them being the solution."
There's a prolonged pause, and for a time, she considers Angelo as well, looking at him, peering at him. "Tell me something. Do you believe that's the case because he's seen it?"
And in that moment, she walks up to Angelo, non-threateningly, as if indeed he were that cat with the hair stood on end, as she comes close enough to lean forward, and to whisper two words.
<Pose Tracker> Angelo Sauper has posed.
Tension abates, but doesn't leave Angelo Sauper. It never leaves him; it's his constant companion, lining his shoulders, steeling his stare... coiling his body like he was just waiting for the threat to rear.
It must be a stressful life, being Angelo, but don't tell him that: he'd probably take it as a personal attack and respond in kind.
Probably invoking the word filth.
The current conversation still remains low on the Anger-dar, for now. Indeed, one might even call it tame, if they wanted to speak in relatives. It's -only- acerbic, the way he scoffs at Leina's soft-spoken admiration and responds with, "Please. Is this the tactic, now? Shower me with blandishments to get an audience with him?"
And it's -only- disapproving, the way he stares at Leina as she talks about how much she cares about the people here...
... and it's -only- incredulous, when she shifts towards...
'Don't mistake that for me believing in them being the solution.'
"What?"
-That- earns a face. The one where Angelo's chin tilts up, and his nose wrinkles at the bridge, and his gaze squints as if he were trying to eat paper.
"You -don't- believe in them? Then why are you -here-?"
Ostensibly, they're allies now. But Angelo didn't live this long not being able to see the writing on the walls. Some things are just survivor's instinct... and for Angelo's, his instincts tell him it's going to be sooner than later that this all falls apart.
Which is why...
"They -aren't- a solution, they're a -problem-, and the longer they drag out this sad joke the more likely they are to ruin everything--"
Leina's words cut through -- but moreso does the way she approaches him. Non-threatening though it is, he immediately takes a step back as he notices that advance. His free-hand falls to his side, tension lining it as if ready to lash out.
His hand holding the rose sweeps behind his back to protect it.
But...
Do you believe it's the case that he's seen it?
Leina whispers two words. And what was mounting tension transforms with skyrocketing surprise as Angelo's eyes widen.
The motion is reflexive, the way he instantly presses his palm on Leina's shoulder and -shoves- the second he hears those words. And yet it's not a violent act -- there's not force enough there to shove her down so much as shove her -away- as he takes three steps back, braces on his back foot, and -sweeps- that same hand out in a broad gesture, his voice rising to a pitch.
"How did you know that?!"
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It's really quite understandable that being Angelo would be stressful. If only he could swap with someone else, perhaps he'd understand how stressful.
"No. I simply understand that things are not so simple as for or against. I can challenge someone, and still admire something about them."
Some part of her hates Glemy Toto all the more for her understanding this truth.
Angelo's incredulity is understandable with his question of why are you here, but Leina's response is again a 'really' face, "Do you truly not get it? I would have thought you of all people would understand."
And those seagreen eyes stare straight into the depths of his own. Despite the hollowness in this moment, there's a strange passion, "What would you do for someone you care about, Lieutenant Sauper?"
In that moment, it's like she's asking perhaps more deeply, 'What would you do for the only person you care about?'
That believing in someone could be so easily extricated from caring for them.
Excised away.
"What wouldn't you do?"
Again the question, and it feels rhetorical, the answer seeming to be 'Nothing' in that regard.
It is not the approach that is threatening, after all, it is - what she has to say. Angelo reflexively presses that palm to her shoulder, and she stumbles. He might swear that she looked more solid when he first saw her if he cared enough to look.
She is perhaps more gaunt than it would show under that suit. She is staggered easily, stumbling backwards, catching herself against the wall haphazardly.
At first she isn't looking at him, her eyes down, but slowly her sightline raises again. Long lashes frame that green behind it for a time.
"Because he told me." She says to him, as her eyes crawl upward further, until they meet them head on, "Because I saw him, surrounded by it."
With a hand, she slowly draws herself up straighter in the weirdly unfamiliar gravity she's not used to on any vessel.
"Now I see." She murmurs softly, as if not even speaking to him any longer, as if she gets something about his loyalty. "No. No I don't think I need blandishments at all."
She tells him, and for the first time since she saw him tonight, she smiles thinly, "Well, I should let you get to putting that rose in water." She tells him quietly as she starts to turn away, "It's what matters to you, isn't it?"
She doesn't mention Banagher or Mineva, after all...
... she doesn't have to, for him to understand.
<Pose Tracker> Angelo Sauper has posed.
What would Angelo do for someone he cares about?
Sometimes words and contexts have a way of tripping over memories people would rather leave buried. 'What would you do for someone you care about,' invoked in the face of what he sees as doomed, blind idealists --
Perhaps Leina meant to invoke a certain colonel - and indeed, Angelo thinks of him too - but...
a woman who always had a smile on her face now just stares vacantly out the window, a shell of something human
"I am -nothing- like you! Why would I understand?!"
... Ghosts have a habit of seething up in the margins of one's memory when they least expect - or want - it.
He draws up like a coil; already on edge, the combination of factors all help feed into that shocked rejection that follows in the wake of Leina's whispered words. It's so impulsive - so driven by emotion - he has zero expectation or control; it's just luck he's more surprised and aghast than -angry- to shove harder. All the same -- the girl from Shangri-La stumbles like someone far frailer than she seems. It's enough for someone like Angelo to notice, even if he can't appreciate it right now, when the wild firing of his synapses allows no room for rational thought.
But later...
How haggard she looks.
How sunk her eyes are.
The way she just... looks -different- from that day at the meeting, someone full of defiance and (stupid, damning) kindness.
Because he told me.
Angelo bristles, compulsively, like the four words were threatening him.
Because I saw him, surrounded by it.
His hand trembles dangerously taut around his rose. In those moments, though, there is tense silence. He watches her, guardedly. Pensively. The way she looks. The things she says, past the obsessive cloud that perceives those words as a threat instead of... something else, his brain registers.
And slowly, gradually, like the unwinding of an animal just about to spring...
... Angelo's tension starts to bleed away into something else. Something coolly neutral.
Now I see, she says. He doesn't like being seen. But there's something off about the way she says it. ... Something's... off about...
"... You..."
Not for the first time, Angelo's response today is a wordless hss of an exhale past his teeth.
"Tt."
What would he do?
What wouldn't he do?
What would -she- do?
What -wouldn't- she do?
And his fingers relax around his rose, fractionally.
"Don't speak as if you know me," he says, first and foremost, even as he moves to the door of Full Frontal's room. Because it's simply his nature. It's simply what's been carved into him. Rejection. ... Isolation. And yet, all the same, he stops at the door before he opens it. Pauses. Frowns.
"... There's nothing I wouldn't do for him," Angelo says, voice uncharacteristically quiet. "But it doesn't matter what I am to him, as long as I have a use. He's what matters." Not me. "Nothing changes without him." Nothing burns without him. "Because he's inhuman."
Most would say that like it's a bad thing.
Angelo says it like it's the only thing that truly matters.
"Unlike the rest of us, drowning in our filth."
The door hisses open.
"Eat something. You look like your suit is half your weight. It's disgraceful."
That neutral tone remains, despite the words. Because...
*hss*
... they have an understanding.
Unspoken but undeniable.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina's eyes turn from this strange hollow gleam, to something strange instead, as Angelo thinks of that shell of something human, vacantly staring.
It is like she has been slapped, a bucket of cold water thrown in her face.
But the image is so vivid and clear, like a childhood yearning she hadn't thought of for years turned back on her into a thing of horror.
Part of her shivers despite herself at his denial.
As expected, he bristles, but she's beyond - reacting to his anger. That defiance is gone, into this strange acceptance...
... of her own filth.
His anger bleeds away to neutrality, and she can tell that in a way, he sees too. "I don't need to know you." Leina replies, half turned away from him.
The details matter, but in another sense they do not, to the broadstrokes of the Spacenoid condition. What matters is that Angelo came to this place, out of somewhere before.
And Full Frontal was his salvation. What a wretched world that dyes them all in this despair and has them tread in the quagmire the unlikely hope of getting out of it.
Those sunken eyes look at Angelo again, that thin smile, in that unspoken understanding. In the end, there is quite the discrepancy in the way they see the world, even now.
But there is just enough, for them to know that they drown in filth together. She smiles thinly, just subtly baring her teeth, in that moment of understanding, "One day you'll have to tell me what you think change under him looks like."
She says quietly with only this subtle sense of... not disagreement per se, "When you haven't come up for air in so long, you can no longer even conceptualize the idea of it."
In the end, she starts to walk away, and utters, "Perhaps I will. I'd ask you to give him my regards, Lieutenant Sauper... but I don't wish to trouble you with pointless things."
After all, what would her regards be worth?
"Have a pleasant day."