2024-07-08: Solidarity
- Log: 2024-07-08 Solidarity
- Cast: Elan Ceres, Trem Firmal
- Where: Asticassia School of Technology
- OOC - IC Date: July 8, UC 0099 (2024)
- Summary: After returning from her duties as a member of the Gaia Sabers, Trem and Elan have an early morning discussion about how that last mission went--and where they'll be going from here.
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
It's been a little over a week since that mission. Elan Ceres has always been a quiet person, so it hasn't been especially noticeable that he's been even more quiet since then. The one exception is a incident that revolves around Suletta Mercury--but we'll set that aside. A week is time enough to grow numb to one's involvement in war crimes. Time to re-read a book on philosophy. He's re-reading it now, as he hits at the table in the private meeting room he met Trem with before.
A page turns. It's in English, though that's a translation from German; the title, Trem would see in this hard, nigh-featureless room, is The World as Will and Idea. Schopenhauer. The basics of his philosophy is that reality as humans experience it is inherently subjective and consequently life is suffering. It's hard to tell what he might be getting out of it based on the flat affect of his face.
He has such a pretty face.
His eyes, though... his eyes are equally attractive, but there is a certain weight behind them. It pulls lines in his skin that make his gaze particularly dead. It's this gaze that he fixes on Trem when she eventually enters the room.
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem Firmal didn't come back right away; not even when Elan did, either. She had reports to make. One to Romero, and one to people who were higher up. And...
And, it served as a reminder: Asticassia, too, is a mission to Trem.
But it's a complicated one, without the simplicity of getting and following orders. (But was it really so simple?)
Trem walks into the briefing room, in her uniform. Her eyes are just ever-so-slightly tired; she brushes back some pink hair, and then looks down at the book that Elan is reading. Studying before a class, perhaps?
It seems a little heavy for class.
She meets his gaze for a moment. She hesitates, then she lifts a hand in a small, almost abortive wave. "Hello," she says. She hesitates. She hasn't seen him since they fell back.
"...Do you have a moment?"
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
The question is, on its face, absurd. Do you have a moment? It's like opening a conversation about a question about a point in a lesson after class while gathering one's things in the classroom, and not a pre-arranged discussion in a private, remote room of what is and is not to be discussed about a secret mission before the crack of dawn, when everyone else is still asleep.
He had his own reports to make too, but his primary mission is being at school. As long as he can attend, he must attend. It doesn't matter what else he has going on. No doubt that's why he returned right away while Trem took a while longer--that, and the fact that she answers to people who aren't so directly invested in Asticassia's games. It's all in his head, anyway. Everything is, for everyone. That truth makes it easier to get along.
But he doesn't say that. He doesn't say anything. Elan continues to stare at Trem. He doesn't close his book.
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
There are moments when Trem wishes she knew how to handle people better. Before she came to Asticassia, she never really had to contend with it. There were only people she interacted with briefly...
...and the people like her, where they understood each other.
Her attempt at an icebreaker failed. She looks around the room, aware of how private it is; then she spaces out for a moment, as she considers something, and stares blankly.
Then, she looks back at him. "...I didn't know," she says, finally. "What was in the weapon system that I used."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
For what it's worth, good people skills wouldn't necessarily make her any better at handling this particular person. But then, good people skills are what let people be able to discern that difference.
Trem spaces out for a moment. Elan waits. This, too, is part of his orders. Eventually, she says something.
"I see," he says softly. He still doesn't know if she's telling the truth or not. She could easily be lying to save face with him--not that he's anyone worth saving face to, but she thinks he is. "But you still pulled the trigger."
He looks down at the spread of words on the pages before him without reading them. "And I made sure you could."
A long silence. Then, with care, he shuts his book and sets it face up. He gazes down at it for a while. Then, at last, he says, "What orders are you to follow going forward?"
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem is quiet for a moment, when points out that she still pulled the trigger. She did -- and it wasn't as if she had some illusion that it wasn't a weapon that would hurt people. Her fingers tense, at her side.
"...Yes," she says. "I did. And... you did."
She looks back at him. "But you were placed there because of the... circumstances of the people that we work for."
Trem hesitates, at his other question. She breaks eye contact, her eyes looking at nothing in particular. "I... can't choose to not follow orders," she says, with great hesitation. "It's..."
Her shoulders tighten. "...It's complicated."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
It's complicated.
To some, it might sound like an excuse. But to Elan... it's a reflection, however muddied, of his own reality.
"I can't choose to not follow orders either," he says softly. "That's why I joined you."
Is it really so different from being placed there because of the circumstances of his employers (handlers)? It doesn't sound so to him. But at the same time, Elan doesn't have any illusions that they might be the same.
Even so, he does wonder--and Trem seems shaken, too. Maybe as shaken as he was about it. So he brings himself to ask, "...Were you supposed to survive that battle?"
Trem might note that he wasn't nearly this curious during the pre-mission debrief.
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
"Mm."
Trem hesitates at that. Something inside of her twists -- because admitting she doubts whether she wanted to follow that order is treasonous. There is a moment where she spaces out again, staring blankly...
...but then she nods, and she looks down. They are not the same, and she knows that.
"I was," Trem says. "It was... a message, I think. To the enemies of NUNE, of course, but to me." She hesitates. "Of... the kind of person I'm expected to be."
She considers, for a moment, how to clarify; how to explain. How she can do so, without betraying.
"A person like the Captain," Trem says. "They're... not a kind person. But they do what has to be done."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
"I see," Elan repeats. "I thought that was probably the case."
But in case she'd been disposable after all... In case they had been more alike than he'd thought...
But it wasn't to be. Obviously. So when Trem does offer that limp explanation, he doesn't even bat an eyelash.
"You're meant to be someone important. Someone worthwhile," he interprets. "But that worth is decided by people who don't value human life."
He doesn't ask 'what has to be done.' It doesn't matter.
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem looks up at him, slightly surprised. But then, she realizes, it makes a certain kind of sense; he was assigned to support and protect her. He was a pawn of Peil Technologies, an asset that they used in the games of her superiors.
She hesitates, before she nods. There is a similarity, perhaps.
But they aren't alike.
She could almost laugh, at the idea of her superiors valuing human life. Instead, though, she nods. "I... yes," Trem says. "I am. The person they need me to be, for... the sake of the future. Their knife in the dark, they once told me."
She swallows. And she doesn't correct him about whether they value human life.
"...You know about that?" she asks, looking up.
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
A knife in the dark. That says a lot of things. But there's also an inherent contradiction--and the conversation going the way he is, Elan points out, "But they didn't tell you what that weapon did."
He pauses. He wants the conclusion to be, 'You don't want to do this either.' Even if they aren't the same, it'd be enough of a similarity to make this easier. But he'd paid enough attention to her fight to hear her getting excited by the battle. Even if a weapon of that caliber is beyond her sensibilities now, it's only a matter of time.
...Or that's what her Captain is banking on, no doubt.
But then she asks a question, and that brings him back to... not Earth, exactly. He has no idea if he's ever been to Earth. "You've met the CEOs of Peil Technologies," he replies. "It only makes sense they'd ally themselves with someone who matches their sensibilities."
And Trem already said her Captain isn't a nice person.
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
"They didn't," Trem says. "I... thought they trusted me more. They have in the past. I think they... wanted to see my reaction."
Does she want to do this?
Admitting she didn't like that was dangerous. She frowns, as she thinks about that, and she finds no answers.
She looks back up at him -- and then Trem's silver eyes blink, once. "Their... sensibilities," she says. "Mm." She thinks of the person she answers to; she thinks of his vision of the future.
The way things will be, when he has succeeded, and the things that others must do to make that future.
"Yes," she agrees. "I've met them. And... the Captain, I think, is the sort of person they would ally with."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
It's strange, to think that someone would make someone else unwittingly (semi-wittingly? she did still know it was a new weapon) commit a war crime just to see how they react to it. To test her. Was that the purpose of the entire exercise? To test her? Those kinds of expectations are on another level. Trem may be valued, but that doesn't make her especially fortunate.
He doesn't ask if she wanted to do this, and she doesn't give that answer. Some things are better off left unsaid.
He nods once. He thinks of how the Captain had praised the work he'd done--the main reason he hadn't been punished for not defeating an enemy with anti-beam shielding while in a mobile suit with almost nothing but beam weaponry. He wonders if that Captain understood what they'd done for him. Probably not. It doesn't seem like something they'd do out of kindness.
"Is your Captain satisfied with the assistance I gave?" he asks. "Peil Technology's CEOs are interested in... a continuation. But if the Captain has no more need for me..."
It's far more hopeful than he knows the circumstances merit. It's not like Trem could make that call herself. But if there's any way she can influence it, even a little...
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem looks distant, for a moment. She asked the very thing that he thought of -- and the only answer that she can come to is that it is not terribly human to do.
But, perhaps, that is the point.
She turns her head, and there is just a flicker of surprise at finding out what Peil's CEOs want. A continuation; to have Elan continue his role as Dragon-4.
Trem's expression levels out, though she doesn't doubt he spotted that.
"...They are," she says. "The Captain... thought you did very well. And--" She swallows. "The Captain... the Captain is the sort of person who... will do what they need to, to secure a better future. At any cost."
Trem looks down. This was the lesson that they were making sure that she learned.
"...I'm sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
Trem expresses a flash of surprise, there and gone like a shooting star streaking the night. So pretty for something whose fate is to burn up into nothing. But beauty, too, is ephemeral--something that's only the product of perception.
Elan's fingers curl a millimeter over the cover of The World as Will and Idea.
"..." He looks down too. Strange; it feels like there's something hard in his throat. Like it's a little harder to breathe. But this was the result that was always going to happen, wasn't it? He never had real hope for anything else. Never.
"...No need to apologize." He looks back up at Trem. His gaze is hollow. "Orders are orders."
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem's eyes are drawn down to how his fingers curl along the cover of the book. She looks at him, sensing the -- the disappointment? She isn't, entirely, sure.
But it's not an unfamiliar sensation. That, too, bothers her.
She should learn the lesson here, she tells herself. After all, the price of the future isn't free -- for him, for her, or for anyone.
But still, there is a doubt when there wasn't before.
"I know," she says. She hesitates, and finds herself speaking without thinking. "...If... if I get a mission briefing that looks like that last one, or--something that seems different..."
She looks up at Elan. "...I'll tell you. We can... consider the best plan to complete our orders, then."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
Whatever the price of the future is, it's too high a cost for him. He won't get to see it. But the future was never for him anyway. He's one of the things used to buy it in the first place.
But he doesn't say that either. Why would he? He can make some good guesses, but he can't read her mind.
It's because he can't read her mind, in fact, that when she goes on, he blinks at her. A shooting star of surprise, flashing down his own face.
"..."
He... doesn't know how to react to that. It's more consideration than he could have ever expected. Or maybe it's pity? He can't tell the difference. It doesn't seem all that different to him. But...
It does feel a little more like they're in this together. And it isn't everything--but it is something. And "something" is more than he had before.
"...All right." He pauses. Then: "Thank you... Trem Firmal."
<Pose Tracker> Trem Firmal has posed.
Trem thinks it's not enough. It's also offering too much -- a security vulnerability that she is introducing, which her superiors would have a serious problem with. But...
They both know that. Of that, Trem can be sure.
She sees the surprise on his face, and that's something of a surprise in and of itself. She'd almost gotten used to his oft-blank expressions.
Then, there's a moment's pause of her own. "Ah..." It still isn't enough.
But it is something.
She smiles, faintly. "Peil House students--" That's not what they are, but it is safe to say. "--have to stick together."