2022-10-16: You, chosen to see the emptiness, I shall not leave to languish in this decrepitude of noise
- Log: You, chosen to see the emptiness, I shall not leave to languish in this decrepitude of noise
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Kamille Bidan
- Where: Side 1 - Londenion
- Date: 2022-10-16
- Summary: Yuliana has a casual chat which Kamille. It quickly becomes less casual when he reveals his own experiences with oblivion.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana's route through space has taken her to all sorts of dreadful haunts, and here, now, there is another -- Londenion. One might suspect that the seat of Londo Bell is too close to Yuliana's investigation to be of use -- but Yuliana knows well how much information can be found at home, left carelessly strewn about.
Of course, it's still quite miserable, being in space. Nothing good happens in space. She took her wrist out of its brace to fit in her space suit, only to have to test its strength immediately; luckily, a day or two of better luck have proven that she's fine, just a little delicate after her ordeal.
Why, at this point, she could probably punch someone without even regretting it!
She's not in a space suit in the middle of the Londenion colony, though; she's in her usual dark suit, with a pink scarf tied about her neck. She's taken a break from querying various offices and scientists to do something as vile and villainous as... 'trying the food'. And as much as Yuliana hates this place, the drink she's currently sipping isn't... the worst cup of coffee she's ever had.
Far from the best, though, even with the added flavour from the nutritional fortification they've sprinkled in.
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
Side 1 is not haunted, Kamille tells himself. Londenion is a perfectly fine colony, or base in residential colony shape, dull and banal in its own way. The dead of the old war are not here, he tells himself.
It isn't that he's afraid of ghosts. He is afraid of hearing them again.
He's been up here renewing paperwork and a license for something-or-other. The Federation pays his salary now, and sometimes they want to make sure he's got all his ts crossed, so to speak. Now he's stopping in for tea, walking into the same cafe as Yuliana with a weary and characteristically grumpy expression. He wears a hooded jacket, having changed out of his uniform at the hotel.
And immediately, something just feels...off, there. A very different kind of 'off' than he's used to, like a clogged ear.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Side 1 isn't haunted. There are no ghosts, here.
Distinctly, sharply, EXPLICITLY so: around Yuliana's table at the cafe, there is nothing at all. No ghosts, no thoughts, no love. If he hadn't seen her with her eyes, she surely would not have existed; the absence about her is absolute and complete, without feeling or intent or presence.
And approaching her, there is a lurching, horrible sense of approaching a vast pit, deep and dark and unfathomable.
Yuliana looks to him -- straight at him -- into him, with a too-welcoming smile.
"Ah," she calls, "Doctor Bidan, is it?" She gestures, with dark fingers, curling inwards -- one is decorated with a rich gold band, diamonds flanking an emerald. An engagement ring.
Her voice is welcoming, her intent unknown, "I've heard so much about you."
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
To Kamille, people radiate. Not just Newtypes, but everyone just has an energy to them, warm or cold, electrical or deep as the sea. It's a sense that has only grown stronger over time, one that might well swallow him up one day and blind him to all but that one sense.
And it is most easy to notice when it is not working.
Yuliana is an absolute cloud of Nothing. Not the lack of psychic energy most androids display, but capital-n Nothing, a true void of what should be there. It's something he's never seen before. It makes no sense. She makes no sense...
No. Not a relapse. It's fine. He just took his medication this morning. It's fine all is fine he's FINE. All he has to do is pretend not to oh no she's addressing him directly.
Against all instinct, because if he just walked away and ignored her he would look even more uneasy and unstable than he does now with his too-wide blue eyes, he takes a step closer to her table. It takes effort to do so, step closer to that cloud of Nothing.
"That's me," he says with a nod and an attempt at a neutral expression. "I try to keep a low profile, but I suppose that's not always possible. You are...?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Yuliana Dispersal," the abyss introduces herself, with a warm, warm smile. (If it wasn't, who could tell?) "Captain -- though I'm on leave at present," she gestures, open-palmed, "so there's no need to stand on the formalities of rank, mm?"
Of course, she was placed on her mandatory stress leave for acting atrociously to a Zeon remnant, but never mind that.
"You're the Ra Mari's doctor, aren't you?" She asks, with light curiosity, as if she doesn't really know. (She does. Her research has been... extensive.) "I've worked alongside the ship at times -- wonderful people." They're not, as far as she's concerned, but Yuliana is an excellent liar.
Yuliana gestures, to her coffee. "I don't have much opportunity to visit space in my day-to-day," she offers a reasonable explanation, amicably. "My work keeps me occupied with terrestial matters, you understand. So I thought I'd come visit now I have the time! Would you care to join me, Doctor?" It sounds like a perfectly open invitation, good-natured, with a dusting of curiosity. The sort of thing anyone might say, to a distant colleague they hadn't been able to speak with before.
So often, she sounds reasonable.
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
Kamille, trying to ignore the Nothingness and attributing it to a glitch in his own mind, sits down at the invitation. It isn't this person's fault he's having Yet More Brand New Psyche Issues. He does his best not to show it, but the smile he gives her back is a little pained, like he might be suffering from a mild headache.
"You're a friend of the Ra Mari, then? They are wonderful, aren't they? Kind of a standout for the organization if you ask me. I, uh...certainly." He's already sitting down, looking at the menu with a hand that shakes just slightly.
"Do you like it up here? It's not the same in a colony as it is out there, among the stars. Always feels like I'm in a container, personally."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Sit down, sit down, and be welcome in the abyss.
When Kamille gets close enough to sit with Yuliana, the world ends.
Oh, the colony is still turning. The physical SOUND of people existing is unaltered -- a plate clacking here, gossip there, someone yelling for an order to be fulfilled, someone else dropping a fork. The physical world is just as it was, and yet, here, alongside her: silence.
Absolute, abject, and complete.
Within this isolation tank, Yuliana smiles. (She sees the pain; perhaps she is politely ignoring it.) "Of course," she assures him, and perhaps it's obscured, in that disorienting moment, just what she's agreeing with.
Being their friends?
How wonderful they are?
How much they stand out?
Oh, the best lies are built from truth, and Yuliana can agree to one of those statements easily enough.
"One can so easily feel... trapped, in a place like this," Yuliana agrees, again, amicable and warm. "In these small havens of habitability, in a place hostile to life... walk out a little too far, and... it's a little unnerving, don't you think?" As if being in space is what's unnerving Kamille, right now.
She muses, philosophical: "It's certainly a unique experience." What she doesn't say is whether she likes it.
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
This is the second time Kamille has been in the abyss.
But the last time he wasn't aware of it. He was in emptiness and emptied out himself, exhausted from too many deaths and losses, and Scirocco had cast one last terrible spell, breaking something in him like glass. Something that healed with deep, strange scars. He did not fear the void because he was of it, like a fish in the sea.
But Kamille is aware now. He breathes. He feels he might drown.
He looks pale, hesitating just a moment too long before he orders tea. (Caffiene, caffeine will help him. Maybe? What does he know? He can't treat himself!) Briefly he considers excusing himself on account of sudden illness.
But no, he will not be a slave to his own senses, even when they fail him.
And she's smiling. That means sincerity, usually, unless it doesn't. He used to be better at trying to read the emotions of others based on their signals, even if he had trouble responding in kind and being understood.
"It's unnerving," he agrees, voice a little flat. "Sometimes I feel like the stars will draw me out someday, and I won't come back."
Wait, why is he talking philosophical nonsense to a near-total stranger? How shameful. How stereotypically Newtypian. He chuckles and walks it back quickly. "But that's probably just vertigo. You'd think I'd be used to it since I grew up in a colony and all."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana spent years learning how to convincingly feign emotion, because when no one can see into her heart, she has infinite possibilities to lead the people around her.
The REA spent all that time teaching her how to lie -- instead of how to regulate herself and genuinely feel her emotions. This is, perhaps, its own tragedy, and hardly one she speaks.
There may well be something different, between this void and collapse -- a thing which consumes, hungry and unknowable. Yuliana appears completely unaware of the aura about herself, completely at ease. Many of the diners at this cafe don't seem to notice, either. Perhaps it's nothing at all.
(It is nothing at all.)
She smiles, entirely too tolerant. "Oh, very true. You could fall in... perhaps it would even be comfortable." Amongst the stars, surely. Yuliana laughs, good-naturedly. "Yes, vertigo is much like that! I rather thank you for pinning down the word -- it does make sense, thinking of it that way."
As if she's done him a favour, explaining things.
"But you grew up in a colony, did you?" Yuliana asks, with curiosity. "Is it nearby..?"
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
It must be nothing at all, Kamille tells himself. A malfunction of the mind. People aren't voids. Why does she act so smug about it? So...
No, stop. It's not her fault his mind is like this. (Is it?)
"I've felt nothing and thought nothing before. I don't recommend it. Space is beautiful but cold, and the stars feel nothing for us." Ugh, more philosophy. He sounds like Quattro, gross. "Ah, no, I grew up in Green Noa."
Also known as Gryps.
"Just a bored rich kid with crappy parents, that old story." He shrugs in self-depreciation. "The usual teenage thing where you just wanted to be anywhere besides where you were, and for me that was the stars."
The difference being that unlike many teenagers, he went there. Right out the colony wall. But shush.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
He's felt nothing before, has he? For an instant, Yuliana's eyes narrow with a sharper interest; then she blinks, and tilts her head, and perhaps it was just a little confusion. "Ah, I see! Not so close by, then."
She doesn't mention the Gryps Conflict. She never interfered with the Titans' work, after all. Call it... returning a favour.
"Well, we are always struggling to escape our parents," Yuliana agrees, too, too easily. "But you've certainly made something of yourself, so many years on. Medicine is such a noble pursuit..." Why, without doctors, Yuliana would fall apart in a week! She sees no reason to give him that detail for free.
Yuliana lifts her coffee, and sips; from behind the rim of her cup, her head inclines, just so. "... but is oblivion really so terrible, Doctor Bidan?"
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
Kamille is right, he is sounding like Quattro. Saying a lot of cryptic things.
(It's a lack of sleep. It's something he ate. It's something he didn't eat. It's the medication, he'll have to switch to another one again. It's...)
(Her? Is it her? Could it be her? But how?)
"It's just an interest of mine," he says, averting his eyes by way of what at least looks like modesty. (It does not help. She is still there, and Nothing around her.) "Something I could use to focus all my mental energy, and maybe put people back together since this world is so intent on tearing them apart. -Hah, sorry, that was awfully intense, right? I promise I didn't say ridiculous things like that in med school."
Then she prods.
"It's silence," he says, with a bit more sharpness than he intended. "Emptiness. You can almost hear, and you can almost talk back. Sometimes you feel like you're reaching out, but everyone is so far away. No one is there, except that you know they're all by your side. They're just not where you are. I had a...an injury some years back," he adds, awkwardly. "That's all. We're probably talking about entirely different ideas of oblivion..."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"How wonderful," Yuliana assures Kamille, on the topic of putting people back together. For just a moment her gaze lids; there's a little lift, to her smile, the skirts of her lips coming up over the scandalous ankles of her threatening upper teeth. It's subtle; it makes her so-called warm expression so much LESS welcoming, in that eyeblink.
Then it's gone, as if her sneer never was.
As if her feelings never were.
As if doctors didn't tear people apart, to put them back together in just the way they wanted. As if they didn't rip HER to --
Never mind that.
She listens, intently, to Kamille's descriptions. She is a green-eyed monster and she is hungry, HUNGRY, for something he describes so sharply. She leans forward, just so, into the table. "Tell me," she says -- she demands, she is imperative, she commands, "know you the empty space they inhabit, the lack, what is lost? Are you alone? Are you alone? You do not smell alone, little man, but you speak the words. An injury? No, surely you were injured! Violated! Forced to the trough of Awakened lies!"
Her grip is so, so tight. Her knuckles are whitened; her smile is too tense, stretched too tight.
"Tell me," she beats, again, a rhythm to lose yourself to, "could you hear her?!"
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
The restaurant is gone now. It's still there, physically, but to Kamille it may as well not exist. There's just this woman grabbing his arm, and her questions, and the void that beckons both of them, and this void that is all around them.
In this void, the ghosts that always reach cannot find him.
"I heard no one! There was nothing! Nothing until-until he came, and..." His eyes go blank for a second, and he pulls his arm away roughly. "Let go!"
Never going back there, never going back to stars and darkness and the absolutely endless gaze of Scirocco's purple eyes.
The waiters stare, and he doesn't notice. They may as well not exist.
"An injury," he repeats, voice flat. "I was lost in my own mind, that's all. There's probably no real oblivion beyond the traps of our own minds. I am...I should go." He stands up quickly; despite the cool edge to his voice, his hands are visibly shaking.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Is she gripping his arm? Oh, it seems so. Yuliana didn't even notice dropping her coffee and lunging across the table.
Drip, drip, drip, the liquid falls to the ground, a little slower than it ought to. Artificial gravity.
"Until he? Until he! Who?!" Yuliana demands, and she is the sharp one, now, even as Kamille wrests his arm back across the table. "Who knocks against oblivion reality?! Violation or invocation?! SPEAK!"
She collapses, back, from the force of her grasping; her chair rocks backwards and almost sends her crashing down, but for the way she slams her palms to the table, and rights the legs on the ground again. She leans forward there, grasping its edges, her short hair falling from where it was combed back; in this instant she is not a welcoming presence but a beast tensing to strike, as if she might leap over the furniture and set upon him, bared teeth and curled claws.
"You fool," she draws through her teeth, all set to hyperventilation, and she LAUGHS -- not the musical warmth of before but something raw and ravenous, all torn from her throat, all making a scene. "Your damned eyes cannot comprehend the truth you were so blessed to see!"
No, she does not leap across the table; no, she will not stop him.
But she tells him -- TELLS him, with all the fanatical surety of a fact to pass, with no room for choice or consideration:
"You are lost, but I will FIND YOU, little lamb..!"
<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.
Kamille the doctor says, she is having some kind of episode and needs help. Kamille, who has seen too many like says, she may be like Rosamia. Maybe you can help this one.
Kamille, the person, walks quickly out the door, pulls his coat around him and just runs, runs back to his hotel room. He gasps in the way of one coming up for air, because he can feel here, he can sense here, there's no Oblivion and no one calling him for it, no one speaking on its behalf.
Oblivion will not find him here, not when he sleeps tonight with all the lights on.