2023-04-20: A Talk

Log: 2023-20-04: A Talk
Cast: Leina Ashta, Sayla Mass
Where: Villa Mass
OOC - IC Date: April 20, 0097
Summary: Sayla and Leina finally talk about who Sayla really is.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

What does one do with a child who obsessively keeps house?

With a sponge and a soap bucket, Leina scrubbed away at the kitchen countertops, not allowing them to be anything less than spotless. Estela said something to her in Spanish earlier, which she thinks was 'Carina, está bien, ese es mi trabajo.' Which she'd replied back, haltingly, 'Está... bien, lo tengo.'

Everyone told he she didn't have to do these things, but it felt wrong not to. It was a big home, Dr. Mass saved her life. Now that she was back on her feet she had to do her part.

Estela must have gone and told Sayla, because Sayla was soon enough standing in the kitchen, watching. Leina told her, "Hey Doctor Mass... just finishing up here... it'll only be another hour or so." A carefully plotted out schedule of cooking, cleaning, studying that she'd made. Just like she had back on Shangri-la. There was nothing unusual about this for her.

It was just life. Life was work.

"No." The scrubbing stopped. Leina looked up in surprise, most of the time Dr. Mass may have told her she didn't have to, but she'd never told her no before when it came to her just, doing these things. "Not tonight. Leave it to Estela. We're going out on the Veranda together."

"But... she's always so busy. It's the least I can do." Leina replied in confusion. To which Dr. Mass replied firmly. "No. There are more important things than you cleaning our kitchen. Come with me." Leina blinked, then stepped off the step stool she was on taking off her apron, which she hung up, and untied the headscarf she'd put on for cleaning. She didn't really know how to deal with this.

Wasn't she doing what she was supposed to be doing?

Sitting uncomfortably in silence at first, as the Catalan sun dipped over the horizon. She fidgeted a little, until Sayla broke the silence, and they started talking. And soon enough...

"Excuse me? Were we watching the same show? Because that was definitely one of its weaker episodes!"

It was the first of many such talks, sparring matches, or arguments in this place. Sometimes sweet, often fun, sometimes serious.

And slowly, steadily, she was coaxed from the mindset that life was all about work and study, as she was opened up to the possibilities. As she discovered new sides to herself.

-=-=-

It had been days since Palau. Leina mandated to the household that noone bother Sayla about what happened for a while, to give her time. It was meant to give Sayla time to collect her thoughts, to recover from what was obviously a harrowing experience, to get a thorough medical checkup even if some Universal Truth had truly fixed her up.

In the end was it more for Sayla or herself though?

She was a nervous wreck post-Palau, and part of it was the experience of getting lost in that Psycommu. The temptation, the draw, the needed power in the moment. That battlefield, ripe with emotions and Psycoframe resonance. She needed time to clear her own head, to calm her nerves.

And then, she called her out on the Veranda. It was early evening, the sun was starting to dip on the sunrise over the coast. A pleasantly warm breeze wafting about every so often. Leina sat within the same wooden slatted chair she'd sat in for years. Sometimes there were drinks, tonight there was one for Sayla, and just a glass of water for herself.

For a while she remained silent, trying to keep a relaxed pose, her eyes facing the sunset, despite the buzz of nervous tension. She’s in her worn and faded Wonderful Persimmon shirt, a pair of denim jeans. Casual enough wear for the night. "I sent everybody out tonight." And the security was very much on, "Noone is going to overhear us." She didn't need to reassure her of this, but she did anyway. "I am going to keep an open mind here, and hear you out. So I promise. We will talk this through, just like we always have."

Is she saying this for Sayla's sake? Her own? Both of them? It's hard to say. "But I want..." A pause, a correction, "... I /need/, to hear everything." Not too aggressive, not too accusative. It may have a different tone than one of their many conversations out here, the gravity is there.

But it's also everywhere here on Earth. In the end she's trying to make it feel casual in that sense of setting but despite her best efforts she knows she's failing. Nothing about this is casual. She only wishes that it were. That she could recapture the magic of that moment right now.

She's never been able to invoke a miracle on command though. Not one of those fictional ones that Magical Girls create, nor one of those real ones that Amuro or Banagher or Rita can conjure. There would be a price to that, after all, even if she couldn't see it. The only true Miracles in her life have ever been the people in it that make life worth living...

... and she pays the price of those miracles gladly.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

There had been a significant amount of exhaustion to recover from after her rescue.After the initial moments of joy- everyone made it out. They were okay. Others had stopped Char's attempt to destroy the planet. He was still out there, though. But other minds were on it right now. Right now, she was told she needed to recover.

But it's hard to pretend everything is normal when something life changing is out. She's been biting down dread, trying to keep her walls as steeled as possible. They were moving at Leina's pace, and Sayla knew that was what Leina deserved. Plenty of people would have questions. She knew this.

But one person had more right to answers than anyone else.

When Sayla walked out to the Veranda, dressed in a light blouse and a skirt, she knew it was time. She took her place, and looked down at her drink… but waited, and watched the setting sun. This time, Leina was the one to break the silence. Sayla's eyes drifted down to her hands as Leina spoke. "Alright."

Sayla's silent a little while longer. Mustering her thoughts. Mustering her courage. It goes so much against what she wanted, what she had desperately hoped, but..

"You're right. I'll…" She falls silent. She folds her hands on her lap. "Shall I start from the beginning or do you want me to do this another way?" She can't be in charge here. If she's in charge she'll omit, or hide, or trick. She can't do that anymore. She has to be honest.

"I'm… going to lower my walls. Not all the way, but… enough." Enough that Leina can tell if she's lying without risk of a connection forming. Enough that Leina can know her feelings- without being overwhelmed or unduly influenced. Enough that Leina can see her- but not have to live her memories.

Enough that she can see the lingering remnants of a girl when she shows her face. She breathes deeply. It's time to show Leina the truth behind the mask.

"I am Sayla Mass, but before that… I was Artesia Som Deikun."
.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

It is difficult to pretend like anything is normal.

Leina waits, hands clasped together, the sunset gleaming within her waterglass that's within reach, but as of yet untouched. She can at least feel Sayla gathering herself. She understands how difficult at least this must be.

Still, so many knew... and Leina did not.

"I..." She almost said 'I trust you.' to decide.

Instead she falls quiet for a while longer, and instead of keeping her silence, decides to share her thoughts, "...I don't know. Akane told me some. Mineva confirmed it. I don't know the best way to go about this. I thought I knew almost everything about you, or could at least, talk to you about anything and... it'd be something we could discuss."

She lays it out honestly, she has to, "But there's a side of you that I just knew nothing about. And I don't know how to feel about that yet. I... the beginning for now, I think."

Does she feel betrayed? Perhaps, but she doesn't know how betrayed she feels. And she wants to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Okay..." Leina affirms gently, to the idea of Sayla lowering her walls. Though she would tell her, she doesn't mind any of that. All of that.

She's always wanted to know Sayla, the woman who saved her, the woman who raised her through those teen years.

It's hard not to think about the film they watched together, Sayla bursting into tears.

The first question comes.

"Before that." Leina echoes softly. Before she then asks, "What about in your own head?" She looks at Sayla out of the corner of her seagreen eyes, "Are you Sayla Mass in your most private thoughts, or Artesia Som Deikun?"

It may be an easy question, or a supremely hard one, but she's never shied away from the latter.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla desperately wants to hide her feelings right now. To not manipulate Leina with them. To protect her from those feelings. She nods slowly, acknowledging starting at the beginning. "Akane did?" Of course. Someone had to take charge when she went missing. "...I asked Mineva not to tell you. It wasn't her idea to keep keeping secrets- but I only found out she knew that night we spoke in my office." Sayla finally reaches for that drink, taking a small sip. The memories of that conversation are difficult.

So is the knowledge she hurt Leina. She knew Leina hated lying more than anything. But Sayla was always duplicitous. What the hell does she say?

The truth. Tell her the goddamn truth.

"Okay." Sayla says quietly. It makes sense Leina doesn't know how she feels. It's crushing to find out someone isn't who you thought they were? Hypocrite.

"Sayla Mass." Her answer comes with no hesitation. "That's who I am. I wasn't always, but Sayla Mass is the person who came away from that fire. That's all there is to it." Another sip. "...This could take a while, Leina. You're the third person I've told this story to- and even then never in full."

Sayla looks up at the sky, the first stars starting to become visible. Her blue eyes are full of sorrow. She never, ever wanted this conversation to happen. "I was born on Side 3, my parents were Zeon Zum Deikun and Astraia Tor Deikun. I don't remember a lot of Side 3, truth be told. By the time I was old enough to remember, my father was already leading Munzo." There's a fondness there, recalling her father and mother.

"Mother looked after us at home herself most of the time, and most of the time… Most of the time Casval and I were inseparable." Leina knows now. There's no point hiding it. "Usually I was clinging to his side- or playing with Lucifer." She shakes her head. "For a long time my childhood was… idyllic. We had guards to make sure we weren't in danger, but not a lot of people around. The people I most knew were children of my father's biggest supporters."

Sayla sips again. "...Degwin Sodo Zabi and Maharaja Karn." She braces herself. Leina is not going to like this reveal. Not at all.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"You weren't answering your phone. Mineva told me that she felt him return. The whole Alliance was in disarray and... Rain shut me out from learning anything as they were scared of how I'd react."

Leina tells her matter of factly, there's no hint of venom there, it's just 'this is what happened'. "Akane was with me. It was... that day. And... I was freaked." She looks away, trying not to hurt her with that comment, "She decided it was necessary."

And it's clear, Leina feels it was. "Judau, Roux, Chris, Kikka, Koji, Faye. They all know now." She figures Sayla would realize that, but she wants to make it clear.

There is a lengthy pause and she closes her eyes, "I have things to say about putting Mineva in that position, but I will save them for now." She tells Sayla quietly, calmly. Leina was always someone whose anger was always patient, measured, deserved, rational.

The question is answered, Sayla Mass. In some ways perhaps, that's a relief, even if she doesn't say it. It feels more honest perhaps? That her very identity at least was never a lie, that the rest was just someone left behind, "But even if you were Sayla Mass, he wasn't really Edouard in your head." It's not really a question. It is what she feels is a safe assumption. "He wouldn't let himself remain that, so not everything could be left behind."

Still, after a moment, she nods, voice softening, "There's time." If there's one thing they won by thwarting him, by rescuing Sayla. It's time. Time enough- "I want to hear all of it, please." - to hear it all.

It is a selfish request in the end. Whether it is the selfish request of a child, or a young woman is up for debate at this moment.

The Villa is far enough away from the light pollution of the cities, Leina was always glad for that, to see the stars, to look for Jupiter, for Shangri-la. It would feel wrong to have a home on Earth where one cannot contemplate space.

As Sayla talks about Side 3, she looks to where she imagines the Moon will be ere long. As if she could see beyond it. Beyond what Zeon became, back to what its founder intended. Zeon Zum Deikun, a man with grand dreams. It's hard to see how those ideals were twisted by the Zabis. It was harder still to see them twisted further by his own son.

The brother of the woman who raised her.

Lifting her water glass, she takes a sip, cradling it in her hand, feeling the condensation pass on to it. It's hard to say how she feels about Casval being an ideal big brother to her, in the way Judau was to her. It's harder still not to compare herself to the image of Artesia Som Deikun in her head.

Which of them had to grow up more quickly? Leina's was such a quiet thing, born out of neglect. And Artesia...

It's hard to wish for an idyllic childhood for herself. It feels like such a thing is impossible. It's far easier to sympathize with Artesia's coming to an end. Another sip of water is taken, but she chokes on that a little, sputtering as the name 'Karn' is heard - moreso than the word Zabi by far.

Leina thought herself a master of her history of the rise of Zeon and what came before, but even that fact of him being Zeon Zum Deikun's secretary eluded her.

She takes a moment to swallow this.

... Did Sayla take her in out of a sense of responsibility for what came about after her father fell? Or had she too heard the rumors of how Char shaped that man's daughter? How did she feel, raising the victim of that woman?

Without saying a word, her eyes briefly fall. A deep breath is taken.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt." She says as she clears her throat.

Questions she can't ask, questions she should never ask.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla closes her eyes as Leina recalls it. Even Sayla can't claim she played this one right. "I see… I'm glad she was there." Would Sayla disagree with the call? Absolutely. But it's done. "...that's… That's a lot." Sayla actually sounds shaken, and takes more of a swig than a controlled sip.

She'll wait for Leina's anger to come for her later. "..It's complicated. Deep down, he was always Casval to me. And I was always Artesia to him. Denial on both our counts, I suppose but..." She's trying to detach, become unemotional. That's not what Leina deserves.

All of it. That's what she asked for. It's taking effort to keep her walls this low. To be this open, even with Leina. There's momentary anger then regret and sorrow. "Alright."

Leina's sputter catches Sayla unaware and she turns to her. "Leina, are you-" Heightened alert and worry that passes a little after Leina clears her throat. "Nothing to apologize for." Sayla's own voice is soft there.

Sayla waits for questions, but when none are asked she keeps going.

"In 0068, my father was assassinated. I was… five? Six?" She shakes her head. "I don't remember much, but it was only a few days after his funeral that everything happened. Mother was having constant visitors when Papá-" Sayla stops. "Jimba Ral, he was the head of another of the Zeon noble families." Fondness again. "He told Mother we had to leave, and we piled into a car with his wife, Peta, with a few things.."

She shakes her head. There's fear and confusion in those memories. "We were halfway to the spaceport when there was a large bang and our car stopped and m- Peta told us to get out. I dropped Lucifer's carrier and he made a run for it- and I ran off to chase him despite everything. Casval chased after me and…"

Sayla shivers. "Give me a moment…" She slugs the rest of her drink.

"When I caught Lucifer, I heard gunshots and froze. Casval grabbed us both and found a place to hide and we huddled. Papá found us an hour or two later. My running probably saved us but… that was the last time I'd see my mother."

Sayla puts down her glass, as the last of the sun starts to disappear. Fitting.

"Officially, Casval and Artesia died that day. In practice, they were taken to Earth by smugglers' routes- and then Teabolo and Alejandra Mass moved onto a farm with their children Edouard and Sayla. Just far enough out of town to avoid problems and not draw attention."

She looks out at the horizon. "I didn't understand why. Between us, we were Casval and Artesia, but to everyone else Edouard and Sayla. But there had been so much change, and everything was unfamiliar. I was just a little girl who didn't get why mother had to stay and why the gravity was set so heavy or why the weather programming was so different. Trying to take in the situation was beyond me. I think Casval understood it, though. Maybe that's…"

She stops herself. "No. Nevermind. It is what it is. Are you alright to keep going?"

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"It is, but, letting us know why - what happened, happened. Was her top priority. Anything to facilitate rescuing you."

Deep down he was always Casval, her big brother. And deep down, she was always Artesia to him. All those stories of the White Base. God. Did he know? Did she know at the time? Who Char Aznable was?

She doesn't even ask that. "Denial." Leina repeats softly, as she gets that anger, and regret, and sorrow. Her head turns, to look over at her. Sayla can feel it perhaps, that warring urge to just take care of her.

To comfort her.

Leina sits still, she waits, as if waiting for a time of decision. In this moment she knows she simply hates him all the more. There are ways an older brother is supposed to act, not killing her, rescuing her from a life or death situation that he himself caused...

... that is below the floor of behavior she expects for an older brother. She deserved better, from her older brother.

"Fine... fine I'm..." She rubs the back of her wrist over her mouth, "Fine." She reassures her. Perhaps few in the history of mankind who has ever said they were fine, was actually fine, and those themselves are outliers. But there are degrees of that.

To hear Sayla outright say he was assassinated, when before she merely let it be a conclusion that Leina drew, she is extra still in those moments, there are so many reasons to be angry at the Zabis, but in this moment there's only one.

Jimbal Ral. She was raised by...

...but the White Base killed?

Oh God...

The glass is put down, as she pinches the bridge of her nose, rubbing it, like she's already comprehending some facet to the tale ahead of time, and rearranging things in her head. So much.

She was five. Six years old. When Leina was six, she merely started learning to cook, and took over cleaning the spaces she could reach. When Sayla was that age she had people shooting at her.

It gets worse though, a momentary happenstance with Lucifer. He at least she knew about, but, that moment cost her any further memories with her mother.

It's so hard to listen to this and stay seated. It's hard. She's angry, she's upset, but she can feel what Sayla is feeling. Every part of her knows that she should be angry most of all despite the complex mix of emotions she might feel.

Which is why she stays seated.

Yet Sayla will feel something anyway. Despite her best efforts. With her walls down, something makes it in. It feels like it exists moving around each shoulder but on a deeper level than that. Ephemeral fingertips that curl around her as if in embrace, comfort for decades old loss and grief.

One look at Leina, and it's clear, she doesn't even realize she's doing it. It's instinct to her, just like breathing. Like it overrides her conscious decision making.

She can't help it. It is in her nature to reach out in this way.

She is conflicted at this moment on that conscious level, she's heard this part of the story to some degree, but she's still comprehending the context. She tries to imagine herself coming to Earth that much earlier, putting herself in young Artesia's shoes.

"Even if he did." Leina tells her quietly as if finishing the thought that he comprehended the grief and tragedy and loss in a way the little girl that Artesia was didn't. And those ethereal fingers grip tighter, "He should have stayed rather than inflicting more loss on you. His first responsibility was..." She can't finish the thought out loud.

It's finished for her.

... to you.

A question is asked, she's quiet for a time, before nodding again, still feeling conflicted, feelings turbulent, "I can keep going." She tells her quietly. "Please."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

"It makes sense," Sayla responds, despite the trepidation in her heart. "And it worked."

Sayla can pick up Leina's feelings now. A maelstrom, coming fast- and all of that fighting a drive to care. An urge she can't stop. One Leina should not be indulging, not with Sayla, not over this. "...Denial that our old lives had ended, I think." She pushes forward.

"...do you want me to raise my walls again?" It is, to Sayla, a kindness. Maybe she made a mistake. But Leina has control… and that might be the wrong decision. Sayla's fumbling through this too. It would have been so much easier if-

No. She can't do that. She can't think that.

That unfinished thought reaches her, clinging tight. That comforting embrace is undeserved and unconscious as it wraps Sayla. "Leina… will you shield a little more? It gets worse from here. I don't want you having to go through them first hand. Please?"

Leina says she can keep going, and Sayla nods. "Okay. But if you need us to take a break, it's okay. I won't squirm out of telling you the rest, I promise." It's a hard promise to make- but she keeps her promises.

Sayla looks up at the sky again, as the stars come out beyond the shadow of the orbital ring. "The next six years were… calm for want of a better word. We lived as a family, we all helped out on the farm. I went to school, I made friends, I did… normal girl stuff. I adapted better than I thought- Casval had a harder time selling himself as an earthnoid. A few times, Papá's son Ramba came to share news from Zeon." She pauses, but Leina wanted it all.

"He'd also play with me and Lucifer as much as I wanted, even though Lucifer would keep scratching him. I think Papá and Mamá got sick of me asking when he'd visit again. As I got older, Papá taught us about father, and contolism, and everything. He spent more time with Casval than with me, though."

"When I wasn't working at the farm, I would help at a refugee camp." She thinks. "...you know this bit, right? The place where I met Yumi?" She shakes her head. "...It's weird. Twenty five years ago, we had people struggling due to overpopulation, and now it wouldn't be a problem if the planet were more intact…" She sighs. "Sorry. I've gone off on a tangent."

Sayla covers her eyes with her hand, feigning rubbing her forehead. "0074… that was when it all started going wrong. The move to earth had been rough on Lucifer and he… passed away. The same day Papá got news- Mother had died in Zabi custody. I don't know how but I think Papá told Casval. I feel like he was different after that day but we only had a few months left together." Her hand fails to hide the tears streaming down.

"I was in school when Casval rode up to my class and yelled at me to come with him. He pushed old Hare to his limit to get us home and when we got there…" Sayla pauses; Not walling up now is taking extreme effort. She wants to protect Leina from it-

The burning flesh, the screaming animals, the choking smoke, the terrifying flame-

Wordlessly, Sayla moves her hands to dig her nails into her other forearm, trying to focus herself.

"I told you it was a barn fire. It wasn't. It was a murder- and they burned down our home to cover it up. Zabi family agents found us. By then I was old enough to understand it. We had to wait and watch as we lost our lives again.We saved the animals we could but… It was horrible. After it was over, Casval went into the wreckage- Papá had a hidden safe- it had papers, money. He tried to stop me from seeing the bodies but…"

Sayla shakes her head. "We slept in the remains of the truck, and in the early morning I snuck away to see. I… shouldn't have. I managed to not throw up somehow, but there was nothing I could do. Casval had missed Papá's gun somehow, so I took it. I wanted something to remember then and… I needed something in case they came back." The pistol she always carries.

Finally Sayla takes a breath. "And then… Casval gave me almost everything from the safe, rode us into town, shoved me on a shuttle and disappeared saying it was a man's duty to avenge his family. He even said he'd write." She shakes her head. "And that's where 'Edouard' disappeared from my life… but there's more to know about my brother and I." Sayla's wording had been ever precise. Careful.

She takes a long pause. "...I suppose it makes sense now, doesn't it? Why I was so hellbent on reuniting you with Judau, pushing you to see him at the spaceport. Encouraging you to get him to move in." Sayla shakes her head. "Seeing the way you two interacted, even for a moment… I was so desperately jealous of what you two had. I think I still am, a bit." It hurts so much to admit it openly. To be truthful is against her nature. "And I didn't want you to lose what I lost. You deserved better than that."

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

A thoughtful but succinct nod, because it did. Sayla asks if she wants that, and Leina tells her quietly a moment later, "No." Yet nearly immediately she makes the request that Leina protect herself more. And Leina looks at her out of the corner of her eye. For a moment it feels like she's going to deny her this request.

But perhaps some part of that request gets through to her, or maybe the fact it was a request, "Alright." The walls slide up fractionally further, the impression of the psychic embrace fades in these moments away to just a phantom prickle on the skin.

"It's okay. I don't need a break." She's not terse, just firm perhaps. Still, she listens, as more of the stars come out over the shadow of the ring. There is a pained blink, and she asks a few small questions, "What kind of stuff?" She asks quietly, but she wants to know, "Are you still in touch with any of those friends or, did you fall out of touch because it was too painful?"

Or, because they might recognize Casval, she doesn't say. Still, there's no implied harshness in the question. It's only natural that people fall out of touch with early school friends. Leina remembers a few, but after she took over the household chores and had no time for play, suddenly she was no fun anymore to them.

She still doesn't say anything about Ramba yet. This story will arrive at 0079 soon enough. She knows it. He sounds like a kindly sort, a shame he wasn’t good with cats, but… knowing he was on good terms with Artesia as a child makes what comes later so much worse.

Leina radiates discontent of her Papa's favor of Casval over her. She's always misliked parents favoring one child over another with their time, "Was it because he wanted him to revive your family legacy and Munzo?" Still, she hasn't said sorry yet, hasn't consoled her, even though it's clear how desperately she wants to.

Her head bobs about Yumi and the refugee camp, this story she'd heard well, "It's fine." She tells her of her apology of going off on a tangent. "I'd like to hear your thoughts on things like that too. I was only a toddler when war broke out." And killed so much of the world.

0074, her mind does some quick math and estimates Sayla at around twelve. For some reason, hearing about Lucifer and Sayla's Mother, the Mother she hadn't seen since leaving Side 3 passing away in nearly the same breath causes a pained wince for the first time.

It's hard to stay seated, knowing she's crying. Harder still knowing Sayla would want her to. Yet she does.

There's a glimmer of emotions, sensations of smells, animals, smoke, fire. It's all a mixed up jumble. With her walls up, she doesn't experience it too deeply, but she catches it, with just the smallest shudder.

Instead of looking to space, she looks off over the Catalan coast, out to the ocean, to the firmament that divides earth and space at the horizon line. That she went through all of that, Mineva's family had so much to answer for, even if she wished Mineva took none of it on herself.

Her teeth clench as she hears Casval's reaction after sleeping the night in that truck, her anger difficult to hide behind her walls. It had been roaring bright enough at the acts of the Zabi, and now...? "A man's duty huh? That's how he chose to justify leaving you alone with your grief?"

Despite her anger, a thoughtful pause, and... "How did you manage to remain Sayla Mass after that?" She asks quietly, "Did they not figure out who your Papa had taken in?" It's the only explanation that makes sense, otherwise Sayla would have been relentlessly hunted. She's certain of it.

"It does, make sense." Leina replies of her needing to reunite her and Judau, "I guess I'd... already figured it out some, with how you'd spoken of Edouard, of him leaving. Just..."

She didn't know everything. It's hard to line it up in her head. Judau and Casval both left. Both for things they felt they needed. Still she'd bet on Judau's love for her every time.

And she's not certain she ever would Casval's love of Artesia.

Leina takes a sip of her water, draining it now to the point where one would beg philosophical questions of half full or half empty. "... I guess, back then I wondered if it would be better if we didn't. After putting his life on the line so many times for my sake. To just, let him live his own life for a while."

Tilting the glass, her eyes inspecting it, "But I think even if we hadn't reunited that day, he still would have found his way back to me. You remember back then while he was still fighting Neo-Zeon on Side 3. Those moments when I was just, elsewhere? ... He told me he knew, even before I reached out, even though no one else believed him."

There is at least one thing she will say right now, "I don't blame you for feeling jealous." She tells her that much, from one little sister to another. There are many things she might be upset about later tonight, even angry, but this one she tells her right now. "I'm thankful that you encouraged me that day."

She only wishes she told her sooner. She would have understood.

After a time, she asks quietly, "Do you ever… visit?" Their old home, and perhaps, the graves. If they even had time to bury them.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

As the presence fades, Sayla untenses- just a little. But enough. "Thank you." The prickle is still there. Still trying to comfort her.

"If you're sure." Sayla pauses. Normal girl stuff. "...Well, for starters, I couldn't sleep one night, and crawled out the couch with Lucifer and put the TV on. It was boring infomercials but it was a voice, and... Persimmon came on. I was rapt. I had watched shows like it on Munzo but... they were different."

She pauses. "There was horse riding... I guess that's not normal but it was normal for us. Riding Gamigin around the farm was wonderful, taking care of him. A few of the other kids were from farms as well. We'd occasionally ride out on someone's land and camp out for the night."

She pauses. "And then uh... when I was about eight or nine I found a book in the public library and may have had an occult phase." Sayla looks more than a touch embarrassed. "I guess that never kind of left but... I used to pretend I was a witch and cast spells on people."

Sayla can't help but feel this is cheating. Sharing happy memories. It's undermining Leina's right to be angry. Or maybe it's just knives given Leina's childhood. Sayla had four parents who loved her, while Leina...

"...I don't know. I asked Casval a few times, but he just said 'boy stuff'. I had time with Mamá that Casval didn't for 'girl stuff'. Cooking, reading, unarmed self defense training, tea parties..." Wistful, again. Sayla sighs. "Casval was older though. Jimba might have told him more of the truth."

Sayla tenses as Leina asks about her friends. "...No. I couldn't risk it. My family was dead, and I was scared. After the One Year War I tried to look them up but... most of them didn't survive. The others... Marco died at Gryps. Terri got married but she dropped off the radar after relocating to Mars. Ferdie and Hugh are somewhere in Italy..." Another long, tired pause. Disappointment. Heartbreak. "...and Alanna has been serving three consecutive life sentences in a Federation maximum security prison since 0091."

The opportunity to change topics is taken without a second's remorse. "I told you this area used to be a lot greener, right? It was. Trees, farms everywhere... and refugees from conquered Britannian states desperate for somewhere to live. Spain wasn't big. The population has shrunk so much in your lifetime alone, from war, from Kaiju, from disasters."

She sighs. "One day I saw that a local charity was looking for volunteers and my parents said I could. I already had some basic first aid training, and they needed all the help they could get. So I worked as a gofer, did basic bandaging. I met Yumi Dias there. Her family were desperate to escape being 'sixes' as the Britannians called them. It was just after mother had died and I was desperate to do something and she was lonely and isolated. We became friends, we'd play together, she'd help me with my tasks, we'd talk... Then the local government decided to move the camp on. The refugees didn't so they... had the national guard blockade the camp until they 'left of their own accord'."

She pauses. "That was how it was when I was forced to leave. A few months later I checked the news for home to find that the blockade had been disbanded and the local government was facing charges after the camp's water supply was contaminated and a number of refugees died of cholera." Sayla glares angrily into the distance. "Yumi was one of them. Killed by fucking cholera in 0075. Because her home had been invaded and the local government didn't care." She wants to hurl her glass off the veranda. She doesn't.

Still, for once... Leina will find Sayla's own anger speaking of Casval here. "Yes." She says coldly. "That was the last conversation we had for four years. He put me on a shuttle to Loum, with an enrollment in a school and the last of our money and I watched him leave the spaceport as I begged him to say."

Sayla shakes her head. "Maybe, but if the assassins were thorough we would be dead-" A thought suddenly occurs, that somehow never occurred before. "Or Casval killed them so they couldn't follow me- and on Loum Sayla Mass was just a transfer student at a girl's school. No one came looking."

Sayla wants to reach out and comfort Leina now... but if she does they'll never get to the end of this conversation. "I think you're right... but it would have changed you both. He would have been left wondering if you were okay, what you would have been doing. And you would have been doing the same. Living your life with that uncertainty..." Sayla's voice softens, lowers as she looks to Leina for one of the few times in this conversation.

"It destroys you. I didn't want you and Judau living through what I did. You were both right there. Even though I thought you'd go with him... I couldn't live with myself if I didn't push you." Sayla smiles. "...And it meant that when you decided to stay you could make the choice honestly- not constantly regretting or wondering what if. And I'm grateful you did."

Sayla takes a deep breath. "...There's nothing left to visit. The area was bombed during the war. The farmland is nothing but craters... as is our house. I don't know where Papá and Mamá were interred, if they even were. We had a symbolic gravestone for Mother... and a little grave for Lucifer next to it. I... can't even be sure exactly where they were anymore."

Sayla falls silent again, and stares out in the distance. Darkness is fully upon them now, and the moon glows dim in the night.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"I am." And then Leina listens, a thin smile appearing as she spoke of climbing out of bed to watch infomercials, and her first Persimmon.

Horse riding. She'd never even seen a horse until Sayla took her, even though Glemy had promised lessons after her debut. Sayla might remember her being a little apprehensive at first, but then taking to it well enough. "Gamigin..." She repeats, as if locking that in the memory, and then the occult phase. "Cute."

It doesn't even feel patronizing, just a matter of fact, she thought it was cute, in a nice way. It does explain why she takes so well to certain elements of the Shuffle Alliance. Leina would like to say she didn't have those phases, but it'd be a lie, when she was caught 'acting' in a bathroom mirror a time or three. Is it cheating? Perhaps its a mix of good, and bad when lined up, but part of Leina's childhood blends in with when Sayla started to raise her.

"Ah." Leina repeats, and for a time she remembers how direct the lineage is from Zeon nobility to Neo-Zeon nobility. She's not about to compare the two, not right now, but she can't help but think of girl stuff as perhaps a kinder version of what she went through under Glemy.

... Honestly she'd have preferred more time cooking, reading and self defense training than the rest. "It sounds likely, but, I guess..." She wonders, "... I don't know, I just wonder how things might have been different." Different, if they hadn't been raised in such separate ways. Really though, should she make excuses? Not everyone had to live like her and Judau.

Her eyes shift over to Sayla's as she talks about her friends, and how she hasn't been in contact with them. How she was scared. How many died before the OYW, and the rest are missing or... there's a soft look of sympathy there, but she doesn't say anything, as if she were just absorbing it.

"Right. When we talked about how fallow the vineyards are."

She'd heard the story of Yumi Dias, at least in part, not the full version perhaps. How young Sayla and her became friends and she died of a disease that should no longer even EXIST. How many thousands of people suffered similar stories every day? Track the path of the Argama through Africa, the people of Ireland during Dublin.

A tragedy versus a statistic, in this unfeeling, cruel world. She feels the spike of anger in Sayla. Sayla feels the wave of anger and despair from her in the same moment. Folding her hands together, she takes a breath.

"To /Loum/?" Leina repeats in alarm, knowing what will come in just a few years, as she gives her a look of alarm, "I'm..." She's not certain what to feel in these moments, the idea of Casval being more thorough. Judau would have done it if it was for her, but... not in the same way, she knows that, "... I'm glad you didn't have to set aside this name too." She tells her quietly.

Still Leina looks off into the distance, "Maybe." She says on it changing them both. She knows how depressed she was after, even WITH the reunion. "I don't think either of us were okay though. It's..."

She starts, then stops, a shake of her head, "... I wanted to be there for him, so badly, but it felt like a side of him that touching would only bring him pain. That like it or not, he had to get away from Earth, from how it hurt him. And part of that pain was, how it hurt me."

Judau, Roux, they never really spoke of everything that happened while she was under Glemy's care. "We still haven't spoken about everything that happened back then. Just, it feels like it would only reopen old wounds of his, that still haven't healed." She relates quietly, "I was happy here." She tells her as if to say why she ultimately made the choice, and the 'was' might be startling, but she must mean it only in the past tense, right? "And happier still when he came back."

Nothing left to visit? Leina looks sideways at her again, wondering, but in the end, she just nods for now. And, she asks her.

"You said four years. Did you know? ... During the war."

Did she know he was Char Aznable? The story about Amuro, Lalah, Char, and her hangs heavy. Either way it's a prompt to keep going, to Loum, and beyond.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla sighs a little at her childhood being called cute. Her reputation would be in tatters if anyone else knew.

"I spent years wondering the same, but there's no answer. Not unless Koji's right about his theory." It sounds like it should be a joke, but there's no humor in Sayla's voice. "I'm not sure I'd want to know, either."

She nods, sadly. "Maybe they'll recover in another hundred years, with tending. You might be able to get wine in two hundred. But even then, it won't be the same."

Sayla takes another moment to stop herself as her own anger starts to roll into Leina's- something that could overwhelm both of them. As Leina breathes, so does Sayla. The same practiced breath.

Sayla gives another nod. They both know what's coming. She pauses. "...Sayla Mass was a gift to me from my parents- people who ensured I had a happy life for as long as they could. I'd been Sayla longer than I'd been Artesia, and I wanted to preserve what they did." She sighs. "...Casval had his own ideas."

Sayla is quiet- but the 'was' hangs in the air like the Sword of Damocles. She can't say anything- not after what she did.

Casval was right. She was as much of a coward as he was.

"No. I..." Silence fills the air for a long few seconds. "After a few months without any letters I thought he was dead. I thought that was the only reason he'd ever break his promise." She bites her lip. 'I was wrong' goes unspoken.

"At Loum I... completely closed in. I was sent to a boarding school and focused on my studies. I didn't make friends. I didn't go out. I didn't want to risk it. I didn't want to risk someone coming after me."

Sayla taps her index and middle finger on the arm of her chair. "...I graduated at 15, and got a scholarship to Medical School. And even then I seemed to absorb information and excelled. But a teen in that environment isn't going to fit in, and I didn't care to. I became cold and harsh. I would bite people's heads off for indecisiveness or getting in my way. I sure didn't make friends- it wasn't like it is now, the students were mostly in their twenties. We didn't have kids starting early without exceptional circumstances. I was on track to graduate mid 0079."

Sayla wishes she hadn't downed her drink already. That's her fault. "Zeon declared war. The Zabi family were using my father's name for conquest and I simply kept my head down. Two weeks later, Zeon was trying to take a colony from Side 5 to enact another colony drop, and we were being shoved into evacuation shuttles." The tapping picks up pace. "It turns out losing your home hurts less the third time. That's what I told myself."

She looks back at Leina this time. "But for some reason, after that battle... I just had this feeling. That Casval was alive. I didn't know why but... I couldn't let it go."

Sayla turns back to the horizon. She looks tired, retelling this, and there's so much more to go. "I was a refugee on Side 6 briefly, but I managed to talk my way into another medical school taking me on." A luxury Yumi didn't have. "I'm sure they thought it would be good PR. I tried to keep studying but it was eating at me. A few months before my 17th birthday I applied for a placement at a Side 7 teaching hospital. Just on a hunch."

The tapping stops. "September 18, Zeon attacked Side 7 to attack the Federation's Operation V. Led by Zeon's Red Comet, Char Aznable."

Sayla stops for a second. "...Did I ever tell you the first time I really met Kai, I slapped him across the face and called him a coward who should be left behind?" She's stalling now, and she knows it. She sighs, and before Leina can call her on it.

"Captain Cassius told Fraw and I to search for survivors. While I was driving around the colony, I saw something red fly toward some of the Guncannon wreckage. I found a man in a red pilot suit, taking photos." Sayla's steeling herself.

"I held him at gunpoint. He called me brave. I told him not to move, or I'd-"

And despite herself Sayla slips up. Her walls aren't quite high enough-

-he seems shocked. I see him whispering, but even through that mask he seems off balance.

"Please take off the helmet! And face the other way!"

Good. He's cooperating. He's taking off his helmet. Blonde hair, fair skin. Spacenoid almost certainly. I need to remember it. Is he unbuckling the mask-

Blue eyes. It... it can't be-

"Ah!" Surprise, not pain. His foot barely grazed my hand. The gun is between us now. Out of reach for both of us. He's whispering again-

The sound of something heavy hits my ears- the Federation MS is here!?

He's trying to fly away and I lunge but I can't grab onto him. A facefull of dirt is all I get as I stare after him.

"My brother?" It can't be. It can't. Casval would never join Zeon. Never!

"I'm going to use Super Napalm." The voice is young... that mechanic boy they talked about? "Please climb onto my hand."

The mobile suit- seeing one up close like this isn't the same as hearing about them on the radio. I don't have the luxury of being terrified.

"We're destroying all of the mobile suit parts here." I walk onto the giant hand. It's... sturdy. "Please lie down on the hand."

It's a request that sounds insane, but I do. The metal is about room temperature, and the hand wraps around me. I worry I could be crushed but he handles it so delicately. How?

And then that man in red flies into the spaceport hatch, and the pilot sees it too. I can hear the gunfire from here-

-Sayla's walls abruptly slam up, breaking the connection.

"Damnit. Damnit!" Sayla's breathing is rapid, and her hands are shaking. The experience of a newtype connection was always unpleasant.

She starts to calm herself down. "I... I need a few minutes. Just to... Just." She shakes her head. She'd spent so long avoiding this. And now...

She reaches into her pocket- the flask is there. She pops it open and takes a short sip before closing it again. She should have had water but...

"Just... a few minutes. And I'll lower them again. I've got a little more to go."

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

Fortunately for Sayla Mass, Leina can be discreet in their bond of little sister solidarity. Two hundred years, there's this, downcast feel to her expression. The Earth desperately needs time to heal. Restoration efforts only work so well when they're focused on such small slices of the world.

She loves her home but... if humanity came together...

It feels so incredibly unlikely. The anger is something that slowly ebbs from her, being replaced by sadness.

"Of course he did." Leina says quietly, bitterly, on him having his own ideas.

Her eyes drift over as Sayla notes she thought he was dead. There is some sympathy there. She knows what it's like to be separated from Judau, but she had the benefit of him constantly trying to reunite with her. And then, their Newtype senses connecting them.

She always teased Sayla for her dedication at medical school, but hearing her at a boarding school with no friends just trying to graduate, closed off, younger than the rest of the students, becoming colder, harsher. Suddenly she doesn't feel like teasing her about it anymore.

"... but it was just more denial." Leina says quietly, to the things Sayla told herself, a sadness in her tone.

Side 7. Leina shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She knows the story of how Amuro climbed in the Gundam and the White Base launched, or at least she thought she did. Now she's realizing there were distinct omissions, and the moment she's reminded again that Char Aznable attacked Side 7 she gets the feeling those omissions were coming sooner rather than later.

"You didn't." She smiles thinly, "But given what you told me of yourself and him, I'm not surprised." And yet, as Sayla sighs, Leina clears her throat lightly, as if to tell her just that. 'You're stalling.' The switch from Char to Kai just made it obvious.

There's some low key alarm as she starts telling the next part of the story, at the man in red, at Sayla holding him at gunpoint. The thought of one sibling, or the other possibly killing the other hanging heavy in her mind. Sayla's mid telling when...

... suddenly she's there. Or perhaps she is her, in that moment Beyond Time. She takes a look at the man, through that mask. That familiar mask. Some part of her knows that she's not here now, not her. Yet she still is too.

And then he kicks the gun out of her hand. It's not her hand. It is her hand. The roar of jump jets, she lunges.

He would.

She thinks, even as her own mind contradicts that he would join Zeon. She's looking up at the original Gundam, more real than any picture she's ever seen. She follows the sequence, up onto the hand.

She remembers herself being tied to the outside of a mobile suit, somehow this is much more gentle, despite the apprehension of the moment. Even as she watches the man in red fly away.

Leina takes a breath, eyes blinking as she looks upon the Catalan coast, reorienting. A hand moves to her forehead. Even as she hears Sayla's distress.

“You knew that soon after you got dragged in?” The distress bleeds over into her, from her as well. Just the idea that Sayla knew from the START that Char Aznable was her brother. Yet being forced to fight him again and again and again. “Yet he didn’t… even say anything to you at the time.” For a while, she reorients...

... it's hard seeing her shake, seeing her reach for her flask. Leina looks at the flask, then looks at her. Then... "Take your time. It's okay. I know you feel like it's not, but it's okay. You're not used to this." There's a firmness to her voice. "I'm not upset at you over what just happened, even if I know you're upset."

Leina stands up, and tells her, "Take a few minutes. I'm going to get you another drink." Before she warns her, "Just one more though." She wants nothing more than to comfort her through this. Instead, she takes it upon herself to go get her another drink. Leina walks away, and gives her a few minutes.

When she returns, there's a taller mixed drink, an Asiatico, which is a Spanish coffee mixed drink and one that can be nursed for much longer. She sets it down in front of Sayla. Then she retakes her seat, makes herself comfortable.

It's still hard, confining herself to the seat and fetching a drink, knowing Sayla is in distress.

She does it anyway.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla pauses for a moment. "...I hated that he sent me away. But it may have been safer. We would have stood out together." This is Sayla's tactical brain taking over. "One blonde haired, blue eyed child is less obvious than two together." That's not an answer that will satisfy Leina, though.

"...Yes. I am pretty sure if I had faced the reality of it then I would have broken." Sayla pauses again.

"...I did. I denied it, but I did." She grips her opposite. "I simply told myself I couldn't be sure." Sayla says nothing on what Char did or didn't say.

She hears Leina trying to calm her down. For once, her ward is more knowledgeable in matters of newtype behavior. So she listens. When Leina says she'll bring another drink, she nods. "Thank you."

She takes a long sip when Leina returns. It's weaker, and the coffee helps. Good. She's silent a while longer.

"...Most of what else I told you about the white base is the same. We made for Luna II, where Captain Cassius passed away and we were sent onwards with barely a resupply and a single escort. We made it to Earth, and were pursued by Garma Zabi." She doesn't feel the need to reiterate all this. Leina knows this part.

"I didn't... tell you everything after that, however." Sayla looks down into her drink. "We were being hunted by a Zeon Gallop, and we met a federation contact who gave us orders for Odessa Day. And I... my hunch that Casval was alive was eating at me so I deployed in the Gundam without permission, to try and make contact with a Zeon soldier."

"...I threw up inside my normal suit and nearly died if Amuro hadn't saved me from the ambush. Amuro captured a prisoner, however." She places the glass down, but she's avoiding Leina's gaze. "I had given Bright and Mirai a nonsense reason so they would send me to the brig, and then while I was being escorted, I took the prisoner's food from Fraw, and took it to him so I could ask him about what happened to Char."

She closes her eyes, tightly. "He told me Char was alive, before Ryu pulled me away. I spent the night in my cell crying tears of joy."

She stops again. "...I know you haven't asked anything about him for a reason. Thank you for not asking."

She breathes in. "The prisoner died trying to escape, but he contacted his commander. And... Amuro deserted." She breathes in. "I was so furious with him at the time, but now... the pressure we put him under was immense. In retrospect I understand why he did it. He was falling apart."

She pauses. "We were attacked, and he came back but... he wasn't okay. None of us were, really. We were falling apart." She pauses. "Kai, Hayato, Howard, Maximilian, they all tried to desert and I sent Ryu after them. TWe came under attack and Amuro was still in the brig so Bright deployed me in the Gundam. Amuro somehow ended up on the guns and helped me take out the Zaku... but Mirai realized it was a distraction. The force were boarding White Base. I switched places with Amuro and that's... when I met Ramba again."

She walls up more, to prevent another incident. "He recognized me. I didn't until he reminded me who he was. I... tried to get him to lower his gun. He did- and then Ryu saw him and shot him- and Ramba Ral shot Ryu."

Sayla's crying again, and again she tries to hide it. This is a detail no one else was told. "...Because I hesitated... two people I cared about killed each other. Not right then and there... but Ramba's shot on Ryu was going to kill him, and Ramba killed himself rather than be captured. And it's my fault."

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"I'm pretty sure you don't have to make excuses for him." Leina says after a moment, "He could have still written, maybe even in code. But it sounds like he didn't even check up on you. Otherwise, wouldn't he have known you were on Side 7?"

It's hard, hearing Sayla tell her about losing her home for a third time, about being in denial. In the end, she brings her that drink, and she settles back in. She could perhaps use a drink herself, but she wants to keep her mind sharp right now.

She lets Sayla recompose, then speak again, about the White Base, her heart seizing up a touch when she speaks of the Gallop, she knows where this is going to go perhaps in part now, and the full truth, honestly she's worried.

She'd heard bits and pieces of this story before, never in full. Maybe they didn't want to embarrass Sayla by telling Leina about it in full? They always hushed up. Either way, she listens to how she deployed, how she got herself thrown in the brig to find out news about her brother.

How she spent the day crying in joy, as she takes a breath. An eye looks at her from the side, and she slowly nods, "You're welcome. You deserve the right to tell it on your own terms, without me interrupting and getting ahead of you." She tells her, with a calm tone, even as that nervous tension buzzes about her.

Amuro's desertion she definitely did hear about, the pressure he was under. Leina doesn't hold this against him at least. He was a teenager that never should have been there. More desertion, she rubs the bridge of her nose, thinking about how all of them must have been falling apart.

'met Ramba again' she freezes. Perhaps it's the emotions in the moment, or the cadence, but she understands more implicitly how disastrously this went.

In this moment, a shudder runs through Leina's body, and perhaps it's all of this having built up for so long having to hear this, all this sadness, all of Sayla's tears, perhaps listening to her unburden, but silently she rises up. Walks over, and slowly lowers herself down beside the chair in a partial squat, an arm draping over Sayla's shoulders.

And she starts to tell her quietly, "Don't say I shouldn't. Or that you don't need this. You've needed it since the start." Then she corrects herself, "No, actually you've needed this for a very long time. And I'm the only one here who can. Okay?"

In the end, her having to come over in this moment perhaps makes her more upset on some deeper level, because indeed, Sayla has needed this for a long time.

And she was the only one there, for so much of it.

In her eyes this should have been a conversation they had years ago, that Sayla told her of her own volition. She was the only one there. She could have /understood/. She could have done /more/ to help her.

That it was kept from her, means that in the worst moments of Sayla's life, she was alone with her feelings, feelings like these.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

All she can do is hold her right now, and for some reason that makes her feel more helpless and upset than she has in a very long time.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

"He could have," Sayla admits. Leina's statement is inarguable. "Even so, nine months into the war, refugee records were near non-existent." Leina raises a troubling thought, however. If Casval had thought she was on Side 5, he would have warned her somehow, wouldn't he? But he wasn't the red comet until then.

As Leina moves to hug her, Sayla tries to object- but she's beaten to it. She tries to find ways to ask her to stop...

But Leina's right.

"Okay." She says finally. "But at least... sit down, okay?" Either on the chair, or the two moving to the floor, Sayla doesn't care- but it's bad enough to make Leina mentally uncomfortable without adding physical discomfort.

A hand moves up to Leina's arm, but it's tired, unsteady. She's almost holding Leina in place, not wanting to let her go.

The story's... close to finished. Leina knows the war from there- how Ryu died. She decides to move forward. To the parts Leina doesn't know.

"Did Kikka ever tell you about the time she and her brothers escaped the orphanage at Jaburo and stopped Zeon bombing it?" It seems like a tangent, but this time it isn't. "Casval led the team that planted those bombs. We'd split up looking for Kikka, Katz and Letz and... this time Casval saw me first."

Sayla grips Leina's arm a little tighter, though not tight enough to hurt. "He asked me to leave the military for him, in the few moments we spoke before Mirai saw him and opened fire." She shakes her head again. "Mirai didn't know who she was shooting at but... I'm sure she knew I was lying to her. Even then she didn't tell anyone."

Mirai really did deserve better from her, after everything. "I didn't encounter him again until-"

-Texas Colony. It's dirty and dusty and visibility is poor. Is this what it looks like back home now? Nothing left but dust and decay. Piles of hay and animal bones.

Amuro was somewhere out here, surely. He had to be. He couldn't be dead now.

The buggy rumbles under me as I activate my helmet comms.

"Sayla here. Sayla here. Go ahead White Base."
"Sayla?" Bright's voice comes back.
"Oh? That's not Fraw Bow."
"Yeah, I just relieved her. Well? Have you found anything yet?" He's tense. Tired. We all are, I suppose.
"No. I'll keep looking."

Suddenly, someone's landing beside me. Rifle in his hand pointing at me. It's him. "B-Brother?"

He raises his rifle away from me. "I thought I told you to quit the military. And now you've become a Petty Officer..." I can hear the worry and frustration in his voice as he looks away from me.

"Look who's talking, brother." There's venom as I harden my voice. "Joining the Zeon military to take revenge on the Zabi family. Your actions don't make any sense!"

Casval smirks, with that same cockiness he had as a child. "Do you truly believe that your own brother is such a petty man, Artesia?"

"Huh?"

"The things Jimba Ral told us might have been true after all. The old man always used to say..." I keep driving as Casval remembers, but my mind drifts back to the same place I'm sure his is now.

~~~

"Why did your father, Lord Zeon, create the Republic of Munzo?" Papá's voice seems to ring in my ears. "He did it for the future of all mankind who are destined to be reborn as Newtypes. But he suddenly fell ill and on his deathbed your father singled out Degwin Zabi." Papá's voice takes on a different tone as he imitates Degwin's voice. "You wish someone like me to be the next prime minister?" 'Degwin' says.

"I understood Lord Zeon's temperament very well." Jimba's voice continues as normal. "He pointed out Degwin... to let us know that it was Degwin who'd assassinated him. Why else would your fathers allies have died, one after another? And that's why I had no choice but to raise you two, Casval and Artesia on Earth under false identities." Happier memories interrupt at that moment...

~~~

...before Casval starts speaking again. "The reason why I entered Zeon, and went from high school to military academy was so I could get close to the Zabi family. But Artesia... I've grown up a little since that time."

Casval's voice turns dark. Hopeless. "I realized that even if the Federation defeats the Zabi family, humanity won't achieve true peace."

"Why...?" I ask, bewildered.
"Newtypes have appeared."
"You mean because Amuro's a Newtype?"
"Well." Casval raised his hand to his chin. "I'm not pleased that a Newtype has become my enemy. From now on, I'll have to fight any way I can."

"Jimba Ral taught us that Newtypes are the ideal towards which the entire human race should strive." I remember the words as well as Casval should. "In which case, there should be no need to make Newtypes your enemy!"

I stop the buggy and stand up and reach out to grab his arm. "Casval... Casval what are you thinking!?"

He places his hand on mine, like he often did when I was worried or upset. "I told you, I'll fight any way I can... Artesia, you must leave the Trojan Horse!"

"Trojan Horse?! You mean the White Base?"
"Yes. I'll leave you enough gold to pay your way from here to Earth..." He looks me in the eye again. "Go to Earth and live out your life!" There's so much sadness in his voice. "I'm no longer the brother you once knew."

"B-Brother..." I know he's telling the truth. I don't want to believe it. But he is.

"You must know why I wear this mask... It's because I've discarded my past." He leaps away from the buggy as I call out.

"Brother!"

He turns back, his cape swept up by the wind. "Artesia... Let me see your face one more time."

I lift the visor on my helmet, and stare out at him. "Please reconsider... my dear brother!"

He looks... shocked, for a moment. "You're beautiful, Artesia. War doesn't suit you. Leave the Trojan Horse!"

"Brother! Casval, my brother!" I shout after him, as I watch him run away again-

-Sayla's grip around Leina's arm is white knuckle tight as the connection breaks naturally this time. Somehow it's less painful doing it this way but...

Sayla's hand is shaking again. She hates this feeling. She reaches out for her drink again, but is careful not to down it. Slowly, she eases her grip on Leina... but doesn't let go.

"...Casval was as good as his word. Kai and Omur found a briefcase attached to the outside of the White Base, with a letter addressed to me- to Sayla Mass- attached." She closes her eyes, remembering. "Bright swore them to secrecy, and brought the case and the letter to my quarters." She tenses again, and Leina can feel it.

"He told me he only knew the letter was addressed to me, and asked me if I knew the contents of the case and the sender." A deep breath. "I told him the truth. He put the rest together from what he overheard on my comms."

She takes another drink. "...I still have the letter. Locked away where nowhere else can find it. I should have burned it but... It was the only thing I had of him..."

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

The thought actually does occur to Leina even as Sayla brings up refugee records. The battle of Loum was so large. What should his priority have been when Zeon brought war there? Finding his sister? Or vengeance?

She has a feeling she'd be disappointed in the answer of which one he chose. Even if she knows Sayla wants to believe it was the other, so desperately. Another form of denial.

When she asks her to sit down, Leina moves up to the arm of the chair that Sayla's on, shifting her weight sideways to spill down just onto the seat, but keeps her arm around her. That hand moves up to her arm, and she doesn't say anything to it. She just lets it happen.

Sayla needs her to do this in this moment, whether she can admit it, or whether she's only just allowing it. She needs this.

So she does it.

"Letz said more about it when I was visiting." Leina tells her quietly, "Kikka's memories of that time aren't the greatest, she was so young." Still, Casval planted the bombs, her eyes briefly close as if she was comprehending this and 'Of course' was the only thought she could offer.

The eyes do open, as Sayla's grip tightens, and her eyes harden, "As if you had a choice even. With what they were threatening you with. Not that he'd know that." Not that he knew ANYTHING about her situation, about her. There's a quiet sigh, "And I bet if you'd asked him the same, to abandon his revenge for your sake..."

She trails off, she shakes her head. There's no need to end that thought. Mirai knowing she was lying... but some part of her suspects there's more to this story. That Mirai...

... she's on Texas Colony. She recognizes it. The dust storms have kicked up. She remembers that in the One Year War it was evacuated and the environmental controls went all over the place from damage.

She hears. She sees. She feels. She's both there in the moment, and knowledgeable of the fact she's beyond time.

Yes.

Yes you are.

Hearing the words of Jimba Ral, it feels like it's cheating in a way. She read everything that was in Sayla's library, and came to the conclusion through it that Zeon Zum Deikun was assassinated. It was different from her AEU middle school history book, where it simply stated he appointed a successor.

In the end, Sayla asked her to draw her own conclusions, and she drew the right conclusions. Still, even if it would have cheated her out of the answers - that idea of figuring out the answer to something like that.

She would have preferred it, to have been cheated out of it, if it meant growing closer to Sayla Mass.

What he says next is baffling to her, yet somehow not shocking at all.

Casval Rem Deikun... you really are...

The thought seems to cut off, before she can finish it. Even as he says he's not the brother she once knew. Even as he says he's discarded his past.

Liar.

Liar.

Liar.

LIAR

He didn't discard his past at all. He simply made his choice which part of his past to dwell within.

It's over quickly enough, with talk of her being beautiful, of war not suiting her. From what she's heard from the stories of others, it suited Sayla Mass more than anyone else perhaps on the White Base.

And he didn't even realize that.

As soon as it's over, her hand is lifted and placed over Sayla's others, where she clenches Leina's arm that hard. Leina doesn't even flinch.

It's as if she's used to this, this reaction, this kind of thing. Just not from Sayla in this strange reversal of fortunes. She doesn't resent it. She only resents how late it came.

Her eyes wander back over to Sayla, holding onto her like that as long as she wants, until the moment it eases. She takes a breath in that moment, the only sign there was any pain at all.

Her other arm tightens around her, letting her talk. "I won't ask you to bring it out. It's okay. That part can remain between the two of you." She tells her, comfortingly. "I don't know if it makes it better or worse than he only thought to take care of your needs again when he saw you weren't where he wanted you to be."

There's a soft shake of her head, "I don't know. I just know I'm grateful Judau didn't leave me behind on Shangri-la... or anywhere, really." She'd prefer that to any briefcase of gold in the world, even after what happened, because he didn't leave her behind.

"Before you go on, who else who was on the White Base other than Bright, knows? Just so I can... keep it straight."

Though a thought occurs to her, and her head cants to the side, "Wait, that day when... after you took me in, when we went to see him. The two of you were..."

Leina uses a single hand to rub her face, "Oh. That's why you were talking about Char. I always thought it strange that we went all that way for that, even if I didn't really... know anything about him at the time."

Stupid. She thought she was giving her space and respecting her privacy, but in doing so she only consigned herself to further helplessness for years to come.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla nods slowly. "From what I heard, Kikka led the charge. Hard to imagine her as the hellion she was back then. Probably for the best."

There's another tired shake of her head. "...Even though we were officially soldiers after Jaburo, I was fighting of my own accord. The threat of court martial was real, certainly. But by then... I was fighting for my own reasons. To try and bring Casval back to his senses... and to stop the Zabi family. To stop them desecrating my father's name. To maybe get some revenge of my own, deep down."

Sayla nods, confirming Leina's suspicion. "He wouldn't have. I know that. He was too far down his path, and I was too far down mine."

The remnants of the thoughts carry through. Leina's feelings. Wordlessly, Sayla reaches to pat Leina's shoulder gently. A reminder, a comfort. It seems neither can stop themselves- even as Leina comforts her.

"...I know he wanted me safe. But his idea of safe wasn't what I wanted. He wasn't listening to me by then, and I know it." Not much longer.

Sayla nods. "The two of you... made the right choices about each other. Casval and I did not." She pauses at the question.

"I told Mirai, not long before Hathaway was born. Kai... found out on his own. I think he read the letter but he's a journalist now for a reason. Amuro knew..." She taps on her arm thinking. "...The only other person I can think of is Oscar, but it would have been after the war and if he did he's keeping it quiet from Federation intelligence. And... Kikka now, I suppose."

Sayla nods slowly. "...I was careless. During the Gryps Conflict, Kai had informed me about Quattro Bajeena- that's when I found out Casval was back... and I felt his presence shortly before his speech at Dakar but it was weaker." She looks back at Leina. "...After that speech I... I thought to myself I might have to kill him. I should have done something then."

She shakes her head. "...what I did was talk to Bright and hope his new task force would solve it. That was my mistake. I should have dealt with him personally." She shakes her head. "It wasn't just to talk to Bright about Char, though. I was hoping we would get news of Judau that I'd been unable to- but you know how that panned out."

She shakes her head. "I'm jumping forward. Once I get through the war, there's not much left." She sighs. Time to reveal more revised history.

"...When I told you about Lalah, I omitted some things." She tenses. "The reason I went out to support Amuro is because I felt Casval's presence. It was the first time I understood what I was feeling. It was a newtype connection- and it was one way. ...Even now, I think it still is."

Another deep breath. Another secret never told. "And the reason Lalah Sune died is because she saved me."

She takes a second. "I wasn't as good as Amuro, and I was in the Core Booster. Flying into battle was a stupid idea. Amuro and Lalah had been connected and the fight had stalled until Casval and I arrived. Char was already there, fighting Amuro and he was overwhelmed- and I begged Casval to stop."

Sayla grimaces and her walls harden even more. Not again. It's not happening again. "The gelgoog's beam naginata took a stabilizer from the core booster. I kept trying to interfere but Amuro, Lalah and Casval- they were all beyond me. I kept trying to reach Casval but he wouldn't respond. Amuro stopped a blow that would have killed me. I took a shot at Casval's Gelgoog and he swung at my cockpit."

"In that moment... Lalah connected to all of us. She felt who I was, who Char was, who Amuro was- and I think we all felt who she was to some degree. The main thing I knew of Lalah at the moment... was that she loved my brother too much to let him do what he was going to do, and called out."

She reaches for that drink again, and takes a long sip. "He pulled his blow at the last second- and even then my cockpit was shattered. Amuro saw an opportunity to kill Char and took it- and Lalah shoved him out of the way to take the blow for him."

Sayla's recollection seems to bring a bead of sweat down her brow. "...A newtypes powers can be amplified in moments of great stress or pain- or at the moment of their death. I know in her last moments, Lalah formed a connection with Amuro that would never break. I was on the outside... and so was Casval."

Her grip loosens on Leina's arm, finally. "Now you know everything about that moment. Why I'm so careful around these bonds. Why I don't like them." She sighs. "Perfect communication... Father really didn't get close with his theories." That thought seems to depress Sayla. She lived to see the newtype come about... and fall so quickly.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"Who isn't, at that age?" Leina replies regarding Kikka, even as she sideeyes Sayla and says it so matter of factly that it's hard to tell its the lead up to the mildest of teases, "We can't all be cute witches."

Another time, some other circumstances, it might have prompted laughter from Leina, for now, it barely raises a split second smile.

"Your own kind of revenge." Leina says after a moment, but doesn't say more of her thoughts on it. In the end she'd say there's something more honorable. Even if both Char and her wore different names to hide themselves, Sayla at least had the decency to do it on the opposition. There's something more honorable in that...

... or at least, she'd like to tell herself that. Is revenge ever honorable? She doesn't know, but if anyone ever took one of her loved ones away from her...

The pat of Sayla on her arm, gets little reaction, a glance, but in the moment she's processing her feelings more of everything that just happened. It's so much.

"'Casval and I'?" Leina repeats, with a note of incredulity to the idea that she didn't, "What did you think you could have done differently? Stand up to him? Had you ever? You'd just lost your second family, Sayla. ... Things changed after you went to Loum, but you couldn't have expected yourself to be /that/ retroactively."

She understands guilt, regret, when she hears it. After all, she twists herself up in knots over the same. Sometimes she can be such a hypocrite in ways she doesn't even realize.

Her mind keeps track of who knows, Mirai, Kai, Amuro, Oscar... Kikka now.

Quattro Bajeena, and the man who gave that speech at Dakar. A responsibility she gave to Bright's task force. Leina's posture shifts, "I guess, it's selfish, but I'm glad you didn't. Maybe you might have stopped Axis, but..." Those kinds of spy games. Leina thinks of the timeline, how even small changes might have... "... maybe we would have never met."

There is in that moment, perhaps relief that Leina doesn't... doesn't hate her, hate this so much, she'd have wished otherwise.

"You did." Leina murmurs of the omission, so much so that she misunderstood the relationship of her nature with Char. In some ways, it's a relief that Casval Rem Deikun is her older brother, but in others it's no relief at all.

Despite herself, hearing the tense nature of this battle again just spikes some anxiety from her. It takes her a moment to understand why. An younger sister fighting their older brother. The older brother nearly killing his younger sister.

She never knew what to think of Lalah, not really. A woman whose entire life felt controlled by the fact she was a Newtype, a woman whose visits to Amuro's dreams took a role in dashing apart Amuro and Sayla's relationship. Now she's grateful to her.

It's a strange feeling. Her pushing Char out of the way to take a blow meant for him. She feels a kinship with her in a way she knows she shouldn't.

That grip loosens on her arm, she closes her eyes, takes a breath, and...

"... I feel he got pretty close." Leina replies quietly after a time, "Sometimes in that place..." There's a time where she's just, not quite there. Where her gaze is abstracted, lost over the horizon of the Valencian coast.

It's like she's lost the words to articulate a feeling.

"... We've lost our way towards the future he wanted." Leina says softly, eventually, "We're caught on the Mobius Strip, and can't slip away." It's a depressing conclusion, for the girl that once found hope for the future in his teachings.

Maybe that girl has grown up and faced reality.

"... Was that the last time you saw him during the war?" Leina finally settles upon asking, as she suspects the answer is 'no'. She can't imagine Sayla giving up.

And she knows Char was very active at A Baoa Qu.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

It's a grim discussion. What humor there is is mostly to release tension, Sayla knows that. "It's a pity none of the photos survived. "I'm sure you would have loved them." A rare concession that it might be good to open up her past. An attempt to make that split second longer.

"You don't constantly ask yourself what could have happened differently?" This time, she's making a small point. She can't help herself. "I keep thinking I could have maybe made him go with me. Or take me with him. Maybe I could have stopped giving him chances- or I could have pulled the trigger the first time I saw him again. How much could have been avoided..."

Still, Leina's comment brings her back. "You're right." She squeezes Leina's shoulder. "Being there are the right time that day... that's something I'd never want to change." Not ever.

Sayla pauses. "One person can't guide humanity. Maybe humanity is drifting from what he wanted- but this world is for the living, not the dead. His dreams aren't my dreams- and mine aren't yours." She smiles, sadly. "I'll keep doing the slow work for the world I want to pass on to you, that's the lesson I'll take from my father."

Caught on the Mobius Strip is a troubling phrase. Especially from Leina. "Maybe it seems that way for now... but even if we are, that's even more reason to keep going. If people don't keep making the choice to keep trying..."

She lets it hang. She knows how she'd finish that thought. Her attention turns to Leina's question. "...No. I saw him once more, at A Baoa Qu. He was so focused on Amuro, on getting revenge for Lalah. When the Core Booster couldn't go any further, I made a crash landing where I could feel Char- and then Amuro."

She closes her eyes. "I found them trying to kill each other with swords in a state room, yelling about what the discovery of Newtypes meant. They wounded each other- Amuro would have killed Casval if not for his helmet. I screamed at them to stop but... they didn't hear me." She bites her lips. "They heard Lalah, though. She stopped them, if only for a moment."

When Sayla opens her eyes again, she's still reinforcing. "Char would have won if she hadn't interceded. He didn't even care about the Zabis at that point. There was an explosion, and Amuro was separated from us- and Casval saved me from the worst of it. He took me to a stable point of A Baoa Qu."

The exhaustion in telling all this, unburdening herself, is real. "We found a dying Zabi soldier, and he told Char where Kycilia was. He somehow realized Amuro was trying to reach me before I did. When he said goodbye this time, I asked him what he was going to do."

She's tapping again, this time on Leina's arm. "That was the last conversation I had with my brother. The last time I saw Casval was him flying away with a bazooka to no doubt cause the 'stray explosion' that killed Kycilia Zabi. I accepted that my brother was gone for real this time."

Sayla looks up at the stars, as a lightly chill breeze blows past her. "And then Amuro did the miraculous- he guided us all out of A Baoa Qu and then the children guided him to our shuttle."

That's that, then. The whole story. "Everything else... I think you either know or were there for. Now you have context for almost everything."

Now comes the worst part. The most recent betrayal. "Until Tsutsujidai. When Gai and Domon purified Amuro, I went to pull him out of his cockpit. When I did... the psychoframe sample must have enhanced my abilities. The same time we reconnected... I felt Char's presence and I knew he was coming."

Now Sayla takes her hand from Leina's arm, and moves for her drink, taking a solid drink. They know how that ended up. "...On Palau... he told me he wanted to say goodbye properly this time. To try and make me understand, even though he knew I wouldn't. And I couldn't reach him. I couldn't before Triple Zero, I knew I couldn't then. So... I did what I could- and counted on you."

Sayla takes in a long breath, and exhales. The story is told. All of it, she thinks. Really all of it.

Now she has to face the consequences.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

"I would have adored them." She agrees, hushed. Before stating, "Of course I do, I just don't think you're being fair to yourself." Is Leina fair to herself when she does the same? Well, it's not about her this time, thankfully. A sharp inhalation as her shoulder is squeezed, and there's a nod, a thin smile.

"If Degwin had been more interested in supporting him than seizing power..." Who knows where things could have gone? Not just one man, but a group with actual loyal supporters. The slow work of passing the world onto her? There's a thoughtful look, then a slow nod, eyes falling as she speaks on making the choice to keep trying.

Perhaps everything as of late has affected her more than she's letting on, or perhaps it's this that has affected her, it's hard to say. In the end, she doesn't answer more than just looking pensive and a little sad on the subject matter.

The story turns to A Baoa Qu soon enough, as she suspected, not out of anything Sayla gave away - but just because she knows at least, so many versions of the story of White Base that it only made sense that she did. She gives Sayla a strange look at the idea of her coming upon Amuro and Char sword fighting, yelling over what the emergence of Newtypes meant. There's something, surreal about trying to connect the path the two charted from Char at Texas Colony, to the death of Lalah, to A Baoa Qu... to Gryps... to Axis. Her head seems to be mulling over new information with each passing moment.

Part of her resents the fact they wouldn't so much as listen to Sayla. Two men, fighting over a woman, when all of their intersecting choices led to her death. "So it wasn't about... Newtypes at all, on Texas." Leina notes quietly, as she looks distant, "The two were already forming a connection, even if they didn't realize it. He just didn't understand it, and felt drawn to him." Is her conclusion, "That later became his excuse, over what happened with Lalah, so he wouldn't have to deal with his sense of guilt. He could project it on Amuro, and the concept of Newtypes in general."

She might be wrong in a sense, but she can't help but remember Haman's fascination with Judau. She can't help but remember the rumors of how out of her way Haman had gone to not kill him whenever he pulled some reckless, foolish stunt to come get Leina.

There's an inhalation, then, "I'm glad he saved you but..." He should have gone with her. He went from not caring about the Zabis any longer to finishing off the last adult member of the family. "... how does the man even..." There's a helpless shake of her head, she can't figure that out. Just his sense of priorities in the moment. Just his sense of priorities ever.

Her seagreen eyes flit back to Sayla, as she speaks about Tsutsujidai, the Psycoframe sample. Leina mulls it over, he was in the Sazabi after all, it only makes sense. Though God, how much of the Sazabi did they find to create Full Frontal. How much did Oath over Omega have to restore?

Again her eyes face back forward as she discusses Palau. As the story finishes, counting on her. Leina is silent for a good long while after Sayla does. Even with her walls partially down, they're still most of the way up, at Sayla's request. It's hard to get a sense of how she feels in these moments.

"Thank you for telling me." She finally says, about a good two minutes later. She shouldn't thank her, but she does. And she knows it was told fully honestly this time. However...

"Why?" It's so quiet at first, but the heat grows far too rapidly, "Why hide it from me? Why continue hiding it from me, even after so many knew? Even after you found out my own girlfriend knew? You could have died out there- and-!”

She forces herself to stop before she gets too amped up and takes a breath. Deescalate, deescalate.

Her walls slide further up, such that only the smallest glimmer of hurt leaks out in what she says next.. "I'm not going to just infer it from what you've told me. I want to hear it from you."

It's like she's trying to decide precisely how hurt to feel, how angry to feel, how disappointed to feel. And she hasn't quite arrived there yet.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla lets out a tired sigh. Now's not the time for her to push back, as much as she wants to. It's not about Leina this time.

"...Who knows indeed?" Sayla finished the thought for her. "What if Heero Yuy weren't assassinated, and the two had fully joined forces? Though..." Sayla shakes her head. It's a world they can only imagine.

"I... don't think that's true. I think that was just who he is. In Amuro he saw a threat to his goals... and when he connected with Lalah and Amuro... I guess he decided the threat was more than he could deal with." She leans into Leina a bit, as she considers her brother in that light.

"I think he already had something like Axis in mind then. A war between Newtypes and Oldtypes, maybe. When he left that last time... I don't know. He seemed at peace for the first time." She taps the table. "Revenge can be... satisfying. Necessary to move on some times. Even if we weren't to see each other again, I could live with knowing he was content." Maybe Leina can understand that.

The question she dreaded most comes. Now that the past is done... Sayla's walls stay where they are. She has to answer that as truthfully as she can. It's difficult after Leina's outbursts. She's already hurt her so much. "Leina..." She takes a deep breath.

"...Because I wanted it to be over. The girl called Artesia is dead, in the same way the boy called Casval is. And it's better they stayed gone. You saw what Haman Karn could do with Mineva. What Char could do by himself." She shakes her head. "After the break with Amuro I was vulnerable. I know that. The right person with the right words or the right leverage..." Sayla shakes her head. "...I'm not so different from him. We both have our father's ruthless streak and our mother's pragmatic one- and both of us will do insane things to meet our goals. Our difference was... is our choice of what we do when we wake up."

So many people knew... Sayla shakes her head. "I've told two. Once under duress." She stops. Leina should know the others. "Casval told Mineva. Nanai too." No point hiding it now. "Beyond that... Kamille and I made a connection in Tsutsujidai... I think it was due to our mutual connection with Casval." The rest of that is Kamille's story to tell. They didn't actually talk.

"Alexis Kerib somehow knew. He taunted me with it, indirectly. How, I don't know. Presumably how he knows anything else." She taps the arm of her chair now instead. "Akane found out from... a kaiju. Full Frontal from some part of Char's memories- I don't know if he told anyone but if he had I suspect if he had it'd be out by now. I think he just wanted to taunt me."

She pauses. "And I didn't want you to get dragged into what would happen if someone found out- and when you connected with Banagher that first time it made me more worried." She bites her lip. "Connecting... might be your biggest strength as a newtype. But an accidental opening to the wrong person..." Even as she says it, Sayla knows it doesn't hold water. "And... Casval made so many enemies. Took so many lives. People might have wanted revenge, and in lieu of him, they could take their aggression out on the last of his family."

She continues on, and it looks as though years have passed for her. "By the time I'd..." She stops the word in her throat, "taken you in, this had been my life for so long. And after a few years I was terrified it would change how you saw me, change... who we were. How I saw myself and how you saw yourself. How we saw each other. That scared me more than anything."

Finally, she looks to Leina again. "That's why I never wanted to have this conversation. That's why I acted the way I did. That's why I took all those stupid risks." Even now, she can't really admit she was wrong apart from tactically. "I didn't want you getting caught up in that bloody history any more than you were. I wanted the Deikun family to be a thing of the past, once and for all. I wanted to deal with my brother without anyone knowing." She shakes her head. "Now... that's no longer possible."

She sips that drink again, and waits.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

How different things might have been? Leina snorts lightly at the idea of a threat to his goals, as if to ask the question 'What goals?'. The vision of Char she got on Texas Colony was a man who didn't really understand what he was trying to do anymore but she doesn't push back otherwise. In her eyes, Sayla knows her brother best. Part of her looks aghast as she invokes Axis as being something he had in mind at the time, "Even back then?"

Then the AEUG was just, giving humanity one last chance after all. Her eyes slowly lid, "You could live with it, but you certainly weren't content yourself." Leina says softly, knowing the pain of separation herself, even if that separation was on much better terms.

Then again, Judau certainly wasn't content either. It was simply what he needed at the time.

Still, Leina lets her speak, all the way until the end this time, not saying anything, her walls are up, her eyes looking at Sayla with a certain intensity, but she doesn't remark on any of it while she's in the middle of saying it.

Then quietly she begins her Counterattack as she begins with a question, "Tell me something, Sayla. Did you really think that the girl who was trying to leave her past as a 'Lady of Neo-Zeon' behind wouldn't respect your desire to leave the girl named Artesia 'buried'?"

"When we met, I didn't even know who Artesia Som Deikun was. Or Doctor Sayla Mass, 'War Hero of the Federation' for that matter. Do you remember your relief, when I didn't recognize you after you introduced yourself? We learned about each other... became comfortable with each other gradually. It wasn't so long before I thought..." She stops, starts again, "... I thought there was nothing we couldn't share with each other."

Her eyes fall as she tells her quietly.

"That was my happiness."

And Sayla might understand instantly, why that would be to a girl who was never used to adults being a real part of her life. Unlacing her arm from Sayla, she stands up, pacing forward, arms crossed.

"So. Knowing you were scared, scared to share this with me, when I went through that time of your life with you. When it was just me, there with you in that dark room, coaxing you away from the bottle. Trying to care for you when you couldn't- wouldn't care for yourself. When I was the person who saw you at some of your worst moments - in ways noone else will probably ever see."

Her voice just, lowers, into something small, and helpless, "It doesn't feel good. Like you don't really trust me, and maybe never did. And that - that's a secret worth possibly DYING for just to avoid this CONVERSATION with me?"

Another short pause, as she whispers forlornly, "What am I supposed to think about that?"

She takes a sharp, ragged breath, like she's trying to hold it all in, finally turning around to face her again, to look her in the eye, "Did you ever stop to think what would happen if you were found out anyway? If they came for me to get to you?"

Her voice cracks a touch, "If I died, not even understanding why. Did you not-"

A deep breath, as she enunciates, "-THINK, to reevaluate things when I started dating Audrey? Knowing that people that wanted revenge for both the Zabis, and for what Casval did might come for me, for reasons having NOTHING to do with you?"

Uncrossing her arms, she just throws them up, and in that moment Leina's walls fall, not all the way, just as low as possible. There's this, almost audible crackle in the air, this static like cocktail of psychic energy.

This mixture of anger and sadness and despair and disappointment. Like she's just been holding this all in this whole time, but now it's present, thick in the air like ozone one can taste, lashing at the senses.

"Tell me something that makes ANY of this better!" She pleads to her, desperation thick and reinforced by the atmosphere right now, "PLEASE. Tell. Me."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

"I don't know." Sayla admits to both those questions. "He was... so far from the brother I knew. In that moment it felt like he had lost his way so much that... I don't know."

This time, Sayla is the one silent. Quiet as Leina finally unleashes her feelings- her own walls fully up. She won't deny Leina her hurt. Or her despair. Or her disappointment.

Until four words cut through her like a knife- and her heart sinks to the bottom of her soul.

"Leina-"

But as Leina speaks, she can't find the words to answer her. Leina's anger is justified. Deserved. She really was just a coward.

A coward who didn't think for a second about what would happen.

She can feel all of it. All those emotions, all those fresh wounds she's sliced over Leina's heart. All the hurt she inflicted...

...When I took you in, I told myself I'd do all I could to stop you suffering. You deserved at least that much.

liar

...I'll provide all the help I can, okay? I've got you...

Liar.

Alright. I'll trust you...

LIAR!

Ultimately, Sayla just bows her head.

"I'm sorry for hurting you like this. For breaking my promise." She says, knowing it's not nearly enough.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

As Sayla apologizes, all those emotions hit a frenzied crescendo. The feeling just grows, like static from a TV set and static electricity all at once, permeating the area until it's all just pervasive psychic white noise.

And then Leina takes a breath, eyes closed. And those walls slide up, in what almost feels like a test pattern cut off, before the plug is fully pulled and the air is clear enough to breathe within.

Leina lets out a small broken laugh, before putting a hand up to her face, as the tears pour down. "Y-You know it's fuh-funny... all I can think of is how much-how much I should take care of you, right now. After, Kowloon... Pah-Palau... knowing how hard-hard it was for you."

Her hand shifts down to her chin, as her eyes tip up, "And I nuh-know that's not... right. But I can't-can't help it."

She turns away to the side, and dabs at her eyes while not looking at Sayla. "Okay." She takes a breath, just a breath. "I need. Time."

She declares, "Time. Time away. One month." The words come out, staccato. This is perhaps more stressed than Sayla has ever seen her, but still trying her hardest to be reasonable here, to be like that.

"One month. I will. Be away." Her eyes float over to her, "The others. They will..." She takes a long, deep breath, like she's trying to steady herself, "... take care of you. You will not, lock yourself, in some dark room, and drink yourself into a stupor."

She repeats it, and it’s like she lost some of that evenness, "One month. You will think about things. So will I. And then we will talk - again and figure. Things. Out." She holds up a finger, "One month. Do you understand?"

The finger drops, and she whispers far too quietly.

"I have to go."

And without saying anything else, she retreats from the veranda, up to her room, ostensibly to pack.

She's not going to get any packing done for hours.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

"Leina, I-"

The words don't come out.

There's not much Sayla can say in this moment.

What can you say when you've broken someone's heart?

"One month." Sayla repeats, acknowledging. "I understand." She's digging her nails into her palm so hard that her knuckles are white.

But that hand is covered by the other sitting in her lap, as she tries not to make things worse. She wants to ask Leina to let Banagher and Mineva take care of her, to not be alone.

But she can't. Not now. Leina wouldn't accept it... and Sayla Mass is still a coward.

"Please... stay safe."

That's all she can manage to force out, quiet as well.

When Leina's gone inside, Sayla picks up her drink and stands up, walking down the stairs from the veranda, onto the grass of the hill Villa Mass stands upon-

-and hurls it as far as she can, trying to express all her anger at herself in one pointless act of rage. It's nowhere near enough. She wants to scream at herself for her stupidity. Her carelessness. Her fear.

And instead of doing any of those, she simply turns, and walks back towards the villa, slinking quietly towards her study.

2023-04-20: A Talk

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