Let's be war buddies...

[initiates]

Date & Time: 18th, beginning at 2100 hours, through to the 20th.
Location: All around Exsilium.
Characters: Everyone!
Summary: The United Earth decides Exsilium had obviously not learned its lesson back in October, and does another round of humble-making bombing for those impertinent exiles. OOC info can be found here.
Warnings: Violence, death, general gloom and doom.

The warning had gone out approximately two hours before the bombing began, broadcast to any available receptor on the island: UE aggressions incoming, bombs expected; please proceed to Catacombs immediately. It repeats over and over, right up until the first bomb, aimed at the Hold itself, silences the signal.

The air is thick with smoke and worse. Every one to two hours another bomb shakes the island. Buildings crumble and shatter, but the focus is on the Hold and the native hospital. Initiative employees, some sick as anyone else, are steadfast in their escorting natives and transports alike into the underground catacombs. For two days the bombs continue ceaselessly, dropped by their cloaked and invisible carriers overhead.

The United Earth is nothing if not thorough.

Comments

[anklets]

[It would almost be cute, picturing that- if only...

well. There are a lot of ifs.]

Oz. [ hasn't any idea how word this tactfully, and so she doesn't even bother to try, but Lenalee hopes she doesn't sound ridiculous ] How does my hair look?

[velveteened]

( nods to himself slightly as if he'd expected that, and rather than put on any show he just leans his head down more until his face is hidden by both his own and cat hair. )

I don't know.

( said levelly, with a bare hint of something - maybe irony, maybe a little self-recrimination, maybe a little bitterness. )

Gil could tell you when he gets back.

( even though he knows she really doesn't want to know, or at least that it wasn't her motivation in asking. )

[anklets]

[ so far from it that to hear him say "Gil could", as though she could benefit a proper answer, makes her eyes prick ]

Oz...

[velveteened]

( perhaps not too visibly, li jun considers the proximity of oz's face and gives it an upwards lick that makes him pull back a little in surprise. )

There was something at the hospital. ( in explanation, though still to the cat. ) Before I knew it, that'd happened. Though! I'm sure it's not permanent.

( of course he's not, but goes on anyway. )

Anyway, I wasn't just worried about Li Jun. Are you alright?

[anklets]

[Takes that moment of surprise by the reigns; rubs her eyes dry again while he's too preoccupied to hear her sniffle. He talks about injuries the same way Exorcists do.

She shuffles, and there is summarily gentle weight on the back of his shoulder (her forehead) and a thick, low voice.]

I'm fine.

[velveteened]

( normal injuries he's not much of a stranger to - baskervilles and cheshire have seen to that - but this is something different. it's faintly reminiscent of the abyss, the place that he'd describe if he ever spoke of it as above all dark - though with horrors when there are things to see, something he'd not wish on anyone. )

That's good!

( he says, meaning it, and is careful not to move. the weight reminds him of alice, makes the missing her more acute. )

[anklets]

[It would be so easy to seal his mouth with her hands and her anger, but it's draining from her the way it always does, leaving her with a heavy hollow feeling in her throat.]

When I couldn't find you, I thought... [ she is being cautious with choosing her words, and the illness is fond of taking her breath even now ] I thought that maybe the building had swallowed you. I've seen it happen before, to other people.

[Comrades. Some of them fast or strong enough to emerge put-together rather and not in pieces. But not always.]

[velveteened]

Oh.

( softer, but heavier with understanding. of course she would've gone looking; i've seen it happen before - and hasn't he? not building collapses specifically, but fire and confusion and loved lives lost, that's not new. )

I'm sorry. A friend helped me get out early on. ( by a gross misuse of sedating medicine, but he can't deny the efficacy. with a sarcastic wave of one of his hands in front of his face, he goes on - ) I haven't been able to use my tablet. Though I should've asked Gil to let you know, at least.

[anklets]

[Much of Lenalee's language is in what she doesn't say, in the little half-words and pained exhales and fingers which twitch without ever sincerely taking hold.

This is the language she speaks now, breathing her gratitude for Oz having faster friends than she, plucking at the folds in her trousers before those fingers rise (unthinking, instinctive). They curl at his back, barely there.]

It's okay. I know you're all right, now.

[velveteened]

( "all right" normally isn't something he'd even think of contesting, regardless of circumstances, but it sounds strange to him now even as he nods. of course he's alright because a lot of people are worse off, surely, and for that reason he has to be. lenalee is almost certainly hurt because who isn't? - even if he doesn't have any way of confirming that.

quiet for a long moment only interrupted by a brief dry cough, and then he says )

You were right.

( he's had a lot of time to think about it. )

[anklets]

["All right" because he is not dead, is not ash, is not another missing puzzle piece in this bizarre jigsaw she's started. "All right" because she can't stand to look at it any other way. Listens to Li Jun softly purring, feels Oz's body move into that nod.

She was right? Lenalee does not want to address that.]

Just rest, Oz.

[velveteened]

I'm resting.

( has scarcely done anything but that, he thinks, not since or for a week or more before the bombings started. )

But, you were. ( stubbornly. ) Someone else had told me something like that before too, but I'd forgot - no, I didn't want to remember.

( didn't understand, more like, and he still does and doesn't. it feels like years have passed since then. )

Which was wrong. All that does is hurt other people, like you. That's what I should've apologized for.

[anklets]

Mm. [ she says- yes, that's about right, unspoken but heavily implied- and withers herself back from him ]

[velveteened]

( it's cold where they're no longer touching, caverns' chill moving in where her warmth used to be. but he doesn't say anything about the new distance, just curls in on himself slightly more, and there's a sound of jangling as li jun catches the chain of the pocketwatch that's slid out of his (gil's) pocket. it's enough to make oz stir and halfheartedly murmur something in reprimand, though he doesn't quite start in on any futile attempts to keep it from the cat. )

1/2

[anklets]

[anklets]

Once this is all over, would you mind having dinner with me?

[velveteened]

( can't say he expected that, especially after her withdrawing; but he's starting to understand a little that it'd be foolish to have expected her to just leave.

bemused: ) Dinner?

[anklets]

Mm. [ a smile, vaguely shaky and graciously unseen ] I don't try and push my friends away, Oz.

[velveteened]

( unlike him. she doesn't have to say that part; it hangs in the air anyway. )

I wouldn't mind.

[anklets]

[ (she would very much like to pluck it from it) ]

I'm not mad at you anymore. [ this is not something Lenalee has often had to say, but Oz is new to this Worldpiece Business, so she is more willing to hold his hand through some of the bumpier parts ] You know that, right?

[velveteened]

I know that.

( said promptly, if not certainly. li jun continues batting at the chain, but oz leaves him be for now. )

But I'm not sure what to think anymore, to be honest. Not about you, but a lot of things are - confusing.

( he's surprised at himself for articulating this, and to her, but on the other hand there's no one else here he'd even know how to say it to. )

[anklets]

[She is uneased, the way Lenalee is always uneased when smiling faces stop smiling and the tenuous surface film of c'est la vie is breached. She has not known Oz long enough (or deep enough) to have handpicked and prepared the words she needs to use for him now.

So she'll choose a few on faith. Perhaps this time it shan't fail her.]

It's said the gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.

[velveteened]

( no, not really what he was looking for. but then, what had he been looking for? she can't tell him how to think or feel, and he'd be a fool to ask. )

I think I've heard that before, somewhere.

1/2

[anklets]

I've been in war for a long time.

[ there are words crammed tight behind her teeth, waxing— though not poetically so— on child soldiers and orphanage, on fighting because you can not (shall not) be allowed to do otherwise, but they are not meant for this conversation ]

The kind of life we lead when we fight for the things we do— it's always difficult, and confusing, and sometimes makes you wish you didn't have to make the decisions you end up making. Sometimes you may find that, in a happy moment, you've promised more than you can ever make real, or that something you had hoped to be one way is everything opposite when you finally reach it. One world is painful enough to learn, and we've found ourselves in a melting pot of a hundred more than that.

[anklets]

But as long as you have people who care standing beside you, it's okay to be confused. They'll help pick you up again. They did me.