i try to keep my hands clean

[cantic]

Date & Time: Today, early afternoonish
Location: North Wing, Room 117
Characters: Tear Grants & Jade Curtiss
Summary: Team Mom and Team Embarrassing Uncle need to have a chat.
Warnings: Jade Curtiss

In her week since arrival, Tear has had time to settle in. She's used to doing things on the fly, adapting to new situations, but this...this is something else entirely. This is entirely uncharted territory. Still, she's gotten things in order as best she can. She reunited with Luke, the memory of his trembling hand in hers still makes her heart twist in a complicated mess of emotions. She's started the beginnings of collecting what information she can, and she's signed up to help at the clinic.

Since her network post the other day, the revelation that the UE has been using replicas has been weighing on her. It's time to talk with Jade about that, and about Asch, and about Luke. Her knock on his door is sharp and decisive.

Comments

[cantic]

"He will," she says fiercely. "He has now, and he will back home."

It's said with absolute conviction in spite of all evidence to the contrary. She tries so hard to be calm and rational, to be an adult - but faced with the prospect of losing everyone she cares for, Tear feels like a little girl again. It was Luke who taught her that it was okay to be weak. It's okay to fight and claw against fate and hold on to irrational hope.

"If anyone can do it, Luke can."

[clinical]

Jade truly wishes he could believe that. He truly wishes that all his science is wrong, and that Luke will come back home.

But the dead cannot return. He knows that well enough. "Tear . . . At present, there is little purpose in us discussing that hypothetical. There is nothing we can do here to tip the scales."