tushanshu_logs | don't you ever consider giving up [March, catchall, open]

Entry tags:

don't you ever consider giving up [March, catchall, open]

Characters: Raine Sage and open!
Date: Most of March, primarily after the 11th
Location: Healers' Guild, Earth sector apartment, assorted others
Situation: Many, lots. Most post-fourth-wall.
Warnings/Rating: just going to go ahead and warn for suicide themes and discussion with Kratos. Dammit, Kratos.

A | Healers' Guild | open

While Raine's largely absent for the first third of the month, spending as much time with her husband as she can before he's inevitably drawn out of Keeliai, she's doubly present for the latter parts of March, throwing herself into work. She always has her hands in something, whether it's healing or herbs or simply scheduling the next days or weeks, and as a result she will need to be interrupted if someone wants any part of her time.

It's entirely possible to get one of her apprentices to interrupt her for you, fortunately, and she doesn't snap at interruptions anyway, only glances up with distracted eyes, slowly focusing. "What do you need?"

B | Healers' Guild | Miles

She wasn't entirely expecting to see Miles again without some grievous injury, but it's not a bad thing; simply a matter for curiosity. Raine lifts her head from the dried herbs she's disentangling and tilts her head at Miles. "It seems you're doing well. What brings you here?"

C | Midnight Hotel | Fai

Eventually, citing time concerns, Raine had had to let Fai go the previous time they'd met, and there wasn't nearly enough opportunity to speak of all the magical and linguistic things she'd wanted to. So she'd arranged with him to meet for lunch, or an equivalent meal at the time of day that worked, and now that's the reason she's at the Hotel, looking for Fai with a pair of notebooks and a slate tucked under one arm. "There you are. I'm glad we were able to sort out a time."

She doesn't look quite as cheerful as she did the last time Fai saw her, but her interest in the matter at hand is undisguisable.

D | Sky Sector, Pepper's home | Pepper

Raine calls ahead, just to be sure; but early in the month, she stops by while Pepper's in and both Gene and Tony are out. "I'm not here for very long," she says, apologetically, "but I needed to discuss something with you in person. I take it you heard I accomplished something with Bakura?"

E | Water Sector, a tea house near the Healers' Guild | Kratos

It's one of their weekly teas, and they've spent what Raine judges is an appropriate amount of time on small talk and catching up socially. Eventually she sets her tea down, arranges her hands delicately around the base of the cup. "I heard," she says, "that Lloyd was here for some little while, these past few weeks."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[And she would, too. Kratos's sigh is resigned and very nearly irritable.]

No.

[He does not want to be talking about this, no matter how much the honest answer might spur Raine's probing.]

[At least Kratos acknowledges that she'll be more trouble if he doesn't make an attempt to have a conversation. Raine takes a moment to decide whether or not that irritability is enough to make her back down.]

[It is not.]

Why not?

Because now I know that he won't kill me.

[It isn't just Lloyd, his son, knowing he'd betrayed him, knowing he'd abandoned him -- more than once. It isn't just Lloyd knowing everything about that night, and not being sure whether Lloyd even blames him for it.

[Lloyd is, right now, a symbol of an end Kratos thought he might have earned, and wouldn't receive. No, he can't face that yet.]

[Raine notes that apparently it will take a surprise to convince Kratos of these things. Which means she herself may have lost something of her window of opportunity. ...Hm.]

You wouldn't speak to him because he might give you hope.

[Borrowing from Lloyd's stubbornness may have its applications, however.]

[Kratos looks away, back out onto the street.]

Hope hasn't been my friend in a very long time.

[He'd tried -- he'd tried hard. He hadn't done enough, it seems, while hoping; and the day he'd realised the truth of Mithos's plans, how far his student had fallen, hope had become ashes. Even with Anna ...

[Even with Anna, life had been snatching at an existence only in his dreams, one he knew would never last. Something to be treasured because there was no hope to come after it; because he'd abandoned the worlds to be with her to begin with.]

Kratos...

[Raine can only sort of understand the frame of mind he must be in. For her, the idea of having no hope is something close to death, or worse. She knows there was a time she would have died, without it.]

[To persist, to be forced to persist, and have none-- perhaps, she thinks, she begins to understand. And so she is silent for some time, tapping her fingers in an unconscious rhythm as she searches for what to say.]

[Finally:]

Why couldn't that change?

[It seems, at first, as though Raine may have dropped the subject, she takes so long ago it. Kratos has no objections to this; and there's something calming about watching children play on the street.

[At her question, he stirs, but doesn't look her way.]

What else would such an attempt be, but another disappointment?

[She notes his gaze, doesn't comment. Children, hm.]

Why does it have to be a disappointment? Surely even at your age there are things that can surprise you.

[The future doesn't have to be the past.]

[He shakes his head, still not shifting his gaze.]

It always has been. To believe it won't be the next time, despite all experience saying it will -- such a hope is surely insanity.

[Raine quirks half a smile. He's talking to a scientist.]

Repeating the same procedure, with no change in conditions, over and over, should produce the same result, yes. Unless there's been a significant alteration to natural laws.

However, variables change. The environment; the people. That's what experimentation is for. To find out what changes in the results when you change the founding principles, when you change the process.

...if nothing else, now is not then.

[There's some truth in the words. It isn't easy to hear, and as a result he doesn't immediately respond; but there is. For four thousand years, the seraphim had kept Aselia unchanging. Yet even then, the distance between the Kharlan War and the reuniting had been enough for Sylvarant and Tethe'alla to forget how to hate each other. Time itself had moved, despite all their attempts to make it stop.]

I don't know how to change. The cruxis crystal --

[It's too easy to blame the cruxis crystal. And yet, there had been times when Kratos looked at Mithos, at his unchanging body, and wondered whether it would have been better for him to grow up, before making those choices. Then he remembered that Yuan and he himself had made the same choices, and Mithos's unending youth had seemed easy to dismiss.

[Kratos shakes his head.]

I don't know how to change.

[Raine knows what he means, even if he cuts it off.]

You knew at one point.

...in any case, it isn't necessarily conscious. Certainly some changes are, but others are simply a response to environmental conditions. If you don't lock yourself in place, or close your mind to outside input, it will come naturally.

[Kratos is around different people now; in a different place. Surely some of this will seep in before he notices.]

For the conscious portion, it will require you to make an effort to step outside habit and what you find comfortable.

[Kratos would like to deny it, but doesn't. He can't remember ever being able to change; even the choice to abandon his commission had been in pursuit of his duty. There's no point in saying it; Raine would only reject it.

[In any case, what she says seems to be impossible. There's things he does which he doesn't even think about, and he isn't sure how to explain the impossibility of doing anything different before he's already done it.]

I'm not sure you understand the influence of cruxis crystals long-term.

[It isn't a dismissive comment, so much as a searching one, the beginnings of an attempt at explanation before Kratos has to stop.]

Perhaps not, but I'm sure you're about to tell me why they make what I ask of you impossible.

[Her smile ebbs into something flatter; Raine rests one hand on her hip.]

Please, explain.

[Mostly so she can find away around it or refute it. Even angels must be capable of change. Even Kratos changed, even if it was years ago. Mithos... refused to; but in the end, it seemed a conscious choice.]

[The tone is not encouraging. Nevertheless, Kratos forges onward, not reckless but inexorable, because this is all he's known. He wouldn't even know where to begin to change.]

The crystal takes over unconscious processes. Breathing, senses, sleep -- these are all things we can turn on again, after the transformation is over.

[Which she already knows.]

But everything else -- a person's capacity to develop -- is stalled. Or do you think Mithos remained a child by choice?

[Raine tilts her head a little, taking this in. Yes, she knew much of this.]

I suspected something like that might be the case. Choice? Hm. I wonder.

[It takes her a moment to put together what she wants to say; she shifts to set her fingertips together, eyes a little distant with thought.]

...but so long as he did not change, he was always someone Martel would recognize. Always her younger brother, even though it had been four thousand years.

[Surely there was some element of unconscious desire there.]

Yuan changed, did he not?

[He seemed to have sided with Mithos originally. And yet: he'd been willing to acknowledge Martel's death.]

So did you, in some ways.

Yuan has always been most concerned with Martel's wishes.

[In that, he's never truly changed. And still surprising, the idea that Kratos might have; he tips his head.]

Have I? How?

[...hm. She hadn't thought of it that way; but Kratos would know best. Raine inclines her head in brief acknowledgment, and then turns to Kratos's query.]

Haven't you? You left the man to whom you'd dedicated thousands of years of your life; you were prepared to do whatever it took to stop him, who was once your apprentice.

You chose the future, over the past. While my knowledge of you is limited personally to the past several months of your life, I suspect -- based on the fact that our world came to the state and time it was -- that this was not always a choice you might have made.

[A great deal, in the end, hinged on Kratos.]

[None of those are things of which Kratos is proud. No matter what, he betrayed someone. He looks back out onto the street.]

Have I? We've just observed that I avoided Lloyd for a reason.

[Because he can't let go of the past. Because he doesn't know how to grasp the future. The hardest thing for him to change, perhaps, is the idea that he can.]

That choice was always before me. It took someone else making it before I could.

I never said it was a perfect process, nor a complete one. Only that you are not the same as you were once.

[Which is something, and not to be dismissed.]

Although it's beginning to sound like you'd prefer not to change. The fact remains that you did make that choice, even if you had help in... opening the way, as it were.

[What Kratos has done for them can't be entirely written off, no matter how much he seems to want to.]

[For a few moments Kratos is silent, watching the children on the street. Raine always has come straight to the point; he'd regarded her as the biggest risk during the first stage of the Journey for a reason.]

Perhaps I don't.

[It's an admission at last, if not an easy one. It's not that he's even pinpointed where the feeling comes from; if anything he seems to be reaching for a cause behind her accusation. It doesn't help him at all with the actual changing.]

[Briefly, Raine slants her gaze after Kratos's, observing the children in turn. She can imagine what Kratos sees there. Before long, however, she returns to watching Kratos instead, theorizing she'll derive more information from observing him.]

Don't you?

[And if he doesn't want to change, what then?]

Are you content with yourself as you are, then?

[Raine suspects not.]

[It's a question which is left hanging in the silence, growing heavier with every moment Kratos leaves it there. Finally he admits:]

No.

[But he still doesn't see a way out. Raine says change; it isn't so easy.]

[It isn't easy, no. But it can be simple, at least to start.]

[Raine's eyes narrow slightly, but more for the fact she thinks she has him than any suspicion.]

If you are not content with yourself, then the only recourse is to change. I might think, rather, that you are reluctant because you don't know what the future may bring.

[She's guessing. And hoping that Kratos would be more drawn to a correction, if she's wrong, than he is to genuine questions.]

... Perhaps.

[It sounds roughly correct, even though Kratos has never really considered it in such a way. He barely dares to think about things like this, let alone the future.]

There hasn't been much of a future for me for a very long time.

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