home...less? probably? semi-considering Singularity; also post game HI SPOILERS EVERYWHERE

[the_survivor]

... does it really matter, anymore? Here or there, asleep or waking...

As for that place? Just another refugee camp in the sky, floating far above a broken world. Just another case of two sides, both wrong, and even breaking it all's not an option anymore...

What's the difference? What's the point?

Comments

[evacuator]

[The kid stares at Zulf. He's seated on a wall, his feet hanging over the edge. His hand on his chin and his eyes locked intently on his fellow survivor seem to indicate that there's....something he wants to say, but he doesn't speak just yet.

He always needed to think it through carefully before he said something. Zulf was better with words than he was. He kind of envied that. He probably wouldn't say that, though. Not at first, anyway.]

[the_survivor]

[Zulf hadn't quite caught that he had a visitor; his plea'd been more like a prayer to gods he wasn't sure were still listening. Though not a god at all in this case, a... something else. But then--]

... my apologies. I wasn't aware I had an audience.

[He gives his best go at a smile, but there's not much mirth behind it.]

[evacuator]

...are you sure?

[He waits a beat, then continues.] If the Motherland doesn't have anything for you...maybe somewhere else does.

[the_survivor]

[He's about to answer yes, but... but. Something about the way the Kid says it...

Kid may not say much, but when he does...]

... I'm sure that the place has the same hurts, the same scars as home. That I know.


But.

Perhaps you're right.

[He is Ura, first and foremost; even if he did, at one point, love the city, even when he did he was always Ura. It will never be the Motherland, not to him. Not even when he's thought a traitor to his own people.]

Perhaps I can do some good among the stars.

[Not likely, he thinks. It seems each time he tries to do good, it all turns to ash around him.]

[evacuator]

...Rucks told me about what you used to do.

[He'd heard the story in his sleep, same as Zia's. It was strange. Rucks' words had a way of sticking with him, even when he wasn't awake.]

You...tried to bring together the Caelondians and the Ura. Maybe that's what those two sides need. [A diplomat was usually more useful than a kid with a Brusher's Pike and an Army Carbine, anyway.]

[the_survivor]

I tried.

[And failed.]

But maybe that is what they'd need. It is worth trying, I suppose...

[As the gods say: two sides to every coin. Take the good with the bad...]

...

I never did thank you for saving me. [He's still not entirely sure if thanks are in order. Maybe he should have just been left there.]

[evacuator]

[That has him clam up again for a few moments. He stares at the ground briefly.]

You don't have to. [After all, if the Ura hadn't decided to let them leave, they'd probably both be dead right now.]

...I'm sorry. About... [He's about to say 'about the Calamity', but even he knows it would sound so overwhelmingly hollow, he can't even manage to say it, so he pauses, and then starts over.] About...your fiancee.

[He may not have lost any loved ones in the Calamity. But he does know a little bit about what it feels like to lose a loved one without even knowing they're gone until it's too late to say goodbye.]