summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

The thing is, Lloyd doesn't really wanna go inside. He doesn't want to face Sheena and Zelos yet, not after that agitating episode, not with the shame that burns in his chest over losing his composure in front of Zelos, who's got his own shit to figure out, and leaving Sheena to deal with it. Lloyd doesn't want to deal with this, with this world, with this scenario, with the cruel 'fuck you' fate keeps spitting at him.

But he also doesn't want to stay out here and try to wait out something that won't fade away from existence just because he's ignored it long enough. Lloyd Irving has never run from his problems before, really, and he's not going to start now, not when there are other people who could use his help. He might be broken, he might be shattered, but he'll do what he can. So it's best he staples his heart back together, whips his mind back into working order, and fakes it till he makes it.

Lloyd needs to get Sheena home, after all. No matter what it takes.

He strengthens the weak smile on his face, shrugging a little nonchalantly, trying to force the strain out of his voice for the sake of tugging the concern out of Malos'. "I'll be okay. It was just - Zelos reminded me of someone, is all. I wasn't ready. But - I'll get over it. I'll be okay."

Without waiting for Malos' response, he turns and starts walking towards the safehouse, closing his eyes and exhaling quietly as soon as his back is turned. No matter what it takes.

"Okay," Malos says, even though Lloyd's already gone. He follows after, trying to decide how much he believes Lloyd. Hard to guage.

Give it some time, Malos, give it some time. Lloyd's old enough to take care of himself. You don't gotta worry too much about him.

(Oh, but he's worrying.)

(If there's anything the Irvings are good at, it's being stubborn as hell, even when it comes to holding on to absolutely terrible ideas.)

Anyway, time to head back in and get breakfast ready for real. If someone's stolen one of his pancakes he swears to fuck--

Unfortunately for Zelos, sleep just won't come, especially not when Sheena keeps pacing about worried out of her damn mind. It causes a strange feedback loop of anxiety to grow between them, one that Zelos desperately attempts to fight back while keeping his face blank to truly sell the picture of him having fallen asleep. At least this'll keep everyone away from him, even if temporarily, so he keeps the charade.

Malos leaves, announcing that breakfast's ready, and once he hears the door open and close Zelos opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. A need for a distraction and some form of entertainment blooms in his mind, and in its wake Zelos makes a face. He shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't, but with the way everything keeps getting crazier and crazier, with everything that's happened in the past few hours, Zelos feels annoyed enough to think that maybe he's justified in stealing some food for himself to eat alone, if only to avoid the awkward air of a make-believe friendly breakfast between them five.

He could do it, probably. After all, Anna's nowhere to be found, Malos and Lloyd are outside, and maybe if he tries hard enough he can sneak away from his driver so that she can't stop him, either. The idea sends a shiver down his spine. Because a part of him is afraid of being caught, but--that's fine, he tells himself. This isn't the castle. It's just some fucking food. Blades need food to survive too, even if in smaller amounts. He can get away with that, right?

That should be fine, right?

Hm.

Whatever. Zelos blinks, focuses and listens for Sheena's footsteps, then picks a moment when they're far away from his general position to rise and peek out, making sure Sheena's not looking his way. Once he confirms she's distracted he gets up and walks off to the kitchen, footsteps quiet and nerves shaking with Sheena's emotional bleed and his own fear as he tentatively and slowly searches the kitchen.

Come the fuck on, Zelos, it's just food. It'll be fine. You can get away with stealing a bit of food, for fuck's sake.

It's fine.

Edited 2019-03-29 19:36 (UTC)

Most of Sheena's pacing is because she's worried about Lloyd, true, but it's giving her a chance to get her thoughts in order, too. The emotional link between her and Zelos is new and alien, but it's hard to miss that almost all of the emotions that she can tell are coming from him are negative ones. And he'd told her he'd essentially never even left the castle before... This is a lot for him to adjust to, probably. She's on her way back towards the living room in this loop of the house, anyway; she should probably check in with him.

"Hey," she starts, uncertainly, as she comes into view of the couch, and then stops as she sees that Zelos isn't where he'd been lying down.

If he followed Lloyd and Malos out after stopping her from doing the same she's gonna-- Well. Not kill him. But she's going to have something to say about it, at least. But no, it's only been a moment, and she's not distracted enough to have missed the front door opening and closing again. She pokes her head into the kitchen, definitely not feeling a tiny puff of relief when she finds him there, peeking into a cabinet like he's never been unsupervised in a kitchen before. Alright. Now what?

"Hey. Looking for something?" she asks, trying to sound casual.

Okay, in Zelos' defense, the only reason why he jumps a little when Sheena addresses him is because he was distracted thinking about where the fuck these peoples' plates could even be, because he's a proper boy and if he's going to eat anything then he's gonna do it without making a fucking mess. Really, that's it. That's really it. He doesn't really have to disguise his surprise, so he lets a bit of it show in a milder, less panicked way than what he really felt at being found out, holding that emotion close and refusing to let it swim through their connection.

He gives Sheena a little smile, though, something that looks friendlier than he really feels, and shrugs. "Thought I'd grab a bite," he tells the truth. "I'm starving. Don't really wanna wait," he lies. Then he tilts his head, smiling still, unconsciously trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. "Need something?"

"Thought Malos said to wait," she says, but her tone's not accusing. She is hungry, now that she thinks about it. And if she hasn't eaten since yesterday morning, then--

"No, I'm fine," she says. "I just... wanted to make sure you were doing okay?" It's tentative, Sheena not used to being anything like this genuine with any version of Zelos, but that panic earlier had been sharp enough to cut through her concern about Lloyd like it was nothing. She steps into the kitchen so she's not in the doorway, shifting her weight to rest on her right foot awkwardly.

He gives her a flap of his hand and a snort. "Yeah, well, Malos ain't my dad."

Well, shit, Zelos is half tempted to step back when Sheena comes into the kitchen, but he holds his ground, smile still in place, all amused and pretty and fake. He does laugh at her question, though gently and a little like he can't believe she's asking. "Yup," he says. Keeps holding onto that fear and decides to redirect. "I'm more worried about your friend, though. Is he always like that? 'Cause that's gonna be a problem when we're on the road, you know."

Edited 2019-03-31 02:33 (UTC)

She doesn't make any move to close the distance, just leans back against the counter, considering his question before anything else. "He's been through a lot," she says, aware it's not exactly an answer. "I think he just needs time."

Unfortunately for Zelos, though, she knows what his deflection looks like when she sees it. She takes a deep breath, readying herself to be way more open than she's ever been with him. "But seriously. Earlier, it felt like--" God, is there a social etiquette for 'I can feel your emotions and they're deeply concerning'? Whatever. "Like you were really anxious about something. I don't- this is all new and weird, I know I'm kind of in over my head, I was just worried."

Ahahahaaaaaaa son of a bitch, she's fucking figured it out.

Zelos can't help but tense a little when she says that, opting for sighing and crossing his arms to hide his discomfort. He rolls his eyes. He'd been honestly expecting to get away scot-free from the whole emotional bleed thing by keeping himself under control and being quiet about it, given Sheena is from a different universe and she totally neglected reading up on the blade system, but apparently he's been sloppy enough for her to pick up on it here and there. I mean, the whole 'shut the fuck up I'm gonna let you feel how annoyed I feel' thing probably didn't help, either, but can you really blame him? He was frustrated! This kinda stuff is just habit for blades!

Okay, okay. Zelos doesn't really feel like disclosing exactly why he's feeling the way he does, and he's currently too emotionally constipated by just holding in all his fear and anxiety, so instead of being honest he does the next best thing.

He tells a half-truth.

"She's a total stranger, remember? Who knows what else she's really planning, considering, well," Zelos laughs, goes for gesturing to where his core crystal lies hidden under his clothes. Raises his eyebrows and says nothing else. Deliberately doesn't say Anna's name, just in case.

That's enough for Sheena to accept it, at least, eager as she is for this conversation to not be what it is. It's a good reason to be nervous, something she'd thought about a little too before everything else had driven it from her mind, and she frowns, leans forward as she rests one hand on her hip.

"Yeah, I know," she says, careful of her tone in case any of the others are on their way back. "I don't know what she wants either, but I'm not gonna let her make you do anything you don't want to, even if she is helping us. Neither is Lloyd." She sounds certain of that much, at least. Even if Anna is his mom, Lloyd's hardly about to let her do something he thinks is wrong.

"Aww. That's real sweet of ya, hon," Zelos manages out through a chuckle. Still, the way Sheena says that actually makes Zelos uncomfortable, the constantly repeated idea that he's got a choice alien and perhaps a little terrifying. Besides, putting his faith on the two people who seemingly killed his mirror is... a little nerve-wrecking, at the very least.

He wants this conversation to end soon, so he twists and goes back to scavenging the kitchen, reaching up for one of the cabinets above him, and--bingo! There's the plates. "But anyway, the plan still stands, right?" he says, taking out a single plate for himself and setting it on the counter. Now where's the fucking cutlery. "I gotta send you home. Whatever anyone else wants, it's still second priority to your thing," he adds.

At least making himself appear busy distracts him enough from the fact that everything keeps happening so much and doesn't seem to be fucking stopping. It's fine.

If Anna showers longer than normal, it's only becuase she gets distracted reiterating speeches she's given like, probably a hundred times now. She is a simple woman with a very complicated special interest that she adores greatly. Like, fuck history. She didn't even go to school but she knows the shit they teach at school is dumb as shit. It's uninteresting and pumped so full of propaganda it makes her sick.

But, the version of history Kratos told her? Fascinating as hell. (And, okay, maybe that's just because she's in love with the man who this history's about, but that's valid, okay?) (A man she hasn't seen in five years, a man who probably thinks she's dead--DON'T think about it Anna, don't think about it.)

Where was she.

Oh yeah-- Even regardless of Kratos, the thrill of knowing a history no one teaches, the lengths she's gone to to confirm it (she loves Kratos, she trusts him, but sometimes you just gotta break into some top-secret records and also steal copies so people believe you) has been... maybe her favorite part of being a rebel. Her resources are too thin now and her plans too scattered to pull off any large-scale rebellion, but you know what she can do? Tell people the truth.

So, yeah, she's maybe got this speech memorized back to front. Going over it again just to make sure she remembers is a comfort thing more than anything else.

She gets downstairs to Malos already serving breakfast, so like, that's fine, but fuck him. She wasn't in the shower that long.

But also they do have three guests so maybe she shouldn't be so fucking petty.

"Am I doing this, like, now?" she asks Malos in hushed tone as she warms up her very-cold-by-now pancakes.

"Well, seeing as we can't exactly take them to Mithos when they have no fucking clue who he is or what an Aegis is, yeah," Malos answers.

That strikes surprise in Anna. "Since when were we heading to Mithos?"

Malos levels her with a Look, even as he passes her the syrup for her pancakes. "And a safer place for one refugee Aegis is...?"

"Good point," Anna admits, even though she hates it a little. Hopefully Mithos will be civil.

(And... it WILL be nice to see Kratos, again.)

(Hoo boy. Keep not thinking about that one, Anna.)

"They have no idea that you're springing this on them, though," Malos warns. At the offended look and the disappointment she sends him, he laughs. "What? You're a big girl! You can figure out how to start the conversation yourself."

Anna sticks her tongue out at him. Starting this speech is always the hard part, because she can practice a beginning all she wants but it's always thrown off by actual real people who have varying opinions about listening to her rant for like an hour about history. Sighing a little, she takes her pancakes over to the table, plopping herself down in one of the empty chairs.

"So," she says, looking mostly at Sheena, since Lloyd's on the floor. (She can't even judge him, really.) "If we're heading to Mithos, then you guys need to a little more about Aegises, huh?"

Edited 2019-03-31 05:51 (UTC)

Sheena looks up from her food as Anna sits down across from her, only to almost immediately choke on a bite of pancake at the casual way she brings up Mithos. She thumps at her sternum, coughing.

"Uh, yeah," she says, after she's gotten it under control. She glances at Lloyd surreptitiously, glad she thought to warn him about Zelos's plans, before she continues. "I know a little, but... it's hard to ask about the kind of stuff everyone knows without people getting suspicious."

Edited 2019-03-31 06:16 (UTC)

"Yeah, that tracks," Anna says. "Though honestly no one would have told you the truth, anyway-- only what they think is the truth."

That... would have been a pretty good segway into the rest of the shit, but she realizes that Sheena must know... absolutely nothing about Aegises. Also Anna's got a pancake to eat. Fuck. She should have eaten before starting this. Look it's fine just take a quick bite no one's judging and if they are they can fuck themselves.

"Not that. Uh. Architect, I gotta start way sooner than that, huh," Anna says. Malos doesn't chuckle, but she feels his fond-smug-amused package of emotions and knows he's thinking about it all the same. Asshole.

Anna sighs and leans back in her chair. Takes another bite of pancake.

"Well. Okay, give me a sec to get into some mythology bullshit, but. Legends say there's this guy called the Architect, and using the power of the Aegises, he created our world," Anna says. "Dunno if the Architect's real, but the Aegises? Real as shit."

(Anna would it kill you for once in your life to explain things even a little bit seriously? Yes?? Okay.)

"Mithos-- he's one of the originals," Anna continues. "And they're-- the Aegises? They're really powerful blades. Ten times as strong as a regular blade, easy. I mean-- they created our world."

She pauses, then smiles here, sharp and incredibly bitter.

"Not that humanity's interested in that, of course. Humanity mostly just wants to use them to wage war."

Blades don't really need to eat, so even before Anna starts talking Zelos is already only poking at one of his two pancakes every now and then just to busy himself. But then she gets into her little history lesson and Zelos tenses only ever so slightly, now pretending to eat to try his hardest to keep his attention to her words to a minimum, trying to keep calm. Unfortunately for him, though, it's kinda hard to not pay attention when she's talking about Aegises, the very fucking thing he is, and it's even worse when she mentions the war.

He knows that if she mentions a very, very specific subject then he won't be able to take it and he will most likely leave, but... maybe he can pretend. Maybe he can take it. And, if he's honest? A part of Zelos is curious, too. He is no fool; he's read the history books, been told about the past by his caretakers, but there's always been enough inconsistencies and mysteries to leave him unsatisfied. Zelos would rather ask Mithos himself how this world functioned before he was created, because he really doubts he could ever trust a human's words, Anna included, but...

Perhaps he can get some info from Anna. Maybe her side of the story will shed some light somewhere, or provide some context and allow Zelos to draw his own conclusions, or--or--

He takes another bite of food, trying to stay calm, expression blank and posture nonchalant. Play the part, Zelos, play the part. Don't think about the war. Don't think about what she's going to say next, just focus on getting as much info as you can.

Let's just see how this plays out.

Anna waits a second, but it looks like everyone's just digesting-- no questions yet. She keeps going. The words are familiar, to the point where she's more focused on hitting the beats of the narrative than the content of them, honestly. (If she focuses too much on the content, she'll just get too pissed off to speak.)

"Of course, even considering how powerful the Aegises are-- You can't fight a war with just one blade, especially if that blade doesn't want to fight. And why would Mithos or Martel want to fight humanity's war? They were both taken from their home, split between the countries, asked to fight for a cause they didn't care about, asked to fight each other..."

She doesn't know much about either of them, only what Kratos has told her. But she knows: The Original Aegises, willingly fighting each other? You could sooner expect the sky to fall.

"So humanity needed a way around that," Anna continues, grim. "And that's why they created th--"

A flare of alarm from Malos so sudden that the words die in Anna's mouth. Before she can even turn her head towards him to see what's up, Malos is sliding into the room, the smile on his face a little too big.

"Heeey, Zelos," he says, before Anna can even ask what the fuck. "You wanna go with me for a walk? You look like maybe you could use the air."

The tight hope and fervent alarm in Anna's veins that isn't hers abruptly makes sense, and steals the air from her lungs. Did. Did she really almost just bring up the cannons with an Aegis in the room? She can't even mention them around Kratos, half the time!

"And before anyone gives me shit about it being dangerous," Malos continues, "I'm pretty sure we're clear so long as we don't go too far. Soldiers are the only ones looking for us right now, and if they were around they'd have already knocked our door down. So."

Malos waits. Anna keeps her mouth shut.

Keep it cool. Keep it together. Don't show just how much worse your dread gets the more she speaks, the more she talks about the war, about taking away an Aegis' choice by forcing them to fight. Zelos stabs at the pancake with his fork. Once, twice. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't even let Sheena get even the slightest lick of your anxiety, don't let anyone see how badly this is hurting already. Stop thinking about the cannon. Stop thinking about the cannon. Stop thinking about the cannon stop thinking about the cannon stop thinking about the cannon stop thinking about the cannon--

A voice cuts through so sharply that Zelos suddenly drops his fork. He blinks. Looks up to meet Malos' eyes.

He's... been addressed? He risks a glance at Anna. She's looking his way, too.

It looks like he's been addressed.

Oh, shit.

It's--It's fine. Keep cool. He breathes in deep, goes back to making eye contact with Malos, because at least looking at a blade helps the sickening pool of pain and guilt and horror in his gut to freeze over a little. Zelos rolls his eyes and hastily constructs a mask of annoyed nonchalance, as if Malos' request was personally troubling him, as if this were anything but the salvation that he wants to get the fuck away from cannon talk. "If you insist," Zelos says. It's the only thing that'll come. And it's pretty weak, maybe, but he's trying his fucking hardest to keep his voice calm and steady, making it a show out of slowly getting up from his seat despite every nerve in his body telling him to vault it the fuck out of this room.

He throws his hair over his shoulder and follows Malos out without further protest, the easy smile on his face hiding discomfort, hands at his sides balled into fists.

Maybe Zelos is out of practice, but hard as he tries to hide it, enough of his emotions get through to Sheena that it causes her to set her fork down, food ignored for the moment. But it keeps growing, goes from hard to ignore to enough to choke on, and she flinches, turning to him, maybe to say something. Malos thankfully chooses that moment to interject, though, and she just waits, instead. She's not sure her voice would obey her, anyway.

She watches the two of them go, waits for the tension in her veins to settle down to something more manageable. Seriously, how does anyone get anything done in this world?

"S-sorry, can you back up a second? I think I missed a little of that," she says as she turns back to Anna, apologetically, smile tight.

"No yeah, that's--" Anna begins, then stops to drag a hand down her face, still kind of stuck on she really did just almost do that, like a complete dumbass. Breathe in. Breathe out. Malos saved it but. Holy fuck, Anna. Really?

She lets her hand fall. Sighs deeply.

"Look. The takeaway here is that humanity is vile as shit, and when the Aegises refused to fight their war, humanity found a way to make them."

Anna sets her fork down, too angry to eat anymore but that's. Fine. It's fine.

"They created the cannons," Anna said. "Machines capable of razing entire countrysides, killing thousands, wiping entire villages off the map." (Her own included.) "It didn't matter if the Aegises wanted to or not. The power was taken from them, and no longer did they have a say."

Hands clench into fists, tight, fury making her want to get up and run a mile or maybe walk right up to Tethe'alla castle and punch the king in the face. She-- could go into a lot more detail, if she wanted, because if Kratos is good at anything it's accidentally overexplaining shit when he's in a bad brain space. She holds her tongue, though, sorting for the most important bits. She's off-script, at this point, but that's fine, that's fine too.

"And that-- hurts," Anna says, her voice a quiet, bitter laugh. "Having your ether stolen from you is like-- it hurts more than I could probably describe."

(Kratos waking screaming from nightmares that weren't even his, the distrust that never left Mithos' eyes, the Not-Even-Close-To-Here expression that had graced Zelos' face just minutes ago.)

"It's... a good thing you got Zelos out of there, Sheena," she whispers.

Edited (i keep fucking with wording like an Author dw abt it) 2019-04-01 00:04 (UTC)

For the majority of the time he's been sitting on the kitchen floor, Lloyd's been half-in and half-out of his own mind. No more vivid imagery flashes before his eyes, but he'll get small things - the sound of swords clashing together, a muffled, anguished plea for Zelos to stop, the terrible sound of a rapier falling to the floor, the hand that held it going limp. They're not flashbacks, no, but they're the aftershocks, the things that do nearly as much damage with less fanfare.

He's tired of them. Lloyd no longer has the energy to shut his memories out of his mind best he can, just accepting their presence and suffering through them silently, his numb emotional core barely even processing anything outside of the noises and the things he can see in this world he's in, familiar but not quite, a house of mirror's reflection of the things he knows.

Anna starts speaking, so he tries to follow along. It's best he understands the way this world works, after all, so he eats a pancake he's not hungry for to keep up the charade of being a normal human - (He hasn't been hungry in months. The scars on his shoulder blades burn.) - and keeps quiet, reading Anna's lips when he's not able to catch the words she says past the white noise that blares in his mind.

Malos fetches Zelos and they leave. Before Zelos places the mask on his face, Lloyd sees fierce anxiety, the kind that made his own Zelos' eyebrows pinch together, that caused a wrinkle on the bridge of his nose to show itself. Anxiety morphs into discomforting, quiet terror, the way his eyes lose their edge and his mouth pulls taut. Lloyd knows these emotions, has seen them on every one of his friends, has seen them in the mirror. Experiences haunt, but memories kill.

Lloyd shakes his head, ridding himself of the desire to reach a hand out and comfort him. He doesn't know this Zelos. That'd be out of line.

Anna keeps going, and slowly, the emotional core that went numb after his episode in the forest behind the house turns itself back on. There is confusion, first, of the way this world works, of how Aegises can just be created by humankind, be used against their will, and then it deepens out, his stomach churning as the lesson continues. Canons. They made fucking canons.

The connections aren't lost on Lloyd. Mana canons have a similar purpose and a similar effect, but given that summons are picky about who they create pacts with, their powers are often used willingly. That willing transfer of mana makes the process harmless to spirits, makes sure that they feel almost nothing if anything at all. This - what this version of his world has happening - they're siphoning what is essentially the lifeforce of these Aegises, of these people who just so happened to be born differently, to be born with different powers and culture and history.

Furiousness boils to the top of his chest, pounding in time to his quickening heartbeat, and he can feel his lips pull back into a snarl. Suddenly, Zelos' fear makes sense. It makes way too much sense.

(Suddenly, Lloyd sees falling snow, feels the cold brush at his neck where his coat opens. "I never wanted to be the Chosen. I spent every moment of my life wishing I could run away.")

This world, it's just as cruel to so many people as his own. Exspheres are blades, cruxis crystals are Aegises, life forces being used up and crumbled away as though the lives that held them are worth nothing. The people in power sit back and watch this happen, happy to keep endless wars going, pleased to see the decline in innocent life, content by the idea of endless, power and wealth, and people like Zelos and Colette, people born into things they never wanted and could never control - they're left to take the blame. They're the ones that face the people, that are trapped in their cages to be flashed around but never truly loved or cared for.

Lloyd clenches his fists, and the words escape his mouth before he thinks about them. "How do we break these canons apart?"

"Oh," Anna says, somewhat surprised by the question.

And then

"Oh!" she says, somewhat delightedly, as the weight of what Lloyd just said hits her. She's over the moon with her pride. She turns to flash him the widest grin. "It's-- good question," she says.

She gets to her feet, too full of energy to keep sitting. She doesn't really know what to do with the energy so she kind of just awkwardly walks towards the kitchen and then back, though her mind is spinning way too fast to care much about her feet.

"We'd need-- we probably couldn't do it alone, or. Hm."

Jin's better at making plans like these. Or maybe Kratos knows? Anna snaps her fingers, trying to think.

"We-- We can figure it out," she promises. "And I-- Architect, I want to do it, I can't believe it never occurred to me. But I don't know if Zelos-- if taking him on a mission like that would be a good idea."

Or if. He even wants to??

(If Mithos wasn't terrified of getting close, he would have done it already, right?)

The dread still lurking in Sheena's heart, slowly starting to fade, mixes well with the numb horror overtaking her as Anna explains. She'd had some idea, had even been aware of there being cannons, but sitting in a homey little kitchen having it spelled out for her that it's at least as bad as she'd thought is-- well. She turns in her chair, both to get Lloyd into her line of sight properly and for her gaze to follow Anna as she moves.

"We can't just leave them," she agrees. "But-- yeah, I don't know if doing it with Zelos along is smart." She still feels kind of sick just from Zelos's reaction to the cannons being mentioned. And if what she'd seen yesterday had been what it was like to be in them--

Sheena shakes her head to clear it, giving up on food for the moment. "I don't really wanna leave him alone, either." She frowns, thinks back to what information she'd been able to dredge up on her own. "There are... two cannons, right? One for each country?" They'd destroyed more ranches than that. Two's not so bad. And if there are two cannons, then-- "Does... Sylvarant have an Aegis held captive, too?"

Anna nods at Sheena's questions. "Yeah, yeah," she says, still somewhat distracted by trying to make plans. "They-- they created two artificial Aegises, after they lost the first two. Zelos was one, and--"

She stops. Frowns.

"I can't remember the name of Sylvarant's."

"Colette," Sheena says, automatically, mouth dry. She swallows hard, processing what she'd just said. It's- it has to be. But the idea of Colette going through anything like what she's seen of Zelos's life before yesterday is enough to break through the horror, building into anger instead. She's gonna kill whoever decided to do this to them. "I can't-- we have to save her, too."

Edited 2019-04-01 02:39 (UTC)

"Colette," Lloyd breathes in unison to Sheena's equally horrified tone, the realization seeping into Lloyd's anger and causing the lava to overflow, his clenched fists shaking with the force of his furiousness. He's already ready to bumrush whatever fucking government building he has to bust into to save her, the idea of Colette, sweet, kind, entirely too accepting of her situation Colette, being one to suffer through the same shit that Zelos has, that she's been in one of those canons -

Lloyd stops. Counts to ten. Closes his eyes and slowly opens them again. This isn't his Colette, but Lloyd wouldn't leave any Colette to suffer. Ever.

"We're saving her," Lloyd declares, echoing Sheena's words, determination coating his voice. "We have to. We're not leaving her there."

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BUCKLE UP HERE WE FUCKING GO

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