voidtreckerexpress | [open] and if it gets too rough, just yell

Entry tags:

[open] and if it gets too rough, just yell

Who: Tidus & You!
Where: Sports gym, training gym, network, and a few other cars
When: Imagination 16 onwards, mostly 'nights'
What: open log thru the second IC-half of the month! barring any events. idk when to date these, let's go wild.
Warnings: Tidus being down/frustrated. crimes against pianos and blowing up the second floor of the games car's ICP console, oops

1; sports

sports gym carriage

football

basketball

any type of ball

2; network(/action)

[ from: the training gym ]

[ a small pause ]

[ That's not a weird request to send out, is it. ]

3; late night

upper music car

upper games car

exploding

ICP terminal

tiny blue creature

sports car

ball

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Maybe it's because they suddenly speak of change, of seeing beautiful things and beloved cities come to their natural ends that make it easier for Roland to speak what he really wishes to say. Even if the words don't quite come out as earnestly as he wants, but that's always been his problem when confronted with things beyond his control. He'd rather do as the higgledy is attempting to fight against its better nature, hiding and escaping and wanting to burrow itself deep despite embodying bravery of all things. No feeling could be farther from his heart, and he knows no magic will ever ease the ache.

But it's Tidus now asking him for the truth, and Roland has grown weary of pretending. Not to him. Not to someone he's vowed to. He opens his mouth to speak, his words meant only for Tidus to hear; to understand. Not quite the answer, yet it solves all mystery. Was it hard? Watching her disappear?

"There's a reason I couldn't look at you using your powers that day." Because watching her disappear was easier than watching a friend fade away. The light was almost the same. The way he could see through the ground, the same. The pain in their eyes, a perfect match of grief painted in varying strokes.

Bambosh stirs on his lap, if only to curl up closer, trying to melt itself into Roland's clothes. His hands create a barrier around him, changing the way the orange glow lands on his face. Roland's breath hitches. He keeps going, as if speaking to himself.

"It happened a lot faster than any of us expected. Nobody really understood what was going on, even with her SCA screeching as loud as it did." His right palm parts from the shield he makes for the higgledy, turns it over to stare at the lines and curves dipped into his skin. Studying it as if seeing it for the first time, fingers moving up and down. "Then, just like that, we were all left holding light and air. And that was it."

His fist draws to a close. Not so tight; just his nails digging into flesh and muscle, enough for him to feel his own hand.

"It's funny." Roland lips move, straight line changing, twitching into a remnant of a something that might have resembled a smile. "That captain and I barely knew each other ten minutes, but it was easy. Easy to see her face change into somebody else's. Somebody I might've known. Somebody who didn't have a choice, who couldn't decide if they wanted to be here or not."

He makes a sound, a breath tangled with a dry laugh absent of joy. Roland shakes his head, doing everything he can not to see the man sat in front of him. He had no right.

"We both-- We both made our choices."

There's a finality in the statement, despite the way it shakes. But Tidus repeats it, starts again to make his words clear, though his eyes close after, and-- and Tidus isn't sure. About what he wants to say, the storm of emotions and thoughts that've been waging war inside his head - is it yet settled? Does he know who he is, what it is he's come to?

I don't know what to wake up to. I don't know who I want to be.

The train exposed wounds, resurfaced the consequences of his actions, but it never inflicted them in the first place. It only helped him to realise them again, to see them in a new light: the actions he didn't take, the excuses that he made. The certainties he started to believe in.

We didn't have a choice.

"I could have told Yuna. I could have tried to let everyone find a way. I could have- let them have their good bye." He's staring, eyes now raised onto the fountain, the pouring of the water into its endless flow, its repeating cycle. Volume raised to make up for his suffering conviction, the shame of having to face it. "She-- your captain. She knew her risk too. We both... we both made our choices. Everyone else... we haven't had that choice. Trapped in this void."

This isn't about him.

It's not about the captain, her name slipping from his memories. Neither of them were anything but a warning, a foreboding, of what could be.

"We can't let the train get away with it. It won't stop."

"I know."

Roland answers simply, carried as light as the wind, neither confirming nor denying which of Tidus's words that was meant for. Perhaps it's for both, whatever choices they both made, Tidus and the Captain he has come to remember often. He would have corrected him then; Halo. Her name was Halo, but he feels a cold crawl up his limbs, sudden warmth removed from him abruptly. The higgledy on his lap is beginning to catch on to his ploy and as all sentient sprites do, refuses to partake in the facade any longer. Bambosh makes a long whistle out of his rotund belly, the fire on his head waning until one final wisp causes him to go out, retreating somewhere Roland can't sense, can't reach.

Face it, he hears something nag at him from the back of his mind, an understanding not quite there yet it's enough to make meaning. Face it or falter.

It's easier said than done. He has nothing to offer Tidus for the moment, still grasping at his own stirrings, figuring out where to go, what to do. Staring at the dim space his higgledy leaves him, his hands closed into fists but can't look at Tidus no matter how much he wants to plead for his forgiveness, though it is not his to grant, and it is not Tidus alone Roland wants to seek out mercy from.

His own quiet disturbs him. He's better than this. Roland is keenly aware of that. But it's so heavy, and for the first time in a very long time, it's too heavy for him to lift all on his own.

It's hypocritical for him to care. For the answer not given, not spoken, too open and vague and yet speaking everything Tidus doesn't want to hear - he can't stand it. He knows what it is, what it assumes, and it makes his body tingle with that exhausted ire that's been eating away at him for days. The anger, the upset. Tidus waits for anything to fill it, to take away the doubt. But Roland doesn't grant him that reassurance.

And he hates it.

And he hates it.

Tidus looks over to him once, one last chance that he gives the man to prove him wrong, then rises when he doesn't. Limbs rigid but his pace pointed, heading to stand a few steps in his direction, halfway between the two distanced. Hypocritical for the stance he now decides to take, the fight in his throat.

"Why?" he asks, so sure. Then allows for the slither of a doubt, that plea masked under the wall of his words. "Are you giving up?"

Tell me no. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I don't know what I'm talking about!

"No. Never."

The shadows cast from the shifts in the void overhead make it more noticeable that Tidus's height towers over Roland, sat there with his chin tilted low. At least the answer still comes to him naturally, even if he says it lacking Roland's characteristic assertiveness. But despite the callout, Roland's glad that Tidus is approaching him like this; forcing him to return to a position where he can command something, anything. Get a semblance of control back, maneuver this ship with the rest of them trying to figure out why they've been cast this lot. Why they had to provide life to a train that didn't care about them, throwing children into the fray without thinking of what that might do to them. Or to men like Tidus who have gotten their fair endings and have only enough room to deal with the consequence of their choices, but now, now he has to go through the same pain all over again. This time, mirrored upon each and every passenger that ever comes onboard. Disappearing. Vanishing. Living to fight another day, forced to protect their captor lest they too, cease to exist. It's cruel. It's cruel and it's this cruelty that unlocks Roland's truth, the emotion bearing upon him as if it could crush him when he says the words.

But it's still the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Tidus will see then, when Roland lifts his eyes at last, a slow crawl from Tidus's feet until he can finally show him. A gaze looking too far ahead and too far back at the same time. A voice that shouldn't belong to a man like Roland, yet here he is admitting it freely, because the feeling has nowhere else to go.

"I just don't want to hurt anyone anymore." He blinks twice, glazed eyes breaking contact at the admission. Roland will fight until the end...but the costs are always so great that if he lives this fate one more time, dooming people one more time, he doesn't know what else will be left of him.

It's not an answer to put coals on the flame. Pausing it even, an answer he wasn't expecting, short-lived his feeling not exactly relief, but some form close. A confusion inspired, and the confession almost tricking Tidus into hearing something else: The words of another, those that've come out of his own mouth. The same fear - the same grief - that had been haunting him far too easily, too close to his wounds.

--I just don't want to hurt anyone anymore.

--I don't want people to fade anymore.

But he finds himself quick, blinking. The hold of his fists easing.

"Wh... but you didn't hurt anyone. The captain - didn't you try and save her? You couldn't do anything. It wasn't your fault."

Did Roland take the blame anyway? Was there more to it? Admitting he saw another in her place, how easy it would be to swap them around. But did it go deeper than that? Because Tidus can't imagine that a death - as horrible and wasteful as it is - would be enough to take the spirit out of a man who wants nothing more than to help others, to push forward. Roland isn't easily deterred.

So what is it? What is it he's missing?

It's only when he hears Tidus question him as innocently as he does that Roland realizes how much he has jailed himself in, how much of his own pain is internalized. There is no relief that follows such a thing, only a choking sensation that keeps him silent for a good while more before he can finally make words out of thought. It's against all instinct to talk the way he does, but Tidus is stood before him, demanding for resolve. Asking for a hand to help traverse a new reality; the same train seen in a different light. What else can he do when faced with that look in his eyes, that silent plead Roland can't quite make out the meaning of?

All he knows is that hiding won't be enough anymore. Tidus will never understand if Roland doesn't try.

"That's not it." He says more certainly, steadily like repeating a fact. His fists uncurl and he finds himself leaning more against his knees, his gaze suddenly looking onwards to a place far, far away. The heave in his breath is heavy; so unused to the act of telling someone, of admitting it even to himself, hearing it out of his own mouth. He'll never understand. Face it or falter.

"...Three hundred twenty-six." The dome above them cracks and peels, revealing layers of a world long gone, stamped in history by an angry, red, nuclear winter. He's back there again. It's an easy place to return to, if he focuses enough. "In the year 2018, my nation housed three hundred twenty-six million people, from all walks of life. Young and old. Majority of them lending me their trust, voting me back into office for a second time. Asking me to lead them, to look out for them. To put their best interests first, and nothing else. And I took it. I lived it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I could."

The wind tastes like ashes. The tremors that tempt his body almost make it.

"And in that crowd of millions, I knew I was working to make the world a better place for just one. A little boy living in a hospital bed, waiting for his dad to come save him. To finish fixing the world so he could be by his side." The beeps come, the only steady sound echoing in an empty city, skyscrapers brought down to their knees, scaffolding melted into the sea. Roland closes his eyes, and there, he's home. He's back home, alone.

"I thought I made the right choices. If I second-guessed myself, I didn't give it any time to come to life. I had to decide. I wanted to save them." Ah, he can feel it once more; the residual heat burning his back, whiplash from a car upturned with only one, barely surviving. He shouldn't have. It shouldn't have been him. He was the least worthy for a second chance.

"But that fated day still came. The bomb still flew. It still met its mark. He was probably watching from the windows." Roland weakly scoffs out a laugh, the reimagining so wretched; so perfect. He doesn't even know what he's saying anymore, what story might be understood by his audience, or if he's making sense of anything.

"So in that one instance, three hundred twenty-six million people, and my only family left, all disappeared before my eyes. And here I am, stuck in a brand new body, just wanting to save you all like history repeating itself...but what right do I have to say a word? Hm? What right do I have to tell anyone what to do when I selfishly left messages in bottles, damned signals and letters to track a train trying to escape the ministry for a hell of a good reason? Halo's warning pretty much sealed that deal. Stay away. Stay away from them, those were her last words. And I..." The illusion breaks, and the lines in the wall return, crawl up into corners, the void filling in the rest of the space. Roland is back, seated, his lips furled like he detests the sound of his own voice.

"I'll never give up. But I don't - I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. So I'm thinking. I'm still...thinking."

If he says it like an apology, Roland probably means it to be. If he grows weaker now, deflating in his guilt and shame, it's because it's the only emotion left to give him life. He doesn't know what to do. There's a reason Evan is the king to unite the world. There's a reason he didn't want to be chief consul in the first place. His track record is bathed in red, and it's never been clearer than in this moment.

There's a memory in Tidus, of a boy on a bed joined by a man and spirit. Each from different worlds, all with their own stories of tragedy. He remembers Roland's history by that framing: the solidarity shared between two with tales so similar. The end of a people, and those left after - or those who knew - the only ones capable of speaking, or remembering, them anymore.

Tidus never needed Roland to paint the portrait of their demise, though he never saw Zanarkand's own, beyond the one the fayth showed him. A city, a life - his old life, melting like wax with the ending of the dreaming that supported its proverbial beams. The end was the end, and the end hurt no matter the damage seen.

There's a sympathy there, all the same. A quieter emotion than the one that turns, pushed up by the waves as Roland speaks on, his own brewing storm starting to show itself in the disgust of his words before it fails.

But for Tidus's, it goes nowhere. Trapped in him, stuck in a disbelief, an unknowing confusion; as the words sink in, as they digest. Bottles and signals and messages left-

The world feels stranger. The air, himself. A trembling he isn't sure is real on his limbs, the way that his body goes cold. And the silence only makes it worse, the way that Roland sits there apologetically, like a man taking the weight of blame onto himself.

No. "Don't you-- don't you sit there and act like this was all your idea," Tidus pushes out, uncertain, unsure, but growing louder, more forceful as he goes on. "Don't act like we did anything wrong! So what if we did? We knew the risks. And what else do we have? Sit back? Do nothing? Never try? You wanna know what happens when you sit and wait and play along with what others tell you to do? Nothing, nothing!"

A pacing comes into his feet, small and few. But it's there, threatening to turn into more as Tidus goes on.

"We don't need to try for the ministry, we can go for anyone else! But what else have we got? Who else do we know? You think risking our lives out here--" he throws out an arm "--is better than trying to get people home? To find any kind of help?! One person doesn't like the ministry, and that's it?!"

He doesn't rise to Tidus's fevered pitch. But Roland closes his eyes and for once, he looks as tired as he feels. There's a dissonance that he can't describe, but it deafens him like a sound being jammed into his ears, and his fingers are cold no matter how much warmth the blanket on his lap feels. He doesn't have enough heart to correct Tidus, pacing about. Doesn't have enough of him left to say that he can't stand it either; he can't stand having every choice he's ever made stripped of his agency, that even his own fate is no longer his to control. More than that - the pain of loss, one that he didn't think Tidus needed to hear from him. 'You know, don't you? How heavy the burden of even just one life feels?' Roland has never been one to stop, but he has to slow down. If he doesn't, he'll crash. He'll sink so beneath the tides that he won't be able to get back up again. He knows that for certain. And that's not his destiny, he won't let it be.

But all this, is redundant. Pointless. Useless. Tidus is both right and wrong, but Roland's not sure which side he should be talking to. He's being pushed for a reaction, Tidus's upset already bearing its effects on him with the dip of his brow, and his arms suddenly crossed over his chest. A shield from harm, or an anchor of comfort, maybe both. It's not so easy, he thinks. To remember the damned of which you were responsible for, then have a hundred more lives to help, to save, to resurrect in another life.

"Tidus, please."

He mutters under his breath, coming out as a plead more than anything. Tidus is always so fast, always so animated that Roland can sometimes only watch from the side. But he can't - he can't be the same, he can't move the way he does, he's not trained for it, isn't the type of man who can think and act like they're the same thing.

"That's not what I'm saying. Listen to me, I..." Eloquence loses its edge. Roland's head lowers more so, his hands rubbing at his face once over before the fountain is in view again. "I'm thinking. We were willing to risk everything but we didn't know the actual cost. The price to pay. The risk to the reward."

'I told you about that once, didn't I?' And he's stuck in that wheel, a machination of his own design. If the price they had to pay, if the risk was so great that a hundred or so lives would be in peril, totally disappearing without a trace of ever having existed at all...how then, could Roland speak so candidly? So cavalier, like he understood from the start? He's always been reacting to things on this train, better at pretending than most people will realize of him. For once, he's being forced to act. To pay up.

He's scared. It dries his throat, a sound barely coming out before he quiets again.

It isn't an easy thing for Tidus, to slow. Taken a hold by the threat of what may come, that Roland's exhausted plea isn't enough to immediately tame him completely. But Tidus does pause, if with a fight on the back of his tongue, apprehension in his limbs. The knot of his brow still tight, ready to protest. Defend.

He listens. Curbing his emotions, chewing on their residue. Risk to the reward. He remembers, and he remembers the position of the man there. Seeing risk that wasn't there, bleeding out for some viewed reward. When Tidus turns away, at least he doesn't pace, though he looks animated even when still, like he might start to any second.

"We knew enough. We knew it would be dangerous. We knew we needed to get people untethered, whatever we did."

Tidus speaks low, head hanging with the rest of his limbs. Nails pressed into skin. A pause despite his efforts to convince, to reach out, voicing his own plea. Understanding that this wasn't just about the risk of the train and what they now understood as a risk. Enough time lapses that it may seem that he won't speak again.

"I'm scared too."

But he does, his voice even lower than those seconds ago. His head turning as if to hide his profile, as if he isn't ready to admit himself fully to the truth. Though Tidus has known, recognised, figured all the stages of his fear: that everyone is as cursed as he is, that he's never known people to come out from the other side of it. That he can't fix it, and that was his own play of risk and reward. Give up the dream, save the future of reality. Decide which had more right to live.

Fears that aren't worth repeating. Tidus lifts his head, looking close to the rim between wall and void.

"We don't have to do it alone."

A reminder, a point - not only for Roland.

The long drawl of silence is not unwelcome. Not for the first time does Roland arrive on the same shore of understanding with Tidus, running parallel with moments that intertwine, fears and hesitations to move resounding off each other in harmony. It's good that they both get this; a period of stillness, a time to reflect on the said and the unspoken yet. For all their similarities, Roland also knows he will never quite understand either, the pain of non-existence; the harrowing reality that the man before him is but a dream tethered to fleeting seconds of hopeful wanting, to truly live and be. Not even as Roland faced his own death, trapped under a car and ready to die with the rest of his people; not when he was threatened by a soulmate possessed. Somehow there would be something waiting for him, whatever it was. Tidus grapples with that every time he wakes, and is it not the reason for his insomnia tonight too? I don't know what to wake up to.

Which is why it would have been impossible to miss it, the way Tidus sounds when he does talk. There is a weakness he rarely shows Roland, who by now is too used to taking the younger's hits in joyful stride, jokes that always land where they must and a camaraderie that formed from it. Only this time it is not the same pang which strikes him like in Irivar. The tears may not be there, but by all accounts, he was crying out too. Asking for help that Roland shriveled away from until he understood that things had to change, that the risks and rewards would mean nothing when life itself became the goal. This time, as he finally lifts his head, craning his neck to look at Tidus from behind, Roland feels much worse. That admission is what binds and frees him. It is what compels him to answer as he does.

"I'm sorry."

He trains his eyes on that back, those shoulders that shy away just as he does.

"That day, you tried to heal me. I'm sorry." It's an apology that betrays none of his own guilt. Roland reaches for him too, in this way. He wonders if Tidus will hear it in the way he stresses the words, that this is not just a simple apology for uncharacteristic behavior, it's so much more. "I was selfish. I let myself lose control and I..."

He shakes his head. "I wondered, deep down. I thought about how hard this would have hit you...but I just started thinking. I didn't do enough. " For you. For my friends. I didn't try to help you - Even now, Roland is pushed and pulled by emotions he can't contain as well as he wants. The need, the fire to fight back against captors who are unjust; or the itch to let go, to let them do it, to help when he is asked of it because he can't take having to be the undertaker to people he loves a second time.

Roland wants to say too; that he knows all that. He knows they're not alone. But it's not a fact he accepts easily because he doesn't know how else to make those decisions when they matter as much as they do. Even in the second world, where he was surrounded by help. I don't want anyone else to get hurt.

But there's something more pressing. The blanket on his lap is spread away from him, opening it up as if an unseen invitation. He resumes to watch the fountain idly, his beckon to Tidus louder than he intends.

"...It's a cold night on the train, don't you think?"

There is space next to him on that stone bench, after all. Roland never forces though. The gesture of it is what matters, it's what he wants Tidus to hear from somebody else, the same mantra uttered from another heart. They're not alone. They're not alone. And he must make amends for abandoning them when he did.

Edited 2021-01-02 06:30 (UTC)

There's not much that the void shows them this late of a time. Darkness consumes what can be viewed, the interior dimly lit by the artificial lighting dotted around the dome-roofed space. The walls are no less odd, even without the bouncing colours washing against them: like a picture out of focus, a reminder of what isn't actually real.

It's bizarre, it unnerves Tidus, and so there's an easy excuses to be made to look at the ground; for his head to tilt, an ear listening to Roland, whether or not his returning gaze to the man is quick.

No. He doesn't want to ignore friends, though it's uncomfortable to be so honest. To acknowledge a face like Roland's and the age he doesn't hide, and what a relationship like this usually means. But Roland opens the blanket, speaks indirectly, and Tidus is struck by a memory that close to hurts. He might as well be eight again or ten, or sixteen or seventeen and about to be dead, and how little life changes. There's pride that wants to dismiss the invitation, hating how small it makes him feel, how young to be offered.

But maybe...he wants that anyway. What company like that means to him, distant yet close. The shape of adulthood, stoic, cold, and everything miserably conflicting with him. Tidus walks the few steps with long limbs, sitting with a space between even before his knee pokes out with how he plants his legs. No good for sharing a blanket, but what does he know about embarrassing gestures like that, and accepting them? Elbows leaning on his knees, back hunched.

If he doesn't look at Roland, then maybe he can pretend. Except it's bull--Tidus knows who it is that sits there, isn't so easy to fooled. But Roland couldn't know, just who he'd see. A scarred eye, shades to hide them both, a figure always tall and imposing but just as capable of avoiding recognition. He wishes that man were here, and doesn't. It's just longing. A friend missed, or...whatever they were.

In their talks, it was always him who started first.

"It was like this too, back on Spira. We were always searching for answers. Everyone's life was on the line... Spira's future. But I didn't want to lose Yuna to save the world."

He speaks softly, no force or point present. Just a reflection, both in the past and now. Eyes on the floor.

"It's hard, being stuck like this."

The other end of the blanket drapes lamely against the edge of the seat, with the rest of it pinned under Tidus's weight when he takes the offering. Like gears that know precisely when to churn, Roland is immediately listening to the words shared freely, his body moving in an opposite flow as if it knows how this might go. Tidus hunches forward, takes up as much space as he can, so Roland sits up straighter, shoulders back and chin up. A role that comes naturally to him, even without prompting. His eyes draw to a close, and he loses himself for a moment. It never fails to draw him in; what Tidus's life was like before the train decided to toy with him. How the very presence of the void makes it harder for Tidus to truly hope when all Roland desperately wishes is for him to want it enough that he can convince himself it could be done. To exist, without the burden of purpose or choice. To just be. His tale is only proof of the fact; someone who could not end the story by exchanging one life over the rest of the world.

But that freedom, he realizes, is now a luxury no one could afford. Not on this void craft. Not on any void craft.

He keeps his eyes closed, mulling out loud as if reassuring Tidus - and himself - in the same, quiet breath. "It's okay. We're going to be okay." It's a hushed mantra, slow and meaningful, movement behind eyelids quick. Thinking himself to fatigue. Convincing, promising, etching it unto stone so that it might come true -

"So many of us with stories that shaped who we are before we ever set foot on this thing. That's our advantage. That's what makes us strong, right?" Yes, a stirring of an answer may lay right under his nose. Unification, coming together as one. Would Evan do the same in his position? Would he assume such a right, to lead as he did, brighter than anything Roland's ever seen in his entire life? Could he outshine the void itself?

"We'll search for answers here too. But it won't be like Spira. It won't have to come to that. There's...there's something we're missing, that's all. No one has to get hurt. No one has to disappear. We're stuck, but we're stuck together and that's what counts."

Too comfortable in his own musings that his finger against his upper arm begins to tap in motions. A beat without a point, other than to count ideas which barely form. His brows crease, meeting in the middle with every passing scenario he creates; but this too, bears nothing. Eventually, he will lose that voice totally, repeating to himself like a habit he forgets to switch off with the presence of company. It's a progression, little by little, until his lips can only mouth the words without a single sound out of his throat.

"Think...Think, think, think."

No one has to disappear. There's no particular strength that the resolution inspires, but there is a morbid wonder, of what this disadvantaged tug and pull between captives and a train will require to have sacrificed to gain. A thought Tidus refuses to make concrete, the kind of person he doesn't want to be. He'd rather be stubbornly idealistic like Senku, screw what anyone else might think. But what losses should there have to be, to have some glimmer of opportunity? Of hope? To make this situation better for themselves?

And yet- it's as if taking the seat has deflated his spirit. An ire no longer being stoked by their goal, and what did he have left with the few cooling embers? Think, think, think.

There's something we're missing.

"We need someone to find us, reach out to somewhere, or find something we can make. Right?" He doesn't lift his head, but he does turn it in Roland's direction. "We're not gonna do anything to the train - not unless we can get to something outside the engine room."

His eyes remain closed, the tapping on his arm slowing, but it doesn't quite stop just yet. The more Tidus speaks, the more vivid the stirrings of his imagination become. Ideas that are floating in his own headspace, turning into bubbles that give ripples to other little musings; what once occurred in the privacy of his own domain, now given life with Tidus's own thoughts voiced out loud. A conversation about the future, this was what this was at the core of it all. That, and offering what comforts they could, from one friend to the other. Tonight, it comes in the form of sitting side by side, lending strength where one falters to speak or talk. He's still uncertain, but hearing others offer what they can has always been a source of his own strength. Reminders in their own right, that he can't let them down either.

Reach out to somewhere -

"Hm. The void ministry can't be the only authoritative body in this whole void business. It's impossible. This whole operation is some sort of void ecosystem." The train has to be off the table, it can't even be touched until...

"If we have someone find us, who? We're rogue void craft, no one recognizes us. Not anymore, apparently. Maybe people who were once fans of the Voidtrecker Express...? Or people who don't like the ministry either..." Roland answers not because he thinks its a bad move to make, but he's repeating it as if he's weighing out its feasibility, hearing himself and wondering out loud all at once.

"There's...something else, too. About the train and our connection to it." The offering is one he makes because it's new, it has only come across to him now.

Roland's eyes finally reveal themselves to the void sphere, colors dancing upon brown irises that strain immediately upon sight of what lies beyond the dome. He squints, looks away for a second before his gaze falls upon Tidus's shoulders, hunched and deflated. He shoves down an other surge of apologies that threaten to overtake him. It's not the time for that now.

"When the captain realized she was going to die, she said to us, 'I don't know what happens now.' What does that tell you? If we remember her final recording too..."

His Arms Band glows, and out comes a familiar item. A phone, big enough to fit in his hand, and its accessed immediately with a code. The recording of everything - from her message to their trek, is all in the drive. But he goes to the notes app, reads out his own transcription of it with a faint glow from the screen illuminating the smooth panes of his face.

"But the idea that I die, for real die, the thing no Void traveller should fear… That I die and no one even knows I exist, that scared me. So here we are, my...message in a bottle."

He swallows thickly, clears his throat before the phone is pocketed in his pants. Not wanting to read that last part out, but failing to stop himself, reading too fast, his voice catching up to the cue delayed. No time, no time for that.

His arms are crossed back, his head tilted up in ponder. The implications Roland is trying to connect are not good realizations, but he has to take it as a challenge more than an impossibility; that even a world as void-advanced as Enrara didn't know how to reverse untethering. He wonders if Tidus is picking up on it too.

Who, who, who? The one who could potentially help them was just another part of the mystery, a possibility without a face or name. Tidus wouldn't have anything to give Roland even if he hadn't moved on, and he's sure that Roland knows it. Nothing more than the avenues that he presents himself, the few options they have.

Tidus listens on, the sound of the water running a strange lie to his senses. He doesn't want it to be the minutiae of comfort that it is, but can't quite kick out the illusion of being somewhere else when he doesn't have anything more than the stone gravel in his vision.

But Roland's words aren't a comfort, permeate louder than the water. 'What does that tell you?' His brow twitches, trying to keep that question with him, but even after all is said and done, Tidus knows what all of those words mean to him.

"That-- it just sounds like someone afraid of dying to me." Truthfully, honestly. Was there some deeper implication to it he wasn't getting? Tidus didn't know the story of Halo as well as it must be scorched into Roland's own memory. But not knowing what came next; not wanting to be forgotten...

"When you're out there, alone... I thought the same thing too. Her whole world was gone, no one knew her."

'Knowing a few people would remember me - it made it easier.' But the confession stays in his throat, close to his heart. At least he lived, at least he would stay in a few people's memories. At least he wouldn't be forgotten completely, even if his life extended to his time in Spira for many of them, than the guy he ever was before Sin appeared.

Tidus wasn't wrong. It didn't matter if you were a void missionary well-versed in the trade or not; the woman was scared and he could see it up close, her eyes in a dazed reflection, her hand growing clammy until there was nothing to feel at all. The point that he wants to make disappears too, tucked back for his safekeeping - that they might need more help to figure out the mechanics of tethering if someone like her didn't even know what to do, should the worst come to pass. Was there a manual for it? Did they get a waiver to sign before being assigned a craft; a rundown of what it would be like as an immortal void traveler in all its unnatural glory?

It seems so silly to bring up now when Roland remembers who sits beside him, still hunched over, now the one to refuse a look or a gesture of warmth from the other. In sadness, or in reminder, or both. This was what mattered the most, right? Before any plans could ever come to fruition to save the passengers of the train, to give them back the right to decide their own fates. In this domed, walled car of void magic existing beyond space and time, there is a confession uttered in the silence of becalmed air that he must follow to unmoving sails. There's a meaning Tidus doesn't quite spell out, but it exists just above the surface, wading between the lines.

"I'll have known you. I'll remember you." Roland asserts with a quiet fortitude, reminiscent of a moment from a world far away, with a purple sky up above and sand between his toes. His very own messages floating into the horizon for someone to read one day, even if it never makes the journey. "I'll remember everyone. I know I will."

Because I believe it, it'll come true.

It's a difficult truth to expose. At least now, to hear that answer for it. Tidus wants to brush it aside, but doesn't want to be dismissive. He just doesn't know how to answer it, to say a thanks that's too -- it's too sobering, all this, even with the conversation already being a downer from the start. The two of them already being the same.

Tidus turns his head, playing up some itch on the back of his head being the reason, the hand dragging down and resting on his neck before it drops.

"Don't worry about it." It comes out mumbly, after the time it takes to be said, Tidus kicking the back of a heel on a foot as he straightens himself up some, bringing his legs closer together. Hands finding the flat bench to rest on. He looks in Roland's direction, but doesn't particularly keep on the man - but doesn't avoid him either.

"But, what did you think she was saying? You said about the train and our connection..."

Roland had been trying to make a point, even if it wasn't the one that Tidus saw, still didn't. But maybe he missed something in the words, focused on the wrong parts.

I'm not worried about it at all.

He leaves the thought to exist where it's formed, the small breath of amusement that he isn't able to stop the only acknowledgment needed. He believes in plenty of things in spite of the challenges presented by the train, and remembering everything that's happened or everyone he's ever met is one of them. But just like in Irivar, he's in no position to make such a grand statement or promise, even if he boldly wants to tell the one sat next to him that there's more to hope than giving him a higgledy made out of its very essence. That perhaps even in the end he has chosen for himself, there lies a beginning to be determined by his very own hands. That he knows deep down, all this will be behind them, and they'll meet again on terms of their making.

For now...

"There's something that's not quite right, and I'm still...figuring it out." Roland breathes in deeply, lets the dry air fill his lungs, blood pumping more heatedly now. It's good he gets to thinking; it reminds him of roles to be played, of the time he can't afford to waste anymore. On feeling sorry for himself, or playing guilt that will one day end him if he wasn't careful.

"If you're from a void advanced world like Enrara, wouldn't you have failsafes in the event that your craft is compromised? Or was that the trade-off? Sign on the dotted line and you waive your existence if anything ever happened to your ride? Sorry, that's it, thanks for the good times in the void?" He shakes his head. "Are they expecting us to believe that if you're tethered to a ship, you're a void missionary forever?"

That might have been the most harrowing of all his musings.

"She was scared, I won't deny that. But is it all really adding up? If she knew the consequences, then why the distress call in the first place? She didn't know we were the Voidtrecker Express until we saw her. And a destroyed craft meant there would be no point to rescue. What was she hoping to accomplish apart from a warning that there were saboteurs in the planet?" Roland opens his eyes, tries to meet Tidus's with a grim expression that doesn't betray the whirring of his muddled mind. "I have no doubt she knew there would be no sentient lifeforms in Nion."

Ideas trying to piece together, but really they all say the same thing. He looks away again and sighs, heaving and tired. Brows to furrow again, the tapping on his arm halting as Roland grows incredibly still.

Edited 2021-01-09 18:59 (UTC)

There's a telling of events that Roland's formed, or the way they connect together, but with threads that don't quite match up dangling in his narrative. Tidus frowns, and he can spot them in the way Roland's shown them. But, if he had to make guesses...

"Is the void just for the missionaries though? The library's got books by people who go travelling and take pictures," Tidus points out. "There was a travel brochure for Jema'grethy too."

Right? Unless that was all for missionaries. Except Tidus never got that idea from them. Or maybe he doesn't have the same idea of missionaries as Roland does; or of anyone else. It wasn't exactly a word thrown around back in Zanarkand.

"And wouldn't you try and get help? Maybe she was just desperate," he offers, as sad as it is. Nothing about her death was anything but though - her story, the end of it. Erased from existence, the only left to even speak of her world. "Or...she didn't know how bad it was. I dunno... we don't even know how hard or easy it is to put someone on a tether in the first place. But it wasn't like she had anything to lose calling for someone."

"Definitely not. The void's filled with companies, traders, and even an underground black market. Halo was well-connected...until she wasn't."

This isn't the first time in his life that Roland's had to deal with plenty of unknowns. When he said that the void wasn't his first rodeo, he meant it. But regardless, his experience falls short when there were no resources to turn to, answers coming in piecemeal without any aid. There was only so much wondering one could accomplish on their own, and even with the combined powers of two brains on overdrive, nothing would be solved when it was the blind leading the blind.

It seems the only thing Roland can do is to continue to breathe. Pretend they were talking at the top of the highest mountain of wherever planet they ended up in next, the air cool enough to wake him up from reverie. He wonders if Bambosh will come out again, but the dullness in his chest is the only answer he needs to hear. Not a chance, huh?

"We don't know. She didn't know. We all don't really know much about anything here, and that's the problem." Progress he's getting tired of counting by the minimum, but then he clings on to something that's been said, something that tickles the gears churning away inside of him. He rests a finger under his chin.

"But the tether. That's always a good place to start digging deeper. There was nothing left of her ship to bring back, and she didn't mention anything about it either." His hum is heavier than he intends it to sound. "I wonder if they knew how. The Enrarans. Or the people who built ships." Untethering. The key to their escape, the secret to unlock. "Destroying the ship can't be the only way to untether. It's too ridiculous a notion to entertain. It just can't."

If he's doing it again - pleading with himself, hearing his own words to reassure him, then this time he doesn't do it on purpose.

"Then don't," Tidus objects, hearing what Roland is saying and - he shakes his head, dismissing it away. "Destroying a ship's the only way? How? That doesn't make any sense. We lose people all the time, they stop being tethered. Why are you letting yourself get that idea in your head?"

Why? Because of Halo? Tidus extends a hand out into the open space when the possibility reaches him, out towards the fountain.

"Just 'cause she couldn't get untethered - the whole thing, it makes people forget things, remember? It makes their heads all fuzzy sometimes. That report said so. So? How long does tethering take? How long does un-tethering take?"

It's a panicking road to go down, and Tidus wants to stop it right in its tracks. There's no reason to think they're tethered forever, even if Tidus can't point to anything as concrete as a guy like Roland may want for evidence. But shouldn't the fact it makes no sense be enough?

"What if she had to do something on the ship? Then what? If her ship was messed up and she was too, she didn't have time for anything. Nothing more than trying to get those bastards who shot at her dealt with. And she did."

He isn't able to say it anymore, the walls he's built for himself slowly drawing back up to protect what he really thinks. What he really wants to say, but he knows very few people will understand where he's coming from, too jaded, still trying his best not to be so, not now. Not to Tidus who is trying, who's opening up to his own fears of what's happened.

'Of course that's where my mind is going. It's the worst case scenario. You have to think about that first, so you're not surprised with it later. You can come to terms with it faster. You can plan for it.

The risk. The reward.'

Instead, he curls closer to himself, hiding hands tucked into the corners of his arms and his head bent down with another deep breath to steady himself. Not wanting to stare at the dizzying void anymore, not seeing what he thought he would every night upon coming back to the same bench, to the same scene - everything's beautiful in the right angle, but maybe the void that takes them for fools isn't one of them. The void with its ministries that erase and tamper with hearts and minds, or trains that pretend they want to be heroes without the weight of the decision to be here.

"Hm."

Indeed, what else is there to say when Tidus only makes the point even clearer? A beacon that sheds light unto matters that have always bathed in the shadows; though that isn't enough to dispel the darkness anyway. It creates more shadows instead, dancing around them as if mocking every passenger with bits of the truth but never quite the whole thing.

He breaks the silence with a gentle resolve, carried by a soft voice. Or a tired one. It doesn't really matter.

"We have to get books, then." When he opens his eyes once more, there's something else he draws out of the arms band, the light in his hand revealing an item Tidus may have seen more often than not in Roland's constant possession. A journal, a little newer now than the previous one he's already filled to the brink. The pen that sits in the middle marks his last sentence; this is where he starts writing again, scribbles in the dimness, staring at pages with a worry he can't describe either.

"Get answers where we can. You said tethering...then untethering...then void craft? Void ships...Memories, alternates..." Roland swallows thickly, the pause in his pen leaking ink deep, staining. The flourish resumes as his words are said without emotion. "Dying in the void...Undoing connections..."

He pauses from time to time, waiting if Tidus has something to add or say. Not cognizant enough of the fact that he's falling further and further into the depths of memories mixed with haunting fears, living nightmares in his head.

It's cold.

He doesn't know why he remembers that, if he feels it. Roland seems to acquiescent, but does he? Speaking on and bringing out that notebook, a gameplan, but Tidus can't find it in him to connect to the process. And what a hypocrite that makes him, to shrink from anything resembling going forward. But everything is so daunting, so above them - and this isn't the place where Tidus works at his best. Thinking, planning.

They're not alone, but maybe Senku was right. They try, but they never get anywhere. Books, what are they ever going to find through books? When it's been six months - no, even more?

It's hard to find enthusiasm where the pit is empty of even dying embers.

"You should speak to Senku about this." He speaks it firm, yet detached; the passion he argued with moments ago lost in the uncertainty that grips him. But it's the right course of action, isn't it? After all- "He's better at this. He's not gonna give up either. And- you two should talk about the radio," he throws in.

"Whatever you think will happen, it's one radio. In a void with missionaries, companies, traders. We can't send messages with it anyway."

His writing stops totally and the breaths that constrict his chest are released, deflating him in a moment he isn't proud of but won't hide. The pen is dropped back against the book slowly, and suddenly the feeling of bursting meets no more resistance.

It's the words he speaks to Roland; that someone else is better for this job, that he thinks Roland has any right to lead any sort of initiative when all he can still remember despite matters is three million twenty six thousand -

- and because he's not sure how else to express it, how else to reach out unless he comes out with it fully, the way it's been paved forward for him moments ago.

That's not what I'm saying. Listen to me, I...

"I'm scared too." He mouths with surprising meekness, though he isn't incapable of moments that soften edges or attempt to bridge understandings. Aware that this is exactly what was said to him, and finally meeting it halfway with an affirmation that the president, the consul, the guy hiding behind the titles can be human too. The pen and the journal that rests on a blanketed lap feel heavy, like they're weighing him down from floating across the void beyond the dome. The words are laden with a frustration he can't reconcile because no matter how much they work, it seems they only uncover more lies, more half-baked truths that lead them with less than what they started with. A man as resolute as him has limits too, and maybe the void was beginning to strain his heart just as much.

"This...this is all I can do, right now." The gesture is lame but the shift of hands to close the journal makes it known what he means. "I don't...know what else I can do. It's all I know." Suddenly he's not sat by a bench, suddenly he's being threatened with war and his people are demanding his appearance and his family is falling apart, but he has to write, he has to work.

A bitter, acrid taste settles in the back of his throat.

"I'm going to speak to Senku about this too, but right now, I want to speak with you. So don't give up with me." Suddenly, he's not sat by a bench, suddenly he's back on a beach with Tidus asking him how he knows the bottles will reach the destination, and Roland can only look beyond into the dipping sun. "It'll be okay. We'll get answers. We will. Together. All of us."

His hand holding the spine of the notes grows taut in a vice grip.

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