searchforpeace: ([05] We're breaking free)
Mineva Lao Zabi ([personal profile] searchforpeace) wrote in [community profile] savetheearth2013-11-10 06:45 pm

i'd give, i'd bend, let's play pretend [closed]

Who: Audrey Burne ([personal profile] searchforpeace) & Banagher Links ([personal profile] argents)
Where: Banagher's apartment
When: November 7th
What: Consider this a bit of show n' tell. Banagher has something he'd like to show Audrey and she has a memory to share with him as well.


Practice had run a bit later than Audrey had expected it to. She hadn't focused as much as she ought to have on her own time and practice lagged thanks to her fumbling. And all she could do was apologize to her tutor, waving it off with vague white lies about 'problems at home' and 'soul-searching' during her time off from school.

Well, it wasn't all lies really. That made her feel somewhat better.

Audrey eventually traced her footsteps to Banagher's apartment building, luckily this time without the need of sneaking out windows. In fact she could hear the faint strains of piano music drifting out of one particular apartment thanks to a slightly opened window. She laughed faintly at herself, her own fingers still aching from practice.

By the time she had reached the apartment door, she wasn't sure just how good of an idea this was anymore. It didn't seem right to see what he had gotten without giving up her own memory, particularly when she had mentioned it. And yet, what a memory to share. However good of a person Banagher seemed to think this Mineva had been, the fact remained that what connection she had had with the Banagher of Audrey's memories hadn't been a good one.

She shuffled a moment outside the front door, considered simply turning around and telling him with a text she couldn't make it. And then she sighed out softly before pressing a finger against the doorbell. Hadn't she learned running wouldn't make this any better?
argents: (thought i'd never lose her)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-11 06:14 am (UTC)(link)
Even though the sound of the doorbell rings out through the apartment, the piano melody continues to drift undisturbed through the window, recognizable as a novice's hand at Amazing Grace. Only a few seconds of this lasts before Banagher makes it downstairs to answer the door.

It cracks open quietly, and Banagher, equally as quiet while the song persists, smiles a bit and stands aside, motioning her in. With a gesture at the upright piano in the corner where a child of about eight sits with his mother, he mouths, 'Recital.'

With November heading into full swing, it wouldn't be long before schools and churches all over the metropolitan area would burst with lights and decorations for Christmas recitals and plays. It was pretty funny, given the nature of why she came to visit today, to sit witness to something so completely normal in the works. Months were still passing, students came and went, his mother sat at the piano, and attended every show one of her kids played in. Holidays started and ended and the next day dawned, just like the day before it. Like that, it was easier to feel grounded, even though his expression is telling when he shuts the door behind her and motions again towards the narrow set of stairs across the room.
argents: ('cause we both know)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-12 11:00 am (UTC)(link)
Taking both of them up the small staircase, the sharp twinkle of the notes fades, even if just slightly. The apartment is small enough and the walls thin enough to be able to hear it from just about anywhere. Which works to his advantage when he opens the door to his room to let her in first. Like this, he could be sure about if and when his mom left the piano, just in case.

"Sorry, it's a mess," Banagher admits, knowing that his time has been spread thin lately. Granted, it's more lived in than messy — the crumpled laundry overflowing from a basket in the corner is clean, and an attempt was made at making the bed, though in the winter he sleeps with the blanket equivalent of whatever a bear would need to hibernate. There's a small desk in the corner claiming the hot mess award: his laptop, entrenched in piles of notes that were half schoolwork and half network scribbles and doodles, with some more refined sketches sandwiched in between dozens of books. A soccer ball sits lonely and abandoned beneath the chair.

"I keep meaning to make time, but..."

You know, life. From his perch on the bed, Haro tips on his axis to 'look' at them, eyes lighting up in greeting.

"Hello! Audrey!"
argents: (frozen waves where)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-13 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
"Doing well? Doing well?"

With Haro taking care of the main pleasantries, Banagher smiles a bit in kind and pulls his desk chair out, swiveling it around.

"Here, you can sit, if you want," he motions, returning to his bedroom door left ajar. For a moment, he just listens. There were breaks in the song where an odd note cut in, or the tempo went off-kilter. Then a more experienced hand contributed a correction, and the song would continue on. Nodding, he turns away again. "She still has a little while left, so I should show you what I pulsed back first. It'll sound less weird if we're just talking later."
argents: (time for a change)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-13 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
"A little," he says, serious enough to indicate he might actually be downplaying just how weird it was. For who's sake is unclear. Still, without taking any more time for granted, he goes for the bookbag perched on the end of his bed. Flipping it open, he rummages around for a second, finally pulling an object out. It's rectangular, with smooth edges and minimal seaming. There's something that looks like a port on one end, and the way he holds it suggests it has substantial weight. Perhaps the most striking thing about it is its steely-white color.

"I didn't know if I should hide it, or risk keeping it with me all the time," Banagher admits, weighing the thing in his palms. He switches it to one, and lays his thumb across the side, "Because it'd be really bad if someone found it, or found me with it."

Why becomes apparent when he clicks something on the exterior and the port fizzles and cracks with energy. Light pours from the object and acts just how it shouldn't, molding itself into the form of what looks like a sword. After the initial burst, it does nothing but sit there, humming quietly.
argents: (hold still right before)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-13 06:37 am (UTC)(link)
"I think I probably had the same look on my face," he admits with a hapless smile, clicking it again so the 'blade' retracts. Or dissipates. He's not really sure how it works and it shows pretty plainly. Sighing, he drops down on the edge of his bed and just looks at it for a second, before turning his gaze upwards.

"Anyway, it dug into one of those snake statues that was in the Dead District pretty well. The moving ones." Which he sounds like he's slow to admit, but it wasn't like he went looking for trouble that time. Trouble just happened to find him.

"But I don't think it was meant to cut stone. It's hot, like, I don't know... plasma?"

Which would indicate metal. It was meant to cut into metal.
argents: (and i'll fall)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-16 09:07 am (UTC)(link)
"That's what I don't get," he admits, pressing his thumb against the metal edge absently. "I don't get the feeling that people did much fighting outside of —"

Giant robots. Giant robots is the term he's looking for but damn if it doesn't sound absurd as far as absurd things go, even when he's legitimately holding some kind of light saber. Which he clutches as if it was, ironically, a lifeline to reality.

"— you know. Those robots. Whether they were Gundams or not. So this," he opens his palm again. "Doesn't make sense."
argents: (to tell me that you care)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-16 09:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Or it's a test," he says, even though it sounds like he doesn't much want to believe it. "Whether or not there's a hundred tons of metal between you and whatever else... it doesn't make a difference if you can't take the swing yourself, does it?"

Maybe for some people it didn't matter. That hundred tons of metal made all the difference; whether you were killing someone or just taking down another hundred tons of metal without regard for what made it function. But he just can't compromise, and the conflict is apparent.

"But it appeared because I wanted to protect someone."
argents: (look into my eyes)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-17 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
Meanwhile, he's none the wiser for her realization. The shift in her demeanor is immediately apparent, how tension in her seems to ease away and give way to something brighter, and more certain. Something he can immediately relate with, despite his reservations.

Banagher still doesn't know if he's entirely behind the concept of fighting a war, no matter what it was for. Without real context, and only bits and pieces illuminated, the reality is something with a definite shape, and weight, but not something he can fully grasp just yet. It's a frustrating spot to be in: carry that weight right now, without purpose, or evade it. Evade it and abandon something so important... he just couldn't bring himself to try.

Maybe he didn't have the strength to say, "I would fight to protect this" — but there's something about the way she speaks about it, about that potential, that makes him think he could do it, no matter what he'd have to bear.

"I hope you're right, Audrey," he says, finally tearing his gaze away from how she'd reacted to her own words to look at the sword in his hands. As if he was trying to take that same light in her eyes and apply it to the object. It wasn't a bad feeling, drawing strength from her. Or for her, which is something that stirs that untapped space in his mind, forcing him to pause before speaking up again. "There's no way I couldn't think about the people in those machines... that's what I keep telling myself, but I have no way to know for sure, either. That scares me."

And it's something he can't not admit. Even though he has no real way of knowing what power, if any, he truly had.

"It goes both ways, thinking like that. Doesn't it? Fighting to protect something means you have to fight other people who are just protecting something too. My memories tell me that neither one is wrong. That it shouldn't have even been like that in the first place!"

He leans forward too, because he knows now that she understands.

"If I had to fight, it would have to be for everyone."
argents: (playing shadow games)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-24 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
It might be worse.

Her guess, if it could be called that, dampens him in an instant. Less because he didn't like hearing it, and more because it was the truth. The truth had a funny way about it, in moments like these. For all the light that it shed, it could take it away just as quickly. And being in the dark is not one of his favorite feelings, he's discovered, but it is one he's become accustomed to, over the months. Shifting, he reaches past Haro to place the saber back at the edge of the bed. Haro's eyes blink, but he says nothing.

"I remembered a conversation I had with someone," he starts, after a moment of chewing over her observation about where they had come from. "About what that war meant. Being part of the Federation, or a part of Zeon."
argents: (how this ends)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-24 06:12 am (UTC)(link)
"It's sort of hard to remember it all," he starts, even though the memory is burned into his mind's eye now. A night sky completely unobstructed by anything human — no lights, no pollution. No planes. Nothing but stars as far as the eye could see from the ground.

"But I was on Earth. I don't think I had ever been, before. Wherever I was, I could see millions of stars. That's what started the conversation, I think. Someone... whoever I was with, said it could make you doubt that the Earth was polluted, even though it was at its worst then. Because of humanity. Development, and," he stops short, uneasily.

"Dropped colonies. Asteroids."
argents: (i can't sleep alone)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-27 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
"I don't know what he was talking about, but I can guess." Looking her dead in the eye, he doesn't hold back the fact that he's able to finish her unspoken thought processes.

"Industrial 7 was a colony. Industrial 7 held millions of people in it."

Someone had dropped something like that on the Earth. Someone had sacrificed billions of people in space and on Earth. For what? "Even if there was a war, or a hundred wars, I can't imagine why something like that could happen."
argents: (a clock ticks)

[personal profile] argents 2013-11-28 06:59 am (UTC)(link)
For some reason, just the thought that he's brought her discomfort makes him feel as though he's done wrong by her. But he has to keep going, until he's told her everything. For the both of them, it was what he owed her, and their decision on where to go from here. He has to trust in her ability to listen to him.

"The way we talked about it, it was like the way we might talk about some kind of tragedy that happened a long time ago. Like history," he opens his palms, pausing, and continues. "You know the things that happened were terrible, but you can't just change those. But instead of thinking about how it didn't involve me, because it was history, I was thinking about how to find a future in it. An endless war."

What he doesn't mention is the sting of tears he also remembers. Those, he still doesn't understand.

"It was like this. To protect themselves from nature, humans built civilizations. Societies. But people ended up existing only for the system, in the end. It got too complicated. That was the Federation. By going into space, people tried to find a new way to live, rather than trying to survive in a world like that. They tried to find hope in Zeon. But I was told... systems born from two places will never be able to get along. Not the Federation, and not Zeon."
argents: (when the violence starts)

[personal profile] argents 2013-12-07 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
"What kind?" he repeats, unable to break his gaze. They're not going to figure this out any other way, nevermind the fact that this is something he's finding completely intrinsic to him. But there's still some lingering apprehension, dogging his every thought. What if he just assumed, and it wound up wrong? What if it influenced a decision he couldn't take back? The thought won't leave him, and makes him slow to act, even when it came to speaking up. "Well, I don't really know. I can take guesses about that too, but it's not like what we're dealing with here."

Straightening, he glances over his shoulder, towards the window. Towards the city that was rising up against them, just like their memories.

"Not at all like this."

Which wasn't to say it was better, or worse. Just very different.

"I think they were trying to save people. Two systems who were trying to do something. But..." He twists back around. "Like I said. It got too complicated."
argents: ('cause we both know)

[personal profile] argents 2013-12-12 04:25 am (UTC)(link)
"Even if people wind up living for the sake of the system," Banagher intones quietly, but also hopefully. "It's still people who created them. I don't believe there's anyone who can't understand one another, if they try."

Granted, he punctuates it with a sigh. Because that part is so clear to him, but he has no idea how he was supposed to tell anyone to try an execute that kind of thing. What put him in the position to think he could change that? All in all, he's stuck. Stuck with knowledge, but still stuck.

Still, he lights up a little when she offers up a contribution, and leans forward again.

"I think I'd feel a lot better if you did. I've just been talking about stuff I don't understand all the way this whole time... sorry. Go ahead."
argents: (chasing relentlessly)

[personal profile] argents 2013-12-12 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
"Involving me?" Well, that's got his full attention. In truth, it makes him just as apprehensive as it does curious. For some reason there always seemed to be this line drawn between them, when there wasn't anyone else he could hear as clearly as he heard her. But her reactions had always made him careful, afraid of taking a misstep he couldn't later fix.

Too much hinged on her. Too much, and it wasn't fair to try and make her bear it. Still, he only hopes it won't last forever, and it's that hope that doesn't stop him from asking.

"How?"
argents: (how it all changed)

[personal profile] argents 2013-12-27 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
It was then that objects seemed to have very little meaning in comparison. Audrey was sitting there saying those words, speaking them aloud with her own inflection and purpose. Despite that, Banagher can hear them ring in his ears, because they were his own. Wincing, something stirs behind his eyes, and he reaches to dig the heel of his palm into his right one. Something in him wants to latch onto the mention of the tapestry, but it's buried underneath the weight of the oncoming pulse.

And I'll...

Those words in particular sit on the tip of his tongue, but another set actually wind up being spoken aloud. In response to someone telling him what he'd need to do, no, what he'd face if he chose to go with her. With her where? There was only... lights, new steel, blood. The man in his memories was dying, but there was only one thing he could think of.

"...'I don't have the confidence or resolve, I just know I want her to need me.'"

Banagher sucks in a breath and his eyes dart up, palm lowering. For a moment, it looks as though he was afraid she wouldn't be there when he did.
argents: (all of my life)

[personal profile] argents 2014-01-06 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
"Needing to go with you," Banagher responds, still a little thrown by the force of his own words. They felt natural, like he'd speak them again if he had to, though he wisely keeps that thought to himself. "Before he'd give me that machine, the Gundam... he told me if I wanted to go with you, I'd have to bear the weight of the world on my shoulders."

There's nothing more he has to say. He'd agreed. Everything that hadn't made sense to him up until now, his involvement, why he'd gotten so mixed up in things he didn't understand — he'd agreed to it.

Because of the girl sitting in front of him.
argents: in you again. (and i drown)

[personal profile] argents 2014-01-06 07:06 am (UTC)(link)
It's all he can do to keep the surge of understanding from bubbling up and crashing over. There's still so much he doesn't know, but that alone had irrevocably put some of the pieces back into place. Between him knowing where to find her and her calling out for him, there was... this. Was that fair? Had it been fair, to either of them, to do what he had done? He's spent no small amount of sleepless nights thinking on it — how that weight had come to him. How he had ended up with the responsibility he had to fix what couldn't be fixed.

Was it fair now, to tell her she had been the reason for everything? What did he know then that he doesn't know now?

Eventually, he has to stop watching her reactions.

"I don't know," he finally manages to get out. "Whatever the weight of the world really was, it was tied to you. And that Gundam. The Unicorn. If it chose me, and I chose to pilot it," He pauses. The words hang there, unsaid and tangible. Because of you. "I think that's why I can hear you so clearly, even now. That's why I responded, when you called out to me."

Briefly, he looks at his hands, too. They didn't look like anything special. Definitely not anything that could hold even a fraction of what he'd promised.
argents: (how this ends)

[personal profile] argents 2014-01-15 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
"I chose it," he replies almost too quickly. Maybe he's latched onto the emotion, but without context, or even circumstance to go on, it was all he had. "Or he did. Without any hesitation."

Of course, that begged the question. Did he even know what he was getting into, when he did? Banagher knows differently, now. Even watching it at this significant remove, powerless to alter that course of events, he'd felt it on more than one occasion. Helplessly, and uncertainty. The way he quiets, and finds his gaze zeroing in on some innocuous part of his room may give him away, in that regard. In his mind, however, it still doesn't change the fact that he'd chosen it.