savetheearth | Die Flügel der Freiheit [closed]

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Die Flügel der Freiheit [closed]

Who: Blaine Frost and Ryan Brown
When: 4th of February, afternoon; follow up to this thread.
Where: In a van.
What: Blaine is coming to pick Ryan up for an echo inducing meeting (they plan on using part of the survey corps uniform for this. Other things will happen). Despite the shady person in a van, his is not a kidnapping, promise.
Warnings?: Spoilers. Also maybe body horror (of the SNK variety).

It's around two when Blaine rings the bell of Bertholdt's apartment. Luckily with the atrocious weather there aren't many people out, and she has parked the van so that it will take Ryan only a moment to cross the sidewalk and get into the back of it (because a. that has no windows and b. she's not sure how large the other actually is at this point).

She's wearing a thick non-descriptive coat, sunglasses against snowblindness with the sunlight shining upon the white and greys of slush and snow, and most of the rest of her is obscured by a hat and a red scarf. Basically only mouth and nose poking out right now. Not particularly trust inspiring, but all logical implications of the weather.

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If there's one thing the cold weather has helped, it's getting out. Ryan can bundle up, covering almost every inch of his skin under a jacket, hood, ha, gloves-- the works. Sure, he runs hot with the whole titan-skin and all that, but it's a necessary risk. He's ready to go. Oh, and he's wearing sunglasses, too. The glowing eyes never really stopped.

"Blaine?" He answers, opening the door. She looks... Maybe familiar? Maybe not. Still, they're both in this, so he trusts her. "Ready to go, huh?"

"Can you ride shotgun still?"

She looks him over, trying to figure out if he'd still be able to A. sit in a car seat B. without breaking it. Since he seems bundled up enough to not draw immediate attention from bystanders.

"Should be fine. I'm lighter than I look."

Which is true. Titans have always been lighter than they should be... He drove around just the other day to pick up Alan and Tavia.

"I'll shut my eyes if that'll help."

"Don't worry. I'm not taking you anywhere secret." She walks around the van as she speaks and opens the doors for them, almost expecting that she'll have to lean over to push his open if his fingers have become too large or uncontrolled to handle car doors.

"Just the back of an underground carpark, where it's the darkest."

"That's not creepy at all." Ryan mumbles, rolling his eyes. He hasn't lost his motor functions or anything like that, though his strength is... well he has to try very carefully not to break the handle. But he manages it. He's been like this for a while.

Ryan sits shotgun, flashing her a smile. It's kinda creepy and titan-like, but y'know. "So, how come you didn't wanna tell anybody you were in the titan club?"

She's getting so much of a feeling right now that she will get all the things that she didn't want to echo from this, but there is no real turning back at this point.

If she kicks him out of the car, the echoes probably would decide to make something out of that too. So she just shrugs and starts the engine. "Because I had no memories of anything until just recently." Yeah, a lie, but she's a pretty splendid liar. "Except for one that led me to assume that I was not from that world. The name of someone who looked a lot like a younger Chloe, but had a different name." Well, the second part is true. She just got memories of other things - like eating Bertholdt's friend and bullying Anthony - soon after.

"You sure about that?" Ryan asks, but he's not really expecting and answer. It's obvious that Blaine is shifty, but Ryan is a trusting guy. He'll believe that she believes it.

"So what was your first echo? If you don't mind me asking."

The car ride was gonna take a while, either way.

"Yeah, and to the second question, I don't know. Maybe there was none.

How about you?" She's actually a pretty good and safe driver, not quite defensive but clearly used to driving cars, also bigger ones. She's had a good amount of experience over the years, and it shows - one wouldn't guess that she never formally learned it.

"You had to have a first one. Otherwise you wouldn't be here." Ryan smirks. Is she just trying to avoid answering? Probably, yeah.

"My first thing was healing. Not a lot, but it gave off steam. That's how I knew something was up."

She shrugs. "If I did, I don't remember it. I got the numbers a couple of years ago, I remember them, but I don't think anything came with it."

She throws a short look over at him. "Was there anything else off about the healing besides steam, then? Wounds heal normally over time." She's mostly trying to learn if his deal also includes no blood being visible. But without really asking.

"Well, they healed faster. And if I thought about it, then even faster than that. It was pretty obviously not human, though I didn't think too much of it at first."

Instinctively, Ryan rubs the back of his neck. "My blood was turning into steam after a while too. Well, steaming when it bled, anyway. That was around the time me and Bertholdt started dating."

"...what do you mean, if you thought about it?" She's tried to influence her own healing, but hasn't actually started to experiment with it - she's not really keen on hurting herself, and the few times that she got hurt lately she was in situation where she really had no time to concentrate much on the injuries.

"I mean... It's hard to explain, I guess. I think 'I want this to heal' and it heals faster. Though it's not really so much in words, y'know?"

Ryan just had better control. Or Reiner seemed to, at least. He hadn't considered that other people couldn't, since Bertholdt could do it too.

"...can everyone from that world do that?"

She pretty heavily assumes no, but it'd be good to know if that assumption is wrong - they seem to have talked to each other a lot by now.

"No. Only people who're titans, as far as I can tell." Ryan shakes his head, but the dour look on his face goes back to a grin pretty quick.

"You may as well call it 'our world' not 'that one.' It's yours too, y'know."

"Not more or less than this one." She shrugs. "So there's you and Bertholdt."

She stops at a red light. "Why did you kidnap Alan, by the way?" Said in a completely conversational tone, as if it is not a big thing. Which it is, at least halfway, because she's still trying to figure out her alignments and if not even everyone else's make sense that becomes even harder.

((tell me if the question is not okay and I can change the tag))

((Nah, it's cool!!))

"True enough." Ryan stiffens at the question, though. Well, anyone would. It's awkward, so he tries to laugh, but that's just worse.

"Reiner kidnapped Eren." Ryan looks away. "It was important. Something about a mission. I don't remember everything."

"Odd mission." She shrugs at the correction. Also ugh, vertigo. How annoying.

She snorts. "By the logic of your names I must have been something like "Breina" in that other life." She knows that she wasn't; Bertholdt had called her something else in that one memory... and she had of course googled the name, and it had been ridiculous. Really ridiculous.

"I dunno. I mean Ellie was named Annie back then." Ryan laughs it off. His next bit is pretty obviously an attempt to change the subject.

"What else do you remember? Anything from our training days?"

She takes note of the subject change but goes with it for now. "I remember moving through a townscape with that gear that we're pulsing back one by one." She shrugs. "But that was an actual battle, from what I can tell. So no."

"Ahhh, that's a shame. We had plenty of good times in training-- it wasn't all monster killing and life and death." Ryan tends to try to focus on that. That and his friendship with Annie and Bertholdt...

"But you haven't remembered anyone specific? Like, your old friends...? Besides remembering Bertholdt?"

"I remember that I met someone who looked like Chloe there [and they seem to have been close from what she can tell, but...]; I must have known Connie for a good while; and I'd say the same goes for at least Anthony as well. I know that I met you and Alan as well, but couldn't tell when or how.

[All of that seems innocent and vague enough to her to tell the firefighter about it.

...Also they are actually pulling into the entrance of a underground parking lot now, she didn't lie here.]

An underground parking lot... seems safe. Good thing it's Ryan and not Ellie, or going underground might not go so smoothly.

"Yeah, I just remember being friends with everyone. I don't know when exactly we met, or anything. Just kinda figured we all trained together."

And down they go, as promised to a pretty remote corner where the only other cars around seem to have been standing there for a good while.

She'll actually need some concentration for driving inside the parking lot so she'll not speak up again before they are there, and then unlock the door and kill the engine.

"There we are. Get out and show me what you got."

Ryan keeps quiet the rest of the way, knowing well enough when to shut up and all. He steps out of the car then, looking around before pulling off his jacket. He wasn't wearing his gear, but he'd managed to convince Bertl to lend him his Scouting cape to go along with his own jacket.

"Well, this was kinda the uniform..." Though it's obvious just by looking at Ryan that he really shouldn't be wearing it. Any visible bit of his skin is either armored or red, raw flesh. Kinda gross, really.

"You wanna hold on to the cape? Maybe putting it on will help."

Oh.

Fuck.

She did expect a wave of nausea upon seeing the uniform, but when she takes a deep breath after it, things are not right. It's nothing visible, not immediately, but she can feel that the fabric over her chest and also shoulders does not move as it should, and under her gloves something about her hands is wrong as well.

How could she be so naive? How could she be this single minded - whatever changed about her (and she has a good idea of what it must have been) it was not the aim of this. Why did she think that asking Ryan of all people for this would be a good idea? Calm down, Blaine. Don't let him notice.

"Maybe." There is only a hint of a weaver in her voice when she says the word and then steps away from the car and steps forward, holding out a hand for it. "It's given me something already, but I don't know what it is yet." Considering that that much was probably obvious, she feels the need to put it aside as quickly as possible.

And maybe she can get something else from this still.

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Die Flügel der Freiheit [closed]

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