IC Inbox for Asgard Genesis

[lethechained]

Hello. Thank you for calling, and I'm sorry I wasn't here to answer.

[Pause.]

--Leave a message, please, if you want to.

Comments

[lethechained]

[ It takes a few minutes for her to respond. Perhaps it's simply too early, or maybe she was otherwise occupied - either way, when she sees the message it strikes her memory immediately; she almost doesn't even need to look to see who it's from. ]

I am.

[ It's - nice, being checked in on. Supposing she owes him the same, ]

How's your house?

[skittering]

❰ good. he's... relieved, that she's still here. he doesn't really know her, but it's still enough that she's not just some stranger's face in the crowd, and lalli would feel something (even if he isn't sure what) if she disappeared. ❱

it's okay

should be kind of done in another month

[lethechained]

[ While they haven't exactly gone through a litany of personal questions to become properly acquainted, there's familiarity enough for her to be glad for his having contacted her. It's a rare treat but a welcome one. Genuinely curious, ]

Kind of done?

[ There would be quotation marks around that if she knew it was appropriate. ]

What does that mean?

[skittering]

livable but not enough for emil to stop fussing

❰ 'livable but ugly', basically. ❱

[lethechained]

[ Ah - another name. Another friend, perhaps? Naminé can never quite help herself but to be glad about it when she hears someone else has the good fortune of company. ]

Does Emil fuss often?

[ Because that's one possible implication; she's a little amused by the idea, really. ]

[skittering]

❰ if this were in person, lalli would shrug. that's how he always answers questions like that, honestly. but since that's not really an option.... ❱

sometimes

usually for good reasons

[lethechained]

[ Naminé might have been grateful for the limitation, were she aware of it. It's nice to have a bit more to go on; the small things help build up a picture for her of what the situation in question is really like. ]

I see.
Well
I suppose that means it's a good idea to listen.

[ In theory, anyway. She's, you know, not going to ask if that means the house in question won't be up to code or in another, similarly dangerous circumstance, but-- she is curious about something else. ]

By the way
what made you wonder if I was still here?

[ Because she's just now realizing she might have side-tracked him from something, and that wouldn't do, would it? ]

[skittering]

❰ there's a long pause before he answers. maybe he's deciding if he wants to answer at all. there was a time when he would've disappeared from this particular exchange altogether without a second thought, but he can't seem to find that in him these days.

then: ❱

onni's gone
other cousin

don't say sorry

[lethechained]

{ The only thing she can assume from his silence is that whatever precipitated his text, it's either not important enough for him to be in a hurry about it or negative enough to make him reluctant to say. Either way she's left to wonder, and yet getting the answer isn't particularly heartening.

Her finger freeze over the 's' key, eyes stopping on his last message. She hesitates only one beat, two, then hits the backspace. Her pause is much shorter than his was, and she spends it frowning at her screen, sad over the departure of someone with whom she wasn't even properly acquainted. ]

What would you like me to say instead?

[skittering]

❰ this time, the pause is thoughtful. ❱

guess you can't say you won't disappear too can you

[lethechained]

I don't think so.

[ Honest to a fault; she doesn't hesitate to say it, though it lasts a beat before she actually hits send. ]

I wouldn't want to make a promise to you that I couldn't be sure to keep.

[ It's strange, how it makes her realize that she doesn't want to disappear. There are enough reasons, now, for her to wish to stay even aside from the threat of the unknown - and that's a really odd place to be in, when she thinks about it. ]

But I can promise you that I'll do my best.
Is that okay?

[skittering]

don't think anyone's best means anything

❰ but it's the best she can offer, so he shouldn't be rejecting it offhand like that. a few seconds later: ❱

it's okay

[lethechained]

No. I suppose it doesn't.

[ Not in the face of such total inability to control the situation. None of them can really help it, can they? In the wake of that message, though, she spends those few seconds trying to think of something else, something better that she might be able to say--

but then comes that other line, and it's... enough, perhaps. ]

Then it's a promise.

[ Even so, her mind continues to work on the problem. On anything she can do, really, to provide him some measure of comfort. ]

It may not make any difference but
I'm glad that you two were at least able to spend some time together in the city.

[ Sometimes all one really has left are memories - which she knows entirely too well, but saying as much seems like it would be counterproductive. In any case, she's spent enough of her own life alone to be relieved that Lalli is... less so, by all appearances. ]

[skittering]

i hope h

❰ he goes to erase that but sends it instead, further evidence that this interface is stupid. (it isn't, he's just bad at it.)

regardless, it corners him into articulating more properly instead of pretending that first message never existed, so a few seconds later she gets: ❱

he wanted to trade his life for tuuri's. was going to ask heimdall

and now he's gone

[lethechained]

[ Perking at the first message - clearly incomplete - Naminé experiences that limbo of watching one's screen, waiting for the other person to finish typing and wondering at the possibilities. Of all the sentences she might have anticipated, though, that was not one of them.

Which means she spends an extra couple of seconds herself frowning at the screen, perplexed by the idea for various reasons. There are a lot of questions she wants to ask, but-- ]

You don't think he did it, do you?

[ Because if he'd successfully made that request and it caused him to disappear, there are some concerning implications. ]

[skittering]

dunno




heimdall says he didn't. honir says heimdall probably isn't lying

it's stupid

[lethechained]

[ It's troubling, the not knowing. She has a healthy amount of suspicion about their hosts purely because of the circumstances, but Honir at least has always seemed well-meaning enough. Heimdall she can't say much about, not having met him properly, but... it does beg the question of why he would acquiesce to such a request at all, if he did, and then in that hypothetical scenario proceed to lie about it. It seems more likely to her that Lalli's cousin disappeared for different reasons, and yet--

No, better not to go reading into it too much, coincidental timing or not. Huffing a little sigh, Naminé frowns at her screen. Her fingers hover over the keys; not for the first time, she has a lot of questions. But perhaps it's better to start with, ]

What's stupid about it?

[skittering]

❰ he feels like it's obvious what's stupid about it. so many things, almost everything really. too many things to be able to properly sum up in words.

the answer that comes is: ❱

just want to know where he is

[lethechained]

[ A lot of things, probably, but 'stupid' is a very general sort of description, and not particularly helpful in clearly defining Lalli's concerns. Not that she expects to get clearly defined answers about any complicated feelings of Lalli's, since he seems like more of a sledgehammer than a chisel type of guy where words are concerned. That doesn't stop her from trying, and yet here she favors instead the simple, ]

I know.

[ And she understands some of the sentiment, at least. She has no family to lose, no strange context of disappearance to worry over, but it isn't hard to imagine. She's had friends go missing, herself, and though it troubles her, she at least has the consolation of being able to believe it was probably no different for them than for anyone else who left. (Not that that's much help; who really knows what happens to them when they're gone, anyway?)

She takes a moment to frown at her screen. She can't fix the problem, but her instinct is to at least investigate it, at least do her best to fully comprehend as much of it as possible, in case some opportunity to make a difference in it comes later. Naturally her mind moves on to the most pressing question; ]

Why did he think he needed to trade his life for hers?

[skittering]

❰ oh. she doesn't know this part. that slipped his mind somewhere in the process of venting his frustration.

the answer that comes is... pretty frank. ❱

she's dead

or was before we came here

[lethechained]

[ She has to hold back that, 'I'm sorry,' again. This time it's a nearer thing, and once she's erased it she spends a few seconds giving her screen a somber look. It's a surprisingly familiar experience, hearing that about someone. ]

It's strange to think about but
there are a lot of us here who are supposed to be dead.

It's hard when one of them is someone you care about.

[ Which is the closest she dares let herself come to that sympathetic sort of apology. ]

It makes much more sense now why he wanted to do that.
Still
either way you lose someone important to you, don't you?
It doesn't seem very fair.

[skittering]

fair has nothing to do with it

with anything

[lethechained]

I know it doesn't.
It never does.

[ That doesn't change the fact of what it is, though. Maybe she says it in part because of how many innocent people she has seen suffer due to circumstances beyond their control, how many times she hasn't been able to tell them that in so many words. The other part is, ]

But you told me not to say I was sorry.

[ There are more ways than one to express the same sentiment. ]

[skittering]

i know

❰ as it turns out? he's not fair, either.

and he knows it, but he doesn't apologize. instead, just: ❱

it's fine. was just making sure you're here

[lethechained]

[ It doesn't occur to her to want an apology. He made a request (demand) of her and she honored it the best she could; there was nothing wrong, it seemed to her, in that. And she'd like to know more, really, about the situation with Tuuri, but that's a delicate matter and she's reluctant to force it. Instead, she takes what she can from this message instead. ]

Thank you.

[ Has she ever said that? She's felt it, but it's hard to find the right time to express this sort of gratitude. ]

For checking on me.
I like to know that you're still here too.