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[ He's shot off one more message to Mako as he steps out the stairwell door and begins to make his way towards Isaac and Alayne's classroom. ]

The three of us can all look together. More people, more coverage.

[ He wants to tell her it'll be alright, that they'll find Isaac and things will be okay -- they deserve to be okay, after the last three or four weeks. ]

Do you want me to check in with some of my other contacts? [ Auraya had helped him determine where Raleigh's drift had gone. He needs to check in with her and figure out how well she's doing, but if he can ask for her help in looking for Isaac, he will. ]

No, [ Alayne answers quickly, sounding more worried than anything. ] No, no, you mustn't make too much of a fuss. [ She tells herself that if she keeps things small then the outcome will still end in her favor, that there's still some modicum of hope to hold onto for now. ] I fear I've made one already.

Isaac will come home and when he does, he'll be embarrassed to know I've raised an army to look for him. [ But that's what she would do if she could, if she wasn't so busy battling it out in herself whether to give herself over to hope or despair. For Isaac there is nothing Alayne wouldn't do. If she had dragons, she could command them to find them; if she had an army she would send them form and raze the entire city in search of him.

Because that's what love is meant to be, isn't it? Something that builds and something that destroys; both the sweet and the bitter. ]

[ It's about that time that Herc Hansen's message comes his way. Yancy replies back and then brings the pocketwatch back to his lips. When he speaks, it's soft: ] It's been a bad couple of weeks, Alayne. No one's going to laugh at you for making a fuss after everything that's happened recently.

[ He's close, and he glances around, gaze hard on the empty corridors. ]

Do you know where he be? Or where he could have gone while you were asleep?

It's always like this. [ Her voice slips a little into miserableness as she says (more to herself than to anyone else): ] I should have known better.

[ Should have kept her defenses up, should have not allowed herself to grow so complacent. Alayne is a creature constantly starved for love but when it leaves her high and dry, she berates herself for such neediness and calls human connection weakness. ]

Master Chief would know but he's at a loss as well.

What's always like this? [ He doesn't like the tone her voice has taken. It doesn't go anyone any good to lose hope.

Softly, he goes: ] We'll find him, Alayne.

[ And if we don't, maybe he's gotten free of this place. But he keeps that last part to himself. ]

[ There is no hope in thinking that perhaps Isaac has gone home. Nothing remained for him there, nothing but death and madness. Alayne has spent the past several months trying to keep Isaac from that as best she could. ]

I want to hold something in my hands, but the gods won't let me. [ Funny, that she should speak of the gods after all this time. Did she still pray to them? Sometimes. Did they ever listen to her?

No. ]

Everyone leaves, or dies. [ Her voice falls off there. (She's guilty of it too.) ] Nothing ever lasts.

[ If she'd met him before Knifehead, he would have told her that it's been a long, long time since he last thought about God. When the hull had broken, the hurricane loud beyond the crack in Gipsy, he'd been honestly surprised to realize that it wasn't that he'd stopped believing -- more like, he'd stopped asking unless it was for someone else. Someone who mattered. ]

I'm not going to lie. [ There's a sigh in his voice and he slows down his pace; stops, just to talk. Because she needs this. ] Nothing ever does, Alayne.

It's not fair. [ His mother's hands so frail between his own. Those last heated words from Jazmine at the funeral. The empty space in his chest that he crammed full of everything else that Raleigh was, the hope for his brother that Yancy never bothered to keep for himself because what else is a boy to do when the man he looks up to decides to cut and run, leaving his wife and three kids to pick up the pieces. ] It never is.

Edited 2014-01-08 22:34 (UTC)

[ Silence follows, cut down by the hiss of Alayne's breath through her teeth, her jaw clenched in an attempt to keep any errant sound from escaping her. She could cry, truly cry, and somehow she thinks it would be all right for Yancy to see.

(He was safe, wasn't he? He would never hurt her. But even that kindness was a danger — just another promise that would fail to see itself through.) ]

How do you stand it? [ Her voice is a hushed whisper, almost as if Alayne is afraid someone else will overhear and think her weak. Even now she is scrambling to keep up appearances despite wanting nothing more than casting them off and have someone tell her yes, it's all right. ] How have you remained so kind?

[ There's a lengthy pause from his end. He's mulling over her words, asking himself the same thing, because he wouldn't exactly call himself kind, just as he wouldn't readily call himself good.

It's the trying that makes all the difference when you live the life that you choose.

And then, finally: ] I had a brother who looked up to me. Who needed a father because ours decided he didn't want to be one anymore.

[ He takes a breath, and Alayne can probably hear it through the comm: ] Life sucks, Alayne. It throws you things that make you hurt. But it's not a good enough excuse to cause that hurt. [ He pauses. ] And I've done my fair share of hurts.

I'm just trying to make the most of what I have right now. [ Because when COMPASS is done with all of them, there won't be a home to go back to. Not for him. ]

[ That quiets Alayne, the thought of Yancy and his inability to go home. Though she still has a life waiting for her in Westeros, what sort of life could it possibly be? A return would promise nothing but solitude and a sword forever hung over her head. When she thinks of home she thinks of her classroom with its ribbons on the doorhandle; the smell of chalk and the faint scratch of Isaac's pencil on paper. The blue glow of his RIG beating back the darkness. This was home.

For a long time she says nothing, just makes a soft sniffling sound before lapsing into sullen silence. ]

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