of things lost and taken [Active/The Most Open]

[dollsy_npcs]

Characters: The Lanternkeeper and anyone else
Setting: Acedia, no place in particular
Time: Day 21
Summary: People try to steal LK's shit.

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[sleepy_fire]

For Ace, it was not so much an intent to steal as a quest for answers. That was all that drove him lately. Answers. The need to know, the need to find out. Answers, a bag full of memories, and enough promises to drag a ship beneath the waves.

He needed answers. He needed her, as much as he needed to survive.

She was the only one, the only one outside of the Phantasms who might be able to give him some sort of answer. He paused several feet from her, cold leaching the energy from his bones.

A protector, if she wished one, an enemy, if she was incautious, an ally if she would meet him halfway. So much depended on her. "Hello again." And as always, she was silence. Almost blessed silence. "A very pretty day, isn't it?" The words felt out of place, empty pleasantries that lingered on the edge of memory and long ago.

Always be polite to a lady.

[dollsy_npcs]

She watched him before she responded, as if waiting for him to strike out at her, as so many other things in this house had been destroyed and rebuilt endlessly. But when nothing came, she replied.

"Well enough, I suppose, for such a place." She didn't bother trying to hide her wariness.

[sleepy_fire]

His gaze never even shifted to her lamp, watching her face with a curious intensity that was focused solely on her, and not whatever objects she might have in her possession.

"It pales in comparison to some I've seen, but it's still a welcome sight."

There was something soft in the words, inviting. "We take what we can find, I suppose. Though I'd like to see it from the water. There's nothing like a sunrise on the water. The sun paints the water in so many colors you'd think you were caught in a rainbow." His lips twitched. "Did they fix you, or did you fix yourself?"

[dollsy_npcs]

"Everything heals," she said, clutching her lantern a bit more closely. "Or most things."

She did not think he was a threat himself--she'd seen him too often to think so. But she could not be sure what desperation could cause.

[sleepy_fire]

He held up a hand, frost tinged fingers pale in the sunlight. His skin had once been tanned, but that had faded months ago. Now he was as white as one of the ghosts. "Most things." He smiled, an old gesture, but one completely lacking humor. "Or they just continue. Some things never truly heal, do they? They just pull themselves together enough to keep going. You never seem to be interested in watching the day. I've never seen you about before, why today?"

The words were almost normal, drawn from a dry and scratchy throat unused to vocing them anymore. He wasn't used to conversation. He wasn't used to being able to convserse.

He felt dangerously sane.

[dollsy_npcs]

She stroked her lantern as she hesitated, uncertain how much to say. She settled on something simple: "Do you know how much you have changed things? All of you. There is nowhere else for me to go."

[sleepy_fire]

"I haven't changed anything." His voice was soft, pained. "I can't even find one child, how could I change anything?"

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. "What have the others changed? Why does it trap you here?"

And where is Rose, if everything is changing, surely you can tell me that?

I promiced.

[dollsy_npcs]

"You want to escape, don't you?" The Lanternkeeper laughed a bit, ruefully. "At any cost. Even if you don't know the cost."

[sleepy_fire]

"No. I want to find Rose. I want to save March and Lilia and Allison and Aiden and Yukimi and Fletcher. I don't care about leaving, so long as the people I care about are safe." The words were almost a whisper, quiet and serious. He closed his hand again, looking at it. "My promises have nothing to do with what might exist out there or going home. What is the cost? The cost for leaving, no matter what else it may be, is failing my promises."

[dollsy_npcs]

The Lanternkeeper sighed now, and then tilted her head at him. "They're dead, you know. You would try to save them regardless?"

[sleepy_fire]

"Of course." The words were given without a pause, Ace didn't even need to think about it. "They're my friends. What does it matter if they're dead? They're still hurting, they're still suffering. I promised March." His lips quirked into an almost smile. "I want to prove him wrong, I don't think he believed me."

[dollsy_npcs]

"He knows better," the Lanternkeeper said, settling on a couch. "I know better. If you stay, you'll learn." If--She looked down into her lantern.

[sleepy_fire]

"Maybe I will." He moved to the window, closing his eyes and letting the sun wash over his face. "But I haven't yet. I promised them I'd try. What can be lost in trying? It's what you're doing, isn't it? Trying to change things. I'm just trying to change smaller things. For just a few people. Maybe I'll fail, maybe this place will eat me and drag me down just like everything else it touches." His fingers frosted the window, ice crystals forming on the glass where he rested his palm. "Maybe it already has. But he's my friend, and he loves his wife, and his daughter. He can't fight for them anymore, he can't find her. But when I had no hope and nothing left to lose, he gave me something to fight for. How could I give up on him now?"

[dollsy_npcs]

The Lanternkeeper fell silent, then, looking out into the distance, distracted.

[sleepy_fire]

He kept his face to the rising sun, breathing softly and feeling, for the first time in months, nearly content.

She was blessedly silent. "I can't hear you. Anymore than I can hear the Phantasms. Why's that? Did they build in a block for themselves and you just got lumped into it? Or do you just block that sort of thing?"

He sighed, watching the fine tracery of frost on the window. Once he had been fire, all passion and flame, and now...now he was very nearly nothing but ice. Quite, slow, but unstoppable movement towards a goal. "You say it's impossible. If it is, how did they come back before?"

[dollsy_npcs]

"A memory, and nothing more," she said, in response to the second question. Whether she had an answer for the first she was choosing not to share or simply didn't know, she was not revealing.

"What if you never find her, hm?"