[Closed] I shall always talk!

[didnothing]

Who| Luna, Sigma
What| It starts with a medical emergency and gets worse from there.
Where| Capitol, Zone 1
When| Day 4 of the final battles
Warnings/Notes| None currently.


The task is straightforward. One of Thirteen's units entering the Capitol had gotten snagged by one of the topiary monstrosities while trying to disable it. In taking care of the thing its members had been left in need of urgent medical attention - attention that, of course, Luna is as well-equipped to handle as any medic can be under the circumstances. Making the journey from further into the city back towards the edges of the Capitol is in itself dangerous, but Luna and the escort assigned to her manage to navigate their way through without major incident or injury until they find the unit in question.

Despite months of war Luna's feelings about violence haven't changed, and every death she witnesses is another stab in the heart like the Nonary Game. She has to fight the urge to recoil when she sees how bad the wounded soldiers are: some are dead already, and others are in need of care she doesn't have the resources to give them. Luna has little success in banishing thoughts of them from her mind, but she focuses on the few that she is able to help and fills what she can with the single rule she knows down to her core: Do not allow a human being to come to harm. Or in this case, don't let anything distract from saving lives.

Her escort and a few soldiers still standing take the wounded they can away, to retreat; Luna stays behind to make her way back inside the Capitol, promising that she can find her way. Truth be told she's less sure of herself than she'd like, but she's willing to take that risk to see the injured soldiers safe so it's with determination and more than a little trepidation that she starts to make the trek back alone.

Comments

[futilecycle]

So much of Sigma's help was too little, too late - by the time the Doctor can get his hands on one of the Gamemaker's disablers, blood has already soaked through the edge of the Capitol. A miniature version of the Arena console, the disabler was a device that gave the wielder control of a trap before its release... and its disappearance would certainly not go unnoticed. It took a night shift in the Gamemaker's tower days into the siege for Sigma to realize that he was sick of his own inaction, unable to stand by as real blood was spilled comfortably out of his sightlines. That night, Sigma came to terms with his fear of execution long enough to make a break to where he thought he could help.

He had not arrived on time. Sigma had begun to think the Rebellion infallible, too good for the tricks of old men - and he is caught off guard by pained screaming in the distance. He ducks into the lounge of a swanky hotel to witness the plants down the street spring to life and turn violently on its prey - and his stomach feels as though it has been filled with lead. It has been years since he had started making traps... which of these had his fingerprints on them..? For a man with an impeccable memory, it was far too heavy to dwell on.

He fumbles with the disabler in too deep a panic to remember that once a pod was activated, it would run its course until its cargo was exhausted. Uselessly Sigma repeats his inputs, more futile each time, until he remembers his mistake and stares numbly at the screen. Where were his powers, now? Why wasn't he able to go back? There would be no looking away, here, no burying himself in his work as he pretended what left his hands did not go on to kill. His monstrosity would continue to take the lives of these soldiers until it was satiated, and as Sigma watches from a safe distance it all becomes too much. He takes cover behind a couch pushed far against the wall, palms covering his eyes, elbows on his knees. When the chandelier above his head shakes and screams with each nearby shell, he no longer has the energy to care if the marble might cave in on him.

When the screaming stops Sigma thinks he can bring himself to his feet and, though his throat stings, reminds himself that there will be help. He had to clear a path for them, and Sigma draws his cloak over his face and slinks into an alley. There were plenty of traps in his radius that had not awoken yet.

It's in sweeping the area hours later that Sigma finds Luna on her own, though he turns his back on her to collect himself. He had done something like this before, had run into a person he loved who pretended not to see him. Luna was not as cruel as Kyle, but Sigma has decided that perhaps she would not be wrong to do the same, to allow him to blend into the walls of the Capitol and disappear. Could she guess that the people she nursed fell because of him? For all they had tried to repair their relationship, he had done her too much wrong to deserve her good graces. Still, knowing that it would do her no good, he lowers the hood of his cloak just enough for the light to catch on his cybernetic eye.

"Luna?"

It is, perhaps, less of a coincidence than it appears.

[didnothing]

Luna's been trying to move along very discreetly in her travels for fear of attracting unfriendly attention, and when a cloaked figure appears she's afraid it's the end for her. When the figure reveals himself, though, she has to gape for a moment. "Sigma?"

It's been months since Luna last talked to Sigma, or even seen him save for a brief glimpse in the mountain facility. It's been hardly much so time since she thought of him, though; Sigma and Phi and Sansa have been on her mind frequently in the days leading up to the current raid, and among her friends still in the Capitol she's worried about all of them the most in the few months she's spent among the rebels.

And in those few months she's come up with things to say, things that have led her to where she is now, but none of it comes to mind in the moment. There are so many things she could tell Sigma, some things she shouldn't, and feelings she doesn't know how to fully express. So rather than tackle all that at once she starts with something simple, obvious or not. "I'm...back to normal."

Normal is relative to their situation, but they both ought to know what she means.