☼ - The Speaker tugs at his hair, white locks falling out of the bun he’s so carefully tucked it into. His anxiety is obvious, his emotions bare to the Stranger before him. He gives a long sigh. Everything seems so hopeless. It has seemed hopeless for a long time, he admits. Only the destruction of the Black Garden has raised his spirits.
Even then, it doesn’t feel like enough. Especially considering the trials that await them.
“Yes. His predictions that turned out to be right. Light, I feel like such a fool.” Maybe he should try sending Osiris a message. Not that the other Warlock will likely listen to him. Not after everything that happened between them. There is too much bad blood.
His eyes meet the Stranger’s and there’s questions in them, questions and fear. Vadim’s fear is raw, raging beneath the surface and eating away at him. He is afraid of what’s to come.
She moves away and he opens his mouth to question her again, but the words won’t come. He just stands there, numb and wide-eyed. He casts his glance to the side. This conversation has not reassured him. Rather it only intensified his worries, heightened his anxiety.
It is a great burden he bears.
When she speaks again he looks up at her, wringing his hands in front of him, the nervousness in his stance apparent. “Yes,” he says quietly, the relief on his face obvious. “If you tell me what you have seen…I will believe you.”
He has no reason to believe she’ll lie.
she closes her eyes, turning off the lights to her optics, as he agrees. she can hear the relief in his voice, feel it radiating off of him, and even still she worries for him. she should not have come, should not have frightened him so. it seems that whenever she stepped foot in the city, she did the very thing she tried to prevent: destroy the hope and stability of their leadership.
before, she had corrupted osiris. now... now she was crushing their speaker. why could she not resist trying to help them.
because they were the only hope. and even with everything that had happened with her sister, they were still the only ones that she could trust to do this right.
opening her eyes, she looks out into the distance for a second longer, then she turns her gaze towards him, starting where she had never started before: at the beginning.
“before i turned to the exoscience program, when the traveler was awake in the golden age, my name was dr. elizabeth bray. i was a... colleague of dr. maya sundaresh, the founder of the future war cult. my specialty when i worked for my family... business was weapons and spacecrafts, but i did assist her in experimenting with vex technology that she had acquired. when she made the machine,” there’s no doubt in her mind that he knows what lakshmi-2 and the others were holding secret, there’s no doubt in her mind that he knows what she is talking about. “i... assisted for a time in some of the research for it.”
she takes a breath she does not need, then looks away again. her voice comes softer now, quieter. she’s not losing her confidence in her choice to tell him, but she’s thinking on how far she should go with this. she cannot tell him everything, that she knows for sure. it could cause a paradox, a rift that would render this thread useless. but...
“what i saw, it frightened me. the traveler splintering. the darkness growing. the planets dying. i have made it my focus to prevent that, to try to steer us to a future where humanity wins. i am trying to fix it all, and i think i’ve finally found the right path... but i need you to trust me, vadim. the black garden was only the first step of many. there is still so much to do, but i think... i think we can do it, if there’s trust on both sides.”
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