ic inbox

[lingeringhope]

[Hope's voice is clear and clipped.]

If you would like to leave a message, you may do so here. I can't promise to respond. I have many demands on my time, and this sort of thing is far down the list. Still, if you would like to, you may.

Comments

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[lingeringhope]

Are you sure? Perhaps we just haven't tried to communicate properly. It's still one of us, somehow.

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[thirdreturned]

I've tried communicating with it. Being there... touching its energies with my own, it almost drove me mad.

There isn't sentience. It's just very old and very vast and being with it for too long turns you inward onto yourself. I thought I'd become like it if I stayed too long.

Afterward, I kept my visits shorter. I tried to understand it, but beyond the function of it, there isn't anything to understand. The thought of you or any of the others losing yourselves to it is unacceptable... so I hid it from you. If your first instinct is to run after it and try to communicate, you'll only be assuring me that my choice to keep it secret was the correct one.

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[lingeringhope]

You can't simply decide what's best for us. You may be the oldest of us, and I respect all that you do and have done, but that doesn't give you the right to make these sort of decisions. We should have worked together on this. Perhaps there's something one of us can do that you missed.

Instead, you put yourself in danger.

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[thirdreturned]

Better me than you. Isn't that how this goes?

It's not an avenue we can justify exploring yet. We're still just trying to survive. Don't get distracted on things that don't matter.

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[lingeringhope]

You are not expendable. I will not have you put yourself in danger for our survival - for my survival - again.

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[thirdreturned]

You should know better by now. You should know that everyone is expendable as long as you survive. This is how we have to think. We rebuilt this city and we got this far because I knew that, even when no one else would admit it.

I know it isn't easy to hear, but I won't let anything happen to you as long as I can stop it. No matter the cost, I will get you out alive.

That's a promise to you.

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[lingeringhope]

I can't agree to that. I understand why you say it, but - I can't.

I want us all to make it out alive. I need that.