[psl] post-mortem; closed to @destinymaker

[eschatological]

[ This office has always been quiet, but now the silence is unnaturally absolute. The usual ambient sounds have all vanished — the muted rumble of feet and serious voices beyond the door, the hum and crackle of electronics, the omnipresent pulse of Aprilius’s environmental support systems. But, then again, there’s no reason for the environmental support systems when the familiar noises of breath and heartbeat have ceased as well.

Two armies of chess pieces lie toppled and abandoned on the floor, leaving the low table bare save for the empty board. Rau sits languidly on one of the two wide sofas with his chin in a gloved hand. Even though he’s corporeal now (or as corporeal as anything in this scene, which is to say, gentlemen of the jury, ambiguously), the dim light and the white of his mask and uniform combine to give him an uncanny, still-ghostly appearance. He shows no interest in the scattered chess pieces. Instead, he is waiting very patiently, intently, for.... ]

Comments

[destinymaker]

Unfortunately, I don't plan on changing this about myself.

[ But he'll give Rau some space to breathe instead of going in even harder on teasing and affection. Though it's fun to push Rau's comfort zone, it's not Gil's intention to make him genuinely uncomfortable.

That he's been granted this much is more happiness than he'd thought he'd ever hold after Rau's death. Though he wants more (so much more), he knows that haste can ruin a good thing. ]

Even if I can hang on to my conscious existence for eternity, I'll still be me.

[eschatological]

[ Rau is grudgingly coming to accept that that's probably true. Rau has tried heckling Gil in life, in Rau's own death, and in their mutual death, to say nothing of Rey rejecting things spectacularly, and Gil is still incorrigible. How annoyingly, spectacularly persistent. ]

Neither of us is interesting enough to engage the conscious for eternity.

[ Although their combined capacity to prolong existence purely by filibuster is top-notch. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil huffs in amusement. Yeah, that's fair. He hasn't even lived to see his 40s, he'd be more presumptuous than usual to assume he could keep himself entertained for such an unfathomable span of time - let alone entertain someone else through it as well. ]

You're right. It'd be worrisome if we were. But I do want to hang on a while longer. Don't you? You're still here now, at least.

[ Gil wonders if two years in the afterlife even feel like two years at all. So far time appears straightforward to him, but he also hasn't really tried to see if he can get weird with it. ]

[eschatological]

I'm here, [ he agrees, simply. Although a moment later he finally drops his hand from Gil's face, and, still completely straight-faced, adds: ]

Though if you become dull too soon, I may bedevil Kira Yamato instead.

[ Rau is completely unconcerned about whether his ability to live rent-free in Gil's head for two years extends to Kira, because he is just needling. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Now freed from the hold, Gil leans back against the couch again. ]

Ooh. What an unpleasant threat.

[ Leaving him for a younger man. Scandalous. ]

Though if it were me, I'd haunt the songstress instead. If all that is left is conversation, she might make for the more lively opponent.

[eschatological]

There are a finite number of ways to say "give peace a chance."

[ Rau settles in leisurely, draping one arm over the back of the couch, which rather undermines any jokes about wandering off to haunt anyone else. ]

Did you ever meet her? I can't recall.

[destinymaker]

Not meaningfully.

[ He could almost fool his own memory, though. Having had Meer, with her identical face, close-by for so long makes it seem absurd that the real Lacus Clyne had always eluded him. ]

I saw her with her father when she was still quite young. It was a promotional event, having the leading figures of the government tour our research facilities. At the time, I was still primarily a scientist so our social circles did not overlap otherwise.

[ The young Gilbert Durandal had not thought much about her. It was a little before the release of her songs that would remain stuck in his head for ages. ]

By the time I turned to politics, she'd already disappeared. Meanwhile, you had the honor of escorting her back home after her brief disappearance in the war, I recall?

[eschatological]

There was an awful lot of fuss over that, wasn't there?

[ Mild amusement. Oh, those wacky days of Zala family theatrics. ]

You once asked where she encountered Kira. They almost certainly met there, in the wreckage of Junius Seven. How portentous.

[destinymaker]

[ Lacus' disappearance had been the talk of the PLANTs at the time. As someone not directly involved in the war effort, Gil had been privy to much talk and speculation. It was around then that he truly started to reflect on the amount of power that goes along with a symbolic role like the young singer's. And that was before she made herself a quasi peace goddess through the final days of the war. ]

Of all places... A playwright could not have chosen a more poetic location to cross the paths of two who should not have mad under ordinary circumstances.

[eschatological]

Oh, it does get better. The Archangel rescued her, and used her as a hostage when the Vesalius had it cornered.

[ He leans back, looks up at the dark ceiling. ]

Patrick Zala's life would have been simpler if I had not drawn back. Yours as well, but not in any way that you would enjoy.

[ Either ZAFT without Lacus would have failed to stop the Peacemaker force, in which case death would make everything rather simple, or ZAFT would have used Genesis without meaningful opposition, in which case Patrick Zala would probably have maintained an iron grip on his position. Neither option would have given Gil a run at rewriting the world. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil runs through those same hypotheticals in his head, and they leave him frowning. Annihilation of the PLANTs is obviously not a preferable outcome, and working under Patrick Zala... Well. He can imagine a less frustrating life for a geneticist. Resolving the infertility crisis is certainly a priority that Gil has always held personal stakes in, but... the way Zala had been trying to brute force it with no real understanding of the scientific delicacy to the situation? That made for an unpleasant superior. ]

Patrick Zala doesn't deserve a simple life. I don't know how you endured working so closely with the man for so long.

[eschatological]

[ He was a conceited ass, but he did build good superweapons. Rau glances back down with a smile. ]

It helped that I was planning His Excellency's death.

[ Also, leaking Spitbreak's real target and Yuri Amalfi's N-Jammer Canceller data; it's the little things. The title is perfectly formal, but in context clearly contemptuous. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil laughs. If Patrick Zala is somewhere out there in this afterlife, he can come take his complaints about the callousness up with them personally. Hopefully he won't. ]

And thank god you were.

[ But thinking of Patrick Zala also makes Gil think about his son. Athrun had been so easy to move with just a little bit of compassion towards his family situation... Love is a destructive force, indeed. Even love that one seeks to bury. ]

Zala was a skilled war time propagandist, I'll give him that. I don't know that he'd have been able to maintain that momentum after a victory, however.

[eschatological]

"After victory"? His particular path to victory would have been short-lived. So long as a single person remained on Earth, they would rage against the heavens. There would never be peace for the PLANTs.

[ ... Rau is slightly wistful. So close. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil looks over at Rau and he can see that wistful longing for endless destruction. ... well, they're both incorrigible.









... it's time for Rau to get a headpat. He started this in the first place, it's his fault. There there. ]

[eschatological]

[ That gets an incredulous expression.

Kinda muted by the mask, but there is some serious skepticism in this frown. ]

[destinymaker]

[ They're dead and nothing matters. It is unfortunately entertaining.

Gil pulls his hand back as though nothing happened. ]

It's the disadvantage of living on artificial ground. The Earth will always contain room for population to hide away in, but space is not so forgiving. We fled this far, but it only put us into a new kind of peril.

[eschatological]

People who live in glass hourglasses shouldn't throw stones.

[ A lesson that Rau will not take to heart, but resorting to acerbic aphorisms is easier than processing thoughts on headpats. And then, a little more distantly: ]

With infinite time and infinite paths -- wouldn't it be extraordinary if, after everything, this was the only path that lead to something other than annihilation?

[ Could have fired on the Archangel despite Lacus, could have not baited Mwu and the Archangel into surviving JOSH-A, could have withheld the N-Jammer data, and PLANT would have stirred up more hatred from the Earth than anything Break The World managed.

He's going to be so annoyed if he accidentally saved the world if it would have destroyed itself without him. ]

[destinymaker]

[ That does make Gil fall quiet for a moment. It's a hypothetical that hits him as well, if he extends it just a little. What an idea it is. All other paths leading to destruction, his utopia forever out of reach.... and yet, through such failure the world can thrive. Or at least survive.

He doesn't know how to feel about that, so he suspects Rau doesn't either. ]

"Part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."

[ this quote is so much catchier in german... ]

You'd make a good Mephisto, if this were the case.

[eschatological]

And you, the striving scholar led astray? That's dramatically self-aggrandizing or dramatically self-deprecating.

[ Not complaining about being cast as a devil is also dramatic, but, well, Rau was semi-complaining about not frying the planet six comments up. To the broader topic: ]

Humans and devils alike, we move toward a future we cannot see.

[ Though even accounting for non-omniscience, it really is absurd to try for mutual annihilation and end with mutual relative forbearance, when there are so many ways humanity could have shot itself in the foot! ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil hardly sees himself as a Faustian figure, but he can't deny that he thought some surface level parallels were strangely appropriate. A scientist, a lost lady love... and a devil for a friend, brought to him by the unsatisfiable human thirst for knowledge and progress.

In the end, he just shrugs at Rau's accusation and decides to focus on the second half. ]

It was hard work to stabilize the PLANTs after all that happened. Without the Clynes, the Zalas, or even you... Well, it made switching into politics full time an easy task. Everyone was desperate for a calm voice and reassuring words.

Maybe I ought to apologize to you for stepping in instead of letting the post-war chaos run its course. Or maybe Lacus Clyne would have returned much earlier had I not done as much?

[ It is a little funny that Rau had been such a large motivator for Gil to take a position in the government and work towards a better future. Whatever Rau himself thinks and believes, he makes the world around him want to try harder. ]

[eschatological]

[ Tigers also make the world around them try harder ... at running away really fast. ]

I can't begrudge you picking up the pieces when I was done.

[ Rau waves a hand airily in the general direction of the ignored chess set. ]

But I doubt that the young lady would have returned home without provocation. The PLANTs killed her father, after all. And people can be so sentimental about those things, [ says a guy who burned down a mansion with the closest thing to his father inside, smiling benignly.

And whose genetic twin killed his father figure? Shoot, another accidental point for biological determinism. Sorry, Gil. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil's own parents are presumably alive somewhere, a little estranged but present... He now briefly thinks of them and the fact that they had to outlive him. Oops. ]

Zala killed her father. With him gone, she'd have had a perfect chance to change the country that made that tragedy occur in the first place.

[ Maybe that's why her absence has always frustrated him. A convenient power vacuum for him to take advantage of, yes, but also an entirely unrelatable course of action. Gilbert Durandal is a man incapable of stepping away. ]

The PLANTs are far from ideal, but letting that fester does nobody any good.

[ "My eugenicist government broke my heart? Clearly the eugenics weren't working good enough yet. We need more of them." ]

[eschatological]

But good and humble people like the young lady only ever rule by necessity, only ever to avoid being ruled by someone worse than themselves.

[ Yes, yes, he's being facetious. And after wrangling Athrun, Yzak, Dearka, and Nicol's very big feelings about everything, it's tempting to make a quip about teenagers not being particularly farsighted -- but Lacus Clyne ended up being more farsighted than most adults. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Rau had to live every day on the Vesalius inside a soap opera, huh... Tragic. (This is why Gil left the Minerva to Talia.) ]

Only ever standing against something without offering an alternative is not a sustainable position. Sooner or later, someone will ask more of her.

[ cue ominous movie teasers ]