2010-02-26 - Little White Lie

Letting Leo lead her out to the balcony, Louise decides to take off her mask once they're outside, feeling the cooler air on her face. Wearing that thing was starting to get a little on the stifling side, to say the least; she feels kind of gross and sweaty where the mask once sat.

"What's this about, Leo?" she asks, a little nervous; she knows that Leo's had a really rough time of it lately, can even kind of sense it when he doesn't say anything, though how she cannot quite fathom. "What did you need?"

Her thoughts momentarily drift back to Flowers Guy; she feels her mind stick on him, as though she missed something important.

Leo, on the other hand, doesn't remove his mask; it has already saved him from the worst of having his face spat on. He figures it's best to not remove it until he's sure no more disastrous horseshit can happen tonight.

He closes the door behind Louise, slips his arm out of hers, and steps silently up to the edge of the balcony, staring out over the colony. It's a good one; Leo wishes, a little bitterly, that he ahd grown up on an Island-3. It's just... Earth. Nothing like home...

No, no, he didn't come out here to... do that. He scowls out at the rest of Cosmo Babylonia in silence for a moment, while he collects his thoughts, and then turns to face Louise, folding his hands behind his back.

"We need to talk about Michael Trinity."

Louise follows Leo out to the balcony in her little purple dress; he seems like he's got something serious in mind, and when he finally opens his mouth, her suspicions are confirmed. Almost instantly, she turns away, gripping one arm with the other, posture clearly nervous.

"I can't work alongside that mobile suit!" she half-shouts, voice not /quite/ carrying inside but pretty loud if anyone is out on another balcony listening. "I'm not going to!" To her, this is simply an absolute; she remembers the Thrones' role in the death of almost everyone she had ever known all too well. She can't even deal with more conventional Gundams all the time -- to her, the idea of working with a Throne... unconscionable.

Leo cringes when Louise raises her voice; his eyes slip past her to the glass-paneled door back into the ballroom. No one's looking their way yet, but if she gets any more worked up... the young Major takes a quick step closer to the girl, and reaches out to touch her lightly on the shoulder.

"Louise," he says gently, his voice quiet. "Calm down. I know it's hard, but you need to try. If you get this upset just from hearing his name..." His mask has proven quite adept, so far, at keeping the emotions he didn't want to broadcast secret; Leo hopes it doesn't work in the other direction, too, and hinder his attempts to calm Louise down.

"He's a murderer!" Louise replies, shrinking away a little from Leo's touch. She hadn't known a thing about the situation when Paptimus had let him out on work release, but /now/... "I refuse to be on the same missions as he is!" The way Louise approaches this is very simple and matter-of-fact; she doesn't seem to even be hearing every word out of Leo's mouth.

Her hand -- the one she shouldn't have, the one Ribbons gave back to her -- clenches into a tight fist. She can't swallow this one, not yet -- Leo is going to have to do a little work.

Leo grits his teeth in frustration. He means it when he says he knows it's hard; even the thought of working alongside, say, BAHRAM, causes his stomach to twist in disgust, and this is just as bad. Michael may not have pulled the trigger, but he might as well have, especially to Louise's eyes.

It will take time - a long time - for Louise to be ready to forgive him, if she ever even can, and there's not a lot Leo can do to help that along, other than try to chip away at her hatred.

But that's time that he - and by extension, she - doesn't have. It's bad enough when she panics in normal combat, and if she can't see the Throne Zwei without freaking out, every time she does so she'll be putting herself and others in danger. So Leo does what years of Paptimus Scirocco's often-subtle influence has taught him to do.

He tells Louise what he thinks she needs to hear to get her to do what he wants.

"Louise. Look at me," Leo insists gently, taking another small step closer to the girl; his right hand settles on her shoulder despite her flinch, and his left reaches up to touch her chin and turn her gaze to meet his.

"You're right," he admits, after a second of pause. "He's a murderer, and he should be punished. And that's what we're doing. Trinity is..." He pauses again, contemplating his choice of word, and settles on, "... a tool. A weapon. I promised you I would destroy Celestial Being, and that's what I'm going to do... and he's going to help me.

"I - /we/ - will use him against the people who let him do what he did... we'll use him until he's useless, or he breaks. And then we'll... discard him," Leo explains, quietly. "Don't you think that's better than just executing him?"

Leo is developing into quite the bastard. On the other hand... Louise likes that -- or more accurately, she's too hurt to care. All that matters to her is her pound of flesh -- not much beyond that really matters to her, except, perhaps, Ribbons and Leo. Saji, too, but -- no, her wounded heart would only hold him back. She at least knows that much.

Turning to Leo, Louise looks at him; at first her eyes meet his neck, but a gentle tilt up brings their eyes together. "... that's what this is about?" Louise asks, a little surprised at first; in all honesty, she didn't think Leo thought this kind of thing out that far. ... which might be closer to the truth than it should be.

The idea of using Trinity to break the rest of them, of letting Michael and the double-drive, Michael and the White Devil, Michael and that selfish bitch princess, Michael and the Red Comet, Michael and that Goddamn traitor Haran, shred themselves against each other... it gets Louise to smile. It's not a pleasant smile -- Louise's smiles haven't been pleasant in a long time. But it's a smile.

"... You're right," she says. "It /is/ better."

Louise's smile elicits a smile from Leo, too... but his actually /is/ pleasant, even if the pleasantness is hampered somewhat by his horned mask. Being pleasant does not necessarily make it good, of course; mostly he's just happy that she's seeing reason, and indeed that she's smiling herself.

But a small part of him is elated at his so far successful... he doesn't know what to call it. He hesitates to think of it as manipulation, even though he knows in his heart it's exactly what it is.

'Guidance'. That'll do.

Leo removes his hand from Louise's chin and reaches up to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. "But for this to work," he continues, lowering the hair-brushing hand down to her other shoulder, "I need to know that I can count on you to stay calm, even if you have to work with him sometimes. You won't have to talk to him, or pretend to be friends with him, or anything. I know it'll be hard. But I need you to be strong."

"Can you do that for me, Louise?"

If all they have to do is work together, Louise can stand that. If it means Michael shredding himself in the blades of the double-drive or any of those other hateful Katharon machines, she can do it -- and, eventually, she puts the willpower together to nod to Leo. "... all right. If all it means is being on the same battlefield with him sometimes, then I can do it." She is, after all, a soldier -- she's learned at least a /little/ discipline.

Taking a deep breath, she adds, "But you have to promise me that he's never going to go free." There's a beat, before she affirms, "Ever."

Leo's smile doesn't falter, but mentally he grimaces. Everything he's said up until now... he hasn't really meant it, exactly - or at least he doesn't think he has - but it doesn't really count as... lying, as far as he's concerned. Maybe he's bent the truth a little, but that doesn't count. But this... can he really promise her that?

Well... he probably won't, right? Leo suddenly realizes he's not entirely sure what Michael's sentence even... is. It's very probable he'll never go free even without Leo's intervention... and that's /if/ he manages not to die in combat. Hnn...

Leo doesn't say anything for several seconds, gently and absent-mindedly stroking Louise's left shoulder with the thumb of his hand. And then he says, simply, "I promise." If that doesn't turn out to be true... well, he'll deal with it then.

And then he removes his hands from Louise's shoulders, turning and slipping one of his arms through one of hers. "We should go catch up with Ralla and Soma."

Satisfied with Leo's word (for now), Louise lets Leo slip that arm around hers. The night seems like much less of a waste now than it did a little bit ago, at least; before she was worried that it would primarily consist of 'her, feeling uncomfortable about sharing space with Gilbert Durandal,' but things seem a little better now.

"All right," she says, letting Leo lead her back in; she's fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.