[IC Inbox | Meadowlark]

[lifetothefullest]

@lance.sweets | ■ ▲ ◌ ▼

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[lifetothefullest]

[Lance can see the conflict Ian's having to deal with, and he feels a flash of empathy for him; it isn't easy to have to deal with something that shakes your faith in an organization you'd wanted to believe in. It's knowing what that's like that made Lance so aware of the need to figure out what they were dealing with here, and he wishes it hadn't been this outcome.]

From me, anyway. Other people might have a little more leeway.

[She already hated him, after all. Someone with more goodwill directed toward them might get further and do so more safely, but that fact that it would have to be done so carefully in the first place is much of the problem itself.]

[wittingly]

( He shakes his head slowly; other people... )

I don't know.

( It's an uncertain murmur, and he settles back finally — eyes still on the message, but he's not really seeing it anymore. )

You're not the only one that's gotten some... less than favorable feedback over it that I've seen. I don't... know if...

( No real need to finish the sentence, Lance knows what he's getting at.

Chancing it on a maybe and having the entirety of the Displaced cut off for that? Yeah, no, he sure as fuck won't be the one driving this project. )

Fuck, dude, I'm sorry. I know you're really passionate about this.

[lifetothefullest]

[He considers clarifying a little on that last point--he knows what Ian means, but was less something he was excited to work on and more something it just felt important to do--but that can wait, because as muted and distant as everything feels for Lance right now he's concerned about Ian's reaction. He seems a little shocked, which is understandable, but Lance wants to make sure it's the normal amount of shocked for something like this and not deeper.

So, first, he just asks directly because he can't really manage anything more subtle right now--]

Are you okay?

[wittingly]

This is you time, man.

( Maybe the subtle amusement in his correction will help assuage that worry. )

I'm fine. I'm just... disappointed, I guess.

( Which, in his opinion, doesn't hold a candle to the kind of stressed out he knows he'd feel if he were on the receiving end of a message like that. )

[lifetothefullest]

[Okay, good, maybe not as shocked as Lance was worried about. He's still going to keep an eye out for any other reasons for concern, but at least there's that.

And he nods, at the last comment, because that's very understandable. Though he should probably add--]

She kind of hates me; and by that I mean very specifically me. Maybe this isn't really indicative of anything more than that.

[It's a very weak attempt, because Lance really doesn't believe it, but maybe. And if even if not--]

She also isn't Morningstar as a whole, so...

[He knows Ian feels favorably toward Morningstar, even if Lance doesn't really, and he's trying to be fair about this. And it is true, after all.]