Right Back After This

Season 2, Episode 5

Shit's fucked from the moment they've landed on Arbo.

Something is different in the air. Production assistants walk in pairs. Colian has dropped off the face of the planet, and for all Riz knows he was abandoned on Gahren Six. Every member of Saccharine is looking at him differently- pitiful, conspiratorial, and lustful, respectively. Sonja and Paloma keep entering and leaving together, and Sonja can't sit still. Even Paloma's acting weird, eyes too droopy to glare, sighing in exasperation more than dulled rage.

Still, the awareness of the microphone under his jaw is ever-present. It's a weight that doesn't let up from the moment it's turned back on prior to disembarking. He only has a brief time to note all this strangeness before he's sitting alone in the middle of a couch, in the room they usually do interviews in. He was dreading Dahlia Thornton before all else, a dread that also dripped from Sonja's anxious little dances, tapping her toes on the floor; but this room isn't the one he'd expect to find Dahlia in.

Instead, he's looking at the screen in a too-white room. Sonja and Paloma watch him from behind it. He doesn't make eye contact with the cameras turned on him, but he's performing for them, and luckily, he can redirect his fear into that performance. His leg jiggles, and he picks at imaginary flaws on his fingers to avoid looking up. Nobody tells him what he's doing in here.

He can imagine what he looks like from the camera's view so well he could paint it. Small and pink, a bruised victim, huddled up in the middle of an endless whiteness. Waiting for something that the viewers might know better than he does.

The screen, after too long, flickers to life. Riz knows the blurry background anywhere, but the withered face in front of it is even more recognisable to his psyche.

He first saw that face, a decade younger with a beard that was only mostly grey, on the streets of Majadha. Frater Raro was not the one to speak to Riz, but he smiled at him from down a dirt road, as one of his congregation handed Riz a little necklace, a rosary, as an excuse to whisper in his ear that there was a way out.

The last time Riz saw Frater Raro was a few years ago, and even then, he wasn't so grey. He looked almost as sad and pinched, almost as wrinkled; Riz would like to think his memory is too rosy, and not that Frater Raro is wasting away faster than Thornton himself.

The last time Riz saw Frater Raro was the day Sonja took him to Arbo, as an ongoing bribe until they had a better way of saving Majadha.

"Hello, Riz." That is not how Frater Raro sounds. For a moment, Riz thinks this is a deepfake, which- the implications- "...it's been a while, hasn't it?"

He sounds strained. He sounds scared. Frater Raro speaks slow, speaks with a wisdom that isn't in these words. And he keeps looking to the left of the camera.

"It- it has." And Riz doesn't have the fucking chance to think through this, because he has to hold up his mask. "I've missed you, Frater. Are you- are you doing okay? How's the congregation?"

The words spill out, and Riz passively listens to his own mouth speak. He doesn't even bother to act surprised; he is surprised, but he's never known what's coming before, why would it change now? He just has to hope that every word is acceptable.

"Better than you might expect," Frater Raro says. He's looking to the left, specifically, and his eyes are shifty. The fans have never seen him before, have they? They wouldn't know he's not normally like this. Is it a deepfake? Or is he just monumentally uncomfortable, like the itch in his voice implies? "I have been hoping you and I might be able to speak for a while. I'm glad I've finally had the opportunity."

Maybe he's reading off a script? Riz can't even let the confusion show. He's got to be here, doing this, because somebody decided it's good optics, and so Riz must play the role he's been cast in. He's in the spotlight, after all.