"... I'm sure it felt that way," says Ji-woo, softly. "I'm sure she cared, I'm sure she meant well. But. No. Not really. You don't have this word in English, but she was your sunbae, your senior, setting you up for success is the whole point." And the rest she leaves unsaid.

Completely socially isolated, with no one to call upon for backup management or guiding, with no one able to help her is not, in fact, set up for success.

..............

(She should take responsibility for her choices.) "<W-willowbark-sunbae was... trying to set me up for success, Baek Ji-woo-nim>", Flywheel responds, in competent Korean. "<I didn't make it easy! And neither did her backlash.>" 

"Yeah. Which is why she shouldn't have tried to handle it all on her own," she replies, still in English. "There's no guild here, for you. And espers are just people. And people just aren't built to work alone."

Then her lip twitches. "Your Korean is very good, by the way."

"<I've been practicing. Tae-hwan-nim owes me tteokbokki.>" (She's still way too backlashed to deliver this with any apparent emotion attached to it, but some part of her knows it's A Correct Thing To Say, and so she can [make|let] herself say it.) (look at her, a sad little puppet, ineptly pulling her own strings because she let the only person who cared enough to do it for her DIE,)

(She - still shouldn't let them think it was worse than it was. It'd be wrong to. Especially since Tia isn't here to defend herself.) "She wasn't doing it alone. We made lots of the important decisions together. And she wasn't the one who isolated me."

"Sure. I don't want to discount your agency, here. But when I think of Tia," and she very deliberately uses her name, instead of her esper codename, because she knew the woman, even if it was a professional relationship, "I think of someone who was very isolated. And in a lot of pain." Hand squeeze. "But she had twenty years of experience, money, establishment, formal recognition worldwide. Other esper or agency contacts," hint hint, like Ji-woo, "that she could have introduced you to. And she didn't. I expect she wanted to be in her own little world with you where she felt safe and sound."

Traceless didn't know her at all - it's weird they were even in Toronto, who has a medical problem that they can't travel for and that Epione can't manage and that they can't solve with normal drugs - but he certainly doesn't know anything to contradict what Uisa has to say about it.

"she was trying to keep me safe," Cara whispers, and it's weirdly difficult for some reason, but she obviously hasn't finished her task and so she will keep trying to explain. "She hated talking about what happened to Stormcrow and Chronaegis, but - the important bits are all public - it wasn't just her backlash that made her feel like she had to - handle all the details, and it certainly wasn't something she was doing for comfort, it was hard on her," (she's sobbing again, though she hasn't really noticed.)

Traceless has the opportunity to let his backlash be the excuse to ruin June's life on roughly half the days in a typical week and he plans really hard around not doing that and someone who had a superficially similar problem, like Kuroko, but not a manageable one, should arrange not to have to manage it, and it sounds like Willowbark either set herself a task she couldn't succeed at or failed at one she theoretically could have and neither is great!

Arguably he has recently set himself a task he is not capable of succeeding at and he is going to need to fix that.

"Yeah. I know. And - the DRT and their agents absolutely did fail them, don't get me wrong, combat espers live and die by their support staff, and then also sheer luck on top of it. But those were pretty cut and dry, from what I read of them. It's scary. I see why she decided 'Fine, I'll do it myself,' with you, and I even empathize a little, just." Handsqueeze. "Erred too far in the other direction, I think. We're all only human, superpowers and prismatic colors or no."

...Cara is going to squeeze Ji-woo's hand and cling to Traceless's body and cry and cry and cry.

(Tia did keep her safe, from the very beginning until the very end. It's not her fault Cara decided to be insane and terrible and secretive about things instead of just talking to her!)

(Ji-woo might notice she's actually getting a bit dehydrated.)

He does his best to be clingable.

Yeah. Fortunately, Sean is a clever minion, and stocked them up with water bottles in advance. She scootches, grabs a bottle, opens it, and passes it to Cara without any kind of fuss.

(They should probably get an IV in her anyway, but Ji-woo is not made entirely out of stone, stabbing a complicated wronged, but grieving girl for minimal gain is a little beyond her right now. Besides, she's never gotten the hang of inserting them, even now. Nobody's perfect, not even her.)

Being handed an open water bottle by a medical esper is obviously a request to drink it, so she does. (Some of the water spills on her. She doesn't seem to notice.)

(She's still crying, but it's slowed down, at least.)

...she's backlashed.

(It's not good to be backlashed. She's supposed to try and get guiding promptly, when she can.)

She attempts, tentatively, to reinitiate kissing with Traceless.

He's not (at this time) going to second-guess that. Medical smooches it is.

Some time later:

"Hello the tent," a woman with a light Irish lilt is speaking outside. 

"Hello the miracle worker!" says the other miracle worker. "I have been sitting on the lung damage like a mother hen. My turn to make the rounds to everyone you've cleared out, then?"

"Am I in the way?"

"It sounds like," Airmed agrees. "May I come in? -and who is asking?" 

Nod from Ji-woo. "Okay." Hand squeeze to Flywheel. "I'm going to have to go handle other people and tell their lungs they shouldn't get cancerous. My pain-blasting is nerve based and will last for a little while after I go, but I'll get someone to bring you some painkillers, okay? My bad for not thinking of it sooner, that was me being dumb, sorry."

She does not feel qualified to say it's okay for them to enter the tent that is not hers, but she can clarify as she heads out: "Patient's secondary partner, Traceless."

(Flywheel squeezes Ji-woo's hand back a vaguely surprising amount given how little she's been present, but says nothing.)

She nods to Ji-woo as she passes. "Morganrath the senior's in Pendragon's tent," she thinks to mention, "She isn't being obstructive," thankfully. 

And, to the tent, "No, you're fine, then." 

"Ah, hell, that'll be a conversation... thanks for the heads up."

And then, yeah, off to go tell some lungs that they should sit down and behave themselves in the future!