The windows close as the flyer rises into the air, and you lean your head against the plastic to watch Cloris's hive dwindle and fade away into the snow. You feel as gray and cold as the insides of the clouds you're being taken through. You finish grooming Jethro's hair and move on to getting blood and dirt off his horns. ((He'll compliantly follow Bel around until Jethros settled, then probably curl up somewhere to pass out for a while.))
You probably shouldn't be surprised to find the gossip blogger and her crew waiting for you at the hotel. You instinctively try to shelter Erskin and Jethro from her waving microphone, but this only allows her photographer to get a clear shot at your battered rival and the unconscious moirail in his arms. Strung out as you are, you have a very strong urge to solve this all with a hail of bullets -- strong enough that the shotgun is in your hands before you think better of it. You pull yourself up short, take a deep breath, and put your strifekind away. Instead, you beckon the blogger closer. "You look like you've been through the wars!" she chirps. "Have Lord Aspera and his moirail been trying out a little reenactment?" "No. Listen." God, you sound tired, even to yourself. "It'd be too much trouble to stop you from publishing, but I think you're smart enough to know you don't want to be on my shitlist. Go easy on them, all right? Talk trash about me if you have to, but no snark about Aspera or Makwaa. They've had a rough week." "It looks it! Is that Aspera's custodian?" She beckons her photographer to the little griffin in your arms. "Poor little dear! What happened?" You just shake your head and pick up your pace so you can hold the door for Erskin, but a porter beats you to it. You tip her twenty caegars and tell her to let the ice bear in when he arrives. And maybe clear his way so he doesn't freak out the other guests. He'll be pretty eager to get to his charge. The porter earns another twenty by politely but firmly keeping the gossip crew from following you, and you're pretty sure she's the reason there's a wheelchair waiting in the lobby for Erskin to nestle Jethro into. Part of you is thinking approvingly about how that porter is a natural born sergeant, and you'd recruit her for your post-ascension crew if you weren't planning to rebel, while another part of you is giggling hysterically over the absurdity of noticing these things at a time like this. Erskin continues to be disturbingly meek and silent up in your suite. Jethro is starting to come round, so you call room service (and Pancho) and order what Pancho advises for stressed-out trolls who've lost a lot of blood: meat from near hemo-matched animals (indigo fowl is the closest you can do for Erskin) and lots of liquids, preferably hot and sweet. Jethro manages most of a cup of mulled cider before nodding off again; Erskin has to be prompted to eat, and even so, he doesn't make much progress. You're indescribably grateful when a scratch at the door announces the ice bear's arrival. With Paw's help, you get Jethro and Erskin into a recuperacoon. The bear sprawls in front of it like a guard, one frying-pan paw protectively curled around Reggie. You drag your tired body into the elaborate bathroom; you're too tired to run a bath, so you just flop into the seadweller lounging basin. You poke dumbly at your bruises for a few minutes before remembering what you intended to do: - crossfireHurricane [CH] began trolling bustedCrankshaft [BC] - CH: * Cloris Vhines is dead. - crossfireHurricane is sending file gory_proof.img - ((@Vast Derp you can start a new scene for bel's convo with galley if you like))
((after Bel's text convos are over)) You doze for some time, then lie awake and hold Jethro for awhile longer, before the stiff ache in your hip lets you know you won't be getting back to sleep again. You only woke up the first time a few hours ago, for all that's happened since. You pull yourself out of the slime, strip off your sodden layers, and then wait, for too long, for your Lady to dress you. She doesn't: she won't. You pull your own clothes on from out of your syladex, hesitantly, feeling wrong and sad and horribly guilty. The purple ink of your sign looks alien across your chest. You haven't worn it since-- since-- Her green scarf has been kicked into a corner, and you feel just a little better when you pick it up, brush it clean, and wrap it around your shoulders. Bel is watching you. You go and lever yourself clumsily down to sit by him, but you can't being yourself to look at his face. "Did Jethro know," you ask bleakly. "Was he in on all this?"
And here it comes. You know you can't possibly be ready for whatever is going to happen now, and you know it's going to be awful, and you know that trying to get out of it would be the lowest, slimiest thing to do. At least you got to clean up first, and he got a little sleep. "I don't know what 'all this' means, but whatever he told you is probably the truth. If you mean, was he somehow setting Cloris up for me to kill her, no, he ditched me. Maybe... try asking more specific questions."
You sigh, scrub your face with your hands. "Good. That's... good. He kept saying you weren't coming to— well—" you shrug, "— and I thought, I thought either he was lying to me or you'd been lying to him. So. That's something..." Bel's expression is very serious, when you glance at him, and very tired. His mouth is saturating around the split you gave his lip. Good. "I never told her about your matesprit," you tell him, and you're surprised, actually, to feel bitterness uncurl in your chest like a golden wire. "I never told anyone. I never would have. You could have set Jethro on me to make sure! Why'd you— why couldn't you have let me go? What the hell am I to do now, sit on the island and suck your nook until we all get old and DIE!?" Oh, yelling. Yelling is a thing you're doing. ((mopey shock erskin is no fun to write it turns out))
You blink slowly and look away. "Whatever you want, I guess. I'm not the boss of you." You hunch over, elbows on your knees, picking at the dirt under your claws. "I knew you wouldn't tell. You gave me your word. I never thought you would tell. And if she could've got it out of your head, she would've gotten it out of Lu's, so." Slight shrug. "I know you were tired of me even before she started working on you. But I couldn't let you die. That's all."
"Tired of you," you say acidly. "Is that how you'd like to put it. Tired of you! So this is— this wasn't even— you didn't even come kill my matesprit to save yours, you're just kicking me over again for another goddamn laugh, you're that fucking petty? Blood and stars, I didn't— you had to go and—I didn't even consider you'd be this fucking cruel, god, you got me." You double over, dig your claws into your horns. You want to get up, to turn and pace around, to make some dramatic exit, but what's the bloody point?
"That's what you think of me?" Your raised voice is more pain than anger, and you don't have the energy to be loud for long. "Have you seen yourself, Erskin. You look a week dead. You --" You cut yourself off, shaking your head. "I'm never going to convince you, am I." You need to change the subject. Well, you do have a topic he might care about. You get out the egg bag and show it to him. "I'll keep taking care of it until Reggie wakes up, if he ever does. How'd he get like that, anyhow? Maybe I should take him to a vet."
You scramble to your feet, away from him, and then pause and frown at the bag, hook it gently closer with your fingertips. "That's... I had... no, that's mine, you can't... that's mine!" you wrench the satchel from him and back up against the wall, sliding back down to sit until you can hold the bag safe against your stomach. Your head is pounding. The small handful of life is so important. How did Bel get ahold of it? Where had you left it? You look up at Bel, feeling very small and scared, all of a sudden. "...Where's my lusus?" you ask. "I haven't seen... he hasn't been... around..."
You point to where his lusus is nestled in the curve of Paw's furry forearm. When Erskin remains crouched against the wall, you get up and fetch the beast. Carefully, giving Erskin plenty of chances to warn you off, you bring Reggie over and set him on Erskin's lap. He resettles his wings and re-tucks his beak under his chest feathers, so at least he's sleeping, not comatose. Still, for any lusus to sleep through such a ruckus, and still be sleeping hours later... that's bad, right? You miss your lusus. Really a lot right now. You back up until the couch hits you in the back of the knees. You're not between Erskin and the door or his moirail. Hopefully that will be enough. Bleakly, with no real hope he'll process the words, you say, "He was lying on the floor in the hallway at Cloris's after the fight. I don't know how he got there. Ask Jethro when he wakes up. As for the egg, you left it in your hotel room, along with your prosthetic and a pile of gangrenous flesh. I was so fucking scared for you." You sniff hard once, then bring up an effort of will like a gutful of poison and force yourself impassive again. You will NOT break down in front of him.
"He's so thin..." you say, stroking Reggie's side. You can feel all his little ribs, and his pinions are raggedly unpreened, dirt and dust showing starkly against the white. When you look up at Bel he's rubbing his nose, and his eyes are bright and blue-rimmed. "You were always good to him," you say softly, and start smoothing your lusus' feathers. "...I liked that. Would you have taken him back with you, if I'd snuffed it? I think he's had the egg by Ms Pancho's custodian."
You nod jerkily. "Him and the egg. Yeah. If I couldn't save you, at least I could take care of... you know. Whatever's in that egg." You give a hoarse little choke of a laugh. "What do you even get when you cross a Reggie with a Loggan?" For some reason it's that that's too much. You put your face in your hands, elbows on knees, and just try not to make any noise or move. Maybe he'll just think you're tired.
You watch him for a while, as you get Reggie's feathers back in order. He's... very upset. Very quietly upset. You think the last time you actually saw him cry he was off his horns on pipeweed and maudlin over whatever dreadful thing or another had happened to his matesprit. You turn the thought around in your mind, slowly, and can't make any sense of it other than— than that he does care for you, in some fashion. "You treated me like a toy," you tell him, offering a little honesty. "A game. That's what I got tired of. Push here, pull there, cut this and kick that and laugh at what comes out, hot and cold in turns and now you're sitting there and— and— you can't treat people like that, even stupid people. They catch on. Or at least they give up."
"I didn't," you mutter. Damn it, you're going to have to let him see you if you're going to answer that accusation. Well, so be it. You're almost too tired to care that you look like an asshole. You straighten up and drag your filthy sleeve across your eyes, then glare at him, daring him to comment. "I did not treat you like a toy. I tried -- all right, I'm awkward as hell, I know, and I can't blackrom worth a damn. I can admit that. But I tried to do it right. When I screwed up I tried to fix it." You give a bleak shrug. "You gave up on me after that thing with the swordfish. I figured I was too sympathetic. Broke your illusion of me as... I dunno... some untouchable blackstud or something. Anyhow, that's when everything tanked. Well before you left me for a bloodsucker you'd never met, who you knew had been torturing my best friend in her dreams for sweeps." You have to resort to a handkerchief at that point. When you're done, you ball it up and throw the sodden thing at the wall. "Was that intended as a deliberate fuck-you to the entire clade? I'm curious."
You blink at him. "Why would I have riled any of your clade up? I wanted to get away, not make some grand statement. And..." you bite your lip, tap your fingers across the knobs of Reggie's spine, try to put everything in order in your mouth before you open it. "...it was before then. You were messing with me before then, before the thing with the fish. You said we could be pale— you knew I was— I needed a moirail and I, I, I wanted you, and you used it against me and it was awful. And I kept thinking, surely we kept— we kept talking past each other, we'd sort it all out, but you just, every time I— needed you, wanted you on my side, at my back, you'd find something to scrap with me about," oh, hell, you'd better not cry. "Then later when I was angry that you weren't there for me when I needed you and you said, you said 'when? when did you need me?'. Like you hadn't taken every last little moment of vulnerability you tricked out of my idiot mouth and made them all into knives—" You wipe your nose, look away, shivering all over. "You weren't sympathetic about the fish thing, or how I was broken or what I was going to do about it or anything. You asked and asked what was wrong and you patted my head and tucked me in for a nap and the next chance you got, the next bloody morning you shoved that poor little broken helmsgirl into my face, all those parts cut out— god. God. How'd you even know to do that? When was I stupid enough to tell you?"
You gape at him in horror. "You think I did that to -- because -- god damn it, Erskin, I showed you that because you were treating what happened to my matesprit as a goddamn joke. I just wanted to show you it wasn't okay! I hope I would've realized it'd bring up your trauma and not showed you, if I hadn't been bombed out of my mind. I'm genuinely sorry for that -- didn't I apologize at the time? I could've sworn I apologized at the time." You have to blow your nose again. "I wasn't sympathetic about the fish thing, oh right, I just dove down and saved you even though I can't breathe underwater, and held you and petted you and -- yeah, we're just forgetting about that I guess?" It's intolerable to be just sitting here -- you try to get up, to pace, but it gives you a headrush and you sit abruptly back down again. Too long on too little sleep. You can't remember when you ate last. "I still don't know when you needed me. I still don't know why you think I used it against you -- I don't know what I supposedly used against you -- you never told me, Erskin! I just know that every time I've showed you any emotional vulnerability you turn nasty on me. Any time I tell you about my life or my feelings, next thing I know you're sneering at me. And all along you've believed I was capable of the most horrible low-down shit, you never had one tiny speck of faith in me, but I spent my whole stipend and called in every favor I was owed to track you down, so I could save you from your mindfucking murder girlfriend, so you could accuse me of doing it out of petty spite! So, so just -- so just fuck you for not believing I love you like crazy after everything I've gone through over you. I wish to god I didn't care." Since you can't storm out -- since you're not sure you can even stand up -- you just look away from him, rigid and stone-faced, and pretend your eyes and nose aren't running.
You chew on your lip some more, completely taken aback. "You actually do care for me," you say. "...Well, then." There is a very worrying feeling tugging at your elbow right now. It is saying, urgently, that you may possibly have behaved like a bit of a jackass, once or twice, in the course of events that transpired in the duration of your relationship. Perhaps. "Er... I care for you too," you say lamely. "You really used your stipend up? I thought you had bags of treasure."
"Why the hell would I have bags of treasure?" you say weakly. Then you shake your head. That's a distraction. "I guess... I can't get too mad at you for not knowing I care, since I didn't know you cared either. Look, just... will you tell me what you need? In words? Non-confusing words?"
What you really want to say is I need my Lady back. But you grit your teeth on it, and think about— going forward from here, what you might be allowed. "I don't know," you finally say, and giggle a trifle helplessly. "I'm sorry. I don't know right now. I'm— I've been— listen, can we, could— could we try to be friends, maybe? Call a truce? I'm no fit partner for you, anyway, I've been breaking down for ages and now I'm lame on top of it all and you're—" you flap your hand at him, "—well, you're you, look at you, you're terrifying. But I think if we both still, still want— we could try—" You sigh explosively. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know I'm no good with words. I'm trying. I want. To be safe. Anymore. I just want to be safe, and for people to be kind to me, and to stop being hurt, and for there to be food to eat and sopor to sleep in, and to draw little shells and flowers in my journal, and to not be a troll anymore or a prince or anything that has to deal with how horrible the world is. And I'd like to sit next to you, if you won't bite me for it."
"I won't bite you for it," you say, and scoot over a bit so he can sit. When he does, you cautiously take his hand. You're blushing from his (unintentional?) compliment, even while you're still riding out the tail of your misery. "I can't tell if you're breaking up with me, or if you think I'm dumping you, or, or that one of us already dumped the other... but I said 'always' and I meant it. I don't want any rival but you." You manage something that's almost a smile. "I had a dream... I was catching an hour or two before -- um -- before go time, and I dreamed you were with me in a reenactment battle. I know you think it's silly FLARP stuff, but in the dream you were really into it. We were such a good team. Competing to out-awesome each other, instead of tearing each other down. Do you think we could ever have a rivalry like that?"
