driftfleet | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Everyone messed up by the dragon plot, and visitors
Broadcast: N/A
Action: Blue Fish's clinic!
When: All throughout the Solrius dragon plot and through the space flight to the next destination.

[So several RPG characters, a dragon, and two messianic figures walk into a planet.

Everything is suffering and tears, there's a lot of dead people, there's no punchline. But, hey, for the survivors, the Blue Fish's clinic is treating wounds and generally being a decent place to rest and recover and pray you don't see a dragon again. And for those who weren't involved, there's enough people bedridden here that there may just be someone you want to visit.]

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[ The problem is that if they don't address it now then they never will - and they'll end up digging themselves into a hole from which they can't escape. They need to be able to work through this, and... Zaveid thinks he can believe in Sorey, can give him the benefit of his trust again. It wasn't broken, not really, but it needs to be fixed - they need to do it before things go wrong. Again.

He breathes out, closing his eyes before he tilts his head up. ]

Where do you want to start?

Well. [The biggest one -I tried to call your name and tear you apart with it- has to wait. He's not ready to tackle that one yet, and he suspects Zaveid won't be, either.] ...I'm sorry for breaking my promise to come to you if things got bad. You'd even tried to help me and I turned you away. So.

You're forgiven. [ Zaveid breathes out before he sits up and makes himself a little more comfortable. It's awkward, and he feels flushed and unsure, but he's doing his best. So is Sorey, and that's all he can ask for. ] It's not easy, learning to trust other people and share your troubles. I'd know.

["You're forgiven." So quick. just like Lailah.]

Mmn. I'm sure you've had your reasons. [Offers a weak, fragile smile.] You never hold back when it's something we need to know, after all. Though I think your mysteriousness annoys Rose a little.

There are always reasons, Sorey. It's just hard to see them, you know? [ He shrugs his shoulders, absent and nonchalant. No, he's never held back when they needed to know about something... Like Maotelus. There was no need. ] She likes it. Girls always like a man with a bit of mystery about him.

She makes an awful lot of faces for liking it. [He's going for humor, but the spirit just isn't there. He sobers, fiddling with the edges of his gloves.

The next one is nigh insurmountable too, but he- He has to say it. Zaveid has to be told this. If he has to tear his heart up for it, so be it.]

I'm- I'm so sorry you had to- That I made you- [Damn. Damn it. Stop, don't cry, do not cry, Zaveid shouldn't have to deal with that on top of everything else...!]

That's what girls do. Jeez, I thought you'd learned that by now. [ Neither of them are managing it as well as they could have, but now...

Zaveid watches him, for a long, long moment, before he breathes out a harsh sigh, closing his eyes. ]

Y'know, Sorey, a lot of my friends became hellions. They turn into monsters, or dragons, and I go around and I get to kill them, because that's what I promised to do. They all go there and they're saved because of me, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

[ Lifting his head, he looks at Sorey properly. ]

They turned, and they didn't come back. You came back to us. That's what matters to me.

[ And then, quieter; ]

You came back.

[Sorey shakes his head, hard, and bows forward until he can bury his face in his trembling hands. Just like Lailah. Just like her, but, neither of them understand how little that matters when-]

But Mikleo didn't.

[And Sorey made that so. Zaveid was forced to kill another friend, a seraph, his own kind, Sorey's partner and Sorey placed that burden squarely on his shoulders.

He's so lost in his guilt and grief that he doesn't realize how much that confession sounds like an accusation.]

[ He makes a soft noise, and he tilts his head back, closing his eyes. ]

Eizen didn't. Dezel didn't. Not at home. And, no, Mikleo didn't. But they were free.

[ He doesn't want to think about it, but he has to. He doesn't have a choice, and he shifts, moving to try and push himself out of bed. ]

I gave them their salvation. It was the only choice left. I send the hellions to hell, and that's what I did.

[ His voice breaks a little, and he has to take a deep breath. ]

No one else could do it.

[It's so hard to remember that, despite how wise and worldly Lailah and Zaveid and Edna might be, they can still be hurt just as terribly as anyone else. Even with his head down, trying to turn those sobs into himself so Zaveid doesn't see, he still hears that crack in his voice. Nothing grand; just a chip heated past its breaking point, glass snapping through. A prelude to shattering.

Sorey picks up his head and sees the crack in Zaveid's eyes, too. And it's so hard to remember, with all his bluff and bluster, with how he dodges and shifts the focus off of himself, that Zaveid has lived in the darkness of the world for longer than Sorey can even fathom. That terror he'd seen on Alisha's face, that first night she'd stayed in Elysia, it's there on Zaveid's as well.

And maybe the jokes are more to protect himself than the others, maybe he spins elaborate stories to keep his own heart whole, but it's not because he refuses to let anyone else know what he's going through.

It's because he can't.]

...it's like you told me, [Sorey says. He pulls in a calming breath and remembers a bubble of protection, carefully crafted around him, allowing him air while just meters away, a seraph's arms tremble with strain.

He reaches for Zaveid's arm. Stops short. Rests his hand on the bed instead.]

Some promises are just hard to keep.

[ He knows full well that he sets himself up for people not to really see how deeply hurt he can be, sometimes; he does it on purpose, to hide his pain, his suffering, to make himself the butt of jokes and humour so that no one can really see the person he is underneath it all. Zaveid is the laughter and the jovial edge to the group and he has been since he first joined, seeing of Dezel with a half-broken heart and a hope for the future... But now it's a little difficult to keep up the act, to force himself to be all laughs and jokes.

He's not just laughter. He isn't just a walking comedy. He's a seraph that's seen too much and suffered too much, watched the world change and watched everything reshape itself, and he's had to survive. Now he just... Has to do it again. He has to hold his head up high and admit that he's done his best, that he chose the right path, even if it feels as though every good thing has been drained out of his body.

Protecting himself from his own heart isn't the most important thing anymore. Not when he's sitting in front of Sorey knowing this human is broken and needs someone near immortal to guide him through the pain, to ease it, to make it better. ]

"When I become a dragon, kill me. I don't want Edna to suffer." That's what Eizen told me. He was a real jackass, right? Making me kill him just because he didn't want his baby sister to cry. That's a real jerk move right there... But that's who he was. He wanted to protect Edna because he loved her more than anything else in the entire world.

[ Zaveid reaches out and, carefully, touches his fingers to Sorey's gently. ]

I don't make promises I can't keep, and I promised myself that I would be the one to kill Mikleo. So you wouldn't have to.

[ Then, quietly; ]

Because I get it. Understand?

Oh, Zaveid, [Sorey chokes, and he bows his head again, taking Zaveid's hand on reflex and holding it between his own. He touches his knuckles to his forehead, almost as if in prayer, and sits there shuddering, weeping, not just for himself, not just for Mikleo but from the thought of someone enduring this, what he's feeling now, for years and years and years.

When Sorey lets himself think about it for those scant few seconds, he's terrified he'll go mad, that he'll hellionize again and become empty once more, clawing desperately for anything to fill the holes he bores into himself.

He just can't comprehend it. It's beyond his understanding; putting yourself together after something like that. He doesn't know the whole of what Zaveid saved him from, but the terror of it is enough. He lets himself consider, for the briefest of moments, what it would be like if he were the one who had taken Mikleo's last breath from him and just that makes him shudder and gasp and cling to Zaveid like a lifeline.

Thank you, he wants to say, selfishly, childishly. He doesn't.

I'm so sorry, he wants to repeat, something Zaveid already knows, something that has no use here.

There's nothing to say.

So Sorey clings to Zaveid's hand like a child, like a friend, like the second half of a single broken heart because he knows, now he knows, now he knows and he wishes to the old gods that he didn't.]

[ The problem is, Zaveid doesn't want pity. He doesn't want sympathy.

That sort of thing... It's not going to make the pain go away, is it? Knowing others feel bad, that they understand, that they want him to feel better; it's not going to erase what he's done from his own heart, the things that his eyes have seen and his fingers had created. It's not going to make him a better person, or a better seraph, not really. He knows that because he's had decades to think about it.

He truly, determinedly believed that killing a hellion was the best and only way to save it because it was easier - it meant that he didn't have to think about what it meant when he finally climbed that mountain for the last time, when he finally came face to face with Eizen. Meeting Sorey, seeing Dezel's death - or, rather, knowing it, understanding it... It hasn't changed as much as he thought it might have. They still have to kill Heldalf, and they still need to free Maotelus, but it's given him the strength to believe in people, to believe in other things.

It's given him hope, and it's difficult to express to Sorey just what that means for him.

Right now, Zaveid's life is a tangle of moments that he tries to remember, centuries of memories fighting for place in his mind. He can't remember many specifics anymore except the ones he knows are most important, and he clings to them because he knows what will happen if he forgets. He's seen his friends forget his face, the people he loved having his image fade into the background, giving him up for strength or power or because the malevolence was too much, and he refuses to do the same. He can't do that to himself.

So, slowly, Zaveid reaches out and he lets his hand wrap around Sorey's. Then, just as carefully, he tugs the other man gently, wrapping his arm around his shoulder, holding onto him gently.

There's no need to speak, not really.

He's doing for Sorey what no one was there to do for him. ]

[Sorey flinches back, at first; of the few days he spent as a hellion, what he remembers most vividly is the moment he fell and turned. He remembers his heart caving in on itself, twisting and burrowing down into a screaming, bottomless cavern as he struggled to fill it, fill it, stop it up before it sucked the rest of him down into it. Mikleo was there with him- Mikleo had run to him but in Sorey's malevolence-inflicted grief, Mikleo wasn't enough. And then Dezel had cut the pact as a soldier beheads another and Sorey had reached desperately for the only one he felt left.

He'd reached for Zaveid's True Name, his soul, and he'd tried to take it.

Zaveid pulls Sorey toward him and Sorey flinches back, because even if he's different he feels like he could become the same again. He could become a vortex that only draws in the people he cares about, consumes them and destroys them until they're just wraiths, like Mikleo, crumbling and disappearing with a few bittersweet words.

That can't happen to Zaveid too. It can't, it can't-

But his hands don't burn Zaveid. When his arm goes around Sorey's shoulders it doesn't crack, doesn't warp into something with claws and scales. Sorey relaxes in increments and then all at once, a wave crashing up against a seawall as he slumps against Zaveid's side and hides his face against his shoulder, shaking, shaking.]

I don't know what I'm gonna do, [Sorey confesses against his skin, frightened of it but so relieved that someone finally, finally knows. "What are you going to do after this?" people keep asking, because they're worried. They're scared for him, they don't want to see him collapse in on himself again and Sorey can't answer them with "I don't know." Except- Except Zaveid gets it.

Zaveid knows it already. What can you do when you lose someone like Mikleo, like Eizen?

Nothing. Nothing at all.]

[ The problem is that Zaveid doesn't have the answers either. For him, it wasn't easy - it was hard, and as difficult as 'keep living'. He had centuries to mourn, to live, to grow, to forget the pain and remember the good things, but Sorey doesn't. He has decades, a scant handful of them, if that. He'll live to be an adult, grow, mature, and die. It's hard to think about, really, but that's what life is for a human, and - well, Zaveid doesn't want to think about how things might have been for Mikleo after that.

Something like this, he thinks.

Something worse.

All he can do right now is wrap his arms around Sorey and hold onto him, because his Shepherd needs an anchor and Zaveid, as flighty as he is, the whispering wind around the world, knows he can bear that pain. He's done it before; for Eizen, for others, for Edna. He had been the one to wear the mantle so no one else had to, and he can do it again. He stole Sorey's pain, the promise of death and murder, and he kept it to himself - and he's glad of his own selfishness, for a moment.

No one deserves to feel as terribly as he knows it feels. No one.

Instead, all he does is hold onto the boy in his arms, broken and sad and needing something to cling to, refusing to lie to him. The only option left is the truth, and that's all he can give. ]

You don't know. Not until you do it.

[ Which doesn't really make sense, but... You keep living until things work out. It's all that's left, isn't it? ]

[It's not exactly helpful, but it's the truth and at least Sorey has that. No- he has more than that. He has everyone who helped him, everyone who put the planet back together in his wake of destruction. He has Nightingale, and Allen, and Stefan. He has Lailah and Dezel, and he has Zaveid; he could have lost the three of them so easily, he's so glad they're-

...oh.

Sorey's arms finally go around Zaveid as he gets it.

You came back.

What Lailah, Dezel and Zaveid are all focusing on- what's the most important to them. Lailah had scolded Sorey for saying that Rose must be more accustomed to loss than he, that it wasn't fair or right of him to say something like that and he'd known in his head that it was wrong but he hadn't known. He'd been too wrapped up in himself to think about it that way, the wound of losing Mikleo still too fresh and bleeding to even begin to try and think of it a different way.

Now he understands. They all lost Mikleo too. They all have lost people so dear to them, it's like losing a piece of themselves. All of them, all of them know what loss is like, but to them, that he came back was a miracle.

Even if he despises what he was, and what he did, he can't deny them that. Not when here, in Zaveid's arms, it dawns on him that he feels the same.

He's lost Mikleo.

He doesn't know if he'll ever recover from that.

But he could have so easily lost Zaveid, lost Dezel, lost Lailah on top of that. He could have so easily watched the three of them fall to malevolence, hellionization, could've lived knowing that he'd torn their souls apart and brandished them like weapons. And they all knew it; they'd fought as hard as they did not just to save themselves, but to save him.

Look at that. The Shepherd, and he's so unwise to things that are so, so obvious in retrospect. He really has been blessed with the seraphim who lend him their strength.]

Thank you, [he whispers, instead of I'm so sorry, instead of please forgive me.] Thank you for getting away from me. [If I had destroyed you too I couldn't live with myself.] Thank you so much, Zaveid.

Edited 2016-09-17 16:36 (UTC)

[ Honestly, holding onto Sorey hurts. It burns, somewhere deep inside of him, and it's as if there's a huge weight on his chest trying to push him down. It's all mental and he knows that, can feel the understanding pressing in the back of his mind, but it still aches. The touch of fear when he reaches out, the way he questions whether or not letting his skin brush Sorey's would even be safe for either of them...

Those are the kinds of things that are going to take time to work out. Forgetting this moment of horror and malevolence isn't going to be easy.

But that's fine. He's old enough, he can manage it.

The problem is that it's going to hurt, and it's going to be hard, because once again they've all been forced to lose something. Once again they have to give something up, and for Sorey... Zavied thinks he's one of the few here who can really understand. Eizen, Dezel, so many others, names and names lined up that he doesn't want to think about - because he'll break. He'll break down and he'll be nothing but a rotting shell, and right now he needs to do something better. He needs to be something better.

Zaveid knows he has to be there to support Sorey, and that's what gives him strength. He has to be the one to stand tall and accept the mantle of pain, the burden of it, and he can do that. He knows he can.

(He has no other choice, but that's a quiet whisper in the back of his mind, now.)

Lifting his hand, he presses his palm flat into Sorey's back, stroking gently before he breathes out. ]

Don't worry about it. That's what I'm around for. [ And then, quieter, a whisper; ] I'll always keep us safe, you hear me? No matter what.

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