(closed) honey honey

[strangel]

WHO: Hanzo & Helena
WHAT: two emotionally healthy people being emotionally healthy together
WHEN: post Tevinter
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: violence

Helena is skulking in the shadows. This is not a great surprise. Being near the training arena, watching and lurking, these are all things to be reasonably expected of her. Helena taking interest in people she likes, that is perhaps also not a surprise, but just how whether or not she likes someone is to be gauged is rather more complicated.

She spies him, brooding and severe, and it makes her frown. More frowns than usual, on Hanzo. More heaviness and weighing down on the shoulders, and she spends a little time watching before she descends. Lands on the dirt with legs crouched, fingers splayed on the ground, a feral creature moving through the dust.

"Hanzo. What is troubling?"

Comments

[eruit]

The dragons shift as soon as she reaches to touch them, moving to make it easier, letting her fingers trace down the shape of them. They're not quite as corporeal as they could be, not like touching a real, living animal, but they can still be felt. Hanzo knows from experience, knows from a near lifetime of having them so close and near that it was like having a constant friend in your mind, and there's something of a warm, soft smile that settles on his face as he watches Helena.

They had not been seen nor touched by anyone since his brother had died. He had not permitted it.

"This one," he touches the nose of one, who wiggles, "is Tomo. The other is Kenji." A pause, something like colour on his cheeks. "I named them when I was quite young." Both their names speak of the awe he held for them - names meaning intelligence, second son, chosen. He puts the bow to one side and sighs. "They are my friends."

[strangel]

"Tomo," repeated softly, as she tickles her fingers under its belly, the strange sensation of seeing something and yet it being not entirely there, as though she were running her fingers through smoke. She does the same for the other. "Kenji."

A little nod, determined, focused. She will remember these.

"They are very beautiful." Helena watches them with fascination, the caution of before giving away to a small, delighted smile as they respond to Hanzo. Her gaze flickers back to Hanzo, her hand still resting on his shoulder, and the smile softens. "You are strange man, Hanzo."

It sounds like a compliment, from how she says it.

[eruit]

They are something like his brothers now, Hanzo thinks, or kinsmen if nothing else. The dragons, his spirits, are all he has left of anything that might remind him of home, that might remind him of what he had been once. He had never allowed himself to use any of his magic, but these... These kind, devoted spirits... He had not been able to give them up, no matter what damage he had done to them.

Tomo and Kenji are good. They are more than he deserves.

Both dragons move and curve around her, settling against her, preening and almost chittering. It's Hanzo they speak to - they rarely use words with anyone else - but they're happy to curl and twist and to introduce themselves. They can sense from Helena something similar to Hanzo, the same confusion, and they want to help.

His honour is healing. Kenji is weaker than his brother, and that is obvious, and Hanzo knows why.

"Strange?" He smiles, almost. "I have been called worse."

[strangel]

This is far from anything Helena has seen before. She can imagine the nuns or Tomas or Maggie, how they would say this is devil work, but she can't help the delighted smile that comes as Tomo and Kenji twist around her. She chitters back, the imitation awkward at first, before she practices it more, to try and make the right dragon sounds.

Kenji looks smaller, slighter, and she rubs under his chin. Better for hiding, this one, although it's hard to imagine a spirit dragon needing to hide. Even so she asks, with a teasing note, "Are you the sneaky dragon?"

A glance back to Hanzo, and her smile softens. "Strange is good. If we are not strange, we are all the same."

[eruit]

The dragons are something that Hanzo is so used to that he cannot imagine not having them, or for people to find them strange or frightening. He is so used to spirits, to spirit magic - it is what he was trained in, what he would have specialised in if he was given the chance. If he hadn't run and fled before he had been properly trained. If he hadn't... Well.

The past should be left in the past, even if it haunts him, makes him feel sharp and bitter and all edges.

"They are both sneaky. No one has noticed them so far," Hanzo smiles fondly, reaching as Tomo curls around him, Kenji choosing to dance around Helena's fingers and play with her, catlike and happy.

Softening, he nods carefully, watching her with some fondness colouring him. "It would be terrible if we were all the same."

[strangel]

A nod of agreement, even if there is something— uncomfortable.

You are the same as all the others, Tomas had shouted at her, when she thought to spare Sarah's life, to say that her sestra was not the same as the other clones. It would be terrible if we were all the same feels like it so easily cut into the meat of who she is, of her sisters, than it being about the type of person she is.

(It would be terrible if all people were killers, like her.)

Her smile falls away a little, as she focuses on Kenji, teasing him by feigning going one way and moving the other, tapping at his snout with her fingertips. "I am sneaky also, Kenji."