faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

She realizes she's awake when her fists hit wood, a piece splintering into her knuckle. It takes a moment to reorient herself: all six claws gouging the door to her room, no one attacking, only Laura herself kept off the ground by the thickness of the wood she leapt at. Without much care, she makes the claws disappear, dropping back to the stone floor, and feels over her front, just in case.

Nothing. Deepstalker did not die that way. She cannot wear his blood when she killed him months ago. It is a dream, the kind she has heard people talk about lately: someone wanders in and sees things, things they recall after. Something in the Fade is broken, someone said. Which means--she freezes.

Laura hurries back to her bedside table and grabs her crystal, pacing around and around in the small space, and sends a message to Athessa. Her voice is still sleep-thickened, rumbling like a growl. "Do not tell anyone."

Athessa's crystal had been hanging from the corner of her bunk, and when she fell, it fell too. Without looking away from the middle-distance (a.k.a. the ceiling), she reaches over and grabs it.

"Right back at ya, kiddo," She scrubs a hand over her face and leaves it covering her eyes. "But it's--that's not how it happened anyway so..."

"I know." There is too much inside her suddenly, lightning moving through her flesh, but if she leaves her room, she might be overheard. The temptation to climb up to the top of the Gallows and breathe in the cold winds blowing off the sea must be resisted.

Instead, she circles her room, hardly noticing anything except the feel of walking. And she waits for Athessa to say something else, if she will; her own thoughts are trapped someplace between her mind and her mouth, refusing to come free in a way that does not hurt.

"It's not really anything I want to talk about, anyway, but--" Finally picking herself up off the floor, Athessa pauses to kick free of the covers and dig through her pack for elfroot and papers. "You don't have to tell me about what happened to you if you."

She hopes it comes across nicer than she thinks it sounds. Laura can talk to her, of course she can. After that ordeal...Athessa's probably one of the few people in Riftwatch who'd understand. Really understand. But she can also not talk to her, and Athessa won't hold it against her.

Laura does not know what to expect, in this hazy middle-of-the-night conversation; she is still working the sliver out of her skin, still trying to remember how to be awake and listen and speak. She might be asked questions. She might be shouted at. Everything is possible, and all of it raises her hackles.

Being told she does not have to say anything, however, is a surprise. Laura keeps walking, keeps digging at the wood in her hand--fingernails here, not claws--and squints down at the crystal, as if that might make everything clear.

She does, she knows, have to say something. The only communication they have is sound. Her voice is that selfsame snarl, more breath coming into it this time. She is breathing faster than before, walking around and around, and she does not know why. "I killed him. Not like that."

She swears under her breath. Not at Laura, or about what she said, but because her own hands are shaking and it's making it hard to roll this joint as easily as she usually can. But she manages, and pulls on a sweater and hauls the blanket off of her bed. Sighs.

"Bastard deserved it," she replies finally. Joint tucked safely behind her ear, blanket balled up in her arms, she starts walking, leaving her bed and the other dreamers behind. "I...dammit. I think what happened to me got mashed up with what happened to you. Different time and place and different bastard. And without you there to kill him before he--" She lets out a frustrated noise and sniffs, scrubbing at her face again. Fucking tears, who said you could spill out like this?

"I'm going to the roof to smoke."

She isn't sure if this is a dismissal or an offer; it sounds like both at once. All she's certain of is that, for all she's found uses for the crystals, they're frustrating her beyond belief right now. Every breath, short and shallow and full of things she can't seem to place, is a reminder that she can't smell what any of this means. They're only words, small and useless.

Laura ends up going to the roof, too, albeit in the least sensible way possible. Climbing the stone walls, leaving little gouges where she stabs at them with her claws, kills away some of the manic energy kicking through her, until she heaves herself up over the edge of the roof--the right roof, there are a few choices--and finds Athessa.

"Where were you?" she asks, without thinking to clarify what she means. For her, it is obvious: if she is not Nevarran, and she clearly isn't, she must have been someplace else.

Athessa is sitting cross-legged, blanket around her shoulders, lit joint between her fingers. Her hands aren't shaking as much anymore, but it's not the elfroot that stilled them. She climbed up the walls, too.

"Here," she says in answer, and then, to clarify: "Kirkwall."

The offending city looms in the distance, across the water, and she glares in its direction. Perhaps she should have never come back. Perhaps there's some purpose to the pain she has yet to see. Perhaps that's bullshit and there was no reason or purpose or meaning behind any of it.

"I was fifteen and alone and the sonuvabitch wanted to test out the goods before buying me. Called me Lowtown trash and... said that bullshit about rabbits." More tears get angrily scrubbed away and she takes a drag. The haze that makes it so much easier to let emotions wash over you cannot come soon enough.

Laura growls at that, looking out at the city, with all its dark buildings and occasional pinpricks of torches. The idea that anyone would say those things, do those things--there is no surprise, but it still hisses through her like a cold gust of wind to think of anyone speaking to Athessa that way.

"That is elfroot," she says, as a matter of confirmation, and perhaps as a request to explain. Athessa always smells a little like elfroot, from what she can remember, along with all the other scents that cling to her--and there are always several--and this seems to explain why.

(And, admittedly, as she curls up, knees hugged to her chest against the cool night air, it's better than speaking of the man that raped Athessa. She wants to know more--desperately, much more so than she consciously realizes--but she does not want to ask.)

"It is," she confirms, and before she goes on in explaining herself, she adjusts the blanket so there's more slack on one side and holds it up with her arm. An invitation to share, if Laura doesn't mind sitting so close. "When you grind it up fresh it makes a healing poultice, something about the sap or juice or whatever it is makes things heal faster. Dried, you can smoke it and it..."

How to explain? Athessa breathes out another cloud to give herself time to think about that.

"It makes things feel... easier. Lets your thoughts come one at a time instead of all at once. And feelings are less confusing because you can kinda look at them at arm's length instead of them bashing you over the head before you can see it coming."

Laura moves over, huddling closer until her shoulder bumps against Athessa's. Sharing a blanket reminds her of Matthias; it reminds her of Kiden, and of telling secrets. It is not at all objectionable.

Neither is the brief lesson on elfroot. She knows it is useful for healing, has used it for herself in that way, on wounds she knew would take too long to heal on their own, even with her body's considerable abilities there. But no one has ever told her it's possible to smoke it, nor what happens when one does.

She regards the bit of paper and herb, wrapped over and over on itself, and frowns. And feelings are less confusing-- "May I try it?"

Barely a question, nearly a demand, and not on purpose.

She raises her eyebrows in brief surprise, and nods.

"Sure. Try not to suck on it or something, you'll probably end up coughing and it won't feel good. Breathe in like normal, hold it in, and breathe out like normal." The joint is passed, and Athessa looks out over the water again.

The onset of the haze feels like wrapping a thick, warm scarf over your head and tying it under your chin, with only your face exposed. Tingling slightly in the sinuses, especially when the smoke is breathed out through the nostrils. Athessa likes to do that. It makes her feel like a dragon.

Start at the head, radiate down. It hits your limbs and they feel heavy, but unrestrained. Moving isn't harder, it's just more solid, deliberate. No second-guessing or over-thinking, just doing.

"After Devigny was done with me he dumped me off at a brothel. Real chummy with the bawd, so I guess I wasn't the first," Probably wasn't the last, either.

The advice is wisely given--Laura, having never smoked before, only observed others in doing so, would have ended in a fit of coughs otherwise. She breathes in, and smoke comes with the air, and holds her breath probably too long before letting it out. And then she holds the joint up before her face, staring at it with some mild fascination. "How long does it take?"

When do feelings stop being complicated? How long until she's what other people seem to be? Soon, she hopes. She hopes it'll be soon.

More importantly, what Athessa says...Laura shakes her head, the thought of Devigny intrusive. She pictures him like Deepstalker, lacking an alternative, and hopes he is dead. "How long were you there?"

"Not long," is the answer to the first question, and to the second: "Long enough to drive away customers. Worthless girl, I said no biting!"

Her chuckle is a little hollow; a balm against how good her impression is of the old woman. In truth, it wasn't her spirit that prompted the bawd to let her go. Athessa was always trying to convince Ciara to run away, leave Kirkwall behind and go wherever they could dream to go. Ciara refused. Whether because she was scared of having nothing, or because she was scared of the madame...It's hard to say.

"I left, and they let me go." She looks at Laura, mostly to gauge her reaction to the root, but also to gauge her reception of this information. The last thing she wants to do is overload the girl with baggage.

Laura can't bring herself to laugh, even though she knows it's expected that she makes some kind of response. She remembers too clearly similar experiences, the one time Deepstalker had thought to have someone to pay to hurt her instead of the other way around. She does not want to remember any of it.

She's curling tighter in on herself, glancing over sharply when she sees movement at the corner of her eye. Athessa. It is just Athessa, the way she knows it must be, but the muscles in her shoulders tighten anyhow.

"They did not want you." It's said as flatly as most things that come out of Laura's mouth, but there's envy behind it. She offers the joint back to Athessa, since it is hers.

"I was more trouble than I was worth. They couldn't afford me," she corrects simply, and takes the joint. She can feel Laura tense beside her, hear the subtle difference in her breathing and, with some focusing, her heartbeat.

Athessa puts a hand on Laura's back beneath the blanket, gambling on whether or not it'll set her off.

"Breathe, Laura. You're ok. Breathe in, count to four--" She pairs Ciara's words from so long ago with a gentle motion to give Laura something to focus on. Up with the inhale, down with the exhale, in through the nose, out through the mouth. "--breathe out, count to four."

"I am already breathing," she mutters, her spine going rigid with Athessa's touch. The elfroot has not worked; everything still feels exactly as it did a moment before. If anything, the world feels sharper than it was a breath ago, the taste of smoke still wooden on her tongue.

But she does breathe as directed, mostly because, when given the choice of following an order, she takes it. In, counting silently to four, then out, and silently to four. She does not think she feels better, only distracted, momentarily, from the night pressing in at her.

Welp. She shrugs and looks away.

"Sorry. Just trying to help," She breathes in smoke for a four-count, and holds it just as long before blowing it out and angling it away from Laura. "It doesn't work for everyone." It applies both to the elfroot and to her attempt at soothing an anxious soul.

Athessa doesn't say anything else, choosing instead to close her eyes and just be for a moment or two. The air is cold, the blanket warm. The press of Laura's shoulder against hers is a comfort as much as the tears drying on her cheeks is not.

She keeps breathing and counting, counting and breathing, waiting for something better than what she has at that moment. If it works or doesn't work, she isn't sure. All she knows is that she does not feel worse, exactly. Only...aware, perhaps. Too much so.

"I do not want to be this," she whispers, her chin hard between her knees. This focused misery right now, everything else that she is the rest of the time. Laura Kint, with claws and scars and a tongue that doesn't like speaking and a past someone knows all of.

"What do you want to be?" She asks. She's felt the same way often enough.

Her eyes squeeze shut. "I don't know."

Athessa nods. "Me neither."

"When does it stop?" she murmurs. And then, in the interest of clarity, she gestures at the joint. "When does it make things easier?"

"It should've kicked in by now... If you don't smoke any more it'll wear off in less than an hour." Her voice is soft, gentle, and she hopes reassuring. "It depends. Works differently on different people. And doesn't work on others."

"Why?" If there something she can do to make it...not like this, she guesses, not like she's a cat ready to pounce at shadows, she wants to do that. Some way she can have what Athessa described, that sense of being able to see things slowly enough to understand them.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject