[ OPEN ] I Still Feel Alive

[sulahnan]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Catch-all
WHEN: Drakonis (but other times welcome)
WHERE: Around
NOTES: Should be pretty tame, mention of trauma will ofc be labeled with CW. Starters in the comments.

Well then.

The month of Guardian came and went like a beating: brutal and cruel and over faster than the lasting pain it inflicted. Now, it's Drakonis, and the goal is a return to something resembling normalcy.

Athessa can be found studying and taking lessons with Ser Marcus in the library or in Enchanter Julius' office, snooping around Kirkwall, and trying her best to stay out of trouble around the Gallows. Her late night hypothetical musing via crystal has all but ceased, and gone are the days of icing the floor to skate on socks.

Maybe she could do with some cheering up, or a good tussle.

Comments

who throws a book? [ closed to fitz ]

[sulahnan]

At this odd hour, Athessa is wandering in a smoky haze, hair piled haphazardly atop her head and smoldering joint held loosely between two fingers. She doesn't quite realize it but she's also humming a little tune to herself. It's the kind of thing where you think you're just thinking it but it's actually coming out of your mouth, which is very common with the amount of elfroot she smokes.

But it's kind of hard to miss the book that whizzes past, hurled out of the library by forces unseen, bringing both her socks-and-sandals shuffle and her humming to a petering halt.

She looks at the book, then into the library. "He-llo?"

[technologist]

The library's rarely empty, and it's saying something for the oddness of the hour that it's almost empty when she looks in. Most of the freestanding candles have been moved, hoarded alongside chaotic stacks of books onto an overcrowded table with one conspicuously bare corner. That stack's been relocated, apparently: upended books and loose paper pepper the floor in front of it, scattered in the direction of the door like incriminating buckshot.

Behind it all is Fitz, one hand tightly pressed against his eyes and the other planted on his hip. Difficult to tell if he's more likely to throw another book or start crying. He goes for the third option, blindly answering the uncertain call without bothering to look up.

"Yes," he says, terse, then adds with dubious earnestness: "Sorry."

[sulahnan]

"I take it this one's no good?" She picks up the book and shuffles into the library proper, glancing at the chaos without much of a reaction.

"Wow. It's like a crime scene."

[technologist]

"It's bloody poetry." He looks up, eyes tracking the book's path as if to give it a final scathing look.

"And these shelves are the real crime. That should've been a history book." It was shelved with them, anyway. It probably is history, technically, but it's very annoying and uninformative, so it doesn't count. He seems to become aware of the crime scene she was referring to an awkward beat later.

"I'll tidy up when I'm done."

[sulahnan]

Athessa shrugs. "We don't have an archivist anymore."

Meaning the library is in chaos because of that fact, of course. Mhavos Dalat, a pleasure, was the only one keeping these books in check, and he's gone now.

"Are you...what're you looking for?"

[technologist]

"A way home."

She probably meant books, or subjects, or just something he could feasibly find in this library. And if he's going to go wildly broad with the answer, he should probably say something about closing rifts or stopping the bad guy. He's too tired and annoyed to consider the optics.

Same goes for when he finally turns his focus to her, properly, then loses track of whatever he was about to say in favor of pointing vaguely in her direction.

"You're an elf."

[sulahnan]

She was nodding absently at the broad reasoning he offered, but his observation calls shock and alarm to her face and she reaches for her ears to check that, yep, they're pointy.

"I am?! Oh no, how many lies have I been living?!" All very dramatic and playful, and totally ruined by her laugh at the end. Back to her previously established normal timbre, she nods and lifts the joint in her fingers to take a drag.

"Yep. Name's Athessa."

[technologist]

The theatrics earn an expression so deadpan that it's verging on straight-up dead inside, but the spark of recognition when he hears her name resuscitates it slightly.

"I'm Fitz," he says, absently turning that vague pointing gesture back on himself. "We spoke briefly on the... with the books."

Extremely weird technology. Magic, whatever. Feels like a much worse version of Yahoo! message boards.

[sulahnan]

Ah! Her own spark of recognition raises her brows.

"Oh, you're the one Sabine was trying to dupe," she says, as if that's his entire identity thus far. But back to the books at hand, Athessa looks down at them and reads a few of the titles--as many as she can in a reasonable amount of time, anyway.

"Have you met Tony? I think he's also looking into rift stuff and how to get home."

Idly, as if it's not a weird thing, she opens the book of poetry Fitz had thrown and fetches a pressed flower from between its pages, then sets the book among the mess.

lost in the inbetween [ closed to deimos]

[sulahnan]

Maybe she shouldn't have sought him out. Maybe she should have gone to someone else, or no-one at all. Let the pain fester and rot inside of her like she'd done for thirteen years already, what's the worst that could happen?

Maybe the best place she can be is with him. He always managed to hold her together when she's falling apart at the seams. Makes her feel like something when falling apart doesn't feel like anything at all.

It doesn't matter what she should or shouldn't do, because she finds him somewhere away from prying eyes and grasps for the comfort she seeks, only within reach because he happens to be sitting down. She kisses him, heedless of whatever he was doing before, desperate to feel normal again but so many months this side of normal that it's hard to describe exactly what it is and how it should feel. Does it feel like her fingers curling under the strap of his armor? Or threading into his hair? Does it feel like caving in on yourself, or being an open wound in the chill air?

Maybe it's like tasting tears before feeling them rolling down your cheeks.

[hemitheoi]

It's not the first time she's found him and kissed him. Out of the blue, no warning at all, just her lips on his with eagerness.

But this? This is nothing like anything else they do. She cries, yes, in the middle of it when he's overwhelmed her, half-mad as he is in that moment where he savours it and he knows now she craves.

She didn't come to him cry. If she is desperate for his kiss it is because he made her desperate. Not... not this weeping, this cloying softness that isn't right. She cries and enjoys herself.

The book is discarded from his hands and he pulls back with his confusion. Something is off, something is not right. Why is she doing any of this? "What are you-"

But she's kissing him again, and far be it for him to turn her down. Pulling her into his lap with the next press, if this is what she wants, this has always been their arrangement.

[sulahnan]

Her shoulders hunch with instinctive panic as soon as his hands are on her, heart leaping into her throat and choking her breaths into shallow gasps and she breaks the kiss as suddenly as she started. Her hands have relinquished their holds on hair and leather, having moved to stop his touch without her bidding them.

"I--" Was it a mistake, to think she'd find comfort here? She swallows thickly, trying to loosen her heart's grip at the same time she's letting go of his hands. His touch isn't the one she's afraid of, the one she loathes to remember. Athessa rests her forehead against Deimos' and squeezes her eyes shut. Breathe. Stop crying. There's safety here.

Is there safety here? This isn't what they do.

"I'm sorry," she starts to step away, brows knit in consternation.

[hemitheoi]

Something is wrong - something is very wrong. If he had never seen her other expression before, that smile, that beaming light from her eyes, this was brand new as well. When she pulls away, he watches her face like he watches a target. Learning every crevice of that scrunched up expression like it might reveal this problem to him.

Because he knows pain, he knows sadness, he has caused it in others often. But...

They're out in the open here, and he trusts that even less. Now isn't the place to ask, or at least, he would hate to be seen like this by anyone. So he does the next best thing he thinks matter, and would prefer to be given. He curls an arm under her legs, one around her back and lifts her. "Don't talk if it's not what you want."

[sulahnan]

Athessa struggles uselessly for half a second until her rational mind takes over for the animal instinct again and her body stills. It's not quite relaxed, still wound tight as a spring, but not resisting.

And she's trying really really hard to be okay with this new situation but--

"Deimos, please put me down."

[hemitheoi]

He comes to a halted stop. His feet landing evenly as he looks down to where she is tucking into his bare chest. Frowning at her.

"But you can barely hold yourself up."

This was how it worked, between them. It always had been. They fill whatever the other one is not quite capable of. He gives her pain, she gives him control. They fit, perhaps not like puzzle pieces, but shards of glass from a once whole mirror, but they fit, and largely, it is unspoken.

Why is she speaking of it now?

[sulahnan]

He's right. She doesn't want him to be right, but he is. Purely by being who he is, Deimos is the antithesis of Devigny, and by instinct alone is preventing her from shattering. If he put her down, she would have to walk, and if she walked, she'd want to run, and if she ran from him, that would be wrong. It would feel too much like being hunted, and he has never hunted her. He never has to.

Athessa looks at his face with wide eyes, seeing him, fixating on that face, and letting everything else dull. She loosens ever so slightly.

"Tell me I'm safe." It's as much a plea as it is a command, and acquiescence.

[hemitheoi]

He knows this place.

This cold and cruel place. Where there is no safety, where there is no forgiveness. There is not even good and bad, light and dark, dawn and dusk.

There is only fear. There is only the fear that is coming. That rises up like a wave against the black, it swallows you, makes your skin heavy and your bones brittle. Where you cannot know who and what you are anymore except that fear. A horrified slugged feeling of mire and muck.

He leans forward, his forehead to hers. He cannot tell her safe. He does not know safe. What he does know - is the one thing he is.

"You have better than safe. You have me."

[justashotaway]

Laura has been stuck in her room for too long; even with excursions out to learn how to plait hair, she's grown bored with everything around her. Fortunately, the grippe has finally loosened its...well, grip. And that's how she ends up climbing the walls of the Gallows on a cloudy afternoon, trying to make her limbs remember what to do. It feels mildly dangerous in a way she's not used to--her body still doesn't feel quite like it usually does--but there's only one way to fix that.

And there's Athessa, up at the top. Laura pauses once she's hauled herself onto the rooftop, trying to slow her breathing. (This should not wind her.) But then she walks over, curious. "Do you still have the grippe?"

[sulahnan]

"I would say no," Athessa ventures, sitting with her forearms draped over bent knees. "But I've been trying to muster the energy to climb down for about an hour so..."

On the mend, but with lasting effects, then. The occasional cough, wheeze, some hoarseness still but nowhere near as bad as not being able to speak above a whisper.

"How're you feelin?" She swaps her joint--which doesn't really help the cough even if it soothes the aches--to her right hand and pats the roof beside her with her left.

[justashotaway]

"My arms are weak," she responds, taking a seat beside Athessa. The scent of elfroot is strangely reassuring today--it smells like a friendship, not only smoke. "I did not know being sick was so frustrating."

[sulahnan]

"Yeah I don't think I understood the extent of it, either," she nods. Sure, she's been sick before, but not this bad. It's one thing to get the sniffles, and another to barely be able to get out of bed. "Have any weird fever dreams?"

[justashotaway]

Laura shakes her head, drawing her knees up to her chest. Nothing feels quite as weak when she's compact like this. "Does that happen?"

[sulahnan]

"Sometimes. I thought I was dreaming that a spirit or something was taking care of me at one point," She laughs out the smoke of a light drag. "Turns out it was just Lady Asgard checking up on me."

[justashotaway]

This, Laura thinks, is the nicest idea of spirits she's heard of outside the stories she's read. A pity it wasn't true. "Lady Asgard is kind. She leant me a dress."

[sulahnan]

"Yeah, she's--" The first thought is of how Lexie talked to her in the hot spring. "--nice. Worries too much, I think."