(CLOSED) You wouldn't hurt them

[sprent]

WHO: Gela and you
WHAT: h/c (hafterdemon content)
WHEN: After pride, before the fall <- modplot
WHERE: Many different places
NOTES: Reference to & discussion of kidnapping, mistreatment, starvation, trauma, neglect

Starters below. Let me know if you'd like a starter!

Comments

For Gwen

[sprent]

She has been on the boat for one day past the rescue. Gwenaëlle has not asked her when she'll go and she has the impression that she won't until the length of the stay becomes concerning. Gela thinks that, logically, she should go home soon, except that this boat is warm and active, and many people and animals live on it all at the same time. They bustle about, talking, meowing, barking and checking on her. She thinks that when she has to go back to her little room she doesn't share with anybody at all, she will forget what the time is; to reach out to anybody; to go down to the dining hall to get something to eat.

The exhaustion has been fierce but she's clean and fed, so nothing is more pressing than being quiet and restful. Or, that is how it should be right now, but currently isn't because she's gathered in the bathroom to start to try and tackle her hair, to comb it nicely. She didn't have the energy for it yesterday.

Even now, she hits a snag that tests the strength of the comb she is using and slams her fist hard on the vanity. The hair has tangled around it so much that the comb has stuck.

[elegiaque]

It's Guilfoyle and not Gwenaëlle who hears the sound of a thud in the bathroom, but working on the presumption that his shoulders blotting out the light through the doorway cannot possibly improve whatever situation is behind it— it is Gwenaëlle, maybe five or ten minutes later, who knocks lightly upon the door.

“Gela?” is quiet, and with audible, restrained concern. They aren't at bust down the door, but it's not as if she hasn't a key to every room in this thing that locks. “Can I help?”

[sprent]

In the time it takes Gwenaëlle to knock the door, Gela has slumped onto the vanity, face down, fighting the urge to cry about it. Emotions simmer too close to the surface these days. Any good mood is fleeting, tenuous. She sits up again at the sound of knuckles on wood and stands jerkily to open the door.

Gwenaëlle could help. But it is so embarrassing to not know how to do one's own hair. She feels like a child, small and useless.

She has not cried but there is an air of hopelessness about her anyway, in the way she sags at the door and doesn't quite smile once it's open. Despite this drama it seems quite unserious; there is only an air of being overtired, in the same way a toddler becomes come early evening. She says thickly, "Hello. I can't get the comb out."

Which is not 'yes please help me' in those words exactly but in this moment, it means the same thing.

[elegiaque]

It means the same thing.

It's familiar, too, for as volatile a creature as Gwenaëlle has always been; she knows overwrought and overtired like her own skin, so she takes in Gela's dry face and shifting mouth and the comb still in her hair and places her hands lightly on her shoulders, guiding her back to the low, plush stool near to the vanity.

“It only needs a bit of help,” she says, not ungentle but not overly so, either, when sometimes to be treated delicately is simply impossible to cope with. She tilts her head, studying the mats and tangles, and turns away to a cabinet so she can find what she's looking for — scented oils, a hair pick. The shirt tucked into her thick skirts (the both secured by a wide belt that isn't quite a corset and isn't far from it) is too large for her, slides toward a shoulder, and her own hair is loose down her back; a degree of undone that she isn't seen about the Gallows.

But this is her home. And her curls are their own assurance of competent assistance.

“Alright,” a murmur, oiling her hands, first, not Gela's hair, and settling to begin the tedious, knuckle-ruining work of picking tangles out individually to comb from the bottom up. After a moment, “I had a lover with hair the same as mine or yours, once. Our hair tangled in the night and it was a wreck. She cut a chunk of my hair to free herself and you've never seen me in such a state.”

[sprent]

It is nice for Gwenaëlle to pretend that not much work needs to be done, gently taking the burden from her without making her feel terrible for giving it over in the first place. Gela can tell what she's doing and all she does is mumble something incoherent, an attempt at gratitude as she pushes her knuckles into her eyes and kneads.

She knows this work, she has done it for people other than herself. There is something nice about it and she tries to remind herself of this, old feeling while Gwenaëlle oils her hands and finds her pick, picking a point to start from. This little anecdote even succeeds in making her smile, thready and tiny, but there.

It drops off when she makes eye contact with herself in the mirror.

She waits for Gwenaëlle to finish picking through a tangle before she turns her head, so she won't meet her own gaze.

"... How much did she cut? Did you get a new haircut in the same day?"

office hours.

[luaithre]

They're neighbours, turns out. So, there comes a point when Marcus registers the sound of Gela's door opening and closing during some quiet hour, and some days after the demon incursion is dealt with. He stays the impulse to go and make his own presence known. He has, himself, experienced returning home for the first time after some awful thing has happened, dirty and half-starved, and never had a yearning for some colleague to come checking in on him, even in the days following his first bath. So, he doesn't.

It's later, when the same thing happens at their equally adjacent offices that Marcus sets down what he is doing—after a moment, anyway, completing the drafting of some report or another before this is put aside.

Her door is slightly open. Goes to open it. Thinks better. Holds the handle instead so that the light rap of his knuckles on the door doesn't fling it open.

"Baynrac?"

[sprent]

He was right to wait her out.

Yesterday, had she received a gentle knock at her door, Gela would have ducked behind her desk and gone utterly silent until the person knocking gave up and went away again. To-day she feels much sturdier, and has to admit she has been sitting with a stack of paper and scanning each of them intently, one after the other, without getting any further. She says, "Hello," distractedly. "Come in."

Rowntree is good, neutral ground. He'll see her in her chair, one leg tucked underneath of herself. The paper she is holding flops backward in her hand, away from her. She still looks thin, tired, but she's dressed in her typical bright colours, all jewel tones, with hair pulled back from her face. There are a few curls loose around her temples.

He came to see her, but she still says, "Could I ask your advice?"

[luaithre]

He'd entered with his hand still resting on the door handle, as if to communicate some amount of temporariness. Just stopping by, for whatever reason.

Instead, he steps in, draws the door along behind him to shut. A flicking glance around a room he hasn't had reason to linger in, before his study returns to her at her desk. The difference is stark, the demon who'd mimicked her not so long ago and this one seated here—and not because the demon was unconvincing, but because Gela has changed. Certainly, she's eaten less.

"Aye?" he prompts, wandering in a few steps, arms folding comfortably. His coat is back in his office, hanging, but still in respectable layers, a waistcoat and the glint of cufflinks at his wrists.

[sprent]

Yes, he is well put together. Gela is very aware of how different she must look, how much thinner her face is and that she's wearing one more layer than he is, a thick, warm one on top of her long-sleeved blouse. She resists the urge to pluck at anything and gestures at the stack of papers:

"I can't tell what I wrote."

They are not all dated.

... Did she write this missive, this trades communication, this proposal for a new contact? It looks like her writing, to be certain, but it also looked like her face and body and talked with her voice. She can't be sure.

[luaithre]

The study he makes of her is obvious but brief; differences noted, marked, and moved on from.

He approaches the desk at her gesture, now turning that attention to the pages. A harder thing to discern. Idly, Marcus picks up the nearest page in question—not that he has any way of identifying her handwriting or finding a hidden date, just curiousity. Something darkly amusing about a demon forced to do paperwork.

"You might be able to run it by the Diplomacy office," doesn't sound altogether convinced. And then again, "Or burn it, start again. Anything important will present itself in time."

If he is joking, it's extremely dry. The page is set down; the arm of the chair sitting at an angle on the opposite side of the desk is gripped, tugged nearer.

[dissolving]

He doesn't see her.

Suppose he didn't before - not really - but Cedric knows the space that Gela ought to occupy. The empty bench, the gaps in conversation. You could knock it off to the schedule change, to nights awake and lunches at his desk sleeping when he ought to be cramming Orlesian,

But it isn't that. Of course it's not, so whenever she's gone he grabs a plate. Sets it outside the door and counts on his steps to sound the alarm.

(Hopes she hears it. Slipping in eggs can't be doctor's orders.)

It goes on like that for a while.

[sprent]

She finally catches him at it when she has the energy to lunge out of bed upon hearing the footsteps. So, that also takes a while. But soon she is there, standing in the doorway (careful not to stand on the eggs).

She calls, "Wait!"

Because she does not recognise the back end of him at all.

Somebody from the kitchens? Surely not. She takes up the plate and says it again, "Wait, I want to speak with you."

[dissolving]

Cedric startles for the creak of the door - uncertain, despite himself, what to imagine of the turn. Memory lays the stretched ribbons of Vanya's face over softer form.

"'Course," His own expression's nearly arranged by the time he loops back around. A beat, the crinkle of a smile: "If you tell me you hate eggs, I'll be a right ass."

[sprent]

He has a nice smile, a familiar accent. Gela's ears prick up. She is holding the plate and stepping down the hall toward him; please don't mind the woolen blanket drawn around her shoulders like a cape and the thick socks on her feet. "I love eggs. Have you been bringing these to me every day?"

What she really doesn't like is the mushrooms but she isn't going to tell him that. When plates are brought right to her door that's one more trip she doesn't have to take down the stairs and back up them again, something that has become the new worst part of her day.

"Thank you." She is a unwilling to admit to this but she makes herself say it anyway, all awkward and warm. "I'm sorry, but I don't know your name."

[dissolving]

"Cedric," A thumb down the hall. "We're neighbours. Just figured,"

You might be half-starved. It is awkward, isn't it? Stranger ever than the easy way it took her place. He pushes up a sleeve - anything to do with his hands -

"Well, figured I'd like to meet you, some day. When you were ready."

sometime post-demons, before the modplot, tilts hand

[wearyallalone]

He can't fulfill his promise to check on Gela immediately, largely because he spends several days ordered to stay in bed. When he's finally allowed up (not to work, exhorted to take it easy as he moves around the Gallows), finding her isn't his very first stop, but it's not one he delays too long. He assumes he'd have heard of any major turn for the worse while he was in the infirmary, but he knows that a couple of weeks of eating real food again won't undo everything they've been through.

He's still a bit leaner than he was, but he's clean and shaved, wearing fresh clothes. He's retrieved his glasses. He can still see the sharp edges of himself when he passes a reflective surface, but he chooses not to linger too long over them just now. Instead, he's acquired a small lemon cake from the kitchens, wrapped in a clean dish towel, and is taking care not to walk fast enough to get him a glare if anyone who works in the infirmary sees him.

we make the rules now

[sprent]

Being made to stay in bed is very boring; Gela makes them bring her work to her.

(Is this because she feels guilty that Riftwatch exhausts time and energy on her without her having done anything for them in return for a solid month? It's a secret!)

When Vanya sneaks by everybody, she is sat up in bed with a hardcover book in her lap, using it as a makeshift desk. Currently she is bent over her work; her woolen shirt has been cuffed at the wrists so that she doesn't get ink on it, but her pen is stick mid-sentence. With her head bowed, it is hard to tell if she is thinking carefully about what to write, or if she has nodded off.

She is so weary these days.

The sound of footsteps approaching startles her alert again, her head snapping up. Her eyes, wide, searching for the sound before — oh, just Vanya — she relaxes, sinking back against her pillow. Her smile is tired, but true.

"Hello. Good to see you."

[wearyallalone]

He returns the smile. He's aware that to most everyone else, he and Gela must still look alarmingly unwell; he has, however, the privilege of seeing how much better she looks. Tired but clean and fed, and Gwenaëlle must have helped with her hair after all. It's cheering.

"Hello. I don't want to interrupt if you're busy, but I did promise to come check on you." And it's clear a promise from him is not an idle thing. He comes in properly and sets the wrapped parcel on the nightstand. "And I brought you a little something from the kitchens. Whenever you'd like it." He settles in a nearby chair, though lightly at first, as if he half anticipates she might shoo him off so she can keep working.

[sprent]

"Not busy," she confirms, pushing the work away across the bed. Well, yes busy, but not for Vanya, and she's already been told off by the healers for pushing herself to work too soon anyway so it's good to stop every once and a while and let them see you doing nothing or chatting with a friend.

When he sets the little parcel down on the nightstand, she touches his arm gratefully.

"I'm checking on you, too. How are you doing?"

She waits until he's settled before she lifts the parcel into her lap. Something from the kitchens? It does still feel warm. She unwraps the dish towel and beams, closing her eyes to breathe in the warm smell of cake, guessing, "Lemon? Thank you!"

[wearyallalone]

Her delight gets a smile from him, warm and genuine. "Well, I didn't make it, which is truly for the best. But I thought you might have mainly been working up from soup like I was, and I wasn't sure if you'd gotten as far as treats yet."

If he gets a lecture from Strange later, he's willing to brave it.

"And I'm well enough. Not allowed back to my duties yet, but glad I can at least get back on my feet. It feels good to just have the liberty to walk, you know?" He suspects she does, more than anyone beyond the four of them who'd been in those cells could imagine. With a small quirk to his smile, he adds, "Pamplemousse is very put out I haven't taken her flying yet. I'd explain if I could."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse waits until she's healed up enough to shrug her shoulders about any lingering cuts and bruises, and then she takes off to find Gela. "Find" isn't really accurate—Clarisse knows where she is—but it feels like she's finding her anyway, like what she should have been doing already and wasn't.

Not for the first time she thinks about how fucking ridiculous the interior of Gwen's houseboat looks, all hardwood floors and velvet hangings, like some kind of mansion instead of the cramped fiberglass and splinters Clarisse imagines when she thinks the word. But if she was recovering from being abducted by demons and held in some fuckass cave somewhere, she'd want to do it in a place like this.

It's a big enough place that Gela isn't in the first room she checks, or the second, but she lucks out on the third. Gela is thin and looks tired but she's clean and looks uninjured. It's still an odd experience, like one image overlaid onto another, clearer one. For a few seconds it's like Clarisse can still see the demon's face, sagging like a bad mask, but she forces herself to push that away, and rushes to grab Gela in a big hug.

Only after will it occur to her that she shouldn't have done it, that she should have waited, or asked first. In the moment she doesn't think about taking Gela by surprise, or how freaked out it might make her to have someone grab her like that.

"Gela," she hears herself saying, "I'm so—sorry."

[sprent]

The sound of the door opening jolts Gela out of her thoughts, a very welcome rescue. Here, she is checked on a lot. Companionably of course — people are worried about her and Gwenaëlle is being so kind and generous, letting her stay for longer than she's meant to because she recognises that Gela needs something sturdy, constant and safe before she moves herself again, that the houseboat is full but calm, while the Gallows is full and not.

It does mean she hasn't seen many people, though. Least of all her friends.

The sudden appearance of Clarisse makes her blood run cold, a little spasm of shock pressing through her. It's hard not to be worried when that thing was out there, wearing her face and voice, pretending very hard to be her. Gela hasn't heard a thing about how it was found out, did it slip up? Say something terrible to somebody she loves?

Clarisse comes across the room and hugs her so quickly that it makes Gela start, a little flinch that melts away into genuine relief as she relaxes. She leans into her, that strong, reassuring circle of arms.

She doesn't know what to say. She breathes in, and presses her forehead into the embrace, sort of at Clarisse's neck. She holds on, tightly.

[laruetheday]

Gela flinches and it almost makes Clarisse let her go—but just as quickly, she relaxes into it, and Clarisse is glad that she didn't stop. The hug is good for both of them, probably.

In a way it's like rewriting the last time she held Gela's body. What looked like Gela's body.

This time there's no strange sagging, no folding of skin, just a warm and solid weight in her arms. And Clarisse isn't forcing the body against a wall, using her strength to hurt something. She's conscious of the way she's wrapped her arms around Gela, the amount of pressure as she squeezes just tight enough.

"I'm sorry," she says again, blurting it out, guilty. "I should have realized something was wrong much earlier. And when I knew, I should have done something."

[sprent]

Gela shakes her head. She does it still tucked in against Clarisse and it must brush her hair against her nose. Now that she's found herself in a nice hug she's reluctant to actually let go, so she doesn't, not at first.

"No, don't be sorry. Clarisse, you couldn't have known. You weren't ever supposed to know until it was too late. They came down to where we were in the cages and they forced their way into our minds, more than once, whenever they had to get more information. That thing probably knew me better than I knew myself by the end of it."

She immediately wishes she hadn't said that. It sounds repulsive out loud and she shudders, disengaging, hands going nervously to her hair to gather it back in both hands, tugging it into the semblance of a ponytail, but without anything to tie it. At least it is clean, untangled, a bit thinner (a lot of it came out with the matting, but that couldn't be helped). Like the rest of her, really.

"Thank you for coming to see me."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse lets her go, not speaking, her lips pressed together and bloodless, and watches as Gela messes with her hair.

She's disgusted on Gela's behalf for having been violated like that, and she's also trying very hard not to wonder what it means that the demon had gotten so fixated on her. If that had been it, alone, looking for a backup body, or if that had been for... some other reason.

It's not like she can ask.

Instead she only says, "Of course," and finds a spot to sit down so she isn't looming over Gela anymore. All of Gwen's stuff is so fancy, though, all velvet cushions and hanging draperies. She feels like she can't lean on anything or she might ruin it, so she sits up straight.

"I'm sure you're tired," understatement of the year, "but I hope you're coming back to the Gallows soon."