faderift | and I'm haunted

Entry tags:

and I'm haunted

WHO: Hercules & Leliana & Ruby & whoever would like a thread with them 8Db
WHAT: a catch all for February-March;
WHEN: the next monthish :|b
WHERE: Skyhold, Emprise, maybe somewhere else.
NOTES:
1. individual starters in el commentos
2. specific themes and warnings will be dropped into subject lines as necessary.
3. if you are threading with Leliana it would be amazing if you could reply to this post re: information she could know about your character.
4. if we have discussed doing a thread but there isn't a starter here, feel free to just barge in and set one up! otherwise prod me and I can add it asap, I have a to-do list but I am also scatterbrained ;u;
5. I'm not doing open prompts this time for Leliana, but if you would like a thread with Leliana, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me! I am just trying to do custom things because she is in a particular state of mind, at present.
6. I am sorry there are so many notes

apparently I am being pretentious this month

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"I've slept worse places," Emma says, and that's not totally untrue. It'll make her miss her bug, but as long as there's a place to shut her brain off for a little while, she's not going to complain it doesn't come with a bed. She doesn't have a leg to stand on complaining about the food, either. She's not sure that Dark Ones can be affected by food poisoning. Probably not.

She tries her best to be good company as they wait for their food and make their way through it. Emma isn't particularly hungry, either, but she gets through half her plate before she gives up. No stubborn desire to finish it and delay the inevitable seems to be enough, in the end when Ruby is finished she'd rather just make it to the barn and admit the truth. Whatever the consequences will be, it's better to have it over and done with, so she knows where she stands. If she is going to have to get used to relying on herself again instead of hoping for a chance at a partner through all this. She's used to doing things on her own, and she wouldn't blame Ruby for not wanting to keep a Dark One close to her.

When they make it to the barn, it's dark and a little cold. Emma knocks the hood down from over her head and looks around miserably, but if it's all they can find it's better than nothing at all. She's silent for a few paces, trying to figure out the right place to start. "Ruby, when you said that you left after we got our memories back, after the coronation... That's not the last thing I can remember. It's not your fault I'm here, there wasn't any magic bean involved. The last thing I can remember is the darkness escaping from Gold and... " she fades off for a moment, closing her eyes. "And I tethered it back to the dagger to keep it from attacking Storybrooke."

It's saying the truth without actually saying it. It's hard to admit it in straight terms, and yet her expression seems to say it all. I'm the Dark One. I'm a monster. And you should be afraid of me. She's already afraid of herself.

The food felt like it stuck to her ribs on the way down, and not in an comforting, warming, filling sort of way so much as the possible risk that it might keep her lungs from functioning. She's not even entirely sold on there being any actual meat in there, but then, maybe that was safer. The tension and distraction in Emma might have been the worst part, had her forcing down her own food like it might actually help somehow.

When they make it to the barn, it feels safer. It's cold as Hell outside, but she burns warmer than most people, and she's already checking out the hay before tipping her head up to the loft. Cleaner, she thinks, and less easy for someone to try and sneak up on them, if they pull the ladder up with them, so she's clambering up and starting to arrange the hay when Emma talks. Even her first words have her looking up sharply, just trying to grasp what the repercussions of that might be, but--

But all that gets forgotten.

"The darkness-- but he's the Dark One." Maybe that's stupid. Maybe that's obvious, but this is all new to her, and Ruby looks at Emma with quiet bewilderment as she tries to unravel the thread of this conversation and the reasoning. Gold was the Dark One, and the dagger was important, essential, and if Emma bound it back...

Ruby frowns, perplexed and concerned. "You protected Storybrooke. That's what you do."

That's not all though, is it? Because if it was, Emma wouldn't have her eyes shut and she wouldn't look like that. I tethered it back to the dagger, she said, and it's like Red can feel the blood draining out of her face as she drops the hay and moves closer to Emma. Her hand reaches out, slow, before her fingers lightly brush Emma's wrist. "Hey." So quiet and soft, before her fingers wrap around Emma's wrist.

Emma saved the town and them and each of them individually, over and over. Red's not even really sure that she's understanding this properly, but there's a feeling of dread in her gut that won't shift, and the way Emma's looking feels too familiar, too much like a reflection of how she used to see herself. "Hey. You're the Saviour, remember? And you'll always be Emma."

The barn is definitely more rustic than anything she's been in recently but making the best of a bad situation is far from new to her. The loft seems surprisingly sweet smelling, compared to the stink of the lower level. She's too distracted to help make their bed, though, and soon enough Ruby is too distracted, too.

"He was." She's cutting parts out of this story. That he was dying, that the darkness was killing him and soon it'd take him over with no human left, just a vessel for dark evil magic. In the end she doesn't think she has to. The most important part is that Rumpelstiltskin is no longer the Dark one. She's taken on that responsibility, and considering how close she'd been to falling to darkness before it even happened, she can't say she's completely confident in being strong enough to handle it.

She laughs a little bitterly about Red's insistence. She's the savior. That's just a word to Emma, now. She's a loophole that Gold used to his advantage. She's a blank slate scrubbed of all her darkness and she still couldn't manage to be the perfect daughter her parents wanted her to be. She opens her eyes at the touch to her wrist, and the pain seems to seep deeper when she lets Ruby look her in the eye.

"Not if the darkness wins, I won't be." Right now she's holding on to the threads of herself, and it feels like every moment they slip a little more through her fingers. "The darkness, it... it talks to me. It's so much, Ruby, I'm not sure I can control it. I've already used it on accident." And it felt good. "I'm not sure it's safe for you to be near me. Anybody, really." It's classic Emma, isn't it, to pull away from people? She's always got a reason for it, and sometimes, it even sounds like a good reason.

"Don't say that." Very quiet, but very urgent. "You can control it, and it won't win."
Her voice sounds pained, and the hand at Emma's wrist slips to catch her hand, instead, gaze beseeching. "You have a good heart. The darkness will never eclipse that, not ever."

Red knows what it is to have darkness in her, to be drowning in her own dreams, in the nightmare of what she is. There's a lot about the Wolf she still doesn't know or understand, because she's not been around others in so long, and her time with them was so brief. How can you learn an entire culture and all about yourself in so short a time, especially when you think you have forever?

No. Shaking her head, Red is insistent, voice low. "I believe in you, and I know what's it's like to suddenly have this whole other part of yourself that you never understood. If there's anyone who can do this, it's you."

Shaking her head, Red just-- no. No way. No way. "Emma Swan, if you think that is going to be enough to scare me away, you have got another thing coming."

She's not even sure how to articulate this. It goes beyond Snow being her best friend and Emma being Snow's daughter. It goes beyond being a monster and knowing how it feels to be at war with yourself, as if you were on fire. Emma believed in her when she was some hapless girl who was only good at pouring coffee. She believed in her when she was a screw up, and maybe in her eyes that won't even compare to changing into the Dark One, but to Ruby that had meant everything. Emma was her lemur. "And don't even try to get away from me when I'm sleeping. I'd find you, and then I'd be mad."

"There's a lot you missed, Ruby." So much has happened since her brother's coronation and so little of it is good. She let her emotions completely destroy her control of her magic at Ingrid's taunting, she'd killed a woman to protect Henry without knowing that she couldn't hurt him in the first place. Without Regina with her, Lily might have been another casualty, too, and for what? To protect her family was a handy excuse, but the reality was she was angry enough that she didn't want to be the good person and try and do things the hard way anymore.

Ruby probably hasn't seen Emma cry often, yet there's a burn at her lashline she would love to ignore but can't quite. She presses the heel of her free hand at her eye, almost like she can force the tears back through sheer determination. She'd been so sure about all this in the moment. That was when she thought she would have her whole family to help her. That was before she had felt how easy it was to slip. Now, she's not sure. Now she's pretty terrified.

"I'm going to try." She has no other choice. Emma is not a person to give up, no matter the odds. That didn't make any of this much easier. She couldn't say she was sure it'd work out, anymore, but that didn't mean she was going to give in before she gave it everything she had. She just wasn't as confident now.

She laughs, a little brokenly, at the determination that she not run off. Maybe it was tempting, maybe a part of her considered it... the rest of her knows what that feels like. She won't leave without saying goodbye. If she's learned anything about being left behind, at least she knows it's a little easier when she knows she'll be alone. "I won't leave." Not unless she has to.

"And there's a lot you don't know about me - about Red, specifically." Her voice is gentle, even if she's persistent. What, like being told no, you're wrong! is going to help anyone? No way. Sometimes the soft approach is better. Several decades with Granny and her bulldozer effect had gotten that well and truly in her skull, alongside the importance of explanations rather than plain, arbitrary seeming instructions.

Now, if there's one thing Red has come to learn over the past several decades, it's that the Charmings cry easily. She's pretty sure Snow and she had cried on each other multiple times within days of knowing each other. David, he was a crier too, it was amazing. Emma was different. She was a Charming through and through, but she'd had to hold herself together so different, had dealt with an entirely different world and set of risks and dangers. The number of times Ruby has seen Emma cry was way below the standard Charming threshold.

And she's not stupid. She can smell the salt of tears before Emma even tries to wrestle with them, and she inches forward. So much for holding her hand, that's just not going to cut it. Not when her friend is hurting and struggling like this, and not when Emma thinks that she's some kind of monster. Red leans forward, one arm catching around Emma's waist and the other around her shoulders as Red leans into the embrace.

"Yeah, you are. And I'm gonna help. I've got your back," Ruby murmurs, squeezing Emma a little as she rests her chin on the blonde's shoulder. "I promise."

"I guess that's true." She hasn't had the chance to really sit down and talk with Ruby since the curse broke. She knows slim details but they're all from Henry's book, not from the source herself. She'd like to know more, and maybe this is the silver lining in a shitty situation. Emma had thought of Ruby as a friend, before all this. Maybe it's a chance to get closer again. Emma would really, really like to have a friend. She doesn't have much of those, not really.

Emma does cry on occasion, when pushed to the limit. She'd cried when she thought she had lost Henry, not once but twice. She'd cried in the broken shell of her nursery, forced to stare down the fact that Snow had given up just as much as she'd lost. It's happened more and more lately, but if there was ever a reason to be overwhelmed, it had to be this. To be facing down an unbelievable weight of darkness was intimidating for anyone. She didn't regret doing it, not even now. Regina deserved her happy ending, and Emma had taken on the curse to protect all of Storybrooke, she'd never regret that. It was just a lot more of a burden than she'd realized in the heat and fear of the moment.

She's at least a little surprised by the hug. Not many people offered those to her, at least, not outside of her family. She's gotten a hell of a lot better at accepting them than she used to be, though. She curves her arms past Ruby's side to press at her back as her head hits her shoulder. It cements the height the brunette has on her, that the top of her head ends up near her ears instead of looking her right in the eye.

"Okay," she agrees in a watery tone, and that doesn't sound like a hell of a sentimental answer, but it is. Emma isn't good at showing what she feels, most of the time. It means everything that Red wants to be there for her, though, even at her worst.

Part of her wonders how much Emma does know, from Henry and his book, from Snow and Charming. She doubted Granny would really talk about it much, when she knows her grandmother has a good deal of her own guilt surrounding Red's discovery of Wolfstime, but sometimes Granny said enough with her silences.

"Okay," Ruby agrees, and probably if they weren't hugging, Emma wouldn't be able to hear her.

Red's content to just stay here and keep on hugging Emma for as long as she needs. Maybe it's as long as she needs, too, because she feels like she's been alone so long, moving in crowds and working in the diner and being part of a community that she didn't belong in, where she didn't fit, and where she could leave, and her absence would be unnoticed. It's hardly been any time at all since she left Storybrooke, but her arms tighten around Emma and she holds onto her tight, and Red honestly couldn't say for whom she was holding on harder; for her own need, or Emma's, for the aches that tormented either or both of them.

Eventually she eases back, and if she happened to blink a few times, it has nothing to do with her maybe being a little watery-eyed, herself. Phew, okay. Keep it together, Lucas.
"You should get some sleep. I'll take first watch." Or she might just watch the whole night and let Emma get some damn rest, because she seems worn down to the very bone. Becoming the Dark One... if anything was going to be draining, Ruby guessed, it was that, and she's packing together some of the hay to make it denser and more springy, all the better to lie on.

No, nobody has told her terribly much. On one hand, there's not been a lot of time between one disaster and the next. And on the other, Emma would rather hear those stories from Red herself. She knows how it feels to have people focus on her past instead of her present. She doesn't intend to do that to anyone else. If Ruby wants to tell her about what life was like in the Enchanted Forest, she's here to listen. As it is, knowing the person she is now, both Red and Ruby combined, is more than enough to make Emma feel a little better in a moment she'd felt quite thoroughly lost.

She probably shouldn't allow herself to hold on as long as she does. Yet there's a lot of comfort in someone drawing her close when perhaps the sane option would be to push her away. Emma seeps in that trust and belief like it'll keep the darkness of her thoughts and her curse away. Maybe, for a little while? It will.

Considering all they've been up to today, Emma isn't quite as tired as she would expect. It's an emotional tiredness more so than a physical one, but for some reason using magic in this place drains her in a way she's never felt before. She thinks she'll get at least a little bit of sleep, even though she worries that might be limited thanks to her curse. "Thanks, Ruby," she says, and if they both pretend they're not a little misty, clearly it never happened, right?

She doesn't need Ruby to make her bed for her but the insistence on it is rather touching all the same. "I can do that," she reminds, stepping forward to make an awkward bed out of golden hay. She's nearly done before she looks up with a sudden request. "Do you like Red or Ruby better?" It strikes Emma that she's never asked. She should have. So much of Storybrooke were still identified by who the curse told them to be over who they are. Suddenly more than ever, she realizes how important it is to be known as who you wanted to be, instead of who a curse demanded you to be.

"Yes, you can." Quiet, a little sheepish, and Red leans back to give Emma room, sitting on her heels.

Might be just as well that Emma's dedicated herself to the task of making her own bed, because there's so many thoughts wheeling around Red's mind that she's not sure what to make of them. Emma's the Dark One, and she's got to figure out the best possible way to be there for her, to help her. That's the only reason she was able to hold it together at all, how she didn't give up and let the mobs have her - she had support. She had friends, and even so, she knows that isn't always enough.

The question snaps her out of her thoughts, startled. "Huh?"
And then realisation, and a silent oh, right, as she pushes her hair out of her face, idly twisting her hands around the dark brown waves to give herself something to do. Which does she prefer? Who is she?
"I like Ruby," she starts, testing it out, "but my friends call me 'Red.' You should call me that, too."

But, okay. Red leans against the wooden wall, keeping an eye on the door, inhaling the smell of hay and Emma and the cold. "I'll wake you up when I need to. Okay? You rest up."

If it makes Red feel any better, Emma has no idea how to be there for herself, either. Both as the dark one and just as herself, Emma Swan never makes it easy for anyone to get close to her. That's a lesson she was meant to learn when she was younger, and instead of learning to trust she learned that people will always let her down. Walk away when it's too much or there are greener pastures on the other side. Even through all she's learned about trust in Storybrooke, sometimes it's just hard to let people in.

It's nice to not be the one drowned by thoughts for a change. Emma is as patient with it as Ruby has been with her all night. She unpins her cloak as she waits, figuring it'll be good enough as a blanket in the still rather cold barn. At least heat rose, that would help them a little. "Red. I can do that." As much as she's used to Ruby, she can get used to Red, too.

"I won't sleep too long." Whether that's a warning, a promise, or a prediction, it's hard to say. She won't end up being wrong on that, though, no matter what the answer is. It isn't personal that she lays on her side with her back to Red, it's just... Well, it's a little strange to sleep with someone awake not too far away from her. Emma reaches for a necklace to distract herself, fiddle mindlessly, a necklace that isn't there. She closes her eyes and fights the myriad of thoughts that whisper not too far from the surface, and within a few minutes, she does fall into an uneasy sleep.

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and I'm haunted

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