ruinations | adsom: reunions

In contrast, she looked as he did before he left: like she hadn't slept in days. The most stark difference was the color of her eyes, an intense, bright blue that burned and made even her more somber expressions seem more severe. The eyes seemed possessed of their own will, and they were predatory, even in her face.

But Neria's expression was soft on Kell, fond, as it had been before Aallotar. There was a sadness hidden there despite the sharp gaze, something held back even as she smiled at him. Briefly, she leaned into the brush of his fingers like an animal starved of affection.

Her expression faltered at his question, grew thoughtful.

"I... I don't know. It was an accident. If I'd known I could have simply found my way here--" Well, she'd have done it weeks ago, if she was honest with herself . "It's..." Neria's voice pitched low. "It's my godhood, Kell. I sank into the dark, moved through the layers of the world...and found myself here."

As unsettling as they eyes were, it was still Neria -- though he couldn't shake the feeling he'd seen that same blue somewhere else, far from here. It sent chills across his skin, but he pushed through it, rubbing his palm against her cheek, never making to pull back.

What she said, though, took him visibly aback, and knocked other questions from his mind. His blue eye flickered back and forth, jaw tight, immediately plunging into the far-reaching possibilities of what this could mean, the dangers this could pose.

This was Neria, but what else could come through?

"Why do you think it brought you here?"

It wasn't a question she expected. Worse, still, that she did not anticipate how much it hurt her. Kell did not hurt her; the memories the question drew up did. And Neria closed her eyes to it. There was a faint tremor in her hands.

"Because I wanted to be anywhere but there."

She hadn't been looking for Arnes. She had been looking for safety, for comfort. It made sense to her that the dark, which now bent to her whims and whispered at her call, would show her the way to someone who had always given her both of those things...even when she had been at her lowest. Everything else had been lost. But Kell-- Kell was untouched. He had escaped. She'd never thought, until this moment, that it might have been better if she took the door too.

"I...just wanted to get away. I'd gone into the dark before and escaped somewhere. Somewhere very deep and dark, where nothing else existed. But I...kept going, this time," she whispered. It made her sound as if she'd lost her mind, she realized.

It didn't. Not to Kell.

The air stilled in his lungs, palm shifting, then pressing against Neria's cheek, thumb running across it. There were no tears to swipe away, but Kell knew the note in her voice, had heard it so often in the wake of Rhy's nightmares.

It hardened his nerves, made him want to hunt down and shatter whatever nameless things had happened, but he was powerless.

He'd chosen. He'd left her. He'd known she would suffer, and he'd left her to do it alone.

Without a word, Kell drew her closer, back into his arms. It was a promise, an apology, an understanding.

His hand was warm. Closing her eyes, she pressed against it, and willed her heart to stop beating quite so fast. Nothing was going to harm her here.

And then, Kell brought her close again and folded her into an embrace. There were no words. Neria's hands fell and then returned to his back, wrapping around him. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder and breathed him in.

Lilies.

"I'm sorry," she murmured into his coat. For the things she'd said, for the friendship that had fallen apart in that fucking place. For coming now, when she had not intended it, and knowing she had probably changed things again. Her grip tightened. "I've missed you so much."

Kell had thumbed through the events a hundred times. What had happened to them, between them, through this place and through their own hurts, all the things they'd never said and all he'd thought he'd never had a chance to.

More had happened to her, he knew -- much more, including things Kell could not begin to or hope to understand.

His fingers tightened on the back of her clothes, eyes squeezing shut as he turned his face to press it into her hair.

"You too. I'm sorry, and I-" he drew in a breath, holding on tight, voice coming out rough around the edges.

"I have missed you."

Kell knew better than to promise safety, to deal in absolutes, to assure her of what he was capable. The world was so much bigger than them, even newly-made and half-made gods.

"As long as you want it, everything mine is yours."

Her fingers fisted briefly into his jacket at his apologies. Her shoulders were rigid. But he followed it with the assurance that he missed her, and that...that was all she needed, she realized. More of the tension sighed out of her on the next exhale. For a moment, she seemed to almost sag against him, like the life had gone out of her.

But instead, she turned her head, nuzzling up softly against him.

Just outside of his thoughts, she gave him her presence. It was far stronger than before, harnessed and honed over days and weeks of practice with her godhood. But it curled around him like a defensive hound, warm, and nestled against him.

"I'll need to find out how to go back," she murmured. Which wasn't a refusal or a decline, only stating fact. "But I...want to stay here with you. However long I can." However long she had left until Asora needed her, and before she lost everything left that resembled humanity.

Neria lifted her head, nudging at him with her nose for a moment. Her forehead rested against his head. "Kell. I'm not angry with you. You know that, right?"

Edited (no jk I wanted to say more) 2018-04-02 06:26 (UTC)

As her presence settled around him, deep and dark but still unmistakably her, Kell finally felt himself relax. He hadn't been realizing how tightly he'd held himself until he felt her mind brush against his, familiar.

It was enough, just to be close.

"As long as you want," he assured her, but then she nudged at him, and the words all caught in his throat. Slowly, he shut his eyes, felt the rush of everything anew, all that had happened, everything he'd pressed down deep. The last words before they parted, before the world went to hell, the horrible things that happened after she'd gone silent in his mind.

The way she'd pulled away from in the chambers of Aallotar, gone so quickly on her quest -- but still refused to take back her pendant.

Neria had told him that she was angry... and he'd known that forgiveness was something that would be a long time coming, if it came at all. He could not begrudge her that.

But it still unhitched something in his chest to hear her say it.

"I left," he said quietly.

"Why should you have stayed?" she asked, in counterpoint. "Your priority has always been Rhy and you were given a way out. Why would you have stayed in a place like that when you had the choice to take him home?" And why would he have stayed without Rhy, if Hakkyuu was gone? If he was among people who did not understand who might have never forgiven him?

Neria loosed herself from his arms just enough so she could look at him. Her arms came up, no longer around his middle; she looped them around his shoulders so she was holding him this time.

"You didn't leave, Kell. You made a choice to walk away from a situation where your choice had been stripped from you in the first place." Kell had never wanted godhood and had been killed to ascend. He hadn't had the option to refuse.

"And staying in Aallotar as...as the Rose Knight? To be there at their whims? I don't think you'd have done that, either."

Neria looked into his face.

"Do you think I hate you for going?"

Kell's heart gave a hard squeeze around itself. Painful, but good all the same. It was one thing to rationalize to himself, but it was quite another to hear it in her voice.

It was quite another to know what horrors Neria had come from, and to accept her arms around him, comforting him.

"No," he answered, and did not quite meet her eyes. "Though I would not have blamed you." He set his jaw, made himself look up and into her too-blue eyes. Searching out her beneath the uneasy feeling they gave him. It took work to find, but he didn't stop looking.

"Some things never change."

That coaxed a small smile, even if it was strained, from her. "Because you take on too much." She nudged him with her arm. "I was angry with you, yes. But I never stopped loving you, Kell. I... It was just too much. All of it was too much."

And it continued to be too much. She needed to endure, though.

Slowly, she released him, and sank down to sit. Neria tipped her head up and gestured for him to join her if he wished - and she hoped he would.

I never stopped loving you.

The world spun, caught, snagged on the words that so easily left her lips, as if it were a self-evident truth she'd told him aloud before this moment, a hundred times if not a thousand. A reassurance, as if...

Kell's fingers were numb, tingling as she released him, stunned- but in a sideways manner, he could not truly feel surprised. It slotted well into what they both already knew, what they felt, the trust between them.

Consciously, Kell closed his mouth, sat down beside her. Opened it, and nothing came out.

There were words, somewhere. Thoughts, somewhere. Rationality. Instead he simply reached for her, and as he touched her arm, he cracked himself open. Opened himself up for the first time in what seemed like lifetimes.

Kell had always let Neria into his mind, past the barriers so many encountered, but he had always held back, in part. Whether it was for her protection or his own, he couldn't say.

Mind to mind, heart to heart, he reached out for her.

Edited 2018-04-03 05:22 (UTC)

Where she'd been coiled about his mind, she felt him open the door. He'd done it once before, given her a clear path to show her he had died without even needing to put words to it. This was...decidedly different. And so she loosened herself, uncurling about his thoughts, and slipped inside for the first time in months.

She didn't go rooting around or looking for things. Instead, she made her home there, like a dog come to the fireplace to warm itself. She rested there, nestled in his thoughts. I'm here. I'm here. A litany of reassurance.

He touched her arm. Neria turned towards him and pressed back in close, shoulder to shoulder, and she rested her head there for a moment. She breathed him in and felt at peace for the first time since they'd returned from Ardismouth.

Kell slid his arm around her waist, pulling her closer and into his shoulder, and tipped his head forward to settle against her hair, shut his eyes.

I'm here. I'm here.

It melded until it was neither his voice, nor hers, but some amalgam of the two, some steady heartbeat. It hurt, and Kell shivered with it, relaxing by degrees, but never felt afraid.

He could feel her pain, though, nameless. Her fear, faceless. Her sense of being trapped, of betrayal, of helpless hurt and a desire to feel nothing, to be nothing, to make it stop.

Kell hadn't gone looking, but he didn't have to. He could feel it, even as an echo, worse than he'd ever been even at his lowest point. He didn't brace against it- instead he let her lean into him.

Carried it with her.

She felt him there with her. She was no longer inside of his mind but he was inside of hers - and then they were simply bridged together, echoes of one another, two heartbeats thrumming in time.

Neria felt his pain. His guilt, his anger. The sense of feeling trapped in duty and love and the utter helplessness and despair he had felt that they might have all died. That Hakkyuu and Rhy were left and--

At what cost?

She felt Kell's deep-rooted sense of responsibility to his brother above all else, and how it traced out like branches into all of the reasons why he struggled to survive, to justify the things he did. And she understood them before but now-- Here, and there, she saw the pain. The guilt. The loss. The fury.

In the dark of his mind and in his heart, Neria breathed with him and shared it. She did not try to take the burden from Kell, as she had attempted before. She simply held him and let it weigh her down too, sharing it.

Absently, she lifted a hand to touch his face. To cradle him there against the side of her head, against her hair. Her thumb brushed his cheek.

It was not so much that things hurt less like this, it was that he could feel Neria letting all of it in, and never flinching from it. It was something, being seen, utterly without fear or rejection.

It was something, seeing, and never closing off.

Even if Kell did not delve into details, history, specifics, he did not truly need to. Instead he let the storm roll through.

They were all broken people, broken in ways that would never truly heal over or be fixed. But it was truly something... being loved, loving, forgiveness. Even like this. Even as they were.

Absently, Kell turned his head to touch his lips to her thumb, soft as silk.

Around them, this place was a sanctuary, through and through. All they had was what they had brought with them, and piece by piece, Kell felt the storm calm.

Neria's eyes had closed. Under other circumstances, she might have seemed asleep, for all that peace had finally come up to claim her. But she was listening to him, to his heart and to his thoughts, and it was only then that she rifled through them with exquisite care. She looked only through the surface thoughts and found what was to be expected: worry for Rhy, for the kingdom. Confusion, that Neria was there at all. Relief.

She felt his mouth brush her thumb. It was a briefly electrifying sensation and she turned her head, looking at him. There, she felt a brief flash of uncertainty again...and she realized the cause.

Her presence wrapped around him again, bracing him for something unwanted. Her hand reached up, brushing stray strands of hair from his eyes.

"They're not mine," she said softly. She sighed. "A great deal has happened since you went home. We're all changing."

Kell opened his eyes again as Neria shifted, coming back to earth. He'd felt her going through his mind, his questions, though he knew better than to ask them all at once.

As she opened those unnaturally blue eyes again, however, he felt that same squeeze in his chest, the uncertainty that seemed so misplaced when it came to her.

(And with the brush of her fingers came a twist of pain, Hakkyuu so often pushed his hair back, encouraging him not to hide-)

"What do you mean when you say they're not yours?"

"I mean that they're not mine. They're Symon's." She sat up somewhat, but didn't pull away from him. She frowned again and though her expression was one of melancholy, it did not seem to soften the sharpness of her gaze.

Briefly, she pushed her hair back with her fingers. One hand lingered over an eye, as if trying to cover it. Neria frowned.

"...The second test, Kell. We were given trials to test to see if we could succeed and be worthy of godhood. Symon's was to give everything of himself. He gave his eyes to me, that I might see with better clarity some of the truths of the world."

Symon's.

Inside his heart as she was, she'd be able to feel the recoil, like the fur lifting on a cat, teeth bared. The hard, protective fury he drew on to keep those close to him safe, the same rage on that battlefield the day he'd stood over her, fighting off anything that dared come close.

"He never saw the truth better than anyone else." Kell practically growled it. "And he never gave anything that didn't gain him something."

She felt it. Knew it was coming, too. Neria only frowned, though she did not move to defend Symon. "He'll attain godhood through giving. So you aren't wrong in that regard." If he'd had the chance, she imagined Symon would have happily traded her for her own trial, and she'd have been the one left giving all of herself until there was nothing left.

It wouldn't have bothered her, in hindsight.

"But he sees things a certain way, as do I. But my perception is filtered through what I know of people and understanding them emotionally. He...can't."

You will be better at this than I ever was.

It chilled her, still. Kell would feel the tension, the sudden feeling of being ill at ease, closing off again. But she pushed through, tried to relax. It was Kell. She was safe here.

"He can't, or he won't?"

After he said it, Kell pressed his lips together, forming a hard, stubborn line -- but went quiet, because he could feel her drawing back. There was more here, far more. But she hadn't come to him for a lecture... and Neria already knew how he felt, knew everything he would say.

She wasn't stupid. She never had been. Willing to forgive far more than Kell, but then again, when it came the well-being of someone he cared about Kell was difficult to convince and quick to bare his teeth.

"What do they do?"

"Can't. He doesn't know how. Several people have grown to love Symon Graves because he is a fire, drawing moths to his warmth. But Symon knows very little of how to properly care and love someone, to understand their emotional idiosyncrasies. And his love is a cruel thing." She knew that first-hand, in seeing the aftermath...and watching him with Waver.

Neria loosed a quiet breath. "I know those things, though, even if I can't say I draw people to me in the same fashion." There was something clinical about the way she said it. Quiet, matter-of-fact. To his question, though, she frowned further. "They...just let me see things in a detached manner, I suppose. As he might. Nothing emotional about it. That's why it's--"

More and more, that voice sounded less like Symon and more like herself. She sighed, pulled herself closer to him. "They've helped me focus better, if nothing else."

Kell pressed a slow breath out between his teeth, but said nothing more. Neria knew the flames perhaps better than anyone. Nothing she said particularly relaxed him, but even if she had Symon's eyes, she still had her own heart and mind. A way of seeing was not a way of being.

As Neria pressed closer to him, Kell closed his arms around her, and shook away the linger, crawling feeling he'd gotten when she said his name.

The eyes may have once been Symon's, but they now belonged to her.

"You found the Herald, then?"

It had been Kell's last act there, his last gesture, getting everyone he could to the sea, where it would begin and end. He'd known it wouldn't be pretty.

Neria leaned into his warmth again, as selfish as it might have been. There was a sensation of gratitude tucked there, deep into his mind and heart; it swelled with the love she had for him with a flame of its own, which she used to keep the both of them warm. She felt the tension in him. Her arms wrapped around him in turn, comfortable here with him again.

"We did. All of us did, all but Grell...but she's been gone for a tick. Wouldn't surprise me if she's gone to look." And as Grell did not have the makings of divinity, her ability to find the Herald might be compromised.

"We found her in the sea and she gave us each a trial. The others are hard at work with theirs but it's..."

How did she make him understand what had happened? The loss, all of her torn away? The thought that she would lose everyone else to the cacophony of their changes?

It was clear she struggled with knowing what to say. Softly, she murmured, "I feel like we're all breaking apart, being stripped down to nothing. Being forced to do things we never wanted to do."

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