ruinations | adsom: reunions

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."

If it was selfish to enjoy touch, then they both were.

Kell half-shut his eyes, felt the shift of her feelings over his, how closely they dovetailed. Kell was the sort of man often shut off from others, but he was no stranger to loving someone, and when he did, he did so wholly and unafraid.

Perhaps he did not define it so clearly as others might, but he felt it all the same.

As Kell settled to listen, he understood the words, but it was the emotions that rolled through Neria that told the real story. He could not understand the source of the hopeless, powerless fear and deep seated pain, but-

"What is the purpose of that?" he asked. "Breaking you down, making you unlike yourselves?"

"I think we're being given tasks that force us to be our opposites...in the hopes to teach us to be rounded gods, able to make difficult decisions. Able to do what we might detest doing if it means keeping the world safe." She looked up at him again. "There's no guarantee all of us will survive or succeed. So...in that sense, if we are all one-note gods, then we'll be shoddy fucking pantheon in the end.

"We all need to be able to do what's necessary, for better or worse."

But the pain was still there. And perhaps it wouldn't make much sense, if the idea of being rounded seemed simple enough. At the core, though, was what Neria feared most: becoming monstrous, as she had always known she was capable. Further still, was the realization - "I fear what we will become, and how these trials will cut deep down into the core of us. And I worry we will come back so changed that we won't recognize each other any longer."

Kell could not help but feel venom at the very idea of it, because the moment she described it, he knew what his trial would have been shaped by. What it would mean to be unlike himself -- and all the more, what it would mean to be unlike Neria.

"The Herald wants you to hurt someone."

He said it with utter and complete certainty.

If it was possible for her to be smaller, she would in that moment. Instead, it felt more as if she was tucking herself closer inside of his heart, burrowing herself, that she might vanish and not be seen again.

But Neria's gaze was focused on his shoulder, that she might not look him completely in the eye. It lasted several moments.

Then, "I was told to kindle True Faith in someone who loves me...and then to ask them to die for me, as I died for the world." Slowly, she looked up at him. "And as I cannot kill those who love me, even if I had wish to, I must find people. Make them love me, make them have unshakable faith in me. And then, when they are primed and ready, I must ask them to kill themselves for me."

There was so much wrong with it. That she must manipulate and lie; that she must be selfish; that she must twist a person so tightly that they cannot imagine living without her.

All for her, when she'd never felt worthy enough before. Why would this change any of that, beyond making her loathe everything she was and would be?

Hatred, rough and breathless, poured over Kell's nerves, tingling slowly as the reality settled. It could be nothing else. Of course it could be nothing else.

Kell thought of the night in the front, of Antheia's hand in his chest, of his choice back then. He had given his life, not as Neria had for Asora, but for Rhy. For Rhy, and for his own selfishness. For his own wish to keep him alive.

"That does not sound like a decision that would make you a rounded god," Kell whispered, not bothering to curb his harshness, or the emotional wellspring that came with it.

"Nor does Symon's. Even if you manage to complete the trial, it will have only caused you pain. Symon's overall gain would be far more than what he will have lost."

Kell set his jaw.

"Magic takes a price- this sounds like a toll. And if said toll is the suffering of would-be gods, then what is it feeding?"

It was difficult to argue with Kell. Not because she was tired, or that she did not want to spend her time with him bickering; those were true, of course, but not the crux of it.

It was difficult because Kell was right.

Neria felt the burst of anger, the emotion. She did not try to quell it. Instead, she settled with it, with that ache and that burn, and let it wash over her.

"I imagine it feeds Asora. We are building faith in some manner. Gods can create mana by existing but only if they are strong enough. And they do not become stronger without followers and faith." But Kell would feel the unasked question: if that's true, then why am I killing the people who would follow me?

She left it at that, though. Neria shook her head. "Perhaps it's feeding us in other ways. You speak of tolls, and some of these... Some people are taking their fees from others. I am, unfortunately." Something else shimmered, pained. Neria pushed it aside.

Softly, she said, "I'm glad you left. It's... I never cared what it would ask of me, what this path would demand of my flesh or my soul. I care how it hurts the others, how it hurts the people of the world. And you--" Her voice caught. "It's hard enough watching him suffer. If I had to see you go through the same, or Rhy, or Hakkyuu..." And there was anger there, at long last, beneath all of the hurt and the exhaustion.

"If I had to sit here, powerless, while the world demanded more and more of you and the others... Asora asked too much."

"A world that demands suffering and lifeblood as tribute."

Tieren would call it dangerously out of balance, and Kell would be hard-pressed not to agree entirely. Life and magic were two sides of the same coin, but why place a value on suffering?

Kell went silent again, fuming, let her own tangle of emotions wash through his own, catching and snagging, matching, creating friction. She was not the discomfort here.

If Neria had to sit here, silent, watching-

"Something else happened."

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