And knowing it wasn't true doesn't remove the memory.
[Like you didn't fight at all. Let yourself be killed. Died — bled out while I held you. It's concerning in the extreme to consider how all of these things are so...targeted precisely to what he knows are Ryn's worst nightmares. How eerie it is that these sorts of misadventures always seem to know where to strike to hurt and traumatize the most.]
Here. Give me your hand.
[He reaches for it, displacing the water of the onsen in ripples and waves as he guides Ryn's hand back to his own chest. Lets him feel, in return.]
[it's something that's going to come back in his dreams. that other thancred, blank and distant with a sword wound through him, nothing he can do to stop it. to fix it. blood, everywhere, coming and drowning him after.
but-- he lets his hand be guided. lets it rest on thancred's chest, shifts it over his heart (tries not to think about what he knows about how he died this last time, the real one. he tries not to study the beat too closely and to just let himself feel it.)]
[Which is why he gives it a little while, before he presses again. Kinder to let Ryn have a few moments of relief before asking him to wade into the memories again.]
It sounds as though it toyed with your perceptions. Affected your mind. You were saying things, back on the mountain...do you remember them? Or is it a blur?
[he'd love to forget them! it would be great if it worked that way and he stopped remembering them just like he stops remembering reality!!]
There was-- the first false reality I knew, where you died. A second, where I couldn't really remember everything that happened in the first, and I was trying to find you there again. Then after that, it was... stranger ones. Ridiculous ones where I forgot everything I knew about this place and myself.
...Loath as I am to have been used in such a manner — or some phantom of me, at least —
[He bites the thought off, unsure of whether he really wants to finish it. There's no blue and yellow drink here to loosen his tongue, and yet after a while candor wins out anyway.]
Whatever the circumstance, 'tis hard to fully regret such evidence of my importance to you.
I know why they used Ryne against me. There's one way the sight of her could hurt me that the sight of you couldn't, and it's naught to do with importance.
...Not in so many words. But I did tell you about our journey to the end of the universe, and the alternative plan that wouldn't have saved...everyone.
[He hesitates a bit.]
She's family. Or the closest thing I've left to it, at least. She's a child, only some fifteen summers — I suppose I'm something of a father to her. A protector, certainly. But her home is on one of the shards, across the rift, and as it presently stands the rift can't be traversed. 'Twas likely I'd never have seen her again even if my untimely demise hadn't intervened, and when the end of days came, she...she wasn't included in the plan for salvation. How could they, with no way to reach her?
[He shakes his head slightly.]
My personal tormentors used her because to have seen her here at all would have to mean she was dead. That she died and I wasn't there. That she died and someone thought she belonged here. That's why.
-you were separated from her before you even died, then. No way to check in on her to ensure she's all right.
[or to see her grow, when he clearly considers her to be his family, calls himself a father to her. that's-- he can't imagine something like that, having to give it up.]
Mmhmm. That we were taken there at all is a...complicated tale. But I spent five years there, and that our fates turned out to be intertwined during that time was no coincidence. But I and my comrades were not of that shard, and the manner in which we were taken there had rendered us...incomplete. It would have torn our souls asunder to have remained for much longer.
[He shrugs slightly.]
Bixing saw a memory of her, those few sennights ago. Not one I'm proud of by any means, and certainly not one I would've cared for anyone to witness, but — I couldn't even bring myself to be angry about it. I was too caught up just with seeing her face again.
...once you get out of here- [because it has to be that, now, he's gone and gotten attached, he won't think about them failing,] -there has to be some way to send you there again. Complete, this time.
[Oh, he thinks to himself, as though he knows what's going on here. Oh, you've tread too close to implying commitment, and after the phantoms that plagued him while he was gone and his existing deep-seated traumas about Aren, it's all just too much. Implications of attachment are too much. Better to walk them back.]
I didn't mean it as an imposition. Just that — a mere expression of your importance. I would want the two of you to know one another because I care deeply for the both of you. You needn't take it for a...a demand of any sort.
[he pauses to consider, brows furrowed in thought, ears flicking.]
...I've just realized we've been teaching and learning our languages for days now, and spoken of what might happen after we escape this place, but we've never once asked what we even are to each other.
[...he's a little speechless at first, at that. for him to not offer any of the answers ryn might have expected, to call him my heart in his own language while he's at it--
just the man who made him believe he didn't have to be alone. that's all he says he wants, not to be his partner, not to be anything to him that has its own name.]
[I think you already are, Ryn murmurs, and he finds himself thinking of weeks and conversations past, of how they've gone from comfort offered in the form of I won't look at you if you don't want me to to cuddled tight together in the restorative waters of the onsen, bare as their namedays. From I don't want sweet nothings from anyone to unthinking pet names to deliberate endearments that aren't pushed away. From dreading the remains of a too-long and too-lonely existence to daring to consider a "what comes after".
It would be enough, he'd just offered a moment before, and for a moment beyond that, he thinks, ...wouldn't it?
Slowly, he turns his head a fraction, angling it to show off the silver ring pierced through the left lobe. It's less sore now than it was when they'd done it, but still fresh enough that he sometimes finds the new weight of it in his ear unusual.]
For days, I've been thinking of this as your claim on me. Was I wrong...?
...not exactly wrong. Suppose it is, in a way, but I...
[he's quiet for a few moments, deciding how he wants to put this.]
I wanted you to have something of mine. Something of me, in case. That was what it was.
['in case' of what, exactly, he doesn't specify, but-- there are multiple answers. in case he dies. in case they're separated another way. in case they can't see each other again, whatever happens.
it's a reminder, for any of those situations, that this happened at all. that they were here, he was here, so he won't be forgotten. and there's some possessiveness in it too, there is truth to that, but it on its own wasn't the motivating factor.]
[Like a ring on a chain, he thinks with quiet solemnity, and isn't sure what he thinks of that notion to begin with. Certainly it's one of the things that's kept him from returning the gesture for Rynlan, himself: the lingering question of whether it would hurt too much, bring up too many painful associations with Aren when there are already too many as it is.]
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[Like you didn't fight at all. Let yourself be killed. Died — bled out while I held you. It's concerning in the extreme to consider how all of these things are so...targeted precisely to what he knows are Ryn's worst nightmares. How eerie it is that these sorts of misadventures always seem to know where to strike to hurt and traumatize the most.]
Here. Give me your hand.
[He reaches for it, displacing the water of the onsen in ripples and waves as he guides Ryn's hand back to his own chest. Lets him feel, in return.]
No illusions. See? I'm all right.
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[it's something that's going to come back in his dreams. that other thancred, blank and distant with a sword wound through him, nothing he can do to stop it. to fix it. blood, everywhere, coming and drowning him after.
but-- he lets his hand be guided. lets it rest on thancred's chest, shifts it over his heart (tries not to think about what he knows about how he died this last time, the real one. he tries not to study the beat too closely and to just let himself feel it.)]
...you're all right. We both are. I know.
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[Which is why he gives it a little while, before he presses again. Kinder to let Ryn have a few moments of relief before asking him to wade into the memories again.]
It sounds as though it toyed with your perceptions. Affected your mind. You were saying things, back on the mountain...do you remember them? Or is it a blur?
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[he'd love to forget them! it would be great if it worked that way and he stopped remembering them just like he stops remembering reality!!]
There was-- the first false reality I knew, where you died. A second, where I couldn't really remember everything that happened in the first, and I was trying to find you there again. Then after that, it was... stranger ones. Ridiculous ones where I forgot everything I knew about this place and myself.
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[He bites the thought off, unsure of whether he really wants to finish it. There's no blue and yellow drink here to loosen his tongue, and yet after a while candor wins out anyway.]
Whatever the circumstance, 'tis hard to fully regret such evidence of my importance to you.
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[he grumbles, but he doesn't pull away. his presence is too reassuring.]
Careful of talking like that, before I start pointing out you didn't see me.
[but, well, okay, he's thinking it now.]
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[Drowned in a WHAT NOW.]
I know why they used Ryne against me. There's one way the sight of her could hurt me that the sight of you couldn't, and it's naught to do with importance.
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[is what he eventually says, setting aside about five different possible kneejerk responses to say this instead.]
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[He hesitates a bit.]
She's family. Or the closest thing I've left to it, at least. She's a child, only some fifteen summers — I suppose I'm something of a father to her. A protector, certainly. But her home is on one of the shards, across the rift, and as it presently stands the rift can't be traversed. 'Twas likely I'd never have seen her again even if my untimely demise hadn't intervened, and when the end of days came, she...she wasn't included in the plan for salvation. How could they, with no way to reach her?
[He shakes his head slightly.]
My personal tormentors used her because to have seen her here at all would have to mean she was dead. That she died and I wasn't there. That she died and someone thought she belonged here. That's why.
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[or to see her grow, when he clearly considers her to be his family, calls himself a father to her. that's-- he can't imagine something like that, having to give it up.]
Were you forced to leave that shard...?
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[He shrugs slightly.]
Bixing saw a memory of her, those few sennights ago. Not one I'm proud of by any means, and certainly not one I would've cared for anyone to witness, but — I couldn't even bring myself to be angry about it. I was too caught up just with seeing her face again.
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[He glances away, eyes closing briefly.]
I want her to meet you. For you to know her.
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Why shouldn't I?
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[his hair tentacles wriggle. it's a certain kind of step, isn't it?]
We're not even together, exactly.
[WEEK SIX AND THEY HAVE NEVER DISCUSSED THIS]
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[Oh, he thinks to himself, as though he knows what's going on here. Oh, you've tread too close to implying commitment, and after the phantoms that plagued him while he was gone and his existing deep-seated traumas about Aren, it's all just too much. Implications of attachment are too much. Better to walk them back.]
I didn't mean it as an imposition. Just that — a mere expression of your importance. I would want the two of you to know one another because I care deeply for the both of you. You needn't take it for a...a demand of any sort.
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[he pauses to consider, brows furrowed in thought, ears flicking.]
...I've just realized we've been teaching and learning our languages for days now, and spoken of what might happen after we escape this place, but we've never once asked what we even are to each other.
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Do you know what you would have us be?
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[...he's a little speechless at first, at that. for him to not offer any of the answers ryn might have expected, to call him my heart in his own language while he's at it--
just the man who made him believe he didn't have to be alone. that's all he says he wants, not to be his partner, not to be anything to him that has its own name.]
...I think you already are.
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It would be enough, he'd just offered a moment before, and for a moment beyond that, he thinks, ...wouldn't it?
Slowly, he turns his head a fraction, angling it to show off the silver ring pierced through the left lobe. It's less sore now than it was when they'd done it, but still fresh enough that he sometimes finds the new weight of it in his ear unusual.]
For days, I've been thinking of this as your claim on me. Was I wrong...?
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[he's quiet for a few moments, deciding how he wants to put this.]
I wanted you to have something of mine. Something of me, in case. That was what it was.
['in case' of what, exactly, he doesn't specify, but-- there are multiple answers. in case he dies. in case they're separated another way. in case they can't see each other again, whatever happens.
it's a reminder, for any of those situations, that this happened at all. that they were here, he was here, so he won't be forgotten. and there's some possessiveness in it too, there is truth to that, but it on its own wasn't the motivating factor.]
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You never answered my question, you know.
[He points out, softly.]
What do you want me to be to you, Ryn?
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