buttsbuttsbuttsmate | You Unlocked Fast Travel!

There has been far too much fighting and friends nearly dying in the past...two? Has it been two days? Or two years? It feels like years. Whatever the length of time, there has been far too much fighting and nearly dying recently for Nin's taste.

And that's not even touching the whole mess that is Niall's everything.

Nin is beyond overjoyed that he's alive, but her joy is competing with despair over what has happened to him since he disappeared. Frankly, Niall's current circumstances fucking horrify her.

He's been trapped here since he disappeared, totally cut off from the natural world and transformed into a creature that's anathema to everything they ever knew. But he sounds just like she remembers, and seems pretty unaffected by the experience. Or at least, he's really good at pretending like he is.

Which, considering how good he always was at putting on a brave face so she wouldn't worry, is probably the case.

Nin doesn't want to let Niall out of her sight, but she has to rest sometime, if only because she's nearly out of spell slots. And if she wants to keep polymorphing him so that he can talk to her - which she does - that 'sometime' basically has to be within an hour or two.

When she finally has to let Niall go back to being monstrous and unspeakably horrifying, she claims a squashy armchair to do her weird elven not-sleep in. She's jumpy as hell, though, because this is some serious bullshit, so she's likely to jerk right "awake" as soon as anyone approaches.

Light on her feet by nature as much as nurture, Naeris is usually fairly quiet when she moves around. Here in the Archive, perhaps by horror-induced habit, she does her best to maintain that ideal level of silence that hovers somewhere between 'dead' and 'church mouse'.

So when she spies Nin resting in that luxurious armchair, it truly is Naeris' intention to leave her alone to her thoughts and hopefully a chance to decompress. Nin's foray into the full spectrum of emotions couldn't have been easy--and this family reunions, although usually happy affairs, couldn't allow for a complete bastion of joy when considering the surrounding circumstances. She deserves some peace and quiet.

Naeris turns to leave, placing all of her concentration into making the process as seamless as possible...

...which is probably why she winds up knocking over an entire end table, instead.

"...Oops."

Nin jumps when that entire end table crashes to the ground, jolted unpleasantly out of her uneasy trance. When she sees she's not alone, and deduces the cause of the jarring noise, ~~wine~~ mom mode kicks in.

"Naeris? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I'm so sorry!"

She reaches down and picks up the table, placing it right back where it fell from. It wobbles for a second, and Naeris holds out her hands as if daring it to fall again, but it stays in place.

Naeris glances up at Nin, her face scrunched up in a heavy wince.

"I didn't mean to wake you up. Are you okay?"

"It's fine. I wasn't having much luck with it, anyway." She gives Naeris a tired smile, and scoots to one side in the generous squashy chair. It's big enough for a man Gorudak's size to sit with a goodly amount of room left over; fitting two slender elves who don't worry much about personal space will be no problem. She pats the cushion beside her, just to ensure her invitation is extra clear.

Come sit with her, Naeris.

Naeris doesn't need any more of an invitation to scurry on over and plop herself into the chair next to Nin. It's not a snug fit by any means, but that doesn't stop her from sitting close to her dear friend. Her dear friend who is clearly hurting. It's a topic that she's not sure how to broach, but, at the same time, she doesn't want to leave Nin without anyone to talk to--as long as that's what she wants, of course.

"...Everything with Niall is bothering you, isn't it?"

Nin fully expected Naeris to sit nice and close, and honestly? She's been desperately needing some closeness so she is more than okay with this. She wraps her near arm around Naeris' shoulders and leans hard on her friend, pressing her cheek against the soft curls covering Naeris' head.

When Naeris speaks, Nin makes a quiet noise that could be a short, humorless exclamation of laughter or possibly a quickly choked-down sob. Who can say? Even she's not sure.

"What gave me away?"

Naeris instinctively returns the lean, shuffling her shoulder to allow Nin the bestest most comfortablest headrest in the history of all elvenkind. It's the least she could do.

There's a lot that gave Nin away. A whole list, even. But that's all stuff that's painful, and harping on it is just going to make things worse for everyone. That said, Nin didn't respond just so she could be ignored or, even worse, given some useless platitude she'd probably heard hundreds of times before.

She deserves a well thought out answer. Naeris is far from a philosopher (both Coruthel and Githal tried really hard to get her into it, only to be met with limited success), but she can speak from her heart.

"Hmm... I think it's that I've never seen you so sad and so happy at the same time."

Her next short exclamation is definitely more mirth than grief. That's sure one way to put it.

There are a lot of horrible thoughts banging around in her head, most of which are only half-formed and half-baked. They are nearly without exception negative; worst-case scenarios, excruciating "what ifs", painful "if onlys". None of them are complete enough for her to express aloud, even if she were inclined to. If the Silent Ones can apparently hear a pin drop on the other side of the archive, she can't chance Niall overhearing her express her fears.

But something has to give. She closes her eyes and allows herself to draw comfort from Naeris' proximity, focusing on the warmth of her friend and relaxing against her. And she tells Naeris the only thing going through her mind right now that she would also share with her brother, because it's in regard to her own failing, and has nothing to do with her fears for Niall's future.

"I didn't accept that he was dead for a long time. It was just the Sunbreak Ruins, we'd played there a million times before. There was nothing there that would bother a druid. There was nothing there that could kill one. How could he be dead? There was no way." She stops talking and squeezes her eyes shut. After briefly burying her nose further into Naeris' hair, she continues. "I was seventy. I knew how to take care of myself. I could've left Murkwater to look for him right then. Mom didn't forbid it. She didn't even discourage it. But I was scared. I was convinced he was alive for years and years, but too scared to leave my home to prove it. By the time I finally did leave, almost thirty years had passed, and I'd more or less come to terms with his death. Because how could he still be alive and out in the world, but never come home in all that time?"

Her voice breaks, and she draws a deep breath, shuddering with the effort of holding in the sobs threatening to break loose. "We were supposed to leave to see the world together. But he didn't mean to leave, and I left by myself, and thirty years later than I should've. If I'd left sooner, maybe I could have found him sooner."

She knows those are a lot of big "ifs", but it doesn't stop her from feeling any less guilty.

"I feel like I betrayed him," her voice drops to a hoarse whisper, though it's doubtful Naeris will have any difficulty hearing. "I refused to believe he was dead but didn't go look for him. I only left Murkwater after I couldn't imagine him being anything else."

There’s a lot to unpack, and Naeris remains quiet as Nin works through her complicated feelings on the matter. Feelings that Naeris finds herself empathizing with: the powerful nature of denial, the paralysis of uncertainty, the never-ending well of guilt that comes with the undying inkling that perhaps, perhaps events could have been changed if not for one’s incompetence. They all had a tendency to rally together, clashing and swirling in the kind of inner tempest that never quite died, but only grew quiet over the years, always threatening to rise up again.

This isn’t a matter that trite platitudes or well-meaning validation can help fix. Nor is it something that will go away with tight hugs and cozy cuddles. Just as before, whatever Naeris says or does next can only continue to come from the heart if it’s to make any difference.

She’s quiet, closing her eyes to concentrate. Githal would always tell her to listen to what her very being is trying to say. That can never be wrong—it’s only when selfish desires, born from scars both physical and emotional, come into play and twist your heart’s words that things can go awry. She’d learned that firsthand, far too many times, at that.

“You chose to hope for the best. That’s not betrayal,” she begins. Her words aren’t confident at first, but as she continues, they grow stronger with conviction, “The thing about hope is that, as wonderful as it is, it can also be scary. It can be scary in a lot of ways.

“You can be scared of having it destroyed, you can be scared of how powerful it is, you can even be scared of what could happen if whatever you’re hoping for comes true. And it’s okay to be scared, just as much as it’s okay to take some time to become brave. What matters is that you did, and now look at where you are. You can help Niall come home. All because you became brave.”

Edited (now that it's not 2AM...) 2020-02-07 14:50 (UTC)

Everyone has been through some deep shit these past few days, both physically and emotionally, and because of it, Velo is having a hard time sleeping. Instead, she's checking up on everyone else under the guise of serving everyone some tea, which she got by popping down to hell real quick to get some good stuff from Todd.

Velo makes a token effort to be quiet as she approaches Nin, but the clacking of her claws on the hard tile floor are difficult to muffle. If Nin ignores her, Velo will simply leave a cup of tea on the table next to her chair. No sense in bothering her is she's passed out, or whatever the elven equivalent of passed out is.

What's it like to pass out? To sleep? ~~Perchance, to dream?~~ Nin has absolutely no idea, but it looks super peaceful, and there are times she really wishes she could try it. Like now, for instance. Not because Velo is being a noisy asshole - she can tell her friend is legitimately attempting to be stealthy - but because if Nin could truly pass out, then maybe she could stop thinking about today's everything for a few hours. That sure would be nice.

But if she can't have ~~the sweet release of death~~ peace, she'll take the next best thing, AKA the company of her good friend Velo.

"Thanks for the tea," she says, reaching out to pick it up as soon as Velo's set it down. Is that a delicate bouquet of hell she's detecting? Mmm, that Todd - the true MVP of this campaign.

"How're you holding up?" Watching Velo take a flurry of blows from Babushka Portia's horrid skeleton arm legs had not been great, and not only because she hates watching her friends get hurt. For a seven foot tall Dragonborn, Velo is alarmingly squishy. Naeris has done the healy sparklefingers by now, of course, but Nin still worries. This is her favorite Velo, and also her only Velo. She doesn't want her to be hurt, ever.

Oh hey, Nin is up. So much for being quiet. Might as well chat for a bit.

"Sore, but no one is dead or permanently injured, so I'm going to count today as a win," Velo answers as she pulls up another chair to have a seat next to Nin.

"More importantly, are you doing okay? I know coming into the Archive wasn't something you were keen on." That, and Malcer, but that can be left unsaid. Kind of a given at this point.

"You know what, that's fair. It's definitely a win when you put it like that."

No one has been permanently injured - that's true enough. But permanently transformed into an eldritch horror beyond mortal reckoning? That...remains to be seen. And based on the Archivist's lack of an immediate solution to Niall's...situation, she has a Bad Feeling about what's coming in the immediate future.

So she'll just put off worrying about that to focus on Velo.

"Well, I never considered the risk-to-reward ratio of coming here to be all that great. But now that Portia's not in charge of this place anymore and we're probably not going to be violently killed, I'm fine." Nin's biggest objection to going into the Archive had always been the danger, regardless of the motivation. Has she learned some uncomfortable truths about both the Archive and her objections ~~and Malcer~~? Absolutely. Will she own up to them on her own without prompting? That remains to be seen. Will she apologize if someone calls her out? It's more likely than you'd think.

As a self-aware hypocrite, she does try to be conscious of the hypocrisy she allows herself, after all.

"...Well. Mostly fine." She's still reeling at the revelation about her brother, and is just starting to be angry at herself for not coming in here a million years ago, the first time Malcer helped them break in.

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