Jewell had remained stoic as she kicked Kruger off The Bridge. She hadn't done anything more than blink when she accepted the Panther's Claw from Andrea. And she kept it together as she walked out of the Outback. She even made it all the way to The Line before her chest started heaving, a precursor to the sobs that were desperate to find release. She had held them back long enough, all the way through the last Spinkick.
Now that she had reached her destination though, the safe haven she had been seeking before she completely unravelled, she couldn't bring herself to go inside. Not even to clean off the drying mud that was thick on every inch of her skin and coated her blonde hair. Even on the city street, it felt like the buildings were closing in around her. How could she go inside anywhere? The tightness in her chest was building up to a painful crescendo as she withdrew down the street, reaching with trembling hands for the chain around her neck. Jewell shoved aside the barony ring hanging there, grabbing hold of the mud covered crystal instead. Her thumb ran over it, infusing it with a burst of energy as she called out for her friend, "Rayvinn." She had barely said a word since The Pit, and the name came out as a desperate, painful cry. "Dragon's Gate. Please."
Rayvinn had been training for the majority of the past seven hours. She was now furiously applying jabs interspersed with the occasional rapid knee assault and attempted kick to the head against the man that she had hired to train her in this style of fighting. Dripping with sweat, she had a dozen little gashes along her face and shins that stung from the salty fluid. Despite the amazing physical condition the elf was in, this new conditioning the trainer was putting her through had pushed the elf nearly to her limit. "Gloves up. Keep your feet moving and stop being such an easy target!" Raye growled as he chastised her but did what he said which spared her another kick connecting with her face. There was a method to the trainer's meanness, obviously.
As the crystal around her neck blinked to life, royal blue to indicate the "caller", Rayvinn took her attention away from her sparring partner long enough to look down which earned her a foot across the chin that snapped her head back and took her down to the mat. She lay there panting, dizzy, and seeing stars for what seemed like an hour (but was only half a minute), before she was suddenly sputtering as a bucket of icy water was poured on her. "What the hell, man!" Rapidly sitting up and wiping water from her eyes.
He stood there smirking at her. "Remember the first lesson...stay focused." The trainer grinned as the elf gave the one finger sign of understanding and offered her a hand up. She took it and stood with a groan; it had been a very long time since she had pushed herself to the extreme she had today.
"I've got to get this," pointing at the crystal. "It's my wife person."
"Your...wife person?" He actually looked surprised. "I wasn't aware that you were..." he let the sentence trail off, apparently either too uncomfortable to say the word or too polite to label her.
"Yes, my wife person. And no, I'm not..." allowing the words to trail off as he had, if only to be a smartass.
"So, if you're not....then how exactly do you have a...wife...person?" His dark brows arched.
"Yeah, don't ask. Mostly because I cannot exactly remember any of the details except making some dwarves extremely angry." She grinned as she pulled the sparring gloves from her hands and walked to the edge of the ring to grab her water bottle and to sit down.
"You are a very...interesting person, Raye." He was being polite again, laughing as he opted not to say the word "weird." This earned him a wide smile, full of teeth.
The trainer moved off to the locker rooms to give her privacy but called over his shoulder. "Tomorrow at 5am. If you're late, it's three extra miles." She groaned out her response and the irony was not lost on her that she was now in the same position as Jewell had been when she was being trained by Raye. Karma.
Rayvinn touched the crystal and her energy flowed into it and allowed the image of Jewell, and that desperate plea, to flow through. There was no hesitation. Even though her legs felt like jelly, even though her body ached to even move. She was up and vaulting over the ropes in the time it would take most people to process the message. Bare feet were silent upon the concrete as the elf raced out of the gym and into the night, headed towards Dragon's Gate. She hadn't even offered any snarky remarks; proof that the elf was genuinely concerned.
There were two places in the Dragon's Gate district that immediately came to mind upon hearing Jewell's desperate plea through the crystal: her barony or The Line. Experiencing extreme distress, as it had sounded, Rayvinn didn't think Jewell was with Ishmerai or she probably wouldn't have called her. So that meant she was likely at The Line.
Rayvinn arrived at The Line rather quickly and after a cursory glance around demanded, "Where's J?" Jerry and Rath stared at her for a moment (she was typically not so bedraggled in appearance or gruff in greeting) before the former shrugged. The elf actually growled as she bolted back out the doors and began searching in earnest, using a combination of tracking skills and heightened senses that were common to her people.
Jewell hadn't made it far from The Line. She had found a wall to lean against in the shadows away from prying eyes. The worn brick was rough against her bare back (she had left her shirt and shoes behind in the Outback), but she didn't really pay it any mind. She was trying to reason with her heart, convincing it there was no need to rip out of her chest. She was trying to force her lungs to cooperate and stop taking such shallow, gasping breaths.
She was trying not to curl up on the ground and cry. But the tears were already cutting through the dirt on her face, and she was slowly sinking down towards the sidewalk.
That's where Raye found her: forehead on her knees, arms wrapped in a vice hold around her legs, dreaming of every wide open space she had ever seen in the shadow of Fred's Wings N' Things (closed for renovations). She approached silently as her gaze shifted rapidly to assess for any level of threat. Finally, the elf dropped down onto the dirty pavement next to her best friend and slid an arm around her hunched shoulders. She didn't break the silence, wisely deciding to allow Jewell to speak when and if she was ready since she appeared to be without any major physical injury that would demand immediate answers.
The worst part about falling apart was that she could never fall apart a little bit. As soon as one little crack opened, all of her fears and insecurities dog piled her. So Jewell wasn't just thinking about the way the buildings were so close together. The way it made her feel like she couldn't breathe. The desperation and cold fear that feeling inspired. And how The Pit had smelled like death to her. Her death.
No, she was thinking about her children dying. The whisper of her true name in her ear. And all the other horrible material that constructed her regular nightmares.
Her body tensed a moment when Rayvinn slid her arm around her, but then she immediately relaxed a little and leaned against her. She would know her friend anywhere. Her shoulders quaked along with her voice as she admitted, quietly and brokenly, what had happened: "They closed The Pit over me." One sob at last broke free, "They closed The Pit and I couldn't get out."