In the early morning hours of what promised to be a fine April day, Jewell practically danced up the stairs to her door, lips tingling with the feeling of Lupton’s mouth against hers only minutes ago. She was already strategizing how she could get her work done quickly so she could steal him away for lunch. Her starshine smile faltered when she noticed the envelope tucked into a wreath of spring flowers hanging on her door. She plucked it free and ran her thumb over the embossed letters: CPA. “Fuck,” she mumbled. She could practically feel the happiness and well-being that she had luxuriated in less than an hour ago bleed away. It was replaced with a too familiar heaviness of her limbs that made even opening her door and stepping into the privacy of her home feel burdensome, each step weighted. She considered dumping the envelope in the trash, unlooked at, even as her traitorous pointer finger dug beneath the seam to open it. She stood rooted in the small foyer-space of her loft amongst a clutter of shoes as she devoured the short message: The last of the Temple members will be executed in a few weeks. Do you want to be there? -M & H
She crushed the thick paper in her hand, eyes shut tight against the words. Of course when everything felt like it was finally going right again, when she found some measure of happiness and normalcy to cling to, the Temple would resurface.
A cool breeze brushed against her bare legs, and she glanced over her shoulder to find that she had left the door open. She slammed it shut, rattling the picture of Ishmerai and Sapphire that hung on the wall, before marching into the kitchen to dump the note and envelope in the trash with unnecessary vigor. She didn’t need it laying around as a reminder. There was no way she was going to respond, anyway. She wasn’t going to spare the matter another thought.
Unlike the spritely, bouncing steps that had carried her home from the Red Dragon Inn just minutes ago, Jewell moved sluggishly, absorbed in her spiraling thoughts, from the kitchen across the open space of the loft to her bedroom, depositing her shoes wherever they happened to land. She overlooked the plants lining the windowsill, their drooping leaves begging for water. She stubbed her toe on the wheel of the bar cart that had been in the same place since the day she had moved, her collection of glasses and bottles clinking into each other. When she made it into her room, she sank heavily onto the edge of the chaise lounge in front of the full-length mirror, abandoning her original plan to shower, change, and power through the pile of work waiting on her desk. Instead, she twisted the hem of her skirt as she thought through the wisdom of not replying to Michiru and Haruka. Her silence would have to be enough of an answer. She had said no to them plenty of times over the last six years. Too many.
No, she didn’t want to help hunt down members of the Temple across the multiverse.
No, she didn’t want to attend the endless stream of trials.
No, she didn’t want to see them rot in prison or be jettisoned into a black hole or their memories wiped, brains turned to slime.
Even when Ishmerai was with her during the first three years of initial investigations, he had not been able to convince her that she might feel better if she helped bring one of the great enemies of her life to justice. That maybe she would sleep better knowing they were locked away or dead or had turned into mush for brains. That maybe she would feel better knowing they couldn’t touch her again.
The problem was, Jewell had helped the cause against the Temple in the months following their attack on RhyDin and it hadn’t helped her. Not at all. The damage had already been done. Testifying in front of the entire High Judicial Panel hadn’t eased the crushing weight in her chest or banished the persistent nightmares. It hadn’t made her less jumpy or stopped the choking panic that came over her when she woke up at night and thought her body wasn’t her own to control. It couldn’t erase the touch of a stranger’s hands on her body or the feeling of them inside of her.
She had even gone so far as to let the Council for Preternatural Activities riffle through her memories. She had let them see what she had seen, feel what she had felt. They had looked upon the faces of her enemies through her eyes, faces that she couldn’t (wouldn’t) recall either asleep or awake because she preferred featureless shadows haunting her to the alternative. She had let them collect and record every horrible detail for posterity’s sake, in case there was no saving her heart, in case she died before they could catch the bastards. Jewell had given the CPA everything she could give except for her continued time and energy, and those she refused to offer. She refused to sink another second of her life into that wasteland.
Yet there she was, wasting minute after minute curled forward, face buried in her hands, drowning in those memories, thoughts, and feelings. Her untouched bed called to her. All she needed to do was crawl beneath the thick blankets and she could safely fall to pieces. But there was a chance (more than a chance) that she’d never get up again. No, she needed to do something. Run or shower. Fight or drink or fuck. Something.
It was pure grit and stubbornness that got her to her feet. She ripped her dress off over her head, not even bothering with the hamper as she dropped it on the floor and exchanged it for a pair of shorts and a Real RhyDin t-shirt. She’d start with a run, knowing her therapist and Ishmerai at least would approve of her choice of a coping mechanism. But if that didn’t work to clear her mind, if that didn’t ease the panic and dread clawing its way up from the pit of her stomach, the faerie Empress knew a few other ways to forget everything for a while.
Dust to Dust
Moderators: Bailey Raptis, JewellRavenlock
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JewellRavenlock
- Legendary Adventurer
- The Empress
- Posts: 2475
- Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:26 pm
- Location: Little Elfhame, Old Market
- Contact:
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JewellRavenlock
- Legendary Adventurer
- The Empress
- Posts: 2475
- Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:26 pm
- Location: Little Elfhame, Old Market
- Contact:
Re: Dust to Dust
A week later, she was reading through a pile of reports the Knights of Summer had left her when a firm knock on the door caused her to jump in her seat and send her favorite blue pen–the one with the sparkly feathers on top–flying out of her hand to land with a skid and disappear under the couch. Jewell was staring at it, scowling, when the visitor knocked again, harder this time.
If it was the new grocer complaining about his taxes, she was going to throttle him. The denizens of Little Elfhame were welcome to call upon her to chat about anything, from the weather to threats to neighborhood safety, but only at preset hours. Ten o’clock in the morning was not one of those hours. She did nothing to adjust her hair, up in a wild top knot, or her crumpled dress and cozy cardigan. She just padded to the door and threw it open, pasting on her most regal expression from years of practice. It instantly fell back into a scowl as she found Haruka leaning against the balcony railing, Michiru a step below her. “Hello kitten,” the blonde purred in greeting.
“I have half a mind to just shut this in your face,” she growled at Haruka. “Can’t you just leave me in peace?”
“Is that what you’re enjoying? Peace? You look like you haven’t slept in a week." She also had a black eye and a split lip, but the blonde didn't mention that. Running had clearly not worked, but Jewell had (mostly) resisted the temptation of blocking out the roar of terrible memories by drinking herself stupid and then visiting every fight club within the City limits until even her teeth hurt. Instead, she had limited herself to the duels where people named One Ton Ted, who had once punched her so hard she had likely sustained permanent brain damage, did not frequent. She had even opened up to some of her friends about the fact that she was struggling this week, and she hadn’t taken a blade to herself once. Still, sleep had been hard to come by even after Gatito punched her multiple times in the face.
Jewell groaned something highly uncomplimentary about busybodies and reluctantly stepped aside, inviting them in with a gesture, “I haven’t slept thanks to you two and your stupid note.” Michiru at least had the decency to give her an apologetic smile as she followed her partner into the apartment. “What do you want to drink?”
It didn’t matter that it was not even noon yet, Jewell closed the door behind them and bypassed the kitchen in favor of the little bar cart set up in the living space. Haruka, seemingly at ease, threw herself onto the couch while Michiru sat primly on one of the chairs facing it, making small talk with their hostess as she mixed their preferred cocktails: Had she heard from Ishmerai lately? How was Sapphire? Had she won any dueling titles? Who was she seeing these days?
Jewell had to remind herself–as she provided increasingly terse answers–that these were her friends. People she had gone into battle beside. People who had her back. Yet her heart beat wildly in her chest and she dried her palms on the skirt of her dress for the second time before handing out their drinks and taking the seat nearest to Michiru. “I know you aren’t really here just to ask about my latest boyfriend. You’re both being unusually persistent about all this.”
Haruka sat up from her rakish lounge, picking up her glass of amber liquor. “That’s because it’s different this time, kitten.”
“Oh?” she tried to act uninterested.
“This final group they’ve sentenced were members of the Namekeeper’s cell.” Jewell had her glass at her mouth, but she pulled it away quickly, barely able to breathe (forget drink) as Haruka continued. “They ran his operations. All of them.” The blonde was watching her carefully. Jewell could sense it even as she stared down into her peach juice and gin. “They guarded his prisoners.”
She tried to keep her voice neutral as she too carefully set her drink on the coffee table between them, untouched. “And why, do you think, I would be interested in their executions?” Her grey eyes were stormy as she finally managed to look at the blonde across from her.
“Jewell,” Michiru called her name softly, reaching over to touch her arm. The faerie flinched away from the contact and the pitying tone of voice. It sounded like Michi was handling some pathetic, wounded animal. A broken doll. Even if that’s clearly what she was. What she had become and had never been able to stop being. “You told us what happened that night. We heard your testimony to the Panel. We saw the recordings.”
“She didn’t,” she nodded towards Haruka. “You said she couldn't stomach it.”
“I couldn’t.” Haruka growled defensively. “But it doesn’t matter because instead, I had to hear their testimony and see the scans of their memories of that night.” Oh gods oh gods oh gods. Jewell sank back in her chair, lightheaded. “They were here, in this city. And some of them…” Haruka hesitated, her hand flexing into a fist. “Some of them knew you.”
“Knew me?” Her laugh was bitter with a touch of hysteria that had her friends sharing a nervous glance between them. “Tortured me, you mean. Raped me.” She sat forward, glaring at Haruka over the coffee table, her nails biting into the bare skin of her knees. “Used my True Name to do whatever they wanted to me and then told me to act like I liked it. Is that how they knew me?”
Haruka squirmed under the fire of that gaze, “Yes. They were some of the ones that hurt you and we.. Michi and I caught them ourselves, Jewell. We tracked down each and every remaining member of this particular cell by ourselves on purpose. For you. We wanted to bring them to justice for you,” she added on quietly.
“What justice? What does the untouchable CPA know of justice?”
“We can’t take back what happened, Jewell. We know that.” Michiru, ever the voice of reason, stopped short of touching her again but left her hand on the arm of the faerie’s chair. “But we wanted to make them pay, even a little, for what they did to you.”
Jewell looked between them before flopping back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling twelve feet away. The loft was open and airy, filled with light. A constant reminder that she wasn’t stuck in that freezing cell, iron chains holding her to the dirt floor or to the rickety bed with the paper thin mattress and the hard springs that dug into her back, bruising her skin. She watched the dust motes dance through the morning light and asked herself: Could she go back to that cell? Because that’s what would happen if she went with the agents to see justice done. If she had to come face-to-face with the people who had sullied her body and poisoned her soul, she would be right back in that cell, screams stuck in her throat. They hadn’t allowed her to scream. “Don’t make a sound,” they whispered.
But if she was being honest with herself, she had never left that cell or the prison her True Name had created in her mind. All it took was the slightest trigger to send her right back there: a voice, a touch, the smell of a certain brand of cigarettes, a note tucked into her door. She sifted through her thoughts as she moved each of her fingers, her toes, in turn. Each movement proof that she was in control of her body. Not them. But they had been that night. Yet she had gotten free. Kal had freed her. Had made it so they couldn’t get her back after the events of Sanctuary. Had ended her torture and then given her new life and a new name with it so they could never touch her again. Not like that. Yet it still hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been enough to free her from the lingering shadow of that hell.
Maybe this was what she needed to take one more step away from it. To put just a little more distance between her and that cell and the memories that wouldn’t ever fade completely. Maybe this was what she needed to do to take another step towards healing, a step that would allow her to sleep a little better at night and not be so damned scared of the dark.
But to be in the same universe as those that had hurt her so deeply, to be on the same planetoid as them, even if it was only for a few minutes before they died… Jewell wasn’t sure she could handle it. She went rapidly through the sequence of moving her fingers and toes two more times to remind herself that she was free. She was free and maybe, just maybe, everything could be a little bit better than it was if she was brave enough to take that step.
“I’ll think about it.”
If it was the new grocer complaining about his taxes, she was going to throttle him. The denizens of Little Elfhame were welcome to call upon her to chat about anything, from the weather to threats to neighborhood safety, but only at preset hours. Ten o’clock in the morning was not one of those hours. She did nothing to adjust her hair, up in a wild top knot, or her crumpled dress and cozy cardigan. She just padded to the door and threw it open, pasting on her most regal expression from years of practice. It instantly fell back into a scowl as she found Haruka leaning against the balcony railing, Michiru a step below her. “Hello kitten,” the blonde purred in greeting.
“I have half a mind to just shut this in your face,” she growled at Haruka. “Can’t you just leave me in peace?”
“Is that what you’re enjoying? Peace? You look like you haven’t slept in a week." She also had a black eye and a split lip, but the blonde didn't mention that. Running had clearly not worked, but Jewell had (mostly) resisted the temptation of blocking out the roar of terrible memories by drinking herself stupid and then visiting every fight club within the City limits until even her teeth hurt. Instead, she had limited herself to the duels where people named One Ton Ted, who had once punched her so hard she had likely sustained permanent brain damage, did not frequent. She had even opened up to some of her friends about the fact that she was struggling this week, and she hadn’t taken a blade to herself once. Still, sleep had been hard to come by even after Gatito punched her multiple times in the face.
Jewell groaned something highly uncomplimentary about busybodies and reluctantly stepped aside, inviting them in with a gesture, “I haven’t slept thanks to you two and your stupid note.” Michiru at least had the decency to give her an apologetic smile as she followed her partner into the apartment. “What do you want to drink?”
It didn’t matter that it was not even noon yet, Jewell closed the door behind them and bypassed the kitchen in favor of the little bar cart set up in the living space. Haruka, seemingly at ease, threw herself onto the couch while Michiru sat primly on one of the chairs facing it, making small talk with their hostess as she mixed their preferred cocktails: Had she heard from Ishmerai lately? How was Sapphire? Had she won any dueling titles? Who was she seeing these days?
Jewell had to remind herself–as she provided increasingly terse answers–that these were her friends. People she had gone into battle beside. People who had her back. Yet her heart beat wildly in her chest and she dried her palms on the skirt of her dress for the second time before handing out their drinks and taking the seat nearest to Michiru. “I know you aren’t really here just to ask about my latest boyfriend. You’re both being unusually persistent about all this.”
Haruka sat up from her rakish lounge, picking up her glass of amber liquor. “That’s because it’s different this time, kitten.”
“Oh?” she tried to act uninterested.
“This final group they’ve sentenced were members of the Namekeeper’s cell.” Jewell had her glass at her mouth, but she pulled it away quickly, barely able to breathe (forget drink) as Haruka continued. “They ran his operations. All of them.” The blonde was watching her carefully. Jewell could sense it even as she stared down into her peach juice and gin. “They guarded his prisoners.”
She tried to keep her voice neutral as she too carefully set her drink on the coffee table between them, untouched. “And why, do you think, I would be interested in their executions?” Her grey eyes were stormy as she finally managed to look at the blonde across from her.
“Jewell,” Michiru called her name softly, reaching over to touch her arm. The faerie flinched away from the contact and the pitying tone of voice. It sounded like Michi was handling some pathetic, wounded animal. A broken doll. Even if that’s clearly what she was. What she had become and had never been able to stop being. “You told us what happened that night. We heard your testimony to the Panel. We saw the recordings.”
“She didn’t,” she nodded towards Haruka. “You said she couldn't stomach it.”
“I couldn’t.” Haruka growled defensively. “But it doesn’t matter because instead, I had to hear their testimony and see the scans of their memories of that night.” Oh gods oh gods oh gods. Jewell sank back in her chair, lightheaded. “They were here, in this city. And some of them…” Haruka hesitated, her hand flexing into a fist. “Some of them knew you.”
“Knew me?” Her laugh was bitter with a touch of hysteria that had her friends sharing a nervous glance between them. “Tortured me, you mean. Raped me.” She sat forward, glaring at Haruka over the coffee table, her nails biting into the bare skin of her knees. “Used my True Name to do whatever they wanted to me and then told me to act like I liked it. Is that how they knew me?”
Haruka squirmed under the fire of that gaze, “Yes. They were some of the ones that hurt you and we.. Michi and I caught them ourselves, Jewell. We tracked down each and every remaining member of this particular cell by ourselves on purpose. For you. We wanted to bring them to justice for you,” she added on quietly.
“What justice? What does the untouchable CPA know of justice?”
“We can’t take back what happened, Jewell. We know that.” Michiru, ever the voice of reason, stopped short of touching her again but left her hand on the arm of the faerie’s chair. “But we wanted to make them pay, even a little, for what they did to you.”
Jewell looked between them before flopping back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling twelve feet away. The loft was open and airy, filled with light. A constant reminder that she wasn’t stuck in that freezing cell, iron chains holding her to the dirt floor or to the rickety bed with the paper thin mattress and the hard springs that dug into her back, bruising her skin. She watched the dust motes dance through the morning light and asked herself: Could she go back to that cell? Because that’s what would happen if she went with the agents to see justice done. If she had to come face-to-face with the people who had sullied her body and poisoned her soul, she would be right back in that cell, screams stuck in her throat. They hadn’t allowed her to scream. “Don’t make a sound,” they whispered.
But if she was being honest with herself, she had never left that cell or the prison her True Name had created in her mind. All it took was the slightest trigger to send her right back there: a voice, a touch, the smell of a certain brand of cigarettes, a note tucked into her door. She sifted through her thoughts as she moved each of her fingers, her toes, in turn. Each movement proof that she was in control of her body. Not them. But they had been that night. Yet she had gotten free. Kal had freed her. Had made it so they couldn’t get her back after the events of Sanctuary. Had ended her torture and then given her new life and a new name with it so they could never touch her again. Not like that. Yet it still hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been enough to free her from the lingering shadow of that hell.
Maybe this was what she needed to take one more step away from it. To put just a little more distance between her and that cell and the memories that wouldn’t ever fade completely. Maybe this was what she needed to do to take another step towards healing, a step that would allow her to sleep a little better at night and not be so damned scared of the dark.
But to be in the same universe as those that had hurt her so deeply, to be on the same planetoid as them, even if it was only for a few minutes before they died… Jewell wasn’t sure she could handle it. She went rapidly through the sequence of moving her fingers and toes two more times to remind herself that she was free. She was free and maybe, just maybe, everything could be a little bit better than it was if she was brave enough to take that step.
“I’ll think about it.”
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JewellRavenlock
- Legendary Adventurer
- The Empress
- Posts: 2475
- Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:26 pm
- Location: Little Elfhame, Old Market
- Contact:
Re: Dust to Dust
Michiru and Haruka did not overstay their welcome. The blonde had seemed ready to settle in and wait while Jewell thought the matter through, but her partner hauled her off the couch–their drinks unfinished–kissed the Empress on the cheek (she barely seemed to notice), and departed quietly, leaving the faerie to her thoughts and demons. Jewell spent the rest of the day wandering around her flat without purpose.
The knowledge that some of the Temple members that had known her, as Haruka had put so delicately, were still alive in the universe twisted her stomach and made her thoughts unwind like an unattended spool of thread rolling across the wide plank floors. It didn't matter that their deaths were now imminent. She had thought them all dead already. Her friends and the residents of the City had been thorough in their extermination of any Temple members that had participated in the attack on RhyDin. But clearly some had escaped the justice of Isuelt's swords. They were out there right now, had been out there living their lives for years, with intimate, carnal knowledge of her.
She drifted from the windows to the kitchen to her desk to her bed and back again, unsure of what to do with her body. Her limbs felt detached, like she didn't fully control them, while her mind raced. Should she write to Ishmerai? Text Sapphire? Call Mallory? Jewell jumped from one option to the next before just as quickly dismissing each. Ishmerai was too far away, and she refused to drag either young woman back into this hell.
Which left her to her own devices, staring out the window wondering what the hell she should do. She was still standing there as the lights came on along the river and across the City, her thoughts lodged several years in the past. She had lost track of time when the rap rap rap of someone's knuckles on wood sounded throughout the quiet loft. Several people had knocked on her door throughout the afternoon, but the Empress of Little Elfhame had not answered. She had not been present at home in any meaningful way despite her body currently inhabiting the space.
Whoever it was now was more persistent than her earlier visitors. Maybe because every light in the flat was blazing merrily, chasing the darkness away even as they proclaimed Empress in Residence. Jewell turned from the sights unseen out her window to stare at the door at the third repetition of the cadence, this time combined with the muffled calling of her name. She drifted towards the foyer looking even more dishelved than she had earlier. Hiding under the smothering weight of her pillow certainly hadn't improved the state of her hair, which was loose and wild now, and her eyes were red despite not having cried a single tear. She didn't spare herself a passing glance in the mirror or lend a thought to her appearance as she swung the door open.
Lupton was standing on the other side, hand raised to knock again. Jewell stared at him for a moment like she'd never seen him. Her brow furrowed as the present tried to reassert itself. "Lupton? I.." she glanced around, noticing that the day (perhaps even several days) had passed while she was stuck in an endless nightmare. She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, forcing herself to focus on where and when she was. Tuesday. Dinner. They were supposed to go to dinner.
His lips pressed together and his eyes squinted with concern as he watched her. He then stepped forward, and wrapped her into a hug. His head tilted down, he spoke quietly into her hair. "It's just me. Have you eaten yet today?"
She tensed for just a moment before she relaxed, her forehead resting against his chest. She breathed in the familiarity of his scent and grounded herself in his presence and in the present. "I don't know," the admission was muffled against his cloak. "I think this morning maybe."
His open palm rubbed up and down her back. "Let me make you something, then." There was obviously something wrong, and he wanted to find out exactly what it was, but the first priority was satiating her creature comforts.
"Okay." She agreed because the easiest thing to do right now was let someone else decide what to do. She reluctantly stepped back from him. "I think I bought peanut butter and jelly. After our picnic." Jewell sounded unsure, even keeping a simple inventory of the scant food she had in the house a task too demanding.
He closed the door behind them with his foot and smiled brightly at her. "You do have the taste of an Empress." It maybe wasn't the best attempt at getting a smile out of her, but it was the one he used. "Let's make some sandwiches, then. It's a specialty of mine." He kissed her on the forehead and then took her hand, guiding her into the kitchen. Once there, he slid back a chair from the small table and gestured towards it. "Please have a seat, my grace. Your peanut butter and jelly will be along shortly."
There it was, lurking at the corner of her mouth: the tiniest hint of a smile at his antics. It faded away just as quickly as she sat down heavily at the two-person table, as if she had run a marathon around her flat all day, and watched him move into her rarely used kitchen. "I don't know that I'm hungry," she admitted, hating for him to go through any trouble on her account.
"Well, I will make it for me, then, and you can steal some when you change your mind." A knife from the knife block was the easiest thing to find. While he was going through the cabinets to find the bread, peanut butter, jelly, and a plate, the knife in his other hand was doing all kinds of tricks and seemingly impossible acrobatics, and yet his casualness about it made it seem like he may not have even known he was doing it. Once all of the ingredients were secured, he made the sandwich, sliced it in half, plated it, and then set it in front of them as he took a seat beside her at the table. And then, finally, his hand over hers, he quietly asked, "What's happened?"
As much as she felt like she was drowning, she couldn't quite ignore how normal it felt to sit there and watch him bustle about the kitchen. How right and good. It was a breath of air, a piece of the universe sliding into place where it belonged even as everything else spun out of control. It was a momentary distraction before he joined her at the table, and all it took was that simple question before the tears she kept at bay all day were stinging her eyes. Suddenly, she had to make a decision of whether she was going to tell him everything or not.
It turned out to be easier than she thought.
If she gave herself time to order her thoughts though, she'd likely never get the words out so she just started somewhere in the middle. "I told you that I got my scar because I was stabbed in the heart with iron. But I didn't tell you that I actually asked someone to do that. I needed them to because I had sold my True Name the year before. And the people I sold it to.. they used it." She hadn't pulled her hand free from his, so it was with the other that she picked and pulled absently at the crust of the sandwich. "Do you know what that does?" She dared a glance at him, unsure of how much she needed to explain.
He studied her face, listening intently, gently squeezing her hand. "I believe so." He nodded.
She took a steadying breath, that squeeze of her hand the encouragement she needed to keep going. "So, they used my name. They wanted to control my magic because.. well, you've seen some of what I can do. They wanted me to do that to a lot of people. And there's no escaping a True Name calling. I tried so hard. I tried everything. We looked for months." She was staring through the sandwich, reliving those desperate months when Alain had begged her to run and she had gone after PathFinder and failed. "So in the end, I asked Kal if they used my name, I asked him to kill me. To stop them. And he did. But," she felt the dread building like a horrible pressure in her chest, "he didn't know right away and I was stuck with them for a day. Two days? Two nights. Whatever. And as much as they hated me because of what I am, I'm still a pretty little thing," the phrase came out with such bitterness and venom. "And they could do what they wanted and make me do what they wanted because I had given them control over everything I am. Was. Could be." She picked at another piece of bread. "So they did."
He squeezed her hand again, but this time he wasn't sure if he was doing it for her or for both of them. Realizing that his jaw was trembling from how hard his teeth were clenching, he inhaled slowly through his nose, forcing a composure over himself. He nodded again.
It took her a moment to continue, to check her emotions and achieve that even, hollow tone that made it seem like she was reciting facts in someone else's story. It was the only way she kept any tears from falling. "We thought we killed them all after. I mean, not me because I was hurt but everyone else who had helped me. But this morning.." her breath caught in her throat, choking the words. "We didn't get them all. Some of them have been alive. They've been out there alive this whole time. And now they've been caught. Now they're going to be executed. But they've been out there. And I didn't know. All this time." Her voice broke as her composure slipped and she stopped talking, overwhelmed by sheer helplessness, rage, and fear.
His hand lifted to her shoulder, intently watching every detail of her face. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. That is horrific. What do we do now? And how can I help you?"
"I don't know." She seemed unable or unwilling to meet his eyes, looking anywhere else: the untouched sandwich, the table top. "What is there to do? My friends who hunted them down want me to come see them executed." Jewell actually shuddered, and she finally covered her face with her hands, unable to face him perhaps or the reality of the situation. "I don't think I can do it. I'm too much of a fucking coward to do it. To see them. To look them in the eye. I don't want to see their faces."
"Then why go?" A gentle squeeze of her shoulder. "Let other people take out the trash while the Empress eats cake. As long as you're certain that it's getting done. I'm sure you trust your friends, but I could even go if you wanted. Just to make sure. For you."
The comment about eating cake actually prompted a dry laugh from behind that shield of her hands, but it was the offer to go in her place, to see this done for her, that had her lowering that defense to finally look at him. Look at him like she just noticed something.
She looked at him like she hadn't looked at anyone in a long time.
Jewell knew for a fact that what the Temple had done to her before Sanctuary–the things she had just revealed to Lupton–had nothing to do with why Kal had ended their relationship. She knew it for truth because the half-elf wasn't even fully aware of what he had saved her from that night, and she had never enlightened him. That knowing didn't change the fact that those two events–her abuse at the hands of the Temple of the Divine Mother and Kal's subsequent ending of their relationship–were inexplicably linked forever in her consciousness. The one did not exist without the other. Therefore the one may as well have caused the other, as unreasonable as the rational side of her brain knew that to be. But it wasn't the rational side of her brain that governed her self-esteem and self worth. It wasn't that rational side that weighed heaviest on conversations on whether she was desirable or worth loving or worth anything.
To sit there and have Lupton ask what they were going to do, to offer to help her, to offer to go in her stead and see that this was done once and for all for her peace of mind, soothed something broken and hurt deep inside her and released the tears that now began to work their way down her cheeks.
She twisted further in her seat so she could lean forward, burying her face against him and wrapping her arms around him as if to keep him there, afraid he would go. "No, I don't want you to go. I don't want you to be there. To see them, knowing what they've done. I don't need that." Mother of Nature, it was the opposite of what she needed. The thought of him in the same room as them made her sick, but she struggled to put into words what she did need: to open up, to tell someone the whole ugly truth of it all, and after, have them not turn away. In the end, it came out simply: "This. I needed this."
His arms weaved about her as she leaned forward against him. He realized, with a bit of surprise, that he was prepared to do whatever was required to make sure that she was okay–physically, mentally, emotionally. If it meant attending the execution, hunting down each of the attackers by himself and bringing her their scalps, or just being here with her in this kitchen, he would do it, and there wasn't anything that would stop or deter him. Lupton had never expected to care like this again, and certainly not as a result of this particular adventure in RhyDin.
His head tilted down and his face nestled into her blue hair. "This," he said quietly, "I can do. And whatever you need next, I can do that, too. And if you're not sure what you need, we will figure it out together. I'm here. With you, for you, and I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me to." He squeezed her against him, kissing her head through her hair.
((With so many thanks to Lupton's player for writing this with me!))
The knowledge that some of the Temple members that had known her, as Haruka had put so delicately, were still alive in the universe twisted her stomach and made her thoughts unwind like an unattended spool of thread rolling across the wide plank floors. It didn't matter that their deaths were now imminent. She had thought them all dead already. Her friends and the residents of the City had been thorough in their extermination of any Temple members that had participated in the attack on RhyDin. But clearly some had escaped the justice of Isuelt's swords. They were out there right now, had been out there living their lives for years, with intimate, carnal knowledge of her.
She drifted from the windows to the kitchen to her desk to her bed and back again, unsure of what to do with her body. Her limbs felt detached, like she didn't fully control them, while her mind raced. Should she write to Ishmerai? Text Sapphire? Call Mallory? Jewell jumped from one option to the next before just as quickly dismissing each. Ishmerai was too far away, and she refused to drag either young woman back into this hell.
Which left her to her own devices, staring out the window wondering what the hell she should do. She was still standing there as the lights came on along the river and across the City, her thoughts lodged several years in the past. She had lost track of time when the rap rap rap of someone's knuckles on wood sounded throughout the quiet loft. Several people had knocked on her door throughout the afternoon, but the Empress of Little Elfhame had not answered. She had not been present at home in any meaningful way despite her body currently inhabiting the space.
Whoever it was now was more persistent than her earlier visitors. Maybe because every light in the flat was blazing merrily, chasing the darkness away even as they proclaimed Empress in Residence. Jewell turned from the sights unseen out her window to stare at the door at the third repetition of the cadence, this time combined with the muffled calling of her name. She drifted towards the foyer looking even more dishelved than she had earlier. Hiding under the smothering weight of her pillow certainly hadn't improved the state of her hair, which was loose and wild now, and her eyes were red despite not having cried a single tear. She didn't spare herself a passing glance in the mirror or lend a thought to her appearance as she swung the door open.
Lupton was standing on the other side, hand raised to knock again. Jewell stared at him for a moment like she'd never seen him. Her brow furrowed as the present tried to reassert itself. "Lupton? I.." she glanced around, noticing that the day (perhaps even several days) had passed while she was stuck in an endless nightmare. She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, forcing herself to focus on where and when she was. Tuesday. Dinner. They were supposed to go to dinner.
His lips pressed together and his eyes squinted with concern as he watched her. He then stepped forward, and wrapped her into a hug. His head tilted down, he spoke quietly into her hair. "It's just me. Have you eaten yet today?"
She tensed for just a moment before she relaxed, her forehead resting against his chest. She breathed in the familiarity of his scent and grounded herself in his presence and in the present. "I don't know," the admission was muffled against his cloak. "I think this morning maybe."
His open palm rubbed up and down her back. "Let me make you something, then." There was obviously something wrong, and he wanted to find out exactly what it was, but the first priority was satiating her creature comforts.
"Okay." She agreed because the easiest thing to do right now was let someone else decide what to do. She reluctantly stepped back from him. "I think I bought peanut butter and jelly. After our picnic." Jewell sounded unsure, even keeping a simple inventory of the scant food she had in the house a task too demanding.
He closed the door behind them with his foot and smiled brightly at her. "You do have the taste of an Empress." It maybe wasn't the best attempt at getting a smile out of her, but it was the one he used. "Let's make some sandwiches, then. It's a specialty of mine." He kissed her on the forehead and then took her hand, guiding her into the kitchen. Once there, he slid back a chair from the small table and gestured towards it. "Please have a seat, my grace. Your peanut butter and jelly will be along shortly."
There it was, lurking at the corner of her mouth: the tiniest hint of a smile at his antics. It faded away just as quickly as she sat down heavily at the two-person table, as if she had run a marathon around her flat all day, and watched him move into her rarely used kitchen. "I don't know that I'm hungry," she admitted, hating for him to go through any trouble on her account.
"Well, I will make it for me, then, and you can steal some when you change your mind." A knife from the knife block was the easiest thing to find. While he was going through the cabinets to find the bread, peanut butter, jelly, and a plate, the knife in his other hand was doing all kinds of tricks and seemingly impossible acrobatics, and yet his casualness about it made it seem like he may not have even known he was doing it. Once all of the ingredients were secured, he made the sandwich, sliced it in half, plated it, and then set it in front of them as he took a seat beside her at the table. And then, finally, his hand over hers, he quietly asked, "What's happened?"
As much as she felt like she was drowning, she couldn't quite ignore how normal it felt to sit there and watch him bustle about the kitchen. How right and good. It was a breath of air, a piece of the universe sliding into place where it belonged even as everything else spun out of control. It was a momentary distraction before he joined her at the table, and all it took was that simple question before the tears she kept at bay all day were stinging her eyes. Suddenly, she had to make a decision of whether she was going to tell him everything or not.
It turned out to be easier than she thought.
If she gave herself time to order her thoughts though, she'd likely never get the words out so she just started somewhere in the middle. "I told you that I got my scar because I was stabbed in the heart with iron. But I didn't tell you that I actually asked someone to do that. I needed them to because I had sold my True Name the year before. And the people I sold it to.. they used it." She hadn't pulled her hand free from his, so it was with the other that she picked and pulled absently at the crust of the sandwich. "Do you know what that does?" She dared a glance at him, unsure of how much she needed to explain.
He studied her face, listening intently, gently squeezing her hand. "I believe so." He nodded.
She took a steadying breath, that squeeze of her hand the encouragement she needed to keep going. "So, they used my name. They wanted to control my magic because.. well, you've seen some of what I can do. They wanted me to do that to a lot of people. And there's no escaping a True Name calling. I tried so hard. I tried everything. We looked for months." She was staring through the sandwich, reliving those desperate months when Alain had begged her to run and she had gone after PathFinder and failed. "So in the end, I asked Kal if they used my name, I asked him to kill me. To stop them. And he did. But," she felt the dread building like a horrible pressure in her chest, "he didn't know right away and I was stuck with them for a day. Two days? Two nights. Whatever. And as much as they hated me because of what I am, I'm still a pretty little thing," the phrase came out with such bitterness and venom. "And they could do what they wanted and make me do what they wanted because I had given them control over everything I am. Was. Could be." She picked at another piece of bread. "So they did."
He squeezed her hand again, but this time he wasn't sure if he was doing it for her or for both of them. Realizing that his jaw was trembling from how hard his teeth were clenching, he inhaled slowly through his nose, forcing a composure over himself. He nodded again.
It took her a moment to continue, to check her emotions and achieve that even, hollow tone that made it seem like she was reciting facts in someone else's story. It was the only way she kept any tears from falling. "We thought we killed them all after. I mean, not me because I was hurt but everyone else who had helped me. But this morning.." her breath caught in her throat, choking the words. "We didn't get them all. Some of them have been alive. They've been out there alive this whole time. And now they've been caught. Now they're going to be executed. But they've been out there. And I didn't know. All this time." Her voice broke as her composure slipped and she stopped talking, overwhelmed by sheer helplessness, rage, and fear.
His hand lifted to her shoulder, intently watching every detail of her face. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. That is horrific. What do we do now? And how can I help you?"
"I don't know." She seemed unable or unwilling to meet his eyes, looking anywhere else: the untouched sandwich, the table top. "What is there to do? My friends who hunted them down want me to come see them executed." Jewell actually shuddered, and she finally covered her face with her hands, unable to face him perhaps or the reality of the situation. "I don't think I can do it. I'm too much of a fucking coward to do it. To see them. To look them in the eye. I don't want to see their faces."
"Then why go?" A gentle squeeze of her shoulder. "Let other people take out the trash while the Empress eats cake. As long as you're certain that it's getting done. I'm sure you trust your friends, but I could even go if you wanted. Just to make sure. For you."
The comment about eating cake actually prompted a dry laugh from behind that shield of her hands, but it was the offer to go in her place, to see this done for her, that had her lowering that defense to finally look at him. Look at him like she just noticed something.
She looked at him like she hadn't looked at anyone in a long time.
Jewell knew for a fact that what the Temple had done to her before Sanctuary–the things she had just revealed to Lupton–had nothing to do with why Kal had ended their relationship. She knew it for truth because the half-elf wasn't even fully aware of what he had saved her from that night, and she had never enlightened him. That knowing didn't change the fact that those two events–her abuse at the hands of the Temple of the Divine Mother and Kal's subsequent ending of their relationship–were inexplicably linked forever in her consciousness. The one did not exist without the other. Therefore the one may as well have caused the other, as unreasonable as the rational side of her brain knew that to be. But it wasn't the rational side of her brain that governed her self-esteem and self worth. It wasn't that rational side that weighed heaviest on conversations on whether she was desirable or worth loving or worth anything.
To sit there and have Lupton ask what they were going to do, to offer to help her, to offer to go in her stead and see that this was done once and for all for her peace of mind, soothed something broken and hurt deep inside her and released the tears that now began to work their way down her cheeks.
She twisted further in her seat so she could lean forward, burying her face against him and wrapping her arms around him as if to keep him there, afraid he would go. "No, I don't want you to go. I don't want you to be there. To see them, knowing what they've done. I don't need that." Mother of Nature, it was the opposite of what she needed. The thought of him in the same room as them made her sick, but she struggled to put into words what she did need: to open up, to tell someone the whole ugly truth of it all, and after, have them not turn away. In the end, it came out simply: "This. I needed this."
His arms weaved about her as she leaned forward against him. He realized, with a bit of surprise, that he was prepared to do whatever was required to make sure that she was okay–physically, mentally, emotionally. If it meant attending the execution, hunting down each of the attackers by himself and bringing her their scalps, or just being here with her in this kitchen, he would do it, and there wasn't anything that would stop or deter him. Lupton had never expected to care like this again, and certainly not as a result of this particular adventure in RhyDin.
His head tilted down and his face nestled into her blue hair. "This," he said quietly, "I can do. And whatever you need next, I can do that, too. And if you're not sure what you need, we will figure it out together. I'm here. With you, for you, and I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me to." He squeezed her against him, kissing her head through her hair.
((With so many thanks to Lupton's player for writing this with me!))
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