tearbleed
Chapter 01: a hand full of hairs (Patroka/Sharla)
Chapter 02: the serendipity of remembering (Melia/Pyra)
Chapter 03: lights on treble flicker gain (Pandoria/Fiora)
Chapter 04: i watched and i waxed and i waned and i waited (Tyrea/Mythra)
Chapter 05: to fall silent is not to fall short (Mòrag/Linada)
Hand to head. Head in hands. Brush it out. Brush it out.
"Can I help you?"
"Like hell you can, sister. I'm beyond all that."
It's old rhetoric, harsh words that she's not even sure she ever really believed in, not because of all that hogwash about how she just didn't know better but because she's sick of believing in anything but the strength of her own two hands.
Her hair is long, whips around her like an animal of its own, except that it doesn't, because it's only hair, it's not any fresh secret to life.
She doesn't want the secrets to life. Neither does Sharla. But she's not so prissy as to ask, can I help you, because the only help that's any good is when you help yourself.
Ugh. She doesn't even know why she's so angry. She's forgotten what there even is to be angry about.
Is she so thin, that shallow and hollow and stroked out of any meaning?
Sharla, across the shuttle, purses her lips. "Sounds to me like you've got a bad case of stuck pride."
Bad case, my ass. Patroka snorts and keeps brushing, as if she'll find the knot there where there's never been one, never will be one.
This woman has long hair too, of course. Of course it's so literal. She could almost cry.
Well. She could scream, anyway. Patroka's not sure she's ever been capable of crying, only choking, which isn't always (only) half of it.
Choking, like retching, which is what she wants to do when she pulls her left hand away and sees wiry, dark strings cling after it like spiders' legs. That's never happened before. She'd always thought herself too proud a Flesh Eater for that, and apparently up until now she'd been right.
"It's terrifying, isn't it?"
That's the realest thing Sharla's said the whole time they've been sitting here. Patroka has to give her credit. As condescension goes, hers isn't the worst. It's almost...genuine.
Ugh. Why?
Sharla brushes back the curved sweep of her bangs-but-not with the index ridge of a gloved hand. Irritatedly, Patroka admires the efficiency of the motion. "But I've been alive for more than a couple decades, and I haven't gone bald yet. I think you'll live."
"I'm not exactly concerned about that, if you haven't noticed."
To her utter consternation, the tacked-on phrase comes out more like a plea than a retort. If you haven't noticed, maybe I'd like you to. Just so I know someone's paying attention.
After a bit of quiescence that Patroka finds herself, again half-envious half-reluctant, clutching onto for dear life, Sharla produces a hairbrush from her pack and sits down behind Patroka, telegraphing all her movements more like she's the scared animal than is the one she's fencing around.
The annoyance shudders away with each gentle stroke. It is a strange world, isn't it? Not worth the explaining. Once she gets out of here, she'll be free to build herself up again. With Sharla's help, if she wants it, even.
Hand to head. Head in hands. Brush it out. Brush it out.
In Pyra's smile, there is a warmth unlike any Melia has ever felt. She's patient, of course, and she's kind, of course, and she's fiery when she needs to be. But none of that explains why she is so gloriously, unerringly, magnetically sweet.
Right from their very first meeting, she remembers every seemingly meaningless detail. The proper way to brush Dobercorgis' coats, for instance, isn't something most people bother keeping track of. They just pet the dogs and take their leave of them when it's time to part, only attracting any sort of a cherished routine when they've taken one, or two, or four, as pets.
Yes, Pyra pays attention. But she doesn't just ask Melia with the bare minimum, or the overdone maximum of politeness, and then follow the instructions implicitly. Instead, she tries her own hand at Aizel's furry back, and when she hits upon the correct pattern, she leans in to ask, cheeks coloring: "Oh, you liked that, didn't you? I'm glad." The wonderful creature nuzzles into her like her presence is a fleeting miracle that they've somehow been given the gift to understand.
Melia, sitting off to one side with Hogard, Garan, Damil all huddled in a pile in her lap (maybe the sentiment is a little off-putting, at first, but she finds it comforting to have honored her brethren by keeping their memories always with her in such a constant way), is glad as well. She feels dreadfully silly noticing all this, to be sure, but if she doesn't, why...who else will?
The judgement had been immediate and just as unerring, from the very first moment of their acquaintance: everybody, in one way or another, takes Pyra for granted. Beyond just her presence, there is the very core of who she is, and since no one else is looking at her the (unseemly, frankly) way Melia notes herself doing, they must not be noticing. Oh, it's impossible. They must.
Already, Melia feels herself faltering in her quest never to repeat these actions, because it's one thing to appreciate, and it's quite another to just stare, and stare, and stare...
"Melia?"
Her nose comes up from its place directed disquietedly at the restored villa's idyllic arrangement of ground flowers with a shimmering, shaky jerk. "Y-yes?"
"Thank you," Pyra says with a brow-upturning smile, hand neatly nestled atop her Core. Most of the time, it glows coolly, its rich emerald green tones restrained, but at moments like this...well. "I can't remember the last time everything was so...peaceful."
Peaceful. Alcamoth has not always been so peaceful. But she, they, should not take today's bliss for granted either. Mostly she.
Without thinking, Melia reaches for the other hand, dangling in unbroached quiet at Pyra's side. Its touch is just as warm, and just as magical, as it closes with appreciative grace.
"Neither can I."
Pandoria loves fishing.
At least, she's enthusiastic about it, and very much so. If she weren't, that'd probably be just as obvious, actually. Right now, her eyes are lighting up, but put the other way, they'd probably be going dim, dim, dim. So Fiora agrees to herself, yes, Pandoria loves fishing.
But why on Bionis...? She's made of electrical parts, for goodness's sake. What if she short-circuits?!
It's a silly question. The Machina never short-circuit for the introduction of water. Fiora herself never had, anyway, and Pandoria certainly looks to be made of more flesh than spark, and whatever.
And, too, Pandoria almost (almost! almost!) looks like the kind of person who'd get struck by lightning and get strung up all crooked for a week, scars streaking down her arms and back, and come out all the more grinning for it. It is once in a lifetime, isn't it? And, well...she looks like that. You know.
How does Fiora know that? Well, it had happened, in a manner of speaking. Long before Dunban. She wishes she could still love standing out in thunderstorms, mouth agape to the sky, as much as she once had. Maybe it's a small price to pay - scratch that, she knows it is. The smallest!
But that's not important. What is important is the fact that Pandoria, or Pandy, as Fiora has finally convinced herself to call her, is sat down on the dock with the gleaming bulbs of her shoes kicking happily up from the water where her legs dangle. She doesn't exactly seem to have figured how to hold the rod in her hands the most effectively for actually catching anything but tetchy Piranhaxes, but it's a start, for sure.
"Pandy?"
Up goes her hand, screwed right round the shining socket in her shoulder. "Over here!"
Well, obviously she's over there. You could hardly miss her.
Really, Fiora has no idea why she's so skittish about the whole thing. The wrappings on the sandwiches are nearly frayed to tatters by the way she's been fidgeting with them. Not that Pandy would mind, but...
Ah, maybe that's it. She feels a little off-balance, being the...well, the normal one! The one with less energy, abounding over and over and on and on and on.
So, is that a challenge? Alrighty!
"Make sure you don't catch all the big ones before I've got a chance!" she calls lazily, step quickening and hands lacing into fists. Pandoria looks back at her, and grins, grins, grins. Maybe she already has.
Tensely, Mythra glares at her. And Tyrea glares right back.
"You don't have to act so suspicious, you know. It's not like we chose to crash down here."
"No? From what I was informed, it was your actions that led to the dismantling of the equilbrium of your own universe."
Mythra tuts. She hasn't felt this pissy in five hundred years, really. She's not sure whether she loves it or hates it.
But anyway. "Yeah, like I said. Not our choice."
Tyrea furrows her brow, and Mythra catches the minute movement of her wings, harsher and harsher, along with them. Oh, this one's a lot of fun. She preens just like a Quadwing, except slighter; a Rhogul, except finer; a Flamii, except fiercer.
"I am not in the practice of divorcing consequences and their judgement from the actions that caused them. Do not expect me to change for you."
The way she says it gives Mythra the distinct impression that Tyrea is still smarting from some disconnected set of intentions and resolutions. Sure, that's fine. Mythra's been shouldering a similar burden all her life. She just had to forgive because any perpetrating had up and died, eventually, whether they were supposed to or not.
So she nods, keeps her arms uncrossed, and walks forward. After a beat, Tyrea follows her with strident, purposeful steps. She seems offended that Mythra, in her flat-soled ankle-cuffing jet boots, can match her aura, her pride. The victory isn't begrudged, but it is contested.
After they've walked for a matter of meters, or tripeds, or whichever they're eventually going to agree (to disagree) to call it, Tyrea halts abruptly, as if testing whether or not Mythra will acquiesce to stopping with her.
"I wish to get to know you better," she says stiffly. Mythra marks, with both amusement and interest, the lack of the additional stiffness that something about "acquainting" would bring, and puzzles for a moment on whether or not the choice was intentional.
She's not about to stand here, Elysium transported, and let herself get Ellook-eyed for a distant hand of a distant land's princess - it's not going to happen, really, she knows that and she's not worried about it, but learning the lay of the cast here is almost the same challenge set before her as learning her new family, centuries updated, had been.
"Fine by me," answers Mythra, her cadence the genuine inflection of curiosity and geniality. Time for another phase.
A slightly softer medic, Mòrag thinks, would brush the dark, blunt hair out of her eyes, would set things irrevocably right, would transmit sparks in the soundless click of her nails, so elegant, so...is it right to say alien?
It probably isn't. And what do they even know about aliens? They don't.
The Saviorites had been, the Aegises were their like, thousands of years later, was it?
Questions, questions. Linada stands patiently, heels arched in a curve impossible to describe. It is not usually Mòrag's responsibility to have to describe things. Perhaps impart, perhaps deride, but nothing so artistic as the description that it quite definitely requires to define such a singular woman.
But is she not equal to the task? In all things, she must be. It's not really much of an option.
The land is still, a Titan's back laid flat rather than its palm laid upward, curving, arcing towards the sky, pointing digit by digit, up there, up there, up there...
It's easy to think in conquest's space; vistas and visions and the enormity of the world, rather than the delicate touch of a creature that sits beside you, transforming all your wordless ways.
"Chip for your thoughts?"
Architect, but her voice is beautiful. Clipped in all the right places, pleasantly oblique in all the others. Gorgeously so.
Mòrag decides she won't bother asking what a chip is. Someone's certainly been sorting out the currency, but it hasn't been her. She'll just gladly assume that her thoughts aren't being esteemed so much higher than the worth of a penny.
It's more comforting than it should be. And Linada is very matter-of-fact.
"I admire your people greatly," is what she forces out in the end. The requisite contrast, what it looks like for a militant nation to bow, even to that which had nominally been the aggressor in the struggle just past, registers itself faintly in the back of her mind, and she hopes that Linada won't be the type to lay finger to chin and observe how quaint it is that the Special Inquisitor should say so.
"I am grateful," returns Linada. "We've worked hard to maintain our culture, what little of it there can be left, and we look forward to sharing our knowledge with the Homs and High Entia in the years to come."
The Homs. So similar, yet so different. And of course, on this side of the universe (or, rather, this other universe unto itself), they don't have Blades. Will there be issues with quartering, given the vast differences in interpersonal independence?
"And with the Alrestian people," Mòrag hears herself say, blazing (more bulldozing) directly past the question, "I hope to provide you every interface. If you are having trouble with any one of us, please do not hesitate to come to me."
Linada tilts her head. The headpiece does not sway. Of course it doesn't. "I had been counting on it, Lady Mòrag."