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 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 3:01 pm
{{ continued from Available Late, 8/2/2014 }}Neither night nor day existed on Hvergelmir's island. The stars held court here, and their light was constant in its reign, lending a mute, middling glow. Here, near the center of the galaxy itself, the light of so many millions of stars should've been blinding, perhaps, or its heat too great to sustain human life. But, likewise, her tiny island should not have been capable of an atmosphere -- not a humanly breathable one. Yet it persisted, all the same -- floating solitary among the starscape, commanding a view unlike any other. At the end of a lonely voyage waited this one, tiny island to receive all travelers. Its long, pale silver pier stretched out into space, like an arm extended -- waiting to receive whatever ships made port. Waiting to offer them succor. Here, Hvergelmir and her visitor landed. She'd never arrived at the far end of the pier before. The terrifying, tempting yawn of space was something she didn't like being close to unless she was in the right mood, and she certainly didn't like putting unsuspecting strangers near it, either. It was hard to say what might have been different, this time, that had led her to arrive in such a way. With Zippeite, she'd wanted only to take him to space. With Titan, she supposed they came as visitors were meant to do: approaching the island from the long silver walk, seeing the rise of the columns in the distance (great Doric monstrosities, towering high over the Well itself), or the pale-and-tinted silhouette of the temple farther off. "Take a moment to get your bearings," she suggested, giving his fingers a light squeeze. "But keep to my hand till we're off the pier -- the barrier can't be passed without escort." The great pier was long -- spanning a football field or more, if she had to guess -- and fashioned of unremarkable silver metal. It was unadorned by railings or barriers, though small hitching posts dotted it at intervals -- otherwise, the broad walkway led only from empty space to the white marble of the island, nothing to mark it as special except for narrow channels of water that seemed to be carved into its border. The air here was mild, weatherless and windless. The sky was black, illuminated by the incredible, all-over glow of countless stars; and from here the island suggested only soft white stone, dotted with benches, crowned with a ring of columns and a single building in the distance. (In truth, up close there was not much more to see.) Ivynian please LMK if you need any more info, and Titan please don't fall off the pier and die :O
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 3:03 am
At least in visiting family overseas, Titan had not only seen a few docks, piers and boatyards, but had been toured around them by some cousins who were professional fishermen. It usually involved hopping on or off boats as well, which were noticeably lacking at the tie offs. Boats of some sort would have been really welcome to break up the incredible cluster-dust of stars in the sky that made the blackvoid spots seem more like the stars than the blobs of light. The thought occurred, looking at the length, of how big a starocean going vessel was expected to be- and where such things came from. There weren't any on Earth. Space shuttles didn't hitch to docks like boats. Neither did rockets. Given permission and direction by her, he gladly kept hold of her hand. "How are we breathing...? There are no boats..." "It looks to want them. Who comes ....wherever here is?...Where is this?" His gaze followed the long silver line of the pier towards the more indistinct distance of the island itself with its columns risen against the starfull backdrop. His attention paused there, stalled out for a long moment just admiring. I could never have dreamed things like this if I tried.
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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 6:09 am
Hvergelmir shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted without much consternation (though she might have been more abashed about it for certain audiences, depending). "Nothing this small should be able to support a breathable atmosphere. But nothing this small should be able to provide enough gravity to hold us to it, either, or to provide moorage for ships twice its size -- but the island can do all those things. Whatever magic or science manages it, I don't know it." She twisted, searching out the glow in the sky where the stars grew brightest, centered around several points of light -- one of which she knew to be the Space Cauldron. "Near the heart of creation," she said a little fancifully -- then, more clearly, pointing to the area she was regarding, she said, "The center of the galaxy is just there." Hvergelmir let her arm fall, staring out at it for a while, contemplative. What she knew about this island was half inference and half conjecture, her understanding cobbled together from loosely stitched together fragments of memory like a very poorly assembled Frankenstein's monster. "This is a resting point for travelers. A place to recover their strength before continuing on. It never saw very many visitors, in its time -- but I doubt it sees any, anymore. There's no one left except on Earth. I can't imagine the pier will ever see any ships again." Slowly, leading him gently by the hand, Hvergelmir began the long walk up the pier to the island.
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 4:40 pm
Titan ran fingers along the successive glimmering piling as they passed- a mix of wonder and affectionate admiration like gently boufing flowers or bushes that line a walk. "Is there one of theses at the center of every galaxy? There are lots of galaxies, aren't there?" "Are is it the center of everything everything, not just our galaxy? Like all space? .....The sun is really a star isn't it?" He thought he remembered that from school. "For being near so many suns it isn't so hot here. " Which was actually rather nice that they weren't boiling and dying. He wasn't a big fan of hot weather anyway, but it made leather impossible. And really long dresses. Maybe then it wouldn't be so bad. "No one at all? " It was said vaguely. "No one at all near the where everything is created? Isn't that...oxy...para...something. Opposites. Aliens and people or people plants and all the stuff with space trek ?" "No one here at your home, even? Who keeps the marble? or repairs things?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:18 pm
Hvergelmir listened to the quiet tapping of her own footsteps along the sturdy metal of the pier, followed by Titan's heavier footfalls. His gloved fingers were warm against hers, and he walked with an ease that bespoke long years of experience at shortening and slowing his stride so as not to step on others' ankles. It was nice. Companionable. "The Galaxy Cauldron," she explained, "sits at the center of our galaxy -- that bright point of light in the sky just past the island. That's where starseeds are made and given life, and where they return again when their time's done, and wait to be reborn in another thousand years -- as far as I've been able to piece together. I guess it's possible other galaxies have their own? I don't know if there are any senshi around who're from outside the Milky Way." She looked around, taking in the nearby stars and their cool light. "The sun's a real star -- and as far as I know, these guys all are, too -- so why you and I aren't burnt to cinders right now is kind of a mystery to me. In general, I don't think life like you and I know it can survive this far in, not without some kind of man-made environment." As they reached the end of the long walk up the pier, Hvergelmir spotted the thin, filmy flicker of the shield that walled off the rest of the island. She put up her free hand to dispell it, and brought them both through. On the far side, the island revealed its secrets, nonexistent though they were. At its center, the white marble rose up in a tiered dais of stairs, after a short series of which the marble leveled out and was set with the ring of huge columns whose height challenged the endlessness of the sky. In the middle --- though visible only in profile from this vantage -- sat the Well itself, a mammoth construction of pristine marble gurgling quietly with the soft movement of restless waters. Away from the well, a half-cleared patch of ancient plant detritus marked what had once been a small garden. Past that, in the distance, was the only evident building: the temple where she'd once lived, a thousand years ago. "No one but me has ever lived here, as far as I know. And whatever lived in the stables behind the temple. The marble's still in a fairly good state, for its age -- but time got the better of the stables, from what I saw. They were mostly wood, and it's collapsed in on itself. Whatever lived there once is out of luck now -- at least until I get up here with a nail gun and start shooting stuff, I guess." She shrugged. Realistically, Hvergelmir didn't really have any intentions of trying her hand at stable construction -- wood shop had never exactly been Laney's forte, and the prospect of purchasing lumber in her squire dress and then dragging it away to teleport to the island along with a bunch of power tools didn't seem very likely. She loosed her fingers a little to indicate he was welcome to let go of her hand if he preferred to, but wasn't averse to the prolonged contact if he chose otherwise. Her eyes went up to the Well, gaze sweeping up over the steps. "It's quieter than you'd think, for its name," she acknowledged. "But you'll see as we get closer and closer -- there's energy here, all pooled in one place, and you feel it roaring in your blood if you linger by the water."
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 4:02 am
Looking at the sky was still dizzying, but it brought a closer introspection of some other points of history that had been both confused and out of reckoning. He spoke softly, like anything very loud might be outlawed in such a place, much how people spoke in banks or churches. "You can't.....see the Earth from here, I suppose? I guess Babylon really couldn't have walked there. The space shuttles can't get here." "Maybe you cannot walk to the cauldron from here either..." it was muttered half to himself as the breached the weird bubble barrier if from the pier to the wonder proper. From there he couldn't have more plainly wanted to all at once look at everything in minute detail and been wholly incapable of that with only one pair of eyes and one body only capable of doing any one of them at a time. Looking between each of the small landscape features, Titan's grip on her gentled one actually firmed slightly in unwillingness to test the hospitality of the strange place so soon in crossing the barrier. Having so solid an excuse and welcome to hold a Lady's hand was a lesser, but also very present motivation. He looked to her again, then back through each of the visible locations. Then slowly started walking for the Well, taking the steps with slow pace but wide grey eyes straining for every detail. Already it wasn't anything like expectations of knotwork beast heads, serpents, long branches or staveless runes of poetry. The columns and stairs all seemed far more soaring than childhood visits with cousins to Bronseplassen Museum. It made enough sense, though, since the roaring cauldron was a place of divinity. The gods and monster might as well have different architecture and taste than the men that prayed to them. It made him wish he'd worked the 6 weeks to memorize some of the tales that mentioned the Hvergelmir. Would the place have liked that? Did it like or not like, if it could take oaths? He felt like he was trespassing again, with that thought. "It is quiet....to me at least. Does it think? Does it speak to you?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 4:43 am
"No," she agreed, looking around. "It can't be reached by human means." With a smile, hoping to put a good face on it, she smiled broadly and said, "Nor the Galaxy Cauldron itself. You see? Babylon would never have made it if you hadn't said something. You're a lifesaver." Hvergelmir squeezed his hand. "Our hero." She followed his lead up to the Well. Immensely broad, it stood ringed in white marble, with a round shape so wide it rivaled most fountains. The Well stood perhaps thirty feet across, at the diameter -- and its bottomless waters ran so pure and deep that they reflected back perfectly the starscape overhead, shuddering and swelling constantly with liquid movement. The reflection was interrupted only along one edge, where the faint outline of marble stairs disappeared on a spiral down into the water. She'd sat there before with Babylon in her arms, singing to him while he waited to die, and there her own blood had run through her fingers and a princess had answered her call. She had memories here, from this life and the last -- but to Titan it was all new . . . and hopefully worth the visit. Hvergelmir closed her eyes, feeling the thrum of all the power radiating off the Well, so dense with it that its waters couldn't even stay still. When she opened them again, she remembered he'd asked a question. "I guess it must think, in a way," she mused. "It knows what I do, and it reacts -- there must be some form of thought there. And it can communicate with me. There's a sort of a -- like a life force, or a spirit, that showed me things once, but only in images. As far as I know, the Well has no voice. Or perhaps its voice is so great, it would shatter human eardrums to hear it." She smiled. "Well, now I'm just being fanciful. Who knows." Her eyes cast about again, trying to see her own island through a stranger's eyes. "The Rift was our school once," she said. She'd told him that before. "A true Wonder, like this one, I imagine. I guess it must have had a knight of its own, before it fell. I wish I could remember what it looked like then. I must have attended -- they say we all did."
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 3:33 am
Titan bit his lower lip as they approached, labret clicking in his skull against his teeth. On surmounting the stair he moved to the ledge side, looking down on the starry waters with want, but better wisdom than to touch it. It was like a museum. You just didn't go around touching things because they were there. Especially if It had a sort of thought. It wasn't much different than looking at her dress. Though there were less donuts in the well. As she mentioned the Rift again, he grew less comfortable. Could the well feel him so much an enemy, if it could feel? Was it Realgar that told her the name for it, The Rift? Else she would only call it some school name, if that is true. I don't even know whether it is. He was a captain like me. He probably knew a bit more about it that I did, since he had his companion, Redline. But why does she bring it up at the feet of her own wonder. Bring up specifically the Rift? The captain looked over and down at her, his unease plain writ on features. "Or the knight pledged it. And themselves vassal to the throne. But I haven't heard of any of that. Only ever from you, that you think it a school. Who is 'they' are that tells you you attended? 'They' must know. " "Why do you want to talk about the Rift? It is a stronghold of the Negaverse, and that is our name for it. It is alarming to hear it known at all. You brought it up before. My experience in it is just 'the place I train with my lord.' He mostly lives there."
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Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 7:23 am
Hvergelmir should've stuck to easy topics, more questions about his family, maybe. Stupid, stupid, stupid -- she'd let her mind wander, and forgotten for a moment how wary Titan was of saying anything that might be seen as sensitive information. "I'm sorry," she said, twiddling one of the dangling strands of her hair around her fingers. "I get a little carried away with myself sometimes. When I'm here, I can remember things, every so often. Memories from another lifetime -- living in this place. Tending the garden, meeting ships at the pier, sometimes working at the loom. And sometimes -- once or twice -- memories that aren't from here at all. I was thinking about whether you'd ever seen a real Wonder before. That's when it occured to me that the Rift was maybe one, once." She pressed the toes of her shoes together, feeling awkward. This was only marginally less disastrous than when she'd brought Zippeite here and she'd freaked out at him when he'd told her that Negaverse agents ate people's starseeds. That visit had been over pretty quickly. "Sorry -- I won't bring it up again. The Code told us about the Academy -- the big glowy white force I mentioned to you once. It brought all the knights together once and told us a little of our history. Our order is, um -- well, so, like, the senshi have the Mauvian cats, they watch over them and explain things they need to know? And the Negaverse, you have -- well, had Beryl, I guess -- and you have your superiors that can tell you these things. But as knights, we're mostly on our own. It's rare anyone can tell us anything about our history. So knowing a piece of our heritage might still exist -- some of us are naturally curious. Sorry." He was right, of course -- if indeed the Academy had been one of the great Wonders of the Earth (and it was difficult to imagine it hadn't been), then there had probably been a knight pledged to it, and there was every possibility that that person had offered it into Queen Beryl's grasping hands. Woe to the knight who could do such a thing: break not just their loyalty to the Earth itself, forsaking their sacred ground into poisoned hands, but condemn all the innocents who lived there to the horror that the Rift had become. The Rift, they called it. Like a tear, a hole in the world. The dimpled scar on the Earth where a great and true Wonder had been gouged out. A symbol of the schism among the noble armies and empire of the Earth. A place where children-turned-monsters roamed freely and waited to savage humanity. A place where Bischofite had described fighting for a slab of rock to sleep on. A place where... wait. Hvergelmir turned quizzical eyebrows up to Titan. "...Your lord is a youma?" That had never occured to her.
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Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 8:08 pm
Memories from before? Her own? The well's? How strange-....how does she know Beryl is a was? That had been at least a year ago, so it made sense that information of that sort could have had many leaks in the months and months since. Especially with there being evidence of officers turned traitor who were at the branch meetings where Howlite had been addressing the 'The former Queen Beryl', and Obsidian had stood powerful before them all to use the euphemism 'the late witch Beryl'. The exact wordings were lost to time in Titan's memory, all but that 'late' had been used. Serpentine had spoken up about the death of a Queen and had been reprimanded for it. Titan had been less than a handful of months into his own service to Metallia, and the meeting had been confusing, terrifying and strange. He'd shared the other man's reservations about the title of a 'Queen' in the case of it all, but hadn't dared to risk speaking. Or much more than breathing. It hadn't been until later with the announcement of the General Operations formation and Laurelite's presentment, where the very presence and orders of Metallia had become very clear. He had finally seen the Queen they all served, and it had been enough in the void of more consistent guidance. She spoke of their Code to him, freely enough. She brought him to her very wonder. She was sharing. She was trusting him with such things. Of course she would look for something back. She'd chosen the Rift, and he could believe the reason given- it was a part of the past of knights. "It's alright. I don't actually know very much about the Rift. It isn't easy to get to- even lieutenants cannot just go in. No, Obsidian is no Youma. He's brought himself very close to it. He had chosen to live there, but I don't know exactly why. Something had broken in him, I think. " "Another officer and I stepped in. Its been maybe a month. He's readjusting, but I don't know if it will last. I hope. Obsidian's sword was once great...and don't want to see him lost in madness. I swore life and honor to his service, on his very sword. I never expected that it would come to saving him in some part from himself... " He trailed off, uncomfortable with the whole situation of having to gainsay his lord's will in some ways to preserve the man's life. It was lore beside the point anyway. "I've never met any officer who said they were the keeper of the Rift. Those who were Knights don't seem to talk about their fiefs, or keep their names much. Or I just haven't met any. Maybe they do in some circles. I don't think I've ever met a knight that had become a vassal to the Throne." Maybe the Information Branch operatives knew that sort of thing. It did seem like something he should check up on- it was a sort of connection to the other side of the war that the Spec Ops should be monitoring. "I have a friend who is a Youma, though. He is the other reason I have spent any time there- I make him dolls sometimes and hide them around the vast place to find. He collects them. Its dangerous, but it is a small sacrifice compared to honoring his service. " He stepped closer to the well to look over the lipledge at the bottomless waters, wondering if it would reflect any part of himself, if it was really water, where the not-bottom went and how the water stayed in if there really wasn't any when it was a weird, floaty island place. "Is it....water?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:54 pm
She was relieved, at first, that he'd accepted her explanation. Things settled back down a little, emotionally -- and he went on to answer her question about his master -- Obsidian. That was where things turned a little strange. She could feel herself pulling away, sinking into some uncomfortable, inner cold as he explained that Obsidian had exiled himself to the Rift by choice. Pain was grabbing at her -- something deep and agonizing that she tried so hard to keep buried every minute of every day. Something she'd worked to ignore, week in and week out, and let herself think about only for a few minutes at sunset on Wednesdays -- because otherwise, Laney didn't know how to function. Something had broken in him, Titan explained, and Hvergelmir could feel her eyes were a little damp and her shoulders shaking, so she bit her lip and looked down and tried to put the thing she didn't think about back in its box and shove the box back into its cabinet and hide from it again -- she tried to concentrate on what Titan was saying. But what he was saying was I don't want to see him lost in madness, and it was too much, and she was definitely crying. She should've said something, then, in answer to what he was saying -- tell him that all the Negaverse's agents were knights themselves, all Metallia's vassals had once served Wonders like this one -- but her voice was sticking in her throat. He was still talking, his eyes on the Well, and he was telling her what had to be the sweetest story she'd ever heard about his friendship with a youma, and how he made dolls for his youma friend to find. She should've said something about that, too. It was a kind thing to do. She should've said she thought so. Instead, she watched as he stepped closer to find his own reflection in the Well and asked her something, and she found she could barely keep the question in her head. He was swimming and blurry in the watery haze of her vision. "How..." She sniffed. "How did you get him to -- come back? Obsidian." Her voice kept cracking. Hvergelmir let out an undignified sob, then lifted a hand to cover her mouth.
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Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:27 pm
The sob and terrible tones of grief in her voice drew his attention swiftly back from marvel at the Wonder of the Hvergelmir itself to the girl who bore it's title for her use name- O, Lady, your heart is breaking and you let me stupidly stumble on. What troubled her, in his explanations, he couldn't begin to fathom. She didn't seem likely to know or have any relationship to Obsidian or Bazzite. When exactly she'd started was lost, too. The why was secondary, really, compared to the first necessity of comfort and reassurance. Titan backed from the Well and hazarded if she would let him hug her. He didn't say anything at all to start, worried of making things worse, or crowding her at a moment when she was plainly vulnerable. She'd made it a point to get the question out, though, so leaving it in the air wasn't good. "I read a small article about a girl who wouldn't eat. It was a while ago, at the end of winter, in Good Morning America . But the people at her gym surrounded her car and helped her, even though she didn't want their help. It talked about how people are usually too polite to help each other. There was a saying...'it takes a village'...but not just for children, for helping each other gently. It looked really hard to judge- she really needed the help to save her life, and she did need people to prove that they loved her and valued her, even if outside she was trying to push everything away. I thought ...maybe my lord was the same. maybe that he was so wounded and scarred that he was just trying keep everything away, even though what he really wanted and needed inside was help and safety. " "It was risky. Another officer and I worked on convincing him to come out for weeks, then once we got him to the apartment without him attacking either of us, we made sure to feed him heavy, gentle food to make him tired so that he would sleep there. After that, I stay with him often to not let him return to the Rift- we have to show him and help him make a life again. It is usual for soldiers, I think, to lose how to just live and value it. " "Is there anything I can do?" He wasn't going to ask if she was alright. That answer was already plain.
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Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:20 pm
Hvergelmir nodded along with Titan's story, things like so wounded and scarred and what he really wanted and needed inside was help and safety. She stored away the things he'd told her about the article he'd read, and his own intervention with Obsidian, some part of her truly keen for any advice even in her grief -- but when he asked her if there was anything he could do, for a few minutes, it was all she could do to put her head in her hands and cry again. When she thought she could speak again, Hvergelmir wiped at her face with the heels of both hands and cleared her throat testingly. Finding her voice choked and raw, but otherwise sound enough to answer, she said, "No. Unless you can end this war, the only solution you would offer... Wouldn't help." He wouldn't understand, she thought. Even with the full picture, there were things she imagined wouldn't fit with the worldview he'd been given -- but dissembling was beyond her at the moment. Let him be a little confused -- this war was killing her best friend. Confusion was not more than the Negaverse could stand. "My best friend is a sailor senshi," she began. "The night I became a knight, she was trying to protect me from a group of youma. Neither of us ever wanted to fight, we... We just didn't want to die, that's all it ever was. But she's been through so much, and she thinks it's all her fault -- all the people around her that suffer, that get dragged into this because she's not strong enough to protect us on her own. She thinks she's weak, and anyway she... She's not stable enough to fight anymore, to go through what she's been through again. So she did what -- what she's supposed to do, according to your people. She went back to her home world a few months ago. She hasn't been back -- won't come back since. I don't know what she eats, I don't know what she... I don't know. She's going mad there." Hvergelmir put a hand to her forehead, tears still running salty down her cheeks and into the creases of her mouth. Aquarius was a problem she'd made no progress solving, and time was running out to try and help her. The longer she stayed at the Surrounding, the worse she was likely to get.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:23 am
"the only solution you would offer... Wouldn't help" What did she think that he would offer? Maybe she did know what he would offer. Hvergelmir seemed like a smart person who read books and understood a lot of things. What would he offer? It felt like it didn't matter to think about himself in the face of so much certainty on her part. It felt a little like an insult as well. Especially when it was connected to any ability or inability to stop the war. There was blame in that. Why not. I do wear a Negaverse uniform. I am one of the enemy to her and to her friend. It doesn't matter than I'm just a captain. Even if I were a General, how much do they even do. Only the General-Sovereigns have the power to move the war in sweeping directions, and then only at the Queen's will. It is Metallia's war. From my side, she is the only one who can stop it, especially since all our strength comes from her.
And all of that doesn't help Hvergelmir or her friend. And she doesn't want my help. He wanted to try to offer things she could try. It made sense, as Hvergelmir spoke of her senshi friend, how similar some of it was to Obsidian. Maybe a copy of the article would do her better, without the trappings of uniforms and the war attached to stain the perspective. Maybe it would suggest enough of whatever thinking people got out of such things to give her new ideas to try to help her friend see that no one of any of them seemed to have the power to protect enough or do enough to prevent the need for further recruitment on either side. There is no army of one. But she knows that, and has probably tried to convince her friend of that. Really, there's no convincing someone of anything with their ears shut. We can only try to show them that we love them and mean well, so that maybe they'll decide we're worth opening their ears to to listen and consider a little. All blood and wounds in between, and having to be able to stay the distance if willing or able. It was really the only thing I was ever good at- staying through whatever. "Maybe-" He cut it off, even as the suggestion popped to mind. As though earlier realizations that his feedback wasn't sought had been a distracted guard dog to his mouth, lacking in their vigilance to other thoughts. "-Nevermind. " Instead, he fished in the rolled sleeve of his shirt to produce a crumpled, but fresh and unused Kleenex. It was a thing he'd learned from his Mormor. He offered it down. The wonder is gone out of these stars and walks with her tears. I am not really welcome here. As much, I guess, as she isn't in the Rift. Not that I could have shown it to her. I wonder if it is comfort to her, though, to be here. It is easy to bear disfavor for that small comfort to her."Would you rather stay or go?"
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 8:11 pm
A broad, black-gloved hand was being held outward in her direction, its lines drawn upward into a strong forearm and rolled sleeve. Offered between Titan's fingers was a fresh tissue, its soft fibers slightly pilled from what must have been long days spent stowed up his sleeve. It was such a simple, such a homey gesture, so completely and naturally kind . . . for a few long seconds, Hvergelmir just stared down at the tissue like it was one of the profound secrets of the universe. She wanted to stay. She wanted to go. She wanted not to have made a royal hash out of yet another attempt to give a Negaverse agent a positive space travel experience. She wanted not to have given in to her own impulses and mucked up the fragile relationship she was trying to form by bringing her own personal problems into the picture. She wanted to be professional and put all her worries back into the little box where she stored them and go back to not feeling them, not thinking about them again for a while. She wanted Tara to come home. She wanted the war to be over. She wanted to wake and find that everything since Barren Pines had been one long coma dream, and her parents loved her and were waiting by her bedside. She wanted a lot of things that weren't going to happen. It felt like agony. "I want . . . " Titan's outstretched hand offered none of these things. There was only one thing there, making no bones about what it was or what it could do -- just that one, lonely little scrap of white. Just comfort. And after all, what else was there, in a world like this? What else did they even have between them to offer each other? So, because it was there -- or because she could, and that was reason enough -- or because her nose was runny and honestly getting kind of gross -- Hvergelmir reached out her hand to take what was offered. But halfway there, she found that that wasn't what she was doing at all: instead she was moving forward, grabbing the fabric of Titan's shirt in both hands, forehead settled against his chest, and she was sobbing again, her tear-streaked face buried in soft, crumpled folds of well-worn cloth. "I want this all to be easier," Hvergelmir admitted to the dark, her voice heavy with damp despair. "I don't want to be scared all the time." Ivynian maybe titan should've kept a snot bucket up his sleeve instead~
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