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 Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2023 2:21 pm
After arriving at the hospital, Brielle had been drifting in and out of consciousness enough to learn a few things. First, she knew that she was alive. It was even likely that she was going to stay alive, and, beyond that, that she was going to recover. Second, she knew that the doctors had no idea how she had pulled through. They were calling it miraculous. She had neither the heart not the energy to tell them that they didn't know the half of it. She simply closed her eyes and let herself drift away again. A dull ache dragged her back to awareness. The medicines were wearing off. She made a face and let out a bit of an annoyed groan as she opened her eyes as shifted slightly in the hospital bed. Then she froze. She could make out her love slouched asleep in the chair next to her, and her heart nearly stopped again. She was glad, so glad, to see him. She was glad that she had this time, that she was able to see him again. At the same time, she hadn't thought about facing her loved ones in the aftermath of all this. She hadn't thought about how she was going to talk, what she was going to say. Still, if he was here for her, then she wanted to be there for him. "Hey," she said, in a soft voice that was still rather raspy.
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2023 5:14 pm
For the first time since Brielle had been admitted to the hospital, Octavian had fallen into dreamless, restful sleep. Sleep had been hard to come by while the doctors flitted in and out of the room, making sure she was going to live, keeping her alive. Numerous times she'd woken only to be put back under to recover, and he'd paced the length of the hospital four times.
But he'd finally, finally came back to the doctors saying her recovery was nothing less than miraculous. Not that he could tell them that it probably had something to do with the fact she was a Princess Senshi, but he was thankful for it nonetheless.
So he'd sat back in his chair, and some how fallen into sleep.
Silver eyes blinked tiredly as the bed shifted and Bri groaned softly. Tavi jolted up, heart in his throat and gently buried his face in her thigh.
"Don't... don't ever do that again. Please don't scare me like that ever again..." he said as he shook, tears rolling down his cheeks. He gripped the sheets to try to not grip her too hard and hurt her further. She was alive, she was alive, she was whole and would be healthy and she wasn't going to die.
She'd be okay. She'd be fine.
They'd be okay.
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2023 6:25 pm
Near the bed, a heart monitor beeped steadily, but all that technology couldn't show the way that Brielle's heart broke to see Tavi like that. She could feel his tears through the thin hospital blanket. She hadn't wanted to do this to him. She might have been a mess of IVs and wires and bandages, but nothing right now was going to stop her from being close to them. She leaned forwards, slowly so as not to pull on anything, gritting her teeth against the ache that radiated out from her chest as she moved, and she rested her head against his back. Her slightly disheveled hair was loose, and it pooled around them as tears wet Cybele's cheeks, too. "I'm sorry," she rasped. She couldn't promise what he wanted her to, but she could rub tiny circles across his back. "I'm sorry. I'm here."
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Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2023 5:14 pm
He brought his arms around her as best as he could, sitting in the chair with her on the bed. He felt her head on his back and reached behind himself to gently grab her hand.
"You scared the s**t out of me Brielle... What happened?" he asked, turning his head to look at her. Hard, given the position, so he sat back up and gently climbed into the bed with her. The tears didn't really stop, just dripped off his jaw line as he moved.
There was a giant knot in his chest and he couldn't really untie it. Not yet anyway.
"Just. Maybe next time don't almost die while I'm on Siegfried and can't be contacted." Octavian took her hand gently in his and rubbed circles against the back of it.
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Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2023 5:57 pm
The way how he told her not to almost die put a bitter smile on her face, even as she melted somewhat into his embrace, squeezing his fingers back some as he rubbed the back of her hands. "Faustite," she said, flatly, like it shouldn't come as any surprise. There were things she didn't say, about the choices she'd made that might have been reckless. She hadn't asked for help, wanted to prove that she could go toe to toe with the strongest now. She'd agreed to a fight to the death. It shouldn't have come as a surprise how that had ended. "He killed me, Tavi," she said, in an even softer rasp. She hated this. She hated how useless she'd been, how careless. She hated what Octavian must have gone through in the aftermath.
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Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2023 3:11 pm
Anger, hot and violent rippled down Tavi's spine and he clenched his jaw. Faustite. That piece of work, piece of s**t burning son of a b***h who'd destroyed her feet. He'd gone and targeted her like she was some gods damned boss fight to beat.
Silver eyes hardened as she spoke softly and he stared off into the middle distance with such hatred and bloodlust that it almost brought a snarl to his face. Almost.
"That... why didn't you call for back up?" he asked, his throat tight and words short. She could be reckless, he knew, but she couldn't have been so reckless as to try to fight the guy who'd tried to corrupt her in broad daylight. The guy who'd made her unable to walk for weeks. The b*****d who'd gone after her and Albireo several times. "What... did you think that your wings and crystal could alone protect you from him?"
Tavi didn't mean for the words to sounds so condescending, to sound so agitated and full of anger. He really didn't. Not when she was broken and apparently brought back from the dead. The rage in his chest, the unyielding desire to find Faustite and make an ocean swallow him whole until he drowned in the abyss, to rip out his heart and crush it under his boot...
He was more likely to get kill himself even trying, but that didn't mean he didn't want to.
And by the stars above did he want to hunt down Faustite and snuff out his fire.
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Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2023 4:02 pm
She couldn't blame Octavian for the rage behind his silver eyes. She felt it, too, even if it was muffled some at the moment by the pain and the drugs and the shock. He asked why she hadn't waited for backup, why she'd been so reckless and so stupid just for that chance to feel Faustite's slim throat under her fingernails. For all the ways it sounded like he was blaming her for part of it, a distant part of her mind wondered if he might not have done the same. "I don't know," she said, even as she slowly shifted back to laying down to keep her chest from screaming at her too much. Her voice was still raspy and weak, nothing like normal. She didn't even have the energy to be defensive. "I thought someone was coming, but-" the aura she'd felt in the distance wasn't an excuse. The fact that Faustite had wanted it to be a duel, uninterrupted, wasn't one, either. She hadn't quite intended to fully honor that. "It all happened so fast. I made other mistakes, too." The sword. If she'd just seen the sword, everything would have been fine. If she'd snapped his neck faster, if she'd- She squeezed her eyes shut, and whimpered softly. "I thought I'd accepted that I was living on borrowed time. I thought something like this was going to be my fate. I wasn't scared of it." Her throat was raw, but this was important. "I've been acting a bit like a martyr." A moment passed. "I was wrong, Tavi. I don't want to die." Then the tears were starting down her cheeks.
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