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 Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:58 pm
It's me because we're bound up in each other, Hvergelmir thought. Your burdens are mine to carry, whether I bear the weight of them in your tears now or in my blood later. Who ought to care what happens to you, if not me?"I haven't asked you to do the same for me," she answered softly. "I demand nothing in return. Stop thinking of me -- take care of yourself for once, real care. I want you to. You deserve a real respite from all of this. It's wearing away at the edges of you."
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:45 pm
"No, you haven't," he agreed sounding hollow, empty."I suppose I cannot imagine giving so much to someone who was incapable of doing the same."
Everything about Hvergelmir was a surreal concept to him. She had to have demons, he knew, but here she was trying to offer him hope, believing in him. It made his heart constrict painfully even thinking about it.
"Is this why you're one of Cosmos's?" He smirked against her shoulder. "Dressed in white and sweet as an angel." His fingers curled around her hand, almost like he was afraid that she was a ghost, poised to disappear at any moment.
You deserve a real respite from all of this.
He shook his head, pulling his body away from her but keeping his hands where they were. "I don't deserve anything. I want, but I don't deserve."
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Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 1:56 pm
Labyrinthite pulled away -- but he held onto her hand, so they still at least had one point of contact. She kept herself very still, in case any movement might startle him into withdrawing further. "I'm not here because of what you deserve or don't deserve," she soothed. "I'm here because I want to be. Let me handle my decisions. You worry about you." He wasn't a bad person. He was a person who'd been dealt a bad hand in life. Even now, in the midst of all this, he was preoccupied with whether or not he deserved anyone being harmlessly kind in his general direction. "If you could go anywhere in the world," she asked, to get his mind onto something less weighty, "no expenses, no obligations -- where would you want to visit?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 9:22 am
"If you're busy worrying about everyone else, who is going to worry about you?"
Destructive behavior presented itself in many forms and the general believed that perhaps, Hvergelmir was extruding the worst kind. Her kind was the most dangerous, because it was the kind that people didn't see, couldn't see.
"I don't want to go anywhere," came his delayed response. Labyrinthite had enough money that he could have gone anywhere he pleased but he'd never wanted to. Destiny City was home, as broken and damned as it was. "I'd go home, I guess," he muttered but didn't elaborate.
Home was a foreign concept to him, it'd been that way his entire life-- from his domineering father who made him hate returning to the too-large home to the drain of Metallia and her expectations for his city.
"But who knows what home even is," he sighed. And perhaps that was the most tragic thing about the general, who wanted to go home only to have no home to return to.
"Where would you go?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:31 pm
Who knows what home even is.Home, once, used to be a room in a big house where everything was clean and her parents rarely sat down to meals with her. That home was gone, now. All she had was a cheap shoebox of an apartment that she and Jenna were crammed into, all their furniture made of milk crates and card tables and other bits of economy and salvage. Each of the two places seemed halfway like home, but neither felt just right. "Everywhere," she answered. "Around the world, like Magellan, or like Phileas Fogg. I'd see everything and never stop -- if I could. This place is like a war zone. It's dark and loud and no one ever gets a good night's sleep. It would be nice to see the rest of the world . . . to remember what it looked like." But they couldn't. Neither of them could. He was trapped here by his fealty to Metallia, and she was bound by the mission she meant to carry out. The work they were doing didn't allow for vacations. All the more reason to dream. "I don't want people to worry about me," she said. "People have enough to worry about. When people think about me, I want them to feel happy."
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Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 1:58 pm
"This place is just the home of the war, but the war stretches over other continents," he sighed, thinking of his general-sovereigns and the regions they once hailed from. "This war-zone exists because this is where it started and this is where it will end." That was something he was certain of, but how it would end he couldn't even begin to fathom.
"Amsterdam is a lovely place," he said with a shake exhale of breath. "Or Germany, if you go to the right places. I'd avoid Russia, you are too warm for their frigidness." Labyrinthite had traveled once upon a time, when his family was whole and the only thing he had to worry about was letting his father down.
"When the war is over, if you survive it, then you should travel."
He pulled himself away from her, blinked slowly as he looked at her and willed what was left of his heart to keep from aching. "You can remind people of what it's like to be happy, but you can't keep them from worrying."
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Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 7:14 pm
When the war is over, Hvergelmir wanted to say, we'll travel the world together. She couldn't, though. Labyrinthite wasn't ready for that kind of optimism -- the faint threads of his belief were too delicate to withstand the pressure of being forced to accept that level of conviction. She had to take things slowly, still . . . and for as long as it took. What she said instead, was: "When the war is over -- if I survive it -- I'll find a way to see the world. If I don't survive it . . . " She frowned, looking down at her lap. Her hair fell over her face. "Promise me something. Promise you'll see the world in my place, if that happens." Someone ought to.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2015 2:13 pm
"I'd like to think you'd survive it," Labyrinthite admitted.
And he did, if the general was to believe that anyone was capable of surviving and doing the things that they should, it was her.
"I can't promise you that Hvergelmir," he said sadly. "I don't think I'll survive, I'll probably perish in the final battle." The ghost of a smile passed across his mouth. "I like to think that'd my death would be the turning point."
If he were honest, he didn't see a future where he survived, no matter what side he was on. He was a soldier, an attack dog-- those didn't survive, not in the end. He was a good as dead in the end, even if he lived.
"People like me, we don't survive stuff like this. Not really." He shook his head, stood up from the bench. "It's die in battle, or be as good as dead after."
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 2:51 pm
Hvergelmir offered a sad smile. "I'm glad you're rooting for me, then," she said, her gratitude sincere. "And I'll keep rooting for you." It wasn't much. Yet again, she felt like she hadn't made much progress, hadn't given Labyrinthite much to hope for. He'd come here because he'd hit another low point and was reaching out for help -- and she didn't think she'd succeeded in giving him any. Hvergelmir could only hope this wouldn't be her last chance. "Take care of yourself," she wished him well.
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:53 pm
"Well, someone has to right?"
A self-deprecating smile spread across his mouth, void of teeth and unlike all his other grins. He stepped away from her and her bench with his hands folding into his pocked, shoulders hunched like he was trying to fold into himself.
"No promises," he replied, a forced chuckle leaving his mouth at his own bad joke. "It's never been a strong point." It's part of what landed him in the hospital the year his dad died and something he struggled with still with his mom in and out of the hospital or being sent away for safety.
He opened his mouth to say something, then promptly closed it, sighing in the aftermath. There was a shake of his head and then with a blink, he was gone.
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