Pascha's 'Daughter' (10/02)

[22:58:48]
Zayne sits, and wastes little time getting into it.

"...Melusine, the Dragon of Water, summoned Chiriel to her side." he begins, dropping that bomb.  His expression is tense, heavy.  But there's something - in him, that hints at this not being bad news.  Just...heavy.

"She told him much.  That Fah'nadir has cut off contact with the other dragons - that whatever she is planning, it will mean more trials for mortalkind in the future.  That she is old, and tired...and nonetheless, committed to us.  And our future.  If there was any doubt about it...she cares about us.  She really does."

Zayne exhales through his nostrils.  "But that's...actually the less immediately important part.  ...she summoned the soul of Pascha.  They...had one last meeting.  And he wanted you to know-"

He faces her, and focuses in.  "You and DeLisle both...he considered you both his daughters.  Not just successors...Not just students.  He saw you both as family, and the heirs to his ideals for Providence.  He trusted in you absolutely.  ...Loved you.  And he has faith in you.  Even if things go sideways - that won't mean it's the end.  He wants you to keep getting back up, no matter how many times you get knocked down."

"...um.  You probably.  Need a minute, huh?" he pauses, exhaling-
(Zayne Harland)
[23:06:43]
Dura sits down. It's in every way she moves. A certain weight still rests on her shoulders, on the crown of her head - though the latter might just be the pair of horns that's sprouted there now.

As he starts, she sits up a bit straighter. There is a weary focus put on Zayne.

Much of what he has to say are very loaded statements for someone currently suffering from a Dragon's curse.

Many of them are also very personally loaded for the Regent. It clearly has some effect. Some kind of emotional stirring. She hunches her shoulders and drags a hand down her face, letting it rest over her mouth.

"I am starting to think. People on Sarea."

"Have a funny way of showing love."
(Dura Levante)
[23:12:28]
...he remembers sitting there with Dura and watching Pascha speak, a long - long, time ago...

A hand reaches over and - briefly touches to her shoulder, experimentally.  If her reaction isn't as bad as his, he'll clasp it in full.

"...I don't think he wanted to push anything onto either of you.  Any more than...being in charge, that is.  Maybe that's why.  Your role is already a lot of pressure.  But at the same time..."

"It woulda felt better coming from him, right?"  Zayne sighs, staring at the table with a heavy gaze.  "...but Melusine - and Melous - will remember him.  Everything he did - everything he accomplished will be remembered.  She even...apologized to Chiriel.  Can you believe that?  A dragon apologizing to someone Extraplanar?  ...It's not all just - Fah'nadir, and the...zealotry.  There's...kindness - behind what made our world."

He shakes his head, glancing back to her.  "...My dad is a piece of **** who gave me to Mehelion to curry favor with the High Fae." he drops, bluntly.  "But...Pascha - ...made me feel like I had a dad worth knowing.  I guess I'm a little jealous.  Hah.."
(Zayne Harland)
[23:20:10]
Her entire state, particularly emotionally of late, has been in a chaotic flux. The deaths, the war, the changes -

The Gaol and what had happened.

Unstable and certain footing had been so blessedly rare. So had moments of peace. She does not shy from the touch at her shoulder. But all of the words appear to have done something to shake her.

"To feel..."

"To feel like I had. A family here." The words eventually spill out. She nearly chokes on them.

"That's all I could've wanted."
(Dura Levante)
[23:26:07]
At that, he doesn't shrink away from Dura.  He comes closer to his friend of nearly two decades, and wraps his arm around her shoulder in full.  This half, sideways embrace is probably the most outright affectionate she's seen him get...

"...if there's one thing I've learned about Sarea - it's that for all the trouble people have saying what they mean, directly...It's that - family is something you can find here.  Make here.  ...and it's not gone, either.  It's not 'had' - Dura.  It's 'have.'  Look at how you and DeLisle fight.  Can you really tell me there's nothing...sisterly there?"

"You know what she said, after she was done laughing?  That if anyone treated you different over this, she'd beat them  ...You know better than me who is important to you here, who your anchors are.  But what Pascha made out of Providence - what Dagur and Demetri and Drahcir made - is family."

"You're not alone."
(Zayne Harland)
[23:29:28] Chat command attempt: /who
[23:39:45]
It is the most outright affectionate she's seen him be. And it's probably some of the most outright affection she's been on the receiving end for...

A while.

"I've tried. I've really...really tried."

"...God, how ****ed is that? That the woman the laughs at me when I'm at my worst is actually one of the closest things I have to family here right now?" She chokes again, this time on a wheeze of laughter, hiding her face in her hands.

"What the actual ****..."

Only once her face is hidden does she take a deep and shuddering breath.
(Dura Levante)
[23:42:25] OOC - chaoko99: everyone it's time to play the game of frog
[23:42:27] OOC - chaoko99: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/426195724842172418/985737133396467792/IMG_20220612_224721_481.jpg
[23:42:50] OOC - RogueSteampunker: Feelin' a I2 today
[23:43:21] OOC - pastelprincedan: solid G5 kinda day
[23:43:41] OOC - chaoko99: I feel that
[23:44:07]
Zayne keeps it up, staying close to her and breathing out through his nostrils.  "Yeah...well.  I'm not gonna lie and say there's - nothing a little screwy about that."

"...Imagine being in love with her." he mutters.

He shakes his head.  "I think you don't need me to tell you that she cares.  Even if she's kind of messed up, and also your particular - personalities drive each other absolutely up the wall.  ...Whatever the case may be, you gotta start from caring."

...He leaves it at that for the moment, letting her breathe and let things out.  Maybe that would be seconds, or maybe it'd be minutes - but he'd ride out whatever she had bottled up and was ready to let loose.
(Zayne Harland)
[23:58:38]
"Sooooo. ****ed." She groans from behind her. These words are louder, more audible.

"Every time. Every time I try it just. Gets so f u c k e d."

This, and all of it really, presents a deeply sore topic in an already time of tumult and turmoil. Emotional and otherwise. The Regent starts to sob behind her hands.

These become a constant, nigh unintelligible and agonized stream of borderline incoherent babbling.

"Ishould'vejuststayeddeadwhydidIdothiswhydidIkeepgoingIcould'vejuststoppedwhydidIbreakitwhatdidIthinkthatwoulddo..."
(Dura Levante)
[00:00:18] Dura Levante says, "(brb rq"
[00:03:31]
The entity somewhat slumped after the exertion rouses slightly.

Ears twitch, signalling the wakefulness, though he doesn't immediately interject, by far. His consciousness is a little in and out. Zayne's probably the most aware: While when out like a light, there is just an organic, breathing body next to him. However, there is that awareness from what lies within, when light returns to the brain and the soul reconnects.

The babbling from Dura, amidst the confession, rouses words from Zayne's charge, however.

"..."

"... You're worth fighting for. He believed it. It's- Why. He wanted you to hear. That message."

His voice is a quiet croak, head not fully pulling up. No buzz of a gaze. A shaky few breaths. "He's an idiot, a coward, and a distant man with his family from decisions he's feared. He has a predisposition to put himself at arms length when he feels he's failing to help rather than to harm."

"But, I see Harland told you. Stop. Don't say you were better off dead. He was so relieved you lived. He cried, when he got home."

He turned off the pain- But it couldn't last forever, from severing off a part of a limb. It had happened before- And fortunately, it wasn't his dominant hand. Chiriel isn't quite so sinister. His breath is a little shaky, as his arm screams in protest now that he's listening.

"... Don't say that, please."

"Let's start there."
(Chiriel)
[00:12:57]
...he was aware, vaguely, of Chiriel's systems restarting.  But before then - he turns Dura to face him, uncharacteristic firmness coming over his features and voice as he grips the Azulan woman - attempting to force her up out of her state, hiding behind hands.

"Dura.  Dura.  Look at me." Zayne insists, eyes hard.  "Don't say that.  Don't you ever say that.  You know how worried I was for you?  How much it hurt to see you ****ed up beyond compare even if you did make it back?"

"You're not a ****up or a failure.  You never stay down.  You didn't stay down when you were dead.  That's not a mistake.  That's who you are.  We're going to get through this.  No matter how many times we get pushed down..."

...eventually, his fervor fades - tone softening, quieting.  "If it's down to - people that see you as irreplaceable, that's me, too.  I'm...sorry."

"I feel like I won't ever live up to what he was to people.  What he was to me."  His eyes screw shut.  "...But I'm going to keep trying.  And I know you are too, no matter what you're saying.  It's who you are.  It's who we are."
(Zayne Harland)
[00:34:19]
All she wants to do is hide. Curl up into a ball, vanish, stop being perceived. She doesn't get her wish. She gets the exact opposite of that.

Zayne pries her away from it.

"No. I don't. Because people only like to tell me this **** when it's too late. When they're - when they're already dead. Or when I'm at my wits ****ing end," she retorts, pupils jittering between Zayne and the now-stirring Seer.

A hand comes up to either side of his face. They press to either side. She looks dead at him, her bright golden eyes still brimming with tears, right into his.

"I didn't get up just because I wanted to. I didn't get up because- because someone saved me. Or because I was stubborn. I got back up because I was desperate- " Her hands shake, both the one of flesh and the one of crystal.

"I got back up because of Nevanerro."


She'd slipped into the cold dark for a few moments. Alone. Then been yanked back into the game.

Dura hasn't forgotten. It's stayed with her, hung over her head.
(Dura Levante)
[00:45:55]
Ears twitch, as he now stares at her.

Invisible, but palpable. The spotlight shines on her, and the psychological aspect of feeling literal pressure, doubtless, does nothing to alleviate her. The Fragment that passes judgement and executes mages stares at her, and most of his expression is hidden- Allowing her mind to creatively fill in the blank, for what cant his brows make, the set of his eyes, as he gazes at her with a neutral set to his lips.

"... I apologize for his cowardice." A dull, dry statement- Numb. His throat is a bit taxed, still, some of the brine still in his hair, the smears on his cheeks still present. He's far from in the best of conditions.

"He has left me the duty to watch after the kids." Ears ease, wilting, slowly. "You didn't get back up because of Nevanerro. Pascha told me the story."

"You got back up, because people loved you. Because they gave you something you could cling to, something to save you, because you are someone able to be cared about- And worth caring about."

"Don't lie to yourself. It's unseemly. Perhaps you can say everything that happened there, occurred because Nevanerro allowed it." His palpable gaze pushes against the keratin of horns, trailing down. "Unfortunately, you're still Dura Levante, so I can't really buy this crafted narrative. That hasn't really changed."
(Chiriel)
[00:49:59]
Chiriel, the sophisticated orator, naturally has an eloquent way to put it.

Zayne, who has never stopped being the foolhardy boy with more passion than sense he was when both met him - not really - naturally puts it in a far more succinct way.

As crystal and flesh-hand alike press against his cheeks, drawing an involuntary shudder - he doesn't relinquish his grip on her own face.  He slowly rests his forehead against hers.

"I won't...let anything else go unsaid then-...I don't care - what the circumstances were.  All I care is that you're here.  Alive.  Breathing.  You're one of my best friends in this world, Dura.  You're one of the people who make this ****hole of a life worth living to me."

"...you don't belong on the ground, out there.  You belong here."

"With us."
(Zayne Harland)
[01:00:14]
The last several months - no, it's been longer than that that she's been under scrutiny. It's just in the last several months she's loathed it that much more. The weighing, the judging. From mortal men and Seraphim and Nephilim all taking their turns.

Pressure to her state had brought on the first changes. It only escalated from there.

"There's a Dragon that begs to differ." Beneath the table, against her leg, the spaded tail twitches once sullenly. "And a broken relic from the City of Sin."

But she doesn't press he point further. The touch of foreheads is a soft moment. Bittersweet, perhaps. The long horns arch up and cast a long shadow.

Her grip becomes softer. Her eyes close for a moment.

Somewhere between what the two have to offer, by way of encouragement, apology, or otherwise?

The Regent falls quiet and still.
(Dura Levante)