Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Printable Version
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RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-08-2019
Despite everything else that was going on at the moment--which was a considerable list that included attempted murder, jailbreak, and dramatic, life-changing conspiracy reveals--Ren still managed to turn red at the word "sweetheart." Her first instinct was to deck him. That was obviously right out, for multiple reasons. Instinct two was to burst into tears, which she would ALSO not be doing. Instinct three was very strong, but it involved things he was in no condition to be doing. She was at a loss.She watched him struggle to take a bite, possibly misinterpreting why it was difficult. "When you can eat more," she decided, "I'll jus' feed you." It was just practical, and had nothing to do with ANY romantic fantasies she'd EVER had while she was supposed to be repairing a lug nut.
She watched his expression carefully as he ate.
He was a bad liar, but sweet.
"For my first time, I guess," she said, refusing not to take the compliment. It was hard won, and she liked being complimented. "Y'give good instructions." This wasn't quite as much of a stretch as his compliment had been. She couldn't expect a detailed omelette recipe from a man with a hole in his chest.
Regardless of her opinions of the flavors and textures of her omelette, she finished all of it, including chunks of essentially raw vegetables. Surprising no one, she was in no mood to waste food.
Having eaten, however, she was becoming aware of how exhausted she was. She'd had a long, horrible day. There would be no sleeping for her, however. She had a stay up to watch Gareth. Hopefully at some point he'd fall asleep. Then she could have a rat sit very close and make sure he was still breathing. Still. He didn't seem like he was in... As much pain? Maybe he was in a better mood? She set the plate aside and curled up next to him again.
"I think at some point," she told him. "I'm gonna hafta go outside. Nighthoof kicked the stable door down and the snow is startin' to drift. Can y'think of a list of things I might need t'do out there? I only wanna have to do this once for now. I don't like leavin' you."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-08-2019
"For your first time," he agreed, because he wasn't the type to let people think he gave out unearned compliments. That was important, he felt like. For management. That people believe him when he told them they'd done well. That didn't change just because she was in his house. Trying to make him eggs."I look forward to eating olives off your fingers," he said, imagining as he said it that she would feed him the way someone might feed their master grapes. He realized the instant he said it that the more likely outcome would be Ren with olives impaled on the tips of her fingers, wiggling them at him.
The whole situation had him feeling much better, as Ren curled up at his side. The pain was still present, but it was tolerable, no longer overtaking the whole of his thoughts.
"Careful," he warned. "It gets cold fast and it's easy to get lost. See if he'll help you. I think he'll be able to get through the snow better than you will. He just doesn't have thumbs." Which was probably the only reason he hadn't just jimmied the door open so that he could close it again. "Anything else can wait until morning. As long as all the animals are safe." The chickens closed up in their coop, everyone with hooves in the stable with feed still left from morning.
"I'll be okay." And if she left for a minute, that might be enough time to get a circle drawn without her watching and worrying. Maybe the pain had abated now, or maybe he'd adjusted, or maybe he'd only distracted himself from it. But he wasn't convinced it would last. Better to take the chance while he could, and let her believe he'd fallen safely asleep while she was out.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-08-2019
Ren wasn't one hundred percent clear on the appeal of olive eating off of fingers, but it sounded pretty fun to stick her fingers in them, and also potentially between his lips, so she was game. She'd find olives later. There had to be some in that overstocked pantry of his. "Alright," she said, dubious about every part of what he'd just said. She was uncertain of Nighthoof, although Byron said he was perfectly nice, uncertain of Gareth's ability to be okay without her, and extremely dubious that everything would be fine until morning. But she'd do her best.
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, for good measure, before standing. She was dressed in winter weight clothing and a shawl, but that was nothing against a blizzard, so she grabbed a heavy, Gareth-sized jacket off a hook on the wall. It came down almost to her feet, and she had to roll the sleeves extensively to get them to a point where they'd fit her. She still felt like she was wearing a bag, but it would be better than nothing.
"If anything happens," she informed him firmly, "Just say somethin' out loud or yell. One of th' rats will hear an' let me know."
She regretted her decision the second she opened the back door. The wind was blowing so fiercly that it carried drift of snow into the cabin before she could force it shut again behind her. She could barely see, but fortunately she had Phoebe in Gareth's cabin and Byron in the stables. She could triangulate her position pretty precisely, this close to both of them. There'd be no risk of her getting lost.
She managed to find the chicken coop with some directions from Byron and a lot of clumsy stumbling and pushing through the snow. It still seemed to be latched up tight, thank goodness. Then she made her way to the stable, which was in much worse condition, thanks to the missing door. True to form, Nighthoof was standing in the doorway, preventing the worst of the wind and snow from getting in, but he could only do so much. Snow and wind were both pouring in between his legs. The door, fortunately, was right nearby, buried underneath a mountain of fallen snow. Her hands just about froze solid as she dug it out, and lifting it was a struggle. Once she got it up enough, however, Nighthoof was able to come out and hook an antler under it, helping her lift it upright.
The actual repairs weren't that hard, although the fact that she was working in a blizzard made it pretty difficult. She had Nighthoof hold the door upright and in place, and Byron and some of the more sturdy members of his family bring her some limited tools from inside the stable. She was certain Gareth had more, better ones somewhere, but she was in a bit of a hurry. She affixed the door as best she could to the inside of the stable, relying on Nighthoof to be smart enough to lean against it from the inside and prevent it from blowing in and crushing someone.
It was probably the worst patch job she'd ever done, but under the circumstances, she'd take it. Just in case, she grabbed some more wood from the wood pile--once Byron told her where it was--and stumbled, half-blind and all-frozen, back to the house. She all but fell through the door, once again bringing a drift of snow back with her before she could fight the door closed. She felt more snow than person.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-08-2019
As soon as she was out the door, Gareth rolled onto his side to try and grab the map and pencils she'd left. It hurt, but it helped that he could grunt and swear and otherwise express all the discomfort he would otherwise be trying to hide from her. Cursing wildly always helped.He held the pencil in his teeth as he rolled back, though once again he found position helped little once he'd made the mistake of moving. With his hands free, he folded the map seven times, until he had a rectangle sturdy enough. He held it in one hand and took the pencil out of his mouth.
This was recklessly small. On a large enough circle, it was easy to get away with lines off by a few degrees. Here, the slightest wiggle of his hands could be dire.
It was fine. He knew how this went.
He drew a circle and filled it with straight lines, drawing from the shoulder and moving quick. The faster the pencil moved, the cleaner his linework. He finished it with symbols and bits of daedric alphabet at the right corners, then looked it over.
No. Not right. Some of the angles were too off.
He flipped the folded rectangle to the blank side, and tried again.
Better?
He flipped between the two.
Yes. This one was definitely better.
He set the pencil down, and tried to figure out if there was any blood she hadn't managed to clean up yet. He slid a finger under the bandage she'd wrapped around his chest, but all he found beneath it was pus. Which was nasty, and not useful, and made his stomach turn over. He'd tasted blood when he'd thrown up, earlier. He'd had a bite of omelette since then, but it was worth a try. He stuck a finger in his mouth and felt around his gums, then checked.
Not much, and thinned out, but maybe enough.
He smeared it over the paper, and immediately his body seized before falling limp and empty.
Gareth might have made different decisions if he'd been aware that his body had always gradually turned cold when he did this, slowly enough that he'd always come back before it was a problem. He probably should have used a ruler, regardless Either way, it was too late, his body drawing breath so slowly it barely seemed to move.
It was taking a chill much faster, this time.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-08-2019
Ren hung Gareth's jacket back up, and it had a lot of the snow on it, but there was no saving her shoes. They were 50% snow and ice by volume. She kicked them off near the entrance where there were piles of snow anyway. Maybe he had... towels or something. She wouldn't want him to slip in a puddle and fall. He was very tall; he had a long way to fall. "I think I got th' door to th' point it won't fall off," she told him, rubbing snow out of her hair and brushing it off her pants as best she could. She was freezing, but she thought she might warm herself by the fire before cuddling up with Gareth again. She didn't know if half-demons could catch a chill, but it was better safe than sorry, right?
"Lemme know as soon as you think y'can eat. I might make some more tea, but less garbage this time... Gareth?"
He was laying still on the floor. Had he actually fallen asleep while she was out? Trying to be more quiet, she carefully approached where he was lying down. He looked asleep. But...
Paranoia seized in her chest. Something was wrong. Something felt wrong. Approaching more quickly, she knelt down by him. The closer she was to him, the more wrong it felt. He was breathing, shallowly; he showed all those visible signs of life. But while she couldn't explain it consciously, he felt wrong. She was looking at Gareth, but she wasn't seeing him. She was seeing a wax doll someone had made. A... breathing wax doll? That was impossible. She went to check his pulse, trying to reassure herself that he was just sleeping, but when she touched his neck, she noticed something terrifying.
He wasn't hot to the touch.
Gareth was always hot to the touch. And she was freezing cold from working in the snow. He should have all but burned her, like when she'd been corpse-cold in her sickbed. Instead, he barely felt lukewarm. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.
It was then that she noticed the piece of paper in his hand. She pulled it out, his limp hand giving no resistance.
Pentagram. Runes. Alien letters.
She recognized this. This was the same thing that had been carved under her bed, before they'd torn up the floor and replaced it. Or something similar. She hadn't gotten a very good look at it, but it seemed in the same vein. Was this the sleep spell Gareth had been talking about?
She didn't know much about sleep spells, but she didn't think they generally included pentagrams and blood. She really didn't. Why would he do this when she was gone? He'd said it was too dangerous. He'd seemed to be doing better! Had it started hurting badly once she'd left? She swung towards Phoebe, mentally, all in a fury. Why hadn't she been informed?! But to Phoebe, it had simply looked like he'd been writing something down, and then fallen asleep.
Ren grit her teeth, trying not to panic. She was failing.
"Gareth? Gareth? Wake up." She tried shaking his shoulders, gently, not wanting to upset his injury. Nothing. Bracing herself, she drew back her hand and slapped him in the face.
Nothing.
Was he getting colder, or was it just her imagination? Was his breathing getting shallower? She began to tremble, pure terror setting in in earnest. She had known as soon as she'd seen him, she just hadn't wanted to believe it.
Gareth was dying.
Right in front of her, Gareth was dying, because she'd left and something had happened or he'd just been waiting for her to turn around to cast his stupid spell and something had gone wrong because he was sick and now he was gone, he was gone. There was no sword she could pull out of him, though she scrambled at him frantically, shaking him as if she could shake him back to life. There was no flame to burst him back to improbable life. There was no heat left inside him at all.
A cascade of chaotic emotions rushed through her, the stages of grief in a repeating spectrum. This was her fault. This was Colin's fault. She'd kill him. How could she explain this to Avi? She couldn't. She'd have to run. She couldn't possibly run. There was no running from this. Gareth was gone, sinking into that black abyss, with nothing but the roar of the sea to keep him company. What happened to people when they died? Was that it? Was it just an abyss? Or was that because she hadn't been quite dead? Or just a dream? Maybe nothing happened. Or maybe he was in hell, because he was a half-demon. Maybe he was with his mom.
Her breath was coming too fast, shallow barely-there gasps as she clutched his cooling hand in both of hers. She couldn't stand the thought that it would never move again, never stroke her cheek or curl into her hair. She couldn't live in a world without his warmth. It was too cold. The world was frozen over in a blizzard that would never end. She was corpse-cold by the fire with him and neither of them would ever be warm again.
Her eyes fell on her bag, spilled on the floor at the foot of his make-shift bed. The few things she had with her, nothing that could help. Nothing useful. She'd set this all in motion by running away; it was her fault he was dead, and what had she brought? Nothing but poison. At the end of the day, she was what she'd always been. No matter how much she tried to help people, to save them, all she ever brought was death, trailing in her wake. Everyone knew she was a monster. Even other monsters. All she had was poison.
There was only one thing to do with poison.
She remembered a play she'd seen as a child, one lover discovering the other's corpse and poisoning themselves, unable to bear being in the world without them for even one minute. As a child, she thought it was stupid. If they'd just waited, it would have been fine. But now, she felt much the same way. She didn't want time to keep passing. She couldn't let it keep passing. If Gareth was gone, she wanted to be gone. If Gareth was in that dark place, she wanted to be there too. She would take anything, anything at all, over being here one more second with his fading breath.
Leaning over his body, she kissed him one more time. His breath was cold against her lips. He was unresponsive. There was no such thing as a true love's kiss, anyway.
Hand's trembling, she uncorked the bottle on the moonshine and downed it. It burned, but this time she was ready, and didn't choke. It hadn't been enough before, and she couldn't bear the thought of waking up when they were both cold, so she grabbed some of the herbs and stuffed them into her mouth as well, chewing and swallowing as fast as possible. Her head was already beginning to swim. Everything was starting to hurt. But, as she collapsed onto the pillows next to Gareth, curling against his body as her vision went dark, it was nothing but a relief. Maybe wherever they went next, nothing would hurt.
Ren awoke, as she had before, suspended in an absence of world. She was pissed the second she did, because she'd kind of been hoping she'd done it better this time. Or maybe this really was just what happened when you died. It didn't take her nearly as long to catch her bearings this time, the roaring sound of waves in the distance and also kind of right on top of her. She stayed where she was, stubborn and annoyed. Was this supposed to be an afterlife? She wasn't impressed. It was not even slightly what the church had promised. Eventually, she began to approach the sound as she had before. She had no real sense of moving, but it was getting louder.
...Actually...
It seemed like maybe it wasn't just blackness? Rather than having no eyes, it seemed more like she was in the dark. But like. Darker dark. She could see in the dark; she had never experienced a lack of light so fierce that she couldn't see. If it was just very dark here, she really ought to be able to see. She always could before. And, yes, now that she thought about it, she could definitely make out some blurry shades of grey. She couldn't tell what they were, but it wasn't just all nothingness.
First sound, now sight? She was willing to bet there were all sorts of things to sense here, and she'd just not been doing it right. That would be just like her, too stupid to realize how her own eyes worked just because it was a bit different. Annoyed now at herself, she stretched her senses out the way she did when hunting for rats.
Yes! See? There!
There was definitely something, on the edges of her awareness. Something familiar, so it was probably a rat. It seemed ridiculous that there would be a rat here, but maybe it was like... an astral rat or whatever. She wasn't going to question it. She was just going to head that way.
The sound of the ocean was almost deafening, now that she was figuring out senses in a general sense. It was something she could feel inside of her, roar after roar tugging at her core. Like when the waves of the Great Lake hit you during a storm and tried to pull you out. She tried to ignore it, or brace herself against it, as she waded towards the sensation in the distance.
As she got closer, she realized, slowly, why it had felt familiar. This wasn't a rat, but it was something she knew very well. Something she saw almost as regularly. Something she'd seen every single day for the past year.
It felt warm. In fact, with that feeling like sight that wasn't sight, it almost seemed to glow like a fire warding off the all-encompassing darkness. Maybe it was that light that had thrown the rest into relief, allowing her to see.
She knew this feeling. She knew how it throbbed in her chest and she could taste it bursting against her tongue, heat against her skin and burning pleasure deep inside her. Happiness and trust and fear and desperation. Her senses burst to life in a blinding grey-scale rainbow, colors she was unaccustomed to seeing, colors she wasn't really seeing. It was disorienting. She thought her soul might be screaming, if that was a thing they could do.
But that didn't matter. That didn't matter at all, because she'd found Gareth.
She had thought she'd been being poetic and dumb when she'd thought she might chase him into this black abyss, but here he was. The important part of him. She could tell. This was the him that had been missing from his body. She rushed towards him, and the waves grew louder still.
They were pulling at him too, she realized. Pulling him out. Away from her.
A burning rage lit inside her, a fury so potent that it frightened her. It was larger than her, larger than any shell she'd inhabited before. It encompassed her whole consciousness, washing the grey-scale world in red.
She'd lost so much in her life. Everything she'd ever had, it had been brief and transient. Nothing was forever, and she didn't get nice things. Even the limited happiness of her home with the Duke had faded so quickly, ripped out of the world and out of her grasp. Now this? She'd found Gareth, then lost him, then found him again, and now this? How dare it try to take him from her. How dare anyone or anything try to take him from her.
She'd had it with losing, and she would drain the entire ocean before it let it pull Gareth one inch further away from her.
Everything tasted like fire and felt like blood and stank of her own incandescent fury. She wrapped all that she was around this sensation of Gareth, and like a cat encircling her kittens, hissed. The roar of the ocean retreated away from her rage, and she sunk her claws into Gareth and pulled.
Everything hurt. Her senses returned to her slowly, one at a time, and each one radiated pain. She immediately missed the nebulous sensations of the ocean, and thought perhaps this was her punishment for lashing out at it the way she had. That was what happened when you lost your temper and lashed out. They always had a way to make you hurt worse.
But, no, nothing in the world could be a worse punishment then the fact that she still had a consciousness. Not the agony in her bones, not the taste of blood in her mouth, and not the screaming all around her.
Wait.
Screaming?
Her awareness opened before her eyes, and she realized that it was rats she was hearing screaming, in her mind as well as her ears. There were rats here? If she was alive, she was going to be furious.
She shifted slightly, but even that slight movement made her ache. Something was warm against her skin, growing warmer. Hot. Painfully hot, almost. A fire?
Forcing one eye to open took an unreasonable amount of willpower, but when she did, she was greeted with a wall of red skin. Ah. That would be the source of the warmth, then. Gareth--
No. Gareth had gone cold, and then she'd gone cold. He only seemed hot because she was freezing. She'd failed to kill herself again. She'd have to wait for the King to do it properly, and she didn't want to see his face or know what he'd do to her.
For the love of fuck why wouldn't they stop screaming?!
The sounded ended abruptly, but she could still feel their panic. For the love of god, what was wrong.
Death. Death was wrong. First Gareth, then her, then everyone.
Everyone? That wasn't right. She could feel life, she pointed out, a dozen or more.
...A dozen? Hadn't there been over a hundred?
Not anymore. The images came to her in a rush through a dozen rat eyes, heaps of rats lying dead in the rafters or out in the stables. Panic thrummed in her chest, but the sensation of death so close just made her realize an opposite sensation even closer.
Gareth was definitely breathing. Gareth was definitely getting hotter.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-09-2019
Consciousness came back to him all at once the way it always did, seizing the way he had when it had left, like some involuntary test to be sure all his muscles still worked. It wasn't a great feeling for the hole in his chest, so he coughed as he fell limp."Ow."
Despite that, it didn't hurt as badly as it could have. Mostly because he had an unusual sense of numbness. He rubbed his fingers together. His nerve endings felt wrapped in cotton. Hopefully that'd clear up on its own.
He looked down at Ren, curled up beside him and feeling like she'd just come in from the snow. "Hey." He wrapped his arm around her, slowly and gently, as much because his own body was sore as because he wanted to be careful of her. His throat felt dry. "How long was I out?"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-09-2019
Gareth was breathing and getting warmer and then he moved. It wasn't a GOOD movement by any means; he seized like he'd been electrocuted. She panicked, but couldn't really move herself yet.He coughed. Then the hand she'd held as he died moved. It moved, and she knew she had a lot to figure out: what happened, why all her rats were dead, what she was and how she'd done it and what it was, exactly, she'd done. But he was moving. He was. They both were. That was the only thing that mattered in the whole world.
He turned to look at her, and for a brief moment she feared what she might see, but it was Gareth. It felt like Gareth, whole and complete. She stared back, stunned, as he wrapped his arm around her. He was hot against her frozen skin, and it might have hurt without her clothes to insulate them, but she didn't care.
He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.
"I... don't know," she admitted, staring at him. She had no idea how much time had passed. The blizzard still howled outside. The snow by the door had melted. It could have been fifteen minutes. It could have been a day. She didn't think it was a day.
She briefly considered just. Moving on. Letting him think he'd had a nap. He hadn't been aware in that other place. He didn't hear the roar of the ocean, which still pulsed quietly in her ears. She could spare him the trauma. She could spare herself the trauma of admitting out loud what she'd done. Just say she'd fallen asleep too, hide the empty poison bottle back in her bag, empty his house of corpses, and pretend.
Her desire to hide things from him was what had gotten them here.
Tears began to fall down her face in familiar paths, following the trails already left behind. She thought she maybe had cried more today than in the last year put together, growing instability or no. When she could move her arms, she was going to kick his ass.
"You bastard," she said quietly. Her anger was normally a beast that roared out of her, but perhaps she was too cold for that right now. "You fuckhead. You stubborn bullheaded IDIOT." She brandished what remained of her map, still clutched in her hand. It hurt so much to move. "Sleep spell?! You fuck! You ejected from yer goddamn body! You fucked it up!" This was not a particularly untraumatizing way to break this news. She really needed to work on her bedside manner.
Despite her anger, she curled up against him more tightly. She needed his heat, at the moment, and also might never be comfortable letting him go ever again.
"You were... You were..." She couldn't say it. She couldn't force the words against her tongue. It felt like if she did, reality would catch up and he'd drop dead again. Instead, a wail came out of her along with more tears, and she buried her face against him, tears like drops of ice water. She tossed the map away so she could touch his skin--it was almost hot enough to hurt and she relished the pain because pain meant they were both alive.
She gasped in great heaving sobs against his side, unable to stop now that she'd started. She cried like a woman who'd lost everything, aware that she'd somehow avoided that fate. Everything was too much. Dead rats and live Gareth and poison on her tongue and Colin riding hell for leather towards the castle and a King that would kill her and Gareth, Gareth, impossibly Gareth.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-09-2019
Gareth blinked, groggy, his thoughts too slow. He looked at the paper in her hand. "Oh." He held her tighter reflexively as she curled against him. "Well. It's. Like sleeping. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. From the outside."This admission was likely ill-advised.
"I came back," he said. "I wouldn't have come back if I hadn't done it right. I always come back." He still wasn't clear on what had upset her, if she'd tried to wake him up and failed. It seemed plausible, and like something he should have predicted. He hadn't meant to scare her.
"Hey. I'm okay. Are you okay?" He wasn't used to her expressing herself like this, and so he wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. It had been a weird day all around.
"Can you maybe—do you want to get a blanket? That might help. With the cold." It might feel less weird to be snuggling on the kitchen floor if they at least had a blanket over them. Some small shelter to keep them together.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-09-2019
She was definitely going to kick his ass once both of them could move and he didn't have a hole in his chest. Presuming they both managed to be alive and healthy at the same time, which was looking questionable.She was very mad and crying harder than she thought she had in thirteen years, and she kind of wanted to bite him, or headbutt him, or some other act of violence that was much more comfortably within her wheelhouse. But she didn't want to risk actually hurting him when she kept having to work so hard to keep him alive.
"FROM THE OUTSIDE?!" she yelled against his side, nails pressing against his skin as her hands clenched. "I knew it! I knew that wasn't a sleep spell! You did it on purpose?! You unbelievable asshole! I'm goin' to... I'm goin' to... I'm gonna tell Avi on you!"
It was the emptiest of empty threats, and incredibly childish to boot, but it was all she'd come up with.
"I'm not okay, you idiot! You went cold!" Almost as cold as she was now, but unlike him, she still had a functioning heart. "I came in from outside an' you were layin' cold on th' floor an'--"
And she'd drunk poison and they were only alive now by purest and most random chance, because while following him had been her intention, dragging them both back hadn't been something she knew she could do. And now there were. So many dead. So, so many, and she was sure she'd done it but had no idea how.
She clung tighter to him at his suggestion she let go even briefly, even though there was a blanket a few feet away. "No! I'm not lettin' go! You lost yer personal space privileges! And it wouldn't even help!" She paused. "Unless yer still cold. Are you still cold? D'you need a blanket?"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-09-2019
Gareth's eyes widened. "No, no no no, you don't have to—that's not necessary, I'm not going to do it again. I promise I won't do that again. Okay?" Avi was much more likely than she was to recognize exactly what Gareth had done, and that was the last thing he wanted. He'd managed to avoid that conversation for over a decade. He'd put it behind him, for the most part. There wasn't any reason to go dredging all that up."I…" He frowned. "I don't think that usually happens. I think I would have noticed." Maybe it wouldn't have been so noticeable once he was back, but surely someone would have treated him like a corpse, if he'd been cold like one.
Best not to dwell on the things that might have happened when he had to leave his body more regularly.
"I came back, though," he repeated. It felt important to emphasize that. He couldn't possibly have fucked it up that badly, if he was here now.
"I would feel better with a blanket," he said, which was technically true and which he thought would do a better job of convincing her to grab one. As opposed to pointing out that she was fucking freezing.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-09-2019
"I'm gonna!" she threatened. "Y'clearly won't listen to me! Y'won't even listen when I tell you t'hold still, an' you, you--" She paused long enough to try to force her body to move. He wanted a blanket. That meant she needed to get him one. Her body had other ideas, though, every muscle cramping up as she tried to brute strength her way towards mobility. She grit her teeth through a particularly hellacious spasm in her back, and then forced herself upwards. She moved like a marionette with half the strings broken. She tried to stand, and almost tripped on the empty moonshine bottle, sending it rolling over the floor in a tired circle. She decided against standing and just half-crawled over the pillow mattress, then grabbed one of the afghans she'd pulled from the back of Gareth's sofa. She meant to drape it over him, but her arm cramped and she more or less threw it onto him before collapsing back onto the pillows. She missed his warmth already.
"Promise you'll never do it ever," she ordered him, which might have been more effective if she hadn't been staring up at the roof instead of him. She could see a few limp tails in the rafters, and it reminded her of the situation she was in. The horror of it threatened to overwhelm her. "Ever. Or I'm gonna tell Avi and he'll..." She had no idea what he'd do. "Something! Something to make you actually listen to good sense fer once!"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-09-2019
Something was obviously wrong as she moved, more obvious the more of it she did—or tried to do. "Ren, you don't have to—it was a suggestion, come back. What's wrong? Why are you… what happened?" Her clumsy movement made him deeply anxious. "Did you fall? Outside?"He was filled with a sudden terrible image of her collapsed outside in the snow, calling for help while he was busy being half-dead. Waiting out there, slowly freezing, until she could crawl back inside. Nighthoof would have helped her, wouldn't he? But what if she'd already closed the stable door? He wouldn't want to undo all her work. If he'd stayed awake, and listened, this wouldn't have happened. He could have found a way to help.
"I promise," he said. "You really can't tell him, Ren, I mean it. I don't know what he'll do if he finds out." Be very upset with him, at the very least. Possibly stick him under supervision in a tower somewhere, to be sure he wouldn't try it again. Set someone on fire. Gareth had still never told Avi what had happened to Ren in his old room, because that would have necessitated explaining why there'd been moonshine infused with nightshade hidden away in his room. As far as Avi knew, they'd both just… been busy. Ideally, Gareth would like to get away with never having to explain it.
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-09-2019
"No, I didn't fall," she said, not expanding on the statement for now. Everything hurt and she was trying to figure out what to do with the fact she'd filled a castle with live rats and a cabin with dead ones. They couldn't stay here. She was mad at Gareth, but if he realized his house was full of rat corpses, he would freak out way more than she wanted him to. Also, she had a growing awareness that she had almost surely killed them. She didn't know how, but something about what she'd done had caused their deaths. This hadn't happened when she'd been poisoned before, and the only thing different from then was Gareth. Well, Gareth and her lack of medical attention afterwards. She'd been unconscious for hours that time, and this time she was trying to move around immediately, which was probably why everything hurt, so much, a lot. Wait, actually, was there still poison in her body right now? There had to have been, physically speaking. She should. She should probably do something about that. At some point.
"I'll think about it," she said finally, because she wasn't willing to promise. "But only because I dunno what he'd do either." The King was unpredictable. He might lock Gareth away from her, and while that might have been best for everyone involved, she was pretty sure that it was a bad idea in the short term. There was a cabin full of dead rats that implied that anything taking him away from her, right now, was a really bad idea.
"But y'can't jus'. Keep lyin' to people about that, Gareth," she said tiredly. "An' I'm well aware that's proly th' most hypocritical thing I've ever said, under th' circumstances." She was going to have to tell him. She was going to have to make him understand what had happened. Otherwise he'd never know just how bad of an idea it had been. He might be lying again, and just telling her what she wanted to hear, like before.
With a quiet, aborted noise of pain, a cry that she stopped halfway, she rolled onto her side and pressed herself back up against Gareth's warmth. She was snuggling his hip, not his side, but whatever. Whatever, he was warm.
"Gareth, you--" Ren was interrupted by a sudden roll of nausea. Something about the movement proved to be too much, or maybe her body had finally caught up to the fact that she'd had a lot of poison and alcohol and a very questionable omelette. "Oh, fuck."
Gareth, mercifully, was a man who kept many small trash cans about his house, so despite the fact she didn't make it all the way to the bathroom, or even close, she did manage to half-stagger, half-crawl a few feet away to the nearest wastebin, where she upended the toxic contents of her stomach, eggs included. It burned like hell coming up, not helped by the fact she couldn't breathe because her nose was all stuffed up from crying. It smelled absolutely noxious, too; she'd definitely be throwing that out into the snow just the absolute second she could.
She dry heaved for a moment, as if her body was trying to make sure it was all empty and then, mercifully, slumped to the side.
"Oh god," she groaned. "That was disgustin'. That wasn't aimed at you, sorry, th' timin' was weird on that one. Ugh. No, don't fuckin' move, stay on the bed." She hadn't even turned to look at him, but she knew Gareth, and he'd be very upset by this turn of events. "Just. Gimme a sec. I can explain. I need to explain, I think."
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-09-2019
"I wasn't trying to lie to you," he sighed. "It was... a simplified explanation." Basically. "It won't come up again, I won't be doing it again." It was stupid to have done it this time, except that it had seemed easy, and if it created some serious problem with his body no one had ever noticed it before.He felt a little sick watching her be sick, but he managed to restrain himself. She was right that he'd already rolled onto his side, ignoring the pain out of a desire to reach out for her.
"Ren..."
He noticed, for the first time, the empty bottles and scattered herbs on the kitchen floor.
"... what happened?"
RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-09-2019
She wanted to argue with him the finer points of deception, but it seemed like wasted breath. Or maybe a fight to have when they weren't both in such terrible shape. She didn't want to fight with him; she wanted to curl up and sleep until her body stopped aching and cramping. Not that she could. She had to stay awake to make sure nothing happened to him. "I came in from outside," she repeated slowly, trying to find the best way to make her chaotic train of thought seem like reasonable, rational decision making. "An' you were goin' cold on th' floor. You were barely breathin'. It kept gettin' shallower. An' I could tell... I could tell somethin' was wrong. You weren't... It was like you weren't in you." She was aware this made no sense, but maybe it would to him, since he'd maybe done it on purpose. She was unclear how much of it had been intentional and how much had been an accident.
"You were dyin'. You were already dead. I could... I could tell..." She stared up at the rafters, feeling cold, but for some reason, not shivering. "You were gone, an' I couldn't take it. So I... Well I..." Was there any way she could play this off. "I... went t'get you. O-obviously." She gestured at the empty bottle of moonshine, the contents of which were now largely in Gareth's trash can. "...Don't yell at me," she pre-empted, looking guilty as she scrubbed at her tear-stained cheeks. It was a waste of time, since she kept finding things to cry about. "You don't get t'yell at me when you were th' one who went and died first."