2023-05-10: Kindness In Measure
- Log: 2023-05-07 Kindness In Measure
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Hicalu Wilwisp
- Where: Meria City
- Date: May 10, 2023
- Summary: Hicalu and Lan reunite, far too long after the Gerudo Temple.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
In the aftermath of the Gerudo's reawakening, Lan had had some hopes that the fear she'd seen on Hicalu's face hadn't been insurmountable. That maybe she won't be one more thing that scares her little brother senseless. She'd always had her pride in being a person he could come to whenever things were scary. So when he'd looked at her, looked at the black ribbons she'd used to help subdue Ratatoskr and cringed...
She'd thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She could explain. She just had to take him aside after Urbosa and Riju finished explaining things. She could sit Hicalu down and explain...
But the more she had sat there, fears spiraling tighter and tighter in her belly and ink whispering in her veins, the more Lan had realized that she couldn't. She couldn't face her terrified little brother and tell him about the Stranger's blue blue eyes, or the things he did to her, or--
She hadn't even stopped to tell him goodbye. She'd just slipped out as soon as she could and vanished.
Hicalu has gotten a few postcards from her since, at least until he left Guild Galad. They never contained anything but the shallowest of messages, the Lan equivalent of 'having a good time, wish you were here'.
She knows that he moved on to Meria City because she stopped in at his old work in Guild Galad and found him gone. Maybe Ganondorf was too much, after being kidnapped by Seraph Harmaus and everything else.
Lan stands across the street from the inn she's heard he works at now, her traveling cloak on and the hood up.
The problem with her disguise is that Hicalu absolutely knows what her cloak looks like, and she's been standing there trying to make herself go inside for the last fifteen minutes. Any minute now! Any minute now she'll be able to move her feet!
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
... is that why Hicalu interpreted Tristan's words as a wish for him to help ARMS? Who knows. The tragic fact is that it's Hicalu who stopped talking, for a while, there -- as he snuck into Heimdall Gazzo, as he got wrapped up in everything there --
He landed in Meria, really, because someone was willing to escort him there in the aftermath. It was on the way.
And he's a little too scared to go travelling and risk a random encounter, right now.
So he hasn't gone to find Lan, either; but he knows, yes, the shape of her cloak. She waits, and waits, and waits...
And finally the window opens, and a muffin sails RIGHT FOR LAN'S FACE!
WHO IS THROWING MUFFINS OVER THERE?!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
What will he say to her? What can she say to him to make it better? Would it be cruel to pretend she has no idea what he's talking about if he brings it up-- Lan immediately squashes that thought. Yes, it would be cruel!
Her hands twist in the fabric of her cloak as she frets, until a window opens. Her head lifts-- and she fumbles the catch, muffin threatening to leap from her grasp, a few surprised noises escaping her open mouth as she finally manages to subdue a simple baked good. BUT it didn't smack her right in the face AND now she has a muffin! Win-win, right..?
It was Hicalu, right? Why would Hicalu throw a muffin at her? From a window, from across the street?? Oh no, he doesn't want to talk to her (but he's really kind so of course he won't turn her away hungry) and so he threw it at her and-- and--!
Lan sniffles, and she tucks her lip in to keep it from wobbling.
Anybody observing her who has any familiarity with Hicalu Wilwisp will suddenly, absolutely see the family resemblance.
"Hiiicaaaaluuuuuuuuuuuuu...!" Lan warbles, tears threatening to well up in her eyes. No! Stop it! She's supposed to have all of this stuff under control and be an awesome and cool and supportive big sis! She wipes doggedly at her eyes and sniffs hard. No way! She's gotta be stronger than this! Lan hesitates one last time, but finally takes the first step.
Across the street, at the inn, a head pops up over the windowsill, Lan standing on her tiptoes to peek in. Tears are still threatening to spill down her cheeks, but now she's also got crumbs on her mouth.
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Hicalu is in the kitchen! Baking! There's a tray of muffins cooling by the windowsill, minus one.
He pulls out a second tray, sets it down, and completes a set of gestures. "Simmerset," he invokes, and the Spell For Cooling Ovens casts -- a spell which makes no sense to see in the battlefield, but which Lan's surely familiar with anyway. Hicalu's always made life easier with all his clever little utility spells, marked up and down his arms and legs. It's why his palms are almost solid black, from all the ink buried there.
Once he's seen to Kitchen Safety, he turns, and goes to the window, and tugs at Lan's hood. "Lan! W-why are you crying out there?! Come cry in here! It's warmer!!" And it is, though the temperature is pretty comfortable, thanks to the help of shady Darkness Magic.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
And then he just comes over and tugs her hood back and, and!! 'Because I ran away that time and didn't come see you even though I wanted to talk to you because I was scared of what you'd say and when I got here you threw a muffin at me,' Lan very bravely does not say even though she is really feeling it right now. "Okay," she says instead, and even though she's having a minor emotional crisis Lan still doesn't have any trouble hopping through the open window, mostly because she cheats and uses antigravity magic as easily as most people would go through the front door.
Once she's inside the warmth of the kitchen proper she wipes her eyes on her cloak and gets her shit together a little better because logically there has been some kind of mixup and maybe it was someone else who threw a muffin (is it the Darkness Devourer? Has Hicalu been teaching it to do other stuff besides eat kitchen scraps??).
"I thought you'd be mad at me because I ducked out of the Gerudo Temple without saying anything because you got creeped out by me using that power," and she traces a very winding, serpentine shape in the air with her finger, "and I didn't want you to be creeped out!"
Well, she's still blubbering a bit but at least she's not actually crying. Do your best, Hicalu...!
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Lan cheats!! Hicalu knows this, though. That's why he didn't go through the front door.
"I was mad!" Hicalu huffs, tail all a-poof. "Then I threw baked goods at you and I'm better now. Come here, come here!" He wraps her up in a hug, creepy powers or no.
He doesn't quite let go of her to say: "Anyway, I wasn't creeped out! I-I was worried! It looked like it hurt!" He's sniffling now, too. "I thought you mighta been doin' some important Drifter stuff and I'd find you if I snuck in after ARMS, b-but you weren't there and a bunch of stuff happened and we went to SPACE and I thought I was gonna DIE and you weren't talking to meeee!" Oh, there's the wail.
There's a knock on the kitchen door, before a portly pheasant birdman pokes his head in. "You all right, Hicalu...? And, uh..."
"YUH I'M FINE" Hicalu yowls.
"Y...you just let me know if you need anything," Torman Redbrush, as he's known, gets out a shade haltingly as he closes the door and stage-whispers to his husband something about how he's having one of his moments it's fine.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
His tail looks so funny when it gets all poofy. It's nice to know that some things really are constant and unchanging. Like sibling dynamics, or an emotional fox. Lan lets herself be wrapped up in Hicalu and Here and Home, squeezing him back until they have both been well and properly hugged. It's therapeutic!! And she doesn't get any tears or snot on him.
(It would be really nice if more people could just get over their anger by throwing a single baked good. Lan is reminded again how lucky Little Firelight was to find Hicalu and not some other child. Not that being lost and alone in the desert was lucky for Hicalu, but-- ugh, nevermind.)
"I thought you were creeped out because it's creepy," Lan tries to explain, once Hicalu has gotten on to the wailing part. "I didn't mean to worry you but--" The door opens. Lan, still sorta-held in the last one-third of a hug, tilts her head at the Beastfolk who peeks in (and promptly, not at all hysterically, giggles a little when Hicalu yowls that he's FINE). "Aheehee... the look, on his face..."
But she's gotten herself under control well enough to pull Hicalu into a hug. "I'm sorry. I got scared, too. I can't believe you've been to space! I sent you postcards because I didn't want you to worry about me and here you are, going on adventures and not dying!!" Lan pets his hair, sniffling a little.
"I got stuck in my thoughts and I got scared that I was going to be something that was scary to you and... and I didn't want that! I want to be someone you feel safe around, always."
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Hicalu gets angry! He's allowed to be angry!! He just doesn't get stuck in his anger terribly much. This might just be because he's too busy getting stuck in his anxiety, but never mind that.
"I-I mean it is kinda creepy but -- but --!!" Hicalu wails. The inn owner just smiles to Lan, tapping his nose (sharp and beaky but not a BEAK) as he shuts the door again. He Gets It.
Hicalu's big ol' ears go twitch-twitch as his hair is pet. "Lan! Lan, you're a sister to me! I couldn't be afraid of you!" He insists, and insists just a shade too sharply, as he tightens his hug again. "If you've gotten caught up in something, we'll figure it out...!!"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's so glad that Hicalu seems to attract good people. If anybody deserves a helping hand, it'd be him.
When he insists he couldn't be afraid of her, she gives a watery kind of smile. Hicalu could be afraid of just about anything! "I..." They'll figure it out, he says. Her mouth opens and closes, Lan floundering momentarily as she tries to think of something to say to that. Something cool and reassuring and not a lie. "...It's kinda complicated," she finally allows.
Once he's squished most of the unease out of her, Lan finally steps back out of his immediate personal space, wiping her face with the edge of her cloak. Sniff! "It uh-- it's kind of a bad, scary story. But I think... it would be better for you to know about it in case something goes wrong. Then you'll know how to be safe, and who to go to for help."
Lan tugs off her cloak and folds it loosely while she talks, the warmth of the kitchen making it too uncomfortable to keep it on any longer. The hem of her top ends at the bottom of her ribcage - not unusual, as she's always been kind of a sun worshipper for someone so star-aligned. And of course when they reunited, she had more scars than she did before she left. Two of them on her belly are particularly wicked: the new, pink one that isn't properly covered by her hem and the older, twisted one just above her bellybutton. It's the latter one that she's contemplating now, a fingertip tracing it out.
"It was about four or five years ago now. I met a stranger on the road and I was young and stupid and we fought. That's when I got this. But I didn't know that he was..." Wrong. Other. A nightmare. "He was really strong and, and he had a weird power, and..."
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Hicalu does attract a lot of helping hands. He's just got that kind of face!
He looks around, and pulls out a stool for Lan to sit on -- sometimes you want to sit *down* when chopping vegetables! -- and for his part, he leans on the counter. (It's higher than his tail, which is important for food safety. Thankfully, this inn belongs to beastfolk, so they understand these vital points.)
He noticed the scars, of course. He notices again, as she trails its shape. "A stranger...?" He echoes, ears wilting. His arms cross over his chest, with a frown. "What'd he do?"
He at least entertains the idea of giving this guy a piece of his mind for hurting his sister before he reasons with himself that if this guy is stronger than Lan he'll just be making more trouble for her. Even so, he's still a brother!! He thinks it!!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She settles down onto the offered stool, cloak held in her lap. She's starting to second-guess herself, again. How much does Hicalu need to know? How much will just horrify him and drown out the important stuff?
At least he's unlikely to just run into the Stranger out on the streets. But then, neither can she think of any real way to hide Hicalu from him, if he takes an interest. The thought of it... she feels dizzy.
She rests her heels on one of the rungs of the stool and folds her arms in her lap. "He stabbed me. He put his hand inside me." He ripped her open. He took piece after piece of her, replacing them with something else. "He messed with my head, really really bad. And he killed my friend in front of me." She doesn't cry, not anymore, even though even now thinking of Ashansi's shape dissolving into dust makes her eyes prickle.
"He wants me to do something and I'm not sure what. I think... he left that power inside of me so I'd use it to do whatever it is." The way he'd used Gwen's natural talent at refining energy to nurture a stolen fragment of a Primarch.
Lan looks haunted, but she's not crying. She has to be strong for Hicalu. She can be strong, for him. "Sometimes it... it's saved my life a few times. But the more I use it the more I think it's changing me."
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Hicalu's ears start wilting down, and never really STOP, until they're just kind of airplaned out flat on his head like he's ready for takeoff. His fingers tighten, at the crooks of his arms.
The bruising won't show up, later. The tattoos have always drowned that kind of thing out.
"He violated you," Hicalu identifies the core of her story as he sees it, and at length he unravels his arms so that he can put a hand on Lan's shoulder, instead. His grip's not so tight on her skin. "Whatever he wants, there's no way it's good, Lan! I-I bet he made you think that's the only way you could save your life, so -- so you'd blame yourself for usin' it! Like, like, you said he got in your head, right? So why wouldn't it be like that?!"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's not so lost in her thoughts that she misses him digging his fingers into his own skin. Lan tugs gently at his hands, encouraging him to let go, and tries to rub some of the harm away. Even if the bruises don't show for his tattoos, she still doesn't want him to hurt.
Lan's mouth thins when he says it. "Yeah," she whispers, nodding once. His hand on her shoulder keeps her grounded. If she'd only been stabbed, it would have eventually been okay.
She listens to him, leaning her cheek against his wrist for a brief moment. She's here. He's real. "I'm not sure what he wants." A half-truth. She suspects. "But you're right, it isn't good. It can't be. He's never done anything good - he does stuff to people, not just me. Gwen, even Loren... he's messed with them. Gwen nearly burned down a town because of it. She didn't even know what was happening until afterward."
"But, but that means that Gwen will know what to do if anything goes weird. If I go weird. So if something happens, I want you to find Gwen Whitlock. She'll know what to do, okay?" And Gwen will tell Loren, who is harder to find; Lan has enough sense about her to want to prevent Hicalu from seeking him out, because Loren is most often found among other Gebler soldiers.
She doesn't say anything about whose fault it is. It's too tender to pick apart still, the hold the black ink has on her. How easy it is to call it to her aid. How much it feels like a part of her that's always been there. How using it feels good, and how that makes her despair of it even more.
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
Lan tugs, and Hicalu releases his grip. They're responsive to each other's worries, like that.
But... he does stuff, stuff which made Gwen try to burn down a town. "Can't imagine her doin' that..." Hicalu frowns, troubled. He doesn't know Gwen well, being fair, but all he's seen of her has been far too earnest for arson.
"But -- but you won't go weird if you don't use it, right? Lan," Hicalu moves in front of her, crouching down a little so he's at eye-level with her even as she's sitting down, his tattooed hands coming up to press against her cheeks more blatantly. "Lan, you gotta promise me you're not gonna use those freaky powers no more. It's not savin' your life, it's..."
He pauses, grimacing. "It's no good, Lan," he insists, a shade lamely. "If -- if you're worried 'bout dyin' -- I'll get stronger! I'll get strong enough to protect you! Just... just don't..." His hands slip, by fractional inches, down Lan's cheeks, to her shoulders.
"... I can't lose you, too."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"She wouldn't. She said it was like a dream, and the fire was all flowers. We didn't even know it was Gwen, she just looked like... like a person made out of flame." She had laughed in a voice like bells, and everything she touched - delighted, dancing - had come alight. "She was pretty horrified when she snapped out of it. Thank goodness nobody was hurt."
Lan looks away. "The last time I can think of, I don't think I'd used it at all. I just remember being on edge all evening. The world tilted back and forth and then it was too much, and I ran out into the desert." It's too difficult to explain that the place she ran from was a Solarian base near Damzen. "I knew I was running toward something, and it was Gwen. We were both all weird, and we fought like we were going to kill each other."
They had tried to kill each other, no punches pulled and every attack aimed to harm. But Lan doesn't want him to know that, either.
"A-anyway, when it was over she picked me up outta the sand and took me to a doctor. And I've been trying to get ahold of it so I'm not scared of it anymore. I wanted to control it." But that's not what happened, is unspoken.
Her cheeks are flushed dark and warm underneath Hicalu's palms, even in the heat of the kitchen. It's hard to meet his gaze but she does, because while Lan doesn't want him to see her feeling weak and ashamed she doesn't want him to feel rejected even more. Her pale eyes are watery and her mouth wibbles a little, but he's so brave.
"...I'll try," she relents, letting her gaze fall to his shirt. "It's... it's not that I'm scared of dying. I mean I am, yeah, but--! And if you want to get strong, that's good! I'll help! But you're my little brother and I will always, always protect you, okay?!"
His hands rest on her shoulders. He can't lose her, too.
Lan looks up at him, heartbroken. "You... what happened?" He didn't... remember something, did he? Did someone back home pass away?
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
"That's awful," Hicalu says, hearing about Gwen's trials. "He set her on fire!"
That... maybe isn't the biggest object lesson here, but, like, is he WRONG? He's not. He's not wrong.
He frowns, when she says she hadn't used the power when she got so strange, and insists: "Do you think you'd do that stuff just on your own? No way! He'd messed with you one way or another!" Hicalu believes in Lan, and isn't that nice?
At length, Hicalu shakes his head, ears flicking out to either side of his skull. "No way, no way! Lan, this isn't stuff you can control! It's not like -- like you're scared of stuff and you need to learn how to get stuff done and not sit there all day being scared! It's not some part of you you gotta get comfy with!" And he, at least, sounds like he believes it.
"I mean -- I -- I know you'll protect me, but you can protect me with the stars, right? Not with this. It's just gonna kill you, Lan. Or, you'll --" he pales, and swallows down the alternative proposition.
He's just a sensitive young man. He doesn't want to say Lan would hurt anyone, clearly.
What happened?
WHAT HAPPENED
what happened is, "I saw a girl die in space," is what Hicalu says, with too much tension carried in his fingers for a description like that. "Her name was Kamui... I guess she was a robot, so it's kinda more complicated, but -- but the girl I spoke to -- I reckon she's gone now, Lan. And we almost all died, too, so I didn't even get to cry about it or nothin'... but, but what if you died too, Lan? I couldn't... I don't want that."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"It wasn't on my own, is what I'm saying," she insists. Even if he isn't wrong. "Back then, he'd already gotten into my head." And her blood, and her meat, and her bones.
He insists, and Lan knows that he's right. That this isn't something she can control; it's very close to becoming something that controls her. But it's already in her veins, has become the darkness between distant stars. "I'll try. Okay? I can't promise to never." Lan doesn't make promises she doesn't think she can keep. Especially not to Hicalu, because life is already uncertain and full of scary things for him. Because even when Lan can't be kind, she also won't bring herself to be cruel. "But I'll try."
Even if Hicalu doesn't want to say it, it hangs unspoken.
His fingers shake as he tells her about Kamui, and Lan reaches up to hold his hands in her own, squeezing gently. He's here. She's real. "I heard about Kamui. I didn't know she died. I'm so sorry." She stands up, once again taller than him, and tries to tuck Hicalu against her shoulder. "There's no shame in crying when you need to, y'know. I cry over the silliest stuff. So you can cry about it, because it's sad, and it's scary, and I wish it hadn't happened." She wishes he hadn't seen it.
"I'm not gonna go out looking to die! I worked real hard to stay alive, okay?" In the basement of the Ethos, at the top of Mount Liverfeast, on the snowfields of Macalania Lake. She blinks the tears from her eyes and presses a comforting kiss to his hair. "Okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.
"Why not?" Hicalu whines -- actually whines, like they're little kids again and he doesn't wanna climb up the tree because it's DANGEROUS, LAN! -- when Lan insists she can't promise. "I mean... okay, but... but you gotta really try, okay? Really, really."
It's already feeling like a losing battle, but...
Hicalu looks to her -- orients on her -- when she grasps his hands, and gives them a little squeeze. Here he is. "I didn't really know her..." He trails off, stepping back enough for Lan to stand, only to collapse right back in against her. He buries his head in her shoulder, and -- yes -- sobs. "I-it was so scary--!!"
Hicalu sniffles and sobs for a while, but he does hiccough, eventually: "... 'kay..."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's not going to laugh at her little brother, this is very serious. Except the corner of Lan's mouth curves up a bit because even though it's no laughing matter, he sounds just like he did when they were children. Instead she hugs him and says, "I promise that I will really, really try."
They stand there in the warmth of the kitchen for long minutes, Lan holding him and petting his back and hair as he gets it all out. "It's okay," she tells Hicalu, over and over. "You're gonna be okay."
Once he's gotten it all out of his system, Lan wipes his face for him with a clean corner of her cloak and sets him down on the kitchen stool. She'll make him some tea and fetch a wet, cool washcloth to blot his face.
Caring for him still comes so easy, even though they're grownups now. Letting her do it is the kindest thing Hicalu could ever do for her.