2023-09-21: Small Sanctuary

• Log: Small Sanctuary
• Who: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
• Where: Halmetz
• Date: 2023-09-21
• Summary: After the events of Course Correction, Loren muddles through helping Lan recover from a nightmare.

---

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It had been her idea, sharing a room. He, of course, wouldn't have suggested it--

    Except Loren had sort of brought it about. He'd told her ultimately to go get an inn room, to get some sleep, and then she'd had the audacity to ask him where he was staying for the night. Because it was nighttime, and it wasn't like any ship would be leaving Halmetz anytime soon, and his rendezvous wouldn't be coming within miles of the city. She'd had him there.

    And, technically, it was cheaper (not that it mattered too much but he wanted fewer audits about funding allocation not more) to rent one room instead of two. And...

    And that's why he is where he is now, awakening in some forsaken hour of the night in a tangle of his blankets to stare up at where the ceiling ought to be. Except it's dark in here, and he can't see shit. At least he didn't wake up on the floor this time, he considers. He has a tendency to sleep ungently. Rolling over onto his side, he sighs and tries to will himself back to sleep. Before too much longer it'll be morning, and then he'll be on his way.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    "...uh..."

    She had been cheered up by the thought of it, though. She'd gotten a room with two beds and bought some food for them to share: a thick meaty stew and brown bread to dip in it. She'd given him the bigger portion and said something about still being kind of full from the beer she'd drank earlier.

    She was apologizing to him again, in a different way.

    Fabric shifts quietly. In her bed, Lan lies on her back, the blanket and sheet twisted around her legs. Her hair is half out of its nighttime braid.

    They hadn't had a repeat of the bathtub incident because this room doesn't have one. There were showers available on the first floor of the inn, and she'd come back from hers scrubbed clean.

    A ragged inhale. Lan's hands are clenched into fists, held out at her sides. A bead of sweat dribbles off the gentle arch of her nose and down over her cheek like a tear. Her eyebrows are knit together in her sleep, mouth partially open.

    Her chin tilts back; at the same time her hands spasm as though she's reaching for something, but her arms don't (can't?) move.

    "..."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    And that might have been that, if Lan hadn't made a noise that sounded as if she were being tortured. Loren freezes where he lies for a moment more, half unwilling to admit that he'd heard that at all. He rises after she breathes in as if pained and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Reaching for the lamp, he lights it with the barest wave of his hand.

    He's been practicing. He can't afford to lose control again.

    It's as if she's been transfixed to the bed. He knows why, at the most basic level: it's in the body's interest to not wander about in the grip of dreams and so the body doesn't... let that happen. Except, that's too easy an explanation when it comes for her.

    It's too easy an explanation for him to simply accept at face value, either.

    "..."

    Loren knows the position she's in. He's seen this before. It had been in an illusion set upon him by the Stranger, where he'd seen her tied to an altar--

    His grip on the lamp tightens. No. No, he's reading too much into this, even for her. She's having a nightmare, nothing more.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    She'd told him once, after she'd run from that train station. Once she'd pitched up underneath the meager shade of a scrubby tree (and he'd caught up to her) because she was scared and he'd surprised her and she couldn't, not surrounded by all those people.

    Lan pants quietly. Mostly, she's silent. Despite the suggestion of her muscles cording beneath her skin, despite the occasional twitch or aborted movement, she doesn't make another sound.

    'I don't know if it ever did stop,' she'd confessed wretchedly.

    Her pajamas are two pieces, a chemise top and drawers. The hem of the former has rucked up just enough to hint at the oldest, worst scar on her belly. The Stranger's mark, still pulling at her flesh years later.

    Lan's lips move, but no sound comes out. It wouldn't have mattered if it had. Pleading, screaming... neither had saved her. "..."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He can only lie to himself so much. He can only pretend to not see what he's seeing for so long. As if it might shatter, he sets the lamp down gingerly on the bedside table and just as carefully rises to his feet. A part of him wants to run away. He's always been a coward that way. Yet, Loren still takes that one step closer to her bedside.

    He shouldn't look. But he can't help but see it, even with the scar mostly covered by her shirt.

    It's not the first time he's thought or felt it, but here it comes again: he'd kill the Stranger, if he could. He's certainly tried his best. But--

    He stands over Lan and watches her as she moves her lips in silence. Grimacing, he closes his eyes tight and reaches down to shake her shoulder. A part of him wants to run, and a part of him knows that this is the only real solution.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Up close like this, he can see her. All twenty-six years of her, all five feet and ten inches, the improbable blonde of her eyelashes, the gleam of her tears caught in them. Underneath his hand, Lan's skin is clammy over the deep heat of straining muscles and complaining joints.

    He shakes her, and she stops breathing, breath trapped in her lungs.

    A dozen, a hundred hands clasped around her limbs, splayed over her neck and jaw and sometimes her eyes.

    The silver-bright blade dipping in, making her an inkwell and itself a pen. Her eyes burning, her throat burning. A piece taken away. A piece replaced. Fine porcelain, shining and beautiful.

    A hand on her shoulder. The pressure is wrongwrongwrong. Everything is gone. Everything is dark. There is a

shape

    above

her

    She explodes into movement, all her arrested motion freed in a single act. An open palm flies at him and then Lan is continuing, sweaty and blinded and mute, launching herself out of the bed and onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. "ah!"

    Kicking, ensnared, panicking!

    She makes a noise like a wounded dog - a pitched, quiet whine - and forces herself back to stillness. Nightmare. Nightmare. It's over. It's over over over over over

    Lan covers her face with her hands, shaking.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It always throws him. She's that much taller than him, that much older than him. He's used to thinking of her as a force of nature in her own way, and yet, there are always these moments where she seems so vulnerable. Like she was made out of glass, nearly, and the single wrong move would be enough to see her dashed to pieces. It's easier when he can pretend otherwise -- when he can stop thinking about how easily she could break.

    But maybe it's enough to do this for her now and wake her before it gets worse.

    He shakes her shoulder firmly, his intent to wake her up promptly. Her skin is clammy with sweat, he notices, just how long has she been having this--

    Is there a single point he can name as the start of the storm that follows? It might well start with the palm that rushes for him out of nowhere, slamming into his chin so quickly and solidly he can feel his neck joints crack. Is that a knee that follows? An elbow? ...A foot? There's pain and there's that whirl of blankets, all of it thwarting his attempts to apply what his self-defense instructor had once attempted to teach him about repeling an attacker. It's that and it's the suddenness of the violence, and it's the semi-darkness of the room.

    It's all of it, really.

    He's pretty sure the blanket wrapped around his legs at some point. All he knows is that he hit the floor, and it's a good thing they're on the first level or someone would be banging the theoretical ceiling beneath them now. Everything hurts. How did she hit him so many times? The floor is cold.

    "Are you... are you awake?" he groans, trying to free himself.

    And because Loren's Loren, he also adds, "And are you done?"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Forever. She's been having this nightmare forever.

    The sad thing is, she wasn't even trying to hit him more than the once. The rest of it was just pure animal panic and flailing limbs. She was trying to run.

    But her legs were trapped in the blanket, and she couldn't-- she couldn't--

    loren says something

    She's sweating. Her heart is jackrabbiting in her chest. Just the way her lungs heave for air, just the way a bruise will form on her hip between now and sunrise. It's too hot. It's stifling in here. She can't get enough air.

he carried her then

    "I'm sorry," she blurts out from beneath her hands. "I'm sorry I'm sorryI'msorry--"

    Calm down. Calm down. Calm down! Calm down!! Calm down calm down CALM DOWNCALMDOWNCALMDOWN

    Lan can't calm down. But she can lie still, and cover her eyes, and try not to shake herself apart at the seams. The seams. The seams. He broke her apart and put her back together and it wasn't gold that he repaired the cracks with-- "I can't," she tries to explain, because Loren needs an answer to the question(?) she can't remember. "It's too hot, I can't breathe, it's too hot it's too hot."

    The wooden floor is cold. Lan presses her cheek against it and wishes it were enough to freeze her to death. To make her stop. To make this stop.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Even he's not entirely sure if she hit him or if he hit part of the bedframe on his way down. It's all a painful blur as far as Loren can tell, but nothing seems to be broken, just--

    It's the look on her face, maybe. Or perhaps it's the fact that she doesn't scold him for what he just said. Or it's the way she starts to babble, the way her body tenses as if she were preparing to run. Except there's nowhere to go, tangled as she is also in the blanket, and even if she weren't, there's just this room and the hallway outside it.

    There's nowhere to go because what she's trying to run away from isn't real.

    He knows it well. He's often been a recipient of the same paradoxical instinct himself: to feel like he needs to run, to hide, to escape something that isn't real anywhere except the space behind his eyes. And yet the body won't let him -- let her? -- forget or ignore it. He would feel like he wanted to claw all of his skin off, he would feel like he was going to die.

    She can't breathe. It's too hot. He struggles for a moment with the blanket, trying to cast it aside. He might at best only be partially successful: in his own lesser way he's in a panic himself and in the semi-dark he can't see well enough for it besides.

    This isn't helping some more resolute core speaks within him, and he takes one breath then another, then looks at her, looks at her trying to press herself nearly through the floor as if it could help.

    It's not a logical decision. If he'd used logic, he wouldn't have done it.

    But he knows what it's like to be like this, gasping for air and for the relief that doesn't come.

    Maybe that's why drives him to pull her against him, to hold her as tightly as he dares. She's desperate for cold? She feels like ice already, clammy against him.

    He's never been good at the words part. He's barely any good at the actions part, by his figuring. But this--

    ...is what he would have wanted, he realizes.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    The blanket is twisted in places; no wonder she couldn't get free of it without help or the ability to think straight. She must have tried to kick it off in her sleep. Loren is clear-headed enough to figure it out and tug them both free. Lan's limbs feel stiff and heavy but there's nobody holding her down, why can't she move?

    "I can't," she tries again. Words. Are hard. "I can't." Can't calm down. Can't breathe. Can't do this--

    She doesn't understand what's happening until it's over. Just arms around her no please hands on her shoulderblades let her go!

    The body Loren pulls against him is damp with fear sweat, a groan squeezed out of her throat, past clenched teeth. "Ghh!" And he's too hot - Lan's feet flutter uselessly against the floor, against his feet, and she doesn't know what to do with her hands. She has hands, right? They're hers?

    They're hers, and they're squished between her and him, and his are against her back, tucking her clumsily against his chest. It's hot. He's hot, she's going to burn up, she can't breathe!

    Lan tucks her face into his collarbone and tries to control herself. The arms around her help. The familiar scent of him helps. Lan worms her arms out from between their bodies and curls her fingers into his sleeves, over his upper arms.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He doesn't know what the right answer is here. Leave her to it, let her burn it out the hard way? He knows firsthand how that goes -- it eventually ends, in time, but he always feels as if he's been burnt afterwards, too sore and tired to manage much of anything. Someone telling him to snap out of it isn't much better, and usually they give up in disgust before long anyway. He's not about to try that one. But what's left after words, if he's not going to leave her to handle it on her own?

    He's not sure this is right, either. She's struggling against him and it goes against his instincts to not let her go. He hasn't been good at keeping other people close -- or letting them get there in the first place. But he has to trust his gut on this, that letting her alone the way she's trying to get isn't going to help her.

    What can he do but hold her like this as the seconds tick by? She's slowly beginning to ease, but...

    In another story, in another relationship dynamic, it occurs to him, perhaps this would be a tender moment. Instead, she probably would have kicked him if she'd been able to. Instead, as much as he's concerned for her he's also left wondering how long it's going to be until she returns to herself.

    But he'll stay like this as long as it takes. For good or for ill, Loren is good at waiting things out.

    "...Hey," he broaches, once it feels less like she's gasping for air and her heart isn't pounding nearly out of its chest. ...How strange, to feel someone else's heartbeat like this.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    There's no shame in not knowing the answer, a Lan in her right mind might have told him. Only in not trying at all. It'd be easy for her to say, wouldn't it? Save for herself, nobody expects great things from Lan.

    Maybe that's why she seems so happy to risk everything on him.

    When it had happened to him, she would sing for him. Or if they were out somewhere more public, she would try to make sure he had space to breathe. But Lan isn't like him. She doesn't spook so easily, doesn't shy away from friendly touch. She almost craves it with people she likes.

    There on the floor, there in his arms, she hides her face against Loren despite the warmth of him. The cool wooden floor leeches away the memory of heat, just like the sweat evaporating off of her skin. Lan is still shaking, but she isn't there anymore and Loren is someone she trusts more than almost anyone.

    Maybe not to always make the 'right' choice, but to do his best not to make the wrong one.

    Her arms and legs are stiff, but she's so tired. She's only warm now where they touch, and everywhere else she's chilly and damp. But Lan can't, doesn't, think about that. She just wants to lie here and breathe and not remember anything.

    'Hey,' he says, and Lan draws in a slow breath until it feels like her lungs might burst. "...Hey," she whispers back in a rush of breath; her fingers ache where they're still all gnarled up into claws in his pajama sleeves.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    There are times when he wishes she wouldn't -- try, that is. Getting close to him has seemed to do nothing for her except get her into dire situations. Or get her hurt. Or nearly, worse than that. She'd made the last plain enough earlier, hadn't she?

    Sometimes it feels like his attempts to even try the right thing lead to things getting worse. Perhaps it's no surprise he finds himself, often, leaning into inaction. But this time, he did try something. And this time, he can only hope it helped.

    It's strange. Usually, he's the one trying to push people away, unable to handle their presence. Their affection, as if often is with her. Yet, that's often what he finds himself longing for. Isn't that always how it is for him, though? Going in two different directions at once and comfortable with neither. It's enough to drive you mad.

    But they lie like that, the floor feeling as if it's going to drain away all the heat in their bodies before long, by Loren's estimation. This time, he doesn't say anything until the length of the moment requires it, until things reach a point where even he can't be silent anymore.

    'Hey', Lan says back, and it's almost like things are normal again, as much as they've ever been between the two of them.

    "...How are you feeling?" he queries eventually, after. It almost feels like saying anything will cause this moment to shatter, somehow, into a hundred million pieces and that this would be the end of it. And sure. A part of him wants to get back into bed and hide under the covers until he sinks back into the abyss. But a part of him wants to stay like this -- well, not forever.
    But for a while, certainly.

    But even 'a while' feels like it would be a tall order. The floor is cold and hard, for one thing, and for another, his one arm is starting to go numb. And she probably wants to get back into her bed at some point, too.

    "Another nightmare?"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    She is here, and he is here, and they are here together.

    She would like it very much if 'here' were softer and her pajamas weren't still damp, as long as they were still together. As long as she was still being held like someone he would protect, someone he wanted to comfort.

    Lan may not be able to experience or give love like so many other people do, but she still wants to be cared for and precious to someone. Just like she wants to care for others who are precious to her. To hold and be held. "..." She thinks about it for a minute. "Uh... wrung out," she begins, finally lifting her head because talking into his chest probably isn't very clear. "Not burning up anymore. Stiff."

    She sniffles a bit and drops her head back to his chest, head turned to rest her ear over his heart. She makes herself unclench her fingers, stretching them out with a hum of discomfort but then she doesn't really know what to do with them. Lan settles for snaking her topmost arm around his, palm flattening to his upper back in an echo of his own arms.

    "...Yeah," Lan rasps, then clears her throat. "I was... it was him again." Loren knows who. It couldn't be anybody else.

    She laughs, an exhausted edge to the sound. "It's been a while. I had a... good run! A few weeks-- nn." Her calf cramps, sending pain signals all the way up her leg and into her spine.

    She's tired - so tired! - but they're here together. They're on the floor, together. Wrapped up in each other. And Lan doesn't dislike the closeness now that she's no longer on fire, but he's... probably uncomfortable, right? "I'm... sorry. I woke you up, huh." She's still not entirely sure why they're on the floor. But Loren probably had a good reason. "Do you... was I flailing around or something? Did I have a fit?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He's always overthinking things like this. Even now, he's wondering what this all means. Or, for that matter, if this is normal in the first place. It's not like he knows, really -- he's seen the way other people act and he's read things about other people's relationships, but he doesn't have a lot of practical experience with it himself. He'd barely been over the threshold of adolesence when tragedy occured and he'd one by one lost every friend he'd had.

    Lan's the only real friend he has, as convoluted as that journey's been. At least, he thinks this is still friendship -- that it's not something else.
    He's pretty sure of that. Pretty sure, but sometimes, he wonders what it is that he has... and what he actually feels about it.

    She shifts against him: it's practical for her, but it makes him wonder if she's listening to his heartbeat. Or if his heartbeat's giving anything away about him now -- particularly when her arm slides about him and her hand comes to rest against his back. He tenses: briefly, he considers withdrawing because this is starting to get extremely complicated for him. But there's not really a lot of room to maneuver without hitting the side of the bed.
    That's what he tells himself.

    Yeah, she confirms.

    He'd figured it was a nightmare from the way she'd been -- far too like the version of herself that he'd seen in one of the Stranger's illusions. There, he'd tried to strike back against him and... failed miserably. She'd ended up getting hurt as a result. But isn't that their dynamic in the real world, too? He tries something, and she pays the price. The Stranger had implied that it would be possible for him to trade places with her but...

    Even now he's too much of a coward to offer himself up -- if such a thing can even be done.

    "...Oh." She'd said once that she was haunted still by the Stranger. It seemed just as wrong then as it does now -- shouldn't she be happy and well? Shouldn't at least someone have a good life? "Is it usually more often?"

    It's a stupid thing to ask. He already knows that it is. And yet, he feels so helpless, like he should be able to fix this for her. But he knows better. Some things can never be fixed. And it isn't as if this is something he can fix--

    Loren shakes his head, as best he can lying on the floor like this. "Don't worry about it. I wanted to wake you up but you, uh..." He pauses. "You panicked, and you fell. I tried to catch you, but I slipped on the blanket."

    It's a lie. He hates lying. But it seems... better, somehow, for him to put it like this than what really happened, right when she's finally come back to herself.

    Besides, it's like she said. He'd tried to kill her. It might even be his fault that she was having that particular nightmare, somehow. There's a lot of things he's still trying to sort through about how he feels and, maybe he'll never get to the bottom of it. But he does know that he doesn't want her attacking him tonight on her conscience.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    It's not very different from listening to Hicalu's heartbeat up in the loft. Or her mother's, even longer ago now. It's comforting to hear proof of life.

    "It was a lot more for a while. But it started getting better, over time. I mean," Lan tries to explain, "It's not as much as in the beginning." She can't be making sense like this, can she?

    Lan takes a deep breath again, and lets it out. It's okay. She doesn't have to explain everything perfectly, all at once. "I've been getting better." Because she has. Maybe not all at once, and maybe not steadily, but Lan has gotten stronger over the years, and so has her heart.

    But she panicked tonight, and fell, and took Loren out with her apparently. "Sorry," Lan sighs, letting her eyes stay closed a bit longer. Gosh, she's a mess...

    "...Thanks, Loren," Lan murmurs, trusting their closeness to carry the words to him if volume won't. "I was really really scared, and you just..." Knew what she needed, when Lan didn't know.

    Her calf cramps again, aggravated by the chill and hardness of the floor, and Lan finally pulls away from him with a soft groan. The dark smudges underneath her eyes are faint. "C, can we get off the floor," she suggests more than asks, because Lan is still a little shaky but she's got to accept that lying on the floor about it is a bad plan. "If I'm gonna be all wobbly and messed up, I really wanna do that someplace a little more comfortable."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    She's not making sense. But maybe here and now, Loren decides, he'll cut her some slack. It's a small bit of empathy from him born from experience -- and time.

    Not even a few years ago he might not have been as kind as he is now, as much as that is. Perhaps he would have been more honest when honesty wasn't called for. Perhaps, even knowing what he does, he might not have been able to reach out. But time can sometimes dull someone's edges with its passage, and he's grown a bit sadder but wiser.

    Particularly, perhaps, with the revelation that Leah had imparted.

    So he doesn't say anything when she talks to him, seemingly, in circles.

    "...Yeah," Loren says, though, when she says more directly that she's been getting better. Stronger, perhaps. He, of course, doesn't feel like he's changed for the better at all. Not by his metrics, that is -- and certainly, not in this moment.

    ...Or maybe he can feel a little bit brighter after all: she says 'thanks' -- even implies he did manage to help, despite not knowing what was the right thing to try to do.

    "Well--" he starts, feeling a little self-satisfied in spite of, er, himself.

    Then she asks if they can get off the floor. It's cold and uncomfortable.

    Somewhere in the depths of his skull, Loren screams in self-inflicted anguish. Of course she's cold and uncomfortable, she was lying on the floor!! Lan probably never has had someone let go of her so fast as he moves to slip away. It might have been hurried but almost impressive retreat if he hadn't tripped on the treacherous blanket at the end and fallen against Lan's bedpost with a pained grunt. "It's-- fine!" he insists, flopping heavily onto Lan's bed to lie there, face down and still on her bedspread where nothing can, for the moment, hurt him.

    I think... it was the bed frame after all... he ruminates as he lies there. She probably only hit him the once?!

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Maybe he wouldn't have. So much can change in the space of days, weeks - entire years might make you a different person altogether. Changing is what people are supposed to do, isn't it...?

    It's not unusual for Lan to talk in circles, to ramble on while not actually making a lot of sense. It seems to cheer her up most of the time, or let her work out a complicated problem on her own: the verbal equivalent of doodling on scrap paper. She just rambles until she feels 'done'. Between the awkward embrace, his heartbeat, and regaining some of her equilibrium, Lan does feel helped!

    Which kinda makes it funny when Loren suddenly scrambles away from her so fast that he slips and falls (again), clattering against the side of her bed. "Be careful...!" Lan frets, and if she can worry about him braining himself on the furniture then she must be most of the way back to normal, right? She pulls herself to her feet afterward, feeling scoured and unpleasantly light, as if a stiff breeze might carry her off. "Give me a second to change." Because she has something she can do, so Lan will do it. Even if it's something as basic as digging her spare nightgown out of her bag, pulling it on over what she's wearing, and then tugging her old nightclothes from beneath it.

    Even if he had looked (why would he?), Lan was never nude. Even if it takes a few extra steps and some extra trouble, it's a kindness for him. She hangs her damp nightclothes over the back of a chair to dry, rebraids her hair, and by then she's starting to feel a little more real. Less like she'll dissolve into ink and wake up back on the altar. He's on her bed, so...

    She pulls the blanket from his bed and climbs onto hers, next to him, dragging the covers after her. "Aren't you gonna get under the blanket?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It's his own paradox: he's definitely changed.

    But to himself, it doesn't feel as if it's been for the better. As if, somehow, it's all gotten worse. But this is a matter of perspective: to many others, certainly, they might not say he's changed for the worse--

    Rather, the truth might be that he's become more acutely aware of his flaws. But caught up still in his own universe, Loren can't really see that. It's in much the same way he doesn't see the blanket that causes him to trip and fall on the bedframe. At least he's not badly hurt, even if his leg might disagree. Ugh," he groans, muffled against the sheets before he finally rolls over to flop onto his back, arms as wide as they can go. He of course doesn't budge when she says she's going to change, partially because he wants to lie there in agony a moment and partially because who /would/ look?

    He's still like that when she returns, lifting his head half-heartedly from the bedding to look at her, blanket in hand. --Oh, shit, she's going back to bed. Obviously. He pulls himself up off the bed a moment later, then glances over his shoulder as if belatedly cluing in to what she's doing. "--That's my blanket," he tells her, almost accusatory. What, is she abandoning hers because she had a night... mare...

    One can see the moment where his train of thought comes to a screeching halt.

    "Uh," he says, as if he's plummeted suddenly into a strange anti-universe. "In... your bed?" It's not even as if this would be the first time!

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    It's just a linen shift with a few carefully-embroidered flowers at the neck; the hem hits at her knees. Once again, Lan's nightclothes are miles more modest than what she wears under the light of day. She sits down, and he stands up, and is he upset? Why?

    Oh, Lan realizes. Maybe the sheets are all sweaty. And now they'll be cold. She frowns a little and pats the mattress. ...Well, the bits where her thighs and shoulders were are definitely a little uncomfortable, and she's going to have to turn the pillow over, but it's not unbearable.

    That's his blanket. "Right, but--"

    Oh, Lan realizes. "You're right. I guess your bed would be better, huh." She doesn't care which one they end up in as long as it's pretty soon. It's really, really unusually kind of him to offer to let her--

    /Oh,/ Lan realizes, again, and this time she feels a bit closer to the truth. "I thought you were offering to let me sleep next to you again." Again -- it's been months! Since the inn near Macalania, when they were both in danger of hypothermia and/or starving to death! She stands up again, his blanket held uselessly in her hands as she looks from her bed to his and back again, and then at Loren himself.

    She ought to say sorry, and give him his blanket back, and go back to her own bed and try to fall back asleep.

    "..."

    She doesn't want to. She wants to feel safe a little longer.

    "...Would it be okay...?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    His-- bed?

    Well, technically, it's the inn's bed and it doesn't matter who sleeps where as long as they paid the desk up front! But that doesn't mean that the comment of hers doesn't nearly cause a collision for him mentally.

    It's-- been complicated, as far as he sees it. In the moment, he never really thinks about it like that: he cares for her, her worries about her sometimes. He hopes she does well. She's become important to him in spite of -- ah, even now he catches himself thinking like that -- in spite of their respective origins (perhaps this is a better way for him to frame it: it's not as if there's any real difference between Solaris and the people of the surface, though it's still difficult for him to shake how he was raised to think).

    But then there are other moments. She's made it clear that she doesn't have those sorts of feelings for people. And even if she... did, there's too much that would make this even more difficult, even more painful if they were in a relationship. Thus, it's just as well she doesn't, even though there are still those other moments, the ones when he wonders after the depths of his own feelings. Or, worse:

    'What if?' What if she's come to feel something? What if--

    It's impossible, though. It might even be cheating on his part (?), considering how things are (??) with Anaitis (???). But it still stops him in those moments when he pauses and thinks a little too much about this thing he really shouldn't be thinking about.

    "Er," Loren manages, at considerable length. He wants to say, that was a unique circumstance. He wants to explain himself. He wants to forget about all of this and go back to sleep.

    But instead he looks at her for what feels like a too-long moment and then almost in passing glances over to look at the disgarded blanket in an ignomious pile on the floor. "..."

    What if she had another nightmare? Wouldn't that, too, be his fault? ...And he's probably the only one making a big deal out of this. She's just scared and rattled.

    Remember all the times she took care of you when you had a fit--

    He sighs, giving in to his own conscience on the matter, and shakes his head, his shoulders slouching. "...It's fine. Do you, uh... want to use my bed?"

    See, he can be an adult about this and not an inexperienced fool-- or maybe just pretend he's otherwise, he considers, reflecting on his level of experience on the matter.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    If he doesn't want to, Lan won't ask again.

    He's quiet. He looks stunned. Oh no, did she really misread the room that badly?? (Can't he--)

    But after what feels like forever, he agrees. Lan lets the tension bleed out of her spine. "Thanks," she absolutely does not sniffle.

    "Yours would be better. I sweated in mine." It had been so hot. Dark, until the brilliant greenish fractals had climbed her body and razed her to the ground. She swipes a hand across her forehead, sweeping her bangs out of her eyes.

    The colorful blanket gets tossed out over the bare sheets, and Lan looks between him and it before lifting the edge and scooting underneath. "Thanks. I promise I won't kick you again." Is there some kind of record for 'how many nerds booted in a single day'?

    Once they're both in bed, Lan makes sure he's as comfortable as he's going to get... and then lies down next to him again, ear seeking out his breastbone. "...I used to do this with Hicalu, or my mom," she confesses. "I had bad dreams, and it calmed me down. And Hicalu listened to my heart, too. He was so miserable back then."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    She sweated in hers, which is understandable.

    But Loren, who has been very good (well, generally) and very concerned about Lan (if sometimes about the wrong things) up to this point hits his own sort of little breaking point for kind and considerate behavior and pulls a face. "Gross," he says, without real feeling. It's got to be his bed. If he has the choice, he'd rather have clean(er) sheets than repeat the stint in Macalania.

    If they're going to do this, he's at least going to vent in his own way, it seems. "I hope not," he says, pausing for just a moment before sliding in next to her. He's overthinking this, he thinks. He's overthinking this.

    Which Lan confirms as she pulls up -- too close, a part of his limbic system reports, on high alert -- next to him and just as before seeks out his chest. So much for that plan to spend the night staring at the ceiling, but--
    As he'd thought, as she confirms, he's overthinking this. This is normal where she comes from. And she's done it with Hicalu.

    Not that he'd thought, 'there's something special about this relationship' but that alone really takes the wind out of the sails of that line of thinking...

    "Huh. I think you said something like that?" Once. Or something like that. That nervous little guy, who was sort of like a sibling to Lan -- something about his past being a rough one. ...He's given to think, once again, that Lan seems to collect that sort of relationship. Because that's what this is for her. Definitely.

    Sibling feeling or not, though, Loren keeps his hands where they are.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Gross, indeed.

    Would he know what was normal for Little Firelight, and what was only normal for Lan and her family? It had been a mishmash of strange people, that one time he and Leah had been brought into Lan's home, but surely the whole place can't be... like this? Other Baskar aren't like this! Are they??

    He's warm. It sinks into her and sets her body on the slow task of unwinding. And at least, aside from her head on his chest and the line of her lying next to him, Lan is polite. No grabbing, no trying to rearrange him into a better pillow, and definitely no kicking him.

    This is comforting. It's home, and safety, and special.

    "Yeah. Something bad happened to him before he came to us. But look at him now. He's grown up and gotten so determined... even if he gets scared, even if he cries, Hicalu keeps going." Someone should tell Lan, sometime, that girls aren't supposed to talk about their siblings when they're lying in bed with people who are not related to them.

    She's content to lie there for a while, listening to the beat of his heart. For a while, anyway.

    "...Do you ever dream? About him?" she asks, voice small. Lan isn't talking about Hicalu.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He moves only his one hand the once, an unnecessary action as he snuffs the flame in the lamp. But better safe than sorry, he supposes. He's gotten better at controlling flame but it still requires too much focus.

    In truth, Loren has no way of knowing what's normal for anyone outside his own family, let alone the rest of Etrenank or Filgaia or Lunar or the worlds beyond. But he doesn't think other people of the surface are like this. Perhaps it's a quirk unique to the Baskar? ...Or just Lan's village?

    They'd welcomed him there. He'd learned that at least a part of it had been because they'd thought he was fresh blood, so to speak. But they'd still welcomed him, knowing nothing of who he was and where he'd come from.

    He thinks he remembers... some shadow of this story. Not all of it -- not as she tells it to him now. But some sketch of the tale, she'd said before. "...He'd probably be mad if he heard you talking about him like that," he says, sighing as he closes his eyes. "Most guys... don't want someone talking about how they're a crybaby. Especially not to other guys." Especially to someone like him, who isn't family, no matter what sort of familial feelings Lan might have for him.

Or maybe he's overthinking it again.

    "But it sounds rough. I guess it was really bad." Whatever it was that had happened.

    And then things settle into a sort of silence, with only the sound of her breathing filling the gap. Inch by inch, he finds himself slowly letting go of the waking world--

    Until she speaks, pulling him back to the here and now.

    Him? Still crossing back from the edge of sleep, it takes him a moment. "...Sometimes," he says, ultimately. "But it's nothing special." A distortion of a memory, at times. More often, some situation that never had been and never could be. And mercifully rarely...

    Sometimes something worse. He'd never read the reports. He couldn't bring himself, even when he wished Engil never existed, to read the reports. But imagination has a way of filling in the gaps, and the dreaming psyche, moreso.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    At first they'd thought Loren and Leah had come back with Lan. To be with Lan. And when she'd explained that they were visiting to learn more about shamanism and the Guardians, a couple of Lan's cousins and neighbors had made gentle overtures. Even after being politely rebuffed, they'd been welcoming.

    Sometimes, he says. It's nothing special.

    Lan is so grateful, suddenly, to the idea that nightmares aren't contagious. "That's good," she sighs, refusing to think about it any deeper. Some things need to be locked away where they can't hurt anybody.

    She'll fold this nightmare up carefully, and tuck it away. Deep, deep down, where it can calcify.

    "I hope they stay forgettable," Lan mumbles. "I hope you don't ever have to remember then if you don't want to." Even just saying it brings her some comfort and clarity.

    That seems to be all she wanted to ask him; a few minutes later Lan has let herself drift away, content and safe for the remainder of the night.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    It's hard getting himself to settle down, but settle down he does by bits and pieces. It hadn't always been like this, but adolesence had been unkind: he'd learned to fear other people and it's never easy for him to set down his guard.

    Little Firelight had been nice. The people had been nice. The sad part -- or at least Loren would be sad if he ever realized that's what they were interested in -- is that he had brushed them off thinking they were a nuisance at the time. Politely, admittedly (for him, that is) but that largely because he'd still been in earshot of Leah.
    Leah, for her part, had been a little less subtle (for her) about her interest level. Or lack thereof.

    No nightmares -- not outside the rare few that have come on for him over the years, related to Engil or other demons that still haunt him. Certainly not born of his connection with Lan. Rather instead, he's had more 'waking dreams' from the Stranger himself with which to contend, or the nightmare his contagion by the Primarch had sown in his soul.

    "I hope so," he says, unable to stifle a yawn. "That goes for you too." He really means it. It had been as if she had been set aflame, just like in the phantasm the Stranger had shown him. He hopes she never remembers it in full.

    He'll feel much more awkward about this situation come morning, and may even have some mild regrets about the decision. But in the moment... it's almost peaceful. Even Loren can relax enough to slip away, this close to another person.