06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord, Gideon, Harrow, Paul, Kaworu, "Shannon," Mako, Ford, Shiro, Ruby, Luna, Faith, Willow, Ezra, Zhongli, Perell.
What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.

Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.

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[peripheries]

“I know,” Kaworu whispers, a soft breeze in a windless place. He too hates this place. He hates seeing ghosts that he can’t touch or feel because he has no words for them. He hates crying because he’s not supposed to have emotions because he’s starting to realize that he’s an overflowing pool instead of a shallow puddle. He doesn’t know if they hate the same things but he thinks he understands why.

The rawness in Paul’s voice rips at him, like it’s as rough on his heart as it is vocalized into the air.

Kaworu shifts his hand and reaches up to gently brush away the oncoming tide from Paul’s eyes like a sea breeze. “I’m sorry you are human and you feel these things.”

[terriblepurpose]

It's something Paul can almost hear in Kaworu's ruffled peevishness, or his cat-paw teasing, instead of this soft, consoling hush, echoing with what he once told Kaworu when he was the one watching over him.

He means to brush Kaworu's hand away as he steadies his breath. He ends up with his fingers half-tangled with the angel's instead, and it's unbearable to pull away from their living warmth.

"So am I," he says, and he means that with every fervent, despairing, miserable part of his too-human self.

[peripheries]

“If I could, I’d change it.”

An impulsive promise, something he can’t contain as the feeling strikes like a flash of lightning. But it’s completely from his heart, a pure force of nature.

He twists his fingers with Paul’s and holds, like he can hold him together if their hands touch. He doesn’t want to see Paul break apart but if he does, Kaworu can keep him upright.

[terriblepurpose]

Paul can only nod at that, as much as he wants to say I know. He's concerned about what else might come out of his mouth if he opens it. If there will be more words, or another sound, or maybe it will him spewing saltwater, but his full of atomic light, radiant blue and severing -

(What would his eyes look like, if he opened them?)

Paul is therefore silent, even as more thin, futile water trickles from his eyes. He doesn't bother to wipe it away, abstracts it to a physiological level - it's like he told Kaworu, once. These are a stress response, a physical purgative.

That they're humiliating, that he wells up with a vast, frigid hate beneath them, that he wishes fervently and darkly for the earth to open and swallow him deeper, those are irrelevancies. Kaworu's hand is in his, slender and warm, and Paul stays where he is, unswallowed.

[peripheries]

Crying is good, like draining an infection from a wound.

Paul once said that to him about tears and Kaworu debates telling it to him now. Then he realizes, if Paul told it to him then he must know and it would do nothing to ease his pain now. Perhaps later, if it seems like he needs a reminder.

Tears, sharp like knives, form at the edges of his own red eyes, and for a moment he's overwhelmed by confusion, in the face his lack of understanding of what causes Paul to suffer. He reaches up with his free hand to wipe them away and then takes a moment to examine the wet sensation on his fingers, marveling at how it's almost delicate in the soft light.

Ah. A moment of clarity. Tears allow others to share in your sorrow. Even if you can't cry like someone else, you can cry for them, or with them. With his free hand, he reaches up and buries it in soft curls and gently pulls Paul towards him, pressing their heads together, moving his hand slowly down the taller boy's spine, feeling every vertebrae until his arm is around thin shoulders.

With his shorter stature, Kaworu can't embrace Paul like Paul once did for him, crouched over his crumpled form, as if misery were shadowed attacker one could be protected from. All he can do is hold him in place with all his strength and try to ward off the dark things that want to swallow him. Not protecting but standing guard.

[terriblepurpose]

Kaworu may not be able to echo exactly Paul's shielding, but that's not nearly so critical as the effort to be there for him and with him at all. Paul doesn't quite slump over Kaworu, conscious of his smaller size (as if the angel couldn't bear him up; but it's more than that, it's the principle of it -), but he does let himself be drawn in and curled to fit. He wraps his arms back around him tentatively at first, then tighter, and he hides his face against dandelion-pale hair.

He still belongs somewhere. He still belongs to someone, to someones. If they'll still have him, if they still want him, after this, and everything else he's done -

(And he lets them, and he wants them to, and he wants so much, and why shouldn't he?)

"Thank you," he says, thickly, and nothing else at all.