Much Ado About Am'shere
Log Info
- Title: Much Ado About Am'shere
- Place: A09: S. Bridge Over Tornmawr River and Shipping Channel
- Summary: There are many things calling the attention of Rune and Harkashan to Am'shere, but the rogue is relucatant to return to the place of her death.
As of late, Rune has been occupying her time making sure that she keeps busy. Simple tasks mean that she doesn't have as much time to worry over things. Thus, her investment into creating a bird perch rather than doing things like talking about her feelings. Of course, it also means that when she is out and about, Rune often spends time alone, thinking and working through her feelings.
She's been alone in some fashion or another for a large portion of her life. Her father, for all his good intentions, was largely absentee. She had traveled for hears before finding Harkashan and his traveling party in Am'shere. After her death and resurrection, Rune had tried to face that alone, too. It's never been very successful.
At the moment, Rune standing, looking out at the river, leaning against the railing of the bridge. It's still early in the afternoon, but the sun is starting to creep down towards the horizon.
There has been a lot to think about. A lot of things running through one's mind. Harkashan has been well aware of what has been going around in Rune's mind. She plays her cards close to her chest, but the Sith-makar has a way of keeping his attention on her at the right times. Has learned to read her expressions. And so far, he hasn't pushed much.
Everyone deals with their problems in different ways.
But right now, it's starting to look like avoidance may cause some problems down the line.
The scales of the 'lava'-like Sith-makari gleam strangely under the descending sun's light, as he comes to stand next to Rune. No doubt she's heard him coming a mile away. He leans down, touching his elbows to the railing of the bridge, and stares out over the water with her. His reflection visible in the waters still.
"How're you holding up?" He asks.
GAME: Rune rolls bluff: (17)+10: 27
There is a twitch of one ear as Rune hears the familiar sound of Makari feet along the stone and metal walkway of the bridge. Not shifting her gaze, she continues to watch one of the boats go by underneath, the people onboard still going about their day-to-day activities, without the knowledge of what dangers lie both inside and outside the city limits.
"Pretty well, all things considered." Is what she replies, seeming relatively in control of her own expression and what her voice conveys. "Was just getting a couple of last things for Pothy's perch and decided to get some fresh air."
Lifting a hand, Rune motions at the traffic along the river. "I like watching the boats. It helps me zone out for a little while."
Then, she glances over towards him, the lava-scaled reflection visible against the flickering water. "Did you come looking for me?"
GAME: Harkashan rolls Sense Motive: (4)+12: 16
"Hrrm, indeed. All things considering." Harkashan answers her, leaning forward a bit further to better see his reflection and clasps his hands together. It's clear he wants to talk about something, but he's letting the timing come naturally.
"Pothy really liked that bell." He notes. "Just be careful not to spoil him too much. All future gifts may pale in comparison." The lizard muses, glancing aside at her.
"Yeah. I did. I wanted to talk about Am'shere." He answers her, expecting her guard to come up quickly.
"I'm adding a few bells to some of the toys I created, since he really seemed to like those." Rune replies, offering a soft laugh as she leans back a little bit. The rogue tilts her head from side to side, easing some tension in the muscles there. "I'm sure it won't be that bad. I'm no craftsman, but I did get a lot of Alaryn's help with it."
Then the healer has to get right to the point. Rune had been dancing around the issue for quite a while. It had come up at really inopportune times, really. "Do we have to?" She already knows the answer to that.
With a sigh, Rune stands up at her full height, stretching her arms out over her head. "I know you want me to come with you, but it's not as easy as you seem to think it is."
"We do. Between the smugglers being beyond the portal - and your hesitance to go after them - and my need to travel to Am'shere to figure out what is going on..." He remarks. "I get that you could just let me deal with those all on my own. But I miss traveling to my homeland. And at the same time... I don't particularly wish to travel without you." He realizes he's not making a particularly good case her.
After all, nothing stops him from just going there solo. Without her. Certainly, things might happen to him there while she stays, but he's not going to /blackmail/ her.
He turns, leaning his left arm on the wooden barrier, other hand resting at the pommel of his weapon. "Nobody ever said that dealing with trauma like this is easy. It's..." He takes in a breath, pausing for a moment, before finishing; "... it's not like I do not have nightmares of that time that haunt me still." He lifts his hand, trembling a bit. "It is not like I do not understand what it means to be haunted my memories."
There were a fair number of things that were pointing them back to Am'shere. Just as there were many that seemed to want to keep them anchored to Alexandros. "The smugglers have already mostly been routed, it's just the final blow that needs to be struck to end them." Rune murmurs. "It's... whatever is going on with you that concerns me more than that."
With him still leaning over and her standing, Rune reaches over and lightly strokes a hand down the darker portion at the end of his nose, then taps at it once. "I understand that Am'shere may be the only place to look, but what if my own path leads me somewhere else?" Her brows furrow. "I don't know what this visit to the Fey realms will bring, or what challenges it is going to throw my way."
It is an excuse, and Rune knows it. She could set aside her own quest in favor of his if they pulled in different directions. Sigh. "I think we both know that it isn't the main thing holding me back." Her lips press together. "I spent two years of my life in Am'shere with your people. Longer than I spent anywhere else since leaving home. And yet... all my time there has this shadow over it."
As he talks about his own nightmares, Rune nods once, looking to his trembling hand before reaching her own out to lay atop it. "I know. But at the same time, I don't know how to move forward. I've been trying, little by little. It's easier to talk about it. To face it. But it hasn't gone away." Her voice drops to almost a whisper, "I'm not the same person I was back then."
"You've owned quite a bit of it." Harkashan reminds Rune when she talks about dealing the final blow. "And in the jungles, it's more important than anywhere to come at it with a more stealthy approach. You know that. The others have never been to Am'shere." Except for Tlanexhuani, if he were to join.
"And we are not going immediately now. We can see what come out of things with the Fey realm today. But..." He touches some of this lines on his body. "It's getting worse, Rune." He tries to impress on her. Just as she mentions being worried about him. Leaving his hand in her own as she touches him.
"I've never set canopy aflame. Yet that pillow caught fire." He tells her, furrowing his brow a bit.
"Look... talking about it gets easier. But until you set foot there, I don't think you'll ever be free from that memory. It'll keep haunting you. Facing it by words isn't the same. You have no closure. You will always feel fear until you manage to replace memory with newer ones." He tells her, touching his hand over hers, creating a hand-sandwich. Handburger? Handwich?
"Neither of us are the same person we were before. I know that what you mean has more to it than that. But we have to try..." He rumbles, before pushing slightly; "I need you there, Rune. You know me. You can help recognize myself."
"Even if I have been there before, my knowledge is pretty far off than that of any Sith-Makar that was actually born to the jungles." There were quite a few Makari that he could call upon for that knowledge, but Rune also knows it is simply another excuse. "I'm not dependable for navigation, or identifying creatures, so stealth is about the only thing I can offer to that cause."
When he mentions it 'getting worse', Rune quiets a little. "I know." Lighting bedding aflame, scaring pixies, burning her hands when she attempted to wake him, all of these things suggest that something more serious is going on. "I want to be there. I don't want you to have to face whatever this is by yourself."
That admission seems like a first step, but Rune blows out a breath of air, shifting some of her dyed hair out of her face in the process. "I'm afraid I'm going to freeze up, or react badly, or that the nightmares will get worse. I'm afraid we'll walk into another Charneth trap. I'm just... flat out, afraid."
She huffs once, a growling curse in Draconic following, "And I hate feeling afraid."
He squeezes her hands softly, nodding his head, before properly looking at her. Tilting his head down and a bit to the side so he can better see her. "You underestimate yourself far too much. You may not recognize all the creatures, but you recognize more than many of the younglings. You are trying to compare yourself against long-lived Makari with years of experience." He reminds her as he keeps holding onto her hand.
"If you freeze up of react badly, if the nightmares get worse, we will deal with that then." He tells her. "There's a reason I am working on bringing other people in on this, Rune. People who can help protect us. So that even /if/ the Charneth do spring a trap... they will soon find out they made a grave mistake."
He squeezes her hand.
"I hate feeling afraid too, Rune. I am a Deathsinger. All death should be equal to me. Yet, when you are in danger, I fear that most of all. There are echoes of what happened that remain with me heavily." Harkashan expresses. "We both have things to work on. I can't just freak out each time you are in danger. Losing my calm and my head is only going to make matters worse for the both of us."
There is a comfort in the touch of his hand, so Rune doesn't pull away from it, seeking that point of contact. "And maybe you over-estimate my capabilities. I've yet to be able to track a single animal without getting myself hopelessly mixed up, and it was more you and Jacob who managed to navigate in the Felwood." She'd helped, but it had been far lesser a contribution.
Even so, she doesn't push back too hard. "Being stuck in that nightmare is what really scared me. People are able to attack us through them. My mind is nowhere near as strong as yours, or most of our allies, in fact." She lets out a breath. "I'm the weak-link, there and I'm not sure what I can do about it."
Admitting his own fear has Rune turn her head back towards him, nodding slightly. "I know. As the healer, it's that much harder if you freeze up, because you know you have lives depending on you." She smirks a bit, "I can't exactly hang back. I need to be up front where the fighting is. And that always means I'll be in more danger."
"The Felwood is hardly a fair test of survival compared to the likes of Am'shere. And you know that." Harkashan offers to her. "I know you are not as good as I am. But you still managed. You still helped." He tells her. "And you have the ability to become far better than I." The Makari adds.
When it comes to the Nightmare, he nods. "There may be things I can teach you to steel your mind. But that will take time." He touches upon that, recognizing that she is weak there. "All in due time."
He nods his head as she turns to the topic of healing. "Indeed. And unless I wish to heal the enemy as well, I need to be able to touch you to heal you. Which is why I am in the middle of the fight." Harkashan notes. "I'm working on maybe developing something that allows me to get around that limitation, but that too - will take some time. Life is a matter of trade-offs."
"It seems to me that Am'shere has proven to be more deadly than the Felwood, at least in my experience." Rune turns, leaning herself back against the railing as she folds her arms across her chest. Her tone has a hint of humor, likely using it to diffuse her own feelings on the matter. "I'll keep working on it, but it's not as natural a skill as some others are."
With a sigh, she taps one of her feet against the railing, "I know Cor'lana offered to help me figure out ways to deal with the nightmares, too." Her brows furrow. "I just worry that there might be something permanently wrong with me. Something that Charneth spell did to me." She looks over towards him, "If you'd seen the mark it's left on me, you'd understand what I mean." Rune hadn't shown it to anyone.
"You work on improving your healing, I'll keep working on ways of getting my ass out of the fire." She smirks, "I'm thinking of maybe talking to Huian. She seems to be pretty quick on her feet. Maybe she has some sort of techniques she could show me." Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, the rogue seems uncertain on that. Sometimes certain abilities work well for one fighting style, but not others.
"Shattered." He remembers the word that she'd used in conversation with Ravenstongue. He slowly nods his head. "It would not surprise me that the Charneth spell may have done something to you. But you have also said that your resurrection had been difficult. Perhaps there is something else to it." He adds, releasing her hand finally as she folds her arms across her chest.
He lets her talk about Huian and fighting styles. But he does finally add; "So... you will join me?" Making sure that her shifting the topic away from Am'shere doesn't mean that the problem has been forgotten about.
"It may very well be a little of both. Perhaps the spell is what made it more difficult to bring me back." Rune offers out the theory. "I don't know exactly how long I'd been dead. I also don't know how many days I was... not in my own head before I really woke." She lifts a hand, motioning it around her forehead and then shrugs once.
Harkashan really gnaws at the bone when it comes to the topic of Am'shere, not allowing Rune to escape from it. "You won't let it go, will you?" Sigh.
"Yes. I'll go." She finally agrees, "I'll /try/." She amends, giving him a wary look. "I can't promise I'll be of much use if things go sideways, but I'll do the best I can."
"It took... a while to get you back home." Harkashan admits, feeling almost guilty about this. She's got him thinking about how him taking so long to find her father and his way there might have caused things to get even worse. A little grunty growl escapes from him, tilting his head.
"And I won't." He then adds, in regards to letting things go. And when she offers a yes, and a try, he touches his hands over hers again, looking earnestly thankful. Relieved, more than anything. Glad that she will be coming with him.
"Thank you." He knows it will be hard on her. On the both of them, but especially on her.
"Well, Aelwyn did say I look remarkably good for a dead person." Her lip quirks slightly, again leaning into that humor to help herself not feel quite so weird about the topic. "So you must have done a good job." She leans a little towards him, giving a light nudge with her elbow to show that she isn't upset in the least on that matter.
The earnest thanks is enough to have Rune shaking her head, "Yes yes, okay. You don't have to look so damn grateful about it." She reaches out and pokes him on the nose again.
She may be a little grumpy about it, but not in the way of someone actually upset. "But you need to find some of those good spices when we're there. The ones the importers have never taste as good."
"You do. You do look remarkably good for a dead person." Harkashan answers her. "You're giving Skielstregar a run for his money." After all, they've got that strange death thing haunting over them. He then exaggerates a big 'ooph' as she elbows him a bit, doubling over a bit and stepping back...
Then winks at her. As in, his nictitating membrane closes and opens for a moment.
"And agreed. It's really hard to find good spices here. I think the nobles are taking all of the good stuff that does export out of Am'shere. You're going to have to help me at the markets though. Help me negotiate for better trades."
Rune sticks out her tongue, just a quick light-hearted flash of it before she shakes her head. "You're just trying to convince me that there's more reasons for me to come along other than that you'd miss me if I wasn't around to bother you all the time."
Rolling her eyes, Rune lets out a breath. "Come on, let's go back to the inn and get ready for tonight. I'll need to make the last touches on Pothy's perch before we go."