[Training] Don't Mind

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

Of course. Why would a God spend so much time among mortals, when they could send a messenger of their own to do it? It only made sense.

Aurelia slightly creased her brows at his question of her knowing her new race. She supposed he had a point; how did she know? She shook her head meekly, admitting, "I really don't but, I guess I should expect the worst. From what you say, it sounds like this weaker feeling is making room for something like... what you have, or what ever else there is," she looked down and away, knowing what she was implying by what she said.

It was true, though. Being 'gifted' with some magic ability would have been the worst case scenario for her. It was exactly everything she had worked so hard to avoid her whole life. It went against everything she knew, everything she believed. How could she make good use out of abilities that were so easily destructive, dangerous... forbidden?

"I know it's different here but, I can't help what I know of magic." She only had experience in the ways that it corrupted, that it burrowed its way into the lives of the innocent only to tear everything apart.

She continued to avert her gaze until Sunjata questioned her statement of the gods laughing at her. "They'd laugh because... because I'm nothing, in comparison," she glanced back up at him solemnly, "And what I want is impossible. I couldn't ask for anything more than going back," she folded her arms against her ribcage, careful not to spill the glass she held. "I know I should look at this like an opporunity, considering all the facts. I know I don't have much hope of ever getting home again." She shook her head again, grimacing briefly at the statement she'd just made, "but it feels wrong to abandon everything."

She took another sip of the drink, finishing it off. She leaned forward to place it down securely on the table. Hesitantly, she looked back up at Sunjata and asked, "How did you manage? How do you manage?" her voice lowered, "I mean, there must have been something you weren't willing to leave behind..."

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

He can’t help but to feel a fleeting smile cross his face when she speaks. “I was incredibly weak when I arrived too.” He shrugs. It was why he’d wanted to attune, to be something more than his normal self. But he didn’t have the terrible connection with magic that Aurelia did, and he supposes that makes all the difference. So he takes a deep drink of the mead again, cradling the glass in his hands.

“I’m sure it’s hard to imagine.” He rumbles, though he truly has no idea. It hadn’t been a terrible thing where he was from, hell, it hadn’t even been a thing at all.

But she continues and he gives her his full attention, fingertips running lightly against the glass while he considers it, nodding lightly in understanding — because he’d been torn from his world too. “Everyone starts out as nothing.” He offers quietly. He had. So many of those he knew had arrived and start completely over with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “But you have the opportunity here to restart and rebuild. It’s hard, leaving those behind, but they’re not… alone.” Because they were copies, weren’t they? There was a version of himself back home hopefully making good decisions while he fucks off here in Caido. It was a hard pill to swallow. But he’s been here long enough to know there’s no way of getting back.

Her question has him mulling that over again too, taking a long sip from the mead and leaning back in the seat again, peering at a spot on the back wall. “I left my sister behind, after we’d run away from home. Made it a couple of years on the run and I got snatched up and dropped here.” He shrugs before turning his attention back toward her. “I like to think that version of myself left there is keeping her safe. Other than that? Home was a shithole and my father was an asshole of the highest degree. I don’t really want to go back.” Too many horrible memories spun around the flooded streets and skyscrapers.

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

Rebuild... The word brought a small curl to her lip, a bitter curl. It wasn't only that she had lost everything she'd worked so hard to get, she'd also lost the ones to work towards it for. Everything she'd done, everything she'd achieved, was always for her family. It hadn't been much in the grand scheme of things but, it was far greater than living on the streets of Oreville.

"They might have me but I don't have them," the words came out quiet, almost a whisper. But she didn't, couldn't say much else about it, feeling a knot in her throat. The wound was far too fresh.

Aurelia eyed Sunjata as he looked away, noting the slight depression of his own mood. She knew he was able to relate to her plight, of being an outlander in Caido, torn from his family - and that was probably why she felt it was easy to tell him these things. He understood, at least to an extent, but she didn't know his story. She vaguely remembered the name of the place he'd come from and that he'd spoke of a sister before, but he had spared her the details. So when Sunjata opened up to her question, she listened attentively.

Her brows knitted when he mentioned his home and his father, regarding both of them with disdain. She tilted her head sympathetically but, in truth, as much as she wanted to, she could not relate to his hatred for his father.

There were a few moments of silence that passed before she worked up the nerve to ask, "Did he hurt you and your sister? Is that why you ran away?" Her gaze went a little wide as she looked at him. It was a more common occurrence than she cared to think about - childhood abuse, that is. She knew her childhood had been blessed by way of loving parents, at least...

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

Her whisper is heard easily, his earring making it nearly clear as day. Her statement clearly made the difference in the end, though, Sunjata having lost everyone he’d ever relied on. Saartjie relied on him, but he never truly clung to her the way she did to him. He had to be the strong, older brother, to save her and rescue her when she needed it. And he’d stepped up and done the job, well enough that they got out from under his father’s claws.

Silence overtakes them and he takes a sip from the glass again before sitting forward to fill his a bit more with the bottle left on the table. Her question visibly makes him pause, the bottle in hand, staring at the glass. Nobody had asked outright, sure, people had assumed or related in some way, but nobody had asked. The sigh he takes is heavy, setting the bottle down and reaching into a drawer in the table to pull out a cigarette and matches, striking it as he brings it to his lips, letting the silence prolong just a bit longer until the smoke is curling around his lips.

“He wouldn’t hurt Saar. She was too valuable.” He rumbles, keeping his gaze away from her as he peers into the glass and the honeyed liquid. “We were… Well, he was the Arbiter for our little lovely county. Like a king would be. Saartjie couldn’t do any wrong so long as she married well and continued the line. Me on the other hand, well… I was supposed to become a smaller version of him.” He takes another drag from the smoke, a half laugh escaping him, picking up the corner of his lip in a mirthless smile. “There was a saying that if you cut him, he’d bleed iron. He just, he didn’t feel. I felt too much, was too weak, cared too much about everything. Korofi was a hard place to grow up, you had to be strong to survive. At six we take a ‘swim test’, where we jump into the flood waters and try to survive it. Good ol’ dad shoved me in, was pissed when I made it out.” And things only really got worse from there. “Pair that with a shitty upbringing of being the disappointment, still managing to survive it somehow, throwing a big middle finger to him when I finally broke away only to be dragged back again and again.” He doesn’t delve into it further, unless she asks, unsure how much information she really wants to get out of him.

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

She watched him refill his glass and freeze for a moment. She pressed her lips together nervously, wondering if she had crossed an invisible line. Their budding friendship was still that - budding, new; there was still that chance that she could cross a line she didn't know was there. Well, she might've known it was there but - where exactly it was drawn remained a mystery.

She watched him carefully as he pulled out a cigarette from his drawer. But his body language wasn't that of someone who was angry or offended. So far, Sunjata had been amiable towards her. She couldn't imagine what it was like to see him upset and she certainly didn't want to make him relive his past. But the question was out and she still found that she wanted to know the answer. She was curious of the place called Korofi, where his sister remained with a doppelganger of a brother while the real him was forced to carve a living out in Caido. For several moments, the only thing to break the silence was the sound of Sunjata lighting his cigarette.

When he began, though, Aurelia let out a small breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. He explained that his father wanted him to be a smaller version of himself and she nodded, commenting quietly, "Like a prince would be," to show that she was following. He took a drag from his cigarette and Aurelia noticed that he still wouldn't look in her direction. She found that she understood why. She slowly looked away, too, after his somber laugh - trying to at least alleviate the pressure of making eye contact. She looked across the table, at its reflective glaze in the light. Her hand cupped her face, her balled up fist resting against the soft skin of her cheek.

"Damn," she said after he was done, glancing over at him as she did, "your dad really was an asshole." She looked away again, to a seat across from her. There was a pause from her this time but, she eventually replied, "I've dealt with a lot of assholes, but none like that. I mean, throwing your kid to the wolves and hoping they don't come out alive? I can't imagine what it must have been like to grow up with a father like that," she shook her head in disapproval. "My parents were angels in comparison. But that didn't exactly work out, either. After my dad died in the fire, my mom- my family basically fell apart. Things got so bad... and then they went from bad to worse," she moved her hand from her cheek, letting it fall in her lap, "living on the streets with my two younger sisters. We ran into the worst kinds of people... I mean, the part of the city I grew up in was... nobody cared about us down there. We were the workers that kept the machines running. That was our only value to the rest of the world," she scoffed and stood up to pour herself another drink, motioning towards the bottle as if to silently ask permission. If he gave her the go-ahead, she would go ahead, but first she met his gaze and said, "Don't get me wrong, Sunjata. This place... it's a far cry from that. It's better in many ways. I hated my world, I hated the people in it... I hate what it's made me become...and so did my mother. But I had them, and they had me, and that's all that mattered."

"Now... well..." she looked away.

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

“A prince.” He agrees quietly, Lusea’s pet name for him ringing in his ears as if she were there. Princeling. And oh how he’d hated it at the time, rolling his eyes, huffing his annoyance. Nobody has called him one since, and he’s not sure if he’s thankful that she’s the one that the memory sticks with or if it makes it slowly bubble more hurt the more he dwells on it.

But he draws quiet, listening instead as she speaks, as she relates. “He was a different breed.” That’s how it felt. How the man had felt absolutely nothing and relished in the cold cruelties of life as if they were trophies waiting to be placed on a shelf. He has nothing else to say for the time, however, just simply sitting there and dragging on his cigarette and letting the smoke curl around his head, around his nose.

If one thing, he can’t imagine what it was like to truly have things fall apart with others like she did. He had always broke down himself, alone, everything went from bad to worse but it was only to him for quite some time. He does look over to her when she speaks of working on machines, a dark brow raised, a small half smile. “I haven’t thought about machines in a very long time.” He offers quietly. For as backwards as Korofi had been, it had been far more technological than this place was. He’d had guns and cars, motorcycles and tanks. But he nods to her as she goes to pour herself another glass, not stopping her should she even want to keep the entire bottle to herself.

The smile fades, however, as she tells him not to take it wrong — wondering where she planned on going with it. And it makes sense — because he didn’t have anyone like that from his old world. “Now you’re alone, trying to pretend you don’t feel like you’re failing at being your family’s protector because some goddess snatched you in the middle of the night?” He raises a brow to that, before leaning forward to grab his glass and take a sip, taking the moment to also tap away the ash at the end.

“It takes time and it’s hard. But there comes a point where you can either wallow about it and disappear or try to pretend things are fine and move on about your life. And trust me, I’m very good at wallowing.” He rumbles, a mirthless smile crossing his face again. “There is a chance that they could make it here… Slim, but it’s there. My girl Lusea arrived here shortly after I did.” He murmurs softer than before, as if it’s tentative. “My father killed her a few weeks before Saar and I left for a couple of years before I arrived here. A few months after and she shows up at the Spire.” A raise of his brow to her as he casts his gaze back to Aurelia, shrugging.

It was a possible thing, not aimed to get her hopes up, but to hopefully make it help.

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

Aurelia's browline tensed and she widened her eyes as he finished her line of thought, in his own words of course. She turned away, pretending it was to pour her glass - but really, she was the one who didn't want to make eye contact this time. With unsteady hands, she poured. That would probably happen a lot, though; the avoidance of eye contact, the shaky hands, the reliving of their nightmares and dreams. It seemed as though they both had a hard time with this sort of subject. Though she would've thought, judging by his normal demeanor thus far, that he was well past it. Only then did she realize the opposite was true.

At his remark about the machines, Aurelia snorted, "That's probably a good thing."

Perhaps if she had more audacity to, she would've hoarded the bottle to herself but, that was not like her. She didn't typically drown her problems in anything, preferring to bury them deep down by way of devoting herself to something. Only, here, she did not feel as though she had anything to devote herself to. She closed the bottle and took a healthy drink from her glass, allowing the taste to smooth across her tongue before she let it pass through.

Sunjata laid out her options on the table, figuratively speaking, and she sank into a seat on the couch beside him. There was still ample breathing room between them but, the closeness was a comfort of some small sort to her.

Aurelia looked up from her glass when Sunjata explained how his girl, Lusea, was killed by his father and then - miraculously - arrived there in Caido. That was confusing information for her, though, but her quizzical expression became a look of realization pretty soon after. "Something happened to her here, too." Her facial features became somber. He didn't need to explain it, she was capable of putting the painfully obvious pieces together. The way his voice softened and he seemed to distance himself from the emotions while at the same time feeling them.

She waited for a moment of silence to pass before she spoke up again, "I- I really hope my sisters don't end up here. I know how that sounds but, I don't know that I'd be able to keep them safe like I could back home..." her gaze wandered to the floor, adding quietly, "even that was difficult," swallowing down the resistance to the words she said next, she admitted painfully, "I have to move on. Rebuild."

She swirled the liquid in her glass around, staring at it as the miniature golden waves swished against the glass surface and bubbled back into place. She turned her face back towards him, realizing the emotional toll he must have gone through. Slowly, in a comforting gesture, she placed her hand on his shoulder, "I understand... You did have something you didn't want to leave behind but, you lost it before you even came here... and you lost her a second time. That must have been the worst kind of torture."

There was a shift in her gaze and she pulled her hand away, feeling guilty, "I-I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you about this shit. It was cruel of me."

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

There’s a brief bit of surprise within him as she takes a seat beside him on the couch, but he doesn’t say anything about it – instead remaining where he is, sat back on the couch, the cigarette darting between his lips and his hand, before he exhales a long sigh in response to her realization. “Yeah. She didn’t even make it a year.” It comes out in a quiet huff, a shrug of a shoulder. Silence overtakes them again as he nods with her, listens to what it entails, what she’s decided for herself.

“Rebuild, Aurelia. It’s all we can do right now.” It’s a quiet beam of hope, a dim light through the tunnel with so many terrible things. A new life, a fresh start, to become anyone and yet remain the same in so many ways. It was both refreshing and terrifying.

The hand on his shoulder has his gaze shifting to meet her face, to scan it for the lies within – so used to it now that it becomes second nature – and when he doesn’t find it, he simply takes a sip from the glass in his other hand, turns his attention away to inspect the scars of his right hand briefly. “Don’t be sorry.” He rumbles, a bit lower, a bit more tired. “I don’t usually go in depth unless I’m incredibly drunk or on the verge of stepping off a cliff, so…” That’s how it always went – driven to that edge or drunk to the point he doesn’t know what he’s saying. “Here goes nothing. Spare me the details of your thoughts, alright?”

But he looks back to Aurelia, to the sorrow that lingers within her, and he shifts his arm a bit so that he can set it on her shoulder – like old friends, because perhaps that’s what they both needed right now. “Luci was just the tip of the iceberg.” He offers as if it’s something he should have gotten used to by now, with everything that’s happened in his life. “I’ll spare you the traumatic details, but.” A quiet snort, a puff from the cigarette, before he clears his throat. “There was the swim test I told you about. And then at seventeen, we’re thrown into a pit to see who survives it.” He’d made it out, much to his father’s displeasure, as per usual.

“I was to be an enforcer in Korofi, so… Like an officer of sorts. And I ended up defecting when I found the rebellion. I joined it. Luci’s dad was the main man in charge. Dad found out, tried to get me to tell him where the resistance was located. I didn’t. So he killed my mother. But Luci was there for me to deal with that. Eventually we started going together until we got captured a few years later. That’s when my father killed her, in the greeting room of the house I grew up in. And I tried so hard to go with her.” A frown deepens his face, in lines well worn, as he points to the scar running down his neck, over the vital artery there, before his gaze lingers on her face again. “They stopped the bleeding, though, fixed me up. When I came to, my wonderful father had me and Saar engaged. So a few weeks later we ran.” He doesn’t go into details of the way he had to get out, the blood on his hands to simply get them somewhere safe.

“So I arrive here. Luci arrives shortly after. And then she goes missing. I meet Nate, we sort of have… A thing off and on at the time. And I meet a girl named Maea. And we went well for a time, until I called it off.” There’s a shift of his lip, unable to tell if it shifts toward amusement or somewhat of a grimace. “I’m not exactly the faithful type and I tried to be honest with her about it. She didn’t take well to it. So we’re on a break of sorts for her to figure it out. And then she goes out on a ship in Torchline trying to rescue people, ends up getting swallowed by a ghost whale.” A brief pause, a consideration of his next words, sparing all the shitty, awful details. “So, things are shitty for me again. The fucking volcano blows up and Nate’s there, and he comes home with me and talks me down because I was still trying to process Maea's death.” Nate became the bigger asshole, the one that despite Sunjata’s attempts to push him away just kept coming back, not leaving, a pillar among Sunjata’s harsh floods left standing. “So we agree to give it a shot.” And it worked so far. But if this story of his life said anything to Aurelia, he hopes that she understands how protective he can be, how he’s dealt with so much loss in his life that if the thought of anything were to happen to Nate he’s not sure he’d make it out at the end. “And here we are. For now.” Despite what Caido threw at them again and again, and would likely continue to.

He finishes his glass and puts out the cigarette, pulling another from the box and lighting it before offering her one if she wanted it. “Alright. Your turn.”

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

There was a small, sympathetic grimace that hardened her features at his affirmation. Not even a year... That look remained engraved across her face as Sunjata dismissed her apology and settled right into telling her everything. At his arm draping over her shoulder, she lets out a deep breath through her nose and looks away from him. The physical touch made her instinctively want to retract from him, instinctively tense against the warmth. Not because she did not want or value the gesture of good will, but because it was just that unfamiliar to her. Outside of her family, Aurelia didn't have real friends. At least, not before. She raised her forlorn look back up at Sunjata as he unveiled his story to her, relaxing ever so slightly against his arm for a moment.

At the mention of his attempt to join Lusea, at the gesture to the scar over his artery, her brows raised up and then fell into a deeper grimace. She swallowed hard. Her jaw clenched and she looked away as she imagined how much that must have hurt... in both ways. She'd never even come close to a love like that, though, so she could only try to understand. After hearing about Maea, she felt pretty bad for calling him 'whalemeat'. As much as she wanted to speak up, though, she kept her lips sealed shut until he had gotten through it all to the present moment.

In truth, there was not much she could have told him to assure him things would be better. Perhaps, things would not get better. But sometimes it was the words that weren't said that meant all that much more, and although the air was heavy, Aurelia remained.

As he lit a cigarette, holding out one for her as well, she met his gaze as he invited her to open up. Well, less of an invitation and more like an unspoken deal that she had agreed to the moment she let him tell her about his past. She smirked right at him then and reached up to sneak the lit cigarette right from between his lips. She took it and relished her own drag from it, leaning against the arm of the couch and deciding to keep it for herself. A playful grin flashed across her face as she kept the cigarette between her teeth but, only for a moment.

After all, she was not feeling especially happy. Although, there did seem to be a sliver of hope beneath it all. Entangled in the webs of darkness, there was an underlying warmth; light. She plucked the smoke from her mouth, holding it between her fingers. She looked at him, though not fully, and let out the smoke in a soft billow. She put the glass down, though it was about half-full still.

"Alright. I've told you a lot, so I'll just tell you the shit you haven't heard yet. After about a year on the streets, my mother got a job in the factories. It wasn't much but, it was usually enough to keep a roof over our heads.. Tarla, the youngest of us three, kept getting sick," she gritted her teeth at the memory, "Things turned out alright but... we had to move so many times I stopped counting and Tarla was always so weak, her body could barely handle the stress. We spent a lot of time without a consistent roof over our heads, too. My mother did her best. I never blamed her for a second. She tried to keep us in school, kept us fed, kept us safe- well, as much as she could've," she made a 'tsk' sound, "Kids hated me. Word had spread about my family. I was the girl whose father was killed by a mage. I don't know, I guess they thought maybe it'd happen to them too if they got close to me. I'll never understand how cruel kids can be but, I mean... I had to learn how to fight for myself and my sisters at a young age," she sighed, "I gave up after so long, though. Dropped out when I was sixteen. Mom was pissed at me for it," she chuckled at the image that popped into her mind, of their huge fight, their angry faces, "she was so mad at me. I was sick of it, you know? I was old enough to work, to help my family, and those assholes didn't care about me. I was the 'problem child'. I didn't know it at the time but... my mother was getting sick. It wasn't like the shit Tarla had. Pneumonia, I guess. Nah," she shook her head and paused, taking a brief drag of the cigarette again, "it was cancer. Those kind of doctors were a luxury we couldn't afford, either, so she just.. I-I couldn't handle it. I stayed down in the mines for months. I gave her as much of my wages as I could but, I barely went home. I was so selfish," she laughed softly at herself, in disbelief of her actions. She paused, sighing and slowly rolling the cigarette between her fingers before ashing it in the tray.

"During that time, I met a man who told me I had a job working under him if I wanted to learn the trade. It was bounty hunting. But I knew how dangerous that shit was, and I couldn't risk leaving my family like that. Not with mom being sick and my sisters being so young. I worked whatever shitty job I could find, anything to keep me from going home," She sighed and tilted her head against the back of the couch, "But mom died when I was 18, and... I was old enough to take custody of my sisters. I knew I had to do something more," she lifted her head back up and looked at Sunjata, "So I went out looking for him- the bounty hunter. That was how I kept my sisters fed, clothed, and well cared for. It was fucked up work. They didn't care if we brought our targets back dead or alive. And I..." She knew it sounded bad but, nonetheless, she locked her fiery eyes against his steely blues.

Anger flared up inside of her and although she controlled her expression, the oil lamp on the table was another story. The small, delicate flame became a burst of light, flickering against the side of the glass with each word she proceeded to speak. She hardly noticed it, of course, self-absorbed for that moment.

"You must think I'm cruel for it - and that's fine. You're right. I showed them nothing. No mercy, no sympathy, nothing. Because they didn't show any to my father, and they completely fucked our lives up. If he hadn't died, maybe mom wouldn't have either... all that pain, misery, and death.. because of one of them." She brought the cigarette back up to her lips, staring across the room as she settled her temper. With it, the flame in the lamp settled too, right as her gaze obliviously drifted across it.

On a final note, before she took another drag, she admitted with a dark tone, "For all my searching, I never did find the bastard that did it. I never will, either."

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

There’s a brief moment of surprise as she plucks the cigarette from hips lips, and despite the downturned conversation Sunjata can’t help the crooked shift of his lips in a small smirk as she seems to hoard it to herself. Fine, fair enough. He pulls a new one and lights it, dragging it deep and holding it in his lungs until it starts to ache before exhaling, and giving her his full attention to hear her story, her end of their little unspoken bargain.

And boy, does she unleash. He doesn’t mind – finding it refreshing in a sense to not have to relish in his own traumas again and again, and instead focuses on how she managed in her own shitty world she’d grown up in. And one thing becomes clear, very quickly. Survival. So similar to his own despite the circumstances being different that it does peg a bit more of a kinship, as he nods while he listens, lets his gaze scan her face whether or not she’s looking at him. He pulls on the cigarette and drinks from the glass, letting his mind imagine what sort of world this might have been, imagining her thick with dirt and dust from the mines, with calloused hands and that similar, exhausted look to her gaze but continuing on.

Because she had to. Just as he had to.

The steel of his eyes dim a small amount as he listens further, until the rage begins to bubble up, her eyes locked on his despite the flickering glow and bursting color of the flame on the table. And for a moment he breaks the eye contact, to look at it, to process her words and wonder if perhaps she is the source of it. But he doesn’t dare voice that thought – not with what she’s said, instead pretending that a rogue wind had raced into the room and messed with the lamp. It was easier that way, after all.

“I don’t think you’re cruel.” He offers after a moment of silence, nodding with her dark tone, with the shift that the conversation had taken. He hadn’t gone into all the details that she had for him, but there’s a relation there that he can’t help but to voice. So he shifts, cradling the smoke and the glass in one hand, removing his arm from her shoulder so he can turn to face her more fully, lifting and bending a leg so that he can fully look at her as he sits beside her on the couch.

“We’re survivors. We’re given a shitty situation and told to figure it out. And we do. You did with your sisters, even if it cost you yourself in the process.” He pauses, tongue dipping out along his lower lip as he considers his words carefully, before shaking his head and offering a quiet laugh, a small half smile. “You aren’t cruel. You survived. You got justice in the only way you knew how.” Tattooed shoulders rise and fall in a shrug before he takes another long drag. “I am hardly one to judge someone’s cruelty. There’s too much innocent blood on my hands, Aurelia, for me to ever be someone to judge.” It was different now, being the governor of Torchline where he actually has to care and enact judgement on such matters. But for him?

Perhaps there was sympathy that lingered therein. “I went into that muddy, shitty pit at seventeen with fifteen other boys. And I was the only one that made it out. I joined the rebellion and helped them try to take down my father, hurting and killing those that threatened me. Some of them I trained with. Some of them trained me. When Saar and I got engaged, there was no way out except to go through our fiancés. And I did.” A dark brow raises as he tilts his head toward her, resting his other arm along the back of the couch, trying to word his thoughts correctly as his fingertips tap against the back of it. “There are many days where I wonder if I had just died that day in the Trial, if my mother would still be alive, if Lusea would still be alive, if Saar would be married off and happy and things would have been fine.”

“But it does no use. We’re here. It happened. It’s what makes us… Us at the end of the day.” He takes a sip from his glass until it’s empty, and he leans over to set it on the table before giving her his full attention again. “If it’s covered in innocent blood and vengeful as fuck, so be it. The only thing that matters is what we do now, right? And the thing we do best is survive.”

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

Sunjata's words cut through her anger in the same way that water quenched flames. It was the reassurance she needed but, did not realize she would get. Her lip curled in a quiet, disbelieving 'tsk'. He moved, though, taking his arm away - and she had not realized how long she'd let it remain - and turning in the seat to face her with his body. Her jaw unclenched and her eyelids sank halfway over her eyes as she looked down at the drink in his hands.

However, at the word 'survivor', her green irises raised up to meet the blue of his. His words were deep and meant to encourage. They weren't lost on her, weren't wasted breath. She had never talked about this kind of shit with anyone else before. It wasn't a difficult thing to understand, if you ever gave up a part of yourself for someone else; if you'd ever sacrificed something for a cause greater than yourself. But hearing someone put those feelings, that truth, into words was incredibly comforting for some reason... To be assured that the plight was understood, was felt by others, even if in a different way. It was testimony that everything was so very real.

Aurelia leaned forward and grabbed her half-full glass of mead, leaning her elbows down over her legs. She stayed like that for a moment, hunched forward in deep thought. Thoughts about the rugged, mechanical worlds they had both come from. The pit he had dragged himself from, bruised, bloody, and alive - but at what cost? She turned her face back up to look at him and leaned back, realizing exactly the words he said into the air at the same moment he said them. None of it could be changed; the only thing they had control over was their futures, the actions they took now. She took a drink.

"I hear you..." came her murmur of a reply. She breathed in another hit of the cigarette pressed firmly between her fingers. She released the smoke in a forceful plume. As much as she wanted to, as much as she agreed with everything he said, as grateful as she was, she could not mirror his energy - and the guilt of that showed in her eyes as she looked at him.

She then turned her glass up until the liquid was gone, plunking it on the table. She wiped the moisture from her lips and sank bank into her cigarette. "Ironic, isn't it? The moment you become a survivor, you're a killer, too."

"We'll never just be.. survivors, Sunjata. There's no letting go of what's happened. There's always going to be that darkness, following us - and we'll keep running. Like a vicious cycle," her gaze flickered, though, and she admitted, "but I really do hope we can find a way to push through. To be more than... the sum of everything that's happened to us."

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

The air deepens, the darkness encroaching – not visibly, but in the way the conversation shifts, storm clouds on the horizon that bring cold winds of reliving their previous traumas. Perhaps he’s more prone to it now, with the visions he’s been spying throughout Torchline, the ones that have him spending part of his day as his dragon form, scouting and scouring the lands for any sign – and then there were Jack’s eyes, ones that kept a lookout as well – ones that likely stood outside the Slagveld this very moment.

She mirrors him in a sense, their bodies facing one another, his steel gaze focused on her face before it tears away to the wall, to anything else but her when his pep talk is done. It doesn’t feel like much of one – feeling more like a ‘cheers to growing up fucked up’,  but sometimes that was all anyone needed. His gaze does snap back to her when she says she hears him, a slow dip of his head before he’s dragging on his cigarette again and pausing to take a sip of his drink.

“Some sort of cruel, slow suicide.” He agrees, darkly, chewing on the inside of his cheek, muscles feathering in his jaw. But he’s drawn silent, torn between looking at her when she speaks, when her gaze flickers and he finds himself looking past her again to the shadows grown by the lanterns hanging around, gaze flickering toward a certain bronze and fiery one in the back, unlit, purely for decoration for this month – just one of the symbols of the things he’s lost.

He does look back to her eventually, throat a bit hoarse, gravelly as he goes to speak. “I don’t think I plan on running anymore.” He murmurs, mulling it over, gaze narrowing slightly as he considers it, a sharpened edge to the steel of his eyes when the silver meets her face again. “There have been so many things taken. I can’t let it take more.” The darkness, whatever it was that followed them and made things tough, awful, paralyzing. But he reaches forward with the glass now, clinking it against her own. “Here’s to telling the darkness to go fuck itself, hm?”

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me

Aurelia

and that the world is always our fault
when we did nothing, how did we do wrong?

Aurelia considered his averted gaze, the sullen thoughtfulness as he chewed the inside of his cheek. She looked down at the cigarette in her hand, watched as the ember smoldered away at what little remained. She suffocated it in the ash tray with emphasis.

There was a pointed look in his steely eyes when they met hers again. She recognized it, but the intensity made her blink and glance across the contours of his jaw as he spoke. She nodded; she could relate to that sentiment. "Hopefully you don't have to," she replied promptly, genuinely. She then let out a soft sigh, closing her eyes for a moment and relaxing into the back of the couch. She rested her arm over her forehead. Finally, the full weight of her enervation sank in, helped by the fact that it was combined with her empathy for his (and of course, the alcohol, but.. whatever).

Sunjata made a motion to cheers, and she lifted her arm up to blink at him in surprise as he held his glass out to her. She hesitated for a moment. Her mouth opened to reply but, nothing came out at first.

She moved forward, picking up her empty glass and tipping it at him. But, she moved it away when he moved his in. "Can you cheers with an empty glass?" She arched her brow and then her lip curved in a slight smile. The question came out deeper than intended, of course. She did it anyway, the sudden clang of their glasses briefly echoing throughout the empty room.

After a few minutes passed, she leaned over and nudged him with her elbow. "Hey, for what it's worth. I'll be here, if anything ever does happen, and you feel like you can't take it," her playful smile had disappeared at that point, "I don't plan on leaving any time soon..." she looked down and away, knowing that she was verbally accepting the fact she'd never go home, "the place I came from is... It's not my home anymore. This is. So!" She leaned back and grinned at him with a confidence that she meant but, didn't quite feel, "that means you're stuck with me."

and I've been thinking that when we thought
the world would break us, that we weren't wrong

SUNJATA

i'm drowning in all these voices in the sea
and meeting all my vices in the ring

He doesn’t even know where he would run to. Already at the one place he’d ever consider as close to home as he could get. But he supposes, just as before, home was with the people you surround yourself with. He has his with Nate and Melita, with Ronin when the Star returns, with his fumbling friendships that mixed their way into his life. And perhaps that’s why he doesn’t need to run anymore, even if the thought terrified him. The thought of more people he loved and cherished being ripped away from him probably the largest fear he has now. One that would continue likely for the rest of his life.

“You can cheer with anything.” He replies, flashing an easy smile her way, bottling everything up once again to the depths of his mind, before his glass clinks against hers and he downs the rest of the liquid in his. His attention returns to her after he’s set the glass down, when she nudges him with an elbow and speaks.

It’s… Sweet, really. A similar talk he’s gotten with Vai, a similar one with Ronin. And it instantly shifts the smile toward something a bit more playful, even if it doesn’t reach his eyes entirely. “Good. I need someone to kick my ass now and again.” He leans in a bit, shoulder bumping against her leg as he evens out on the couch and looks across at the ring theyd left prior. “If you’re up for it, that is.” Steel slide over to her face, that roguish smirk playing on his lips even if it seems hollow.

so step inside, i ain't afraid to bleed
there ain't a casket strong enough for me