i've been trying to sleep
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#1
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Ashe was sitting in the damp earth as the sun dipped below the horizon. All was dim, muted and blue, quiet and chilled. Dark and heavy stormclouds were hovering, breathing in the flowerbirth warmth and exhaling gentle rolls of distant thunder. Candles flickered uncertainly in the breeze the carried petrichor through the trees. And she…

    She sat upon the ground, her back against a symbol-carved stone and her deep blue cloak drawn closely around her. The small young woman hugged her legs to her chest, her chin tucked against her knees and remained wholly still. It was a wonder she didn’t fade from existence, as that strange power of hers so often did when she sat like this. But she didn’t want to disappear. She didn’t want to fade away into nothing. Live he’d said.

    Her fire blue eyes stared out into the gathering dark. She had been sitting this way for some time now. Hours. Cobalt eyes swam in her vision, and her own began to fill and blur her sight. Her lip trembled, but the tears remained burning in her reddened eyes, as if each one shed made it too real, too irreversible. It is real, it is irreversible, idiot girl.

    No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop replaying memories over and over and over. Hanging onto him however she could. It had all been borrowed time, borrowed and running out faster than she could ever keep a hold of, and she’d told him as much… His voice resounded in her: ’There's always more time. I'll steal you more... As much as you need, for as long as you need…’ Where was the time now?

    Finally a tear slipped free, and Ashe held herself all the tighter. She knew who she should ask for. The patron of death, Ludo would the logical option... but she could only see him rising into starlight, and she instead whispered to the dark: ”I would like to speak with Safrin .”


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#2
Safrin

"Hello child."

Appearing with none of her usual starfare, Safrin is suddenly before Ashe, leaning against one of the trees. Her cosmic beauty is of course there in abundance, and yet she is dimmer. Tired, weary, anguished. That Ronin is a bright spark in her cosmos means little. Not when it is Ludo who holds his soul.

"I wish it were under different circumstances that I meet you for the first time Ashetta...but even I do not control fate." The goddess said with a gentle sigh.
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#3
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Ashe didn't move at the appearance of the goddess. Her chest tightened, and her eyes looked upwards to where she leaned upon a tree, but the assassin didn't rise or so much as lift her head. Another one of those frustrating tears fell, like they would do or fix anything at all. Still, the wolf girl was.. caught off guard, she supposed, at the sight of the goddess so dimmed.

    Despite her better judgement, but her lip curled just barely at that word. "Fuck fate," she muttered halfheartedly before she could stop herself. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and glanced away from the goddess, picking up her head to lean in back against the stone she sat against. "He spoke so highly of you." Ashe turned fractured eyes back to her - Safrin ... "I thought that if I met you, finally, I might understand -"

    She broke off and fell silent, unsure of where that sentence was even going. Understand what? Understand why he was fucking dead? Understand why he trusted her enough to bet his life on her being with them? Understand why the fuck he had to make that sacrifice for a problem that never should have been theirs in the first place? She didn't expect to feel this anger smoldering so suddenly in her chest, but she kept it down, kept it smothered as best she could. Anger wasn't why she had come.

    Ashe looked back to Safrin, and she remained silent for a minute. This goddess could not give her Ronin back, something in her knew that, so why ask for her? "This is wrong," she said quietly from where she sat. Another traitorous tear fell. "If I offered the right price, would he be given back? You, or Ludo, whoever the fuck I have to ask, who can give him back?" Her words started shaking, and her arms tightened around her legs. She expected a no. She expected to be told that it was impossible, that it was just the way things were. Her nails bit into her arms with how tightly she held herself. This stupid anger that she didn't want rose like bile.

    "This is not our prison," she bit out, voice thick with eyes wet and burning with unfair accusation. Shut up, idiot girl, shut up! "Why were we brought to this world to die for sins that aren't ours, for people who don't even want our help? What was so worth Ronin's life to you?" She swallowed again, anger giving way to something closer to desperation as she looked upon the goddess Ronin had held so dear to him. "Why were we brought here?" she reiterated.



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#4
Safrin

The goddess laughed and nodded in agreement. Had they been barmates at the Rathskeller, it was the type of moment where Safrin might have drunkenly cheers'd the wolf, had she been mortal. Instead, her lips just twisted into an unhappy agreement.

Normally Safrin might have put on a display, done more to assuage the wolf-girl of her doubts about the diety. But ... tonight her heart was elsewhere. Even her need for glamour and recognition was dimmed by the light of Ronin's star above them. So instead the goddess merely smiled sadly. "He was one of the best ... " She said delicately.

With a soft sigh, wrapping her arms around herself, Safrin shook her head. "I do not decide what happens to souls once they have been taken. And Ludo...it is merely a vessel to carry them. It is not within our power to put them back into their bodies, much as we might like to."

Ashe's anger was immediate and palpable. Briefly the goddess considered reaching out and soothing the savage wolf, but in the end she decided against it. Something told her that anger would be more comforting than an ocean of serenity just now. At least the pain was something this girl seemed to understand. "It was not us who brought you here." Safrin said gently, her shrug seemingly an answer to the rest of the girl's questions. "I can only guess as to the reason ... but it was not us who sent you to that Spire. And it would never be me who would play with Ronin's life so."
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#5
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Ashe didn't take her eyes from the stunning goddess, and as quickly as her anger had burst to life, it fizzled out. It settled heavily in her as Safrin confirmed it - they would not give Ronin back. She bit down hard on the inside of her lip with hard eyes that could have been a glare if it weren't for the unshed tears that glistened there.

    She shook her head with a half growl of frustration, and she looked down to press her brow to her knees. The gods had no reasons to give - as blind as she and the rest of the Outlanders were as to why the fuck they had been pulled here. Why it was that it was them that were able to defeat a three hundred year old beast. Why Ronin had to -- ”We were randomly selected to shoulder another world's plight, then? Or was Ronin chosen because whatever brought him here knew he could never ignore something like that beast?”

    Quietly, she took a long breath before lifting her head to look at Safrin once more. "We fought for people," she said. "Back in Northaven, that's what he  did. What he pushed me to do. We fought to help people, to save people. And then here, I just..." Her voice cracked, her face crumpled before she sniffed and looked down again. She took 'I suck at saving people' to a whole new level.

    She had to hold her breath to contain the monstrous thing in her chest. When she looked up again, she raised a hand to rake her fingers into her hair, shaking her head. "I'm trying to want to help these people, but the price we paid to end that menace... and they're angry at us? Is the key to freedom even in that spire?" And Roana posted that gods damned notice, lines were being drawn, and she couldn't accept that as what he would have wanted. Ashe shook her head and turned her eyes up towards the sky before she looked back at the goddess. "Ronin wouldn't stop. He wouldn't give up, he would know exactly what to do next, but how the fuck am I supposed to do any of this without him?"

    Ashe didn't know what answers she expected for her jumbled and incomplete thoughts. She didn't know why she spoke to a goddess like this, why she thought this would help anything at all. Live, live, live. "There has to be a way to get him back," she said, almost pleadingly.


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#6
Safrin

Safrin had her suspicions about why the Outlanders were here .. how they'd been chosen and why the group suddenly pulled in such a high number was perhaps different from the rest. However as the wolf-girl mentioned that perhaps whoever had done it knew that Ronin wouldn't turn away, Safrin almost flinched. Now that was taking it to a whole other level.

But was it possible?

"I don't think it was random. Not at all." Safrin said, voice tense. Indeed what Ashe said next only helped to confirm what the goddess thought, even though the information was not particularly new.

"The...way out, is in that Spire, yes. But if the barrier lifts, you will have more space, but you will still be here in a sense." Safrin said gently. And he will still be gone. "What is it you want to do?" She asked a touch more softly this time, relaxing somewhat. "You cannot return from where you came. It does not work like that. You ... do not know our ways. Do you understand the reasons why there was a rebellion? Why some wish for the Spire to stand?"

With a breath that was shaky and radiated a cosmic anguish, Safrin half-shook her head. "The one with the power to do that...the one who will hold his soul is so far away...We cannot reach him in here."
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#7
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Ashe wasn’t sure it mattered if there was no going back. What was it Frey had said? ’Your feeling of being trapped won't go away, your cage will just be a little bigger.’ And the Naturals didn't even seem to want the barrier down.. She could relate in some way. She been holding onto her own intangible prison of fear and violence because she was terrified of what she was without it. But that wasn’t what Safrin asked. ”They're afraid... and it was made to keep that new god in here, wasn’t it? And the bloodfiends.” It was still hard to remember sometimes they were something quite different here.

    Then suddenly there it was with the words that fell from Safrin like distant, barely glimmering stars: a sliver of hope. Ashe’s eyes flashed, and slowly she pushed herself up to stand. ”If I get through that barrier, there is someone with the power to bring him back then,” she said tightly. She knew little of this world and its religions and beings, but she had heard enough to know. ”Mort.”

    That far-fetched, hardly there hope trembled in her chest. ”What I want to do is break down that barrier,” she finally answered, her voice rough with unshed tears. ”I don’t want Northaven, I don’t want Northwind, but I will not live my life in a fucking cage when there is an entire world for me and my family out there,” - she gestured vaguely towards the barrier and looking outwards. The demon was dead and they had paid too high a price for it and Ashe was fucking done... but things had just gotten very, very personal again.

    She bit her lip and furrowed her brow, and she pulled free a small piece of gleaming metal from her pocket - the broken tip of a dagger’s blade. Ashe looked back to Safrin, holding out the now smooth and dull piece of steel to her - once razor sharp. ”The tip to a blade called Candor. My old dagger, I broke it when I was fighting against a beast that threatened our home, our people, the one I lost my finger to. I believe it was Candor and a stroke of luck that let me live. I found only the tip of it in the wreckage, kept it with me... ” Her eyes were searching as she held the steel further out in offering - not like Ashe had anything that would actually be worth anything to the divine.  ”Is there anything you can do?” the wolf girl asked, taking a step towards Safrin. ”Is there anything you can do to help us get into that spire, some trick, some key? Anything?”



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#8
Safrin

"Ascended." Safrin corrected with a small nod.

Watching solemnly as Ashe rose, Safrin chewed the inside of her lip in a manner that made her seem all too mortal and human. And in her grief, truly she was. Safrin herself could not remember the last time she'd clung to a life so possessively as she had done with Ronin. Already she'd cheated Ludo the soul of Aoife just to keep the guildmaster happy. It wasn't proper, she knew...but then again nor was giving this human girl the idea that Mort could bring Ronin back.

And yet she'd done both.

"Yes. Mort." Safrin confirmed with a gentle nod.

Listening as Ashe described how the blade had come to be broken, what it had done for her, Safrin watched as the wolf-girl held it out. With a sigh that had the power to birth galaxies, Safrin reached her fingers out to gently curl Ashe's open hand closed. Not tightly enough to cut the skin on the dull steel of course. "I cannot be a part of this." The goddess said reluctantly. "The Spire...I have done what I can. If you truly want to leave, the Voice...she will help...but it must be her own that open it. It will not yield to anyone else." Safrin said carefully. "I know not what is within, save for the Voice. Whether there are traps I can only guess at. Ludo seems to think the way out is at the top...but there is also a basement. "
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#9
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    She refused to shrink back as Safrin approached, no matter how much instinct demanded the wolf shy away from the powerful being. The goddess was gentle in both her touch and words however, and Ashe drew her brows together as she looked down to her closed hand. Wordlessly, she drew her hand back with the tip of the blade in her grasp, listening without looking up.

    Ashe nodded and thought in silence for a moment, her chest feeling tight. Hope. She had hope. She hung onto that tiny, bright thread in the depths of her grief, and she turned eyes that smoldered with the beginnings of a fire up to Safrin.

    "The ascended then," she said, her voice perhaps a bit steadier now. "They want out too, and they can enter." She bit the inside of her lip, thinking of Roana's intentions the next day, the conversation they'd had... fuck playing nice then, and fuck the Natural's sensitive feelings. Ashe was no hero, and this had gotten deeply personal. And there were people in her fucking way. "I'll get him back. Once that barrier comes down, I'll get him back. Will you help me? Will I need Vi as well?" She knew who she was going to next: Ludo. Ludo was the closest step forward to prepare... but for the dead to be returned to life? She would be unsurprised if the gods of each were needed for such a feat.



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#10
Safrin

"The ascended do not know what they want." Safrin said almost bitterly, though perhaps regretfully was a better word for it.

However the wolf girl's request seemed to catch Safrin off-guard. Of all the deities, it would not be a stretch to say that perhaps Safrin was the most kind, or at least the most willing to listen. She must have heard a thousand pleas over the centuries, and yet something about this stunned her for a heartbeat. "Vi..." She hummed thoughtfully, spectral gaze flickering upwards as she thought, her eyes roaming without seeing.

"It is not a thing which is done, bringing them back..." The goddess began, her voice low as if this was a secret and there was someone who might overhear. "Mort is kind. He loves them all dearly, but he knows when a life is complete. He doesn't barter. There is precedent but even I cannot tell you the way into his favour. But yes, if the time comes, I will help you." In Safrin's hand was suddenly a pendant. It was a black circle with flecks of colour in it. At the centre though, was almost a hieroglyphic sort of eye. "You come to me in a time of need, not a time of fealty. I do not expect you to wear this—" Though something in the goddess' gaze said she would indeed be pleased if it was worn, "—but when the time comes, I will be with you."
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#11
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Her heart had begun to pick up its pace, looking up at Safrin with round eyes. He loves them all dearly.. The souls he kept? She tried to make herself take a deep breath and process what she implied: that there truly was a way. And she would help Ashe.

    Breath slipped through her lips with a shallow huff, a feeling of weightlessness settling in her limbs. She had expected the goddess to refuse, say something about rules and balance... But she would help. Instinct honed in being raised with cruelty and hate snarled at her for even hoping she could trust this higher power, that she would ever put her faith in someone who could crush her without hardly a thought. Ashe clenched her jaw in spite of it, raising her chin to better look Safrin in the eye as she given a gift.

    The pendant was exactly that: a gift. Safrin asked nothing in return, had refused Ashe's offering, didn't even expect her to wear it. She held it in her palm, blinking down at it with a wary sort of wonder, her gaze drawn to that eye. Everything came with a price, she learned that hard lesson over and over... but she asked for nothing.

   Ashe closed her hand around the eye that stared up at her, looking up at Safrin once more. She was at a loss for words at first, unsure how to express her wary gratitude. She knew she was asking.. a lot from a goddess.. The wolf girl had expected push back, even anger or contempt. Not this gentle look in Safrin's eyes, or the promise to help. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat, nodding.

   "Thank you," she said. She pressed her lips together with a creased brow, unexpected emotion welling. "There were no gods where I'm from. Either there never were or they died a long time ago. I don't..." She paused and sighed, glancing at the pendant and running her thumb over its eye - just like Ronin's. With that, Ashe slipped the pendant on over her head, its weight new and warmer than she expected.

   She looked up again, meeting Safrin's stunning gaze. "I don't trust easily. But Ronin had faith in you, and I trust him."


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#12
Safrin

Silently Safrin allowed Ashe to process and ponder. Her thoughts were littered on the ground and it would have been easy for the deity to pluck at them in the wolf-girl's mind and know what it was she wrestled with. But there was something beautiful in letting the mortals work things out for themselves, and in that Safrin gently rode out the silence.

"Trust too is a gift. I understand." She said, though her smile was one of delight as she watched Ashe place the pendant over her. Again the goddess resisted the urge to simply wipe away the girl's grief. She could do it easily, but it would be a theft of the highest order. Her pain was an echo of her friend's life, and Safrin would not rob her of that.

"Do know that .... should his soul stay where it is, that Mort will love him dearly. That he and Vanya will be together, watching." So saying, still Safrin appeared hesitant. Hopeful. Mort's presence was wonderful yes, but her greed and want of the former captain was strong. Strong enough to wish him to endure more life and pain as a mortal pain, than euphoria in the hands of Mort.
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#13
ASHƎ
i did my best to control

the growing unrest
in my soul.


    Ronin was with Vanya... briefly Ashe paused in her thoughts with the sudden constriction around that little hope. He had loved that Hali woman so passionately, so wholly - would he want to leave her? But she thought of Aoife, of Remi, and she let out a long breath. Did she have the right to make this decision for him?

    She wasn't going to find those answers, at least not right now. She tucked the questions away and nodded to Safrin. "I know I've asked a lot, I understand that it is not supposed be done, but I just... He shouldn't have have died, he deserves so much more life." Ashe's brows drew together, her eyes not leaving the goddess. She didn't know how to understand a being like her. She didn't know that a god could mourn, could feel the wary hope the assassin thought she heard in Safrin's voice. When she thought of gods, she thought of arrogant, immortal creatures that played with mortals like disposable toys. Her fiery blues held that of galaxies and stars, and there was a new kind of realization in the wolf girl: Maybe the gods have souls too, souls that felt love and hurt and grief.

    Ashe offered Safrin a smile.  It was soft, weighed down with the harrowing of grief and exhaustion, but it did reach her eyes. "I will do whatever I have to do to bring Ronin back us." The words were an oath, her voice steady and hopeful. She would see her brother again.


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#14
Safrin

Gently Safrin shakes her head. "You may always ask. As you have seen there are things that even I cannot answer, but I will never fault you for your questions."

Nodding gently, the goddess sighs softly. "For now, rest." She urges. Starshine glimmers softly around Ashetta, and though Safrin does not touch her wounded heart, she does heal her body and revitalizes her muscles and mind.

"Go now and prepare. For what? Even I cannot say. But with the creature before the Spire gone, it is only a matter of time before things are brought to a head. Be strong Ashe, and know that I am with you."

With a glimmering, the goddess is gone. However the stone against Ashe's neck feels comfortably warm somehow, and possesses a weight that is strangely comforting.


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