It's been a day or two since Athessa did what whe said she didn't want to do (again) and ran away from Derrica and her feelings. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that she ran headlong into those feelings, considering the unfortunate breakdown she had while huddled and clutching a pillow on Loxley's bed, but whether away or into, she still ran.
But she isn't running now. Athessa's come to a decision, and it might still ache but she'd rather see Derrica happy and unburdened than avoidant and tentative. So she approaches at some easy hour when neither of them have pressing business to attend (or nothing they can't do together) and sits across from her friend.
"Hey," is the very eloquent greeting, offered with an apologetic smile. "I realized that... I keep running away from you, which I don't wanna do, cos it seems like that'll just put us back in avoiding each other territory. So. What should we do different? To be good friends."
In the courtyard, Derrica has found an unoccupied bench to claim. There are several sheets of paper in front of her, where she's practiced a set of symbols across, ink strokes growing increasingly steady with time. At Athessa's appearance, Derrica straightens slightly, apprehension giving way to a slight smile that furrows into a small frown as Athessa speaks.
Instead of answering, she sweeps her papers into a neat pile and gestures at the bench beside her.
"Will you sit with me?"
Derrica hadn't wanted this conversation, and she isn't entirely sure how to approach it. Now that Athessa's asked, Derrica finds herself unsure of what it looks like to be friends after everything else. It's something to piece together between them, if they can manage it. Derrica certainly hasn't tried her hand at this before.
Neither of them had wanted this conversation. There were moments that stretched into minutes into a half-hour in which Athessa nearly pivoted back into hopelessness simply because it would've been easier than trying to wield language she's never used.
"'Course," she agrees, heart hammering with too many keyed up emotions to pin down. Fear, anxiety, misplaced adrenaline. It'll resolve itself into her heel drumming against the flagstones once she sits, angled to face her friend (her love) with one leg folded up to rest on the bench in front of her. Who sits on a bench properly? Not Athessa.
"B-before you say anything—" The words come tumbling out before she can stop them. "—I didn't mean sex. In my note. In-in case you thought that. I just meant that I'm—That you are my friend and I'm here for you as your friend, to s-support you, whatever that looks like. And. And also I wanna say—" This shouldn't be so difficult. It certainly shouldn't take so much breath from her lungs to say these things, but it feels like she's run a mile for the chance.
"—I wanna let you know that I have no idea how this works. It's new to me, and I've said before that...I never stayed put long enough to adjust to something like this, because I've always run away, and I don't want to run away from you, but because of that I...I don't know how to talk about h-how I feel. But also. Also because of that, I don't have any expectations."
Phew. Or maybe not phew, but something like it. Athessa lets out a breathless laugh. "Is there less air out here today? Or is it just me?"
Derrica wants to take Athessa's face into her hands, wants to do something to stem the nervous energy radiating off her. It's almost helpful, really. Athessa's anxiety is so obvious and pronounced that Derrica can do nothing but be calm in the face of it, trying to steady them both.
She takes Athessa's hand in her own instead. All the traces of frostbite and burns are long gone by now.
"Just, take a breath," Derrica says gently. "It's alright."
Maybe Derrica should have gone after her, rather than let her run from their last conversation. She never knows whether or not to press, how much pressure is helpful and how much is damaging.
"I think it works however we want it to work between us now. I just..." Derrica trails off, then steels herself, presses on. "I don't want to take from you when I may never be able to give back to you in kind. If being close to me like we were before, and the way we were on the road, is going to be hurting you later, I can't be alright with that."
The grip on Athessa's hand is maybe an attempt to keep hold of her in case she gets up again. Derrica doesn't want this conversation to end so abruptly.
She does try to get a few good, deep breaths in, self-conscious of her nerves and the drumming of her heart that makes it feel like there's an earthquake in her chest. The absence of burns and frostbite isn't lost on her attention, which hovers over their hands. It's alright.
"Even if..." The thought makes her wince. She needs to know, but she doesn't want to sound desperate, even if she very well may be. "Even if I give it freely?"
Whatever it is. The presence of this feeling, its persistence, surely must be testament to her ability to love without being loved in return.
There's the trouble. What is Derrica if she accepts all the sweetness Athessa offers, knowing what she knows? Is it not some kind of harm being done to her?
"You were so sad," Derrica says softly. "Nothing is worth you being sad, Athessa."
"I was selfish," she corrects, gently. "To decide what was right for us before even speaking to you about it. And I was scared, because I didn't want..."
She takes another breath, and for that span of a moment searches for the right words. "I thought I didn't want to be hurt but I think now what scares me more is the thought of losing you."
Though that begs the question, can she lose something she never had?
"What I said about being unhappy...I don't know. There's a lot influencing that and I'm trying to be better, but I don't want you to think that I was sad because I was with you, because those moments are some of the happiest I've ever been."
Each word falls like a stone, weighing on Derrica's shoulders. None of this is Athessa's fault. It should be no different than Matthias' affection or Laura's friendship. They would grieve if she were gone as well. Maybe it's even foolish to think she would fade in their minds without incident the way she'd hoped to fade from Athessa's.
Maybe it's foolish to think she'll ever run, except for the fact that she might. Ilias and Flint and Julius have all made their estimations about what happens if she goes to Val Royeux, but some sneaking fear warns that she might have to vanish.
She turns Athessa's palm up in her grasp, passes her fingers across the lines there. The Mothers would have been able to read what's written in the pattern here, but it's all murky to Derrica. No help.
"You're not losing me," Derrica says, marking off the simplest thing first. "None of this means you will lose me."
But it still begs the question—
"But I don't know what's right for us now. As much as I...as good as it is to be close to you, I worry it means something different for you than it will to me. And that will make you sad, no matter what you mean to feel."
Then, quieter, firmly: "It's not selfish to feel how you feel, Athessa. I don't think that of you."
It's hard not to think back to that winter cabin, with the frigid snowfall outside while they shed their sodden boots and coats and warmed themselves and each other by the fire. We could get passage somewhere lovely.
Athessa could still think of plenty worse things than running away with Derrica. And she'll always feel far more and far more deeply than she ever means to.
"I think you're kind," Derrica says, fingers lingering over Athessa's lifeline. "And you're generous and you're sweet, even to people who may not deserve it."
Her thoughts stray briefly to what Leander had told her, what Athessa had done on behalf of a man who had endangered them all. But that isn't something to dredge up now, in this moment.
"You're good, Athessa. I have always known that about you."
"You deserve the best things in this life," Athessa says, fetching up Derrica's hands in her own. Even if Derrica didn't mean herself, it bears insisting. And repeating, if ever she needed a reminder, because Athessa believes it with every fragmented piece of her heart. What's a little sadness if she can see Derrica happy? She could be happy for her, and maybe that'd be enough.
"Derrica, I—" Don't. Athessa stops herself from seeing that thought through, looking down at their hands, at the tattoos on Derrica's arms where she can see them. She'd like to trace those lines again, with her fingers or her lips. The one at the nape of her neck, too. Her back. The way she did before. But instead, she brushes her thumb over Derrica's knuckles and takes a deep breath.
"What would make you happy?" It's close enough to asking how to be a better friend. Athessa smiles, covering her feelings with it like a sheet over unused furniture.
The depth of those words is slightly overwhelming. Derrica would shift it away, redirect it. She looks down at their hands, waits a long, considering moment before speaking again.
"Athessa, I am happy," she promises, though she knows part of that question was what Athessa could do to make her happy and Derrica can't bear up under the responsibility of that. "I am here, I have met you, I have found someone I thought was lost to me forever. And we are doing something to make a difference and end a war. It is all enough for me, for now."
What comes afterwards will be it's own chapter, something to navigate once it finally comes to pass.
"The only thing you can do to make me happy is to be less sad," she finishes, squeezing their hands. That is not so simple. But Athessa's misery has it's own hold on her awareness. The question should really be the other way around, if Derrica didn't already know her own failings on that front.
Athessa lets out a breath. The idea of being happy feels out of reach right now, with Churneau so close and Derrica so far away despite their hands grasping each other's.
"I wish I could promise that for you," she says, and thinks back to her training session with Bastien, when he'd asked her if she was alright and her answer was more honest than either of them expected.
"All I can promise is that I'll try. And I am trying, but I... I dunno. It's like when you fall through ice into cold water and you forget how to breathe for a second, ya know? And then you can't get out of the water because there's nothing to hang onto and your limbs don't work right," she makes a face, because this analogy is getting away from her. What is she trying to say? "I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I don't understand myself most days, and it's not something I expect you to fix. But I'm working on it. Feeling so much all the time is just...overwhelming."
Maybe she wasn't meant to be just one person. Maybe she was meant to be something else and it didn't happen, leaving her with too many emotions to be contained in one slender frame.
Some of this is bigger than Derrica, bigger than what they have been to each other or could be to each other. Athessa unspooling this reminds Derrica of being in the infirmary, and someone uncovering a wound.
"Trying is enough."
Especially in this, in trying to repair all the hurts she's carrying. Derrica doesn't have any spells that can do such a thing. She squeezes Athessa's hands gently in her own, watching her face closely.
"And it's not just me helping you out of the water. I know there are so many people who love you," Derrica presses. "You can lean on us, when it's too much."
An offer shaded with the same tone of Athessa's letter, an offer to be present when things are too difficult. Maybe it would be easier for Athessa to accept than it had been for Derrica.
It isn't easier. Not now, when she's felt like a burden to so many, a disappointment to others, selfish and cowardly to herself.
There are so many people who love you. It's all she can do to keep from flinching at that, at her own immediate thought of: but not you. It's unfair, thinking like that, making so little of the love her friends give her, and making so much of what she can't have.
"It's hard. Accepting help," she admits, her grip on Derrica's hands loosening, but not retreating. Instead, she mirrors the way Derrica had traced the lines on her palm before, aimlessly and with less scrutiny. Athessa doesn't know how to read palms at all. What she sees instead is the signs of a life lived; calluses built up from wielding a staff or manning the rigging on a ship. How their hands fit together, which of them has longer fingers, whose hands are colder or warmer. Where she once kissed her wrist when Derrica pressed that palm to Athessa's cheek.
Why did she have to ruin everything by falling in love?
"Back at the bar, you said it felt like we were afraid to know each other." It should be the preamble to asking if that's still true, but she's stuck on how to phrase it. Are you afraid to know me isn't what she wants to ask. Are you afraid of letting me know you sounds too accusatory. Are you afraid to be known?
Surely Derrica can guess what the question is, and choose her own wording of it.
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But she isn't running now. Athessa's come to a decision, and it might still ache but she'd rather see Derrica happy and unburdened than avoidant and tentative. So she approaches at some easy hour when neither of them have pressing business to attend (or nothing they can't do together) and sits across from her friend.
"Hey," is the very eloquent greeting, offered with an apologetic smile. "I realized that... I keep running away from you, which I don't wanna do, cos it seems like that'll just put us back in avoiding each other territory. So. What should we do different? To be good friends."
help help
Instead of answering, she sweeps her papers into a neat pile and gestures at the bench beside her.
"Will you sit with me?"
Derrica hadn't wanted this conversation, and she isn't entirely sure how to approach it. Now that Athessa's asked, Derrica finds herself unsure of what it looks like to be friends after everything else. It's something to piece together between them, if they can manage it. Derrica certainly hasn't tried her hand at this before.
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"'Course," she agrees, heart hammering with too many keyed up emotions to pin down. Fear, anxiety, misplaced adrenaline. It'll resolve itself into her heel drumming against the flagstones once she sits, angled to face her friend (her love) with one leg folded up to rest on the bench in front of her. Who sits on a bench properly? Not Athessa.
"B-before you say anything—" The words come tumbling out before she can stop them. "—I didn't mean sex. In my note. In-in case you thought that. I just meant that I'm—That you are my friend and I'm here for you as your friend, to s-support you, whatever that looks like. And. And also I wanna say—" This shouldn't be so difficult. It certainly shouldn't take so much breath from her lungs to say these things, but it feels like she's run a mile for the chance.
"—I wanna let you know that I have no idea how this works. It's new to me, and I've said before that...I never stayed put long enough to adjust to something like this, because I've always run away, and I don't want to run away from you, but because of that I...I don't know how to talk about h-how I feel. But also. Also because of that, I don't have any expectations."
Phew. Or maybe not phew, but something like it. Athessa lets out a breathless laugh. "Is there less air out here today? Or is it just me?"
no subject
She takes Athessa's hand in her own instead. All the traces of frostbite and burns are long gone by now.
"Just, take a breath," Derrica says gently. "It's alright."
Maybe Derrica should have gone after her, rather than let her run from their last conversation. She never knows whether or not to press, how much pressure is helpful and how much is damaging.
"I think it works however we want it to work between us now. I just..." Derrica trails off, then steels herself, presses on. "I don't want to take from you when I may never be able to give back to you in kind. If being close to me like we were before, and the way we were on the road, is going to be hurting you later, I can't be alright with that."
The grip on Athessa's hand is maybe an attempt to keep hold of her in case she gets up again. Derrica doesn't want this conversation to end so abruptly.
no subject
"Even if..." The thought makes her wince. She needs to know, but she doesn't want to sound desperate, even if she very well may be. "Even if I give it freely?"
Whatever it is. The presence of this feeling, its persistence, surely must be testament to her ability to love without being loved in return.
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"You were so sad," Derrica says softly. "Nothing is worth you being sad, Athessa."
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She takes another breath, and for that span of a moment searches for the right words. "I thought I didn't want to be hurt but I think now what scares me more is the thought of losing you."
Though that begs the question, can she lose something she never had?
"What I said about being unhappy...I don't know. There's a lot influencing that and I'm trying to be better, but I don't want you to think that I was sad because I was with you, because those moments are some of the happiest I've ever been."
no subject
Maybe it's foolish to think she'll ever run, except for the fact that she might. Ilias and Flint and Julius have all made their estimations about what happens if she goes to Val Royeux, but some sneaking fear warns that she might have to vanish.
She turns Athessa's palm up in her grasp, passes her fingers across the lines there. The Mothers would have been able to read what's written in the pattern here, but it's all murky to Derrica. No help.
"You're not losing me," Derrica says, marking off the simplest thing first. "None of this means you will lose me."
But it still begs the question—
"But I don't know what's right for us now. As much as I...as good as it is to be close to you, I worry it means something different for you than it will to me. And that will make you sad, no matter what you mean to feel."
Then, quieter, firmly: "It's not selfish to feel how you feel, Athessa. I don't think that of you."
no subject
Athessa could still think of plenty worse things than running away with Derrica. And she'll always feel far more and far more deeply than she ever means to.
"What do you think of me?"
no subject
Her thoughts stray briefly to what Leander had told her, what Athessa had done on behalf of a man who had endangered them all. But that isn't something to dredge up now, in this moment.
"You're good, Athessa. I have always known that about you."
no subject
"Derrica, I—" Don't. Athessa stops herself from seeing that thought through, looking down at their hands, at the tattoos on Derrica's arms where she can see them. She'd like to trace those lines again, with her fingers or her lips. The one at the nape of her neck, too. Her back. The way she did before. But instead, she brushes her thumb over Derrica's knuckles and takes a deep breath.
"What would make you happy?" It's close enough to asking how to be a better friend. Athessa smiles, covering her feelings with it like a sheet over unused furniture.
no subject
"Athessa, I am happy," she promises, though she knows part of that question was what Athessa could do to make her happy and Derrica can't bear up under the responsibility of that. "I am here, I have met you, I have found someone I thought was lost to me forever. And we are doing something to make a difference and end a war. It is all enough for me, for now."
What comes afterwards will be it's own chapter, something to navigate once it finally comes to pass.
"The only thing you can do to make me happy is to be less sad," she finishes, squeezing their hands. That is not so simple. But Athessa's misery has it's own hold on her awareness. The question should really be the other way around, if Derrica didn't already know her own failings on that front.
no subject
"I wish I could promise that for you," she says, and thinks back to her training session with Bastien, when he'd asked her if she was alright and her answer was more honest than either of them expected.
"All I can promise is that I'll try. And I am trying, but I... I dunno. It's like when you fall through ice into cold water and you forget how to breathe for a second, ya know? And then you can't get out of the water because there's nothing to hang onto and your limbs don't work right," she makes a face, because this analogy is getting away from her. What is she trying to say? "I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I don't understand myself most days, and it's not something I expect you to fix. But I'm working on it. Feeling so much all the time is just...overwhelming."
Maybe she wasn't meant to be just one person. Maybe she was meant to be something else and it didn't happen, leaving her with too many emotions to be contained in one slender frame.
no subject
"Trying is enough."
Especially in this, in trying to repair all the hurts she's carrying. Derrica doesn't have any spells that can do such a thing. She squeezes Athessa's hands gently in her own, watching her face closely.
"And it's not just me helping you out of the water. I know there are so many people who love you," Derrica presses. "You can lean on us, when it's too much."
An offer shaded with the same tone of Athessa's letter, an offer to be present when things are too difficult. Maybe it would be easier for Athessa to accept than it had been for Derrica.
no subject
There are so many people who love you. It's all she can do to keep from flinching at that, at her own immediate thought of: but not you. It's unfair, thinking like that, making so little of the love her friends give her, and making so much of what she can't have.
"It's hard. Accepting help," she admits, her grip on Derrica's hands loosening, but not retreating. Instead, she mirrors the way Derrica had traced the lines on her palm before, aimlessly and with less scrutiny. Athessa doesn't know how to read palms at all. What she sees instead is the signs of a life lived; calluses built up from wielding a staff or manning the rigging on a ship. How their hands fit together, which of them has longer fingers, whose hands are colder or warmer. Where she once kissed her wrist when Derrica pressed that palm to Athessa's cheek.
Why did she have to ruin everything by falling in love?
"Back at the bar, you said it felt like we were afraid to know each other." It should be the preamble to asking if that's still true, but she's stuck on how to phrase it. Are you afraid to know me isn't what she wants to ask. Are you afraid of letting me know you sounds too accusatory. Are you afraid to be known?
Surely Derrica can guess what the question is, and choose her own wording of it.