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[ He starts reaching for her again, but it's... not a controlled collapse over, exactly, but one where the worst that'll happen to her is a bruised ass and an equally bruised ego, and that's very much not his problem.

He hops down to sit on the parapet so he's not entirely towering over her, his elbows resting on his knees. ]

Yeah, well, don't jump off a fucking building if you don't know how to dive... or fly. Dummy.

[ Yet there's little rancor in the words. He's not really in a mood to yell. At least not yet. He is, however, annoyed at how much manna he burned on that, since what reserve he's got left is probably not enough for the flying he wanted to do, not unless he goes and finds Aerith to hold hands with for a couple hours first.

Though she'll probably find this pretty funny, all things told. Maybe he'll share the story.

...except then she'll probably want to meet Summer. And then they'll become friends, because Aerith makes friends with everyone. For a moment, that also almost sounds like a good idea, because there's nothing funnier than watching Aerith... Aerith at someone who isn't prepared. Except then maybe they really would be friends and... no, BAD because then Summer would know where to find him and make his life hell and start plotting with Aerith and...

He brushes his hands together, trying to clear away that horrifying train of thought. ]

You hurt?

Edited 2022-06-07 20:51 (UTC)

[It takes her about three seconds to decide that no, she does not feel like expending the energy to keep herself upright, thank you very much, and so Summer quickly goes from sitting to sprawled on her back in short order, expending only the willpower strictly necessary to get her staff out of the way before flopping. It's...a strange feeling, she decides, trying to place the sensation buzzing through her body; it's a little bit like feeling faint from hunger and a little bit like aether disruption, and sort of the opposite of holding too much light inside her. That had left her feeling like her body was a cage barely strong enough to keep something horrible in; this feels like she's been hollowed out, scooped empty of something she desperately needs.

It isn't until she hears the sound of her staff clattering clumsily to the rooftop that she realizes her hands are shaking, and her fingers too fumbling to keep their grip.]

Not...hurt, I don't think...

[Just. Just not right. Emptied out. G'raha had mentioned she might not have enough manna yet to sustain her spells. It didn't feel like she'd used too much, but then, she's not exactly used to having limited supplies of potential to draw on, either.]

Just not...

[It doesn't feel right.]

Just tired.

[ He has a very educated guess as to what's going on, and he hates it. Mostly because he spends most of his time at the edge of muscle-shaking manna hunger unless he's been spending the day with Aerith--or engaged in the occasional hookup.

After this escapade, he's feeling rather drained himself, but hells no doesn't even begin to cover it. This woman is already a nightmare. Encouraging her in any way would be idiotic. ]

Probably need manna. You got a friend you can call?

[Oh, seven hells. Yes, yes, she does have a friend she can call. And if she does, then she'll have to explain why she needs manna, and what she did to be out of it in the first place, and she'll never hear the end of it.]

Aye.

[She closes her eyes, hair fanned out beneath her, focusing on breathing like drawing air into her lungs will somehow fix the problem.]

But I. I don't want him to see me like this. So. No.

Well, you'll not feel better unless you give your buddy a call and either fuck him or hold his hand and think nice thoughts, so that's your choice.

[ He shrugs, letting his hands hang loose now. He's ignoring the small tremor in his fingers. He's felt a lot worse. ]

The way this place works is stupid, but it is what it is.

What's the problem with him, anyway?

You're closer. I wouldn't have to move as far.

[FUCK HER YOURSELF YOU COWARD, she implies, as she keeps focusing on breathing and slowly tries to figure out how to convince Ultros to blurble over here and get her communicator out for her without her having to move.]

He'd worry. I was ill recently...well. My recently. Mayhap not his.

[Fortunately, that sounds like the kind of inane babbling that someone might say if they were very exhausted and unfocused, and so hopefully it will just slide past rather than leading to a great big conversation about timelines.]

I don't want to make him worry. S'all.

I'm not gonna fuck you. I'm gay, and it ain't my duty. [ And added as an afterthought, because it's not as if this has actually ever stopped him from fucking anyone, but she doesn't know that. ] And I don't like you.

[ Her excuse is a pretty sad one, in his opinion. ]

He'll worry a lot more if you turn into a fucking rock.

[ Pause, considering. ]

Though it'd sure keep you from jumping off a building like a gods-damn amateur again.

Edited 2022-06-07 23:21 (UTC)

I would set you on fire if I had any feeling in my arms.

[Is that mutual agreement to his remark about not liking her? A retort to being termed an amateur at something she is in fact highly versed in, when there isn't bizarre gemstone magic involved? Who can say, she's sleepy.

A note of tension, however, does enter her tone at that middle part, and after a second she murmurs with more audible concern: ]

Is that what happens? You...turn into stone?

Too fucking bad you've no manna to do it, aye? [ Somehow, the tone is more like teasing than cruelly-meant mockery. ]

That's what all the manuals and shit say. [ He shrugs. ] Haven't done it myself.

You're better off taking the loss and letting your mate yell at you.

Oh. Oh, no. No, no, nonono.

[All right. Okay. She's tired, aye, and Thancred isn't here to nag her about it, and Y'shtola isn't here to nag her about it, and Alisaie isn't here to nag her about it, and — right, just. No one, no one is here to nag her about it, and that means she is free to pretend like she's fine and fake it until she makes it long enough to get back home.

She's done worse. She's stood up when primordial light was tearing her soul apart. She's not even retching, she's felt worse, so she can manage.

It's preferable, anyway, to have something like pain and exhaustion to focus on, instead of the alternative. Instead of letting her thoughts drift to what it looks like when people turn entirely to stone.]

I'm going home.

[And she grits her teeth, making herself roll over though it looks like it pains her to do it, and starts to force herself up onto her hands and knees.]

I'll manage. I've felt worse.

Thal's balls, woman. [ The exasperation he fits into those three words. This is not a level of stubborn stupidity he's willing to accept from anyone but himself. ]

There someone at your home that's gonna help you?

[ Because going home doesn't even make sense otherwise--and then why not call them? He pushes himself off the parapet to grab her arm. If she's going to insist on standing, he's not quite enough of an asshole to want to watch her fall on her face. Even if she is an idiot.

Though why she's being like this when she's admitted to having a mate is really beyond him. Unless... his eyes narrow, voice dropping to a growl. ]

Does your mate beat you or something?

[ Doesn't have to like Summer or not to be unwilling to put up with some male doing that. ]

Oh, I thought you didn't want anything to do with me. Now that's all any of your business?

[She makes a vague motion with her arm like she's either trying to elbow him or pull her sleeve away, but either way, it's barely an effort. She's busy conserving what little energy she has, and besides, every moment he inadvertently supports her is one less moment she has to do it herself. It's only practical.]

Either you care or you don't. Not just when it suits you.

[She tugs again.]

And you've decided you don't, so leave me alone.

[ This is definitely feeding into his theory that her mate is someone he might need to slam against a wall a few times, in an unfriendly way. He bares his teeth. ]

You're my responsibility 'til you're safe or well.

[ He's an asshole, he's terrible at this, but he's not a monster. He's not going to abandon anyone who's in this bad of a way.

His grip tightens slightly; he'll not be shaken off. There's nothing inadvertent about him supporting her. He's very much doing it on purpose. ]

Call your friend, and I'll trouble you no more.

Am I. That sounds an awful lot like a duty to me.

[But she's not tugging on her arm anymore. And she doesn't really like him any more than he seems to like her, frankly, and maybe this is a terrible idea, but it's — convenient. It's the most efficient solution to the problem at hand, however stupid it might be. And it's one that might mean she doesn't have to lose herself in thoughts of people turning to stone anymore, that might mean when she inevitably tells G'raha about this, it's something to laugh about rather than to feel guilty over.]

You could just help me. Tolerate it until I can get by again.

[She lets out a slow, ragged breath.]

It's the fastest way to be rid of me, if you won't let me go as I am.

Aye, as I'm an annoyance and... hah, a convenience for your use. [ There's a hint of bitterness that creeps into his tone. Though really, this is of his own making. He's still more comfortable as a leaning post than as an actual person.

He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing out a frustrated sigh. ]

You're not gonna like synchrony with me, and I don't like doin' it at all. You've better options, from this mate of yours to a fuckin' stranger on the street. Choose one of them.

Do you suppose I'd like it more or less than turning to stone? Do you know what it looks like? I do.

[Though mayhap he has a point, she considers at length. Synchrony with Raha had been...euphoric, in its fashion, and that had really only been the barest surface hint of what she assumes it could be. The joy he'd felt, seeing her again. The relief. The waves of it, how she'd felt them while all the while knowing they weren't really hers, and how that still didn't matter in the slightest.

Happiness. He'd been happy, and it'd worked. And maybe that means Ezar is right. How could something like that be good for them, if right now neither one of them is happy?]

...You liked falling. Before. From the building.

[He'd laughed, hadn't he...? And slowly, almost thoughtfully, she drags her arm out of his hold and turns her hand palm-up in offering.]

Show me how it felt.

[ He gives her a look that communicates eloquently, of course he knows what that looks like, he's been a soldier for ten years and he's seen a lot of shit.

Then she's offering her hand and... he wants to take it, a sudden hunger sharper than his need for manna. It was so much easier before this place, when he'd been alone with no recourse. Every time he has to refuse this step, it's more difficult, his will wearing away to nothing.

His expression shifts, not anger or annoyance or frustration, but sadness and... exhaustion. ]

Please don't do this.

[ With his defenses stripped away, he's nothing at all. ]

Edited 2022-06-08 02:05 (UTC)

You don't even have to do it for me.

[Her arm feels a little like it's going to fall off, if she has to continue keeping it suspended like this much longer, but if she lets it drop right now, she'll lose him and she knows it.]

Just think about how it felt. You don't have to think about me at all.

You don't get it.

[ But she's won. He hates himself for being so weak, and he hates her for making use of him when she could have just saved them both by calling her gods-damned mate, isn't that what mates are supposed to be for--

He takes her hand. And from him, the synchrony flares up like a wildfire, because it's never just the synchrony, it's that power he has that he only knows how to control by cutting it off entirely, and it roars.

There's nothing joyful in what he offers, nothing welcoming, because if she's cornered him into this, she gets what she gets. Him making it easy on her would have been helping her get to someone who wasn't him. It's isolation and guilt and crushing despair and the dragging weight of exhaustion, it's the frustration of needing to be alone and simultaneously hating his own loneliness, of wishing all of it would cease, that he could cease, that-- ]

When I fall.

[ And this, at least, he will give her, what she asked for. The precious seconds of nothingness, of no thoughts or feelings as the wind tears water from his eyes, the glory of having given himself wholly into the mercy of the firmament, the hope that he will never land. ]

I'm free.

Edited 2022-06-08 03:04 (UTC)

[He's right. She doesn't get it — and, as with so many things in her life, Summer flies too high and falls hard as a result.

She doesn't know what she'd expected. A flicker of joy, maybe, like a candle flame in the darkness. Something he clings to in the midst of whatever makes him so surly, something he hides away and keeps for himself like she's hidden the secret of her own name. She'd assumed, maybe, that falling for him was like falling is for her — the rush, the weightlessness, the laughter bubbling up as she climbs high, high, higher, the way she only really learns how far she was able to go by how far she falls once she's reached it.

But this is —

This is like finding herself plunged beneath Coerthas ice, down into the frigid deep, sucked under until her limbs go stiff from the chill and the weight of the water presses in around her, until she couldn't breathe even if she tried. This is drowning, and falling isn't salvation from it; it's just forgetting, escaping the reality of it only for as long as the falling lasts before the ground comes rushing up below.

His loneliness floods into her, finds her own, forces it to resonate — and it doesn't hurt because loneliness never hurts because there's nothing for it to strike against to begin with. It's empty and hollow and if anything it aches, the phantom pain of something that's supposed to be there but isn't.

And the worst part is that it's still Synchrony. It still works. She can't let go, can't pull away, because it still brings feeling back into her weary limbs, strength back into her wobbling knees. It means he's given her something twice now — protected her twice now, two different ways, and her balance sheet is coming up short by comparison.]

Until you land. And you always land.

[She ought to let go of him, to escape this herself, and stubbornly, she holds on instead.]

And you wish you wouldn't.

Too stubborn to die.

[ He shrugs, like it doesn't matter. And maybe it doesn't. The one time he should have died, he knows he died... he woke up here. He doesn't get to stop, not yet. He still owes the world too much.

He's surprised she hasn't let go, suspicious, but if she wants to drown a little longer, that's her decision. He's too tired to fight any more. And in a way, he's horribly, pathetically grateful that for one moment he isn't alone, even if this is just a pale mockery of the home he once had, this holding hands with a woman who is using him in her own way just as surely se he was used in the dark days that followed the calamity.

The secret of it is easy to divine, for anyone who can wade through the emotional flood. He doesn't hate other people, not really. He simply hates himself and projects it outward, so that he can maintain that isolation that is simultaneously refuge and punishment.

He hates this thing, and he hates that she's seeing him for what he is, but there's some part of him that's just as pathetically grateful that there was one person he could actually help, even a little. That there was someone he could almost care for in his broken and fumbling way. His failures are so broad that he counts his smallest successes like a dragon hoarding gold. ]

Next time, call your mate. If he worries at you, it's because he cares about you.

Let him care in his own way.

Oh. I should let him care about me?

[She almost laughs. Almost. Not because it's funny, or because she even really remembers what laughter feels like in the wake of Ezar's torrent of despair. But the very absurdity of the notion cuts a fine glittering line through the center of it like a well-placed swipe of a very sharp sword, like a thread of starry darkness through a sea of overpowering light.]

You have no idea. As though I could make him stop.

[She shifts her hand slightly, weaves their fingers together like a threat, and holds on — and wrests from Ezar, for just a fleeting span of moments, control over the flow of the Synchrony between them, emboldened by the singular sentiment that runs as deep inside her as his self-hatred runs inside him.

What she returns, then, through the connection forged between them, isn't words or images or even really an emotion. It's possessiveness, fierce as a wildfire, burning in counterpoint to the emptiness and isolation she's carried all her life, herself: the unparalleled elation of having found mine, mine, my thing, and the fangs she's bared when someone, anyone, anything, dared to take it away from her.

It's not that she has anything to prove. It changes nothing, showing this to him. But for a span of moments, it's her turn to flood the link between them, overpowering and overwhelming the ache of despair for as long as it rages and flows.

It's something different. It's unmistakably hers.

And maybe, just maybe, there's a measure of silence for him in that as well.]

Then why are you doing this to me?

[ He's bewildered, and even moreso with what she pushes back at him through the synchrony. If that's what she has, then why? Why grasp for something so prickly and deeply inadequate when she has something that's hers? That's good?

Yet it is still a relief, to feel something that isn't him, because that's all he ever really wants is to not be him. Anything but him.

It would be too easy to crawl into this like a shelter and hide there, never leaving. But he knows it isn't for him and it's only slight breath of fresh air that will soon be gone. Like the fall, it will end and he will once again be nothing but, unfortunately, Ezar. ]

I'm glad for you.

[ It is a true statement; he knows how to be happy for the fortune of others even from his own mire, and it is truly good for someone whose loneliness he can recognize to find what she has. Though he is certainly no saint, either. He may be glad for what she has for her sake, but there is a small and deeply unworthy part of him that sparks up jealousy, and far more that wishes, that longs--

It's too much, to be in such radiance. He closes his eyes, swallowing thickly. This makes him want things that he does not deserve to want. ]

And I'm sorry.

[ That he has nothing good in him to give, nothing joyful beyond the freedom of the dive, of the battle litany carrying him away to a place beyond thought where in its flow of syllables nothing hurts.

Told you that you'd be disappointed. ]

Edited (I am done editing it I promise) 2022-06-08 16:08 (UTC)

Because you think you know everything and you don't.

[It's strange the way the Synchrony between them has started to feel — not like a battle, not exactly, but like a clash of something elemental and fierce. The drowning depths of his self-loathing pitted against the wildfire burn of her contrariness. She's not clinging to his hand the way she'd clung to his shirt as they'd fallen; no, the way she's got him now is like a fetter.]

You're not sorry, and you're not glad for me. You don't care about me, except in the manner that suits you. You don't care that I fell; you care whether I did it around you. You don't care if I'm safe and hale. You care about what you did to keep me so or not.

[She shakes her head, eyes narrowed, and doesn't let go of his hand.]

So this is for you. Because I want to. Because I choose to.

[More and more she shoves at him, and isn't it just like Summer Icarian, to find a way to turn care and empathy into a threat.]

Thank you for catching me. I like the way it feels to fall, too.

You're right. I'm a piece of shit.

[ Each word is like a blow, and he welcomes every one. He's always been selfish; isn't that what ultimately killed his clan? That he was a selfish coward who ran instead of becoming what they needed him to be.

He says nothing to defend himself. In a way, it feels strangely good to be recognized for what he has always known himself to be, for once seen in a way that does not feel threatening because it does not challenge him in the slightest, does not see anything redeeming within him that would lead her to expect better.

So he bows his head and takes it as what he deserves. ]

I told you I'd disappoint you. I disappoint everyone.

[ But there is something in that flow of emotion that almost washes him away, which he also recognizes with a sweet pain: her desire to be seen and cared about for herself, not out of obligation or convenience, but because she is Summer and that alone makes her worthy of love.

And that is something she deserves, something he heard in echo during their first meeting, when he responded to her fear with his own clumsy attempt at reassurance. The reason that he held her the way he did when she started to fall, that he made his sad attempt at teasing her like he might have teased one of his sisters if they'd lived, and it's not enough because nothing he ever does can be enough, but it's all he has to offer.

In disjointed contrast to that bitter and well-earned torrent of words, he reaches with his other hand, fingers sliding into her hair, and draws her closer so he can rest his forehead against hers. ]

I still see you, Summer.

[ As raw as he is, drowning, it isn't a conscious offering that he makes; he's not trying to disagree with her, or prove her wrong, but merely give the pittance he has left. But beneath all of the self-loathing and grief and pain remains the part of himself that he hasn't managed to kill, even after a decade of trying. He cares, with a fire and fury like a newborn star, and he believes, and that is the engine that drives him, that he's defensively tried to armor with guilt and gruffness. He wouldn't be so destroyed by his perceived failures to others if he didn't care.

He cares about Summer, because she wouldn't let him brush her off, and she's stubborn and funny, and she gave him a dumb name, and she was strong enough to show a complete stranger that she was scared, and stupid enough to trust him when he said he'd help her. Because for just one moment, he almost felt like he could, and even now he wishes he was good enough to be someone she didn't despise, and he resents her for that as well, that she's made him want to try again when it's turned out so miserably. ]

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