she balls her hands into fists, here, angry. tired.ย how this journey has toiled at them both,ย broken them until they were nothing but echoes of the people they were when she pulled him out of that portal.ย look,ย look and see how it sits on once maidenlike features-- the circles around hazy pink eyes have grown dark and tired, deep and puffy (as if in a constant state of tears; suffering is holy, in a way). her cheeks are gaunt, the weight she's lost on this journey indicative of a lack of love, a lack of joy.ย he has tried to combat that,ย with his cooking, but the excess use of her magics has beaten him ten to one.
she looks at him, and she's not sure when she started crying so very long ago, but here she was -ย here she had been.ย sometimes, gale dekarios looks at her like she has not changed, like she is still the woman she was before mystraย broke her.ย before mystraย punished herย for taking her champion away. the pink rose was once kept in a glass case, beautiful and pretty, for anyone who wanted to look at her, and now she is trapped behind a wall of thorns, twisting and deadly and violent.ย DON'T TOUCH ME,ย they say, as if protecting what is left of her maidenhood, as ifย fighting nowย to discern what was and what was not acceptable.
@inkyembers says ,ย โ ย don't give up on me now.ย โ
he looks at her as though she is the maiden she once was, because he liked her then, and he loves her now. she falls forward, into his arms, and he catches her without complaint.ย he always will catch her,ย even when she is far too heavy for him to hold up. her arms wrap around him, blunt nails digging into the white of his shirt, into the depth of the orb.ย if she digs a little deeper,ย she can rip that wretched thing out of him andย save him,ย save them,ย save herself.ย her worth is intrinsically tied to him, and his view of her, and she knows that is a horrible thing to do to him, and she isย tryingย to fix it.ย she is trying to be a good girl.
" i'm so tired, " she says, and of course she is - she has been appointed to be the leader of this group of weirdos without her permission, without her consent, and she is not a leader.ย she is a healer,ย a damn good one, one whose study can concoct potions and poisons and elixirs and tinctures and grenades and everything in-between. with her own weave weakened, the spells that come from her hands are weaker, and she has needed protection outside of her combinations, her brow furrowed, her face screwed up into frustration as karlach and lae'zel close ranks around her. " i'm soย bloody tired,ย gale. "
his hand is warm on her back, his cheek gentle against the top of her head.ย she can't give up.ย no, cerys aldurain is not a quitter -- she has never stopped at anything before, and she cannot stop now, not while the threat of the elder brain looms over the horizon.ย she will destroy that damned thing,ย with alchemist's fire and poison and keeping the others alive.ย and when the time comes,ย she will do what it takes to rip it out of the sky and plummet it into the ground, just as she did the illithid ship.ย the mindflayers will pay for what they have done to her. what they have turned her into.
the silence is deafening, so she fills it. like a chest cavity with no heart. " when all of this is over, " she sniffles, " i want to go to waterdeep. and i want to hide in your tower like you showed me the first night we laid together. and i want, so desperately, for a big, long, nap. with you, a-and with tara. "
