๋࣭⭑ ALBATROSS

that doesn't change the fact that it hurts— that she feels like a failure as his guardian figure for being unable to assuage his worries no matter how she tries. she hopes, at least, that he thinks of them whenever he feels truly stuck. (later will she sit in the church with her eyes closed and her hands clasped in prayer, asking the gods that may willingly listen to her thoughts to be kind to him. )

" we should see what the healers and medics need... If magic isn't our strength.. I'd rather gather some supplies" She couldn't stand around like this— it stresses her out , and she was itching to get back to work now that she got all that energy out.

"Shame about it, really. Magic seems like a good thing to be proficient in." On the swordsman's side, anyway; every other blade, these days, drenched in spellcraft. He feels a little left out. Shannan peels some hair away from his face; such is the humidity, salt on his tongue. "Sounds good to me." Practical, at least, which is all anyone can ask for; a dash of pragmatism here and there.

He does not want her to leave. Not yet. But she has done this song and dance enough times now to know it is only a matter of time before the fragile peace shatters. She longs to ask him how he has been, to share with him the joys of her own life but she remains quiet as she goes and sits where she is told.

"I do not need tea. I am simply happy to share the room with you." Her hands fold uselessly in her lap. It does not feel right sitting here in his only open chair. "I could help if you wanted. I am not so injured that I cannot help unpack."

She should be caring for him. She should have never stopped caring for him. There is the thought to insist on disappearing to her own classroom to fetch her collection of tea leaves and prepare some for him the way she once had. It is not far and she always makes sure she has plenty in stock. But she stays in her chair. The thought that he might not let her back in if she leaves creeps through her mind and she cannot shake it free.

Despite himself, his lip twitches. It's a sweet thing to say, is the thing; he can count on two hands the number of sweet things he's heard over the past twenty-ish years, particularly those that haven't come from the mouth of Deirdre's son, which is another thing. It's not so bad a thing that he wants to smile, the issue is more that it's attacking other muscles, including those that are probably responsible for inducing tears. "No need to flatter me," he says, then flicks his eye around the room until he finds something suitable—a desk scattered nearly opposite, which won't have any trouble holding his weight. He settles on it like a seat because he hasn't unpacked all of his yet, leans his heels on the floorboards where his legs have to fold. "It's—you don't have to do that, honest. It's not hard work." It's mind-numbing, really, once you get into the flow of it. Pack up and leave and unpack; pack up again, so it goes. "You're a guest, right? I'd better observe hospitality." Not that he's doing a bang-up job of it. No tea 'n all, and his hands are still, intermittently, shaking; he probably couldn't have poured it were it there.

Except, of course, the thought is of no comfort when her nephew is the one walking beside her. Indeed, she must wonder if Shannan called on a dead woman to investigate a haunted house as some kind of indictment. And yet, the moment she thinks of it she knows he never would. He is not the sort to toy with people like that: He has her bluntness, for one thing, and for another he does not resent her for dying.

That the possibility occurred to her at all speaks to her guilt more than anything else, in the end. Even so, the fact he asked her to run this fool’s errand over anyone else troubles her still; and all the more so because she cannot tell why. It isn’t that she minds — quite the opposite, she would gladly do anything he asked —, nor even that it cuts too close to the bone...

(Although it does. Oh, it does. As the story goes Lily Bolden killed her own kin brutally, with forty blows of her axe to each. The parallel is obvious, and although she tries not to wonder how many times Dannan bashed his brother’s head in, how many times Dannan bashed her head in —)

Even her nephew’s company does not keep the nausea at bay for long. If nothing else, the bile doesn’t rise into her throat. She swallows all the same, breathes and refocuses. The house is just up ahead — and, regardless of Shannan’s intent, her first thought is that the place fits her: It was left to decay untouched, as though its residents might yet return home from death, rather than being relinquished to a new owner. And she has returned from death to find her loved ones have not moved on from her loss, not truly —

Ayra swallows again, bile and laughter both. She will not laugh. She would look deranged.

Quite suddenly, she understands what it is that troubles her about Shannan’s invitation.

“ I’m not sure I was the best choice for this little errand, ” she speaks up, her smile wry and fond at once. “ I am not complaining, but... You could have taken this as an opportunity to mingle with Black Eagles faculty, for instance. ”

Ayra pauses, uncharacteristically hesitant. What she really wants to say is that he could — and, in truth, should — spend more time with the living than with the dead. There is no way to voice this without concerning him, though.

“ What I mean to say is, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Shannan. ”

Anyway, it's not his place to complain when he's taking advantage, so.

He keeps pace with Ayra half because there's no need to run on ahead and half because it comforts him to see her in his peripherals. Upright, moving steady, all those good things people do when they're healthy. Also, she's on the opposite side to the tattered, aged sword-sheath strung at his waist. He has no illusions that she won't, or hasn't, spotted it, nor that she wouldn't have some thoughts on it he can recite to himself in her voice and tone exact approximate. Frankly, he's hoping the sorry state of it will distract her from the hilt of what it's carrying.

He flicks his gaze across the building, considering. It's practically a hovel. It has a certain kind of nostalgia to it, he guesses, but that's on him. He figures that his experience isn't the widest applicable there is in the world. "I don't need to mingle, Auntie," he replies dryly; he's not that distracted. Or distracted at all, generally, though it doesn't do him any ill to give the impression. "I'm good. You don't think I'm a social butterfly? Besides, you're better company, if I do say so myself."

His eye darts to her, inscrutable, then back again. "I know what I want to do with my time," he assures her. "There's no need to worry." If those are the kind of worries she's having, though, then he's all set. Who ever said he couldn't be subtle? He's acutely aware of the space between them and the doorway they're leaving in their tracks. It's not that he suspects she'd turn and leave, mind. That would be to accuse her of cowardice. His preferred extent of spatial awareness is unrelated.

Shannan smiles, a little like a cat with a canary caught between its claws might. "I saw you in the arena," he says, aiming light. There's an edge of seriousness as he continues, regardless, firm. "You could've warned me—you did so well out there I'd almost think you've been holding out on me." It's nice to pretend, to a level, that the training he'd received when he was twelve might have any bearing a decade and change beyond. In some part, maybe. Fundamentals.

Lene sighs, brushing her fingers trough her hair "Its... Yeah a little bit- I cant imagine how people have to do this everyday of their lives" The girl sighs, her eyes drifting towards the entrance of the of the tent "I was doing my best but- I guess I'm not as strong for these types of situations."

He steps over to stand next to her, one hand resting at his hip while the other falls back to his side. Shannan cants his head, listening without interrupting; like it or not, he's not that impotent. "Stifling, right?" He says after a while, a little wry, and shakes his head. "Some people think it's their calling, I guess, but between you and I, I've got no clue why." He's seen the devotion the abbess pays to the ill; he watched as she taught the same to her daughter. That doesn't mean he can understand the process behind it; why, again and again, would someone entrench themselves in a bed of decay and disease, hoping to fish life up from the stragglers? There were no miracle cures. not really; for six caught six, two would heal up, three would die, one would stay sick. Something like that, at least. He isn't going to call it a waste, not that, but it seems exhaustive. Not his cup of tea, in any case. "I'd rather not make a living out of mopping up gangrene, so you and me both."

And so the prince found himself on another trip, another journey. His destination was towards viscounty Menja alongside the other volunteers. He hummed, looking ahead. The map of Fódlan had yet to be etched into his mind as it must have been for the others among him, the ones he had placed his faith in. 

To his side was… a professor? Maybe? The prince smiled at the other. What good was faith without the trust built?

“Hello, I am Marth of Altea. It is good to meet you, sir.”

For the most part, the prince assumed most here had arrived before him unless proven otherwise. He would assume the same of the other but his eyes held unfamiliarity for the world around him. The same unfamiliarity that the prince’s gaze matched. 

“Are you also new to these lands?”

Which was what led him to his current circumstance. He was little stranger to travel—foreigner here, even—and hadn't his own class to be teaching on a schedule. He was, however, still employed, and still so beholden to the will of the benefactor, so basically he was the perfect candidate to send haring off on a supply run. Something like that, anyway; he had to laugh at them sending the students along, too. What was it supposed to be, field experience? He flicked his eye over when the kid started talking, and the corner of his mouth lifted in turn. "Name's Shannan. You seem pretty calm." Not even worried about being carted off who-knows-where with a stranger. Well, that's respectable, isn't it? Better that than a bundle of nerves to be shuffling around with.

Hell, she was suspicious of the town as well, and not only because she’d woken within its borders when her eyes should never have opened again.

And so she does not dissuade Shannan from his healthy degree of suspicion... but neither does she justify her own lack of it. Simply put, she is not so insecure as to feel she must defend her decisions when her nephew hasn’t complained. (A wise choice, because if he had it would have changed nothing; which, she thinks with fond bemusement, he surely knows by now.)

“ A bear, ” she begins, turning back to look and finding Shannan fully dressed still, “ is easier to disprove than fairies, you see, my heart. ” With a breath of laughter, she makes her way into the pool. “ The taller the tale the better, they seem to think. Which is ridiculous, not least because I know these woods and I am unlikely to be the only professor who does. ”

She shrugs one shoulder before adding, “ We’ve had enough strange incidents that we can’t just ignore this, though, even if it is possible that the children made it all up to cover their truancy. ”

This last is punctuated by a long-suffering sigh, exaggerated more in jest than not, as becomes evident when she halts and turns around with a look of wry bemusement. The sight of Shannan perched near the water’s edge only accentuates her wryness: Where she once sported the ghost of a smile she now smirks in earnest and lifts a brow in silent questioning.

“ For someone who does not believe in — how did you phrase it — a bunch of gremlins you are more hesitant than I expected, Shannan, ” she says, retracing her steps to higher ground now that she’s soaked up to her chest. Loose strands of hair stick to her neck, but she doesn’t mind — certainly not as much as he seems to. “ It’ll get less wet like this, which is enough for me. ”

A bush rustles and Ayra reaches for her blades at once, letting go when the culprit turns out to be a hare. Quite suddenly, she recalls bathing in the forests of Verdane when Shannan was still a boy: More than once they had halted to soak in a lake or a river after long hours on the road, her sword kept close at hand while her dear nephew splashed about. Gods, he’d been so young —

— and now he is older than his aunt and just as jaded besides, if not more so yet. He won’t even join her. But then, it’s her own fault for thinking of him as a boy still. Melancholy slants her smile downward and Ayra cannot quite shake it off, no matter the embarrassment of it.

Or, shame on him, at least. Shannan's brow twitches, but he merely hums. It's not his place to argue strange incidents—even if he'd like to ask after them. "Now what's that supposed to mean?" And he does exactly that, for whatever reason he does anything; curiosity, maybe a little concern.

He narrows his eyes at her, a challenge—lighthearted—before squawking a little laugh and sticking out his tongue. "Of course I don't," he insists. "If they existed I'd have seen the things by now, right? Skulking around the underbrush? Can't be all that subtle." Not enough to evade his eye, surely—he's a lot of things, but inattentive is not one of them, and it never will be. He'll not stand for it. "It's not hesitation," he refutes more calmly, and makes a sweeping gesture at the springs. "How should I know what's in that water? I'd prefer not to catch ill from it. There are all kinds of maladies out there." This is a new continent, besides—if the Silessian chill was cause enough to worry for the life of the foreigner, then what of Fódlan?

He eyes the rabbit in his peripheral as it flees back into the safety of the trees; if his own hand had flit down to the hilt of the sword at his waist, hovered lightly there for a moment, that's his own business. When he returns his gaze, he feels that averting it might have been a mistake—something thorny curdles in his stomach, like a coiled bramble, though the weeds that tangle underfoot here are smooth and delicate.

She is under no illusions that Shannan would entertain such a request from just anyone, after all, as well he shouldn’t. He has better things to do with his time than (at least on the face of it) chase a rumor of fairies, she is sure... and the same goes for her, of course.

Perhaps, she muses while he scoffs a laugh that makes his disdain for the task at hand evident, she should feel a little more guilt for her deceit than she presently does — which is none at all. And yet, she cannot quite find it in herself to: It is for his own good that she’s gone about it like this, and they have more than established that as his aunt she can take such liberties.

Still, as endearing as his trust in her may be, she must be careful not to reveal her hand; at least not before they are bathing proper.

“ Well, ” she puts in, heading to the water, “ the locals did say it is the hot springs, specifically, that host these fairies — if they exist. We might have to go in for them to show themselves... Or for the students to be satisfied, at any rate. ”

Ayra does not wait for his response before she takes her boots off (largely because she is not given to waiting, but also because she won’t risk his refusal) and sets them aside. Having done so she divests herself of her blades next — despite the unease which prompts her to put them just beside the water’s edge —, then strips down to her linen shift. She does all this with surety and care... and without so much as a glance back to ascertain if Shannan is undressing as well. It is only while gathering her hair up and out of the way that she looks to him again.

He's not necessarily looking for anything, because he expects to find nothing—other than the atmosphere, and he finds that to be positively tranquil. Too tranquil. He's not charmed. Shannan peers at the woods beyond them both with a degree of suspicion reserved only for the enterprising man who has reaped just as many boons as he has banes from the copse; for all the cover a cluster of wilderness has provided him, it's more than like to do the same for anything else. The thick wood casts tar-black shadow upon itself, darker than night—any sun overhead is blotted the minute the leaves shift in silent air. It's eerie, is what it is. He'd be less surprised to find an axe-murderer skulking in the shrubbery than he will be if they actually spot one of these elusive faeries poking their nose out through the epilimnion.

"I don't see the fuss," he offers eventually, when his interrogation of their surroundings provides him nothing save his own burgeoning unease. He shakes it off with a flip of his hair, away from the back of his neck. "If they want to make up a reason to dodge class, there are plenty that'd make more sense. Say it's a bear." He doesn't appreciate it—there's no point in attending a school if they do not, in fact, attend it—but it's true. This is sloppy work of an already disappointing intent. Finally circling back around to the centre of the grove, Shannan watches bemusedly as Ayra wades into the waters with nary a care—Od knows what's in the stuff. One eyebrow hitches sharply, but he keeps his tongue with an unusual amount of politesse and instead looks to her blades—the corner of his mouth flattens a little, but he doesn't say anything about that, either. They're not so far from her reach that it should be an actual problem, but…

"Is cooking something that you do often?" 

It was an idle question, to break the ice and the comfortable quiet between them when they had come together in the kitchens to determine the menu for the week. Lachesis was decidedly not a cook, by any stretch of the imagination, but talking was something she could do with a deft hand - or, tongue, rather. Although not the head of a household of her own, she had acted as lady on more than one occasion, and certainly there had been tougher nuts to crack than this gentleman. 

"I am not an especially skilled cook, but I am a steady hand and an exacting eye. If there's a recipe you should like to follow, please, I would like to hear it." 

Perusing the monastery's collection of recipes had not unearthed anything that she, herself, found herself particularly craving – more of the same, wasn't it? The hunted catch, the vegetables from the greenhouse, in the same configurations over and over, with little variation, despite the large rotation the students enjoyed. 

Almost idly, she flicked at a speck of flour on the counter, and canted her head. 

So. Shannan sighed, a harsh puff of air, and set the recipes down in all their papery, unintelligible glory on the counter-top. The woman beside him wasn't the only one with deftness to boast, but again, he hardly ever applied that to cookery and he doubted he'd be starting now. "It's not like I recognise any of these ones," he replied, but something—… now that he was paying attention, there was something about her voice. Shannan flicked a glance at her, from his peripherals. "I guess you don't either?"

She was definitely familiar, in… some kind of way. Had he seen her before? Around the monastery, maybe, but that didn't click quite right; he pressed his tongue to the bottom of his mouth, thoughtful. Her gesturing didn't distract him from the puzzle—if he could just figure out where he'd…

…

Ah. She just looked like Diarmuid, he thought. They had the same sort of a face. Satisfied, he turned back to the counter and made a sweeping gesture at it. "Getting tired of the menu, huh?" Shannan's voice was dry, but not without amusement. "I mean, I could think about it, but I don't have a discerning palate." Or much of one at all, actually. "We'd be better off just fishing something out of the drawers to go by. Crusaders know they've probably got all kinds of nonsense stashed away in there. Or what, they want foreign stuff? Where're you—" he paused.

… she looked like—

His hands are a slight larger than hers, after all, even in their shared leanness and the slimness of his fingers. He almost chuffs a laugh; doesn't, in the end. It won't be made.

He doesn't mean to laugh at her, still, but the turn of his lip curves wan as he watches her struggle with herself. He averts his gaze, cants his head to the side, so as not to give her the wrong impression. He's hardly happy to see her like this. His fringe falls at an angle over the bridge of his nose, obfuscates his eyes beneath a sea-black veil. "I don't want thanks." The rebuttal is delivered a little warmly, though, and still quiet. And she's still saying it, of course, in her token concession—he knows it for his own track, and the similarity slides itself dark in a withered little pit in him somewhere and stays there, funny—but he elects not to reply. He's not all so keen on giving any ground. One of them doing it is enough. "Impossible or not, I should've paid it more mind." It was thoughtless; and if he makes a habit of being that, he'll make a habit of being dead, too, so better to make the mistake where swords aren't flying, but he still doesn't like it.

His smile, a faint ghost of one, sharpens to a blade-tip without divesting of its effete tinge. They are both, he wagers, perfectly aware of how little he means to touch upon topics like that. He has no need of comforts. Still, for her sake, he says again, dutifully, "I know, auntie," and squeezes her hand briefly to comfort her. And when her head meets his shoulder, his breath hitches only for a half-second before he evens it again, and—impulsively, but it'll do him no worse than he does himself already—he lets go of her hand to sweep her into a hug instead. He's content, he finds, to let it last until she decides otherwise.

When she opts to guide them both back to the chairs, he goes along with it half out of amusement—he wonders if she could conceive of ever not taking the initiative—and half out of practicality. Despite it all, he still feels a little faint—gods be damned if he'd ever say it. Not dangerously so—not enough for it to show, he thinks—but the thought of sitting back down is still relieving, lest she notice. He'd doubt she would if she was anyone else. As it is, he's not taking the risk. He adjusts himself to make the walking easier, lets his arms slide away. "What?… Oh, I don't care." It's not her he's sickened by. "Speak how you like." A silent pause, long, before he breaks it with a half-breath of a laugh. "You call that harsh? I'm not made of glass, auntie."

It hadn't been harsh. It had been… feeble. After the unease fades for the surprise of it, what's left behind is his aegis—and that, above all else, is what he knows. It's easy, then, to adjust; the sphere of it still fits, anyway.

No. If he found the quietness of her voice strange, her tears would be worse yet. She does not dwell on his apparent bemusement or on the possible causes for it, then, instead lifting a hand to sweep his fringe aside quite naturally; and, while so doing, she understands just what he meant when he said none of them give a damn about time. It is shamefully obvious, to think of it now. That she does not give a damn about time, at least, Ayra already knew. She could not treat him with such easy tenderness if she did; but that he allows such treatment of her, indeed that he thinks of her as his aunt — his auntie — at all, can only mean that he does not either.

Oh, the years still weigh upon her, each little sign of their passing (his height, his voice, her hands smaller than his) akin to the pinprick of a needle upon her skin. The burden of them has not lessened, no, but some of the agony has; and she laughs, though in scarcely more than a breath, for that as much as for Shannan’s next words.

“ I should have known you would say that, ” she replies with a small fond smile, reaching to tuck a strand of his hair back into place. Then her expression softens further and with an exhale not quite a sigh she adds, “ Perhaps you should have, but we both know the sentiment is of no more use to you than to me. ”

Hopefully this framing will keep him from challenging the point. Oh, she can imagine it, even still: evidently the grace he grants her is not extended to himself. All the same, her concession may well force one of his own... and he does give her ground, after a fashion, though she has the keen sense he — again — does not know; or, at the very least, does not believe she should listen to all he regrets.

She thinks to press him after all, if only because there is far too much going unsaid and unacknowledged for her liking... But then he brings her into his arms in a sudden impulse and she stills at once, releasing a shuddering breath. The time is no needle pricking at her finger but a knife twisting in her ribs: Only yesterday she could have wrapped him in her arms like this, have his smaller form melt into hers as she comforted him, and now — now — !

She melts into him all the same, even despite the strangeness of it, returning his embrace and pressing her face to his chest. Gods, she has been aching for this from the moment she let him go, still in the hallway — no, she has been aching for this from the moment she opened her eyes and took breath into her lungs again... But, no, that is not right either. She has been aching for this from the moment she parted from him to return to war.

Alas, that she cannot simply hold her nephew for as long as she likes. He will be feeling the effects of his breathlessness still, no matter that he has not said a word of it, and he had better sit down a while yet. It is no great heartache, however: They have time, now; and for all that the gulf between them hurts, to think of the future is a comfort.

“ Ah, my mistake for forgetting not to apologize, ” she answers with a deliberate lightness, smiling too, though as he goes on the lightness becomes wholly genuine. “ Don’t put words in my mouth, you rascal. I would never take you for being made of glass. I call that harsh only because, ” she laughs properly, unembarrassed, “ well, you are my nephew. You should know I play favorites by now, Shannan. ”

Having seen to it that he is sat down she turns about to pour kumis for herself as well, and for a while they are silent. It is fortunate that she has set the drink down on the table and taken a chair beside him by the time he speaks again, or she might have spilled it. Oh, he is so thoughtful, but of course he does not realize...!

“ No, ” is all she says at first. She cannot tell him the time he told her children was one too many, nor remind him he is still a boy to her. He will want to keep comforting her, and she has no need of comforts — certainly not from him. She settles for a half-truth: “ I appreciate the offer, my starlight, but I don’t intend to back down. ”

With a glint in her eye Ayra adds, “ There is something you can do for me, though. ” Her hair falls over her face when she leans forward, but she takes the glass into both hands and tosses the strands back only after righting herself. “ Drink your kumis, would you? ”

It would have been anything else, in truth, if she had not been in this strange land for as long as she has. She’s seen enough by now to be wary of such rumors. No one ever said the fairies are benevolent, their supposed beauty (if they exist) worthless as an indicator of morality. But then, to be perfectly honest... She would have chosen to look into the matter even if she didn’t believe any of this to be so much as a possibility.

The reason for that, needless to say, is her dear nephew. If she had proposed a trip to the local hot springs — fey or otherwise — for the sake of it, he would have demurred. If she had mentioned he could use a little relaxation, he would have been insulted. (She cannot think ill of him for it, recognizing this trait in herself yet again.)

And so she couched their outing in dutifulness, knowing precisely how Shannan would take it. If anything, she owes the townsfolk for spreading this tale regardless of its truth.

“ Here we are, ” she says once the springs come into view, making a show of glancing around before cracking a smile. “ No fairies in sight, unsurprisingly. ”

Even so, he hadn't argued Ayra's request; why should he? As far as he's concerned she could ask whatever she very well liked of him; he has no right to deny her. Whether or not he thinks that chasing faeries is a fool's conquest, if it's something the students are actually concerned by, to the extent that the faculty should have to deal with it, then it's worth at least a once-over. It's considerate of her, although he's not sure whether she's taken up the task because she merely feels the same sense of responsibility, or because she actually believes any of it. He figures it's not really his business either way, when it all chalks up to the same thing.

Besides—he can understand why she'd not want to go at it alone. It would give the wrong impression; how any could think that Ayra of all people would use the guise of business for a little sojourn, he'd love to know, but he'd prefer to dissuade any assumptions like that right off the bat. Two professors looks a more reputable task-force than just the one, even if the task at hand is ridiculous.

I know, Shannan tells her, except he does not. He cannot. How could he, when he has never felt the touch of death and watered the soil with his blood and rotted away for years, only to then come back into his body — intact, perfect, alive — and reckon with all that has gone, all that has passed him by and been forever lost?

Oh, he ought to be glad he does not know; but he isn’t, and he won’t be, because she has made him feel guilt that is not his. She does not doubt for a moment that he harbors more regret than those Grannvalean dogs could even conceive of, and the thought fills her with rage... which goes out like a candle in the wind when her beautiful nephew continues to weave his apologies.

He doesn’t understand, either. Again, he cannot, for it has been two decades or near enough to that and he lived through each and every year — every month, every day, every moment — with the weight of her absence. And now, now she has made him feel as if he needs to apologize —! (He felt as much before, she knows, but he did not act on the impulse just as she did not act on hers; and that she has gone and ruined their tacit agreement is all the worse for she has given him new causes for guilt, as if the old were not more than he deserves already. Oh, she is a wretch.)

She might have told him some of this, at least what she thinks would not have drawn still more self-blame to the surface like water from a well, if not for his next words: But none of us give a damn about time, auntie. He makes it sound so very simple... which he managed from the first, somehow. Hello, auntie, he said, as though she couldn’t see his disgust and his shock. She can see his guilt just as clearly — but he means that declaration no less for it.

“ Shannan, ” she begins, her voice small now, and blinks even before any tears well up, “ Shannan, I... ”

The words, of course, fail her. They always do. The best she can offer is a lack of resistance when he moves to grip her hand, the limpness of it in his; and it is only when he puts his other hand atop hers that she remembers to squeeze back. After a moment she brings her spare hand to rest atop his, as tears are no longer threatening to —

Oh. They almost come again, but she swallows thickly and puts on the bravest face she can muster. Saint Od knows he is going to great lengths to comfort her as is, and she will not make him go farther still with her weeping. She does not interrupt but doesn’t nod either, only grasps his hands tightly in hers.

“ — Thank you, Shannan, my light. I will not say you have nothing to apologize for, although I would mean it, but... Your laughter was not out of turn in the slightest, it is our circumstances that are impossible. You are forgiven, of course you are, for that and all else... and I do mean it. I would listen, if you wished it, to all you regret. I reckon you don’t, ” she manages a smile for the first time, small and soft and tired, “ and so I will not force the matter, but... ”

She runs one hand over her face. The other, she keeps in both of his. She could argue, she thinks dimly, she could tell him it wasn’t the only thing she could have done and he did his best and she is grateful to him, but he won’t care for any of it and the weight of all those years between them is suddenly making itself felt.

And so, she leans her head on his shoulder.

His hands are a slight larger than hers, after all, even in their shared leanness and the slimness of his fingers. He almost chuffs a laugh; doesn't, in the end. It won't be made.

He doesn't mean to laugh at her, still, but the turn of his lip curves wan as he watches her struggle with herself. He averts his gaze, cants his head to the side, so as not to give her the wrong impression. He's hardly happy to see her like this. His fringe falls at an angle over the bridge of his nose, obfuscates his eyes beneath a sea-black veil. "I don't want thanks." The rebuttal is delivered a little warmly, though, and still quiet. And she's still saying it, of course, in her token concession—he knows it for his own track, and the similarity slides itself dark in a withered little pit in him somewhere and stays there, funny—but he elects not to reply. He's not all so keen on giving any ground. One of them doing it is enough. "Impossible or not, I should've paid it more mind." It was thoughtless; and if he makes a habit of being that, he'll make a habit of being dead, too, so better to make the mistake where swords aren't flying, but he still doesn't like it.

His smile, a faint ghost of one, sharpens to a blade-tip without divesting of its effete tinge. They are both, he wagers, perfectly aware of how little he means to touch upon topics like that. He has no need of comforts. Still, for her sake, he says again, dutifully, "I know, auntie," and squeezes her hand briefly to comfort her. And when her head meets his shoulder, his breath hitches only for a half-second before he evens it again, and—impulsively, but it'll do him no worse than he does himself already—he lets go of her hand to sweep her into a hug instead. He's content, he finds, to let it last until she decides otherwise.

When she opts to guide them both back to the chairs, he goes along with it half out of amusement—he wonders if she could conceive of ever not taking the initiative—and half out of practicality. Despite it all, he still feels a little faint—gods be damned if he'd ever say it. Not dangerously so—not enough for it to show, he thinks—but the thought of sitting back down is still relieving, lest she notice. He'd doubt she would if she was anyone else. As it is, he's not taking the risk. He adjusts himself to make the walking easier, lets his arms slide away. "What?… Oh, I don't care." It's not her he's sickened by. "Speak how you like." A silent pause, long, before he breaks it with a half-breath of a laugh. "You call that harsh? I'm not made of glass, auntie."

It hadn't been harsh. It had been… feeble. After the unease fades for the surprise of it, what's left behind is his aegis—and that, above all else, is what he knows. It's easy, then, to adjust; the sphere of it still fits, anyway.

She watches him as he avoids her. Oifey had been so pleased to see her. She had hoped and prayed that Shannan might have welcomed her back as well.

She offers her hand but he says he cannot do this right now. Her heart sinks to the very pit of her gut. It is as she had feared. It must be. He has branded her a traitor, too. He has condemned her. Why else would he push her away?

It hurts worse than even when Lady Edain told her she must go. Edain may have been her first friend, but Shannan had been by her side the longest. Longer, even, than her dear Lord Sigurd. Shannan has always been as much of a son to her as Seliph. As Julius.

His throat feels clotted, the room too-silent and heavy in that absence, encroaching, but he does his best to ignore it—it's not the hardest thing in the world, when Deirdre is a book splayed open for anyone to read. He's upset her, he understands, and it sticks him like a dagger to the side, a subtle but striking ache. He ignores that, too, fixates on the tricky business; steadies his fingers, more prone to failing him than any good swordsman's should be just by a few spare emotions, as he wraps hers. The motions aren't difficult, not when he'd taken such pains to learn them once upon a time—his body alone seems determined to make his life more difficult than it needs to be.

"Not what I said," he reproaches her, although gently, and ties off the slapdash-bandaging tight enough to stay. Being a thin kind of material, gauzy, he sees the specks of red peeking through, and swallows down any reaction, disregards the jitter still working away at his arms. "Don't put words in my mouth. If I wanted you to leave, you'd know." Despite the bluntness of the words, his tone stays calm, not unkind.

she turns her head to stare at him, squinting her eyes when he insists that it's not so bad— the exact same look she used to give him in tirnanog when he was still just a child and would try to sweep something under the rug with little comments like that. it was always so easy to notice— at least to her.

When she turns to eye him, he smiles at her winningly—sharp as a blade, curved like a sickle, but with no bite behind it at all. At worst it has an air of self-satisfaction, beatific, and it slithers off his face when he flips his hair anyway, an absent-minded fidget. Her scrutiny slides off him like water; has for a while, really, longer than it ever had any effect.

One eyebrow quirks. "Exactly that," Shannan says, dry as death, because they both know how to walk the fine line between defeat and armistice. "I'm not a worrier, Edain," he waves her off with, which is a complete and utter lie. He seems perfectly confident in saying it, even so. He's not surprised she'd be henning the students, though... as she will, so she does.

Because, of course, he should not be. It should not be worse for her than it is for him, when he was the one left to shoulder burdens too heavy for one so young. When he was the one left unmoored without his mother aunt, when he felt unmoored by her absence in these very halls after decades without her. And so she says nothing, for there is nothing she can say that will not be damning.

That her nephew also says nothing is damning in itself; and, worse yet, he does not keep silent but he laughs. She would have given the world to have him laugh in derision at her, but she can see plain as day that any derision therein is only directed at himself — or else at what he deems an absurd question, but not at her. Never at her, she is beginning to understand, for he holds her in much the same esteem she holds him... and himself in the same contempt she reserves for herself. In other words, they are at an impasse.

Oh, it pains her to think of their reunion in such unfeeling terms when she has an abundance of tenderness for him. But then, of course, it is the same abundance that has led them here in the first: Emotion has always been weakness, and neither of them know what to make of it.

Ayra keeps her silence for a while, offering it in lieu of an apology seeing as he doesn’t want the latter. She speaks again only when it becomes evident he will not, and this time her words are less piercing. Yet her nephew argues even still, and she must bite her tongue lest she repeat herself uselessly.

“ Of course I would, ” she asserts, the challenge less direct than it could have been; would have been, in truth, were it anyone else. She’s never been any good at curbing her tongue, but for him she can manage. She smiles too, sincere no matter her wryness. “ You drive a hard bargain, don’t you? But, yes, fair is fair. ”

They’ve both conceded to some extent, but not enough yet. Not nearly enough. The abundance of feeling remains unaddressed, their impasse unresolved. By now, Ayra has the sense that if she lowers her walls he will raise his in answer. That he will worry for her before he ever thinks to join her, and that is the opposite of what she wants.

Yet Shannan leaves her no choice in the matter.

Hold on, he says, when she could not interject if she tried for the dread that pools at the bottom of her stomach. He reads her with the same ease she does him, so his guess in itself is no surprise — but his amusement is; and it cuts deep, deeper than she cares to admit.

She regrets having tried to laugh the matter off at once, for all she did was add to his mirth. The sound tapers off, void of humor by the end, and she is left with burning eyes and a lump in her throat in its place. She swallows, works her jaw and finds no words.

“ That’s not — ” Realizing she must look as stricken as she feels Ayra rises abruptly, though does not move away from him. “ Well, yes, it is the health seminar — but — ” She hates how brittle her voice sounds, on the verge of breaking; and she does leave him in the end, turn her back and make for the cabinet, where she places her hands around the jar of water more to try and halt their shaking than anything. “ It is not that I — do not want to deal with it, but that... ”

She pauses, swallows again, desperately holding on to the slivers of her composure even as they slip between her fingers. She will not — will not — cry in front of Shannan, for Od’s sake, let alone for what he meant to be a bit of teasing. How do you feel about it?

“ — You were a boy when last I saw you, ” she blurts out and the rest follows without pause, brittleness and all, “ you were a boy and now you are telling me it’s not so bad, which you know because you told my children about it while I was — was dead and now I might not have died at all except there are twenty years between us, and all I can think is I should have been there and it should have been me when that does not matter one whit — and I’m meant to, what, laugh while you advise me on how to talk about sex? You were a boy — no, you are a boy to me, Shannan, do you understand that? ”

Ayra is breathing harder than she realized, clutching the damned jar tighter than she realized too, and she lifts one hand to wipe her tears away furiously. She will not. And, to reaffirm that as much as prevent the weeping, she turns to face him again.

Shannan rises from his seat, stalking with a cat's long-legged—almost silent—lope towards Ayra. He settles beside her; doesn't lean, but stands steady on his two feet, a careful peripheral eye on her. "I shouldn't have laughed," he says, evenly gentled, cataloguing her tension in half-second impressions, caught and folded away like streams of old parchment and letters faded in the sunlight. "I'm sorry." He doesn't suppose she hears him, though, not even in the least—because what rushes from her next is a torrent, a waterfall, a slough of words left to congeal in a swift-run, heavy-fall heap. He glances to the jug, worries what he'll do if it breaks. He could pick up the shards, but they'll slice her anyway; they'd prick him, too, but the blood that might well would be the same between them. The same red, the same smouldering traces of metal in the air, coppery. And he worries, and it drowns the chorus of his cresting guilt just enough to pry it off of him and disregard it.

"I know," he answers, his voice low as what gets it nearest to softness; of course, he's always been better at using it to jab. He works a balancing act, keeps it teetering away from an edge; this is not the place for command, although it prods at him as if it would help. It would not—he imposes a set of identical offshoots onto Ayra's figure, as much as she notices their absence. Shannan's teeth stab into his cheek, and he tastes scarlet. Her children, and does she know how he's raised them? How he's failed them, two children? He could have done all he was capable, he could have tried his utmost to substitute, but he makes a miserable stand-in and he knows it. It beats with his heart in rhythm, beats the same every passing minute of every hour of every week, month and year—but if she thinks him a careless thing, it's all the better. What a sorry effort—a necessity turned a future. He'd not have left her children with himself, either, not if he'd know of permanence; she might have done a lot of things differently, if she had thought to consider permanence. Of course, it was him or the fires his life had kicked up, and of all the equal inequity to bestow upon two babies both were he supposed one burned away their lives slower than the other might have. In the end, the fires of war chased them all up—but almost-twenty odd years to expect it was better than the span of Belhalla. "I know, and I'm sorry. It was out of turn. I didn't mean it like that."

He exhales. "I understand full-well." He doesn't know how to be a boy, though, and he's not full-sure that she understands that. He knows nothing more and nothing less than to be this—whatever this even is. What he needed to be. "But none of us give a damn about time, auntie." He reaches out, quick as a viper, to disentangle her spare hand's fingers from the jug she clutches still. Deftly, but the only force behind it is his concern. She couldn't comprehend even if he dared to speak of it, to crush her with the weight of it—seventeen years, and all of them spent for her, for them, to play at being her, because what else was there to be? Who else? Himself? With her hand freed, he holds it in his own for a moment, before placing the other over it, clasp feather-light should she find it intolerable, from him. Shannan watches her for a while.

"You did the only thing you could have done," he says at length, still low. "It wasn't your fault, and I don't see why you should act as if it is. Don't try to tell me you think otherwise, because we both know it wouldn't be true." She can lie to him if she wants, but he'll not have her thinking he wouldn't be aware. That would be cruel. "You should have been there, but you couldn't have been. You know that. I know that." If the—her—kids do or don't know that, it's none of Shannan's business. "The past is immutable. But," Shannan allows, "death should be too, and look where that's gotten us. They're still young, you know?" He doesn't bother to do her the disservice of over-clarifying. "Knowing you late is—far superior to never knowing you at all. Even if you don't think that, and even if they don't think that," which he'd like to hope otherwise, but couldn't be sure of, "it's true. Okay?" He knows what a wretched substitute he makes—he knows exactly the fact of it.

“ Yes, it is, ” she counters firmly, all too aware of how he views his shock; again, recognizing his habit as her own. “ The point is you cannot be expected to feel nothing when faced with a dead woman, years after her death at that. ”

That she does not say who cannot expect it of him is deliberate: They both know, and beyond that she has no right to lecture him when she is — yes — dead, and decades too late besides. All the same Ayra moves past her own death easily, smiling at her nephew’s sweet insistence.

“ I know you do, ” she reassures him, “ and I am glad you think that. ” Her voice is light, almost playful as she adds, “ Many of the students find me intimidating, so I try to make them welcome if they have to seek me out. The swords are not always appreciated, but, well. ” She shrugs one shoulder as if to say she can only do so much.

When he laughs again, sincerely now, she must do the same: the sound bubbles from her chest into her throat and out of her lips before she can restrain it, quiet yet warm still. She’s challenged him enough, she thinks, and it would be too far to say that as the one revived she’d know better than him whether it is ‘all that’. Quite apart from that, he has already relented.

So she deems a fond laugh answer enough and leaves to go about fetching his water, as well as to afford him a little privacy. No matter what she says on it, Shannan will want to gather himself. Seeing as she cannot force him to unravel — nor does she want to —, she means to let him... And yet, his pretense is so blatant that she can’t hold her tongue after all.

“ You did, ” she says, quietly but not sharply: not with him, never with him. “ In other words than those, I’ll grant you, but still. What else do you have to apologize for, if not the embarrassment — the inconvenience — of your reaction? I will tell you again, ” and he must recall how much she dislikes repeating herself, “ you’ve nothing to be embarrassed of, nor are you causing me any inconvenience. ”

If anything she’s inconveniencing him, to put it mildly. She bites her tongue on that, knowing they will indeed be volleying apologies back and forth all day otherwise, and breathes out slowly. Her motions are slight and precise — practiced, in a word, though she had not poured kumis for a guest in many years by the time she died.

Then, when it’s been long enough to seem she won’t speak again: “ Of course I need to worry, Shannan. I’m your aunt, for the love of Od. ”

With that she pivots on her heel and returns to his side. Something in her chest settles once his cup is set on the table, the clink of it eliciting a strange relief. Still, the hint of melancholy that flits across his face is obvious to her eyes.

“ You’re welcome, ” she answers, still not taking the chair across from his; and not only because his books are on it. Her hand is already back on his knee, and she answers his question without missing a beat. “ Well, no. Not quite, my heart. I was going to ask you to step aside. ”

"This is worse for you than it is for me, auntie." It would be better if he just called her by name—more stately. The notion disgusts him. He'd never seen her grave, at least not knowingly. For all he knew she had none, was a pile of ash and cinders on the wind—who could tell him? Her? He'd walked on the soil of Grannvale, fertilised with the blood and torments of a generation past, and he hadn't felt any spirits there. He'd seen the Deadlords and known them for what they were—soulless, decrepit entities, corpses strung up and walking on borrowed time, borrowed power. Flimsy, at best.

He's seen the undead, and he's seen the alive, and he's not sure what that makes Ayra, other than the perfection of his haunting. Shannan is pretty damn sure, however, that it'd hurt a ghost more to look upon the living than it does the other way around. One will be same as the other, eventually, death an inevitability—he would think, or he should think, that the ghost could never go back to what they'd had. He's being proven wrong, yeah, but that's not the point.

It's not like he expects her to answer him, but not everything can just go unsaid, no matter how much they'd both like it to.

Shannan watches her now, inscrutable, before the mask splinters; he barks another not-laugh sound, higher. What else, she asks him—what else! The hilarity is so sudden and so stabbing it borders on agonising, mostly because of how well he knows that she'll hate to hear the answer—she expects no answer, of all the things. Here is the son of Od: a wretch profligate. Here is her nephew, a disappointment, and she doesn't even want his apologies. He doesn't know what else in the world he's supposed to be giving her, for she has no grave and he has no offerings for one if she did—he has Balmung, the blade, wrapped careful and delicate and untouched somewhere tightly away in his luggage, and he'd dig her one with it, set a funeral date decades late, if he didn't know what exactly she'd think of it and what exactly it would be—a disgrace to the blade, Balmung, to use it for something like digging, to dull its exalted edge with dirt. He'd tell her not to lie if he felt more argumentative, but he knows it's a lie unintended; she really does believe that, somehow. It's as miraculous as it is maddening.

In the end he gives her a smile, incisive and thin, and says nothing on the matter, picking the glass back up again for want of fiddling. For a while, they languish in silence.

He expects her to break it, nonetheless. Her next words sting, but not as bitterly. It bleeds out of him in a breath. "That's…" he tries for the words. "Auntie, I…" He takes a sip of water, small. "You don't need to," he repeats. That leaves, however, the same lack of clarity that prompted her, and so he continues, hesitantly: "But I—… appreciate it. That you would." I just don't see why, he doesn't add; they'd tangle themselves into tangents, if he did, and by now he has learned when to keep his mouth shut even if he rarely abides by the sense. For her, he can manage. "Just know that you'll have to bear with my worrying, as well. Fair's fair, right?"