Comfort from a Friend

Log Info

• Title: Comfort from a Friend

• Emitter: Ravenstongue

• Characters: Dolan, Ravenstongue

• Place: Ravenstongue and Telamon's house

Lúpecyll-Atlon home, late morning.

It's raining. Only lightly, but it's enough to throw a gray shroud over the spring Alexandrian sky and lightly obscure the light of Daeus. A mild wind occasionally casts the sky's tears into the faces of onlookers and walkers in the University District, pushing people to move indoors, save for the people who don't mind a light rain in the warmth and renewal of spring.

The Lúpecyll-Atlon residence is renewed in one sense. There is a new door and some light constructive work to restore the walls, and the bushes around the door look a little singed. The signs that something happened here are evident.

But perhaps where they're most evident is in the darkness of Cor'lana's violet eyes as she sits inside in the living room on the sofa, staring down at her cup of lavender-mint tea. It's quiet, even with the sound of Pothy's wings over in the study as he relaxes into his nest of books.

Dolan's eyes don't miss a detail of the housefront as he approaches it, scanning every detail with both eyes and a full, focused gaze. The rain has left him perhaps not in the best of moods, but with Andelena needing to speak with the Masters, and his own work concluded for the morning, the opportunity presented was as good as it was likely to get, and in truth, this very thing had been weighing on his mind since he was first told.

Once he is satisfied that he has gathered as much information as he possibly can about the nature of what happened - fix or not, something quite clearly exploded here, and the front door is new. That is - concerning, to say the least. Time to test it. He steps up and raps firmly on the front door, clad as is his wont of late in full adventuring gear minus the pack. Of note is the addition of the greatsword over his back, the harness of similar leather. Sharp eyes will spot that the hilt is over his right shoulder, not his left.

The knock at the front door results in one thing. Cor'lana lifts her eyes up from the teacup and asks, a little loudly, "Pothy, can you see who that--"

"DOLAN!" Pothy shouts excitedly--loud enough to be heard from outside the house--and he flaps from the study to Cor'lana's shoulder. "Dolan-Dolan-Dolan-Dolan~! Come on, let's go open the door!"

Cor'lana smiles just a little as she rises from the couch, although the darkness in her eyes doesn't abate. She walks over to the front door and opens it. "It appears I have a little alarm system just for you," she says, a lightness in her voice that doesn't quite reach the eyes, although she does seem cheered just to see him. "Hello, my friend. Get in out of the rain and come inside." The door swings open a little wider for him.

Despite himself, and the ache in his shoulder and across his back, an unbidden smile comes to Dolan's lips at the clear excitement. When the door opens, he immediately holds up his right hand towards Pothy. "Brightest of days, Lana." There's about to be more, and then he spots the look in her eyes. "Heard something happened," he offers, stepping through the door at the invitation, careful not to bump the hilt of the blade over his shoulder.

As soon as the door closes, he reaches to remove his cloak, then, the harness, and then his boots. "You okay?"

Pothy nuzzles into Dolan's outstretched hand, making all sorts of happy noises just to see him. Cor'lana brightens all the more just for looking at Pothy being so happy, and it's after a moment of just watching Pothy in his happiness that she looks at Dolan. "I'm..."

The words suddenly become hard to say. Cor'lana ducks her eyes away, off to the side and into the wider house. "I'm trying to swim," she says at last. "It's one of those things where you think you know how--and then you're cast into the ocean and you're being weighed down by things you simply cannot cast off. And the swimming becomes so much harder that your head keeps being pulled underwater."

Pothy looks at Dolan with Cor'lana's words. "She needs a friend," he quietly says.

"Good thing I came by, then." The words are quiet, and Dolan finishes kicking his boots aside, gives Pothy another stroke or two - or three, or four - and reaches to pull Lana close, armor and all. Yes, he very much wants to know what in all the green garden hells happened, but _a friend first_, something within him whispers. "Tell me what's going on, Lana."

Cor'lana accepts the hug. Compared to Dolan's fiancée, she is a tiny slip of a thing--so much smaller, and the trembling that comes with the fresh shedding of tears on her cheeks gives off the impression of a small fey creature that could, at any point, disappear and leave forever. But she stays. Because he is a friend.

"I'm grieving," she says. "Someone who I hated and then came to love within the span of a conversation. Not love in the same way that I love Telamon--someone who I wanted to love as a friend. Someone who I wanted happiness for, because it turned out he was like me. Someone who had been stumbling in the dark and had never felt the gods' touch. But he was found by someone who served evil--someone who used a broken young man and turned him into a weapon. That was how Zalgiman became Zalgiman. And he told me I was the first person since Marsward Seraquoix to ask him about his life. But when I offered to lead him to Eluna, when I offered him my love in friendship--he said no. That the path was shut."

Her eyes shut. Tears continue to flow. "I hoped for hope and he declined. I had tried to give him the death he told me he wanted--and even that was denied. That's why he kidnapped Telamon. He wanted something to come kill him. He wanted me to finish the job. Should I have... Should I have tried harder? To convince him that he could have been happy in the light? Instead of giving him the death that he wanted?"

Dolan listens to the entire sequence, the entire spill, without moving. Holding Lana much as he would have held a distraught Andelena, though keenly aware of the differences. There's nothing there in those arms, though. Nothing other than concern and friendship. He seems content to let her cry into the breastplate, into the jacket, as much as she needs.

When he speaks, though, it's with conviction. "No, Lana. If there's anything I've found out, in all of this mess, since Kol -" There's a hesitation there, but it's a brief one. "It's that nobody can pick your path for you, and you can't pick others' path for them, no matter how bad you want to. Telling me how to recover didn't do a gods-be-damned bit of good for me, Lana. I've had to find my own way, and do what worked for me, not what someone else said should work."

"The same holds for him, Lana. You can show a man the light, but you can't make him walk towards it. You can't make him be happy in your path. You can't redeem someone who doesn't want to be redeemed. If he's set on the path of evil, the only thing you can do is end it, as swiftly and kindly as you can. Not because you hate him, but because he'll hurt more people if you don't."

Cor'lana continues to cry. But there's that little nod, an indication that she hears his words as she tries to marshal the effort to speak, to stay the sobs long enough so that she doesn't have to fight with them. It takes some time.

"I--I'm glad," she finally manages. "That--That I did the right thing. That I tried. It doesn't change the fact that I am in mourning, but I--I don't feel quite as guilty now."

She shudders with another sob before she adds, "I just wish I had been able to kill him in the dream like he and I both wanted. That I didn't have to bring you and so many other people into that hellish camp. That he didn't curse Telamon because I was..."

Cor'lana shakes her head. "No, he would have done all of that anyway because he was evil--not because of any action that I took. Right?"

"That's right." Dolan is in no hurry to release the embrace. She'll move when she is ready to, and she'll be the first one to move. He learned this long ago, with women. _You let them move first,_ Papa had said. How true it was.

He says none of that, though, instead giving her just enough room to pull away if she decides she wants to, and hold her if she doesn't. "I got a good hiding from Papa for this and a lesson I ain't never forgotten. There ain't no such thing as _he made me do it_." The farmboy twang comes out here in his words, just a little. "It ain't matter a lick what you did, or what you ain't do. He did what he did. You didn't make that choice, he did. He'll answer to the Harpist for everything he did, his own self. To you, to Tel, to every poor bastard he lured into Kol's clutches." The tone loses its twang and becomes dark with anger.

Cor'lana reaches up to wipe at her tears with one hand, drying her eyes. She does begin to pull away from Dolan, mostly because one hand isn't enough.

"Dolan's right," Pothy says gently, nuzzling into her hair. "He's got a good way of wording it." It appears Pothy has tried to console Cor'lana in his own way, judging by the words and his tone of voice, but it perhaps means more from Dolan, a servant and giver of judgment from Daeus, to hear these words.

"Thank you," Cor'lana murmurs, wiping the tears away. She's still close to Dolan. "I just--I have to remember. He may have been like me, but he and I walked different paths. And I wasn't going to take the path he wanted me to take. Even if I did want to--I don't think he would ever have truly been happy."

Her mouth twists again. "How awful--that he was destined for tragedy in that sense. How awful life can be. But he also chose to say no to anything that would have resulted in a different kind of happiness. I said yes to living, long ago. I said yes to happiness, long ago. More than I ever dreamed of having. That makes me lucky--but it also makes me someone who made her happiness real."

She looks up at Dolan. "Does that make any sense?" A small smile finds her face.

When she lets go, Dolan does. He's not restraining her in any way. "Just remember, Lana. We ain't none of us automatons. Fate and destiny is bullshit. Your choices got you where you are now. My choices and the choices of others got me where I am now. It's the same with him. He chose to turn away." The lone brown eye is open. "You're getting it. Every man chooses his way. It's a shame he chose the one he did - for all of us. You chose yours, and so did I."

"I don't believe fully in fate and destiny in that the stars are fully fixed--but I do think some things are simply meant to be." Cor'lana's small smile blooms just a little wider. "Like how people meet and fall in love. You and your fiancée, Telamon and I--that might simply be my romantic notion, however."

She's drying her eyes a little more now. "But even then, one has to make decisions that put them on the path of meeting that someone. You can't meet the love of your life by choosing to hide in your house all day. If I'd stayed in that little house in Rune--I would have never moved here. I would have never met Telamon. Nor would I have ever met my most cherished of friends. And then there are the hard choices--the ones that you and I have made. For knowledge, for growth. For survival."

Pothy pipes up. "I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing to learn. Both of you did that, you know?" he says. "Granted, I am a little biased--but Dolan's right."

"You don't have to do anything except die, Lana." Dolan reaches into a belt pouch and pulls out a square of silk cloth, offering it to her. "I made peace with it, you know. It's harder to accept the things you didn't choose, sometimes, but - it's about the choices we make, not what's handed to us, yeah? You can get handed a turd in a roll, but it's your choice whether to bite into it or not."

The last comment puts a wide grin onto Cor'lana's face as she takes the silk cloth, using it to dry her tears. "I wouldn't," she says, "but I wouldn't put it past Pothy."

Pothy makes an aghast noise. "Let's go eat some snacks," the bird offers instead, taking flight from Cor'lana's shoulder to land on the living room table. "We have more of that yummy snack you brought us a while back!"

"And I still need to tell you about what happened most recently," Cor'lana says as she goes to follow Pothy, taking her seat at the sofa. "Although--I imagine word's already spread about it."

Chuckling, Dolan finally relaxes and follows her into the house, seeing that she's at least worked out some of what was eating her. "Yeah," he says, trailing her in and taking a seat in his usual spot. "Looks like something blew up your front door. What happened?"

"Two imposters, one wearing Seldan's face and one wearing his husband's face, were walking up to the house. I was coming back from the Temple of Vardama and they tried to ask me to invite them in." Cor'lana's face is sour as she recounts it. "The real Seldan, however, was right behind them, as well as a collective of other people. I..."

She sighs. "I was so worn out from coming back from mourning that I yelled at everyone to step away from the house and leave me alone. The real Seldan was gracious enough to give me a scroll for privacy--I still need to write him a letter and apologize, because he didn't deserve to be yelled at. Unfortunately, I walked up to the door, and..."

Cor'lana makes an exploding gesture. "Well, it blew up. Seldan saved me from the damage--which I need to thank him for in my letter--and the fiends were gone."

"You found them, then." Dolan grins easily, an approving expression. "Good." What is less good, though, is the rest of the tale, and he sits forward in the chair, the easy manner of the grown-up farm kid sharpening into the focused and driven inquisitor in the blink of an eye. "You were being harassed by-" he stops short. "Impostors. I presume that Sir Seldan's someone you know. How'd you know which was which? Are you sure which one's the impostor?"

"Seldan has a way of speaking, even to friends, that he does not stray from," Cor'lana says with a small smile. "That was the primary key, in addition to the imposter Seldan waving his sword around in offense. They are poor actors if you know the subject they're impersonating well."

Cor'lana gestures in the direction of the door. "I'm certain it was to send a message. I know it was. The writing by the door I read was: 'nowhere is safe'. Clearly, trying to rattle me and make me feel like my home is not a home. It won't work. I did not bend even for the Tyrant himself--and I will not bend before fiends."

"You think they're fiends? How fucking many of the thrice-damned things _are_ there in this city?" Dolan snarls, sitting forward, unworried about drinks or snacks. "My sword is yours, Lana, and never mind what I said before. Nowhere's safe for these fiends, including the Hells." There is a lot of bravado there in the words. "I've got to protect Andie, but she isn't the only one I care about. She can't be. I assume Tel knows?"

"I agree entirely. Tel knows; he's the one who replaced the door. I don't know how he got it done on such short notice, but that man has connections in ways that astound me, sometimes," Cor'lana replies. That fondness of hers sets into her voice and face, just for a moment--like how mention of Andelena puts something similar into Dolan's--before she returns back to the firm expression of the woman on the warpath.

"It must have to do with the demon wearing Aya's face--the one who came here and throttled Tel a year ago. It has to be. Pull Daechir out of the prison, and they get mad. They get petty. They decide to strike back." Cor'lana's full of the same bravado--and then she stops to consider. "I will call on you, Brydion--but only if Andelena is truly safe. I don't want what happened at your Temple to happen again if that's what happens when she's alone, and I _know_ you've been feeling it, too. I would in your shoes."

"Yeah. She's not going to be safe until that cult her mother's funding is behind bars, Lana." No room for doubt hides in Dolan's words or firm, determined tone. "If I can help, I will, but now that we know that those are two different fiends -" He shakes his head, his posture ramrod-straight. "If you need me, call on me, but my focus has got to be Jal'goroth and his cult. For my family's sake, and for hers. Then we go after the portal, yeah?"

Cor'lana nods, empathy in her eyes for everything Dolan and his fiancee are going through. "I completely understand, Dolan. You focus on keeping her safe. Keeping your family safe. I have others I can call on for this matter if need be--and of course, the portal."

Her eyes darken again. "I want Marsward Seraquoix's head on a pike. I want the Red Maw defeated. I want to beat back the Hound so that it does not win."

"I want all of those things, Lana, and the faster we do it, the better. I want to sleep soundly at night." A flick of Dolan's remaining flesh-and-blood eye says that he knows he probably won't get that anytime soon. "I don't think Jal'goroth is the enemy you got that sword for, and I'd think long and hard before you use it on anything else."

He sighs and sits back in the chair, then, relaxing as much as he can into the cushion with a breastplate on. "But why Seraquoix? I know he's mixed up in all this, but I don't know a a damned thing about the man."

"Zalgiman told me--Marsward was the one who brought him in. When he was a young man, lost in the world and feeling abandoned by the gods, Marsward found him, asked him about his life--promised him power. Promised him strength. Promised him _friendship_. But he didn't disclose the price until it was too late." Cor'lana feels bitter about all of this. "It sounds to me like Seraquoix--he's the leader. He's the original. And while Zalgiman was still actively involved in evil--I cannot forgive a man who took advantage of someone who was lost and brought him into darkness."

She looks at Dolan. "You can understand. He and I were alike in that the gods did not speak to either of us--until I found Vaire. Until I prayed to Her. And She responded. For I am a poet and... I think that Her tempestuous nature suits my own somewhat mercurial one all the same. Just as I feel you are befitting of the Knight."

The last part brings an _aw, shucks_ grin to Dolan's lips. "I try. I don't always do things His way, but -" He shrugs. "Sometimes you have to do it the dirty way. Like now." He listens to the rest of hit, though, the smile fading. "He's not so different from Kol, then." For a moment, his gaze goes into the middle distance. "That ain't excuse what he did, and it ain't change nothing I said. "I still say that if we shut down the portal and get rid of the Maw, they'll all turn on each other."

Cor'lana nods softly. "It's true. It doesn't excuse it. It only makes me want to prevent it from happening ever again--and to bring peace to the man that was. I think--I think my mourning will truly be over then."

Pothy looks up from the snacks. He's turned quite yellow around his mouth and throat, since he's been gorging on the mustard-dusted morsels, but that does not bother him one bit. "Dolan's right," he says. "If they have no reason to be allies... And if they blame each other... Then they will turn. 'Friendship' doesn't work the same for those of evil like it does for you two. And it's not like how it works for me and Dolan." He omits Cor'lana in a rather cheeky little brother way, looking up at Dolan with those bright blue eyes of his.

Dolan looks over at Pothy when he speaks, and offers his hand to the raven with a grin. "Evil doesn't have friends. It's got allies of convenience, and family. Some evil people have those they love, and they'll defend 'em. Some don't give a shit about nobody but themselves, but it ain't the same thing. You leaving any for me, Pothy?"

"I saved plenty for you, Dolan!" Pothy protests, and he gestures to the snacks with a sweep of his beak. "I always share snacks. Even if Cor'lana doesn't need to eat."

Cor'lana clears her throat at Pothy, followed by a playful smirk at Pothy that's not fully nice. "Does that mean I should buy _less_ snacks for you?"

"NO!" Pothy looks at Dolan pleadingly. "We have to buy lots of snacks so I can share them with Dolan! And Telamon! And all of your other friends! You never know who's going to come over, and friends all deserve happiness and snacks."

Warm laughter bubbles from Dolan, and he gets to his feet, walking over to the table where Pothy is eating. "I'd love to have some." He reaches to scoop up a handful of the dusted snacks, making sure to leave plenty for the bird. "Thank you, Pothy." He pops a couple of the bites into his mouth, crunching thoughtfully as he returns to his chair. "Let me and Andie handle Jal'goroth, and I'll call on you if we need help. You'll do the same with this demon after the pair of you. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," Cor'lana replies, smiling as Pothy and Dolan both dine on the yellow-dusted snacks. "It keeps us focused on our respective causes, rather than spreading ourselves thin. But the moment you need my aid--call for me."

Pothy seems content with this arrangement, too, at least judging by the happy noises he makes as both he and Dolan chow on the snacks. Sometimes a little brother is just happy to be around a big brother--even if he's just talking with their sister.