tushanshu_logs | A Revelation in the Light of Day (January Catch All)

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A Revelation in the Light of Day (January Catch All)

Characters: Valdis and Open
Date: January "2017"
Location: Throughout Keeliai
Situation: Various
Warnings/Rating: In Starters

Her memory loss in November hadn't left any visible scars, but its return had been less than pleasant. Thus, apart from spending time with the kedanese children, she had mostly kept to herself in December. Trying to sort out the conflicting memories that belonged to her and those that belonged to Meira. In the end, the memories had merged and she was able to recall in detail the events of November. Some of those she wished she didn't, but others might prove useful.

Now that she was back together, she could focus on what she really cared about, getting back to work at the Dojo and hunting down the cultists. The Cultists had been fairly silent throughout the Chihuelans visit and the Turtle Move, but she didn't suspect they would be for long. Then there was the matter of Yunxu's salt hoarding, Jintou's current state, her hunt for Celaunn and conflict with Zanru, not to mention those zombie kedan who had tried to take her soul gem and the visions from the turtle. She barely had time to think about anything else when her head was spinning with so many thoughts. There was so much to be done and she couldn't do it alone.

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It had almost gotten to the point where Raine might have interrupted them when the two separated regardless, Cain starting up and Valdis stumbling away. She hesitated a moment, the practical considerations of which one would need assistance more warring with the instinct to go to family first.

"Do both of you remember where you are?" she asked, forcing her voice calm though her heart was speeding. "You're safe; you're in the Hotel. Nothing is going to hurt you here."

She crossed to the bed, took one of Cain's hands without preamble. Here and now. She wasn't overly worried about his physical safety, but mentally was a different story, going by the look on his face. "Valdis," she said aloud, reaching toward the other woman with the hand that held her staff. "Can you stand? Do you need healing?" And a white circle was already spinning beneath her, ready to do something; Raine would not be surprised if Valdis' healing abilities were out of sorts again, as it seemed to happen when the Void was acting up one way or another.

There was a lot going on in such a small room. Valdis reacting at the same time didn't frighten him, and he tilted his head to watch her own stumble yet couldn't bring himself to move or to catch her. It was like his heart had climbed into his throat and he could hardly move for want to just keep breathing. He couldn't place what had happened and it made the intangible feelings all the more dangerous with nowhere to go.

His hand closed over Raine's tight and warm. He had enough control not to crush or cling but he needed that anchor more than he cared to admit. Cain breathed, looked at their enclosed hands, then up to Raine. He tried to quirk a smile for her in encouragement and the attempt only wrenched his heart more; a grimace came instead.

"I remember," he said after a moment. "Not what happened... but I remember what we were doing. Something happened at the end, there."

Her chest hurt, so she took a deep breath as an experiment, sharp pain rising in the place where Fenrir had touched her in the memory. Was it a memory? The Void was writhing around in concerned anger, adding to her confusion. Then Raine's voice broke through the haze of emotions and the room came into focus as Jacob spoke. She covered her face with her hands, wishing that she didn't remember every detail of his suffering, wishing that she had never seen that...whatever it was at the end.

Valdis didn't want to move, she just wanted to forget the image of Meira's soul being shattered, of Jacob's brother's death, of the torture. She had made a mess of things and she was working herself into a panic. She need to slow her breathing, needed to get a handle on herself.

We are sorry, the Void hissed gently, We shall not do it again.

"It doesn't matter," she sobbed in reply, "This was a mistake."

That was something Raine could have told them herself; but she bit that back, since it wouldn't help. And it would have been valuable, in any case, if Valdis could control this ability.

Raine wished for Anton, then, but he had been warned of the experiment and would likely not make an appearance unless his wards were further tested. And she could hardly leave the room right now, as it was, with Cain holding her hand tightly in return, and she wouldn't want to leave either of them in this state anyway. "Valdis," she said steadily. "Come here, please." She put her staff down, let the arte splinter into nothingness, and extended her free hand to Valdis.

Not yet a good time to ask what exactly had gone wrong, with both of them barely coherent, and so Raine steadied herself and waited.

It wouldn't do to linger in this. There was no point when he had no point of reference, and Cain was already trying to shore himself back up. It was something he had done hundreds of thousands of times, every time a little easier than the last, except now it was like he'd been broken down near the base and had to try again from the start. Swallowing harsh, he pulled his legs closer to him and shifted as if to make room for Valdis, or maybe lessen the space he was taking up. Confidence that usually emanated like an aura was muted, Romulus' quiet replacing the space.

He breathed, let things slowly return to their proper places. This pain wasn't going to go away easily but he could at least bring himself to work around it. That was how he always did it, had to process in order to function. Little sparks of anxiety and nerves and pain echoed across his subconscious. They'd definitely poked something bad in there.

"It's okay, Valdis," he said. Whatever he had seen in there, he didn't intend to share. His own hurts were not something she needed to carry, whatever it was she saw. "See?"

Raine's calm nature was strong and Valdis latched onto it, shoving aside the fears and pain to try to make her emotions steady like the healers. Despite his efforts to decrease his emotions, Valdis could still feel his uncertainty, his pain. She had done that, she had allowed her power to hurt him because she had become emotional. Just one more reason that emotions shouldn't be a part of her. She looked up when he moved, his voice more reassuring than the emotions wafting from him, but the fact that he didn't seem to blame her did wonders for her fear.

She reached out, half standing to take Raine's hand and slowly moving to sit on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice steadier as she began to calm.

The Void purred like a cat. See? Everything will be fine

Raine nodded briefly, an approving sort of a gesture, and squeezed both their hands. "All right," she said, still calm, hoping they might somehow take some of that from her. "Take the time you need to calm yourselves, but it would likely be useful to figure out exactly what went wrong sooner, rather than later. For instance, whether it was a measure of the skill, or the people involved."

That was all the urging she was going to give them, however, judging both still in a compromised state, and Raine would stand there and provide as much of a grounding influence as she could for as long as was necessary.

Being helpless didn't sit well with Cain. He was all for vulnerability and working through it, but this wasn't something to be worked through. This was something dredged up that he needed control over again, and in the meanwhile he would help Valdis sort through the same. Those things he saw at the end there... it was impossible to miss the meaning behind it. Not exactly the best of moments to have dredged up, however accidentally Cain may have done it.

"All I know is that we somehow switched places in the end," Cain said slowly, watching Valdis without changing his grip on Raine's hand. He still needed that connection. "But that wasn't your fault, Valdis."

Valdis took several deep breaths, long and slow to relieve her racing heart, ignoring the pain in her chest until it began to fade. Raine's words and presence were reassuring, but her eyes flicked to meet Jacob's when he spoke. If he remembered switching places, then he had to remember what they had seen, which meant that it hadn't simply been a nightmare.

"It is." She croaked, pausing and lifting a hand to touch her throat, less certain now that she hadn't actually screamed, but her mind had always been a strange place, "I never should have tried this. I should have known that the life of an immortal...would intrigue the Void too much."

How could she tell him that she had seen those things when he didn't seem to remember her being there?

"I...don't even know what we saw on my side."

Except she did and the lie was probably perfectly evident.

"While you are the person who knows the Void best, you are not responsible for its actions," Raine said steadily. Save the disapproval for later. "It's also true that if you do wish to gain control of this ability, it's best to attempt it with someone durable and consenting."

As much as Raine disliked that, too. But there was value in learning control over dangerous abilities. She had told Solomon that -- years ago, now -- and she still meant it, as much as the thought of having Cain hurt bothered her.

"Are you saying the ability rebounded?" she asked aloud, curiosity temporarily overtaking calm.

It was obvious that Valdis wasn't telling the truth, judging by her own shaken nature. Cain himself knew he had things lurking in his own psyche but they were nothing more than memories now, and nothing that personally affected Valdis. Maybe that wasn't it and he was distancing himself too much, yet he still found himself for wanting to know what she had seen in his soul.

"Something like that," he said, a slight upturn to his tone for Raine's curiosity. Calm was well and good, but returning to status quo helped him even more. "It looks like we can't remember our own sides of it. Can you tell me what you saw? You don't need to hold back."

She was quiet, trying to decide if she felt like arguing with Raine, but there wasn't any point. Raine might have been partly correct, but if she hadn't let Jacob's emotions get the best of her, then she might have possessed better control.

"The Void is attracted to suffering," Valdis said slowly, "It found..what were probably some of the darkest memories you possess. There was...a lab, people in white coats experimenting with your healing abilities, that one was quite clear. The other is hazy, but your pain and fear was quite evident and the last one, before you forced the rebound into my plane...I saw your brother die."

"Fucking Texas," Cain muttered, more of a sigh than pure words. He recognized the first and the last, and his mind teetered alarmingly at the second. He knew that one but it wasn't something to talk about, not even a question of it, and thankfully her description left it vague enough that he could hide it behind not knowing what she was referring to.

This was all the fault of that unwilling trip to Texas. He had thought about it, briefly, before they'd started. Hands at his sides, a reminder of being tied down (of his arm and the length he had to go in order to free himself), and that must have been where the Void had latched onto. His breathing stuttered at the mention of his brother, the thought and reminder, and he had no way to deny that: they had definitely been to that memory. It was so raw all of a sudden.

"Be glad that's all," he said eventually. There were more terrible things in plentiful numbers inside of his head gained through the eventuality of his lifespan. "Those were just... more recently-relevant. Likely, that was my fault."

Guilt, raw pain, perhaps a hint of fear continued to waft from Jacob, growing in intensity as she went on. She shook her head, "It would have found more had you not forced us out."

Immortality could be a curse. There was always going to be suffering that the immortal couldn't escape, loss, death and revival, but torture was not something she had experienced in all her years. Or at least in her memory, but there were memories that had been hidden from her and somehow Jacob had found the one that ruined everything.

"The dogs..." she said quietly, renewed tears coming to her eyes, "I'm sorry, Jacob, you must hate me."

That was another thing. Cain had managed to force them out? He couldn't imagine it had been all under his own power; something else might have been wrong, or maybe Valdis had been helping when she didn't realize. He was just too powerless for that in comparison to these magical giants all around him.

Seeing her continue to fall into the pain of the memories, Cain frowned. His hand held to Raine's more tightly, unsure of where she was going with this. The dogs, of course, were not something he wanted to think about. He'd had many pets and beasts of burden over the ages but canines had never been part of that; he still couldn't bear the idea. "It isn't your fault," he said. Maybe it needed to be said more clearly. "You didn't set those dogs loose on us."

It was no longer his memories that were painful, it was the one that he had found, that he had somehow wrenched from an unknown place. She lifted her free hand and touched her chest lightly, relieved to find that there was no pain. She didn't know how much he had seen of the memory, but she suspected he hadn't realized what that memory had meant.

"No," she replied, rising and pulling her hand out of Raine's before stepping back to give the man room and a clear path to the door. "What you saw, the memory that you somehow summoned, that's...I didn't even know I had that memory," She shook her head, "That's the day I lost my soul. The day I became a monster like those dogs."

It was true, everything Amos had told her had been true. She covered her face with her hands, half laughing, half crying, both relieved and terrified. She was certain that the wards were going crazy by now, good thing she had had the foresight to tell Anton.

Raine watched the back-and-forth for a while, judging that Cain and Valdis were best served discussing it that way -- she had not shared the experience, after all -- but at this point she deemed it better to step in, rather than remaining simply a balancing influence.

Now she glanced between them, and realized that though she did not know all the details that Cain had missed something important about Valdis. "Cain," she said, quiet, insistent, and waited until he looked at her. "Valdis isn't human. The other form she commonly inhabits is canine. That's why she now assumes you must hate her."

She gave it a beat, and then added, more authoritatively, "And that's enough from both of you about monsters and fault. An experiment went wrong, and while I hope you've both learned something from the experience, arguing about who's to blame does nothing helpful. The only use is in discovering where those powers went astray."

Edited (thought clarification) 2016-01-24 05:07 (UTC)

Everything was rather off-kilter all of a sudden. Valdis wasn't making sense until Raine stepped in, measured and understanding, knowing more about the situation than he had. His heart felt like it had stopped, only not really because he knew how that felt, before it picked up the pace and a tremble came unbidden to his frame. Logic knew so much better, that someone with the body of a canine (even then only sometimes) was not the same thing. It wasn't, but his blood felt like ice.

This wasn't going to help. With the memory of Remus' death so fresh in his mind, emotions swirling like a storm with no port to find, he couldn't contain the movement he made. Halfway to sitting up, getting away, trying to separate himself from the thing that would haunt his dreams. His breath came out choked and he forced the next one out strained, even.

"No," he said. It wasn't directed at anyone. He just needed the denial, the force, the power of it. He said it again, another language, and another. Any one where he could say the same thing in a different way, letting it build up like a wall against the battering ram. He needed a moment before he could do anything else.

Rather than feel relief at Raine's words, Valdis shuddered. Jacob's reaction wasn't unexpected, but she was unprepared for the storm of emotions that followed Raine's words. The terror and anger slammed against the guilt and pain, causing a whirlwind that was becoming hard to handle. She couldn't shut the emotions off, her empathy causing her to feel Jacob's emotions just as deeply as her own. She was having a hard time breathing.

"Jacob," she whispered, shaking her head "You need to stop."

She could hear the many languages that came from the man as he repeated the word over and over. There was far too much feeling in each iteration, emotions that were too powerful to push aside. Her hands dropped to her sides as her vision blurred, her pulse pounding in her head. Her body suddenly failed her and she dropped to the floor, her vision darkening as she fought to separate the emotions out. She was tired, too tired, walking in Jacob's soul and the resulting emotional trauma was becoming too much. It would be easier to just let go, so she did, hopefully, if she dreamed, her sleep wouldn't be filled with pain and suffering.

And things were officially out of the range of what Raine could manage by herself, with both Cain and Valdis unresponsive in one way or another. She was too slow to do anything but watch Valdis collapse.

Emotional overload in both cases, manifested in different ways. Raine needed to separate them to prevent a feedback loop, but she was loath to leave Valdis unconscious by herself. She needed Anton.

At least he had been forewarned that something might happen, and was likely nearby. "I'll be right back," Raine said to Cain, and let go of him, striding quickly to the door and sticking her head out. She took a deep breath and yelled down the hall. "Anton!"

She would explain when he got there; there was little point in yelling an entire explanation down the hall. In the mean time she went back to the two of them, crouched to check Valdis' vital signs. She could move Valdis, but likely she wouldn't improve until Cain and his emotions were out of range.

Although Anton was admittedly concerned about this venture, he also fully agreed with the prospect of Valdis learning more control. Thrice he'd seen what happened when she didn't have it; he'd been her combatant the first, the one who talked her down the second, and someone to help with the aftermath the third.

But he was forewarned, so when the wards went off the first time, he made sure it was as a result of this experiment and not elsewhere. Then he went on with his tasks, keeping an eye on Valdis's room.

By the time Raine's strident call came down the stairs, Anton's keys were nearly burning and he was on his way up to check on them.

Anton quickened his pace and was at the door in seconds, entering without waiting for direction. He cast a quick eye across the situation. (His gist churned in his chest, at the sight of Valdis unconscious on the floor.) "What do you need?"

"I need to separate them." Satisfied for now with Valdis' physical signs, Raine beckoned Anton over. "They're fine physically, but learned rather more than they bargained for about each other from this experiment." A brief hesitation to debate the wisdom of making Cain's weakness known, but no: Raine trusted Anton. He would do nothing untoward with it, and in fact might need to know for Hotel management, if both were to retain occupancy here. "Cain has what appears to be a strong phobia of canines, and Valdis' other form was previously unknown. I believe it's causing a feedback loop with her empathy. I'll fill you in with more detail later, if Valdis doesn't, but for now physical separation is most pressing."

She was moving as she explained all this, though she waited until Anton had some hold of Valdis to do so, and Raine took up her staff in one hand and Cain's hand in the other, tugging at him till he responded, urging him up and toward the door. "I don't think she should be alone," Raine added, "but I believe you will be better for her than I."

Damn. Anton had wondered if this might have something to do with that, but he hadn't asked, because it hadn't been his business. Now it was, but now he knew. Raine had done the right thing. "I already know," Anton said quietly as he kneeled beside Valdis to cradle her to his chest. "He had an averse reaction to Yuri's canine companion. I asked Valdis to avoid her hound form in the Hotel after that, but I didn't tell her who would take issue."

He wasn't surprised she might have figured it out, though.

It would have been easier for Anton to carry Valdis downstairs, Anton thought, but when he followed Raine's movement he saw Cain obey the urging toward the door.

"I'll stay at least until you come back to exam her," he said, lifting Valdis to take her to the bed, and settle her comfortably against the pillow.

"I didn't," Raine said, brisk, "or I would have been more forceful about my concerns." But that was neither here nor there. Deal with the problem at hand. She shook her head, and nudged Cain out into the hall. "I'm going to take him downstairs to his room. With Valdis unconscious, hopefully that will be far enough."

Ideally she'd like Cain out of the Hotel entirely for now, perhaps at the Guild, but she would be remiss in not ensuring Valdis was well before leaving the building entirely.

"I'll be back to take a look at her as soon as I can," Raine said with a nod. "She seems to be fine, but her regeneration has done atypical things in the past. For now, though, I do believe your presence will be the most helpful." Valdis knew and loved Anton, and his calm could only do her well. A pause, at the door. "Thank you, Anton," Raine added, and was gone with Cain.

It wasn't as if Cain hadn't been listening to the whole thing. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he took it all in and processed it to try and decipher later; he just wasn't paying attention when his emotions had taken the wheel. That didn't happen so often anymore, and yet he was practically paralyzed with the idea of... of what? A dog with a person's intellect? It was so stupid when thought of like that, but it was true. Canines with cunning and tactical ability was a terrifying thought when just a regular dog baring its teeth had him backpedaling without any kind of supernatural foul play involved.

His thoughts were out of order. They had pulled things out of their boxes and left a mess, and he had to try to enforce some sort of containment before he could really stop and think. When Raine started pulling him out of the room, leading him to somewhere less cloying and charged, he squeezed her hand tighter without pausing in his numerous denials. It was helping, no matter how childish it probably was. He kept his head bowed until they got to his room, then pulled out his key with one last, soft utterance.

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