RP:It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

This is a Warrior's Guild RP.

Summary: All's not well with the Khatalians. Both Lionel and Brand are seemingly on the verge of breakdowns and Khitti's just doing her best to live.

The Tranquility, Cenril Wharf

A few days had passed since Kahran’s attack on Cenril. On one particular morning after, one very particular redhead woke up with those memories she’d lost quite intact and with the urge to completely annihilate the captain that’d been lying to her over the past 2 months. Lucky for him, she didn’t. Even luckier still, he was allowed to go back to sleep after the situation diffused. That redhead, who was of course going by Khitti again, didn’t go back to sleep. How could she go to sleep when there was people to inform of her being very much alive?

Khitti would leave Brand in peace (instead of in pieces) and headed to the library. There, in the solitude she so desperately needed to get her mind straight again, she wrote a letter to Lionel. ‘Please come to the ship tonight! We need to talk about what’s happened. There’ll be food too! - Red’. (As if Lionel really needed a reason like food to go see his family.) It was worded in such a way that he’d be ignorant to her full recovery from that little ordeal of dying and sent off to his quarters at the inn.

Khitti still didn’t sleep even after this was completed. No, instead she continued to spend her time in the library until it was time to prepare the food and get ready for Lionel’s arrival. Her most recent visit with Meri, her first art lesson, had given her an idea. When Brand finally awoke, he’d be given explicit instructions not to spoil the surprise right off the bat. You’ve been lying this long, Brand. You can keep doing it just a little bit longer.

Hasn’t Brand lied enough for one lifetime? Alas, he’s still too close to the proverbial doghouse to argue with Khitti on the matter. It’s on his mind, though, as the day proceeds. The ship is in port, and so much of Brand’s day is taken up by odds and ends: finalize paperwork, gather feedback on operations from the crew, ensure the ship’s itinerary is compatible with both the jobs they’ve been given and any essential crew member’s requested days of leave… This is by far the least glamorous part of being a captain, and it’s the part that tends to take up the most time, too. Sailing about or playing rescuer and hero to Lithrydelian crises is only a minute part of the whole, though it tends to the be the only part that anyone not a captain pays mind to. At any rate, he’s worked up quite the appetite by the time he’s finished; Lionel will come to find him having already sampled Khitti’s trays of delectables -- and curled up beneath a blanket in one of the chairs, just about ready for the post-food coma to take him to dreamland for the night. (It’s not even midnight, Brand. You’re getting old.)

Lionel could have gone for the wooden plank, but he’s opted for the broken bottle instead. He could have dodged when the beefy hand of Erich van Houten came at his head, but he’s opted to take the blow and collapse to his knees as the world rings incessantly around his ears. He could have aimed for the big man’s own knees from the angle of his fall, and he would have struck hard and true, but he’s waited for van Houten to lean over for another assault and he’s smashing sharp glass shards into his big head. It cuts his cheek to pieces, and the force of it knocks bits of glass into flesh. The crowd roars in approval as van Houten loses his balance and knocks over three chairs on his way to breaking a table in defeat. Two boyish sailors Lionel had never met before tonight lift his tired arms up to the tune of an even louder crowd, announcing him the victor in a no-holds-barred match that has left his nose half a mess, his jawline covered with blood, his bare chest fresh-bruising in six shades of yellow and his third crimson button-up shirt in tatters in two nights.

“Let it end.” Esche dabs the cloth in the heated bowl of water, cleaning blood from Lionel’s battered chest. Lionel’s breaths are somewhat ragged and blood has seeped into the beard which has blossomed on his unwashed face. “You would let tavern brawlers kill you at the dawn of the very war that drove you back here in the first place.” Lionel clutches his fists as pain shoots through him; Esche was gentle after the first bout of violence here at The Winking Nod, but by now he’s begun exhibiting all the delicate movements of a bronze-beaked Stymphalian Bird. “They won’t kill me,” Lionel says slowly. “They can’t kill me.” He grabs one of the nearby rags from the table and clamps down hard with his teeth right before Esche applies stinging healing ointments to his collarbone, so that instead of a shout he has a muffled cry. Spitting the rag to the floor and reaching for the dredges of his wine, Lionel gulps it down eagerly and tosses the emptied brass goblet wayward. “Would that it were so,” Esche answers knowingly. “There was a letter. ‘Red’ wants to see you.” Lionel spits out a piece of one of his molars. “It can wait.” The elf slaps him and Lionel’s world spins around him not for the first time this evening. “You have run out of excuses not to see them. If you delay any longer, you may begin to lose their trust. I suspect you will believe the alternative to be even worse: their worry for you will put them in greater danger.” Lionel snorts derisively and lifts off from his wooden chair, grabbing his cloak and wrapping it around himself in a haste. “I wasn’t finished,” Esche protests. “No, you’re done, Esche. That’s enough ‘healing’ for tonight. Greater danger?” His tone takes on full mockery. “What ‘greater danger’ can they possibly be in than what’s already come to pass? Don’t talk to me about greater danger. Don’t talk to me about anything.” He swings the door open and leaves their rented room; behind him, he hears something about the importance of staying hydrated after a fight, but it’s background noise, an unwanted bubble boiling at the back of his mind.

Bearded, with specks of blood still down his chin and swollen discoloration on his cheekbones, Lionel has arrived.

Lionel was here… and he was an absolute mess. Khitti had to resist the urge to ask ‘what the actual frakking hell’ of the Steward, but it was a difficult task to be sure. “Knight-Commander,” she’d say politely, with a warm, albeit saddened smile. She’d moved from her spot on the arm of the chair Brand was nestled into, nudging him a bit so that he might see just what’s become of the other Catalian since the attack, and went to pour Lionel a cup of tea. Earl grey. Hot. “I’m sorry. You must still be recovering from the other day. I’d hoped it’d been a long enough time for such to pass.” The smile faded somewhat, but retained its sadness. “There’s things to discuss and only one thing is more important than the obvious.” Something felt off. Those wounds looked to fresh to be from the other day.

Khitti, with a sigh, lead him to the collection of couches and chairs, urging him to sit and drink the tea she’d given him. “Here. This is for you.” A small, thin sketchbook was handed over; it was the ‘more important’ thing--cheering him up, even if just a little, was the most important thing.

Inside, Lionel would find a sketchbook of drawn out memories. Their first meeting--and first fight--inside Vailkrin’s castle started it off, and was followed by every other memory they’d shared from the incident with the spider in Vailkrin’s cemetery, to her rescue from the dragon’s cave. Brand even appeared in them after awhile; he was part of their family too, after all. But lastly, and it served as the first best memory she’d had of Lionel, was the scene that’d played out in Xalious’ library. He’d been sitting in there, pouring over some book about the Second Age, and the Immortals, and the friends and enemies he’d made along the way. Khitti’d found him there, of course, and accused him of treachery, but things soon changed as they exchanged pasts.

The sketches were rough at best, but were given enough detail in the short time it took Khitti to create them. Their creator, didn’t say anything, however. She just waited, in silence, and watched him expectantly. Would there be confusion? Some small amount of happiness? She wanted to see it all. Underneath where the sketchbook had laid on the table, was the very book Lionel had been reading that night--or, rather, a copy of it.

Brand has had all the day to imagine what form Khitti’s big reveal might take. Unfortunately, by the time the moment comes he’s expecting something humorous and pranklike rather than sentimental, and then the humor never comes. He’s prepared his palate all wrong, as it turns out. The sketchbook is a sweet idea made strange by his expectations, like being given chocolate milk while expecting whiskey. He’s peering over Lionel’s shoulder as the book is leafed through, and as this happens he adjusts his posture and expression from something expectantly jovial to something more suitable to the tone of the occasion. Or he tries, anyway; Brand is bad at sentiment. His demeanor comes across more like an introvert unexpectedly exposed to a stranger’s life story. “Oh! Okay. I see what you did there. That’s neat.” Brand -never- uses the word ‘neat,’ but in this case all other suitable adjectives have failed him.

Lionel seats himself, as would be expected of him, and sips his tea, as would be expected of him. That it should happen to be one of his favorite brews doesn’t even register, and if it had then he’d surely have assumed it was Sundance’s doing, or even Esche’s. He pulls away from the tea and coughs into his hand, unprepared for any level of inquiry into his obvious physical state. It hadn’t occurred to the man that there might be questions. It hadn’t occurred to him that there’d be anything at all. He opens his mouth to speak, to tell this ‘Red’ directly and succinctly that he’s hurt because he’s been throwing himself into fights at the bar.

The sketchbook serves as tapestry, finely detailing numerous early instances of probable meddling by Kahran and Lionel’s obsession with it. Long before he knew the man’s name -- he still cannot recall the man’s face -- Kahran or others like him were harming. Killing. Orcs out of portals, undead out of portals, spiders out of portals, and here and there a rough-drawn portrait of Lionel poring over it all, with some book in his hand on ancient lore as he thrust himself into his work immediately upon coming ashore. The same book that lay before him now. Lionel flinches, and his hand recoils. He was on the right track 18 months ago; that visit to Caedan Navarre’s prison cell was the only diversion he had ever intended to afford, and then it would have been nothing but the work, and maybe if he’d never stopped to relate with other people, never dawdled by taking Frostmawian mantle, never fought the saurians, the insectoids, Macon’s Larket… ‘no’, he remembers in silence. ‘All of those things and more, they were all related to this in some unseen way. It, too, was the work.’ He breathes a sigh of relief toward himself, but he can’t evade that part about relations; every minute Lionel spent opening himself up to burgeoning friendships in any way could have been done on a broader scale, should have been done by gathering rulers into the same rooms together and bringing forward demonstrable evidence that Lithrydel wasn’t free of its demons. The sketches have all been drawn by a friend, drawn by a companion, drawn by someone with deep and appreciable knowledge of his person. Drawn by…

Realization arises in Lionel’s pained face. It took too long, because Lionel is almost entirely elsewhere, and because some of these sketches have in fact depicted much of that elsewhere, besides. He leans into his chair and places both hands in his lap. “Was it the battle?” He asks quietly. “Is that what prompted it?”

Khitti couldn’t help but grin once the realization hit her friend, the one she’d deemed worthy enough of the title ‘brother’, “It started the day Brand and Onyx took me to relearn archery, actually. It’s been little by little since then. The vision that -I- had was strangely enough of my own death, and all of yours, on the bridge. But it wasn’t specifically that--it was the portals. Those are Shadow Plane portals, Lionel. I can feel it. It’s not like mine, though. Maybe because it’s being opened from the other side? I don’t know.” That grin had long since disappeared with the mention of the Shadow Plane, for that reminded her of another problem (not like she’d actually forgotten about it), but she didn’t bring that up just yet. “All of this has been done to say… basically… that I want the two of you to train me. Weapons, magic, hand-to-hand; any of it or all of it. Whatever you think would be best. You had friends--family--before to help you, and you still have it now. I won’t be cooped up in this ship any longer while people are dying.” She’d still have to go to Vailkrin for magic things of a darker nature, but that was obvious.

“You’ve been cooped up for long enough,” Brand admits, “but if you’ve got your memories back, what do you need trainin’ for? You’ll be slower and weaker now, sure, but shouldn’t the training you’ve had before still hold mostly true?” Brand lacks experience in this regard. In fact, he’s the only one in the room who is human, has everyday human attributes, and has never been anything else (disregarding any issues raised by Dominic’s short-lived existence, but Brand does that easily enough these days). “Shouldn’t be in much of the fightin’, anyway. There’s the whole matter of the, er…” Brand isn’t sure how to make the announcement and instead stares pointedly at Khitti’s middle.

“She’s pregnant, not an invalid.” The also-supremely-inhuman Onyx cuts in. Brand jumps in his chair but cannot at first locate the source of the fright. Onyx, as it turns out, is seated on the top rung of the bookcase ladder, this year’s issue of some scholarly journal sprawled out across their lap. “ ‘First time parents almost universally approach maternity with more fragility than is warranted.’ It says as much right here.”

Lionel grimaces. The Shadow Plane. “How the hell could…?” He cuts himself off. Lionel should know better than to question the capacity of tainted things to spread. Immediately, his mind races to implications, permutations, potential revelations. What does a connection to the Shadow Plane portend? How can they use this? How has Kahran used this? Is this why the bastard’s powers have seemed so different from the things Lionel had seen in the war? Or is that some other matter altogether? Multiple people are talking, cutting him off from his inner world with its pragmatic equations. One of them has declared Khitti’s pregnancy. Several days ago this would have elicited some measure of shock. It no longer has the power to do so. If a thing feels probable, it’s been dropped into the equation. If a thing feels improbable, it’s discarded. If Lionel himself does a thing which may actively damage their efforts -- like get himself beaten-up multiple nights in a row, for example -- it circumvents the equation altogether. But this is not such a thing; this is a thing that has felt like a probable eventuality, and so it passes by and is applied accordingly. It’s also a complete and utter frakking travesty, ten layers of tragedy; this child’s odds are slim, and if their parents are alive much longer and the child dies first, then that may prove to be a harrowing enough ordeal to take them out as sure as if Kahran himself had slid the knife between their ribs. “If we do not fight, we will die,” Lionel announces to the room, in a sharp enough tone to cut through what has already been said. “It is good to have you back. Training will begin at first light.” A sudden headache almost overwhelms him.

“F-first light? Now, hold on a damned minute.” The sharp tone that accompanied his words had not gone unnoticed and it prompted a frown from the redhead. Khitti directed her thoughts first towards Brand, brows furrowed somewhat in concern, “If you think I’ll be fine, then you know I trust your judgement, -but-...” She paused long enough to gather her thoughts and sighed, “The speed is the main issue. There’s a whole lot of difference between fighting as a vampire and fighting as a human--a pregnant human even. The morning sickness is mostly gone, which helps immensely, but I need work in the evasion department. Or have you forgotten how many near death experiences I’ve had over the past 2 years?” And, actual death too. Don’t forget that.

Khitti shifted her attention towards Onyx next, “I appreciate your backup on the matter, but also that is absolutely not the way I wanted this to be made known.” Another sigh.

And finally, “Lionel. You and I aren’t doing any sort of training whatsoever until I know where your head’s at. What exactly is going on up there right now? Because those wounds are fresh. Too fresh to be from whoever the hell that was the other night. I’m not lacking a brain; I had amnesia. I would’ve frakking noticed regardless of what memories were here and what weren’t. Plus, you were just told that I’m pregnant, which means you’re going to be an uncle, and that didn’t phase you whatso-frakking-ever. I feel like there’s cause for concern here.”

Death couldn’t touch Khitti until recently. As far as Brand’s concerned, that is the truth. Her dying once has broken the spell, and before that none of it counted. And so it is that Khitti’s words, reminding him just how very prone she is to near-death experiences, settle around Brand like an itchy, suffocating shawl. He kicks off his blanket as if that’s connected to the problem and rises from his chair. “Evasion. Yes. Y’know the best evasion? It’s to not be in the gorram fightin’ in the first place.” He pivots now, gives Onyx a look of palpable irritation, and then it’s back to Khitti. “You’ve got your bow, n’ you’ve got magic. There’s no reason you should have to be on the front line, even if you should insist on helpin’. Stick to where you’re safer.” And to Lionel, “frak, but she’s right. You look like maybe you’ve got a deathwish, n’ what kind of person is that to train someone to -not- die?”

Brand ’s heart is pounding ever more loudly the longer he talks. By the time he’s concluded it’s a panicked drumming in his ears, and his hands have taken up shaking something fierce. He curls them into fists and wills the cadence of his breath to slow. Three breaths later, he’s begun to reclaim some tiny measure of composure. “Maybe this -is- a matter of fightin’ or dyin’, but that doesn’t mean you go runnin’ into death’s arms. Either of you.”

Lionel rubs his eyes through Brand’s declaration. He smiles tiredly, lopsidedly. It’s a lot less convincing than the gross facsimiles of a positive mental state that he used to accomplish. “I’m okay.” His answer’s a bad salve for them both. He’s very quickly replaced the sharp tone with something striated in too-chipper inflection. “This is… it’s training, too.” He stands up and waves awkwardly at his own face. “No rest for the weekend, or, whatever they say.” Where is the darker, somber Lionel from mere moments ago? He’s still here, really. It’s plastered all over his terrible acting, written in an invisible ink that’s bluntly plain to see. The headache roils over him. It’s an incessant buzzing. It just won’t go away. “An uncle, you say. I’d better, uh, I think I’d better sit down for that.” And so he does. Again. His heart’s racing and he feels a thirst engulf his throat. Quickly, he gulps down his tea, but somehow it barely seems to wet his mouth. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them he’ll probably never be an ‘uncle’. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them they’ll probably all be dead before Khitti gives birth.

Lionel hunches forward. Elbows on the table, he rests his head on his hands and sighs into his palms. “I’m not okay. I’m really… not. But I can’t… um, I can’t talk about it.” He sniffs and looks up, peering between Khitti, Brand, and Onyx with sad blue eyes silently pleading. “I just can’t. Right now, I need us to just… be together. So, let’s just be together. Please.” Lionel suppresses the pangs of guilt for giving himself a moment’s rest; he can work it off with another brawl. He suppresses the terror waving through his chest when he looks at his friends and almost sees their corpses looking back. He suppresses the urge to vomit. “Who’s hungry?”

Khitti listened to them both in silence, that look of concern that’d been plastered on her face shifting into one of irritation--and most of it reserved for Brand. But, just as Lionel said, he wasn’t okay, and surely starting an argument with the father of her child would make it worse. So, she didn’t. Not yet. Not ‘til they were alone. Lionel’s worries were almost as obvious as Brand’s, although he didn’t say it--it practically radiated from him--and it only made Khitti’s irritation flare up more. Maybe it was the pregnancy that was causing it, or maybe she was tired of talking about death. That’s all she’d done for years and now she wanted to do away with it. She wanted to live, and their worries weren’t helping things.

Khitt put up a mask of her own, one with an easy, yet warm smile, something that might help reassure them both. For now. “That’s my secret, Lionel. I’m always hungry.”