RP:Lacrymosa

Part of the Through The Looking-Glass: Return To Wonderland Arc

Summary: Khitti plans a romantic evening for Brand, so that it might be easier to break the news to him: they have to go back to the Shadow Plane and face Jessamine and James. Not so coincidentally, the aforementioned villains had been waiting for a chance like this to capture Dominic. A fight ensued on the Tranquility while Khitti and Brand were at the apartment, leaving both Brand's first mate, Dozla, and Khitti's spiderdoggo, Francis, wounded and without a Dominic.

Apartment Above The Bakery, Cenril

Khitti || Today was a very special day, or so it would seem to Brand. Khitti had instructed him to come to the apartment when his work for the day was done because she was making dinner! And dessert! And then there’d be sexy times. Maybe he forgot her birthday? No, that’s not until the fall. Maybe their anniversary? No, that’s also in the fall. MAYBE it was his own birthday! No, no. Wait, did they ever even figure out when his birthday was? Or even a new day to replace it? Probably not. Well, Brand would be left to ponder over this all day while he worked, as Khitti prepared stuff for later that night. She even managed to find Dozla before work started that day, so that she could give her an extra large tip for watching Dominic that night as well as a warning, “If you don’t see me after tonight, Brand murdered me.” Despite the warning, however, Khitti still went ahead with all of the things. She even grabbed Brand’s ever-filled bottle of wine to go with the steak and veggies she was making. And once he got home? Everything would be done. It was like magic! Or something. And Khitti would be desperately hiding how tired she was after all of that. RIP because they hadn’t even gotten to the damn bedroom yet. It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Nothing was amiss. Nothing at all…

Brand || All day, Brand was quivering in anticipation. Shuddering. Positively vibrating. He gave up after a while trying to figure out what the special occasion was -- it was more important that *Khitti was making food. Brand was gonna get laid.* He was gonna get L A I D. It was one of the bigger ironies of being a parent, after all, that having a kid made it much harder to go about the act that must necessarily precede any further kids. Even more so when both parents had such busy professional lives. So, naturally, Brand could hardly concentrate on his work all day, and came -rushing- to their apartment the very moment he’d finished his required tasks. When he got there, the door was practically burst down in his eagerness. Khitti was swooped immediately off her feet -- and nevermind if she was doing anything or carrying anything that might make this inconvenient. It could wait. Hell, dinner could wait, too. He hoisted her up and straddled her legs on either side of his waist before pressing his lips to hers. What’s that? Khitti actually had things she wanted to say? She’d have to pry herself out of her husband’s clutches, first. The man had a one-track mind, now even more than usual.

Khitti || Welp. Nothing was going to be said because Khitti couldn't speak when Brand was kissing her. And when Brand was kissing her, uh… yeah… nothing else was happening except for what always happens after Brand kissed her like that. You know. ~The thing.~ But hey, maybe it would help him be able to cope better with the news she was going to give him! Yeah. We’ll go with that. “Brand, literally everything is going to be cold now,” Khitti said after ~things~ were all said and done. She wasn’t upset though and that was rather obvious by the smirk she was giving him. “I was supposed to be part of the dessert, damn it. You were going to eat cheesecake and then have me too...” She thought about it for a moment, “Well, I mean… I guess you still could.” Was now a good time to tell him they needed to talk? Khitti didn’t know. How do ~normal~ women tell their husbands ‘We have to talk.’ without giving them an aneurysm and spoiling the rest of their evening? In much the same way Brand had read books about relationships and being a parent, Khitti probably needed to do something similar with this sort of thing. Do they even make books on this?

Brand finished buttoning up his shirt while he looked around at all the food. “Nothin’ I can’t fix.” With his typical self-satisfied grin, he lit a few careful flames under or around the dishes that needed to be reheated. Why bother with a stovetop when dinner could be fixed magically? He… wasn’t exactly the best cook, though, so Khitti might need to tell him when to quit it so that dinner wasn’t ruined. Until then, he’d continue to be very smug about his big-brain dinner-recovery tactics. Brand the Brainy, they’d call him -- wait, no. That made him sound like a frakkin’ nerd, and gods forbid he ever be one of those. Brand the… Baker? Brand the Bold! Hmm, sure. Not that being bold had anything to do with kitchen stuff, unless one was trying out a new recipe of questionable origin, but he liked the sound of it.

Khitti put her own clothes back on and watched Brand so that he didn’t frak up dinner. “Ah! Stop. Too much longer and you might as well eat your shoes,” she said, with regards to their steaks. She’d sit down eventually, after pouring both of them some wine, and started to cut into her steak. It was still pretty damned perfect. “It looks like you saved the day again, Brand.” She feigned a fainting spell, like some sort of damsel in distress. “Whatever would I do without you.” Once she “recovered”, there was a lot of eye-batting before she dug back into her food. Khitti tried reaaaaally hard not to devour her food like the uncivilized beast that she was. Look, a full day’s work of cooking and then immediate sexy times was enough to turn her stomach into a growling vortex of hunger! The attempt was more difficult than she thought and soon the wine was used to slow herself down. She’d let him eat for a bit, watching him occasionally without being too obvious about it, “So… how… was work?” Ah yes. The small talk. The small talk she wasn’t good at. The small talk that she’d been doing a lot of lately because nearly every damned interaction she’d had with people of late had been super awkward! And this was no different.

Brand had not a care in the world. This evening was perfect, and so was the food. All perfect, that is, until The Question. If Lithrydel knew what a movie was, or what a record was, or if they knew anything about real-world pop culture circa the 1990s, this was the part where the record would scratch and we’d freeze frame on Brand in mid-bite, a look of horror just barely beginning to dawn on his face. Over the image, Brand would narrate some attemptedly witty line about this being the moment where ‘everything changed’. Instead of any of this, though, Brand slowly set his fork down, never breaking eye contact with Khitti. “Okay, what’s going on? You never ask about work quite like that unless you’re trying to muster the nerve to ask about somethin’ else.” And it was never a -good- something else, either.

Khitti || Change? What change? Did the Fire Nation attack? No? Oh, Brand is probably the Fire Nation in this scenario and while he’s not attacked yet, another instance of Crispy-Fried Khat looked imminent. Or, she’d choke on her food. Like she is right now. Cough cough. Sorry, Brand. Can’t respond. Khitti is now dead. RIP. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There’s a lot of side-eyeing everything -except- for Brand. “I can’t ask about work?” She’d eventually look at him again and well… this wasn’t going well at all. Brand was too good at smelling nonsense from a mile away. -Especially- Khitti’s nonsense. And to make things worse, he had that look on his face that even said so. Okay. OKAY. Time to do the thing, Khitti. You can do it. Except you’ll probably die immediately, but you can do it! “WeneedtogobacktotheShadowPlane.” Yes. Yes it did come out as all one word. Khitti would draw in a breath and start again, making sure to actually take more breaths, in between words. “Soon. More than soon. Extremely soon.” Sigh. “Things may or may not be getting worse with those two plant freaks; that I can’t really say beyond being told by some guy in Rynvale that they still, unfortunately, exist.” -That- was a whole story on its own, so Khitti wasn’t going to get into it unless asked. But, other things are getting worse and it’s connected to the Shadow Plane and… I need to fix one problem before I can fix the others. And that aside… I can’t progress this quest I’ve given myself for my magic without making things better again.” She braced herself for a fireball as big as the Tranquility and was certainly failing at hiding the guilt she felt for needing to bring this up at all to Brand. “We have help… if Quintessa will agree… and if Kailani isn’t bogged down with Healer’s Guild work or whatever else she does by herself, but I don’t think I can do this without you.” Khitti paused a moment, frowned, apologized, and continued to brace herself for certain doom.

Brand had lost his appetite, and was sweating more than a little. Nervous sweating. Fearful sweating. He usually kept up the pretense that he had no fear, but this was a moment where the truth shone through. “You sure about that? Things seem like they’ve been fine. No evil tree shenanigans lately or anything like that. You sure we can’t just leave well enough alone?” It wasn’t just a question, it was a plea. A moment of raw, undisguised desperation. Please don’t make him encounter those -things- again.

Khitti || “Brand, those people that the Warrior’s Guild is dealing with… one of them closed one of my portals to the Shadow Plane. A very -big- portal. Almost as big as the one I made for the Tranquility to go through. I -have- to end this. -We- have to end this. I cannot continue to ignore it anymore. The dead have been talking again like they always do. The goddamn mermaids know. Some weird hermit in Rynvale knows. It is -seeping- over here. It will continue to seep over here, just like those goddamn witch sisters at our reception. They tried to ruin our wedding! One of the only things I’ve truly cared about! They succeeded in ruining the reception and made everyone go home too damn early! -They need to frakking die, Brand.- Before something else -does- happen.” Khitti was still bitter about the whole wedding thing, and the bitterness continued to surface as she spoke. “And they took you from me. They took you and I didn’t even know! I was supposed to protect you, like you do with me, and I failed. And now I have to fix things. But I might fail then too… and that’s why I need you. I’ve been angry for so long, because of these two. I feel like I did in Frostmaw during the war. Like I did during that fight in the mines, with Linn. I want to kill them and I want to burn everything.” She sighed, a hand moving to her face to rub at her eyes. “I need you to help me not literally kill everyone and everything in that place. Because not everyone deserves it. Quintessa is more unhinged than I am most of the time, so I can’t count on her with this. And I barely know Kailani. For all I know she could just nope out of things and leave me to my destruction.”

Khitti || Okay. This wine wasn’t cutting it anymore. Leaving the rest of her food to grow cold again, and to give Brand some space to take in all that she had said, Khitti got up from the table and went to their precious alcohol cupboard. Bottles of lesser alcohols were pushed aside, her hand hovering briefly over the peppermint schnapps before finally saying frak it and going straight for the whiskey. She should’ve just started with it to begin with.

Brand tried to hold eye contact, but failed when Khitti mentioned him being taken from her. Despite any appearances to the contrary, he’d barely stopped thinking about that time. There were brief moments where he could almost forget, sure -- where he became so engrossed with something else that he could put it out of his mind for a time -- but even then it was always there, lurking, waiting to come back to the forefront of his mind. His sense of security had been damaged by that kidnapping, perhaps indefinitely. It wasn’t something that should have happened (unless it was on purpose, such as the incident with the dragon). He’d broken free from the Crystal Daggers long ago. He was able to fend for himself now, and savvier to the ways of the world. There was no way he’d possibly end up being taken away and tortured for a second time in his life, in the same way that lightning couldn’t strike the same place twice... and yet, it had happened anyway. Which meant it could happen a third time, or more. And even killing the perpetrators couldn’t guarantee him safety from somebody else trying the same thing in the future. He’d gotten himself out of so many scrapes that he’d started to feel invulnerable -- and then this had gone and shattered that illusion.

Brand || “I dunno what to say.” His voice was soft, but Khitti would still be able to hear him, if only just. “I don’t think I can go back there.” He knew avoiding the Shadow Plane was no guarantee of anything, but even still… “If we don’t do anything and they come back for us, well… it’s been a good run, hasn’t it?” Was he seriously just giving up? It sure sounded like it.

Khitti || “Okay.” It’s all Khitti could manage to say at this point. She didn’t want to force him to go there, when it was clear the place in general still bothered him. He’d lapsed back into that whole mindset where he reminded her of Dominic and… she just couldn’t bring herself to try to convince him. She was -not- going to go through that sort of thing again, only for it to possibly push him away. She didn’t acknowledge the rest of what he’d said, instead choosing to pick at her food, and occasionally actually eating some of it. Unless Brand actually spoke, they’d just sit there in silence. This had actually gone worse than what Khitti had thought it would--or maybe she had just been in denial the whole time.

Khitti || The silence wouldn’t last forever, though. As Khitti was halfway through her steak and a glass into that fresh bottle of whiskey, someone or something outside the apartment started banging on the door. Khitti tried to ignore it. She didn’t want to deal with any company, even if they had been important enough to have a key to get inside the bakery, and make their way up the stairs. But the banging on the door didn’t stop and soon a voice joined it, “Captain Brand! It’s an emergency! Open up! Please!” It wasn’t Dozla, but very likely one of Brand’s crewmembers.

Brand || The chair scraped against the floor as Brand shot from his seat. Soon enough the crewman had been let inside, the door shut behind him and his captain looking at him expectantly. “What’s wrong? Has there been a fight? Did rodents get into the storage again? Don’t tell me Dominic set the deck on fire again.” Brand was worried, sure, but even an ‘emergency’ couldn’t be worse than continuing the conversation he’d already been having. Or so he thought.

Khitti || The poor kid that’d been sent to give Brand some -really- bad news nearly collapsed on the floor when the door was finally opened for him. He bent over, both hands on his knees, as he took in some much needed oxygen. In the time it took for him to compose himself, he came to the realization that he was going to have to tell his boss something terrible. The boss that’s prone to anger. The boss that loves using fire magic. The boss that very well could fire him (haha) for this or at worst, incinerate him on the spot. This led to the kid being even less composed than he was when he got in the door. His whole body trembled as he finally made eye contact with Brand, his words first coming out in a stutter, and then finally in a full on word vomit. “Y-yes, sir. T-there was a fight. Some sort of blue-veined creatures teleported onto the ship and attacked Miss Dozla. They’d look almost human, if it weren’t for the fact that they were so skinny they looked like tall skeletons. And their skin was as dark as charcoal! I’ve never seen anything like it!” He realized he’d started rambling, but couldn’t quite stop himself. He’d get to the point eventually, but not yet. Not after he’d continued going on and on about these strange people.

Khitti || Meanwhile, Khitti had started eavesdropping and even went so far as to grab another glass of whiskey and wandered over behind Brand to listen. The mention of blue veins and tall spindly human-like folk earned the kid more of Khitti’s attention. It was familiar. Too familiar. Like how everything about that trip to find Gilgamesh had been familiar. “Miss Dozla is being taken care of by Mister Lennier. She’s unconscious, though. Your wife’s spider helped her out. He’s a bit beat up too but…” He hesitated, looked from Brand, to Khitti, then back again to his captain. “Before they left… the creatures… they took your son.” Just as Khitti had waited for a fiery end earlier, so too now did the kid. Khitti, however, just stared at Brand’s poor crewmember as he spoke. Then he said the thing--the really bad thing!!--and Khitti’s glass fell to the ground, as she stood there in shock. Khitti was not a fainter, typically. Hell, she’s even really bad at faking like she was. But, now, she actually looked like she might pass out.

Brand listened intently as the man told his story. Even when it concluded with the bad news, Brand never reacted with the anger his crewman was so fearfully anticipating. No, if anything, it was almost as if Brand had expected this. Quiet resignation, not outrage or blame. Brand’s fiery wrath would be reserved for the creatures that had caused this trouble, not the crew who had failed to defend against it. “Okay. Thank you. We’ll handle it.” He looked to Khitti, a hand massaging one temple and partially obscuring his face. “I guess these frakkers agree with you. Off to the Shadow Plane we go, then.” He sounded calm, but Khitti would of course know better: he was at once both livid and terrified.

Khitti || Brand’s crewmember would leave, but not without giving his captain a look of uncertainty. How could he be so calm at a time like this? He would leave as instructed however, not wanting to question things. Khitti, on the other hand, was not so calm. No no no no, this couldn’t be happening! Whhhhhyyyy was she so god awful at protecting the people she cared about? It just kept happening! It was a never ending cycle, year after year, all the time that she’d been in Lithrydel. Brand’s words were of no comfort to her now, and were like nothing more than static to her ears. Once she stopped feeling woozy, Khitti decided to forsake the rest of her dinner, the broken glass on the floor, and any promise of making things better tonight with cheesecake, and eventually followed after the kid. She didn’t even bother with her shoes. Nor did she bother to lock the front door of the bakery once she’d left. She didn’t care. None of it mattered.

Khitti would shove her way through the crowds of people that were making their way home from the merchant district of town, passed through the market, went past the beach and eventually found herself standing in front of the gangplank of the ship. If she went on that ship and saw that Dominic wasn’t there, then it’d make it real. It’d meant that she’d lost him again. But, Khitti pushed past the guilt that consumed her and went inside. Various members of Brand’s crew just stared at her. Some retreated into their quarters, just as they had when she’d been a vampire. Khitti said nothing to any of them and kept on going at a slow pace until she got to Dominic’s room. The whole place had been trashed. Claw marks were scratched through the mural Khitti and Meri had worked so hard on, while Dominic’s bed, toybox, and dresser were all in wooden heaps, spatters of blood left here and there. From the remains of his bed, Khitti snatched up Dominic’s favorite blanket, the whole thing of course adorned in chickens and eggs. She tried really hard not to cry, but failed at that too.

Brand had gone with Khitti, but they were both so lost inside their individual thoughts and fears that they may as well have gone alone. It wasn’t until they arrived at the ship that they parted ways -- Brand needed to consult with the people who had been there, to try to learn as much as he could before they departed. As much as the perpetrators fit the description of ne’er-do-wells from the Shadow Plane, rushing into the wrong place to stage a rescue would only make a bad situation worse. He had to be sure.

Brand || His crew, however, had once again proven their worth. No sooner had he stepped onto the Tranquility than a thorough report had been shoved into his hands, and what’s more -- they’d already sent for outside help. If Khitti and Brand wanted to search for their son, they wouldn’t have to do so alone.