RP:Once Upon A Dream

Part of the The Day I Tried To Live Arc

Summary: Khitti's dreams are still being manipulated by Amarrah's father, Facilier from his home in the Shadow Plane. This time, it's gotten so bad that Brand must go and save her (again).

The Tranquility, Cenril Wharf

3am. The Tranquility.

It happened like clockwork every night she was on the ship. Now, it started to happen even when she wasn’t. House Dragana. Her room at the fort in Frostmaw. It didn’t matter anymore.

Tonight, though, tonight was different.

Tonight, the tainted water that swelled up within Khitti’s lungs, aiming to drown her in her sleep, was thicker.

Tonight, it wasn’t water any longer.

Tonight, the putrid black water was now putrid black blood.

It took some time for Lydia to rouse her sister from the nightmares that plagued her. So much time, in fact, that even that spiteful spectre was worried about Khitti. The vampiric redhead sat up finally, after much effort on the ghostly one’s part, and coughed up the acrid substance that choked her, the black ichor spewed onto the floor beside her bed, the equally dark waters that had once been there following it soon after, clearing out the blood and leaving a disgusting pool on the wooden boards below. When Lydia was sure that Khitti was awake, she left her sister and reappeared in Brand’s quarters.

“Brand. Brand! Wake up!” Lydia’s voice came out in a hiss as she tried not to alert his first mate or anyone else out of his crew whose rooms were nearby. “Braaand.” She’d take ahold of him and shake him if need be until he was awake. “Come on, damn it. You need to go to Khitti. Things are getting worse.”

‘Worse’ was a bit of an understatement. Since Lydia had left, Khitti’d grown colder--much more so than she was from just being an undead--and that same black blood had begun to ooze from her ears, nose, and corners of her eyes. Tears mingled with the ichor as she clung to that stuffed white rabbit of hers and cried.

“Dammit, woman. Can’t you see I’m tryin’a get some gorram shuteye?!” Brand is… not really awake yet. Well, he only went to bed a couple of hours ago, to be fair, and Lydia looks and sounds much the same as her sister aside from the whole floaty-ghosty thing. He attempts to pull his pillow around the back of his head and over both ears, but it’s no use. Lydia is nothing if not stubborn.

By the time he’s roused enough to realize what’s happening, it matters very little that Lydia was attempting to be discreet. No sooner has Brand reached out for the knob than the door flies open, slamming against the adjacent wall and nearly off its hinges. A shadow looms in half the frame, a silhouette against the distant torchlight at hall’s end. Onyx needs but a glance at the two within the Captain’s Quarters to confirm what they already know.

“Well, hurry up, then. I’ve alerted Lennier. Dozla is clearing the deck of other eyes as we speak.” And the figure is gone, the doorway left vacant. One of the undead’s illusions, no doubt -- split consciousness manifested two places at once. The real Onyx is undoubtedly somewhere much closer to Khitti.

Brand pulls on a shirt as he exits the hall. It’s down a ladder, some stairs, and all the way to the opposite end of the ship to Khitti’s room. Damn these stiff legs. Damn his aching head. Dozla guards the entry to the guest hall, wide-eyed and full of questions, but Brand can only wave off her concerns for now. Even if he had the answers, there’d be no time to share them.

For once, Brand actually managed to shock Lydia, with the way he’d leapt from the bed and rushed off to help Khitti. It took her moments to register this and then she’d be off, her form coming into view in Khitti’s room.

The room itself was thick with shadows and dark ice crept along the walls and floor, covering all in frost. Tiny shade spiders poured out from within her wardrobe, the culprit likely Amarrah’s heart, but the wardrobe was well-guarded by an ever-so-familiar purple aura that wouldn’t allow the wardrobe to be tampered with. The spiders skittered around the room, some fleeing beneath the door and heading right towards Brand and Onyx.

Lydia had thought Khitti awake, but it appeared to be not the case despite the vampiress’ unending sobs. The veil between this world and the Shadow Plane was quite thin, as it always was this time of night, and the frozen heart’s hold on Khitti was tremendous. “Khitti?! Khitti!” The spectral von Schreier woman attempted to awaken her sister much like she had not long ago, but Khitti remained unresponsive. It’d continue like this even as Brand would enter, the frostbitten and shadow-clung room shifting between the ship’s interior to that of the Shadow Plane -- more specifically, that of Dhavislaav’s mirror. Khitti and Lydia’s home village, albeit in ghost form, flickered in and out of view, the screams of the villagers filling the room for the few seconds that it came into focus.

Onyx marches in as soon as they catch sight of Brand’s approach, but there’s only so much even a mage of their caliber can do against the magic of someone like Facilier. The shadows are silenced, smothered behind thick walls of glacier-blue glass, but they cannot be eliminated -- only quarantined. Beyond, the wardrobe can still be seen as a faint violet glow, and the dark ice frosts against the barrier, further obscuring the shape of the shadows. And it’s clear even suppressing it this much takes a grand effort; every muscle in the undead’s body is tense and their brows are drawn together in concentration.

Brand’s approach is far more direct. He wheels on Lydia, looking for all the world like he’d throttle her if she had a corporeal form. “This is -your- fault. Get into her head. Fix her dreams. Wake her up again. Somethin’.” As far as he’s concerned, it’s her inaction that has let these dreams escalate the way they have. Whether that’s the truth of it or not, he’s powerless here and the blame has to lie with someone who -isn’t-, doesn’t it?

“I cannot penetrate Facilier’s magic. It’s… gone on for much too long.” Lydia frowned, seemingly disappointed, perhaps with herself. “I’m sorry.” She actually was sincere despite the way she’d acted before when Brand had gone to inspect the heart. “I can do something else, though. I can help you to help her.” Lydia motioned to the bed, “Lie down”, then turned to Onyx. “Please continue to do your best to keep Facilier’s magic at bay. The veil between the Planes weakens for an hour, but if Brand can manage to find her and wake her up, it will certainly not take that long.” Onyx would likely fail in their endeavor to keep Facilier’s magic from overwhelming the ship if it went on for the full duration of the witching hour. “I know you don’t particularly care for my sister, but I’m certain she’d do the same for you.” With as much focus as Onyx was putting into it, Lydia didn’t figure there’d be a response, but the sentiment was there nevertheless. If Brand hadn’t done as he was told by now, the spectral woman would add in a ‘please’. “She needs you.”

Brand is skeptical, and that’s putting it lightly. “Smells like a bunch of frakkin’ nonsense,” he complains, nose crinkling accordingly. Onyx shoots the man a look; it sounds like this is going to take a while, and yet Brand is wasting precious time -- and the undead’s precious energy -- moaning about it. The blonde catches the gaze and shrinks away from it, ultimately sinking onto the bed with a sigh. “Fine. We’ll play this your way. But if I find out there was somethin’ easier you coulda done…” There’s little sting to the threat, because how could there be? Lydia’s a ghost, so the most he can really do is tattle to his necromancer girlfriend after. Besides, Lydia is already slated for a more permanent death, and everyone in the room knows it. (Onyx knows everything, sooner or later.) There doesn’t exist much Brand can threaten her with. And so he ends it there, and closes his eyes with another disgruntled mumble.

“Will you quit bitching so much? You sound like Dominic.” Well, what she was -told- Dominic had started to sound like before the end, always whining about this and that. Funny enough, it was the same thing Khitti’d always said about Lydia too. Without warning, the ghostly redhead brought her hands up, incorporeal fingers touching both of Brand’s temples. It’d knock him out immediately, and hopefully he didn’t fall backwards and squish her sister or else Lydia would have to shove him over onto the pillow beside Khitti.

Everything would be black and then suddenly it wasn’t. The whole of the land was tinted red, fires blazing and reaching up to the heavens. It was certainly Lithrydel, but it was in ruins. Undead of all kinds littered the realm; whatever was left of the actual people that roamed here were either in the process of dying or were hiding in fear of the dead.

And, poor Brand, he was smack dab in the middle of Cenril, nearer to the gates and the portal to Vailkrin than the shore where the Tranquility might be--if the Tranquility even survived what was clearly some form of the apocalypse. Somehow, though, Khitti’s sobs could still be heard, and it was definitely coming from Vailkrin.

Brand is generally pretty certain he has the worst dreams out of anyone. Comes with the territory, y’know? When it’s not dreams related to his past, it’s portents of the future… and those might actually be worse. But here, he whistles, awestruck. Khitti’s dream is a whole other kind of nightmare. A sadistic hellscape, even. Well, that explains a few things, doesn’t it? There’s little he can do about it, though, but to follow the path laid out before him. The rooftops -- those that aren’t swallowed by flames -- seem freer of undead than the roads, and it isn’t long before he’s assessed this and altered his route accordingly.

As Brand went on and exited Cenril, things only got darker from there--and not just because Vailkrin was dubbed ‘The Dark City’. Vailkrin had become reminiscent of Facilier and Amarrah’s village; spiderwebs covered the few building that remain, their makers out in plain sight. Some of the arachnids were the ones that had already made their home in the forest, others were like Francis--some larger than that lovable beast that Brand and Khitti had adopted; all ferocious and bloodthirsty. If Brand was careful, he could likely sneak by these as well, for they were all preoccupied with building their grand webhome and eating the undead that passed through the remains of the city.

It seemed that this was perhaps a dream of a possible future as the forest itself was mostly leveled and a great mausoleum built in its place. This was, in fact, where the disembodied wailing was coming from, but… it was also guarded by one white, black-runed arachnid. The ever-familiar spider was looking much more feral than he used to, venom dripping from his mandibles, but that scarf Brand once owned (for a very short time) was still there, albeit a bit ragged and riddled with holes.

If there’s any logic to this gorram dream at all, Brand thinks, then Francis is there to guard Khitti. From the zombies, perhaps, or from any still living who would try to take out their pain and loss on the vampiress. Because… all of this -is- her doing, isn’t it? He has that feeling. It rises in his gut and twists in knots around his heart. When Brand approaches the spider, it’s with hands raised, a desperate gesture of peace. “Easy, boy. Let your old man in, yeah? In a mighty bit of hurry, here.” As he speaks, he edges closer, on his guard but hoping for the best.

Brand seemed out of luck right now. The closer he got to the spider, the more obvious it was that Francis was no longer amongst the living. Parts of his exoskeleton was missing, leaving his arachnid bits in various places wide open for all to see. His many eyes also had that strange purple glow that came with the necromantic magic of the Shadow Plane. Francis did not seem to recognize the Catalian at all either and showed as much as he growled viciously at Brand then proceeded to pounce on him as he did in the past, albeit this time it was clearly an attack and not a show of affection like it once had been. He’d put Brand in that spiderhug though that’d been reserved for only Khitti and the blonde, mandibles threatening to pierce flesh, but Francis didn’t do much else just yet. Perhaps, Francis wanted him to squirm a little.

Welp. Okay then. Brand is actually pretty calm about this whole Spider Hug of Death thing, considering that it’s a dream. He can just… turn off collision detection, so to speak. Brand sinks through the spider’s legs and down through the earth, beyond Francis’ grip. Sorry, friend. You’re not real anyway. Through layers of sediment and rock Brand swims, following the sound of Khitti’s voice which somehow still penetrates through. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable feeling, even in dreamland, to be existing in the same space as solid rock, and so it’s with great relief that Brand eventually penetrates through a wall and finds himself in open space again. It’s dark here, but Khitti’s voice is all the louder. He’s close, very close, but her cries seem to echo all the louder and it’s impossible to tell which direction he should head from here and -- wait. Silly Brand. He has fire. He should probably use it.

Francis was hella confused for a moment, but then as some things tended to do in dreams, he just flickered away. Not long after Brand glitches his way underground and makes it out safely does the crying stop. “Francis?!” The voice was eerily ethereal, but still somehow managed to sound like Khitti’s. “Francis!!” Brand had obviously made it inside the tomb, but there’s a strange crunching noise beneath his feet. Once he finally used that fire of his, he’d find the walls covered with spiders of all kinds--it seemed this Khitti really -was- the Queen o’ Spiders now.

The sobbing began anew, as if Khitti could no longer feel Francis’ presence, Brand having defeated him somehow. It came from the passage to the left, and would lead into a large open room filled with several stone coffins, each one etched with a specific sigil: a music note, a mermaid, a lily, a creepy looking skull, a lion, and lastly a fireball--one not unlike the one Khitti had tattooed on her wrist.

And there, in front of this last one, was a figure shrouded in black mourning attire, huddled up against the coffin, one hand on the stone. Up this close, the wailing was ghastly, like a banshee’s cry and on the only visible arm of the figure was that bracelet that’d been given to Khitti so long ago. It, however, glowed a deep dark purple, bordering on black, as cold necromantic energies emanated from it--it’d been repurposed into a phylactery.

Coffins. Of course. Because that’s not totally ominous or anything. Brand doesn’t spend a whole lot of time looking around, but makes a beeline for the vampiress herself. As he approaches, his flame is extinguished and he clamps a hand on her shoulder, shaking her. “Hell of a nightmare you’ve got yourself in, peach. Time to go. You’re dreamin’ and there’s a whole lotta creepifyin’ shadows muckin’ up my ship in the meantime.”

Brand… did you really think it was going to be that easy? Really? Do you not recall the sorts of things that happens in the dreams you and Khitti have?

Khitti’s body went rigid the moment Brand grabbed her shoulder, but she still didn’t turn around. “You. You killed him. You killed my Francis and you torment me vith zhis form. Haven’t you taken enough from me, Facilier? Vhy don’t make yourself look as you should so you can at least attempt to die vith some dignity vhen I rip your soul from your body.” She paused and stood slowly, “Better yet--let me see your true face so I can vatch zhe light die in your eyes.” Khitti turned, the movement faster than anything real world Khitti could produce, and a skeletal hand would find Brand’s neck, equally bony fingers digging into his flesh. Gone was the verdant eyes and the red hair of the woman who was now a lich, replaced with that familiar violet of her magic and long unkempt locks of white. Much like with Amarrah, her free hand sought to reach in and tear out Brand’s heart.

Thankfully for him this was a dream. People don’t actually die in their dreams, right?

It felt real. It felt so real. Fingers of bone wrapped around his throat, and she looked nothing like the Khitti he knew. She sounded like Khitti, and clearly had some knowledge of Khitti’s life, but this was someone else now clamping down on his windpipe.

He didn’t spare time on thinking about it. Brand’s automatic response was to raise his hands, to meet her strength with his own. Fire to undead flesh. Flame to the bearer of Khitti’s voice. People don’t actually die in their dreams, right? He’d died enough in his own, after all, and he was still here. And how better to jar her into awakening?

Still, it felt too real. The stench of burning flesh crawled up his nostrils and stung at his eyes. This was the second time he was attempting to burn a lover to death, now, even if it was only figuratively this time. He pledged to maintain eye contact until she either broke away or woke up.

“I’m sorry.” It was perhaps the first heartfelt apology he’d ever offered her, and it was only in a dream. Go figure.

The redhead was so cold by now that she could barely feel the fire as it started to consume her. That apology, though, that somehow managed to reach her now very icy, dead heart. It was too late, however. “Brand…?” was all she was able to say in that ethereal voice of hers before she turned into that charred pile of ash Brand intended for her.

But, as with all liches, it didn’t last. The bracelet survived, and with it her soul--or what was left of it anyway--and she was soon reborn into that vaguely Khitti-like being behind him, the bracelet disappearing from the ash pile and reappearing on her arm where it’s been all this time. “Vhy are you here? -How- are you here? You’re dead and yet you are not.” Clearly, she was not convinced about this all being a dream; for her, it’d all been very real. Khitti almost looked like she might cry, as she circled around him before finally coming to a stop in front of the Catalian. For once, it wouldn’t be tears of sadness, though. “You’ve been gone for so long…”

He shouldn’t be so surprised. She was dreaming, after all; anything could happen. And dammit, but he shouldn’t be letting it get to him, either. Brand’s heart shouldn’t be beating in his throat, pounding away where she’d released him. Would he have bruises on his neck tomorrow from this? Was that possible? Time would tell. “I’m not. I haven’t been. Look, peach…” As much as it disturbed him to do so, he took her skeletal hand in his. The charms on her bracelet glowed as if they were embers, but they were as cool to the touch as if she’d not been ignited mere moments before. “...You have to know it’s me. Do you trust me?”

Only now did she realize just how undead she’d become, as he grabbed her hand. There was hesitation, but ultimately, she withdrew her hand from his grasp; it didn’t take much to notice the uneasiness he felt at even touching that skeletal appendage, but likewise she too was a bit freaked out and was quick to pull away. Khitti -did- know it was him. The sound of his beating heart had gone unnoticed all the while that she was in kill-mode, but now it was there and now she was certain. “Yes.” Khitti watched him sadly with that violet stare, white brows furrowed in concern, as if he’d disappear just as quickly as he had appeared here with her.

“Alright.” As she withdrew, he gripped the bracelet, taking it with him as they parted. Her hand, without its usual skin and muscle, couldn’t provide enough resistance to the movement; it slipped easily off her wrist. “I hope this doesn’t hurt…”

However Brand would go about destroying the dream bracelet, Khitti finally did wake up. The shadows and ice and flames all died away as she woke up and found the Catalian next to her. Brand. Her Brand. The real Brand. He’d saved her again. She’d lay a cool hand on his cheek, and press the tiniest of kisses to his lips--and then that’s when she realized they weren’t alone. It wasn’t even just Lydia creeping on them, for Onyx was there too. But, funny enough, Khitti didn’t care--especially because Onyx was still likely preoccupied on that wardrobe. Whenever Brand did wake up, which would’ve been not long after Khitti, he’d find her actually smiling. The weight of Facilier’s magic hadn’t entirely been lifted, nor would it be ‘til Lydia was resurrected with it and the whole cure was finished. Khitti was still happy though--happy that he’d not abandoned her--and then, she wasn’t.

Khitti crawled out of bed with a rather stony look on her face, made a motion for Onyx to stop what they were doing and step aside, and then the vampiress conjured up one of those balls of shadows and shadow-fire. She didn’t have quite enough energy to summon up all three shadowy elements, but she had a feeling this would be enough. The barrier of dark magic, and the door to the wardrobe itself, was shattered with a single magic-fueled punch and the ice-covered heart retrieved. There’s obvious hesitation now, but Khitti then turned to Onyx with a sigh, and handed over the heart. “Please, do vhat you must to guard zhis until I need it. Do vhatever it takes, but please don’t destroy it. Zhis vill not go on much longer, I promise.” Lydia, despite the fact that she helped (sort of) was regarded with a bit of a side-eyed glance; Khitti wasn’t sure whether to pity her or to hate her right now.

Is it possible for an undead to feel fatigued? Regardless, Onyx certainly looks it. It’s only for a lack of living flesh that sweat doesn’t drench them. The heart is taken in their two small hands, and with a nod the first mate is gone, gone to do whatever is necessary for its safekeeping.

Brand, meanwhile, appears to be mightily disoriented as he comes to. The room is spinning. It seems Lydia’s abilities aren’t without the potential for side effects. “Look, peach,” he says, steadying himself against the wall as he rises off the bed, “whatever the hell Meri gave you that makes you dream like that, maybe lay off it a while, yeah?” He’s trying to smirk, to crack jokes, but it’s overshadowed by a clear and present nausea.

Dozla raps on the door as she edges herself half inside; Onyx’s departure has made it clear things are wrapping up inside Khitti’s room. Inquisitive eyes take in Khitti and Khitti’s spectral doppleganger before settling on her captain. “Oh no.” She’s gone again. Distantly, there’s a sound of a door opening and water splashing on the floor before she returns, shoving a flower vase between Brand’s mouth and the floor. “None of that now,” she chides, as he empties the contents of his stomach. “Not when you’ve got me on cleanup duty this deck the rest of the week.” Brand is finished, and she’s whisking the jar away again, but not before a finger wags in the doorway behind her. “You want to tell me, later, what the frell secrets I’m guarding from the crew here.” It’s not a question. Dozla doesn’t get serious often, and it would be dangerous not to heed her when she does.

Onyx left without a word and before Khitti could thank them. Then Dozla came and went in nearly the same manner with that chiding and demanding of secrets. As Brand’s third in command tended to her captain, Khitti would wave Lydia off in a mildly frustrated manner. Go away, you. Seriously. You’ve gone enough--and by that Khitti would mean nothing at all. When it was just the two of them, Khitti would help him back to the bed, despite the fact that he’d only just gotten up, “Hey. You need to sit. Please.” She’d sit beside him, snaking her arm loosely in an attempt to keep him somewhat upright and--oh who am I kidding, she’s also cuddling him a little too. “I’m sorry.” Pause. “I should’ve told you.” Another pause. And then a sigh. “I don’t know vhat’s happening to me and I don’t know if I can stop it,” Khitti finally finished her thought, albeit with a bit of voice cracking, those emotions from the dream starting to come back to her. “It’s been happening in Vailkrin too. Away from zhe heart. You’re always gone. Everyone’s always gone. Zhis is my future, I zhink.” In her dreams, of course, is what she means.

Brand shakes his head. The nausea’s been eased some with the voiding of his stomach, but he can’t stay put; his racing thoughts demand that he pace to keep up. “Lydia told me, a while ago. Just didn’t think it’d gotten this bad. Neither of us did, I think. You’re on borrowed time though, now, that’s for sure. Facilier agreed to give you a cure -- I don’t suppose he guaranteed you’d be able to finish it before whatever this is--” he’s forgotten to breathe until now, and a lack of air forces him to pause “--undoes you. Just gonna go ahead and assume that’s purposeful. Doesn’t seem he places any particular value on your life. Or unlife. Though as a follower of Vakmathras, maybe he should. What the frak did he want from you in that dream, anyhow?” Brand’s not ready to lend the dream any credence, at least as far as fortune-telling goes. It’s a hair too terrifying for that. But it can’t hurt to know what’s buried in Khitti’s psyche, if nothing else.

Khitti frowned as Brand slipped away to go about his pacing, her line of sight fixating on the floor instead of him, though his boots occasionally came into view. “Souls.” Now she too couldn’t sit still, but instead of pacing, she went to her wardrobe trying to hide her uneasiness as Brand tried to figure things out further for himself. “Zhis is only going to get vorse. I should not be here. I should not be around any of you.” Once again, as the redhead so often did in the past, she started packing her bag to leave, though this time it was truly for the good of everyone on the ship as opposed to Khitti leaving due to some stupid fight with Brand. “Better for zhis to happen in Vailkrin around people equipped to deal vith zhis vhere zhey can put me down if it comes to it. Dream or no dream, I vill not be your murderer again. I vill not!” That rage that Brand had been privy to as of late resurfaced, mixed with frustration and a bit of sadness; unfortunately for the wardrobe, this manifested itself into another forceful punch, albeit sans magic this time.

“Oi. Don’t punch holes in my ship.” Brand circled over to where Khitti was, hands restraining her at the shoulders and then wrapping around her to hug from behind. “You’re always so gorram quick to isolate yourself. The first thing you wanna do anytime anything goes frakked side up is run away from it all. But in this case,” he sighed, releasing her, “in this case, you might have a point.” Back to pacing. “It can’t be much longer ‘til you have everything you need, yeah? But I can’t let you go by yourself, or only with Lydia. If you’re gonna go, take Onyx with you.”

She felt a little better when he hugged her, but that soon went away when he proposed she take Onyx with her. “Onyx?! Are you frakking nuts?! Zhey vant to kill me! And likely only hasn’t done so because -you’re- in charge. Who knows vhat zhe hell they’d do to me and any other necromancer in Vailkrin! It’s not frakking happening. I trust zhem enough to ward against zhe heart zhe best zhey can, but zhey’re not leaving zhis ship vith me.” Khitti sighed in frustration, a hand trying to wave away Brand’s bad idea (okay it wasn’t that bad, but it also wasn’t happening), “Let’s just try to zhink of something else. I-I’ll just stay awake until ve’re done vith zhis o-or zhere’s a potion I could make--Pilar had it to help her sleep after she vas kidnapped--it keeps you from dreaming. Or! Or…” No. All of these ideas didn’t sound like they’d work at all. Even if she didn’t fall asleep, that didn’t mean Facilier wouldn’t find some other way to manipulate her. “I don’t know.” Khitti sounded rather defeated and things only seemed to worsen as that signature frown of hers reappeared, her verdant staring fixed on the blonde, “Brand, I don’t know if I can do zhis anymore. V-vhat if zhat happens?” She motioned to the bed, signifying her dream, “He made it so not even becoming a lich vas strong enough to bring you back. I -can’t- live zhat again.”

Brand’s response to concerns about Onyx was to shrug. “It’s not like workin’ on my ship is the only way to make a living -- unliving? -- ‘round here. If they really wanted to kill you that badly, I’m not convinced my orders, generally sensible though they are, would be enough to stop them.” That’s… probably not as reassuring as you mean for it to be, Brand, good job. “But, fair. I guess it’s hard to keep the heart safe and away from you if I send them along. I just think you need -someone- around with you. Besides Lydia. Besides… Larewen’s spirit or what-have-you.” Cue a dismissive wave; too many disembodied people floating about lately. “Preferably someone with knowledge related to these things. I dunno who else. I’d feel better if you at least sent word to Shishi or sommat. Maybe he could help somehow. Cuz I don’t think just not doin’ anything is an option, peach.”

Khitti stepped past him, sinking down onto the edge of the bed with a sigh. The white rabbit she’d been clinging too during her nightmare--the one Pilar had given her--was picked up and eyed carefully. “Zhere isn’t anyone, Brand. I’ve either cast zhem off or zhey’ve got zheir own lives--you know, zhe domestic vhatevers--or zhey’re busy vith other zhings. As far as I know, Shishi’s dealing vith Larewen. Lionel’s got enough on his plate vithout having to vorry about zhis now too. I don’t trust Bradyn enough for zhis, even if I am going to have him bring back Lydia vith me. Everyone else is just… busy.” Too busy for her. Too busy having lives she wished she could have. It wasn’t even just that it made her feel utterly alone; she felt guilty as hell for needing someone’s--anyone’s--help. This wasn’t their problem. It was hers and she created it. “I’m alone in zhis.” Even Brand couldn’t fully be there for her, not with all the responsibilities he had with the ship.

Brand throws up both hands with an exasperated sigh. “And how much of that is by your own design? How many of those ‘busy’ people have offered help that you’ve turned down? You’ve gotta learn to lean on people when you need it, peach, before it gets to this point in the first place. More than just me n’ maybe Lydia.” He’s spewing words without giving them thought, the frustration of being unable to be -enough- help by himself boiling over. And it’s easy for him to say -- he has an entire ship’s crew at his disposal and loyal to him, should he need anything. The footsteps of one approaches now, and none other than the healer elf Lennier nudges his head into the crack of the door a moment later.

“Apologies for my delay. I was ensnared in some rather time-sensitive potion making. Can I be of service?” If the elf is aware of any tension in the room, it does not register on his face. He’s looking for lacerations, bruises, any obvious outward sign of a person in need of healing. Inner turmoil isn’t first priority on his radar.

Your yelling isn’t helping things right now, Brand, sorry. There couldn’t possibly be anymore guilt on her face, at this point, and she even looked on the verge of tears. The tears did start pouring, of course, just as Lennier makes himself known, and Khitti was quick to get up and move to her table that was as piled up with papers as always. “Yeah, hold on,” the redhead said as politely as possible through a few sniffles here and there. A blank piece of parchment was ripped out of that journal of Dominic’s she’d taken over, a shadow-ink pen conjured up (because who wants to look for a pencil or wherever the hell it was she put her quills at right now), then scribbled down some ingredients. Discreetly, she wiped at her eyes before crossing the room to hand over the list over; among various ingredients for helping with sleep was deadly nightshade. “I need a dreamless sleep potion, please. Double everything, except zhe nightshade, vhich needs to be tripled. Mix it vith some bloodwine; I keep some in zhe pantry. Don’t vorry about zhe nightshade; it von’t kill me, I just need it to veaken my system.”

Khitti gave a faint smile to Lennier, a muttered thank you, then spun back around to face Brand--the smile went away pretty quickly. “Look. You can stand here and tell me zhings I already know -or- you can go get some sleep, vhether it’s in here or in your own room, and go out vith me tomorrow. I’m going to zhe beach, to every single restaurant in Cenril for vhatever I vant to eat, and zhen I’m going to get really drunk and go dancing, and eat carrot cake. Because you know vhat? I’m tired of feeling guilty every goddamned day about zhe choices I’ve made and zhe people I hurt. I vant one day--just one damned day--vhere I don’t zhink about zhe cure, and zhe bad zhings I’ve done, and vhether or not I’m gonna come out of zhis okay. Because ve don’t know zhat I vill at all.”

And so, Lennier went off, and Brand made his decision: tomorrow KhittiBrand would have what may be their last good day together because time was running out.