[Molly is in his damn room for once in his life - though he has a bad habit of not shutting the door all the way, so she can probably just barge right in. He's curled up on his bed, the coat slung over the end of it, just.
[She just saunters over, then, like she owns the place. And just sort of stands there? Watching him? Like an angry glowering goblin. It's honestly so unsettling and weird.
She's just. . . never had a friend before. She doesn't know what to do, the right thing to say. She's always hated a problem she can't solve, and this problem feels very important.]
[That's fine. This is honestly not that unusual. He is friends (?) with a literal goblin who also does this shit a lot, so it just does not even phase him.
He just curls a little tighter for a second and then presses his hands over his eyes (the eyes on the palms pressing over the eyes in his skull, eyes on eyes on eyes) until his vision sparks and blurs and then shakes it off. Sitting up.]
[Okay, so this is what happens next. When he sits up and covers his eyes, he'll find her palms pressed against his shoulders. I was going to say bent to face him, but she probably doesn't have to be. She's just up in his space. Harrow has basically two modes, imperious and glowering or scared sad little girl, but this isn't either of them. It's still the high-handed Harrowhark, but gentle, openly warm.]
You saved her life today, as surely as anyone could have. What a marvel you were.
[Ah. So this is payback for the mortifying ordeal of being known he had subjected harrow to on thursday. everything on display then. he's hidden his past, his truth, all the secret churning ugliness that's beneath the jewels and the tattoos, but here in this place the rest of it is so, so visible. every bit and piece of his turmoil and grief, a performance. and she's kind about it.
he doesn't know how to respond to this exactly, just adding the overwhelming feeling of gratitude: that shi qingxian is alive, for harrowhark, smart and kind and incredibly brave, how fate can be so strange that you run into the best of people at the bottom of the grave.
raising a hand to grip one of her wrists for a moment, just squeezing. he can't remember crying, in his life. a few tears for a tattoo needle hitting bone, maybe a few for the wrong kind of drunken night. a tightening of his chest for beauregard, in her prison. he doesn't quite yet here, either, but something that's just raw emotion is burning in his throat too.]
. . . I pulled a card for her, this week. Just one.
The tarot. Oh-- I suppose you haven't-- [they hadn't really talked about this so much. the cards. he pauses and looks around, like he can't quite remember what he did with them before he spots the coat there on the end of the bed and gives up trying to show her.] Doesn't matter.
They said someone would be looking out for her. And I thought, if no one else, then I could try. I wouldn't watch her die too, in that bloody arena.
[She likes that thought. She does know about his cards vaguely, I think, she just wasn't sure exactly what he meant. But she loves the thought of making your own destiny.
She also loves the poetic justice of it.]
You used it selflessly to help her, and by chance it brought about a small part of the justice you wanted. Perhaps you drew a good card as well.
[That's fine, he's ready to be done with feelings. he barely avoided a wailing cry session there. will these feelings spectacularly explode at some point in a terrible fashion? probably. will it be right this moment? seems it has been dodged. just flopping himself backwards, blowing hair out of his face.]
I don't know. I-- Well, the world moves on without you, doesn't it? One day, you're left in a grave by the road, and everyone continues with their lives because that is what they have to do and they occasionally speak of you fondly until, one day, perhaps they don't. That's normal. As it should be.
Perhaps. I don't have much experience with that type of grieving process. And yet, I can't imagine they would have forgotten you.
[All of the grieving she's done has been. . . so bad and fucked up. But she feels it a little anyway - a pang of something that bubbles up in her, imagining losing someone like him. Putting him away and just - forgetting, moving on. It's hard to think about.
So she says a little too fervently - ]
You are alive, Mollymauk. You are a living person. Perhaps you were only somewhere else for a while, in another room, and they didn't happen to see you.
[They haven't forgotten, is the thing. Of course they haven't? Beau was here for him. Maybe the statement was more of a wish for what should be, rather than what had come to pass. Some things should be left in the grave when their time is done, to be remembered fondly.
... You sure you don't wanna pretend for a while more?
You are alive, Mollymauk. You are a living person. For now, this body is yours alone. He'd promised her that he'd do his best. He'd promised himself that he'd fight like hell, in her name. He doesn't so much begin to cry as something rips out of him, animal and foreign, raw. A broken dam of unnameable emotion that's fought its way to the surface and demands its due. He curls in on himself, hiding his face in his arms and pulling his knees up, shoulders shaking and making that horrible noise. A pathetic infant.]
[Oh, Molly. Somehow, she doesn't feel that this is shameful at all; she doesn't feel embarrassed. She feels, oddly, tremendously blessed, touched and grateful at being allowed this. Isn't that something, that for the gruesome chimera that she is, this hollowed out shell, that he would let her be a witness to his grief.
She doesn't really know how to hold someone any better than she does how to be held, but she'll do it anyway, arms around him without disturbing his ability to curl up and hide.]
[ 'You know what just occurred to me? I didn't have a childhood.`
he feels like a child now too, pathetic and angry and sad without being able to put it into words. he's good at words. they'd taught him well, or someone had along the line. so he's lost without them for the moment, just digging his hands into the side of his head and letting himself feel it. all the vile anger and sickening grief that's built up. for beau. for the nein. for himself. wallowing in the muck of this place and hearing the blood thrumming in his ears.
funny, how he'd told sheila that if he cried, he'd be the prettiest crier in the place. this is clearly not true. it's about as ugly a cry as it can get, but eventually the just sheer wailing madness calms to just. cursing in every language he knows and even more he doesn't. words he'd picked up along the road. That strange, grating noise he'd screamed earlier, the common fuck and shit and bastard and scheiße and other, stranger things until he calms down, just breathing instead.]
[She'll let him go, once he says that, folding her hands in her lap, instead. She still isn't sure what to do, only trying to be - trying to think how to be kind when she has no experience in comforting others and no experience in being comforted. She may have had a childhood, but she was never a child, not in the eyes of the aunts who would watch over her while she made her prayers, and certainly not in the eyes of her parents. To them, she must have been a horror. A bargain paid off, but painful to look upon, impossible to love. She never even had any playmates her own age. There was one, but she died before Harrow was born.
Being cared for and caring for someone is new, and frightening. That there's a piece of her that can be hurt, and it exists somewhere she can't cover and shield with bone. But she'd like to try.]
[He just sits up and decompresses for a moment - sniffling still and trying to like. wipe off the worst of it on the back of his arm. his makeup - dark red eyeliner, mostly - is absolutely ruined. it probably gives him slightly the appearance of just having bled from the eyes. he didn't plan this well. it's fine.
with the non-snot hand he reaches over to hold one of harrow's. bonded by cry now, bitch, that means hand-holding happens occasionally.]
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Bad vibes, man.]
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She's just. . . never had a friend before. She doesn't know what to do, the right thing to say. She's always hated a problem she can't solve, and this problem feels very important.]
. . . Mollymauk.
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[That's fine. This is honestly not that unusual. He is friends (?) with a literal goblin who also does this shit a lot, so it just does not even phase him.
He just curls a little tighter for a second and then presses his hands over his eyes (the eyes on the palms pressing over the eyes in his skull, eyes on eyes on eyes) until his vision sparks and blurs and then shakes it off. Sitting up.]
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You saved her life today, as surely as anyone could have. What a marvel you were.
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he doesn't know how to respond to this exactly, just adding the overwhelming feeling of gratitude: that shi qingxian is alive, for harrowhark, smart and kind and incredibly brave, how fate can be so strange that you run into the best of people at the bottom of the grave.
raising a hand to grip one of her wrists for a moment, just squeezing. he can't remember crying, in his life. a few tears for a tattoo needle hitting bone, maybe a few for the wrong kind of drunken night. a tightening of his chest for beauregard, in her prison. he doesn't quite yet here, either, but something that's just raw emotion is burning in his throat too.]
. . . I pulled a card for her, this week. Just one.
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A card. . . ?
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They said someone would be looking out for her. And I thought, if no one else, then I could try. I wouldn't watch her die too, in that bloody arena.
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She also loves the poetic justice of it.]
You used it selflessly to help her, and by chance it brought about a small part of the justice you wanted. Perhaps you drew a good card as well.
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Perhaps. A good way to think of it, at any rate. At the very least, Beauregard and I are even now.
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. . . Are you feeling all right?
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Be fucked if I know.
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[He crosses his arms over himself tightly, just. thinking.]
It doesn't feel as if she's really gone yet. Just that she's been, somehow, in another room, and I just haven't happened to see her.
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That's not an inaccurate way of looking at it, but I suppose you're speaking more metaphorically. Nonetheless, death isn't the same as gone.
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I suppose you would know.
[ . . . ]
Did I tell you, according to her, I've been dead eight months.
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Anyway, that gives her some thought.]
Does that trouble you?
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I don't know. I-- Well, the world moves on without you, doesn't it? One day, you're left in a grave by the road, and everyone continues with their lives because that is what they have to do and they occasionally speak of you fondly until, one day, perhaps they don't. That's normal. As it should be.
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[All of the grieving she's done has been. . . so bad and fucked up. But she feels it a little anyway - a pang of something that bubbles up in her, imagining losing someone like him. Putting him away and just - forgetting, moving on. It's hard to think about.
So she says a little too fervently - ]
You are alive, Mollymauk. You are a living person. Perhaps you were only somewhere else for a while, in another room, and they didn't happen to see you.
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You are alive, Mollymauk. You are a living person. For now, this body is yours alone. He'd promised her that he'd do his best. He'd promised himself that he'd fight like hell, in her name. He doesn't so much begin to cry as something rips out of him, animal and foreign, raw. A broken dam of unnameable emotion that's fought its way to the surface and demands its due. He curls in on himself, hiding his face in his arms and pulling his knees up, shoulders shaking and making that horrible noise. A pathetic infant.]
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She doesn't really know how to hold someone any better than she does how to be held, but she'll do it anyway, arms around him without disturbing his ability to curl up and hide.]
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he feels like a child now too, pathetic and angry and sad without being able to put it into words. he's good at words. they'd taught him well, or someone had along the line. so he's lost without them for the moment, just digging his hands into the side of his head and letting himself feel it. all the vile anger and sickening grief that's built up. for beau. for the nein. for himself. wallowing in the muck of this place and hearing the blood thrumming in his ears.
funny, how he'd told sheila that if he cried, he'd be the prettiest crier in the place. this is clearly not true. it's about as ugly a cry as it can get, but eventually the just sheer wailing madness calms to just. cursing in every language he knows and even more he doesn't. words he'd picked up along the road. That strange, grating noise he'd screamed earlier, the common fuck and shit and bastard and scheiße and other, stranger things until he calms down, just breathing instead.]
. . . Okay. I'm alright. Fuck. I'm okay.
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[She'll let him go, once he says that, folding her hands in her lap, instead. She still isn't sure what to do, only trying to be - trying to think how to be kind when she has no experience in comforting others and no experience in being comforted. She may have had a childhood, but she was never a child, not in the eyes of the aunts who would watch over her while she made her prayers, and certainly not in the eyes of her parents. To them, she must have been a horror. A bargain paid off, but painful to look upon, impossible to love. She never even had any playmates her own age. There was one, but she died before Harrow was born.
Being cared for and caring for someone is new, and frightening. That there's a piece of her that can be hurt, and it exists somewhere she can't cover and shield with bone. But she'd like to try.]
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[He just sits up and decompresses for a moment - sniffling still and trying to like. wipe off the worst of it on the back of his arm. his makeup - dark red eyeliner, mostly - is absolutely ruined. it probably gives him slightly the appearance of just having bled from the eyes. he didn't plan this well. it's fine.
with the non-snot hand he reaches over to hold one of harrow's. bonded by cry now, bitch, that means hand-holding happens occasionally.]
. . . Never really done that before.
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[Squeezing that hand right back.]
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[not a very funny joke but it's the best he can do right now?]
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