when we collide we come together

[atouchofka]

Alain had thrown himself into the work Kyrat offered, not without some gratitude. It was something to do, to take his mind off everything that had happened and might still be happening, far off in New Canaan. He knew Roland and Bert were alive - couldn't believe he wouldn't have felt it if they weren't - but the rest? He couldn't help wondering what was going on with them, any more than he could help wondering just what Walter's presence here had meant. The pieces didn't add up, no matter how he tried to arrange them, and it was both frustrating and a little frightening.

It wasn't exactly reassuring that he hadn't been able to pick up Walter's spoor, either. He'd looked, and looked closely, investigating every street and every building he could, but after a week of searching, he had to admit that the wizard - and Vidalia, though he was slightly less concerned with her; she was Nariko's business, Kyrat's business, not his - wasn't going to be found. In all likelihood, they were both long gone, probably off with Farson's forces. He went on searching, but without much urgency, and that chore fell in priority. He had other work to do - helping the local people bring order back to their city, where they could, and trying to win their trust, and watching over Nariko (from a distance, usually, since he doubted she'd appreciate him hovering over her shoulder all the time).

But it was Walter he was looking for outside the city walls, when he heard the horn. It pulled him up short, and he looked up at the horizon, where the gunslingers were a tiny smudge of shadow which even his keen eyes couldn't make out clearly. The horn, though - that was unmistakable.

He turned on his heel and ran, ducking through streets he was coming to know, and finally knocking on Nariko's door. "Roland's near!"

Comments

[gunslingerqueen]

There was nothing if not work. The streets had to be cleaned, the water purified, wounds (emotional and physical alike) had to be assessed. For Nariko in particular there was an entire stack of proposals that demanded her attention, meetings to sit and argue through, it was a laundry list of tasks that felt meaningless by themselves but built into a greater picture. What she asked of Alain was along the same vein but his purpose was easier to see, it’s effect more immediately utilized. The Kyrati people warmed to Alain’s quiet but serious nature very easily, his moments of kindness were heralded as the shining example of their own judgements - Gunslingers might be killers but they weren’t completely inhuman, maybe they weren't the monsters they had been told to fear in the dark! To her own it was something of a miraculous realization.

As she opened the door to her office and he gave her the news she could only hope that his progress was enough. She had doubted that Roland would actually come back to her and pushing off the idea hadn’t done her any favors. She stared at Alain as if he’d grown a second, unattractive head, her mouth opened to speak but nothing came out for a solid ten seconds before it snapped shut again.

“Oh.” Alright, then. She should have been much more prepared for this but frankly it had been easier to fret over getting the well clean than think about her own husband. “You should go meet them, the guard’s will be less suspicious if you're there and I need to set up their rooms.”

An incredibly polite, almost stiffly formal way of saying: I’m too nervous to deal with Roland Deschain right now, go stall for me. Not that it truly mattered, if Roland was here then she couldn't hope to avoid him, and twenty extra minutes of solitude wasn't going to prepare her anymore than the previous weeks had.

[atouchofka]

Alain nodded, raking his fingers back through his hair, and turned away again without any further questions. It would be good to say that was because he had no need of answers, because he understood what was going through her mind, and to an extent he did, but truthfully, it was more that he'd simply missed his ka-mates, and was all too glad to hurry out to meet them.

By the time he reached the front gates again, the gunslingers were far closer - close enough that they had gone from a vague shadow to visible silhouettes. More of them than he'd thought; more than he'd dared to hope. He'd expected them to come with even fewer men, if they survived this far at all, but it seemed like their little party had actually grown. Feeling his heart lift a little at the realisation, Alain set out across the plains towards them.

Roland saw him first, of course, but it was Bert who hailed him, sticking two fingers in his mouth and whistling - as if there was any need to draw Alain's attention. "You remember Al, aye?" he said over his shoulder, to the two girls riding on the horse he was leading. "He's the nice one."

[apassingafternoon]

“Shit, we’re gonna die.”

The girls could nod along all they wanted but Eunyce was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, one that had only seemed to intensify the farther they traveled. “We’re so fucking dead, Ignis, we should have just stayed with Tyrann, why did I let you convince me to come back here!” The younger cousin shot the elder a horrid look, and he only shrugged.

“This is our home, Eunyce, for better or worse it’s where we belong.” Ignis had repeated the same idea over the course of the past four days, always calm, with a measure of understanding. Kyrat’s body formed an outline, a final end to their long journey, but he remained eerily serene, as if he couldn’t imagine taking any comfort from his own sentiments. “You have to trust our cousin to make everything right, as much as it can be.” In that he seemed to place a genuine bit of confidence but Eunyce was hardly moved.

“Mmhm, yes, our resident bitch in charge, who I have yet to see. You remember that if one is whipped viciously enough you don’t want to move for weeks, right? For all we know she’s laid up and let the place go to further shit than it was when we left!”

“Shut up!” Kaine finally interjected, in part to save the girls some fear, but simply because their endless chattering about the whole matter was beginning to drive her mad. She chose to ignore that Eunyce was right, that it was a bit odd Nariko wasn't there to immediately greet them - but maybe she was just busy. “You’re going to scare the kids! And furthermore, I don’t think Alain would be walking out to meet us if it was really that bad. Stop being negative for ten whole minutes, Eunyce, I promise it’ll do you a world of good.”

Said woman grumbled her fears, but even Eunyce couldn’t retain her dour mood when a blur, only recognized by a mop of blond hair, shot past Alain. “ROLAND!” Nathan moved with all the gangly excitement of a boy his age, boundless and grinning stupidly, when it was a somewhat feasible act he launched himself at the gunslinger whether he liked it or not. Kaine mentally prayed for his safety, and that he didn't break his arm smacking into the hard earth.

[toweredingly]

Roland wasn't expecting Nathan, but he had a gunslinger's reflexes; he caught the boy easily, sweeping him up instinctively and actually laughing a little, low and coarse in his throat. That surprised even him - he had barely smiled, let alone laughed, on most of this journey, and it felt almost foreign.

"One day," he commented, setting Nathan on his feet again and ruffling his hair, "you'll hurt yourself doing that."

"Probably stab yourself on his elbows," Bert put in, with a smirk. "Gods only know they're bony enough." Passing the reins back to Emily, he winked. "Al, if I jump on you that way, will you catch me too?" Without waiting for an answer, he did just that, launching himself at his friend with arms and legs both - Alain let out a little oof! and stumbled back a half-step, but did catch him and didn't even push him away for a moment. "We missed you, Al. I'm not cut out for this whole Roland-management business." Then, disentangling his legs from Alain's waist (the girls were giggling at his silliness, which was gratifying) "No Nariko?"

Alain shrugged, looking at Roland rather than Bert as he answered. "She's back in the city. It's been busy." A moment's hesitation. "...There's a lot to tell."

[apassingafternoon]

"Tons," Nathan added while he took one of Roland's hands for his own, and didn't seem intent on letting go even as they neared the city gates, and the guards in their towers. Ignis raised a hand in greeting, that and Alain's general presence meant that they would pass unbothered. "The water was poisoned and the bad sorcerer came, a lot of people died, and Dito was a pervert." Before Kaine could get her own words out, Nathan added: "I smacked him for it."

"Good," Kaine grumbled, but otherwise continued to tread on, she gave Alain a smile but otherwise left him alone - he was probably more concerned with Bert and Roland, so she didn't feel a need to get in the way. "Nothing else happened, right?"

To her was the unspoken component there, but much to Kaine's relief Nathan shook his head. "Nope! Just a lot of boring meetings and arguing!"

As Alain was more than well aware of now, Kyrat was far from a quiet city. It hummed with activity even late into the night, but you'd never guess it as they made their way in. The gunslingers arrival was like a wave of cautious, jittery silence that fell over every citizen when they looked in the group's direction.

"Don't mind them," Kaine chirped, "They'll get used to it."

That there was none of the clear outrage or immediate fear was probably all thanks to Alain, so - Small mercies.]

[atouchofka]

Alain walked at the front of the little group, between Roland and Bert. It made it easier for him to be seen, for him to smile and greet the citizens familiarly, to make all his work integrating himself worthwhile. Smiling was easy. Even seeing the sorry state of his brethren - the blind man slumped in the saddle, the limping and crippled and mutilated - it raised his spirits no end to see them at all.

"I've been in some of the meetings," he told Roland, as they walked. "Nariko can report on them clearer than I can, I'm sure, but little of it seemed to be our concern, if you'd have the truth of it."

"I can't say I'm surprised," Roland remarked. He looked distant, though, and his smile had faded into thin-lipped severity. "Though I'd know more of this poisoning, and this sorcerer. Is it...?"

"Aye," Alain said quietly, before Roland had even finished asking, and pretended not to see how the colour drained from his dinh's face. "Aye. It was him."

[apassingafternoon]

"Nathan," The boy looked at Kaine, who was off to one side of Bert, and trailing behind a step or two with the girls nearby. "Was Alain there for every meeting with Farrim and Aja?"

"No, sometimes they all met really late at night. That was usually when the arguing happened."

Kaine raised her arms as if exasperated but left it at that while Nathan continued to walk. If he knew that he had done something worthy of any real concern then he kept it to himself. "Did you hear what it was about?"

"I'm not supposed to say."

Kaine paused, biting her lower lip and then pursuing it from a different angle: "But you could tell Roland."

Nathan stopped, then, and was only saved from a trampling because the horse that held Emily and Alice was intelligent enough. "I'm not saying anything to or in front of you! I already have to run four miles because I skipped etiquette class yesterday!"

Her eyes rolled as they neared the castle, "I guess that's one way to keep your cards close to your chest."

[atouchofka]

"It's no bad thing," Roland said mildly. "He knows how to keep his lip buttoned. That's a damned sight better than a lot of men twice his age." He looked back at Kaine. There might have been some sympathy in his look, but with Roland, how could you ever tell? "It's kept this long. It'll keep a few minutes longer, till you can ask Nariko herself."

Bert snorted. "That'll teach you to try and make Ro' helpful," he told Kaine cheerfully, and winked. Silliness was easier for him to come by, since they'd found the kids, and even more since they'd got within sight of Kyrat. To Nathan, he added, "Four miles is nothing. I once had to run twelve for missing my etiquette class."

"You had to run twelve miles," Alain corrected him dryly, "because you broke into the wine cellar and then wouldn't get out of bed for two days." He elbowed Bert, shaking his head and smiling, then looked back up at Kaine, his smile fading again. "If I had to guess, it's been less bad than Nariko expected. She's not been hurt, for one thing."

[apassingafternoon]

Kaine rolled her eyes at them both but she had no choice but to agree, she was fretting despite how close they were to the answers. Another hour or so wouldn't kill her anymore than the damn month it had taken them to come back. Nathan, meanwhile, looked horrified when Alain mentioned a wine cellar, and directed the expression to Bert. "Why did you go in there? Wine is awful!"

Off to the side of him Kaine gave Alain a grateful, if somewhat nervous kind of smile. "I'm glad to hear it, I really was worried that they would pull something dramatic. Now I look forward to hearing how it was avoided."

But they wouldn't have much time to go on discussing it. Waiting for them at the entrance to the compound was a relatively young man, only a few years older than Alain. He had messy brown hair and a tanned quality to his skin, but he was far too fair skinned to be a Kyrati. When they were within a reasonable distance he waved at them, "Your the gunslingers, right?" Not that he needed an answer so much as opened with a question.

"I'm Dito, and I’ve been tasked with showing all you lovely folks to your rooms. With the exception of Kaine, who has some talking to do in the office, want me to drop your stuff at your room? Kaine stepped forward to hand him her pack but kept her sword in place, and then she pointed to Bert. "He might be staying with me, just so you know. I think he and Roland are supposed to be coming with me.”

Dito's green eyes widened in a mild sort of confusion, as if the idea was somewhat unheard of. "But he's a gunslinger. And I don't see anyone else that can be described 'irritatingly pretty' so I'm gonna say that's the one that isn't particularly liked."

Kaine had to control herself to keep from laughing, and she barely choked out: "It's fine. She can yell at me if it's really that big of a deal." It was horribly clear that the man was confused but he shrugged and went along with it. If they let him, he would direct the wounded gunslingers to follow him as if separating was an expected goal. For what it may have been worth Ignis and Eunyce would follow while Kaine lead the rest of them towards the compound’s office.

[askthelookout]

"Did she really say that about me?" Bert batted his long, dark eyelashes, putting his hand to his heart. "You hear that, everyone? I'm irritatingly pretty!"

"Irritating, certainly," Roland muttered under his breath, and shook his head, following Kaine.

Bert stuck his tongue out, turned back to ruffle the girls' hair and send them off after Dito with his pack, then jogged after the others.

[gunslingerqueen]

There were far less people crowded into the circular halls, and those that went about their various jobs didn't pay as much mind to the gunslingers. Kaine, however, received more than a few greetings and some batted lashes aimed in her direction. She brushed it all off politely and never stopped moving, in fact as time went on she seemed to walk much faster until they made it to the correct office.

Kaine didn't knock despite the sound of voices from behind the door, she waltzed right in and threw three different sets of gold eyes in her direction. Nariko was one of them, of course, standing behind her desk, hair unbound. The other occupant was seated, one with such incredibly dark skin that she almost appeared inhuman, and the equally black hair didn't help. She blinked at their entrance and then immediately turned back to Nariko. "If we don't go after Vidalia now she's going to come back and slit our throats! We don't have time to be concerned with New Canaan! It does us no good to focus on it! My Lady, you can't possibly expect -"

"Aja." Nariko interrupted, "We can discuss this later, alright? For now concern yourself with the Nursery and strengthening the borders. Losing your mind over it won't make us anymore or less prepared, so spare your nerves."

The other woman visibly deflated as if she had wasted all the words in her, but nodded rather obediently and stood to leave. When she passed them, only Alain was idly acknowledged but otherwise she seemed just as happy to exit as Nariko was to see her leave.

"Busy, huh?" With the last distraction out of the way Kaine took the first hug, squeezing tightly.

"When am I not?" Nariko squeezed back, "Welcome home, Kaine." And when they parted she managed a polite enough smile for Bert, and a slightly wider one for Roland. "I'm glad you're both alright." Whatever nerves she felt were knocked out of place when Kaine kissed her cheek and then occupied the armchair that Aja had been in a while ago. There were four others, so no one would be lacking in the seat department.

"So, what happened?"

[toweredingly]

Roland waited for Kaine and Nariko to part before he moved in himself, pulling Nariko into a hug of his own - one rather tighter and more fervent than she might have expected - and kissing her cheek before stepping away. "It's good to see you," he said, with a little nod, not smiling.

Bert nodded his agreement. He wasn't about to go for a hug, but he was glad to see her in one piece - for Kaine's sake and Roland's, as much as for hers. He settled for tapping his throat in due salute, before draping himself into one of the other chairs and kicking his feet up onto the arm. Alain settled, more sedately, in the seat on Kaine's other side, but Roland remained standing.

"We found a few of your kin," he said after a moment's consideration, "and a few of ours. Though not so many of ours as I would have liked. Two gunslingers who'll never draw a gun again." His expression, always dour and stony, only changed a little, but it was enough to make his grief surprisingly clear. "We buried two more. Stayed ahead of Farson, for the most part, but it was nearer than I'd like. There's no going back there." He frowned, looking back at the door Aja had left through. "Nothing to be concerned with there, not any more. It's just more of Farson's territory, now."

If you didn't listen too closely, or look too hard, you might almost think that was as easy for him to say as he was trying to pretend.

[gunslingerqueen]

Yes, it was far more than she had expected, so she barely had time to get over the initial shock and enjoy the contact in the first place. It was a shame, of course, but Nariko let him go even though every nerve in her body asked her not to. Life was cruel that way, and full of various issues they needed to go over. As Bert and Alain sat Nariko did the same, smoothing out her dress before settling into the same chair she’d been stuck in for weeks now.

She listened to Roland with an leveled expression, and the only indication that she might not believe his final line was a minute downturn of her own gaze. Kaine, similarly, rubbed the back of her neck and spoke up.

“Tyrann and Yonah are alive at Castle Black. From the way he tells it things are still a mess but they’re getting by well enough. I think the biggest thing there is just making sure they actually have a shot at defending themselves. Yahewa didn’t run off, thank goodness, but that’s one man to however many might raid the place. You know how much I hate to admit it when Roland is right, but he is - keeping that whole territory is going to be more than a little difficult.”

Nariko shook her head while she leaned onto her desk a bit. “Castle Black is full of our people and I won’t give up on them. Besides, I already sent the third group out their way. They only need to hold it together for another week or so, and then another two after that.”

Kaine shrugged, though whether she felt doubtful versus moderately exasperated was up for debate. Nariko finally turned her gaze to Roland and asked, “Are the remaining gunslingers planning on staying here? They’re welcome to it, of course, but it would change how I handle certain matters.” So if that was the case knowing ahead of time would save them all a good deal of suffering.

[apassingafternoon]

She'd thought that she had nothing to say to Bert but that was a white lie. Kaine had quite a bit to say - or rather shout - at the man she had fallen in love with and she had every intention of finding him and saying it all as loudly and angrily as she could. Frustrated, angry tears rolled down her face as she stomped through the compound.

But it was somewhere between the library and the entrance that it all seemed to drain out of her. She was just too fucking tired for all of this. Maybe Roland or Bert could stand to be angry and frustrated and pissy for extended periods of time but Kaine just didn't have the will nor the dedication.

For as dark haired as Bert was he would still be easy to find among the Kyrati, the citizens immediate reactions would be enough to guide her in the right, general direction. If nothing else it wasn't that big of a city, and it wasn't as if he could leave without running into trouble.

So, really, it was only a matter of time.

[askthelookout]

Bert hadn't gone far. He'd thought of going back to find the rooms they'd been given, but the chances were that the girls were still there, and he was quite sure he didn't want to see them. Not when he was so angry, not when he felt like anything that came out of his mouth would turn into shouting. They hadn't done anything to deserve that.

So he'd found somewhere he could be alone, sprawled on the top of a wall, staring up at the sky. His face was tightly set, his eyes heavily-lidded but still burning with that deep-settled anger.

To his credit, about thirty seconds after storming out he'd started to shift from anger at Nariko and Roland to anger at himself. He wasn't totally without self-awareness; he knew he'd had no right to be so angry or to feel so hurt, not when they were only being reasonable. He shouldn't have behaved that way, shouldn't have shamed himself that way.

But that didn't make the anger go away. It had been building up in him for weeks, and it certainly wasn't going anywhere now. He couldn't look at it too closely, either, for fear of what he might find underneath. Anger might be shitty, but he could manage it. The grief and fear and loss and love buoying it up... that was Alain's department, not his. Raging was better than crying, on balance.

When Kaine found him, he didn't look at her. He just went on watching the pebble he kept tossing up and catching, like it was the only thing in the world that could matter to him. "If you've come to get an apology, you can forget it. I said what I said, and I meant it too."

[apassingafternoon]

He'd gotten the words out before she could even sit beside him, and she was incredibly tempted to simply turn around and leave.

"I was going to ask you which room you wanted to sleep in." Now the question didn't feel particularly relevant, and she continued to stand nearby, but folded her arms, overlooking the eastern part of the city. It was a good five minutes before she settled herself along the edge of the rough concrete, out of arm's reach for however much it counted. Even then she was quiet, watching the farthest guard tower that they had passed through upon entering the city. She didn't exhibit a hardworking silence like Roland did when he had to let his mind churn. Kaine knew exactly what to say, she just wouldn't be rushed to say it.

"Bert, I thought that you loved me."

It was a surprisingly even tempered question, one that wasn't meant to instill cheap guilt.

[askthelookout]

Whatever he'd been expecting her to say, it wasn't that. He blinked, the pebble bouncing off his chest and off to one side, and looked at her. His brows had drawn together, but shock softened some of the hard lines of his expression.

"What?" He blinked again, and swung his legs to one side, sitting up. "What does that have to do with anything?"

[apassingafternoon]

"Because people who love each other help one another. If I'm bleeding out I'd think you'd be the first to come over and help me not bleed out. So I'm not understanding why you keep holding on to all of this anger and sadness when you could just deal with it and let me help you. Right now it feels like you love your anger and how easy it is to be afraid of not having it more than you love me."

When she huffed it was shaky and her eyes immediately filled with tears of her own, but she kept her gaze forward, as if looking at him might destroy her resolve.

"I know you were like this before, too, to an extent but it wasn't this bad. Before, you were at least kind of healed, but now you just keep bleeding and I thought if you yelled and got angry then maybe it would help, but it's not. So am I just supposed to keep pretending everything is fine when you are very obviously not 'fine'?"

[askthelookout]

For a moment, Bert stared at her in pure incomprehension. It was clear that none of this had occurred to him, and really, why should it? He'd never had much in the way of emotional intelligence, not really. In his experience, physical injuries and real-world problems were the ones you could do something about. Bleeding out and being angry were different because...

...Well, because they just were.

(Alain, halfway across the building, caught a wave of what was going on and pressed his hand to his forehead. Gods, this was going to take some untangling, and he wasn't at all sure how.)

"I'm not..." Bert said after a little while, and his voice was as confused as his expression. "I mean, I am dealing with it. I mean, trying to." He could feel some part of him, the part he really hated, wanting to crumple up and cry. Can't you see I'm trying? Can't you see I'm doing all I can? He screwed up his face for a moment, to hide the tears that were momentarily threatening. "What do you want from me? I mean, you can't slap a bandage on what's happened, you can't stitch it up, and if even Alain hasn't healed, what the hell do you expect from me?"

And there was that anger again, coming up like a shield, but it wasn't the same anger, not really. It didn't have direction, didn't have even the pretence of being about anyone else. It was anger at himself, for his own vulnerability and his own inability to understand. He looked away, slamming his fist against the top of the wall so hard there was an audible crunch of cartilage.

[apassingafternoon]

Kaine had no right to complain about her reaction when she’d essentially asked for it, so she held back the desire to flinch when he crunched his hand along the wall. She waited a moment or two, as if it really might do some good. When she spoke again she’d found some evenness, and looked out at the city again. Maybe it would help if she wasn’t staring at him, or maybe she still found it difficult to open up about this stuff and she needed to alleviate the pressure.

“You’re right, I can’t do any of that.” She pauses, narrowing her eyes out into the distance. “I can’t stitch anything anymore than you can make me stop being upset. You can’t make me un-sad about the decisions that both you and Roland have made. What I have to do is wait until it feels like everything is manageable, and then I’m going to go and cry underneath my comforter. It’s going to be ugly, gross, and awful. At the end of it Gilead and Aranasa will still be gone, Jaime will still be dead, Devola, Lena, Christie, my parents, my grandma - crying isn’t going to bring them back, and I won’t magically recover after doing so, letting myself feel stuff is awful. It’s the worst.”

She probably wasn’t making the best case here, which was why Bert really needed to patient with her. “But if I get rid of all of that there’s room for other stuff. There’s more room for being able to spend time with you for however long we’ve got. There’s teaching the girls about carving and learning their birthdays and their favorite colors. Eventually there’s room for being okay. Everyone’s still dead and it’s awful and it hurts, but at least I’ll be able to get up and function without feeling like every moment I’m conscious I’m just a living dead woman.”

Kaine finally looked back at him and reached out to put her hand over his fist, though she hesitated, fingers wavering before she simply did it. “I don’t know what you need. But throwing around jokes and quietly burying it and expecting it to go away on its own isn’t working. You’ve been doing your absolute best, and I am proud of you for that, but you don’t have to bear it silently. I’m right here.”

For all that she’d managed to string together it all felt terribly useless and thin, though towards the end it felt as if she was pouring her heart into each sentiment. That was the most torturous part about love, she could never fully express how badly she wanted to help make everything better, words would never do the job.

[askthelookout]

Bert was quiet for a long moment, looking from her hand to her face, biting down on the inside of his cheek. It was almost a minute before finally, wordlessly, he turned his hand over to grasp hers, lacing his fingers through hers and holding tight. He looked away then, closing his eyes tightly and heaving a deep sigh.

"Never thought anyone'd accuse me of bearing things quietly," he said at last, and looked up at her sidelong, from under his long, dark lashes. His smile wasn't really a smile at all: faking them was getting harder and harder, apparently. "Roland, aye. Alain, sure. Pretty sure my job around here's to bitch as loud and long as I can." That not-smile faded, and he shook his head, casting his eyes downwards again. For a moment more, he worried at his lip, tussling against his own pride and stubbornness, before he managed to string the truth together. "Every time I think we're pulling something back, it gets taken away again. We came back to our kin; they died. We retook Gilead; it's gone. We found the girls; they're staying here. I just..."

He screwed up his face, embarrassed by this touchy-feely conversation, wishing he'd never started saying this in the first place. "What about when you go? What then? Alain's tied himself to everyone he meets, and Roland's got Nariko and his thrice-damned Tower, but me? I'm the fucking ka-mai with nothing left to keep hanging onto." To his horror, his voice cracked audibly, and although he tightened his jaw, it wasn't enough to stop the sobs from threatening. "I need someone to stay, Kaine. Just stay with me. Just tell me when I die, someone's gonna be with me longer than it t-takes to bury me and say a prayer..."

Now he was crying, like something in him had burst; it came out in humiliating, gasping sobs, the sort of childish all-encompassing crying that made it hard to breathe. He pushed his free hand hard up against his mouth, but it did nothing to stop the tears, which had been building up for months and weren't about to be pushed back inside now.

[apassingafternoon]

She reached up to take his hand from his mouth, gripping it so firmly that he couldn’t hope to untangle it from her own without a real fight. “Come on, you sound like you’re already halfway there, go for broke. If anyone tries to say a word I’m gonna say it’s me, and then I’m going to punch the shit out of them.” That wasn’t an attempt at humor, Bert was a man and men had weird forms of pride and they were technically out in the open-ish, but an ego wasn’t getting in the way here. Bending inward, Kaine pressed the back of his neck to her shoulder, not only because she wanted to hold him, but because she really did want to protect him from roving eyes.

“You were stuck with me the moment that Nariko engaged us, Cuthbert. I’m going to follow wherever you go whether you damn well like it or not! I don’t care if it’s the Tower or another world or all of this one! I’m going to be with you even if ka or whatever the hell else tries to get in the way.”

It was her turn to crack at the seams, her voice wobbled at it’s edges, and her grip on his neck was becoming harsher as she tried to keep herself together - and failed. “You might go a moment before me, Bert, but losing you is the only thing that could well and truly kill me. I won’t leave you alone in this life or the next, I’ll lie next to your grave and you’ll just see me on the other side.”

And that was her limit. Kaine shuddered as if she’d been smacked, and sniffled loudly, shifting to wrap both arms around him and pull Bert as close as possible.

[askthelookout]

He tried to wrench his hand away, blindly and instinctively, but only for a moment. Then he relaxed into her grip, going limp up against her as another thick, choking sob racked him. He ought to say something, he knew, something to turn him from a sobbing child into a man again, but he couldn't for the life of him think what that would be. So he just cried against her shoulder, and when she embraced him, he answered by clinging to her in return, desperately tight, his hands clenching into fists against her back.

He didn't know how long he stayed like that, holding her tight with his shoulders shaking and his breath coming in thick, heavy gulps. It felt like forever. At last, though, his sobbing slowed, turning into sniffles and gulps, and he pulled away from her a little to wipe his eyes.

Biting his lip, he looked up at her, opened his mouth to say something, and then seemed to give up on the idea - his quick tongue didn't seem to be answering to him lately, anyway. He settled for kissing her, more forcefully than he meant to, tasting salt from his own tears.

I half apologize for the lil character bomb that has happened today elmo.gif

[apassingafternoon]

When they parted she reached into her pocket to tug out her handkerchief, but she didn't get very far before he kissed her. For a good second or two Kaine stayed like that, arms mid-air and useless and thrown by the strength in that kiss, but she leaned into it as easily as she could breathe. She didn't rush him, but when she had no choice but to come up for air Kaine giggled a bit, her forehead pressed against his.

"You're welcome, I guess?" Assuming that's what the kiss was about in the first place. She hadn't expected it at all, but you'd never find her complaining.

"So on a scale of one to one-hundred, how awful do you feel?" No one should ask her to be a comforting force, her delivery could stand to be refined.

never apologise. not even half.

[askthelookout]

"Two hundred?" Bert suggested brightly, his smile a little less brittle now. Only a little, but it was an improvement. He looked at her more seriously, reaching up to brush her hair back out of her face. "Better. A little. Thankee, Kaine."

He kissed her again, less desperately this time, and laughed rather thinly. "And cry pardon, for getting your shirt all wet. You look like you got caught in the rain." It wasn't that bad, really, but making a joke of it was always easier than being sincere, especially when the sincere thing would have been Cry pardon for breaking like a little girl.