[Ravi/Reilanin] - waking up

[paladont]

Who:
Ravindra
Reilanin
When: Friday, 8/26
Where: Reilanin's office
Before/After: Before the masquerade, after Ravi writes to Gabe asking him to revive Reilanin
Warnings: ~*Feelings*~ and awkwardness, that's about it



'Waking up', as it were, was difficult. She couldn't quite remember why, but she fought against it instinctively. She'd been terrified of the silence and the darkness the first time, though it wasn't totally silent, or totally dark. The Library hummed about her even in her self-imposed sleep, and the blackness was interrupted by waves of light now and then as the world went on without her.

As the magic cycled through her, however, powering through her systems and forcibly rousing her once again, the darkness faded and brought her into full awareness. She kept her eyes shut a few moments- one figure left the room while another stayed, and her wards mapped out every crate and shelf and item on them like a map inside of her head- and waited, wondering briefly what had happened and why her first reaction was a deep-seated revulsion and a rising panic.

Ravindra was dead.

She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling before her face shifted ever so slightly to turn and look at the figure beside her. She stared a long moment.

"...why?"


Ravindra didn't say much to the Asha. He was a means to an end, and treating him as an actual person was simply too much for him to handle at that moment. He hovered by Reilanin's cot, staying out of the Asha's way, and only moved in closer once he had left and the door shut behind him.

He knelt beside her and waited for her to say something. Not intentionally, but because he simply didn't know what to say. His feelings were still a mess, impossible to untangle, but he wanted to be happy she was back, so he forced himself not to listen to the feelings that disagreed.

...It was a stupid question. But he understood perfectly why she'd asked it. He gave her a sad, rueful sort of smile and answered, "Because I missed you."


Not dead, here, but she couldn't make sense of it. He'd been dead. She knew what an unsent letter meant.

"Do you miss people in the Dark?"


The smile fell, leaving behind only the rueful sadness. He considered lying to spare her feelings, then reminded himself that he had a poor track record for guessing her feelings, and that when it came to Reilanin the truth was always the best answer to give.

"No," he said, his eyes lowering to the edge of the cot. "I didn't, at least. I didn't feel anything." He paused. 'It was nice' crossed his mind and was shooed away. He didn't want her to worry that he was intent on returning.

"But Iravati missed me," his eyes lifted to her face again, "so she called someone to bring me back. Just like this."


She didn't know how to respond to his sadness, not when she felt so much of her own. She could be feeling none at all right now. Did he know that? Did he know what he had pulled her away from?

But if he was sad, maybe he did. It just seemed cruel to bring her back just to keep him company.

Her eyes dropped away as well, and she looked aside, examining the wall briefly before her eyes slid over the ceiling, the shelves, the stacks. She shut her eyes again and then gave a small grunt, shifting to sit up.

Her body felt stiff. How long had she been out? Did it matter? It wasn't as though she had anything to wait for, or anything to consider for the future.

"It was my fault, wasn't it."


He knew exactly what he'd pulled her away from. It was the same pleasant nothingness that Iravati had pulled him away from. Losing that peace and having to cope with that loss on top of the others was something they both had in common now.

He reached out to help her sit up, only because the grunt prompted him to recognize her difficulty.

The question was not immediately answered. He set his jaw and forced himself to take a deep breath before he let himself open his mouth.

His first instinct had been to agree to the blame just to make her feel bad.

Maybe he wasn't ready to be around her again yet. But leaving right after bringing her back was just as cruel as bringing her back in the first place. He could not let himself ruin this. She was too important to him for that.

"No," he said firmly, as much for himself as for her. "There is no one to blame for it except myself."


She stared at her legs in front of her, unwilling to lift her head up, unable to look at him. She didn't know what to say to his response. The pause did not bode well, and the answer did not entirely convince her.

"I just told him the truth," she told him softly. "I didn't know... he didn't know... I couldn't understand..."

No, she understood Akhilendra perfectly well in that regard. She liked things better when she didn't understand. She liked things better when she didn't know how to care. She didn't know if she could handle having anything else pulled away from her again.


"I know, Reilanin. I..." He paused again, this time with a more ragged breath, turning his head away from her. "I know," he repeated.

He did know. Reilanin was blunt and honest because it was all she knew to be. He liked that about her. He hated it about her. How could she be so naive that she wouldn't understand how much it hurt him to lose Alex, when she knew how much it had hurt herself? But he understood how she could be so naive, and he couldn't blame her for it, because it was just a part of who she was.

"It's not your fault," he repeated. He looked back to her. "And it won't happen again."


"It will."

She set her hands in her lap, rubbing the palm of one with the thumb of the other. She could feel her chill returning to her, but aware of him she focused on keeping it low, struggling with the boost the Asha had given her- yes, it had been the Asha. She knew already his signature, the way his magic manifested, how it felt. Inexperienced but powerful, almost hesitant, but becoming bolder.

"I don't want to go through this again," she whispered. "Now... fifty years from now... if that's what I have to look forward to, why...? Why bother?"


"It--" won't, he wanted to say, but then she continued. He rocked back on his heels, looking up at her with a soft, sympathetic sadness.

What did you say to that? It was true. Everyone died eventually. She would lose him again some day, and it would be no less painful than the first time.

He wasn't good at this. He was bad at explaining what he felt, and he never knew the right words to say. Maybe there were no right words. Death was a difficult subject. For her, who was only just realizing what it meant, and for him, who'd lost so many important people in his life. It never got less difficult. Being more experienced with it didn't make it any easier, only more understandable.

"I don't know what to tell you," he said finally, "but I do know that--" He had to pause to collect himself, to push down a surge of resentment that disagreed with what he was about to say. "--that my life is better for having you in it. And I hope it's the same for you."


Unaware of his personal dilemma, she remained silent. Was it the same? She didn't know. She didn't know any different from what was.

"I just feel... very sad. And very tired."

The consolation of being with Alexander was that there would be time for them. Barring his unexpected death. A hundred years, two hundred years- it had been a possibility. One she had been naive to entertain.

But for Ravindra, it would be a short time only. Comparatively. Or maybe sooner. There was that fear now, too. And the idea of new people, and more death, and hundreds of years of existence-

"What will you do?"


She didn't need to subject herself to hundreds of years of existence, but it seemed a travesty to let her give up after such a short time. She'd hardly experienced anything yet.

He moved to sit beside her, not touching, but close. The radiating cold, for once, was pleasant. The weather was very warm today.

"I don't know yet. Things are different for me now. When I was resurrected..." He paused, eyes downcast, rubbing his elbow in an anxious fidget. He wasn't sure how to explain this. She hated Akhilendra. He was afraid that he'd either scare her off, or that she'd deal with it by refusing to acknowledge that side of him. The latter, he knew, would make him livid. He felt irritated just thinking about it.

He took a deep breath and tried to put it out of mind. He pulled himself up straight, letting his hands rest in his lap. "I'm not Ravindra anymore. I'm not Akhilendra, either. The line between those parts of me wasn't real, and it's gone now."


She still didn't look at him, not convinced that what had happened- to him, and perhaps even to Alexander- were not somehow her fault. She hated to think she was so powerless. As he sat down beside her, she glanced down, catching sight of only his side before she returned her eyes to her own lap, linking her fingers together idly and twisting one of the many rings she wore around.

I'm not Ravindra anymore. That brought her eyes up, not wanting to bring her head up, not wanting to look at him and confirm what that first statement meant to her. The second confused her and she hesitated, still not wanting to lift her head. The idea, the very thought of Akhilendra, sent a sharp feeling through the pit of her stomach like fear. But what did that mean, that he wasn't Akhilendra either?

Slowly she lifted her eyes to meet his, or at least to look at his face, to gauge the verity of that statement before she looked away again to try and understand what it meant.

"...who are you now, then?" she asked softly, gone back to twisting the black and red ring.


"I don't know yet." He hadn't admitted it aloud until now, but it was the only answer that felt right.

He'd been going by Ravindra's name for the sake of convenience, but it felt like an ill fit. The few times he'd tried introducing himself as Akhilendra, mostly to strangers to test how it sounded, it also didn't seem quite right. Both names were his own, but both failed to capture the complete picture of who he was. His identities had been so clear to him when they were separated, but now that they weren't, he just...didn't know.

It occurred to him that maybe he should have reassured her that he was still Ravindra, at least in part. It was followed up immediately by the thought that if she needed to be reassured about that, then fuck her. He wasn't going to disown half of his identity just because other people found it inconvenient to acknowledge.

And then he shifted to uncomfortable, because that was kind of a harsh way to look at it, and he understood why Reilanin might need that reassurance, given how that other half of himself had treated her...

"It's a very confusing place inside my head right now," he added, turning his head slightly to look toward her, his tone that of an apology.


Aside from the twisting of the ring, she was silent and still, waiting for him to answer, almost like a frightened doe, afraid to move.

She stared down at her lap. How did she respond? Was Akhilendra satisfied now? Or would it be worse?

What did it mean?

"...I don't understand," she mumbled finally. Had he been lying to her? Or telling the truth? Both? Had he wanted to wake her up at all?

She wanted to go back to sleep.


He bit back the urge to reply with, 'You wouldn't,' and took the time to evaluate what he actually wanted to say to her. His gaze moved away from her, eventually locking onto the penguin in the middle of the room.

"What don't you understand?" he asked. He was careful to ensure it came out in the gentle, neutral tone Ravi used when he was trying to explain some concept her player had failed to give her.


"I don't know what it means," she said after a moment. It wasn't that she didn't want to explain, just that finding the words to express herself was difficult.

"Does it mean you hate me?"


"No." There was no hesitation. The answer was firm and certain, without a trace of doubt or falsehood.

The hesitation came with what followed it, not because it wasn't genuine, but because he said this sort of thing so rarely that it was difficult for him to voice. He folded his arms, his shoulders hunched, his eyes straying from Pendleton to the shelves across the room. "I love you, Reilanin. You are someone who makes me glad to be alive."

A pause. He turned toward her again, looking in her direction but not quite looking at her. He was nervous to. He wasn't sure if he wanted to see her reaction to his words. It was something that needed to be said, and ironically it was the Akhilendra side of him that allowed him to acknowledge that and say it. "I am sorry for how I treated you when I was Akhilendra. I don't want to do that to you ever again."


It would be nice to say that her confusion stemmed from too many thoughts at once, but the truth was there were barely any thoughts at all, unable to fathom how to process this new information. Akhilendra and Ravindra, at the same time. Then one must know how the other felt. She could barely reconcile it- how did he?

And she'd promised to keep Alexander safe. Another mark against her.

But he didn't hate her. He said he didn't. His conviction was tempting, but the pause threatened to make it waver.

I love you. Dangerous words. Even she recognized how powerful they could be. They could mean everything. They could ruin everything. She didn't know if she wanted to respond to such a thing again- it didn't seem worth it. None of those memories of Alexander seemed worth anything to her now that they were just that- memories. She preferred the Veil.

She was silent, unbreathing, trying to understand how to respond. It felt like a debt- it felt like an obligation. People kept leaving her with no thought to her- why should she accept it? Why shouldn't she just go back to sleep?

Because she had let Alexander die, and maybe she didn't deserve to have what she wanted anymore.

"I just wanted him to be happy." Akhilendra hadn't wanted him to be happy. Or, he'd wanted him to be happy a certain way. "I just wanted to be with him." It hadn't seemed so difficult, but clearly there had been something missing she'd had no control over. Maybe it had been because she hadn't known any better? It didn't seem as excusable now.


Sometimes it was difficult to reconcile. It helped that there was no distinct line between the personalities. Everything had meshed together, and it was smooth in some places and snarled in others, but it was all part of the same weave. He didn't think of himself in terms of Akhilendra or Ravindra, but in terms of I, me, self. It was easier to reconcile conflicting feelings when they both came from you, and not from something that seemed external.

But the fact that it was all him, all one mind, made it easy for strong feelings to overwhelm his rationalization.

That's what happened when she said that she'd just wanted Alex to be happy. Akhilendra's possessiveness surged up like a tidal wave, washing out his other feelings, making him bitter and resentful and angry. He reined himself in before he could let any of that out, leaning forward to set his elbows on his legs, his head in his hands, his fingers buried in his hair. He closed his eyes, kept his mouth shut, and forced himself to breathe calmly and deeply through his nose.

Akhi had just wanted to be important to Alex. To be the most important. All he'd wanted was to not feel like he was being replaced. And how could he not feel replaced when he had no lasting presence? Reilanin didn't have to worry about when she might next appear, she didn't have to worry about Alex growing distant from her during absences she had no control over, she didn't have to worry about being abandoned because of some bullshit excuse about players creating their closeness in the first place, like that meant it wasn't real.

He didn't want to listen to her whine about losing Alex. He'd lost Alex too. He'd lost more than she ever had. He didn't have any sympathy for her.

No, he did. He understood exactly how she felt. He knew that Alex and himself were the only people she had a real connection to. Losing Alex hurt as badly for her as it did for him.

That thought made him feel miserable. The reason it hurt so badly for him was because Alex was literally the last thing he'd had left to care about. That meant Reilanin felt like she had nothing left to care about. That meant she didn't care about him, at least not enough to think he was worth staying around for.

A warmth behind his eyes warned him of oncoming tears. He forced them back. He didn't know what to say to her. He couldn't get a handle on his feelings. They were a tangled mess and nothing he wanted to say felt like the right thing to say.


She shifted, watching him as he curled in on himself. She felt dull and sluggish and out of words. She said nothing, did nothing. She was not sure she wished to touch him. She wasn't sure if he wanted her to touch him.

She didn't feel sure of anything.

He was alive now. It wouldn't last. He- granted, as Akhilendra- had not thought twice about leaving her. There was nothing to say there might not be a similar lapse in the future.

Slowly she shifted and slid her legs off of the cot, letting her feet touch the ground before she stood and took a few steps away. Everything felt stiff still, and she moved slowly to compensate, fingers alighting on various items as she walked through the small room. It still seemed claustrophobic with all that was piled up, but she noted immediately that it seemed to have been tidied up.

Pendleton squawked at her, and she looked down at him before she crouched down. The bird didn't pay her much mind after that initial greeting, instead going back to grooming itself and standing about looking important.

"...who's been feeding him?"


He was ashamed of that choice, even though he knew why he'd made it. It wouldn't happen again because the context was different now. The reasoning for it was voided by this new, combined self that he'd become.

But he understood the worry. He'd always understood the worry. It was why he'd never really talked to anyone about how he looked forward to dying.

He felt her shift beside him, and felt her weight leave the cot as she stood. He lifted his head and watched her, rubbing the extra moisture out of his eyes so it wouldn't blur his vision.

"I have," he answered. He paused, sniffed, straightened, and looked out over the room. "I organized your things, too." A nod toward the stacks of ownerless items. "Those are all the ones that wouldn't send. I checked what they're worth but I wanted to ask you before I sold any of them."

It was easier to talk about that than to think about Alex. Simple, factual, not painful.


"Yes, I... I was in the process of doing just that..."

Her words trailed off as she stood, still watching Pendleton, before she turned her attention to the crates, to her desk. She moved back to it slowly, hand on the back of her chair.

She pulled the chair out and sat down, almost as though it were a new sensation, or simply an old action she were reluctant to repeat. Once there, she rested her hands in front of her on the desk, not touching anything yet.

"If there's anything you see you could use from them, by all means... it isn't as though I've much need for the money."


He nodded absently, looking at the abandoned items instead of at her. Even with permission, it didn't feel right to sell off her things (even if they weren't technically hers) and keep all the money for himself. But he was the one who'd had his entire savings stolen out of his room in Bastan, and still needed to replace the material items that had been stolen, and wasn't currently working but still had to afford food and cigarettes and whatever else. Reilanin was right, she didn't have the same need for money that he did.

...He'd kept that money he'd created through the game in Alex's cellar. That meant it had survived the fire. His armour, too, even if the enchantments weren't quite as useful now that he wasn't planning to become molavvas anymore. There was no reason for it now, with Alex gone. Well, they could be redone, that wasn't a problem.

Ah, he wished he'd realized this sooner. It was a very nice realization to have.

Maybe he'd sell the abandoned commissions and use the money to buy Reilanin something nice, instead.

He turned to her, silent a moment longer, trying to figure out what to say. He shouldn't have stopped to think. That plunged him back into the uncomfortable and confusing territory he'd been in moments before, and when he shoved aside the resentment, what was left was insecurity. He slouched forward, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes drifting from her down to her desk. "Am I important to you, Reilanin?"


She had begun to quietly leaf through the papers on the desk, doing things mechanically while she tried to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, she had no plans. She hadn't had any before she'd fallen asleep, and she had none now. She stopped moving the papers around and simply stared at the topmost one instead.

She started at the sound of his voice and she looked up again. It took a moment for the question to register, and even then, she didn't know what to say.

Important. Her chest felt tight.

"I stayed for you. I stopped when you left. And here I am. I have no other reason except you. Is that 'important'?" she asked, looking back to him. "I don't know... what it means. I thought I knew..." Co-dependency and importance were two concepts she did not know the difference between. If it was the first, she risked the same problems she had with Alexander, where the importance she placed on him had trumped everything else.

"It's very dangerous, to have important people, isn't it?..."


It should come as no surprise that her response gave him conflicting feelings. He knew how it felt to have only one person left to live for. He knew how it felt to have nobody. He also knew how it felt to have people, but to hate living so much that he saw death as an escape and resurrection as a cruel punchline to the joke that was his life. He felt guilty for forcing her out of a pleasant emptiness back into a painful existence, because he'd experienced that himself and knew exactly how much it hurt.

But he also felt glad, very selfishly, that he was important enough for her to deactivate herself over when she thought she'd lost him. On some level, he recognized that as disturbing and wong, and on a completely different level he recognized it as the same possessiveness he'd felt over Alex's emotions. They were flickers of thoughts that he did not stop to examine; instead he made an effort to shove it all aside so he could work through it later.

"It is dangerous," he agreed, trying to focus on her and not how he felt about her. "It's because they're important that it hurts to lose them."

He paused, his gaze lowering to the floor as he considered how to explain what somebody being important to you meant. It frustrated him to have to explain such a basic concept, but he knew she was naive and it was the fault of her player and not a failing of hers, which in turn made him resentful of her player for forcing someone so ignorant on the world--no, for leaving her so unprepared for living--or was it for forcing him to explain something he felt he shouldn't have to? Ah, another example of how his head was a mess since his resurrection.

"Somebody being important to you means..." He cocked his head thoughtfully, his eyes drifting toward the wall. "...It means something different to everyone, I think."

Yes, that felt right. There was no single definition, it was something everyone had to figure out for themselves. Feeling a bit more confident in his answer now, he turned back to her, looking her in the face. "For me, it means I want to be important to them too. And it means I don't want to hurt them."

Two things, he realized now, which were completely at odds with the way he'd viewed the situation from separated perspectives. His brow furrowed, gaze drifting away again. As Akhilendra, hurting Alex hadn't mattered, so long as he was the most important thing in Alex's life. And as Ravindra, he'd rather be unimportant to the people who were important to him, so that he couldn't hurt them by being careless or selfish. Or maybe that wasn't entirely true--he just had points in his life where it felt like it would be easier that way.


She listened without looking back up. Was that what important meant to her? Yes, she supposed so. But there were conflicting feelings all the same, as though maybe it weren't enough, or maybe it weren't true.

Staring at the desk still, she spoke, voice stilted, "I think... I may have to consider what my own definition is, then..."

She didn't want to hurt anyone. She hadn't. But she hadn't been hurt back then, and so for the time being, that may not have held true.

As for being important to someone else... well. She just didn't know what to do about that anymore.

"Will you be returning to Bastan now?"


He nodded. She needed to start creating her own opinions now, and figuring out how she defined importance was a good start.

How strange that he'd never realized as Ravindra how many of her opinions came from Alex. As Akhilendra, it had seemed so obvious. There was still some lingering irritation over that, but now that the knowledge could combine with his brotherly feelings for her, it was overpowered by a sense of wanting to help her break free of that.

At the question, he turned to her again, then let his gaze fall in the opposite direction from the previous. He shook his head. "Bastan..." Didn't feel like home anymore. He was not ready to put that into words and make it real. "It's different, now. I'm not sure how I feel about it anymore."


The temperature was beginning to drop again. It had been comfortable, if a little cool, while she was out. Now that she was awake and functioning, mana restoring itself, it began to grow cold again.

"It's quite different now, I hear." She paused. "I haven't seen it. I haven't seen much beyond the Nenakret."

Meaning she hadn't really left the Library since the merge. She still had no desire to. Nova's offer still held no interest for her. She would consider that too, perhaps, though she didn't see how it could matter. She'd gotten along fine before, before Alexander had ever really been a part of her life, staying in the Library all the time with a little venture out here and there. Was it wrong to feel that way?

She didn't know, and she was tired of asking.

"...thank you. For doing all of this." It wouldn't keep her busy for too long- that had been part of the excuses she'd made. But there was a relief in it as well. No one else need know she wasn't as busy as she let on, after all, and she had simply been running into a wall, trying to organize it herself without the actual will to do so.


"Ah--you're welcome," he said, which didn't quite feel right, but it was the expected response, so he went with it anyway.

He understood the underlying meaning of what she'd said. She hadn't left her office since Alex had died, so she hadn't seen any of the new merge's results. He understood how that felt, and he didn't want to be the person who tried to drag her out of her shell before she was ready. She needed her space to process and mourn, and it wasn't his place to tell her she had to move on to the next step now.

He hated it when people told him how he should feel. He wasn't going to do that to her.

It took him a moment to figure out what to say next. He didn't want to force anything on her, he didn't want to bring up any painful subjects, and he definitely wanted to avoid tripping over anything that would trigger his negative feelings toward her. In the end, he went with the most innocuous thing he could think of. "I'm staying in the Nenakret for now. With the Ambereyes. Mittens is with me, if you would like to come see her sometime."

It was an offer to allow her to get out of the Library for a while, for a purpose that might serve to distract her from her misery at least for a little bit.


"Here... in the Nenakret?" she asked slowly, looking surprised. She hesitated, gone back to twisting the rings on her fingers. "Why are you with the Ambereyes?"

He was certainly not a spellsword, so she couldn't see why he would be there with them. At the mention of the cat, her expression seemed to turn almost shy, and she looked down. "Well... well, I'll think on it... Mittens, she doesn't quite like me, does she? It can't be helped..." Reilanin wished she did, but it was the price to pay for having a cold lap.


"We stayed with them during the war. It was--the only place I had to go that wasn't Bastan." He caught himself, but there was still an ember of something dark and nasty in his tone. Because if she hadn't burned down Alex's house, he would have been able to stay there, instead. In a place that actually felt like home.

He took a moment for a few calming breaths, pushing the bitterness aside. She was too important to him for him to let himself be angry with her while she was still so fragile.

"I think if you come at the hottest part of the day, she might appreciate you a bit more." He tried to put some levity in there, but it was half-hearted.


She hummed, completely missing the pause and the threat of bitterness, the house already out of her head. Instead it just seemed a pause between words that she had nothing to add to.

The comment made her head tilt a little in consideration. "I don't like the heat much," she said, chagrined. "...I will consider it," she added a brief moment later. She didn't want to leave, but if it might help, with Mittens, well...


He accepted that answer with a simple, "Alright." He didn't want to say anything that might make her feel forced or guilted into it. That wouldn't help at all.

His eyes drifted over to Pendleton. There was a pause before he looked back to her and said, "Is it all right if I keep coming every day to feed Pendleton?"

But, just as Mittens was an excuse to get Reilanin out of the office, Pendleton was an excuse to get him into it to see her.


She followed his look over to the bird. A fellow Moghan had been looking after him- partly to prod at him, partly to get the experience of being squawked at- but she liked him better in the office. He didn't seem to mind, either.

"Yes, that's fine. Whenever you like." She'd be around, she'd be awake.

"Was there anything you wanted from the discard pile?..."


He glanced toward it, trying to remember what all was in it. He couldn't, it had all blurred together by this point. "I'll look through it again tomorrow and see." He just didn't have the brainpower for it right now.

In fact, he felt like it was time to go. Dealing with Reilanin had been so stress-free before this whole mess had started, she'd been so easy to spend time around. But now... Well, it was a little draining, to say the least.

But it felt wrong to just leave her here alone after all that. He ran a hand through his hair and left it against his temple, his eyes moving up to her. "Do you want me to stay?"


"All right," she said, unsure herself of what she was going to do. There was no motivation to do anything just yet. She pushed a piece of paper on the desk again but let her hand fall back into her lap after that.

His question prompted her to look up and she watched him a moment before her eyes moved away. Did she? Ah, but if she didn't know what to do with herself, it hardly seemed fair to keep him here as well. And she had to keep in mind the temperature bothered most people from long periods of time. She made a noise, not quite a sigh, and not displeased, just... a sound, to fill the space in between.

She pushed the chair back gently and rose from it. "No," she said finally, fingers on the desk before she let them fall away. Moving from the desk, she returned to the bed, leaning over to look at him.

She'd gained a certain sort of awareness with Alexander, nothing a normal person wouldn't be able to point out, but one that she'd had to really work at. She could see he was a little tired, a little frustrated, a little uncertain. Maybe it was more than that- it was all she herself could glean from his expression and his posture.

One hand reached out and she touched the hair fallen at his temple lightly, watching her fingers as she did so. She leaned in then and kissed him on the lips, no passion, no intention as one would expect from a lover; just the barest touch of cold, simply wanting to feel that sensation again, however briefly, to somehow communicate as only she knew how her feelings for him, even if they did not correlate to how she felt for Alexander.

"Thank you. But perhaps you ought to go back for today." Her fingers slid down the strand of hair they had pinched lightly and she moved away again. "There's nothing to be done here."


He straightened a bit as she stood over him, looking up at her, waiting to see what she meant to do. His eyes shifted toward her hand as she touched his hair, though he didn't move his head.

That was not what he had expected from her. In fact, that was so far from the spectrum of expected responses from Reilanin that he was too stunned to react for a moment after she pulled away. When expression crept back onto his face, it was equal parts flustered, disgusted, and baffled.

He lowered his head, looking away from her, splaying a hand over his mouth. How was he even supposed to react to that? Part of his brain was screaming at him that she was just trying to find the closest replacement she had for Alex because she was completely lost without someone to tell her what to think, and another part was hoping it was some aspect of Reilanin's naivete causing her to act without fully understanding what she did, and all of him was completely lost regarding how to handle it.

"I'll--ah--see you tomorrow then," he mumbled, shoving himself up from the cot, brushing past her and heading for the door without actually looking at her again on his way out.

For now, he was just going to pretend that it hadn't happened.