Hopeful. Relieved. Any other day, Lune might be amused by the opposite ends they stand on with this. Now, she presses her tingling lips together in a firm line, inhaling slowly through her nose as her eyes lock onto some unseen point on the horizon. She hates recalling that moment, feels the cold dread crawling up her spine all over again, tasting the creeping panic at the back of her throat. She swallows it back, thickly, exhales through her mouth.
"I felt... terror. I felt like I was choking. Maybe I was." On ashes, crawling up her throat. "Like the ground had dropped away from under my feet and I was falling. That it was the end after everything we'd gone through, after all the Expeditions since the Fracture, it was ending like that, in an instant. Like none of our struggles and losses and sacrifices ever meant a damn thing. Failure. All of it amounted to nothing. Insignificance."
She shakes her head and drops it to stare at the grass instead, dread replaced with sadness. "Just oblivion. Nothingness. It was the most horrific feeling I'd ever experienced. Sometimes I... I wake up at night and feel like I'm choking all over again."
Their perspectives couldn’t be more different, but it’s still an easy difference to understand. Sciel watches Lune’s face, expression swelling with sympathy, and she reaches over to put an arm around her friend, leaning in a little.
“Oh, Lune… I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
It had all happened so quickly, and with no warning. Odd, how the Gommage would feel like that every year if they hadn’t made a festival out of it, but even then, there’d been some distant figure ready to wake and count them down. Could they have known what heralded this one? She’s not sure; it likely will never matter, but the feeling of it is going to linger a long, long time.
She runs her hand idly up and down Lune’s back.
“You should come to me next time it happens,” she says. “So you’re not alone. Any hour of the day or night, we can sit and breathe together.”
Lune doesn't shrug off Sciel's comfort, even if she doesn't lean back into the contact, either. A small tremor moves over her frame, like a manifestation of all the ill things inside looking for a way out. Lune hates how fragile just the memory makes her feel, how viscerally it still affects her. She's supposed to be stronger than this, isn't she? She's not supposed to be weak. She's supposed to be able to get over this on her own and put focus on the work ahead like she always does, that's her role.
Sciel's offer is kind, and hard to accept. It's pride, or perhaps that ever-nagging sense of failure that churns within. Maybe both. Maybe this is well-deserved. Maybe she should feel badly for letting down generations upon generations of Lumièrans. Part of her knows that's insane, but she can't help it. And none of this is anything she can actually put into words, for several reasons.
"Yeah," she finally gets out, exhaling a long, slow breath. "I can try."
Sciel feels that shudder like an earthquake, relative to how tightly wound Lune is, how controlled. She doesn’t withdraw, she doesn’t press in closer, she just keeps running her hand up and down, gently.
“Mmhmm, you will,” she hums. “You know, now that the clock’s stopped, it’s easy to look back at all that time we were stressed, and realize just how much pressure we were under. You especially. It’s a wonder the body can handle it.”
She wanders back towards her own feelings. The knots that lived permanently in her shoulders and back and calves through the whole Expedition, the hours she needed to sit in quiet on the edge of camp just to find a little distance from it all. The stress-relief, always cathartic, but sometimes overwhelmingly sad. It lived in her body and challenged her in ways she’d prepared for in Lumière, in years of training, but the Continent had still been different. Tougher. She can feel some similar tension in Lune’s body now, even through her clothes, and she thinks: if that’s just a year, what does it do to live that way from childhood?
It’s too cruel.
“More than once I’ve had a really good cry about it all.”
There’s a little question in her gaze –– have you? –– but she doesn’t ask it.
Lune shrugs a shoulder slightly. It's true, there was never really much time to stop and consider their stress-levels when they needed to keep moving, keep pushing forward onto the next challenge. She never thought she was under more stress than anyone else, but Sciel usually sees these things more clearly.
Some of the rumbling tension goes out of her when she sighs, sounding a little tired.
"Did that make you feel better?" she asks, not unkindly.
Lune thinks if she was a crier, maybe it could be a relief, somehow cathartic. But that was never how Lune was brought up. Stiff upper lip. No use crying about things, just do better. Anything that could have been considered a tantrum was greeted with cool indifference from her parents, and that sense of being ignored felt worse than any verbal reprimand could have.
“Always,” she says. “Sometimes it’s little embarrassing, and exhausting, too! But it’s always good. Like… when your cup is too full, you get to pour out a bit off the top, and then it’s manageable again. I always sleep really, really well after a good cry.”
More than once, she’s held Maelle in her arms, chin fitted to the top of the girls’ head, and felt the stress ease in her body after some tears were shed. It would do the same good to Gustave, she’s sure, and especially Lune. They’re such stopped up people.
Her hand settles on Lune’s side and she leans in for a gentle squeeze, a hug with the side of her own body.
“It’s not like you can force it to happen, but if you feel it sneaking up on you, ever, even for a second, you should let it happen. Call it research on what it does to the body.”
Lune can understand the idea intellectually, if not relate to it. What would it be like, to be so unburdened and even-keeled with oneself, so... reconciled?
She breathes a faintest laugh and finally gives in, tipping her body to the side a little and leaning back into the embrace, her temple pressing gently against Sciel's head.
"I'll keep that in mind," she promises, the best she can do. She's quiet for a while, before adding softly, "I'm glad you're here."
Lune leans in and Sciel’s heart swells, and she brings her other arm around Lune, too, relishing holding her, even if it’s only a little bit, even if it’s only a little while. There are a lot of things she can’t fix, but at least she can be here.
“I’m glad you’re here too,” she says. “It’s been wonderful getting to spend so much time with you.”
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no subject
"I felt... terror. I felt like I was choking. Maybe I was." On ashes, crawling up her throat. "Like the ground had dropped away from under my feet and I was falling. That it was the end after everything we'd gone through, after all the Expeditions since the Fracture, it was ending like that, in an instant. Like none of our struggles and losses and sacrifices ever meant a damn thing. Failure. All of it amounted to nothing. Insignificance."
She shakes her head and drops it to stare at the grass instead, dread replaced with sadness. "Just oblivion. Nothingness. It was the most horrific feeling I'd ever experienced. Sometimes I... I wake up at night and feel like I'm choking all over again."
no subject
“Oh, Lune… I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
It had all happened so quickly, and with no warning. Odd, how the Gommage would feel like that every year if they hadn’t made a festival out of it, but even then, there’d been some distant figure ready to wake and count them down. Could they have known what heralded this one? She’s not sure; it likely will never matter, but the feeling of it is going to linger a long, long time.
She runs her hand idly up and down Lune’s back.
“You should come to me next time it happens,” she says. “So you’re not alone. Any hour of the day or night, we can sit and breathe together.”
no subject
Sciel's offer is kind, and hard to accept. It's pride, or perhaps that ever-nagging sense of failure that churns within. Maybe both. Maybe this is well-deserved. Maybe she should feel badly for letting down generations upon generations of Lumièrans. Part of her knows that's insane, but she can't help it. And none of this is anything she can actually put into words, for several reasons.
"Yeah," she finally gets out, exhaling a long, slow breath. "I can try."
no subject
“Mmhmm, you will,” she hums. “You know, now that the clock’s stopped, it’s easy to look back at all that time we were stressed, and realize just how much pressure we were under. You especially. It’s a wonder the body can handle it.”
She wanders back towards her own feelings. The knots that lived permanently in her shoulders and back and calves through the whole Expedition, the hours she needed to sit in quiet on the edge of camp just to find a little distance from it all. The stress-relief, always cathartic, but sometimes overwhelmingly sad. It lived in her body and challenged her in ways she’d prepared for in Lumière, in years of training, but the Continent had still been different. Tougher. She can feel some similar tension in Lune’s body now, even through her clothes, and she thinks: if that’s just a year, what does it do to live that way from childhood?
It’s too cruel.
“More than once I’ve had a really good cry about it all.”
There’s a little question in her gaze –– have you? –– but she doesn’t ask it.
no subject
Some of the rumbling tension goes out of her when she sighs, sounding a little tired.
"Did that make you feel better?" she asks, not unkindly.
Lune thinks if she was a crier, maybe it could be a relief, somehow cathartic. But that was never how Lune was brought up. Stiff upper lip. No use crying about things, just do better. Anything that could have been considered a tantrum was greeted with cool indifference from her parents, and that sense of being ignored felt worse than any verbal reprimand could have.
no subject
More than once, she’s held Maelle in her arms, chin fitted to the top of the girls’ head, and felt the stress ease in her body after some tears were shed. It would do the same good to Gustave, she’s sure, and especially Lune. They’re such stopped up people.
Her hand settles on Lune’s side and she leans in for a gentle squeeze, a hug with the side of her own body.
“It’s not like you can force it to happen, but if you feel it sneaking up on you, ever, even for a second, you should let it happen. Call it research on what it does to the body.”
no subject
She breathes a faintest laugh and finally gives in, tipping her body to the side a little and leaning back into the embrace, her temple pressing gently against Sciel's head.
"I'll keep that in mind," she promises, the best she can do. She's quiet for a while, before adding softly, "I'm glad you're here."
They'd all be so lost without Sciel.
no subject
“I’m glad you’re here too,” she says. “It’s been wonderful getting to spend so much time with you.”