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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.