Waffle House, Tuesday Morning

[deathsmajesty]

"Why won't they just leave?" Liliana demanded of the alien beside her as they hunkered down in a booth, trying to subtly keep an eye on the TV-headed creeps milling about outside the restaurant. They seemed loathe to actually come into the restaurant, quite likely due to the staff's absolute unwillingness to tolerate nonsense, but they weren't leaving, either. Just standing there, holding up various reward offers towards the glass like that might entice either person to come out.

Of all the places Liliana had intended to visit today, this Waffle Hut wasn't one of them, and of all the people she intended to see, Stark was most definitely not one, either. But they'd both ended up getting menaced by an ever-growing crowd of TV heads and had ducked into the one place that had offered sanctuary and, well...now here they were. Sharing a sticky booth, getting stared at by the crowd outside and utterly ignored by the staff within.

[For said glowy alien, please]

Comments

[stykera]

"I saw someone who needed help and I did what I could," Stark insisted. "And I knew something was wrong as soon as there was interference. I had no intention of harming you! The man with the shadows was choking me and I couldn't do anything. I was trapped in your memories just as much as you were and if I could have closed the doorway I would have."

[deathsmajesty]

Once again, she flinched at the mention of the man in the shadows, but where there was nothing but underlying fury when she spoke of the golden-eyed man, the emotions underlying the discussion of the shadow man were much more complex.

"Fine," she said softly. "I believe you. All right? I believe you."

[stykera]

"I'm sorry," Stark said desperately. "I wouldn't have tried if I'd known what would happen, or that you could come back from the edge of death the way you did..."

Of course, if he hadn't shown up that might have led to a very different outcome for one of the occupants of the apartment. He was a convenient energy source at times.

[deathsmajesty]

Eh. Beefslab had a ton of HP. He probably would have been fiiiiiiiiiine.

Except we all know that Ignis would have insisted, which might have been for the best considering how good Gladio was at yanking Liliana off people she was harvesting...But still, a vastly different and more unpleasant outcome for sure. Stark had been a guilt-free juice box!

"He is waiting for me," she said, unaware she was repeating what the Raven Man had said, "in the void. j--The one you're calling the shadow man. I've always wondered, but now I know for certain." And that knowledge hurt, in a way she couldn't hide.

She was so very tired.

"I... understand," she said finally. "You didn't know. You couldn't know. Just like I didn't and couldn't know what you were not what was attacking me." Another pause. "Are you still injured?"

[stykera]

Stark shook his head. "No. I'm...I'm fine."

Sure, he still had the occasional nightmare but it was just the year for that sort of thing for him. "I've, I've had worse things happen. I've survived. And someone once did something...not the same. But it felt similar, after."

[deathsmajesty]

Look, sometimes you just woke up with screaming nightmares. That just was a thing that happened.

Liliana nodded. "Had you still been feeling the ill-effects, I wouldn't have gotten you a health potion or a salve or something," she said, a little awkwardly. "If you'd like, I still can. To make up for what happened."

Was she apologizing? No. Absolutely not. Or, at least, she hadn't yet stooped to offering him an insincere apology. But trying to make it right another way? That she was willing to do.

[stykera]

"I'm fine," Stark repeated. "It hurt. It's over."

That was just his life, wasn't it?

"As I said, someone else did something similar, once. To save someone else."

[deathsmajesty]

Save someone...else? Sounds fake. That wasn't how things worked. Unless, of course, they had a reason to still need the other person alive. Then, sure, she supposed she could see it.

"It hurt, it's over," Liliana agreed with a nod. "That seems the best way to look at it. Mistakes were made that will not be made again."

A hesitation. "I am...sorry. That you experienced...that. Memory. Of mine."

She took no responsibility for it, it wasn't like she invited you into her head, Stark, but she knew how bad that memory was, at least. And could express sympathy that he now shared some small part of it.

[stykera]

Zhaan had knocked him out and used him as a battery to save a life at the eventual cost of her own. Stark was trying not to think too hard on that.

"I've seen other terrible memories," he said softly. "And I have plenty of my own. I'm sorry you lived it."

And that she had those two men lurking, somewhere, waiting for her.

[deathsmajesty]

Oh like the Raven Man was going to settle for lurking and waiting when he could be an active creeper instead!

Ugh, he was just the worst.

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic. "It hurt, it's over," she said, like it was that simple. Like it wasn't a weight she'd carried for two hundred years and would carry for thousands more. Like she couldn't trace the woman she was now back to that exact moment precisely.

Like the Raven Man hadn't been there, in the shadows, watching and pulling the strings.

"To make sure it is crystal clear, I have no intention to harm you further," she added, in case the reassurance was necessary.

[stykera]

Surely there would be no repercussions to other people knowing about the Raven Man. Right?

"I wouldn't be able to stop you if you did," Stark said. "Though there are some who might object. I never meant to cause harm at all."

[deathsmajesty]

Perish the thought! It couldn't possibly!

Liliana hadn't lived her entire life not giving a fuck about other people's objections to start doing so now she had plot to get through first. "Which is why I was telling you that I don't," she said. "Since you wouldn't."

She was looking at him oddly, though. Since that wasn't how most people would have replied, even though it was true. "What is your deal?" she finally asked.

[stykera]

"I had thought it best to avoid you," Stark said. "After what happened."

As if that explained his answer. Maybe it did.

"What do you mean? My deal? I'm just...me."

[deathsmajesty]

She shrugged. "Wise," she said. "But unnecessary, now that we've cleared up what happened."

She dipped her much abused coffee. "You radiated light and energy that tried to ease me death, which you have said is your purpose. What in the black-and-white mana does any of that mean?"

[stykera]

"That's just me," Stark said. He gestured at himself. "There's me." He tapped his mask. "And then there's the rest of me."

He sighed, shaking his head. "I'm a Stykera. It's just...what I am. What I'm for. Dealing with death. The dying. Crossing them over to the Other Side. Attending deaths. Someone here said the word 'psychopomp' fits, once."

A ghost had told him that, even!

[deathsmajesty]

"I don't know what that is," Liliana said, still awhile out from meeting Gideon Jura and learning about the gods of Theros. "So, you're some...doorman between life and death? Is your mask a separate aspect of you? Or does it keep your power from just spilling out willy-nilly? If you splashed your energy on someone who wasn't dying, would it have an effect on them? What does crossing over normally entail?"

It wasn't that she hadn't had questions this whole time, Stark, it was that she'd just been too well-bred to ask them.

[stykera]

"The mask is protective. Of me. It keeps me from...leaking. I can take it off, when I'm ready, but leaving it off too long is draining. Exhausting."

Stark sighed again.

"It's not...it's just part of me, the energy. That part that isn't my body. I can...share memories, if I choose. Usually I give them, to offer some comfort. Or just to share something with someone."

He relaxed, a little, uncurling his body a bit to take a proper sip of his coffee.

"And usually...usually I'm just there to help. To ease the passage. There isn't anyone else there. Just them and they go. Sometimes they're ready. Sometimes they aren't. But they go and I help and there's no pulling. Just this side and the other. They go to different places. I don't know until the end where."

Different beliefs, different destinations and all that.

[deathsmajesty]

Yeeeeah, the concept of an afterlife in Magic: The Gathering was weird. You didn't really wanna think too hard about it in the same way you didn't wanna think too hard about what was holding you up as you ran off a cliff in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

She still looked like she didn't really understand the point of it all, but also like she was certain that was not the right thing to say. "But there are people dying every day," she said instead. "Hundreds, thousands. This plane has more people in it than I've ever heard of. How are you not mad?"

Weeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllll...

[stykera]

"How do you know I'm not?" Stark asked softly. "Sometimes I think I am. Sometimes others think I am. You were nearby, so I felt you. And people rarely die on this island. Very rarely. You stood out."

He frowned at his coffee. "When I was small I was kept by the Scarran upper caste to attend their deaths. Now I can choose to do it. Choose to help, when I can."

[deathsmajesty]

Yeahno, she'd heard it as she'd asked the question. Because she was pretty sure that Stark was at least a little mad. Or, at least, not all the way sane.

"A note," she said dryly, "you should really be more specific about what you're offering to help with. Since I assure you, it did not line up with what the rest of us assumed you meant."

[stykera]

"I thought they knew what I am. I don't hide it. And you... I've never been wrong before. Not about that."

There was one area of his life where Stark was confident. Or had been.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana was a helper!

"Not hiding something doesn't mean everybody knows about it," Liliana pointed out. "I certainly didn't. And they were gone for ten years for a war; I'm sure much of what they'd known before has been relegated to storage and never retrieved." She gave him a look. "Also, if you're at the bedsides of people dying, then surely you must know how frantic, how emotional everything is. Even if they know it stone cold fact outside of such times, it's easy to forget when you're on the verge of losing someone you care about. Especially if it's an unexpected and ugly death."

And then she dropped her eyes. "I saw that a lot. As a girl. When I was a cleric during the war."

[stykera]

"There wasn't time to say anything else once I... once things started to happen. I couldn't do anything. I was being held there."

By scary men, apparently.

[deathsmajesty]

Yeah, the reminder about the men in her head had Liliana stop lecturing and drink a few more swallows of coffee.

"Scarrens?" she asked eventually.

[stykera]

"Their empire controlled much of where I'm from. They look...somewhat like lizards. I'll be happy to never see another. They were cruel and used me and discarded me. Sold me. Traded me. I'm not certain."

At least that was to be assumed. He'd been on Katratzi and ended up on a Budong before becoming Scorpy's science experiment.