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 felt it," Stark said miserably. "Choking on the shadows. I'm sorry you felt it first."

[deathsmajesty]

The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both.

"He--" She stumbled over her words. "I--."

This time, she didn't spill her coffee, just clutched at it with trembling hands. Nor did she look at him, feeling vulnerable and exposed, almost naked. "I do not wish to speak of it."

Honestly, it was all she could do not to crawl across the table and drag the memory from his head with clawed fingers. She wasn't as adept at lethemancy as she was with other aspects of necromancy, but she was good enough to make sure it stuck. But she didn't understand Stark, wasn't sure if she could make it happen.

For the first time in awhile, she missed Jace. Missed Jace terribly.

It was fine. He could keep it. He didn't know what he'd seen. Who he'd seen. Didn't know the details, couldn't understand. Couldn't possibly understand the depths of her fear and guilt and shame.

Join me, Lili. All the torment of the Void will be ours to share forever."

[stykera]

Stark was not inclined to give up memories readily. Liliana could try but it likely wouldn't end well for either of them.

"Then don't speak," he said, still curling in on himself as much as possible. "But the other one... he was more frightening. He didn't do anything but he was worse. And then he was gone and you were... pulling. At me."

[deathsmajesty]

"The other one?"

Liliana tried to figure out which of her memories could be worse than that.

...Actually, without the emotional tenor that went along with what had happened to Josu, there were a lot of memories that could be classified as 'worse' than that, truth be told.

"Worse how? What did this one look like?"

[stykera]

"Just a man," Stark said, looking intently at his coffee cup. "With golden eyes."

Who had been quietly and thoroughly terrifying

[deathsmajesty]

"Him," Liliana snarled, setting down her mug so heavily some of the coffee jostled over the side. Their server didn't even move just pointed at the towel that had been left behind. "Did he hurt you?"

It didn't matter that Liliana had lifelinked Stark. Didn't matter that she absolutely would have drained him if Gladio hadn't intervened. The Raven Man had no right to touch him. To be in her head at all!

[stykera]

"No. He didn't."

Stark shook his head, still making himself as small as possible.

"He just talked. I don't want meet him again. Ever. He's... frightening."

[deathsmajesty]

"Yes," Liliana said quietly, finally folding under the stare of their server and wiping up the spilled coffee. "He's...I don't know how to describe him. Or explain him. But you are correct in your response to him. I call him the Raven Man. He's been...following me...since I was a girl."

She looked up at Stark, brow furrowing. "What did he say to you?"

[stykera]

"That he had plans for you and that someone was waiting for you on the other side," Stark said softly.

"And that you'd heal yourself if you stopped being 'squeamish.' Which you did."

[deathsmajesty]

"Which I did," she agreed. "But not on his say-so."

Neither thing Stark said was new or surprising, but that didn't mean that it didn't make Liliana shiver hearing him say it. Keep me out of your plans, Raven Man, I want none of them.

She was pretty sure the faint echo of his laugh was just her mind playing tricks on her. Pretty sure.

"I wasn't going to let you drag me into the void without fighting tooth and nail," she said crisply. "I will not go gentle into that good night nor any other."

Oh no. She would rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[stykera]

"I wasn't dragging you anywhere! I wouldn't. That's not what I do."

Stark was going to need so many hashbrowns to recover from this conversation.

"I wasn't trying to do any harm. I wasn't forcing anything. You were dying and I knew you were dying and I tried to help you. I'm not wrong about knowing someone is dying!"

[deathsmajesty]

She just looked at him, arching an eyebrow. "Ignoring, for just a moment, how incredibly disingenuous it is to offer a dying woman help, but not with saving her life, and also ignoring how I will never see that kind of 'help' as a kindness, how, pray tell, was I supposed to know any of that?"

[stykera]

"There was nothing else I could have done to help! You were dying and you were too far gone for me to offer anything else. I'm a medic, of sorts, but you were beyond that sort of help!"

Stark sighed, frustrated.

"I wasn't trying to harm you. I wouldn't do that. And it can be a kindness. It's meant to be! You chose to...whatever that was you did. To me."

[deathsmajesty]

"You didn't answer my question," Liliana pointed out. "You came in, offered to help, bathed me in a light that whispered to me that it was all right for me to let go and then suddenly the door to the void opened and I was being throttled and dragged to it. How, precisely, was I supposed to know that that specific aspect wasn't you?"

Her haughty expression turned to something else before being wiped free of all emotion. "Do you honestly think that was the first time someone saw I was injured and vulnerable and tried to finish the job?"

[stykera]

"What about any interaction we have had, or anything you may have heard of me, would make you think I would walk in and try to murder you?" Stark asked, almost pleading. "In front of witnesses, no less? Why would I want to harm you?"

You know, before she tried to eat him.

[deathsmajesty]

"The part where I was experiencing it certainly helped," Liliana drawled. "I was, as you say, dying, it's not like either Ignis or Gladio knew what was what going on. You could have swanned in, done whatever, and then wept how you'd tried to help but it was too late and no one would have been the wiser."

She glared at him. "I had just fought off a demon, had nearly bled out, and was dying on a living room floor. I was vulnerable in a way I haven't been in sixty years - and do you know what happened the last time I was in almost that exact same position? Someone tried to kill me. A perfect stranger, a healer, someone I had begged for help. Yes, I harvested that energy that was going towards trying to convince me to let go and used to to heal myself because I was fighting for my very life."

Her violet eyes blazed with light. "You want to tell me it was all a misunderstanding, that yes, your help was still going to end with me dead in the floor, but in a nice way, but that you were a passive actor in what happened after you opened the door? Fine. I will even believe you. But take thirty seconds to think about what happened from the point of view of the woman whose formative memory was getting strangled by--"

Oh look! Liliana was just gonna shut the fuck up real fast.

[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.