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]

"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.

[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.