Logs:Wrong Move Romeo
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| RL Date: 17 November, 2015 |
| Who: Dahlia, Ka'ge |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Ka'ge tries to be comforting a few days after R'oan's death. Then things go sideways. |
| Where: Dragon Infirmary, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 19, Month 4, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: R'oan/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Back-dated. |
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| They never had to chase him out because he never stayed. Especially after the loss of R'oan, his visits seemed even more brief not all unlike the first few days of Dahlia falling ill. He'd look in every few hours if anyone took notice of the quietly lurking form of the bronzerider, but rarely make his way fully into the infirmary proper. But this time, this later hour of the next morning, he appears with a carven wooden bowl. Inscribed with a dragon, flecks of golden highlights on its rim and embellishments with a deep final stain bringing out the essence of the wood grain itself. Within the bowl are a number of fruits, mostly sweet ones and others bitter, with the scents that belong so much so to Southern itself. The fragrance is strong, lending to the thought that the contents of this gift basket are freshly- and likely personally- picked by an experienced hand. Ka'ge's delivering it himself, silent as he almost always is, coming up alongside Dee's beside to place it on the side table next to her. Here he hesitates, staring at the basket before he allows himself to release it and turn leave it without a word. "Kael?" Though softly asked, the single syllable question means he's caught. Dee's eyes blink blearily at him. What did she catch of him in her tired glance? The line of his chin or maybe just that distinctive hood. Maybe he didn't expect her to be awake, maybe he'd just read her wrong from afar. Regardless, he stills briefly at being 'caught' before turning smoothly to her. It's as if he'd intended to stay that he draws a stool underneath him, sitting in it within the same motion. One of his gloved hands reaches to lay over hers, the expression beneath his self-made shadows too-serious but slightly cracked by the hint of an attempt at a grin. "Dee." He confirms in a quiet, breathy voice. "I hope you have an appetite. There's some fruit here for when you're up to it." He claims nothing for bringing it with that, but does glance back at it in indication of its location. She sees his reach coming, for her hand, and manages not to flinch. Dee looks at the bronzerider's face for a long moment in silence before flicking her eyes toward the fruit. "'m not hungry," she tells him. It shouldn't come as a surprise since the infirmary aides have been trying to ply her with the available items from the kitchens since they realized she wasn't eating. She must be eating something, now and again, but not enough, certainly. She unconsciously turns her head a little to flick in the direction of the cot, already occupied by someone else, now set a little ways off from hers, and then looks back to the man who is here. "You're not supposed to be here. You'll get sick," she doesn't have the strength to truly scold him but it's chiding, to be sure. "It's from Southern." Ka'ge says, "I visited this grove once that had the sweetest fruits I'd ever tasted. Seemed they're in full ripeness this time of turn, so I thought you might try one." The words seem to ignore her statement of not being hungry, one of his hands reaching for the small light-pink fruit from the top of the bowl, the other for a knife stowed somewhere on him. The small blade is slipped along the edge, peeling and then slicing it into a bite-sized piece against his thumb before holding it to her. There's a shrug at her later words, "I'm not supposed to be a lot of places I go. You know that better than anyone." To getting sick, he bares her no answer. He doesn't miss her glance to that cot, but he doesn't follow it, nor allude to its significance. Her eyes narrow. "You're risking your life to bring me fruit from Southern?" Dee is frowning at him. She should think it's sweet. "You should go. I don't want you to get sick, Kae." That much is a firm statement and even if it's a repeated sentiment, it bears repeating again since he didn't mind her the first time. "I've been around enough of the dying to assume if I would join them, I'd have already done so." Ka'ge replies with equivalent firmness to his voice, offering the grim reality of it but the lack of assurance that it's wholly true. The frown, the narrowing of her eyes, it does seem to evoke a reaction, a fluctuation of his expression and subtle change in posture, until he ultimately is drawn to ask, "Do you not want me here?" "If I thought it would actually teach you to take more care with yourself, I'd hit you." If she even could right now. Dee hasn't moved much from the way she later when he made his approach. "Do you really want to be here?" is turned back on him, her expression pained, her eyes betraying the depth of her hurt and loss before she looks away. Ka'ge lowers his hands with the fruit pieces and blade, down into his lap . His gaze follows them, small movements of his arms and shoulders indicating the cleaning of his weapon and replacement of it from wherever it'd come. "Even if I tip-toed around here like many of those terrified of death, I still wouldn't have avoided you." He says quietly and adds "I'm never where I don't want to be." Noted cryptically but sternly, he looks back at her only after. "Does me being here make-" He tilts his head briefly beyond her cot though not specifically in the direction where R'oan had lain, "this more difficult for you?" There's rapid blinking, of the sort that normally would herald tears, but that now hold no wetness. Dee shifts a little before managing to ask, "Since you're here, would you hand me my water? It should be--" on the little table beside the cot. Not everyone has that sort of luxury here, but Dee does. This might be a stalling tactic, if one can imagine she has tactics after everything. It's only once he reaches for the water <if he does> that she asks calmly, "So you're so careless my feelings that you would risk being another person I feel for that dies? So eager to give me another notch in my belt?" Hazel eyes are heavily accusing as they rest on him. Ka'ge still maintains that odd coldness, that reservation that could very well be chalked up to just not being able to be close her and yet it could be much more. He watches her with that blank expression, turning away only when she asks for that water to reach for it and bring it to her. The roughness of his glove slides over her hand with intention to hold it if she doesn't take it away from him. "You blame yourself for something so radically out of your control?" He scolds in return, though has no weight to his voice to make it really such a thing. "Always the bleeding heart." Though he seems to take less stock in that than usual, said more for nostalgia than blaming her for it. "Would you have stayed away if I was in that bed?" "You're not a bleeding heart," Dee counters, justifying the tacit admission that she would've visited if their places were reversed, with his own words. She looks away from him while she drinks. "If he hadn't known me, hadn't loved me, he might've lived." That is reason enough for her to revile her involvement, to blame herself. "Hearts are for suckers," she says after another moment, expression cold. She might actually mean that. "Unfortunately that's come into question when I'm around you." Ka'ge replies in a sarcastic mutter and roll of his eyes that are a little more apparent as he shifts his hood back an inch or so. But he fails to manage a grin, even the hint of one, shrugging instead at her self-blame. "Or he'd have had drunken sex with another person unknowing of their illness, or shared a swig of some flask with another rider. You don't know if he'd still be alive or not, with or without you. With half the Weyr affected, and much greater the surrounding area, you are not the source of infection and death." With her revelation, he sets his jaw, looking down and away for a moment. "No." He replies finally, perhaps not the reaction expected of him, "No they aren't. If you aren't fighting for something, you'll fail eventually." Her expression is pained as he speaks, her eyes directed firmly elsewhere. His response to her revelation is unexpected enough to draw her eye, for certain, and Dee apparently can't resist asking, "And what is it you're fighting for, Kael?" Ka'ge watches his hands, now rested limply in his lap, between his legs. "You reminded me of what's important." He doesn't directly answer her question, true to his habits, "Don't let this change you." Clearly this event would have an impact on anyone, so his meaning must run much deeper than no change at all. But Kael has a resolved ache about him, a sense of sadness that's been creeping into his reservations and moreso in the last few words that are lacking the normal steel walls. "I might die yet." Dee tells him with a shrug. "I might not have control over what changes and what doesn't, and maybe it would be better for me to change." Slowly, she shifts to try to sit up a little more, to pull the pillows behind her so that she can. "They voted to give the Weyr to someone else." Not that she thinks he doesn't already know, but that she's letting him know that she knows. "It may be difficult to keep the important parts." Of her, he implies. "I used to-" Ka'ge stops, clasping his own hands together, squeezing his fingers tightly. "I'd prefer if you don't take the easy way out." He decides to say instead as a direct reply to her consideration of change, though apparently fails to specify which way that is. "I know." Of course. "And you blame them? The Weyr is ravaged with you basically still on death's bed." His heavy brows shade his eyes as they narrow in more business-like seriousness. "As if you need to lead a Weyr while recovering, regardless of your ability." "Blame them? For making a bid for control of Fort while the Weyr is in crisis and I'm not yet lost to between? I had hoped better of them. It's callous, conniving and--" Beneath the obvious disgust, there's some new deeply seeded feeling. Dee bites her tongue. "I can't talk about this here. I can't leave here. And you shouldn't be here," she rounds back to the original point of contention. "Is it doing anything for you? Seeing me here? Like this." Dirty, amid the stench of unpleasant death. "Zymadiath can find out from Taeliyth how I am." She points out, her jaw setting in the way that suggests they're about to have a fight. (Unless she gets her way.) "Helpful." Ka'ge finishes her sentiment with a word clearly not meant to be there. His face has become more stern listening to her feelings on the matter. He again fails to clarify that, but states it with a particular rigidity. "Actually it is." He replies somewhat harshly, looking up to watch her expression, her eyes. "It doesn't matter to me what you look like. Clearly, since I prefer you as much in a dress as playing in the mud." Or farming, as the more appropriate term may be. "As long as you're alive." "Helpful?" Dee looks aghast. "Get out." The rest? It doesn't seem to matter. There's a cold fury in Dahlia's face before she looks away from the bronzerider, expending the effort to turn away from him since she can't walk away. To Zymadiath, Taeliyth is suddenly here. Roused from a restless doze, she's abruptly alert in the wake of the sudden surge of Dahlia's feelings. It's possible that it's taking her some moments to put together just what is happening, but already her focus is bent on the shadows of the bronze's mind: Ka'ge has something to do with it, the idiot. Ka'ge doesn't look like he's about to move despite her command. He sits there, unnaturally still besides his breaths that even seem too shallow, too quiet. Blue eyes darken at her reaction, but expression doesn't falter beyond that. "Did he mean so much to you that I-" He stops as his eyes glaze, his attention drawn in the classic draconic direction. When he refocuses, the bronzerider sighs with the clear edge of restrained frustration, "I didn't make that call, Dee. I'm only here for you." To Taeliyth, Zymadiath is there, as he had been. His shadows writhing, living, seething somethings of darkness that never leave their vigilance from somewhere on high. But the sensation from him within that darkness she touches is unconcerned, unimpressed by his as much as hers. "If you're not with us, you're against us." The world has no shades of grey just now. Dahlia doesn't turn her head to look at him. "You can leave on your own or I can have Taeliyth get a healer to escort you out." Then, abruptly, "This is not about him." It's about them, which makes it all the more unreasonable, illogical and painful. Her shoulders hunch. To Zymadiath, Taeliyth's comprehension comes and there's the cracking of branches, which is at least shades better than the tearing up of roots (though the possibility that it could've gone that way is there in her mind as she considers the shadows). « I won't have him distressing her. » She's still not sure Dee will live and she's sure that Dee being upset isn't going to help her either get well or keep her heart safely intact. To wit, she adds bluntly, « He's making it worse. She needs support and understanding, not this. » Though Taeliyth may struggle to give her that and only that, she's trying. Ka'ge exhales quietly, a sigh that slightly slumps his shoulders. His gaze slants away from her as he places a hand on the edge of her cot when he starts to rise. "I'll never be your enemy." The words seem so simple, though they have a darkness to them that seems more of a warning than a comfort. His knuckles whiten as he squeezes the blankets of the cot in place of the hand he assumes she wouldn't let him have. And he releases that hold, turning to go with no further flourish. To Taeliyth, Zymadiath's figments move almost in tandem with those branches, as if true shadows. They're giving, malleable, non-fighting of her demands, Dee's demands. Neither man nor dragon demonstrates resistance, though in Zymadiath's darkness, disappointment is not wholly hidden. In time with Ka'ge leaving Dee's side, the brief semblance of eyeless faces dip their heads and turn away before the bronze himself recedes from prominence. |
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