makinglies | Respite

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faerun

Respite

The lake is dark and calm with a small breeze by the time they arrive at its shores. The stars above reflect perfectly in the still waters before them, and a small copse of trees lines one side, starting on their side of the river and jumping along the other side.

Chris takes a moment to re-prepare the spell he hadn't been able to cast in five years and gestures vaguely to the area around them as a suggestion for what the others can do. Gathering in the forest, sitting on a nearby over-turned log, it didn't matter to him. What he needed was an hour without interruption.

He settles down on the ground and presses his hands together as he closes his eyes to focus on the image in his mind. Within minutes, the white, shimmering outline of a large building forms in thin air. The gentle glow of its light barely spreads from the growing structure.

As promised, it takes the full hour before the slowly filling-in form is complete and finishes with a jaunty, echoing click.

Chris takes a breath, now sitting in front of the stoop that looks annoyingly like the one he'd passed earlier in the night, and gets back onto stiff legs as the glow fades away, leaving smooth, but otherwise unremarkable, white stone behind.

"Here we are. Home for the next however long we need. I'll start working on food and water next." Once they're inside, anyway, which is why he takes back his things from where he'd left them and leads them into the temple, marked only with the carving of ravens on the black wood of the double doors.

Inside is something just shy of opulence. The same polished white stone makes the walls, though black and gold veins course through the marble. The floor is the inverse, a black stone with white, shimmering speckles like a night sky if looked at for long enough. A single window faced East high up on the wall. The temple was alight with sconces at regular intervals along the walls, illuminating an open area that held all the offerings of comfort Chris could think of.

A large hot-springs-like bath, complete with a miniature waterfall, took up the left side of the room and ran into a smaller, similar bath at dog-height. Next to it, covered by a retractable screen, was a shower. Along the back wall, a raven's head emblazoned the white wall in black and watched out over a set of tables, chairs, and a couple of sofas. The majority of the center was clear for walking, but the right edge and right side of the room held a deeply inset pit of pillows, cushions, and blankets in various soft (black and purple) fabrics.

Finally, in the middle of the right-hand wall, there were two closed doors that, when inspected, revealed one room with a large, soft chair and rug, while the other room was made of nothing but stone with jars, pitchers, and plates on shelves along two walls and a cork wall perfect for catching daggers on the other side.

"I hope it works for everyone. I didn't...I didn't make separate bedrooms this time. I didn't figure we would need them tonight."

♥

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"I think we've already established we all do things we shouldn't," Wolfe says gently, kneeling to the ground with her, then thinking the better of that and sitting beside her instead. He doesn't try to get her to raise her head, instead rubbing her back as long as she remains curled up.

"I'm not the one who has to forgive you, Love. I do, for what of this hurts me, but... Do you know why it hurts?" It sounds like a question he'll answer himself but he waits to hear what she'll say instead, what she thinks he thinks about all this, because that's more telling.

It hurts him that she hurt Chris. That they couldn't support each other in his absence. The familiar hurts of having left her when he didn't want to, of wishing he'd been there to prevent her doing such things are there, but its the heaviness of it that hurts the most. Someday he'll actually be gone and what then? It hurts him to think that he's her only support even while he's sometimes envious of not being such for Chris. She deserves better, deserves to actually acknowledge the strength she possesses that she only sees when someone else points it out to her.

It hurts because he doesn't know how to help her.

"Because I didn't need to do this. Because I chose to do this to myself. Because I shut Chris out and hurt him multiple times over for it."

Because he thinks she can do and be more even when she knows she can't.

She shakes her head, drawing her hair through the dirt and counteracting everything they did to clean up. It doesn't matter. She shouldn't be allowed across the threshold of that temple anyway. Chris shouldn't let her in. Wolfe shouldn't try to coax her in. Jon's made it clear he thinks she's stupid and short-sighted, so he'd easily agree if Chris cast her out.

Her shoulders shake with another set of heavy sobs. "I wasn't strong enough. I-I can't be without the people I love at my side. Being alone, facing that house and that room and that bed without you... I just couldn't do anything on my own." A slow, tense breath. "And I was too scared of hurting others to let them help."

“I might be able to do you one better than a bag of holding, though one of those would do us good as well. I’ll have to look into it, I’ve only heard of what I’m thinking about, so I don’t want to get your hopes up.” A pocket workshop would be perfect for a displaced archivist, if it worked how he thought.

“And there might be spells that can work similar to your compulsions. Gideon would know better, or just the library at the tower.” Something like a zone of truth, maybe? Or a magicked quill that wrote more consciencely? Maybe.

He tries not to melt entirely as Jon’s fingers trace along the bones of his wing.

“You might want to finish what you’re doing and wait on the other wing, then. I don’t trust either of our abilities to split concentration during a statement. Besides, we probably ought to afore the other two get in here from whatever they’re doing.”

He considers a moment. “Would yesterday do? When we got here. Would the Eye be interested?”

Better than a magical bag that can hold just about anything? Jon is skeptical, but given Chris can summon all of this out of thin air, maybe he shouldn't be. Doubtful it would be some sort of cleric spell, but they could sort out who might be able to use it once they're written into the Weave.

"Mm..." The sound is considering as Jon does his best to focus on the obvious 'problem' areas to finish up. He could do more later. His appetite is overruling his desire to be gentle with his boyfriend, unfortunately. Maybe if he feeds he'll have an easier time controlling himself around Amelia and Wolfe, as well. "I think it would, considering. Seeing a double of yourself, losing everything, questioning who and what we are... It's ripe ground for the Stranger and the Desolation. Maybe the Lonely and the Buried, as well, depending on how you feel about it all. We can see what comes to mind."

Jon spends another few minutes fluffing and plucking before he pulls back. "By the way, I-" No. Chris won't have answers about that. How the hell would he know what they'd be once written into the Weave? If Jon would lose half his soul in the process, or if there would be some way to marry the pieces of him back together enough to make one thing. He casts about for a different question. "Did, uh... did you check for curses on the lighter?"

"It hurts that you won't let anyone help you," he agrees, looking out over the lake as he rubs her back, wanting desperately to pull her in against him. But that would be for him. He does better when curled into someone he loves. Amelia does better with them near but not right in her space, and he wants to help her. Things seem much clearer if his goal is her.

"I assured myself you were looking after each other when I was being held. I thought that at least you could grieve together, as much as it ached that I couldn't be there to prevent the need for it altogether." A bird wheels through the somewhat cloudy sky. He can't tell what kind it is, but he watches it ride thermals until it disappears from sight. "Amelia... Why do you hurt yourself and say it's to help others?"

Even if he knows its not why she does it, it makes Wolfe feel as if she's trying to pass the blame for her pain onto them.

She should have watched over Chris. She'd offered and told herself she tried. She gave of herself when she had nothing and came out the other side of it feeling more depleted than she ever had before. Now they have their mage back after escaping the hell they'd lived in together for years only to feel like they'd be better off without her. That after all she's done, because of who and what she is, she's worth less than she ever was - to them, to this new world they're in, to anyone else who might ask something of them.

To herself.

"I don't mean to. I only mean to--" How does she explain this? How does she make him understand this need that was forced on her from memories that aren't hers? "All I know is how to care for everyone else. I've tried to balance things, to b-be better and help others without forcing myself down, but... but I've never cared about me. I just want those I love to have everything they can, no matter what it costs me."

Amelia Royer of Ragneux put her life on the line constantly for her Family. Again and again she pushed the limits of her body, her contracts, her skills for them. In Duplicity, that continued for as much as she could manage it, yet it never felt like enough against what the city did to them.

Her sobs slowly quiet, but she doesn't move to sit up or stop gripping her arms too tightly. "You know I find my worth in what I do for those I call mine. I selfishly want you to be happy, even if what I do means you enjoy it without me. My life has never felt like my own, because I wanted it to belong to everyone else." She hesitates, then clenches her eyes shut against what she knows she has to say and how much it's going to hurt. "I don't know how to care about myself when I don't... feel worth anything on my own."

He cocks his head for the aborted question but doesn’t dig. His curiosity was softer like this, he’s noticed. It didn’t press at him like his normal self, it felt more flighty.

Though, the question Jon does ask has his eyes go wide a moment and a much more human fluster comes over him as he swipes a hand through his hair as best he can.

“Oh…no, I forgot! But…you remembered, which you haven’t usually before. When I’ve asked you in the past about it, you always change the subject…so something in it must be weaker. It’s still with my things outside, I’ll check it when we get out. For now…”

He flutters his wings to stretch them a little before he shifts to face Jon. He reaches out and traces a talon along his partner’s cheek and down to his throat. “Pay attention to me now, Archivist.”

Chris leans in a bit, but he looks off at the wall across from them as he lets the memories come in a way he’s tried to resist. Even a siren can know fear.

“I can still feel how cold it was: when the dragon’s breath struck me and I fell. It sank so deep, down into the blood and bone. I remember waking from that feeling to the warm, dry, attic of Marzipan Terrace where you and Martin slept peacefully below. I should have remembered waking on that battlefield. I should know the taste of the potion in my mouth Ra’ah put down my throat. Instead…I’m…not me. Not him. I don’t know if I’ve ever been him, but I remember having a twin sister and an older brother, I remember how light I felt when I cut off all my hair, and how it felt to lay with the first man who made my heart dance, and how it felt to feel my body shift from what it always was to what it always should have been…so how can I not be him? How can I not have woken on the battlefield? Why do I feel more kinship with those dying and calling for salvation that won’t come than the man whose name and face I bear?”

He can feel his eyes prick and the song in his throat is mournful. Scared. If knowledge is power, then surely he was weakness incarnate.

“I know I’m going to spend weeks, maybe years wondering if I did this to us, if I’m the reason we fall apart at the seams. If I’d been faster, more clever, if we hadn’t brute forced our way out, would we make more sense? Would we be the us we know instead of the us we have to learn to cope with being?

“And where do the changes start? Maybe we’ve always been someone different from the moment we were made simply because we were made wrong from the original. I watched him wake and sit up…was what he said to Ra’ah in that moment of blissful ending what I would have said? I’m me and not him and I don’t know what that means or what to do…because when faced with the option of not being him, he let fear take him and ran back to himself…but I…can’t. I have no where to run. Like being stuck in a room of mirrors, but the all show something different. I don’t know where to start.”

It is a bit odd he'd remembered. Has he been forgetting it? Since when did the Web have the ability to cause memory loss? Or... maybe it forced him to stop thinking about it? The thought of tiny spiders crawling inside his brain, setting up their own little webby connections and chewing through others enters his head, and Jon tries very hard not to blanch. Better not to think about that. Ever.

But what if that's what they were doing?

Chris keeps talking, which is a blessed distraction, especially when he settles into a Statement. A tragic one, but aren't they always? They wouldn't be what the Archivist needed, otherwise.

There's cold comfort he could offer, reassurance that Chris probably saved them from a grisly experience of being ripped apart into nothingness by some dying eldritch being desperately grasping for anything it can reach. Everyone else they know has likely suffered that fate... but that's not what this is about.

Jon watches the siren, eyes wide and unblinking, taking in the quaver in his breath, the touch of redness about his eyes, the song that begs for some sort of answer, and it's heartbreaking. And good. Very good.

"Are you jealous of him? Afraid he'll have things you never can?"

"Wanting others to be happy isn't selfish," he tells her, his hand stilling on her back, but he doesn't withdraw.

He wants to reason with her, to tell her to take worth in how they want the same things for her, but that clearly doesn't work. She would have seen it by now if it did. No, he can't just tell her she has worth.

"Why?" Achingly, he asks instead, afraid of the answer but they need to get through this or nothing will be mended. He hates seeing her like this when he knows she has so much value. Its not only in what she does for others, or her skills as an assassin. Its in her warmth, her ability to grow, to want, to listen to her own heart even when it gets in her way. She's never going to see herself the way he sees her, but he hopes at least she can try. He firmly believes she can do most anything if she stopped telling herself she couldn't. "Why don't you feel worth anything alone?"

That question. She's so tired of it. Why? Why doesn't she have worth in her own eyes? Why isn't she stronger, better, less weak? Why aren't the things she does enough? Why does she fail those she love?

Why?

She doesn't have an answer, but she doesn't say that. If she does, he won't accept it. Not for long before he asked her again and again until she found one. He needs something because he wants to help her through this, even as she's certain there is no helping it, much the same as there was nothing he could do when she spoke her fears about being too soft aloud. Maybe once she had an answer, when she still believe her memories of times before Duplicity were hers, but that's gone now. None of that matters. Nothing matters.

Nothing matters but them.

Slowly, she presses her palms to the ground and forces herself to sit upright. Her face and hair are coated in dirt, not helped by her trying to rub some of it off with a dirtied hand. She doesn't try to lean into him or pull away from his hand. She simply... sits, staring at nothing and breathing heavily as she tries desperately to find anything to say.

"What I remember from... from that life that isn't mine, I was raised not to care about myself. I was shown over and over that I was part of a group and nothing without it. I could live apart from it, but my life still belonged to it. That's not-- I'm not that person, but that need still presses on me. It's the motto that I was told defined me: Family before everything. And everything includes me."

Her breath shakes as she exhales and she has to fight the urge to crumple again. Dreams, she wishes she could ignore this. She wishes this wasn't important. She wishes they could be past this already. She wishes he'd never been taken and that they weren't copies and that everything was truly fine.

Always with the wishes. How pathetic she is to reach for them when she knows they're useless.

"I don't want to be alone, Wolfe. I'm terrified of it. If I'm alone, then I've failed those I call mine. If I'm alone, I fucked up somewhere. I don't know how to live alone and I don't want to. I want to hide myself in what I do for others, in their joys and sorrows, and that means what I do doesn't fucking matter if it's not for them."

He blinks, and his overly green eyes meet Jon's, that glow is one he's long familiar with. Some part of him might even miss it if it eventually vanishes with Jon's abilities.

His song shifts echoes his fears as he nods.

"I know he will. He'll have them...they kept me focused: thinking about how Ra'ah might judge me, how Amnos might keep his people safe and keep his strength, remembering what Silver might feel about a thing...he'll have them there to keep him honest...I never was. Never did. Never will. And her..."

His song shifts to something lighter, grief and longing and a fear of...insignificance.

"He has Rhyt. He's always had Rhyt...bright, shining, loving, good Rhyt. Worth caging himself again just to see her smile, just to know she wasn't alone and had somewhere to call home. They convinced her to stay and what was he going to do but stay with her? He'd always stay with her- I...don't have a sister but the one I keep in my reflection. What if I'm not good enough for you all without them? What if I'm not good?"

Some part of him, the part that's still Jonathan Sims... aches. Knowing he'd never have Martin, not a Martin who's gone through what they have. Knowing both of his Martins are dead. Knowing Morrigan is dead. So many others who have disappeared, lost to the maw of the thing that rules over and feeds on Duplicity.

The Archivist's eyes shift to their ordinary brown, to those of a very human man looking on someone he loves. His hunger isn't sated and there's more here, but he has the taste he needs for now. There will be more later.

He hopes there's more later. The siren's mournful songs and the words that fall from Chris' lips like a confession say as much.

"What if you aren't? I'm hardly a paragon. Amelia's... faster to violence than an avatar of the Slaughter. Wolfe's the only one who's better than the rest of us. And you've always been enough for me without them. For so many years..." Jon lifts a hand from the water to cup Chris' cheek. "You are the man I've fallen in love with. You split from him, but you're the one I fell in love with. The one all of us fell in love with. Maybe we can't be them... but we can be ourselves. And hope that's enough for now."

"I think I understand." On some level. He doesn't think as low of himself as that; someone loves him - many someone's, even if he didn't think of himself as Adalwolfe Hawke from Thedas to now but from Duplicity instead he still has love - and that means there's something worthy in him. He tries to be good, to his own given definition of good, and that too means he has worth. But he understands never wanting to be alone. He hates silence, hates gaps where someone is missing. Where there's supposed to be someone he's taking care of. He feels it even now keenly with the absence of Anders. His Anders, who is now... gone, whose absence he can't look at too long for fear of falling into the cavernous void the other man left in his life, but also the Anders he was patterned from, the one Wolfe apparently never knew and who another version of himself is - he hopes - taking care of. There's still a gap, something he feels like he should be doing because he'd done it for so long even if the task is no longer his, or no longer needed.

They, all of them, are full of holes.

So he asks her the only question that he was able to ask himself, absent of everyone else when he first got back to Duplicity after vanishing. After Anders was not there in his life for the first time in more than a decade, living alone for the first time he'd ever done so. But he had Chris staring him down, seeing not just him but through him in the way he did. Still does.

"How do you want to be?"

"I don't know." This time she doesn't shy away from the answer. They're barely a day out from learning the truth of what they are and where their memories come from. Less than a day into the first taste of real freedom any of them have ever had. How could she possibly have an answer to a question this massive and weighty when she still doesn't know who or what the fuck she is?

She inhales slowly, exhales a heavy sigh and wipes her face with both hands to give herself something to do. It's better than collapsing into a heap again to cry. It won't do any good to give into such things if he's trying to ask her questions.

"In the city I'd have said 'not so soft' and 'stronger than I am', but that doesn't mean anything right now when we're still figuring things out." Another sigh as she drags her fingers through her hair. "I need us to get through the Shadowfell and into the Weave before I can think about it. My focus has to be clear for the fight we're walking into and to face... gods. Who I am," what I am, "and how I'll be can wait until then. I can't-- I'm still learning to breathe again. If I spend too much time thinking about these kinds of things, I'll fall apart." Or turn on the others like she did to Jon in the woods.

Her weight shifts to one hip so she can pull her knees to her chest and wrap her arms around them. This time, at least, she doesn't hide her face in them. "I know this is important. I know it sounds like I'm trying to push this off, and I know I am, but I can't do this right now. Let me be a protector and offer what support I can while you... slowly lose your magic, and I promise you I'll ask to be held accountable when it's my time to heal."

Until then, she'll survive and do everything she can to keep her chin above the metaphorical water. The life they are trying to build together is too important to risk by letting herself have the crisis of self that's pressing constantly on her mind.

Those mesmerizing eyes shift back to the deep brown he so often loses himself in…the same ones he finds himself in now.

Chris reaches up and takes Jon’s hand carefully in his own to turn and kiss the palm.

“I just…don’t want to stop being good enough. I was what you -they- needed in Duplicity, but here…I thought you all would be happily distracted with making new lives, discovering new opportunities, with me there to love and help you grow. Now…”

‘Just me
Omen
Omen Child’

He sighs and shifts quickly so he can move to have Jon pressed to his chest, clutched in a gentle curl of arms, tails, and wings.

“You are the you I love as well. All your flaws and talents. I’ll keep trying, I can promise that much. As I said yesterday…he has them, but I have you all. You will keep me enough.”

He lets himself be pulled in, throat tightening as emotions threaten to overwhelm him once more. There's far too much of that going on right now. While he's focused on Chris, he has a sense of some of what's going on outside the walls, which... he probably needs to try harder to stop. Ambient use of his abilities is, no doubt, draining whatever well he has faster.

Maybe if he had a new victim, though...

Jon pushes the thought away as Chris curls around him. The Archivist clings to his boyfriend in turn, knowing this can't last, that there are so many ways the days ahead of them might and will go sideways.

"I don't see what's changed? We just get to keep you. You don't have to be the king, dealing with everything." There's freedom that comes with the new and different chains binding all of them together.

"We should... Probably get properly washed and dressed before the others come in. I went through everything in the wardrobe. You, er..." Jon feels a heat bloom across his face wholly unrelated to the hot springs. "You certainly have a... variety available. Garment-wise." There's a long pause. "I'm sure Amelia will appreciate that."

Whether she asks or not, Wolfe is certain at least Chris will hold her accountable, even if Wolfe is too soft and Jon will decide its not his place. Its a comfort, especially because she's right. There's too much to get through first, and he suddenly can't tell if he's pushing this now because he's terrified of what he knows is coming for him. That's not fair to her.

He exhales, seeming to slump a little before gathering himself up and finding some still relatively clean part of his shirt with which to lean over and carefully wipe the mud from Amelia's face. It doesn't help a whole lot. "I'm sorry. I know its all too much and it hasn't been long. I shouldn't be badgering you."

His knees creak as he stands and he's forced to lean backwards with his hands pressing in at his lower back to crack it before he can stand comfortably and offer a hand down to her. "Let's have a proper bath and I'll get some stew on so you can do whatever you need to feel better, alright? Even if it's help me with chores."

Because that's probably what it will be, knowing Amelia as he does, and ignoring the cruel part of himself that whispers she probably won't want to stay near after he tried yet again to force her into some sort of revelation for his own ego.

Edited (backwards.) 2025-11-01 19:26 (UTC)

Her poor love. He's tired and aching in ways she can hear, and it breaks her heart as she pushes down her own struggles. She leans into the touch to her face, trying not to cry or tear up. It's not his fault she's like this; it's her own fears and insecurities. She wishes she could tell him that right now, but... but it doesn't matter. They need to keep moving, to stop lingering in something they can do nothing about until after they're in the Weave.

"That sounds like a good way to spend the afternoon." Doing something with her hands feels like the best thing she could do, after she's clean enough to not leave a trail throughout the temple. She takes his offered hand and rises to tuck herself against him, not caring about the spread of mess between them. What does it matter when they can clean it off later?

She smiles up at him, soft and tired, and squeezes his hand. "I'm ready when you are, love. Let's get all this meat inside and then soak for a while."

Edited 2025-11-01 19:50 (UTC)

What's changed? He'll be himself, without what he's meant to do...and he's not even sure what that means or who that is...but that isn't a new fear or a new question. Five and a half years ago, or only six months ago here, he'd asked himself that same question and felt the overwhelming enormity of anything and anyone suffocate him. He might be older and wiser than that version of himself now, but it still wasn't a question he could answer.

Instead, there's talk of washing up and clothing, and he lets the distraction bury the existentialism once more. He smiles, his too-sharp teeth not helping the predatory nature of it.

"Oh, no, love...you'll find some of those are shaped for your hips, not hers...there's some for Wolfe too. You can't tell me your enjoyment of those things was only for Duplicity; most of the time, no one but me knew what you were wearing under your scholar's clothes." He leans in and presses kisses down Jon's cheek to his neck. "I still like being the only one who knows."

But first, he carefully runs his talons through Jon's hair to get water along his scalp. Just in time for the sound of the door opening and Little Thunder's ragged squawk to break the peace ahead of the other half of their group.

Some part of him had known, but refused to acknowledge. Those things, that... interest had developed in Duplicity. So, it was a thing meant to stay in Duplicity. Maybe Amelia wouldn't notice. Jon prays to every god in the pantheon Wolfe doesn't, regardless of what the mage might prefer for himself. If he does indulge in something a bit less utilitarian for his undergarments here, he might actually die from embarrassment if either of them found out. It's bad enough they both know he has a penchant for pet play. Though, maybe they'll assume that's gone away with Duplicity, as well.

Hopefully.

"I, um..." The blush spreads from his cheeks as Jon tilts his head up, exposing more of his neck to his bastard boyfriend. What does he even say to that? To the idea of hidden lingerie and toys outside of a place designed around that sort of thing? It wouldn't be expected. It would be far more humiliating here than it ever could have been in Duplicity if they were found out.

His cock begins to stir, and Jon digs his nails into the siren's feathers, just as his hair is being stroked and the door opens. Why now? Why did they have to be done now.

Jon tries to push away from the siren and put a little distance between them so as not too seem too intimate in the water. In an effort to distract Wolfe and Amelia, he calls out in a somewhat strained voice. "If there's soap or shampoo in the showers, could you bring it here, please? We're in the springs getting cleaned up." And absolutely nothing else!

"In a moment," Wolfe calls back, sounding exhausted and a bit strained from the bounty he and Amelia are carrying in to the little kitchen Chris had made. He's not looking their direction, instead watching where he's going, but Jon's tone is an easy one to read. They'd interrupted something intimate by coming inside. A bit if jealousy blooms in Wolfe's chest but he tamps that down. He's hardly deserving of such attentions right now, even if he wants them.

He helps Amelia lay out what they've brought in and asks that she put a pot on the fire before kissing her on the cheek so he can part and grab the washing supplies for Jon. Padding over in still-bare feet, the soles stained with mud even if he's not leaving a trail of it, Wolfe resists the urge to toss the bar of soap and instead hands it over. Beside them he leaves one of the shampoo bottles he'd pilfered from the shower as well.

Fuck but Chris is gorgeous spread out like that, wings at rest and tails shifting lazily in the hot water. He's got a much calmer expression too, which Wolfe is glad for on Chris' account but still unfairly envious of on his own.

"Enjoying yourselves? Careful not to get soap in your gills," he teases as if nothing is wrong, putting a hand on Jon's shoulder and leaning in to kiss the side of Chris' head through his curls. He pats Jon's shoulder companionably before letting go and starting back for the much needed shower, throwing his pants in the general direction of the laundry on his way with absolutely no modesty at all. He's too tired for that.

Amelia knows a deflect when she hears one and she's all too glad to let Wolfe take care of it. What interests Jon may or may not have aren't her concern right now when she doesn't want to apologize to Chris in front of him. Or to see him at all as the crisis of self she's still mired in refuses to stay down. Dreams, he's going to have another comment on that later, isn't he? She hopes to anything divine he can keep it to himself as she tries to keep herself reined in.

She marches past the bathing pair without looking at them even once, pausing only long enough outside the shower to toss down her boots and knives before disappearing into one of the stalls. Her clothes end up in a pile in the corner and if not for spotting her soap from Duplicity on a little shelf by the handle, she might've been on the floor under the water when Wolfe comes in. Or gets into the other stall. She... doesn't know if he'll want to be close to her right now after what she told him and how she reacted to his pressing about who and how and why she is the way she is.

Unkind thoughts, but what else is she to think when she's just. so. tired.

Whatever her partner's choice, she'll start washing slowly to be certain she gets all the blood off her hands and dirt from her hair. She needs to be clean if she's going to help with chores and that means taking her time with her cleansing.

He doesn't try to keep Jon close to him, mostly out of a fear of accidentally scratching him with his talons if he did, but he doesn't bother hiding his amusement over his poor partner's suffering.

He behaves himself nicely while the others come in beyond reaching his tails out to touch or wind around one of Jon's ankles, while his focus predominantly fixes on shifting his song to something of comfort, family, affection...something that could hopefully bring all of them a little calm or comfort while inside his hall.

Sharp green eyes sweep over Wolfe as soon as he can see him, assessing. Talons snag in Wolfe's pants irreverent of the fabric's safety. "That is hardly the sort of kiss I'm looking for, Adalwolfe Hawke." He purrs it with a touch of (gentle) threat below the words. "I think your lady can have you back in a moment."

The snag to his pocket has Wolfe startling slightly. Not unpleasantly, but more because he isn't sure where the boundaries are with Chris right now. He's not exactly sure where the boundaries are with anyone right now, including his own, but those sharp green eyes looking into him and the dangerous vibrato underlying Chris' words are decidedly positive.

"Apologies, My Siren. I thought I might still be too offensive having only rinsed in lake water," Wolfe replies in kind, with a grin and a cocked eyebrow. It's a little put on to cover what remains of his envy, but mostly genuine otherwise. He leans over the side of the spring again, this time bracing himself on the rock instead of Jon's shoulder, to plant a proper if relatively chaste kiss on Chris' lips. He's not sure how fire would be welcome right now in general, but sticking his tongue down Chris' throat directly in front of Jon's face would probably not be welcome, at least by Jon himself, even if Wolfe petulantly wants to. There's enough drama from the things they can't control, he doesn't need to add something he can.

He accepts the kiss, and a pleased ruffle ripples through his feathers, but he lets go of Wolfe soon after. Asked and provided, he wouldn't ask more when part of him was still mad about earlier.

"Good boy." He murmurs with that same voice the request had come in. When he speaks next, his voice is lighter, more gentle. "I'll not keep you longer from your shower. I'll help with the food when we're done here. Then you should look at the books I made, too."

And he'd need to grab his clothing he left outside, and look at that lighter once food was started.

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cw: spiders and body horror

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Insight 25

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