lady_moon | (no subject)

"Of course it hurt. It was supposed to. But I have to ask why did it hurt? The answer isn't very comforting. We took away his control, his power. It has nothing to do with a true hurt and everything to do with a loss of what made him think he was better than everyone else."

Sorrow's voice is soft, gentle, full of unspoken understanding.

"It was always both of you. Did you think Gorlim was the only person Ruin was working on when that mess happened? No. It was also Mary Anne, Námo, Random -- everyone in his life because his life touched theirs."

She chews her lip lightly, not wanting to go into this too deeply with Miniver, because she doesn't think he could handle it.

"He can't learn it from you, Miniver, because he doesn't... feel for you what you wish he would. Hugging you, offering comfort? A wonderful step. Now we take you away from him and he has to reevaluate what he has with you. Why he misses you... if he misses you."

"He's not going to come for me, is he?"

"How could he?" she asks him.

"Does he even want to?"

"He doesn't even know you're missing yet," she reminds him. "You could have simply gone off with Robbie for an evening, after all."

"But I didn't. Anyway... will he? Tell me, Sorrow. Explain this to me. Please."

"In his way."

Sorrow looks down at him.

"You fell in love with someone who could never return the feelings as ardently as you feel them. He isn't a hero, Miniver, and he never will be. What we're trying to do isn't about making him into this great, noble man."

"I know. I know that. But -- what is it, then? And why bring me into it?"

"You're a by-product. A means to an end," she says sadly. "Something he has that he wants, and like a naughty child, we've taken that away from him."

Miniver curls up a little on the bed.

"No one else is going to notice I'm gone," he whispers, his voice strangled. "No one else is going to know or give a damn if I never come back. Robbie will assume I'm with Draco, and no one else will give it more thought than that. And even he... no one's going to come looking for me." Just like no one in his world filed a missing persons report when he didn't come to work for a week. His absence was an inconvenience quickly solved by hiring some other luckless bastard to fill his place.

He's never mattered enough to anyone to be worth saving. Even now he's nothing more that a favourite toy snatched away.

"Even when Draco and Robbie realise you aren't with either of them, they could never make it here on their own," she points out. "They aren't able to walk worlds."

But the fact that they couldn't find him isn't the point.

The point is... he doesn't expect anyone to look.

He's on a strange world with strange people. No way out, no one trying to help him, no value but as a bribe to some spiritual reawakening in which his role is ultimately to be forgotten.

He bites his lip, blinking back tears.

Sorrow's heart hurts for him, as it does for everyone where he is emotionally.

"We're all but ghosts wandering down paths. Occasionally, you become real for just a short while and you touch and feel and love and remember. You're cared about. You'll be missed. Moon loves you... Robbie loves you... Draco loves you, even if it isn't as you wish he would... and others will come along who will love you, too."

"I want to go home," Miniver chokes. "Take me home. Then it'll be okay. Draco will be fine. I'll be fine. Please... take me home..."

Because here... there's no hope. No love, and no future.

"I can't do that."

And Sorrow is terribly sad she has to say that.

"Not yet."

He knew she'd say it.

But he had to ask. And now there's nothing more to ask, and nothing more to do, and nothing more to look for but the shifting whims of the gods in their game. It seems to him that they'll keep him here for a long time, and he's beginning to suspect there will be no one too terribly glad to see him come home when he does. How long will he be here? Mia might be back by then, and then...

He buries his face in his arms, no longer able to hold back the tears.

Sorrow reaches for him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

It's a quiet invitation to be held and clung to, if he's so inclined.

She understands.

So he does. He scoots next to her and clings, sobbing softly into her shoulder.

The universe is immense and terrifying, and most of all, it is lonely. At this moment, he feels that he has no one in all words and all times but a baby kestrel, and even he has moods of wildness, and will not be clung to. He feels his isolation in terms of a lifetime, not just a night or a month or a moment. He feels in himself the tragedy of the unwanted bulge in his mother's belly, the strange small child who could never fit in, the drunk who'd spent his share of evenings in the gutter, the anonymous face at the end of the universe.

It had all seemed to be going so well. He had made friends, or thought he had, but he had seen few of them in weeks. He had a lover who seemed to only ever be willing to give half his heart or less, but oh, how Miniver loved him. And oh, how useless it was to do so. But he wants him so badly now, wants just the two of them in their room, loving, reading, it didn't matter, being as they were. And he wonders if it can ever be like that again.

She pets his hair and holds him in return.

Sorrow knows it isn't much, but it is something, no matter how small it may be.

The card also knows that, no, it can never be like it was because change has been made and change can't be unmade. It simply was. But she spares him that. Spares him any more talk tonight, since it has been a long night for Miniver.

Ultimately, he is simply exhausted. He doesn't say anything when he parts from her, just slips away and curls up and closes his eyes.

It is not a restless sleep. It is a resigned sleep. A hopeless sleep. The kind of sleep he slips into not wanting to wake up from.

Sorrow watches over him for a short time, and before she leaves, she pulls off his shoes and covers him with a blanket.

She didn't feel confident that things would look up in the morning...