goodweather | ic inbox (PH)

(( ooc: because i forgot to make a new inbox post in time: sometime in july, phil pays hawkeye a visit. ))

It's late. Or very early, depending on your point of view. Only faint moonlight illuminates the room in cool tones, cutting the shape of it in silhouettes and reflecting strangely off the silver-lit eye of the girl sat at the dining table.

Ruby's sleep has been better, since they moved into the farmhouse. It's familiar in a way that nowhere else in the last few years has been, reminds her of being at home in Patch before everything went wrong. She still has bad nights, sometimes; mostly it's nightmares that make it difficult to fall back to sleep, but not tonight. Tonight, she just couldn't fall asleep at all.

And so she sits at the table, with a glass of milk (once upon a time it would have been tea, but she can't— she still can't do tea) and a snack, staring out into the farmland beyond the windows. Her hair is down, her eyepatch is on her bedside table, and she's wearing a nightgown that almost makes her look like a haunted doll.

It's subtle, but every noise in the house makes her freeze for a moment until she decides it's just the creak of a floorboard or the wind through the wood and she settles down.

There's some noise coming from Phil's room at this hour, not for the first time.

The door opens. He shuffles out. In contrast to Ruby, he's wearing a bandanna over his bad eye; he keeps it on in the house but takes it off when he goes into town. There's a slump to him. In this light, he looks even more utterly tired than he usually is, cold-seeming and dimly lit by his Mantle. Spotting Ruby (he knew she was out here), he turns and shuffles about the kitchen, grabbing his own food and water and pulling up a chair. He doesn't really eat. Mostly he just slouches.

If they're going to be awake and miserable, the least they can do is do it together.

Ruby's head moves just enough for him to tell that she's watching him out of the corner of her eye, as he mills around and comes to join her. She doesn't say anything immediately, just leans her head on her hand in a way that smushes her cheek and stares into her milk. There are crumbs floating around the surface from a once-dipped cookie and for a moment it's like they're the most interesting things in the world.

But after a moment, she breathes a: "You too, huh?"

He makes a non-committal hum. He lets another few silent moments pass, and then sighs.

"Yeah."

"Something new or just— same old?"

They've all got their familiar problems, but you can never really rule out something brand new in places like this.

"Same old. Ship stuff. Then I've got work in two hours."

It's 2 AM.

"You?"

Edited 2024-08-22 02:48 (UTC)

"New, I think? Sally's got me on this medication and apparently the first couple weeks are..." she pulls a face and wiggles a hand side to side in the air. Iffy, unstable, wobbly, take your pick. "I've been mostly sleeping okay until now. Which of course means all my problems were just in—" she sighs, which morphs into a yawn, "—other areas, but..."

She bops her head back and forth. Half a dozen of one, six of the other.

Phil makes a sympathetic sound. "Psych stuff, right? Yeah, I know that game. It's not an exact science. Sometimes you have to shop around a little until you find something that works well enough."

He fidgets with his pastry, which is marginally more destructive than normal on account of the talons. "But, it's uh, really good that you're on that process, ehn? It helped me a lot, personally. Takes a while though."

"Mmhm." She brushes some hair out of her face, briefly uncovering the empty socket before it inevitably falls back into place. "This is all... very new to me. Back home no one really... talks about it. Any of it. If they did, maybe... maybe we wouldn't all be so screwed up. I don't know."

It's blunter than Ruby would usually be, but with every step she takes along this path the more thinking she's been doing.

"It still feels strange. I want— I want to feel better, but every new thing is like climbing a mountain."

"Mmmmh. No goddamn kidding."

He tears a piece off of the snack he'd grabbed, a motion more absent than present.

"I'll tell you what I wish people told me, though, is that this stuff... it's measured in years. That's not meant to discourage you, just... if you start getting worried that you still flinch or have bad thoughts after 3 months of this, that's okay. That's because that's not actually a lot of time. Even eight months is only so much. I've been working on things for decades. Some things never get easier, but some things do."

"...sometimes it doesn't feel like I even have years," comes out quietly, not so much an admission of anything but as a statement of fact. She's only made it to 19, and will only make it to 20, because she was stolen away from her world before the worst could happen. Even if she survived to escape the Ever After, the war against Salem rages on and the whole world could end before she should've turned 18. "I guess maybe here."

...

"Man, do I know how that feels," he says, very quietly. It feels a little like a gunshot in a space this quiet. "I first felt that when I was younger than you are."

...

"You feel real tired sometimes, huh? More tired than you ever thought someone could be."

There are words on his tongue to follow that he doesn't quite let out: and it's not that you want to die, really, but you wish you could just stop.

There's quiet, for a moment, before, "...yeah. It doesn't feel like it should even be possible to be so tired."

It started out as just telling herself that taking risks with her own life was worth it if it meant saving other lives. That that's what heroes do, put themselves in danger and accept the chance that they might not survive.

And then the risks kept getting bigger, and bigger—more reckless, more pointless. Until even that thin veil of deniability fell away and there was just Ruby, the ghosts of the dead, and the tea. The ability to stop existing, right at her fingertips.

The morning after the holiday, there is a small package at the farmhouse - the light dusting of frost on it might tell that it did not come through the mail. But it's marked for Phil.

Inside is a set of cufflinks, their distinguishing feature being the polished sea glass that they show off. Yet, it's different - clear melded with light green and blue, and a thin streak of brown, colors merged in a way that is both deliberate and pure chance. They aren't identical, but they complement each other.

And a note, folded in the back.

Happy Givingstide.
-F

Ah...

Ah.

Well, aren't these so wonderfully lovely? They even match his eyes.

(Taking them inside, he immediately replaces the pearl cufflinks left in pride of place in his jewelrybox with these ones.)

The day Phil returns from being dead, he will get a message on his sending stone.

It's Cassandra, in a tone that would sound entirely calm and untroubled, to anyone who didn't know her well.

"Master Connors? I heard that," an infinitesimal pause, "you might be back today."

It's... some time, a lengthy minute or two, before Phil picks up the stone to respond.

"I am." He sounds subdued. "... Uh. Hi. Lady Cassandra. Are... you okay?"

"I'm all right," she tells him, keeping her voice steady. "It was ... a complicated experience, but it's over now."

A beat.

"Are you?"

"... No."

A strained breath.

"That oath I took with you, uh... I think we might have to bump up the timeline on that. To. Every other day, maybe."

There's barely half a moment's pause.

"Are you at home? I can be there in about seven minutes. Unless you'd rather come to me."

"Uh... yeah. But, uh, could you give me a little more time than that? Twenty minutes or something?"

So he can pry himself off of his bedroom floor and look decent and all. He got home hours ago and has just been... here.

"Twenty minutes," she repeats. "I'll be there. Call me if you need more time. Or less."

"Okay. See you."

In twenty minutes' time, when Phil answers the door, he looks... neat, but sunken. Shoulders hunched, arms dangling, feet in, wings close.

But still, he tries to greet her with a smile. "Hi, Lady Cassandra. Come in. I, uh, can put the kettle on, if you want any tea."

"Tea would be lovely, thank you," she says, not because she particularly wants tea but because she's come to understand the need to not feel wholly helpless at times like this.

She hopes she's not wrong. His posture would worry her if she weren't already worried.

He nods, and shuts the door behind them, shuffling into the house.

The sounds of running water and clinking metal issue from the kitchen as he sets about. It doesn't take long before the pot is on the stove to boil, and the room falls into a lull.

One hand presses blunt talons into his arm. "... So, uh. What did you want to talk about?"

"Well," slowly, carefully, "catching up on recent events might not be the best topic. I understand we were all in a dream realm for some days. I shan't ask what happened in yours, unless you feel it would do you good to talk about it."

She's pulling out the kid gloves. Well, he can't say it isn't warranted.

Phil is quiet for a moment, scratching the back of his neck.

"... No. Not right now."

He glances around, trying to think of something else to talk about, but all he can see is Darcy's things. Darcy's house. Darcy's jacket, one of Darcy's sword, the screwy ongoing "anarchy chess" game with a knife stuck in the board that Darcy and Hawk have been playing whenever he visits. And it, just... hurts.

"... um."

He can't think of anything else.

She breathes out, quietly.

"I brought you something," she offers, by way of a conversational topic.

ic inbox (PH)

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