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ratinayellowbandana · 8 months

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Hi! Number six of the drabble prompt list, and if I may suggest, with a sad jealous Laudna.

hi! I'm sorry this one took a few days. I um. got a little carried away with it again. these were only supposed to be like 500-word prompt fills, and this is uh, slightly more than that. so I hope that's ok.

for those who don't want to find the prompt, it was: "You just didn't look for me." naturally I went ep 64 with a healthy splash of canon divergence, some good old-fashioned hurt/comfort, and pate as a thinly veiled metaphor.

length: 2k

~~~

Laudna whirls on her, snaps, “We looked for you. And the others. Every fucking day.” She holds Imogen’s gaze, holds her piercing stare until Imogen tilts her head. “You just didn’t look for me,” she whispers.

Imogen steps forward, quiet but insistent. “No, sweetheart, no, we did. I did. Every day.” She does not reach out, afraid, not of Laudna–never of Laudna–but of herself. Of what she might do if given the chance at the wrong time. Her heart pounds an unsteady rhythm.

“I want to believe you,” Laudna says. She toys with the brass ring on her left hand, twisting it around her finger anxiously, twin snakes coiling. “I do, truly, it’s just…”

Imogen studies her, searching for answers in a frame both foreign and familiar. Laudna is pale and gaunt, cheeks drawn in, though that’s hardly unusual. Her stringy dark hair lacks luster in the eerie light of the red moon, crispy and clumped together in places by something Imogen can’t identify. Cast in the long shadows between buildings, Laudna is on edge, ready to claw and screech and lash out with those wicked talons if provoked. She is wild, and she is beautiful, and she is frightened.

“I understand,” Imogen speaks slowly, gently, distinctly aware of each word’s weight.

The others are still in the inn, consorting in the tavern. The Hells and their new friends, chatting, laughing, and drinking the night away, simply happy to be home. Introductions were made, and tales of grandeur waited to be spun.

Laudna had been unnervingly quiet after the initial elation wore off. Her hands remained folded in her lap or picked intently at the skin around her nails. Pâté’s silence was even more concerning. He had been coaxed out of hiding in Laudna’s hair with the promise of scratches and nudged his beak into her wrist until she began stroking his greasy fur.

She spoke when spoken to, adjusting in her seat and responding eagerly when prompted. The moment the attention shifted, though, her forced smile would drop. Every so often, she sent a furtive glance in Imogen’s direction as if to ensure she was still there, then looked away just as quickly. Exhaustion crept at the corners of her eyes, and her gaze would fall to her lap whenever the conversation turned to the adventures in Wildemount.

The group from Issylra hadn’t said much about their travels, but Imogen gathered their transplantation had not been as, ah, pleasant wasn’t quite the right word. Illustrious, maybe, Imogen considered, fussing with a seam on her new dress. Laudna’s blouse was tattered and stained with a thick substance that did not match her ichor’s usual viscosity.

Laudna had stood abruptly, muttering something about air, and disappeared outside. After making puzzled eye contact with Ashton, who tossed his head at the door and sighed heavily, Imogen followed her.

She had found Laudna around the corner, curled into herself against the wall of the Spire by Fire. A feral thing, hardened and reshaped by whatever circumstances found her while they were apart.

She has not calmed yet, and Imogen is reluctant to curb the swell of emotion that has Laudna dangling by a thread. She is tangled in it, ensnared in a knotted web, and Imogen is unsure how to extricate her. She is all jagged pieces and raw edges, a tempest of fury and loss that Imogen cannot rely on her mental connection to unravel. Laudna is something of a mystery to her now in a way she has never been, and it’s all Imogen can do to not toss her circlet to the winds.

Instead, she waits.

Laudna is muttering to herself, tugging at her clothes. Pâté flaps about her head, wings of sinew and bone making an abominably wet sound Imogen hadn’t realized she’d missed. The tip of one wing tangles in Laudna’s hair, and she swats at him irritably, sending him tumbling through the air until he manages to right himself. Imogen extends a hand, and he flies to her, settling in her palm on his hindquarters. He gives a disgruntled shake, and his wings squelch back into his body, tail coming to rest around his paws. He peers up at Imogen, then looks back to Laudna.

“I tried,” he croaks in that gravelly way of his, and Imogen strokes his disgusting little head with one finger.

“I know,” she assures gently. He could be referring to any number of moments across a lifetime, a few weeks, mere seconds ago. She sets him on her shoulder and feels pinprick claws pierce the fabric of her dress for stability. Crass and wretched as he is, Imogen can’t find it in herself to hate him. He is an extension of his maker, creepy and ungainly and off-putting, so Imogen must love him a tiny bit. She scratches under his chin, ignores the feeling of magic-touched bone, murmurs, “Thank you for keepin’ her safe.”

“Boss didn’t have the best of times without you.” He pipes up, a little rueful, in a manner Imogen assumes is meant to be quiet. Laudna, only a few feet away, catches it.

“Pâté,” she snarls. He squeaks and tucks himself into Imogen’s collar.

“He’s just confirming what I had already guessed,” Imogen defends, an attempt at lightness that doesn’t quite land. “It’s not his fault you haven’t told me anything.”

“He ought to have stayed in my head. Then he might leave well enough alone,” Launda warns.

“You don’t mean that,” Imogen counters calmly.

Laudna spits, “He should have stayed dead.”

“Hey.”

She huffs a sardonic, dry laugh. “Not everyone deserves second chances.”

Imogen inhales sharply.

There it is.

“Laudna…” She softens. She cups Pâté protectively. His fur oddly damp against her skin. She takes a cautious step forward.

The pieces begin slotting into place, building the frame for a jarring picture of something severe enough to reopen this old wound.

The fight sapped from her limbs, Laudna slides her back down the wall until she sits in the filth and dirt of the alleyway with her knees drawn close to her chest. Imogen winces as rough stone drags across jutting bone and paper-thin skin.

“Are you… Do you want to be alone?” She asks–because what else can she do?– and half-fears the answer.

Laudna’s head jerks up, and something Imogen can’t decipher flashes in her eyes. After a moment, her head shakes minutely, and Imogen lets out a relieved sigh.

Tense silence leaches from the pores of the building’s rocky exterior.

“We tried to find you all. Every day. We didn’t–we didn’t know where we were. Where anyone was, and–” Laudna breathes at last. “Orym was… was angry. Vengeful. And Ashton…. He was our friend.”

“Ashton?”

“I hurt him,” Laudna continues as if Imogen hadn’t spoken at all.

“Hurt who?”

She shudders. “I killed him, not Prism.” Inky tears well from eyes pressed shut. Her voice is impossibly soft, hollow, seeming to ask, Do you hate me yet?

The narrative is convoluted at best. Imogen fruitlessly attempts to splice together the fragments of memory slipping through Laudna’s teeth like snowflakes, to arrange them into a cohesive whole among the scraps she gathered at the table. The Issylra group returned rattled, apprehensive and tense, but this is deeper. Laudna is shaken.

“Wasn’t he a member of the Ruby Vanguard?”

“He was confused, just like the rest of us. Angry at the gods.” Laudna’s eyes flicker to the glowing red moon. Her fist, clenched in her hair, tightens. “And I killed him.”

Imogen steps closer. “We’ve all killed people.”

Laudna shakes her head. Her voice hardens once more. “I don’t begrudge you the shopping or fraternizing with royalty or, or whatever else it was,” she says lowly, “But we didn’t have that. We didn’t save a toy store or home-cooked breakfasts. We spent every moment fighting to get back to you. And now,” she swallows, “we must reckon with the cost.”

She is utterly exhausted; Imogen can see in the dim light. Although bone-weary and at her wits’ end, Laudna’s elegant cheekbones curl with shadows that twist and hide in her skirts. Hunched and fearful as she is, Laudna is still hauntingly beautiful. Something warms in Imogen’s chest.

“You did what you had to do to survive,” she says, “No one can fault you for that.”

“I’m sorry.” Laudna’s voice breaks, fracturing in tandem with Imogen’s heart, and she sobs. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Laud, no–” Imogen crouches next to her, yearning to touch, to take Laudna in her arms and bite and hiss and growl at anyone who dares approach. She restrains herself, carefully plucking Pâté from her shoulder and setting him on the ground between them. He turns to her skeptically as if to say, Really? After what she said? Imogen nudges him in Laudna’s direction. He sniffs, beak in the air, and ruffles his fur before bounding to Laudna’s ankles and putting his weird, cold little dead rat toes against her shin. She ignores the pawing fragment of her soul, ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” Laudna mutters, “I must seem…I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Laudna begins incredulously, “I–”

“You survived,” Imogen reiterates, “against gods and people powerful enough to destroy them.” She sighs, “I sent you a message every day, you know? Sometimes more than once, if I’m honest, ‘till my nose bled and Deanna had to patch me up.” Imogen offers a half-smile. “All I got was static. I just had to hope you were out there, somewhere, lookin’ for me, too.”

Laudna looks as if she might melt into herself, refusing to look at Imogen. Her shoulders shake, and she confesses with a gasp, “She’s back. I brought her back.”

Imogen’s blood chills, but her tone remains neutral. “Who, Laud?”

At last, Laudna meets her gaze, eyes wide and wet and horror-struck. “Delilah.”

The name hangs between them like a stone ready to drop and shatter and bury itself into their flesh. Searing rage erupts in Imogen’s veins.

“I’m sorry,” Laudna shrinks back, “I’m so sorry. To all of you. You all gave so much to–to find me. And–”

“It’s not your fault,” Imogen interjects.

“–and I wasn’t…I was weak. I lost control.”

“Laudna,” Imogen cuts her off with the steely calm of a thunderstorm on the horizon. She cannot afford to process this now, not when Laudna is trembling in an alley. Not when Laudna, unmoored and terrified, needs her to be an anchor. No, Imogen will save her questions and unfiltered anger, for another time. A time when Laudna is safe and warm and at no risk of coming unraveled in her hands. When Laudna is in a place to know Imogen’s wrath is not, could never be, directed at her.

“Laudna,” Imogen repeats, because she cannot bear the thought of her not understanding, “this is not your fault. None of this.” She does reach out, then, offering a lifeline should Laudna choose to accept it. She does, hesitantly, as if waiting for Imogen to recoil. Her fingers are cool, bird-light against Imogen’s red-scarred palm. Laudna seems to notice at the same time.

“Imogen,” she exclaims, words still tear-tinged and quivering, “your hands. They’re–are you alright?”

“Oh, they–they don’t hurt, usually. Promise. I’m fine.”

“I should have–I’m sorry, I suppose I was–”

“Laudna,” Imogen interrupts again, not unkindly, “please.”

It’s then that Laudna seems to notice Pâté clawing his way up her skirt. She scoops him up and holds him to her, murmuring apologies into his fur.

“‘S’okay, boss,” he rasps, squished against his maker’s chest, “I can’t hold a grudge.”

They sit like that, hand-in-hand, hand-on-rat, until the easy stroke of Imogen’s thumb against Laudna’s has smoothed out the worst of the jagged edges. Until the tension falls from Laudna’s spine and she relaxes into Imogen’s touch.

“The others are surely wondering where we’ve gone.”

Imogen shrugs, snorts, “There’re so many people at that table I think they’d hardly notice two missing.”

“Still,” Laudna says, “we ought to get back.”

“Do you want to?” It’s her choice. It always will be if Imogen can help it.

Laudna considers. “I think I’d rather like to hear the end of Chetney’s story from the Savalirwood.”

“Oh gods,” Imogen groans, flushing at the memory, “no, you don’t.”

“Fearne and Deanna, hm?”

“Best to let them tell it.”

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