I wanna talk to Eddie. Just for five minutes. About anything. About D&D and his favourite thing about planning campaigns. About what he ate for breakfast this morning or if he skipped and would he like one of my snacks? About the first song he listened to this morning and the last one he remembers before he fell asleep. About how he's feeling. About why he's feeling. About his tattoo designs and which one is his favourite and why. About why he has his beautiful hair that way. About how he can be so full of love and hope and acceptance even with and after everything he's gone through. About how he's a shining beacon for so many people and how he managed to become the person for others that he himself always needed. About his favourite songs and what lyrics make his eyes close of their own accord and which guitar riffs make his heart feel like it's bleeding.
I want to know Eddie Munson inside out, back to front and all the other ways.
I want to sit on his lap, cup his face in my hands and smother him in kissies until he's giggling and holding my wrists, choking out a, "what the fuck?" or a "jesus h christ" because he doesn't know how else to react. I want to hold him so tightly that he swears he can feel himself clicking back into place, coming home, for the duration of that embrace, and for the ghost of my touch to accompany him through the hours we're apart.
I'm gonna cry. I just want five minutes with him. Just five.
I'd die for the privilege.
But more than all of this, I want to make sure that he knows he's so, so loved, by so many and for so much.
He deserves that at LEAST.
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Thinking about Thaniel and Halsin reuniting again when he wakes.
Thinking about how Halsin describes Thaniel as having been ripped away from him (just as he was from Oliver). How he was the only one able to see and interact with him; how Halsin is very insistent that Thaniel made him who he became. How Halsin's "very first friend" being an encapsulation of nature itself affected the entire trajectory of his life. How that implies, to me, that Halsin and Thaniel were connected on a level far stronger and more significant than just being unlikely playmates as children - even moreso than just Halsin deciding to become his protector as he aged, or the implication of the relationship becoming more along the lines of a parent and child - to the point of being so interconnected and intertwined, Thaniel evidently uprooted and followed Halsin from the High Forest to its own unpredicted detriment.
Thaniel's being cursed and trapped quite literally *did* rip the two of them away from one another, just as tearing Thaniel's being in two twisted and created Oliver. Halsin feels a hole in his absence - a loneliness and disconnect that eats away at him. He describes losing contact with Thaniel all that time ago as being "worst of all", which is saying a lot considering what else was happening to and around Halsin at the time. And all Thaniel talked about whilst trapped was Halsin, insisting to find him because he was the only one who an entire force of nature itself believed could help it.
Losing Thaniel sent Halsin into a century long spiral; Halsin who blames himself for "dawdling" in his own pain as it suffered. Who could almost place himself in the catalyst of Ketheric Thorm's tragedy of losing his daughter pushing him to the edge. It's the elevated metaphorical adult fear of losing a child and the indescribable sorrow involved in that, mixed with the loss of an important childhood and formative influence, mixed with losing a friend, a piece of oneself, all in one.
I just imagine Halsin twitching in his skin to head immediately back to camp after convincing Oliver to return. Distractedly following behind, but evidently elsewhere, until he is dismissed or the group returns. And he is first to arrive and first to break off to his tent, pulling aside the cloth, lacking any considerable delicacy of action, to see Thaniel sitting up, blinking slowly at his surroundings. Alive; the smell of lavender heavy and sweet. Not dead and rotting, not twisted and empty. Small. Frail. Not quite whole. But alive.
And Halsin...hesitates on the threshold, hands shaking, everything having come to its head at last and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He holds his breath, fearful of any disturbance spooking the life away that they'd worked so hard to revive, until Thaniel turns its eye slowly towards him. Two deer caught in a crosspath of light. A century past and there are hundreds of things to do, hundreds of things he had planned to say to him if they succeeded, but all Halsin can manage is a strained: "It's me."
And he does not need to say who he is; Thaniel knows. All those rehearsed things fizzle away in its face. Halsin is older now, he reasons, much older; perhaps Thaniel will not recognize the century carved upon his brow just as Oliver had not. In a moment of desperation, he needs it to know him. Needs Thaniel to remember - but, fool that he is to underestimate the power of life before him, of course he remembers. Of course Thaniel would recognize him, just as he had recognized him after the long winter had passed - when he had changed so much, and was no longer a little elfling and never would be again. Just as Thaniel had recognized him every springtime after, the thawing of ice bringing another year with it, even as its face did not change at all. It must; his eyes betrayed the centuries beneath his boots, even as the child rubbed fitfully at them.
"It's me," Halsin murmurs again, falling to his knees - as if he could make himself impossibly smaller - bring him back to the beginning, turn back the years before it all went wrong. And Thaniel just nods its head and touches little hands to his face, and when he echos his name, it feels like that first thaw of spring again.
"I heard you calling," it whispers, gentle like summer breezes. "You cried for me to stop hiding. You were frightened and did not wish to play anymore. But when I came out, it had gotten dark. I could not find you."
"I know."
"I called back," he continues, even and intoned, but his lip wobbles. "You could not hear me.
"I know," Halsin repeats, brokenly.
Thaniel blinks a few more times, seemingly working out how to reteach a face long asleep, though there were no muscles to move. A false start later, a twitch of the nose, and he is...smiling. "But I kept trying - I knew you would find me."
A single stick too heavy and the dam breaks. Eyes filled with tears, he hugs Thaniel to him like he hadn't since they were children chasing each other through the underbrush with glitters of gold tangled in his hair. Since Thaniel had guided his hand to make the flowers in his father's garden grow. Since all they'd had was each other under the endless canopy of trees.
"Forgive me," Halsin whispers, a century of pain and loss and loneliness exiting from him in a single rush, the cold empty spaces inside him filling up with warmth. And at last he wakes, dragged violently into the open air after drowning for too long, blinded but alive and whole once again. Interconnected; not alone anymore. The earth sings beneath him and Oliver's spirit hovers just beyond the outskirts of his vision. Halsin chokes on his laugh. "I was never very good at this game."
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No, see, now I'm thinking about Iris teaching Phoenix how to plait hair and getting emotional about it because like. The first person who ever plaited her hair was probably her mother, right? And I think Morgan's the kind of mum who's rather strict with hair, meaning that it'd be drawn very tight and be a rather painful affair. After they leave Kurain, I'm guessing that Iris still may not have known how to braid her hair but Dahlia did, and so Dahlia was the one who used to do it for her before eventually teaching Iris to do it herself; and, while I don't think Dahlia was as rough as Morgan was, she did learn how to plait from her, and she has nails, so it still hurt a little. But that's how Iris learns to plait her hair: with a touch of force and an emphasis on bridled control. It's necessary, when you're working up in the mountains since it keeps strands out of the way.
But then she goes to Ivy-U and meets the kindest, gentlest man she's ever known, and he gets curious as to how she does her hair, so she shows him. It's the first time anyone's ever touched her hair and truly cared about not hurting her -- he's hesitant to even comb his fingers through it because he's afraid of tugging on her scalp -- and she has to change the way she moves as they slowly, carefully work their way through the two braids together. Yes, it takes longer than it normally would, and the braids are looser than she would usually wear them, but they stay, and it's the first she's ever tried plaiting them in a way that's different from her mother and sister -- the first she's ever considered it, even -- and it shows her, irrevocably, that kindness and gentleness can be just as effective as the harsh strength her family has always prided and possessed. It's the first time that Iris has used her hands in a way that feels truly natural to her and not been ashamed for her own weakness.
And she carries that with her for the rest of her life; just as he carries what her hands showed him as he brushes his fingers through her younger sister's fairer brown locks, while she sits in jail and does the same to her own long, dark hair, now black as it should be instead of red.
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Before I run off to reply to comments and write for today... Can I take a second to talk about Fit's song choices last night? In particular, We'll Meet Again. Because he's always very intentional, so I'm sure he knows the history around the song.
I don't know how well known it is in America, but it's a very famous song in the UK. It was released early in the second world war and performed by a woman named Vera Lynn (known as The Forces Sweetheart, later made a Dame). It is for obvious reasons heavily associated with soliders going to war and making promises to their darlings - and also their families, promising to wait for them back.
Which... Okay you do get enough of this from the lyrics, but also in context - WW2 in the UK was conscription based. Every man 18-41 who was not exempt due to medical conditions or being in protected work (critical infrastructure design/repair, medicine, some farming and food-based jobs, etc). Those with moral or religious exemptions were required to argue their cases in court. Generally speaking, though, 'every man' is the assumption.
Certainly, a man like Fit would be required to go.
Let's say goodbye with a smile, dear
Just for a while dear we must part
Don't let this parting upset you
I'll not forget you, sweetheart
And thus we come to my analysis of it - Fit knows he doesn't have a choice but to continue with the very dangerous mission he's been put on, and to complete it. He has his deadline, and he has his task, and he has the threats looming over him. Backing out is not an option. Staying with Pac and Ramon (and Mike and Tubbo and Phil and everyone else) is not an option. He has to leave them, and he has to comply with the demands of someone with more control than he.
But, for all he likely won't fully explain himself, he's not abandoning them. He doesn't mean to hurt them, he doesn't want them to be destroyed, he doesn't want to loose them.
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day
He's not saying goodbye forever - he knows he might die, and knows he will be irrecoverably changed - but he's not saying goodbye. He's promising he'll remember, he's promising he'll come back, he's promising this isn't the end, but also...
Fit's asking them to wait for him, to wait for his deeds to be done, to forgive him what he is being forced to do, to love each other in his stead and to be there when he returns.
It's just a question of if they will or not.
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
'Til the blue skies chase those dark clouds far away
(He could also be referencing Dr Strangelove in which it plays while a nuke wipes out humanity, but I'm supposed to be here with the copium today)
And I will just say hello
To the folks that you know
Tell them you won't be long
They'll be happy to know
That as I saw you go
You were singing this song
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day
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