Going Home

Log Info

• Title: Going Home

• Emitter: Dolan

• Characters: Andelena, Dolan

• Place: Temple of Daeus

• Summary: Andelena awakens to find Dolan dozing off after he's cleaned her armor. She wakes him up and invites him to crawl into her healing bed with her, where they talk for a while about her new scar, what happened in the Temple, and more beyond. Eventually, Dolan offers to walk home with Andelena so they can sleep in their own bed--which she readily accepts.

It is hard to tell how long, exactly, Andelena slept for. When she wakes, she will find Zeke nowhere to be seen, an empty teapot and Dolan's artificial eye, wrapped in silk, on the table, and a dim room. Her armor and gear, including Deliverance, have been cleaned, oiled, and polished, and Dolan's gear is set next to hers, save only the twin cloaks and the sheepskin jacket.

Dolan himself is sitting on the floor opposite the bed, on the floor, wrapped in the sheepskin jacket and covered with both cloaks like a blanket, his remaining eye closed. Tear tracks run down the mobile half of his face, but he appears to be for all purposes at least dozing.

Andelena awakens... and then she grunts in awakening, as the first thing that comes back is the soreness and the pain of what she's endured. She rolls onto her back and grimaces, looking up at the ceiling. "Fuck," she swears softly, mirroring how she'd awakened upon being healed... hours? Days? Has it been that long?

Then the next thought is one that she speaks out loud. "Bry." She gulps, her throat feeling dry, and she turns over to find him where he's dozing. The steel-gray eyes trace the tear tracks on his face, and she frowns. "Baby? You can come join me in bed."

Dolan mmphs, stirs, then snaps awake with a start, hand automatically going to his throat, lone brown eye wide. The hand grasps empty air, then falls away into his lap. "What-" His heart pounding in his chest, he sits up and looks around, almost immediately fixing on Andelena in the bed. He is less sore than he would have been, for Zeke's ministrations, and certainly far less sore than Andelena is likely to be right now. "Huh?"

Brydion is not always the most intelligent life first thing upon awaking.

"Bry, it's okay, it's me," Andelena says soothingly. Even while hurt herself, sore and aching all over, her first instinct is to care for him, the Sunguard at work. "C'mere, babe."

She holds an arm out to him, inviting him to come next to her in bed and cuddle up. "It'll sure as shit be more comfortable than dozing on the ground," she says.

"Andelena would likely feel more comfortable to have you close," Deliverance observes. The sword's voice is a bit more affectionate than it is maternal at the moment. "She does sleep better to have you in her arms, you know."

It's the last part that nudges Dolan from his spot on the floor. With a groan of effort that answers Deliverance's commentary, he gets to his feet, leaving the sheepskin jacket that had been against his back to fall to the floor unheeded. The cloaks he takes with him, rolling into the bed with her and using them to cover them both. In a bed this size, this puts both of them lying on their sides to accommodate the cramped space, with him facing her. "Hi baby," he murmurs, snuggling into her without protest. "Feeling any better at all?" he murmurs to her, once they are close. "I'm sorry, baby. I should have been here to defend you."

It's cramped, but Andelena wouldn't have it any other way. She puts her forehead to his, gently, closing her eyes. "Tiny bit," she says. "Better now that you're close to me." Which is the truth, and she even seals the statement by leaning in to kiss him.

She pulls back a moment to just look at him, her gray eyes inspecting him for a moment. "I guess you feel the way I felt for a while," Andelena says softly. "After we met up again, and I found out what happened to your eye. I..."

Andelena puts her hand up to Dolan's cheek. "I can live with it, Bry," she says. "It could have been worse. I just..."

She pauses for a moment. Deliverance, again in a soft tone, says, "You mustn't wrestle with the guilt for the people who fell beside you, Andelena. They were charged with the defense of the Temple. It is fortunate that the demon did not attack you in a place where there were more civilians."

"I told you I'd be there, and I wasn't." Dolan lets her forehead rest on his, snuggling close and reaching up to trace the new scar with a callused finger. "I - I'm just glad you survived, baby." That finger reaches to push a curl off of her face, then. "Deliverance is right, baby. It's not your fault that pile of shit took your baby brother's face and attacked His temple. It's that thing's fault, and nobody else's. You sent it back home. Let its destruction answer for their lives, baby, because that's what's about to fucking happen. If I'm right, and it's Jal'goroth that stole Seb's face - he needs to answer for that, yeah? I'm not leaving again. I've got something I've got to deal with, but you can come with me for this, okay?"

Andelena doesn't flinch from him touching the scar--it's a thing that feels fresh and yet set into the skin, the scar tissue there a different texture from the rest of the skin. If anything, she smiles a little wider for the touch, that he's accepting it as part of her. Her eyes close. "I knew I had to send it home, or it'd keep--it'd keep killing. It wanted to take me, I'm certain, but the only thing I kept thinking was--'No. I'm not going to make Bry go through that pain. I'll stand on my feet and send it back.' Failure didn't occur to me as an option."

She opens her eyes again, a sort of ambition in her eyes. The drive to keep going. "You're right. I don't know if it was Jal, but if it was... I want to kill him properly in the Hells. If I can."

Her eyes turn downcast. "Damn took everything I had in me to face down with that fiend. Plus everyone else that was there."

"And yet you fought admirably," Deliverance reminds her. "As admirably as Brydion cleaned my blade. You could learn from him, you know."

"I know," Andelena responds, a little smirk finding her face. "I learn every day from you already, Bry. We're not apart after this. I'll go with you for whatever you need from now on."

"Staring one of those things in the eyes isn't easy, baby, and you did awesome." The affection in the lone brown eye is hard to see, since it's the one closest to the bed, but Dolan's touch and his tone communicate what the ruined face cannot. His thumb gently strokes the scar. "I - I didn't ever want you getting one of those, baby." He swallows. "But - it reminds me that you kick fiends in the teeth as much as I do. I - don't ever want to forget that. You aren't going to do it alone. We're doing it together, and with our friends. I'm going to talk to Magpie, as soon as we're rested up."

He sighs, hard. "I know it's hard. That's why I didn't want you facing one without me. I know what it takes. I wanted us to do it together. And then I ran off. I told you what I went for, right?"

"You did, and it needed doing," Andelena says. "That asshole of a demon--it was lucky. Right place, right time. I--I didn't think for a fucking minute that it would wear my baby brother's skin. If it wasn't for him I would have wanted to go with you. And... I thought I was safe with him. Because it was Seb. Who..."

She shakes her head, sighing. "I don't want to do that alone again if I can help it, but it reminded me--I am still a servant of the Knight. Even apart from you, I still have to carry out His justice. I still have to act in compassion for the victims."

"And while you wear the reminder of that," Deliverance says, "it is a badge of honor for what you did. You sent it home."

"That's why I can live with it," Andelena agrees. "Magpie's probably gonna have questions when we go see her, huh."

"You're not going to do it alone ever again, if I can help it," Dolan answers, still rubbing his thumb along her cheek, as if getting used to the feel of it. "You, me, and the Knight, baby," he tells her warmly. "We do this together. Even if it means me going back into the Hells to chase this bastard down. That's what it's going to take, to put a stop to this shit. That and the portal."

"I - I don't ever want you to have to face that alone again."

Andelena's hand goes up to rest in Dolan's hair, a familiar and comforting gesture for them both. "At this point, Bry?" she says, a little grin finding her face. "There's a part of me that wants to go into the Hells and kill as fucking many as I can. So none of those shitheads can ever bother us. None of them."

"That's my girl," Deliverance says, in a very, very maternal way. "You are not alone, Andelena, for Brydion and I are both with you." These notions visibly strikes Andelena in a way that not only Dolan can see, but feel, as she trembles just a little, her eyes swiftly wetting.

"Fuck," Andelena swears. But she's smiling anyway. "Bry, we're keeping her." As if that was ever in question.

It's the dampness on his fingers that tells Dolan about the tears, and the thumb reaches up to wipe away her tears. "I know we are. As long as she stays in the common area." The smile is more felt and heard in the words than visible. He leans his forehead towards hers, reaching around to the back of her head to pull her head towards his, fingers wrapping themselves in her hair. "We bring magic that opens chains with us," he adds darkly. "And we bring friends."

"I'm not inviting my mother-sword into our bedroom, you can sleep just fine on that one," Andelena says with almost a snicker that's aborted at the last moment with a small groan. Laughter is a little too much for a body that's sore all over. "Only sword that's allowed is yours, babe."

As they come closer together, she replies, "And we bring the Knight and His light." But that's a given. She leans in to kiss him deeply, to be together with him in the wake of the darkness of what happened.

Dolan's return of that deep kiss is nonetheless gentle, and he breaks it off after a minute or two. "Yeah. You're not getting any tonight, baby. You need to rest. Do you want anything?" His earlier struggle and doubt has at least muted itself, and seems to have entirely melted away. "I fed the girls on the way here, so they're fine for the night if you'd rather stay."

"Please do not copulate in the healing room," Deliverance says with a more familiar sort of tone--the one that reprimands Andelena for language, although she's appeared to have given up on that project more and more lately.

That puts a grin on Andelena's face, and she has to stop herself from laughing again. "If you're saying you're going home--then I'm going with you," Andelena says. "Besides, I need those girls just as badly as you do."

"No danger of that," Dolan calls to the room without looking, his remaining eye now closed. "You wanna walk home, baby? You sure you're up to it? If you want to see the girls - Zeke deserves his rest, without us in his bed." He makes no move, though, letting her be the first. "If you're up for walking home, I might be willing to entertain you a little." Although his eyes are closed, the wicked grin and the teasing in his tone holds an offer.

"I want our bed, not Zeke's bed," Andelena replies quite firmly. "For that, and to see our girls, I'll walk forever if I have to."

And then comes the offer. That puts fire in her, it seems, because she rises from the bed, albeit slowly and stiffly, and she says, "Let's go, then. Help me put my shit on so you can take it off me later."

Deliverance sighs from her spot. "I didn't realize she was that motivated by it," she says. "Gone from the brink and suddenly she's up and out of bed. She loves you, Brydion."

"You're damn right," Andelena replies as she more fully sits up on the edge of the bed. "Helps that he's hot." There's a wicked grin and a wink offered to Dolan.

That was what Dolan had been hoping to hear. He, too, rolls carefully out of the bed and stands, flexing his shoulder experimentally. "And that our bed has more space," he adds, grinning despite himself. "Yeah," he turns his head towards the sword. "And that makes me the luckiest man alive. Let's get you suited up so we can get you home. It'll be easier to bear if all the pieces are correctly in place."

It takes him a few minutes to get her back into her armor, but all of it is cleaned and properly oiled, a fact that is doubtless a relief. "There," he says, tying the last piece in place. "I - probably ought to put mine on," he sighs, looking at it. "I'll have to skip the brace."

"After tonight, I'm not taking chances," Andelena replies, already gathering up Dolan's gear to outfit him now that she's done. "Get it on you then get it off you once we're in the bedroom. Thank you for cleaning everything for me, babe--I was in no fucking condition earlier to be doing anything more than cleaning off my face so I didn't get blood all over Zeke's bed." Which might have been worse than copulating in Zeke's bed. Either way, it's rude.

The look on Dolan's face encompasses a thousand things at once, but he nods. His armor is simpler than hers, but there are multiple steps to getting him fully kitted out, and she is well familiar with which pieces he will need assistance with. The shoulder brace, as it happens, is the roughest part today - he seems to be a bit sore himself, still, and he runs at his neck from time to time.

Seeing Dolan's visible signs of soreness, Andelena opts to skip the brace."We're going home right away," she points out, putting the piece away into her bag. Once he's otherwise fully outfitted, Andelena picks up Deliverance. Normally, the blade gets sheathed fairly quickly, but this time, she gives it a sort of reverent, warm look.

"Thank you, Deliverance," she says. "I don't know if I could have gotten out of there without you."

"I am with you," Deliverance responds, in a way similar to when Andelena, Dolan, and Telamon faced down 'Mortin' and she had spoken those words to her Sunguard when the magic came back. "For I am your blade."

That puts a smile on the Sunguard's face, and she looks back to Dolan. "Let's get out of here, babe," she says.

A quick note is left for Zeke - "we've gone home, I can't sleep on the floor, thanks, -Bry and Andie". Weapon belt and pack are hefted, jacket and cloaks retrieved, and nothing is left behind.

"I'm with you, too, Andie. We go nowhere without each other. I got lax. I thought the Temple was safe." The brace is stowed in the pack. "I'm not making that mistake again. Let's go home."

For home, in the end, is where they belong. Together.