multiversallogs | I'd left him dreaming [closed]

In person, when she gets the door, she's wrung out but steady on her feet; just the bandage at her hand as far as injuries go. Getting back to Baedal has been an exercise in nothing making any sense, which at least isn't new or strange, but now it means she's not entirely sure how to react to anything. 'Understated' is the default, the easiest, but maybe she's supposed to be doing something else--

"Hi."

He takes her in for a long moment, then said, "I didn't think I'd see you again." It had taken him about a week to finally accept she'd left Baedal altogether. If he'd thought the Candlelighters had taken her, or the militia, he'd have been ill-playing the white knight by now, but he'd no illusions that she, Sonja and Hilmi could all have gone that quietly.

Or maybe he just tells himself that to assuage guilt. She's back, he doesn't suppose it matters now.

After a moment, he adds, "I brought your purse."

"I didn't think you would, either." It was longer, for her; a few weeks. The preparation, then the siege, and she hadn't let herself think about Baedal too much, there hadn't been time for it. There'd been so much that they needed to do and she couldn't not be concentrating on that.

She missed him, though.

"Um-- come in."

He did, then, not sure if he should touch her, both because of her evident injury to her hand suggesting others he might not see, and because he wasn't sure if she wanted him to. They'd been in a strange place before she left, and now...

...now he didn't know where they were. "How long, for you?"

"A few weeks." She lets the door swing shut behind him and tries to remember what she was going to say after that; if there was anything, if she has any idea how to navigate something that was making increasingly less sense to her before the siege. (There is a conversation she was going to have with him, but now doesn't seem like the right moment. If there is one.)

A beat. "I don't think it's going to happen again."

He comes in, setting her bag down.

"No?" Whatever happened changed her, in subtle ways, but Ivan won't venture to guess without being told. Ilde doesn't process in quite the same way other people sometimes do; it's part of what he loves about her.

Ilde doesn't immediately answer that - she steers him from the entrance way into the house proper, upstairs into the music room where she's retreated for a while. It's her space and she feels comfortable in it, which is important because right now she isn't even sure she feels comfortable in her skin, not yet. She remembers what it felt like to slow and to stop and her heartbeat just seems impossibly loud in her own ears, still.

She sits down before she says anything, tucking a foot underneath herself and still so neat in posture, so correct. Habit. "I died," she says, like she's tearing off a bandaid; like she's practised the words and separates herself from them.

He doesn't look stricken or horrified. Instead, he crouches in front of her so he looks up at her face. "Do you need anything?"

If she does, she probably won't say, but he asks. It's his way.

"I wish I knew what happened," she says, quietly, pressing her hands together in front of her mouth. "I saw things-- I have to tell her, but she's not here--"

Sonja; naturally.

"You can't do anything about that now," he says, equally quiet, though he understands. There'd been things he wanted to do, to say - to tell Daisy, though he supposed it wouldn't have mattered.

"No. I should figure out where I am with work." ...yes, that seems like an excellent idea right now and completely something that she's in any state to achieve. (Practicalities are comforting; the ability to actually follow through is not necessarily there right now.) "And I have to-- I don't know."

She curls her hands together, tighter. "I didn't call you first because there was a lot of blood."

"That was probably prudent." He considers her a moment longer, then says, "Come take a bath with me?" It's a gauge, as much as it's a genuine offer; he wants to see where they are, and he thinks it's a good measuring stick.

Warm water and somebody who doesn't ask her a lot of uncomfortable questions, as a general rule, sound equally appealing to her and Ilde leans forward far enough to rest her forehead against his, first. "Okay." She feels like absolute shit, even if she's not readily discussing it; she's too tired and on edge to make much of the usual effort to try pretending otherwise. She isn't sure how to react to being dead and thus far has more or less got by with...not reacting, really. It's a concept she's still circling.

He lays his hand along her cheek, for a moment. If she initiates touch, he assumes this much is acceptable.

"Come on," he says, quietly, and gets up, helping her stand as well. He's died twice, but has no good advice. Relaxation and company, though, he can offer.

"You're very sweet sometimes," Ilde observes, though it sounds less like a compliment than it does the mildly bewildered remark of an observing scientist witnessing an unexpected development. Ivan is not, it must be said, a person who typically inspires that sort of remark; maybe Ilde is just lucky.

The size of the villa means she has her own bathroom, at least; all of her things in here, the smell of her own perfume. The clean scent of recent scrubbing, to get rid of the bitter vomit smell from last night. There's a scented candle on the vanity, and an ashtray by the bath because of course there is. Running the bath is reassuringly mindless occupation and she turns away from him to do it. Maybe she'll miss it if he says anything, maybe she doesn't have a lot of words to work with just now.

He doesn't bother responding to the observation directly. He doesn't feel there's much to say about it.

Instead, he follows her to the bathroom, letting her run the bath. He doesn't try to speak to her back, but instead slowly undresses as he thinks through what to do next.

Once the temperature is right and the water is running and she doesn't necessarily need to be watching it go, Ilde's attention drifts; she thinks about what it might mean, living out the rest of her life in Baedal. 'The rest', like it didn't end already, but...it didn't, it just. Also did. Figuring out the terminology she uses here is going to be a mess, she realizes; it must be easier for dead vampires. It's not as though they weren't dead already. The words don't get so tangled.

(They probably care less about the specific meaning of words than she does; there's also that.)

"You should stay," she says, eventually, resting her weight against the rim of the tub. Tonight, she means.

"If you like," he agrees, turning to her. "I don't have anywhere else I need to be." He's not sure what to do with her; if he'd recruited her, there'd be a form for this, but as there is, nothing quite comes to mind.

Ilde hesitates, like she's got something to say she isn't sure of, but settles on a wisp of a smile and, "Did I miss anything interesting? While I was gone."

'Gone' is a nice, neutral word.

"Nothing requiring urgent attention. I finally got a friend from home to stop hanging up on me." Ilde will love Daniil, he has no doubt.

"The militia continue to be charming."

Not Mitchell, she surmises, since it seems oddly specific and he knows she and Mitchell are already acquainted. (She wonders vaguely if they've cleared up why he punched him, yet, but Ivan hasn't talked to her about that at all and she doesn't feel anywhere close to being up to pressing him on it now.)

"That's comforting." It isn't.

"We didn't solve any problems without you," he says, mildly wry as he comes to sit on the edge of the tub.

"It just--" Ilde makes a vague gesture that doesn't really mean anything; it just seems like more should have changed. She knows, intellectually, that she was gone much less time for Baedal than for herself and that doesn't change the fact that she's spent weeks away in an intense situation and the familiarity is in and of itself disorienting. Like stepping back into something she'd come close to convincing herself was gone, and not knowing how exactly to readjust. To fit, again.

...she shuts the taps off, and refocuses on simple things; how much water a bath actually needs if it's going to accommodate two adults, why did she put on a shirt with so many fucking buttons.

He reaches out, slow enough not to startle her, but fluid. If she doesn't stop him, he helps with the buttons. "It wasn't long, here."

"A few days." It's easier just to drop her hands and let him do it, so she does, resting her hip against the side of the bath. "Cindy told me, when she got me from the arrival room."

She feels strange about having left the razorblades there, but there's not really anything she can do about it--

Well, they have a lost and found--

Does she really want to call about that.

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