IC Inbox Redshift

[mustact]

[Fanciness TBA. Video, voice, text, action]

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[circumspector]

In the aftermath of everything that she was told, Angel doesn't go to look for anyone at all. She curls up in a corner of the agricultural level, knees to her chest, and remembers them. The Vault Hunters. Roland. Bloodwing. Her father. Who he was before, he couldn't take that from her, and for the first time in a long time, she mourns that man. He was dead now. She had it truthfully from the one person she could trust about it. It would be the Vault Hunters or Jack, and if Zer0 was still alive, then that was proof enough. That was that story was going.

But she didn't know about the price for her own death.

So she cries. Not loudly or long or hard. Not desperately, asking why. She knew why. Roland died because Jack would never forgive the person that killed her. Jack had made that clear. It was her fault. It was just... Her fault. Roland - Roland was everything Jack never would be. A true hero. Someone who fought and became a leader not because that was his goal, but because he stood up no matter what, and people flocked to that earnesty. So of course would Jack would take that, eye for an eye, always.

But in her exhaustion, even that turns to nothing, just shaking limbs and eyes that leak even when the dehydration headache creeps in, she needs water, she needs a change of clothes... Though, nor could she face anyone. That eventually leads her back to Connor, hours later.

What time it is, is barely relevant. Night and they're all asleep as she clips her quietly into Connor's room looking for a dress she'd left in there. The first mistake in a selfish avalanche. She was still, if privately, wary of sharing rooms with them all. It was good, it was so good, to wake up with Connor's pleasant weight at her back, burrowed into her, and steady heartbeat filling her senses, to hear Jacob and Charles beyond the walls talking and moving. To bounce out of bed of a morning, ask them how their night was, admire them all ruffled in a morning slouch, and not be worried about anyone breathing down her neck over it. To share like she always imagined it would. A cup of coffee left lukewarm, the hang of clothes on the back of a chair to dry, the flicker of lights that illuminated tired first thing smiles.

Other times, it was overwhelming and she felt the need to run. To throw it all back at them and never come back because being attached to people, to anyone at all, was terrifying. Raw and open that was much fear of being used as it was the fear of the consequences.

Settled even deeper than that was what she tried never to say to them but was so utterly true to her mind: she did not deserve their kindness. Their welcome. The goodness that hung like stars in their warmth. Suspended and so freely observed and admired.

But right now, more than anything she can't stand to be alone. To breath him in, sleeping peacefully, is the first, middle and last rebuttle to her conflicting need to punish herself. That by the end of the short task of changing clothes is shifted through in silence, has been fought and lost. Angel crawls into bed beside him in just his shirt half buttoned up and falling off her shoulders, dishelved and needy.

Gently, carefully she pulls one of his arms around her, not wanting to wake him up. God, she doesn't want to wake him. Her sun and he deserved his rest, he always worked so hard and did so much for so many people she was loathed to ever disturb him. She will not compound her crimes, not now.

But the hiccups of the tears that won't stop go on, her best attempt is to muffle it into the pillow. Wriggling her back into his broad body, his arm clutched into her chest with her legs pulled up as she secured herself in as little as a afterthought. Half as soft of the little hitched whispers. It's not the first time she's had to sit in the aftermath of the lives she's caused to die. It's not the first time she has had to smother herself as the grief poured thick and toxic as a Eridium vein.

It's not the first time she's cried the night through next to him, either. Not because of him or any news that made her eyes sting. But simply a thing that overwhelmed her at times, what her life was and had been crept into her mind like an old ache that wouldn't let up. Waking up sobbing, clutching a pillow and dragging herself to him like a chewed up skag for the comfort he provided.

But this is the first time, she isn't alone. Some of it doesn't come easy: she cannot believe she is worth waking him, to want to talk about it, that says even now she ought to force herself to be alone. She hated herself for that too. Lilith didn't get to have this, but she did? She should let herself rot. Wallow like a Bandit corpse in the pandoran sun, laid bare and festering and ignored. But - but she's weak, that's all it is, just like Jack always said. Weak and scared and not willing to face the consequences of her actions. But with her eyes closed, surrounded by him, she didn't have to be so alone as she continued to cry quietly in the dark room. Clutching and held in his arms, and that, as it was to all she had never had, was everything.

[circumspector]

She couldn't go to see him. She just had to trust Charles and Jacob had seen it through after she'd managed to pull the truth out of the plants about what she needed to cure Connor's memory. Though she had said it over and over again, only if he wanted it. It wouldn't be right to taks his choices, no matter his state of mind because of a strange alien maze, away from him. The only thing that mattered to her was Connor's happiness, and if he... If he just wanted to never see her again then... That was that. She had no right or claim.

But she figured if... If she stayed out here worrying instead? Listening intently with super hearing to make sure he was okay, then... Then that would be alright? Nothing too bad. Nothing overt. She just wanted him safe and happy and free.

Which meant she wasn't doing much else but sitting, staring at her own feet, hands tucked under her legs at the edge of her bed, half torturing herself with the presence of him, our of reach, but knowing she couldn't go in there. He looked at her like she was... She didn't know. But she knew she couldn't handle it.

Her heart was breaking. A way she didn't think it could, but it was.

She pressed her knees together, her hands tucked under legs and her shoulders tense as she fought wanting to curl up into a ball and hide away from the hurt of it. Jacob and Charles had looked after her, not let her be alone.

It just wasn't the... same. Or, it was its own special they, but it was shadowed in the pain of this - being reviled by the person she'd give herself up for if he asked, to be looked at like she was nothing.

Oh, stop it, she was being pathetic. It wasn't anyone's fault. Except creepy maze. It was the creepy mazes fault and she'd done everything she could.

"Snap out of it, Angel. It'll work or it won't. Quit moping. What are you? A little girl?" It's a miserable mutter as she wiped at her own eyes. Angry at that too. Connor made the crying feel not so sad and pathetic, he'd hold her and whisper warmly to her. But alone? She had nothing but those thoughts to live with.

So wrapped in them, for once, she didn't hear anyone approach her little room in the quad where she sat on the end of the bed, just the sound of her own sad frustrated sniffles as she tried to get her composure together as she waited to here whether it worked or not, or if Connor still had forgetten well - everything.