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wildestlogs2022-02-14 01:51 am
wildestmods) wrote in wildestlogs2022-02-14 01:51 am
IMLADRIS
IMLADRIS
The group is told to take a week of rest in the Last Homely House as the injured and sick among them heal. The Elves promise them that after the injured are healed, there will be a great Council, with representatives of several peoples in attendance. There Lord Elrond will meet and assist them with speaking with the Green.
Until then, they can wander the peaceful halls of Rivendell, which are filled with travelers from all over the Wilderlands who are making a rest stop while they travel through the lands of Middle-Earth.
There are many halls in Rivendell, but the most notable part of Rivendell is the Hall of Fire, a great feast hall where people can eat, drink, and be merry. Alongside chairs, cushions line the floors in much of the hall. This is the great social hall of Rivendell, where the Elves and their visitors share news of lands far beyond, tell stories, or perform music. The music here almost sounds divine, especially when the Elves sing and play instruments, but they're just as eager to hear songs from other lands, so if any of the squad decide to share, they'll be glad to listen.
Some of the hall's guests are a touch more lively than the others, like a party of dwarves staying at Rivendell. Their stories are a mite more adventurous and if you get in their good graces, they might be willing to share some of the beer they brought with them. Listening to their stories or their talk about their craftmanship is a way to get into their good graces. They have news of the lands beyond.
The Elves love learning, so there are libraries the group is allowed to browse, though they mostly only contain tales of Middle-Earth (for now), though the Elves seem to be collecting what books about other lands they can. These libraries often have viewing stations with telescopes pointing at the sky. Though concerned about what it portents, Elves have been almost delighted by the changing skies, enjoying the challenge of trying to understand how the sky has been knitting itself together with the addition of new worlds.
There are also beautiful balconies here, overlooking the gorge and the waters below, and terraced gardens filled with flowers, bushes, and flowering trees. Their rooms are open to the outdoors and have beds that seem grown into the shape of bed-frames instead of carved. The bathrooms actually have running water. The Elves have figured out how to direct the clean running waters of the gorge in primitive indoor plumbing. Water for hot baths has to be heated first in brass cauldrons over coal braziers before getting dumped into the bath, but are at least located right next to the tubs.
Different flowing slides and fountains can also be used as waterslides for the adventurous, though this will make the Elves tut in disapproval. (X cw: warning for mild nudity from a distance.)
It's time for the squad to rest, eat, and regroup. If a great Council is going to be called involving them, it might be a good idea to make sure they go into it as a united front, because the Green is clearly fine with trying to make decisions for them.
❧ Cursed Weapons/Powers: So they know about how they'll be treated: those with cursed weapons and dark powers will be tolerated by the Elves after entry. While they'll get the same general treatment, the Elves around them may at times seem uncomfortable. Those with cursed weapons will only be distrusted a little, as the weapons themselves will seem more suspicious than their bearers. Those with dark powers or some kind of dark nature (such as being a vampire, Necromancer mage, werewolf, etc.) will be treated with the greatest distrust. But they'll be allowed to wander freely.
❧ Communication: The Elves will make it clear a Council will be called when the injured have time enough to heal and that the group can stay in Rivendell until they're all healed and refreshed. They'll be told they'll be equipped with weapons, clothes, and supplies when they eventually leave. The characters can move freely and characters can stay at the bedside of injured friends.
❧ Injuries: Characters with morgul-blade wounds will be find that any areas or limbs where the shard was will no longer hurt but will be numb at first, with feeling returning over several days. They'll be physically weak for several days at well, winded when walking a short distance. Within a week or two, depending on their constitution and the severity of where the wound was, they'll be able to walk on their own and start to rebuild stamina. Other non-Morgul-blade injuries will heal fully within a few days of treatment.
❧ Clothes: The group will not yet be fully equipped for their travels (that will happen upon leaving) but everyone will at least be given new clothes in Elven styles since theirs are dirty or torn. These are in many different colors but most commonly colors found in nature, like green and blue. Characters without appropriate footwear will also be given light and sturdy boots that will somehow be in their size without their size being asked. They'll also be given basic toiletries like scissors that can be used to cut hair and beards. There are no razors, however, because the Elves don't need to shave so they don't keep them on hand.
❧ Food: Food and drink are plentiful. The food leans towards fruits and veggies but there's enough game for any meat-eaters, cooked well in unknown spices. Wine is abundant, some vintages more inebriating than others. The restorative cordial miruvor is available to help weary travelers get their energy up and revive their strength. It doesn't get characters drunk but helps them revive their strength. It has a light, pleasant floral taste and smell. Beer can also be provided, though that of the traveling dwarves is superior to what Rivendell has to offer.
❧ Weather/Atmosphere: Rivendell is open to the outside air but the temperature is always perfectly temperate and pleasant. The sun shines frequently and is only lost behind shimmering mist. Sunsets and sunrises paint the sky in sections of the valley in every color imaginable. The valley is safe to travel in as long as they don't go back past the Ford of Bruinen or through the gap in the mountains past Rivendell on the valley's opposite end. The air is filled with the smell of green things and delicate perfume of flowers.
❧ Archivist Spells: Around the valley, Archivists can bank up to (4) iterations of a water spells that blasts a brief torrent at an enemy, with the force of a fire hose.
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Someone has to steer the boat. Although sometimes it feels more like a hollowed out giant pumpkin that they all agreed was boat-ish enough, because desperate measures.
But the offer of Peter Pan makes Tim give Kon a Look - jaw tucked, one eyebrow up, playful glare. “Are you kidding me? I retire, and you drag me into everything Peter Pan did Wendy? Do you remember how many times he almost got her killed because he realized that he needed a responsible lost boys and responsible ones don’t get lost? Do you think I’m going to be able to stay home and play Parcheesi with you flying out the window to fight pirates? If I retire and you Peter Pan me through the balcony, I’m throwing the thimble at your head.”
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He'd hunted him down the first time he retired, though, with full intent to try to nag him out of retirement and full intent to keep bothering him even if he never started being Robin again. And he'd keep hunting him down as often as he had to.
"My point: if you ever quit just start calling me 'Bad Penny' as a nickname because you'll never get rid of me. I'll just start professionally annoying Bats by raiding your fridge and being the 'doesn't he have food at home?' friend. Or at least share the role with Bart."
They both ate a lot.
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Retirement doesn’t have to mean not keeping tabs on his friends. He’ll just be the ghost in the system. Systems, because he’ll probably stay linked into the Titans and Batcomputer. Oracle’s network would be harder to pierce.
“Fridge full of Tostino’s and Toaster Strudel. You want Alfred’s cooking; you’re going to have to make friends with Damian. Tim Drake can’t cook, and he’ll be ordering bulk grocery deliveries for life.”
Tim nudges Kon with his elbow. “You can’t use Penny: the Penny Plunderer will get confused. Looks like plain old Conner Kent has to use the front door.”
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The grin is wide. Kon likes thinking about how hard it'll be for all of them to get rid of each other.
And he likes thinking about the future as friends they all almost didn't have. However it goes, as long as they're all alive, it'll be good.
It's just the "alive" part that isn't set in stone.
That thought is a sobering one, so the smile fades a little.
He doesn't like that Tim had such a close call.
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He doesn’t flex about money. This still isn’t flexing about money; it’s about how all the Robins eat more garbage than pigeons. (Except Damian). Cereal for dinner, chili dogs at 2 AM, poptarts are any anytime meal if you vacuum the keyboard. “What makes you think I don’t make nightmare lasagna already?
Come on, Kon. Don’t look at him like that. Tim’s fine. He’s not going anywhere except on a diet. Yuck yuk?
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He almost starts joking around again.
Almost.
But his penchant for sincerity has grown over the years. Their friendship has too. In the past, he had so much trouble talking about his feelings, even more so with dude friends. But things had...shifted. Over time.
"I'm trying to keep the joke train a-rolling, I really am, but I keep getting slammed in the face with what just happened. I'm really glad you're okay."
They fact they can joke around like this hasn't made him forget how worried he was. If anything, it's just masked it so that the other feelings were brewing underneath.
And now that they've stewed enough, they're finally bubbling up from where his brain has been chewing them over in the background.
"Like...the more I joke around with you, the more I can't stop thinking about what else could've happened instead."
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It feels dirty to acknowledge. It sounds way too deliberate, and he wasn’t being the calculated. He knows joking around can make Kon feel better. He just wanted to underscore it until he didn’t get hugged like he did when he woke up again. He wants to stop being fussed over. He wants Kon to have the relief of not fussing. That’s Tim’s job.
“I’m fine. I’m always the one that’s fine. I’m always the one that comes through it in the end.” He’s always the one left behind. Because he can take it, and the universe knows that. “You don’t have to worry about me. All kidding aside, you can’t worry about me. You’ll start second-guessing everything.”
Tim slides on the rock until he’s fully facing Kon, with a soft, yet fervent, expression. “You have to be able to trust me to be okay. I promise, I’m never going to let you get hurt like that.”
Maybe he can’t keep it, but he can swear to it and die trying. He will do anything to keep the promise and not have Kon live through that kind of grief. Even if it only hits Kon like Bart’s death hit Tim… it’s still too much to put on him.
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He turns to face him, too. He doesn't like the fervor in his gaze. The insistence in his words. Tim going 'No, it's okay, it's okay that I hurt, I can be the only one that hurts. You don't have to wrap me up in cotton.'
Except Tim is wrapping him in cotton and doing that to him on instinct. Earlier, after Agrabah, he'd drawn whatever darkness was inside Kon into himself without even trying.
"Death is stupid and random and you can't promise that I'll never ever be hurt by loss. And that's okay. That's just...life. I died. I've also already out-lived someone I cared about, remember? And it wasn't like with Pa. She had her whole life ahead of her."
He looks him directly in the eyes. His gaze is piercing.
"I know you lost a lot of people at once and I can't imagine what that was like. You got slammed by volume. But I've known that's a promise you can't keep from earlier in my life than you. I knew when I was like two. I already knew waaaay before we even got here. So you don't have to promise it. And I don't need you to."
He worked it into his worldview earlier in his existence. Didn't get to keep up the illusion that things would always turn out alright for very long.
"I think I just need to not be okay. About it. At least for a second. I don't plan on second guessing things and I tried to get it all out while you were still out, and was hoping that was it, but..."
He's not a Bat. He doesn't avoid. He processes. Even if the feelings come up from behind and hit him in the face sometimes.
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(Tim almost dies because he was sloppy. Kon gets scared. Kon watches out for Tim more, when he’s not even invulnerable now. Kon gets sloppy. Kon dies. Tim breaks.)
This protects both of them.
“But I need to promise this,” Tim says stubbornly. He can adjust. He can make it work for both of them. “I won’t let you get hurt like that over me. Just me. I won’t promise you anyone else.”
Tim swallows hard, the same way he did on the balcony. “I need you to say it’s okay because I can feel it. I’m going to second-guess myself if you don’t. I’m already doing it. I’m not who you lose it over. I’m who you make fun of for obsessively planning and over-analyzing everything.”
He’s practically begging Kon to go along with it, because the more he thinks about, the more he knows it’s true. His eyes are wet. It’s because Kon brought up… volume. There’s supposed to be a taciturn agreement to not bring up Tim’s anus horribilis. “I - you can be not okay. A little not okay. But you’ll be fine before the council.”
Fine like Tim is fine. Except for everything, Tim is perfectly fine.
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This is the hurt Tim's been tucking away and hiding. A hurt Kon knew had to be there. But he also respected that Tim was still nursing it, dealing with it. Kon knew he probably would be dealing with it for a while.
"It doesn't work like that, Tim. I'll be fine whenever I'm eventually fine and maybe that'll be before the Council and maybe it won't."
Feelings aren't a thing you turn off and on like a spigot.
"If you're worried about me getting stupid and overprotective like I did with Cassie, I'll try not to. But I'm allowed to take a little while to be freaked out over this."
He frowns.
"You realize you can't smooth everything over for me all the time, right? I know you want to. I get it, you want me to be safe. And happy. But I don't need that from you."
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Just because it’s getting harder to be fine than he was a kid doesn’t mean that you can’t tell yourself that you’re going to be fine and then bringing it into existence by sheer force of will.
Tim deals with emotion by fixing the underlying problem causing the emotion. When the situation is resolved, then the feeling is baseless, so let it go because the only thing his feelings do is cloud his judgment. Every bad decision is because his head’s been a mess of feelings. That’s why he cut everyone off to find Bruce.
(And it worked.)
“I know I’m not like Cassie.” Tim’s eyes are precariously close to spilling, but the detachment that overtakes his voice. He doesn’t want to be like Cassie and the suggestion has absolutely no effect on him at all. Who wants to be Kon’s girlfriend? Tim shouldn’t have suggested Kon would worry about him.
That was a misstep. (A huge one.)
(But he said he’ll try not to treat Tim like Cassie. Implying that he wants to. Implying that there’s a reason to.)
No. Implying that he’s a nice young man who cares about his walking disaster of a friend. Implying nothing. Is.
Because he doesn’t need that from Tim. He just said it. Tim already knew that.
He doesn’t need Kon to believe him. Tim can keep the promise, and it will still work. Kon will start to trust it in spite of himself. He’ll get used to Tim being that solid again.
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A pause.
"I don't need you to be rock solid and invincible." A pause. "You were always other things besides the guy who could muscle us through anything. You're also the guy who chills on top of the Tower with me."
He shrugs.
"Maybe I just need you to be Tim. Maybe I just need to be here with you right now."
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(It’s always Kon, isn’t it?)
Kon doesn’t want to joke, and he doesn’t want Tim’s promise or the emotions attached to it. What’s left that’s Tim, and not something Tim slips into when called for? Not Robin or Red Robin, not a Wayne, just… just Tim, that could possibly be what Kon’s after. Tim doesn’t know.
“Yeah,” he says as he finally moves away to sit normally and resume staring at Rivendell. “Yeah, we can just chill.”
There’s no need to talk.
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But he does need a second to breathe. It just sort of caught up to him. He needs to pretend they're sitting on Titans tower, and needs to focus on how they're caught in a moment.
Tim is present here. Alive. Kon's not stuck with some gaping hole where he used to be.
The joking, the teasing over him being a giant nerdboy, the warmth can come again after.
After watching Rivendell for a little while, he finally closes his eyes.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to like...freak out." He opens his eyes. "I know when we were joking around we were just being us. But this...caught up to me all of a sudden after chugging along in the background in my head." He figures out how to word it. "I just needed to take a second to feel it. And to talk about it. And be here with you for a second. I didn't need you to fix it."
That's it. That's the occasional problem they have.
Sometimes you need to just talk. And feel a bad thing in a moment and let it go. You don't need solutions. Tim's all about solutions.
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Tim always tries to fix everything. No, he tries to plan his way around as many obstacles as possible so that there’s less to fix and then he fixes everything. Prides himself on it. Helps his friends with it because it’s how he shows that he cares.
“Don’t worry about it. This one’s on me.” You get a freebie. Because it’s Tim’s fault, but he’s not allowed to take things on himself. “You’re allowed to freak out.”
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It is close but not as close as he actually wants.
But Tim probably feels smothered by now.
So he doesn't do more than that and he also lets go of Tim's shoulder.
"I'm glad you got to see this. And that you'll get to nerd right out of your dorky lil' brain over being at a Council of Elrond. I got real scared for a second the universe was going to play a shitty joke on us and swap out which of us was dead."
A brief little pat pat on Tim's closest shoulder.
"Buuut I also thought that if I got to run around Middle-Earth and you couldn't, you'd probably just haunt me anyway."
The ghost of a smile again.
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Mirroring what he thinks is expected in real time. Pulling back to a safe distance.
He just needs to get through this, have Kon help him back to the garden (no avoiding that), feign needing a quiet room for a nap. Hide until he’s reasserted mental discipline.
There’s only one hiccup, where he draws breath to argue that it’s a preferable trade to Kon being dead. Tim almost lets it go.
Almost. Kon can lay off some of Tim’s triggers, too, in this negotiation of how they deal with elephants in the room. “Too soon.”
He’s not talking about the jokes about Tim being dead. “That one’s always going to be too soon.”
Then, like nothing else was asked, “what time is the Council?”
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He can tell. He doesn't always pick up right away. He doesn't always notice the exact transitions. But he knows him. Knows how his face looks when it's open or closed off. Knows when he's talking normally or using the "Starfire" voice. The voice where he's trying to handle someone.
He did something wrong, got too real, and now Tim's shut off. He knows not to dig into it right now - not at the moment. Because that'll close the doors of the vault even more.
He heels guilty for hitting the wrong button. Yeah, nearly losing him hit hard but Tim's the one that got hurt. How selfish is it that he focused on being twigged out by the near-loss when Tim was the one that dealt with the horror and agony of it?
Stupid.
And then he hit some other button. The "too soon," he thinks at first is about what just happened to Tim but no... no he's playing that off and genuinely just steamrolling it aside.
Oh. He gets it now. Wonders about how that's the trigger button rather than something that happened to Tim. But then...Kon isn't the only one he lost, right? He thinks about how many layers of logic he always buries the bad feelings down under and how many feelings must've be jammed down in there over the space of the shittiest year ever.
God, he wished Bats believed in therapy.
He nods slightly.
"Okay. Too soon." It's an agreement. No jokes, maybe even no digging too deep in talking about how he died. Not any time soon. "I don't know about the Council but they're probably not holding it today. They're waiting until everyone heals up. But I'll take you back."
He stands up and holds out his arms so he can take Tim in them.
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That ended the outing far more abruptly than Tim had intended. He’d meant to change the subject, and apparently overshot by a good margin.
Tim could ask to be left here to make his own way up or to be allowed to try to get up the stairs with minimal support, but he doesn’t want to argue and be overruled when Kon scoops him up anyway. If he concedes, he retains some agency.
“I’m healed enough to sit and listen. I don’t know about the others - is anyone still bedridden?” Tim, who has assumed the position so to speak (turned to the side, one arm over Kon’s shoulder and the other folded against his chest to not be in the way), affirms that he is in the upper percentile of physical condition by moving the goalpost to not being bedridden.
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He carries him. It feels only tolerated, even worse than before.
"Most of them are up and about but sore and tired, so I think they're giving people more time. The little cat kid is still in bed, last I head. He's going to be okay, but word is if his dad hadn't gone ahead of the rest of us and run a marathon to get him here, he probably would've died. Makes sense, he's tiny."
So it's no wonder he's still exhausted.
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By the time they’re halfway up he’s biting back offers to walk. Kon doesn’t have to baby him through it.
Luckily, there’s Rivendell to be distracted by, because he hasn’t had his fill of it yet. It feels like he’s sneaking glances, even though he’s staring at it to avoid looking at Kon like a damsel.
“Lil Cato’s still in bed?” Tim frowns at this, because he’s so young. “That kid gets in way too much trouble.”
This is only the second time that Tim is aware of, if the faire is taken as one time, but still. Most people avoided the stacks. “He’s worse than Bart.”
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Even someone getting arrested five times didn't quite reach that level.
"Even with healers we're pre-modern medicine. Between the injury and surgery, kid probably lost a lot of blood. And to be fair, trouble kinda came to us on this one."
Getting stabbed is also a very pot-kettle situation, but he doesn't say it.
They reach one of the gardens again and he puts Tim down.
"Um, did you still want to hang out or did you need some time to yourself?"
The talking still hadn't distracted him from the fact he fucked up.
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“I’m glad he’s okay - really, I like him. I wouldn’t have picked the locks for him if there wasn’t something about the kid.”
The question eats up a lot of processing power. It’s a simple question. But it’s also not. He can sense the correct answer - or the one that Kon wants, anyway - which is yes, Tim wants to hang out.
But it doesn’t compute. He has two different data points where he screwed up today. Gave away too much and mistook everything.
(What if he’s misreading the correct answer and only seeing what he wants to? Doesn’t that make not hanging out safer by a wide margin?)
He’s been through a lot. He can ask for alone time. He can blame it on the injury if Kon needs him to. That will be more readily accepted.
“I think… time to sleep.” Or lay in bed with the cover over his head so no one walking past could see he’s not sleeping. “I wanted to push myself so I’d heal faster.”
‘Heal’ as in, to be able to grit through it like a hockey player playing on a broken foot in the playoffs. “But if you need me, I can stay.”
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He'd hovered enough. It felt...
Honestly it'd felt actually welcome in the beginning. With his arm around Tim and Tim's arms around his waist.
Now something's different.
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It had been different at the beginning. Maybe not welcome, as he is stubborn and wants to push his recovery faster, but expected and therefore accepted.
Tim takes a few steps towards the wing with his room. “I’ll find you later, before dinner.”