middleofsomewhere | Conclusion

Conclusion

Thank you.

For those inside the system the voices of the Great-Seasons ring out around them once the red mass has vanished and the blue plinth it was smothering is freed once more. They don't have all that much time to reflect on that before they find themselves waking up once more in their bodies around the tree trunks.

Or at least, around the tube that is the Great-Season they entered through. All illusions have vanished now, all that is left are pipes and metal.

The Great-Seasons allow them passage out from the centre, no sentries or pipes attack them this time. Everything seems to have been put to rights, the walls in the Autumn sector have stopped moving, there is no strange weather effects in the Summer Sector, no engineering problems in Winter and all the camaloid creatures in Spring are calm. Any Helpmates they come across are doing their jobs and no longer malfunctioning.

After a small amount of time, enough to check that all is well, their SCA's light up. All Passengers are to return to the Voidtrecker Express.

Considering the vast distances involved it is probably best that they use the evacuation function to return to the Luggage carriage.

Once all Voidtreckers have returned the train returns to the Void once more.

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"Oh the prize is honey covered donuts. Mostly because I made and ate way too many of them while I was dealing with learning all of this. First had to get Thanatos somewhere out of the bright light, then have breakdown. You have to compartmentalize. Save the freaking out for when you can soothe it with delicious carbs."

She doesn't mean to trivialize it. She just--if she gets into the feelings about it, how it really felt, how she doesn't know who she will be or who she's supposed to be and whether not wanting that future is selfish--and would she want that future, if she didn't have people here? What happens when she goes home, if she goes home?

It's a lot that she doesn't want to think about, that she's burying deeper and deeper with each day.

"I should have brought you some but I was feeling sorry for myself and upset. I talked it out with people. But--Thanatos. It's weird. I barely know my version of him, yet I feel so much closer to this one. Like--like someone has to take care of him. His life has been awful."

He can't help it - she describes her coping strategy, and he laughs. It's brief and quiet, but there nonetheless - stress relief he hadn't known he'd needed. "Donuts are good for that," he agrees, a small smile on his face.

He quiets down when she continues and leans against the tree. If she's still upset about it...he files that away for a different conversation at another time.

"I thought so too, when I met him." He looks down at his peach, considering his words. "I think normally I'd be scared of someone like him, but...when I met him, I think he was panicking, and all I could think was that he needed help. So I did my best." He probably would have stayed completely out of Otoha's way as well, had Otoha not been injured. Funny how these things work out.

"But now that we know, we should figure out what to do. He needs something to keep his mind off of home - something he likes." He pauses. "I...don't think I know where to start."

With her stomach settling back down, she takes another nibble of peach, small but a start. And--he gets her thinking.

"I don't know exactly where to start. I love swimming and reading and all that. I'm not just flowers and junk. But--I mean, I do a lot of here, just to keep things going. But it's hard to say what he'll want or like. You just have to try things. I started swimming to do it as a--a sport, you know, for competitions. But I grew to like it. If we could find something he already enjoys?"

Edited (u know it was true) 2021-02-07 03:25 (UTC)

"I think that's the problem - do we know what he likes?" Wait. "Does he know what he likes? I've only ever heard him talk about his job, his family, and Zagreus, and none of them are here." For better or for worse, depending.

He takes a bite of his peach, thinking. He's seen Thanatos around the train, but what has he seen him doing? There has to be something he's interested in-

Wait. "He-" Nope, swallow that bite of peach, try again. "He has a pot in the greenhouse, doesn't he?"

"Well we can just try things out until he finds something he likes. It's always good to try something new."

It's hard to think of what someone might enjoy when they're never...really enjoyed things before. It's a shot in the dark.

"Yeees? It's down a few plots." She gestures absently in that direction, "I'm under strict orders not to touch it with my magic plant growing powers. Or at least, that's my impression. He just wanted to try and grow something."

Ryo twists around, looking over his shoulder in the direction Persephone gestures, as though he could see the pot from where they sit. He settles back in his seat after a few seconds, turning Persephone's comment over in his head. "Maybe we can start with that," he says slowly. If Thanatos had taken the initiative on that one - if he'd started it on his own, and wanted to grow something without magic - then maybe... "Maybe he'd like making things? I don't know, maybe we can teach him how to cook."

"May..Maybe? I think it's the life thing? He did spend an awful lot of the past few weeks espousing how much he's death personally and how would 'I dare embrace death' and all that nonsense."

She frowns, "I can try to teach him, if he wants to learn. It has felt a little weird that he doesn't know what the mortals ate, what we ate as gods at home all the time. I eat just like mortals do. I don't think his set of gods do though."

For a moment, he just...stares. "He said that? Gods." That level of drama would almost be funny, if Thanatos weren't having issues doing things outside the scope of his job.

The fact that Thanatos evidently doesn't know what kinds of food people eat only serves to cement that. "I don't think his set of gods does anything useful," he says flatly - because that particular opinion hasn't lessened any. "But teaching him would probably be good. I don't know as much, but I can help."

"Of course he said it, he was still very much in the whole dramatic persona of the whole thing. The fact that I'm an alternate version of his queen probably wasn't helping the nonsense at that point either."

She nibbles, frowning as she does.

"I mean, I don't have to eat to survive but it's not pleasant. I can't imagine just not eating at all, forever. But--yeah, I'll try to teach him, if he wants to learn. Some of the food has to be at least a little familiar, right?" There is an air of desperation to that query.

It's about as dramatic as some of the bards Ryo has met, not that he thinks Thanatos would appreciate the comparison.

He can hear the desperation in that question. Normally, when people ask him a question in that tone, he usually has to answer it with bad news; right now, however, it's far less life-threatening, and he doesn't actually know the answer. He can fudge a little. "Probably. I mean, your worlds are pretty similar, right? At least, more so than yours and mine."

"Yeah--I just--it's stupid." She props her head in her hands.

"Food, sharing it, eating it, hosting meals and feeding guests, it's so important to mortals, to us gods for less drastic means. I can't imagine not eating." She frowns, then huffs out a sigh, "This is probably my mom talking through me. She's goddess of harvest, agriculture. This sort of thing is important to her, I Think, more so than me. You ever wake up one day and your mom is talking through you?" She sits back, smiling crookedly.

"I suspect it happens to all of us one day."

He smiles. There's a joke in there somewhere - he can't imagine not eating either, namely because it'd eventually kill him - but he doesn't manage to make it before she continues on.

The smile abruptly dies as she talks about her mother and asks about his. He...can't relate, to say the least, and there are days when it still stings, and he doesn't want to talk about it, never mind right now-

"I-" never knew my mother dies in his throat. He doesn't want to say it, and Persephone doesn't need to hear it. "Can't...say that I have," he finishes instead. It's not good enough - it's contradictory, open for questioning - but it's something.

"But- just because it's important to her doesn't mean it can't be important to you too." It's true, and also it will hopefully redirect the conversation away from him.

There's something there, something niggling and open and still a little raw she thinks. It reminds her of when she stumbled talking to Zetta, when he mentioned Apollo and she couldn't think straight for a second. She could push, she could prod, but she doesn't. She hates it when people find the secret parts of her, the parts that have yet to heal, and poke and prod and insist. She doesn't want to ask, she doesn't want to share in turn.

"I--I know it can be important to me too. I just...well regardless, I can just deal with it later."

This...isn't what he wanted. He wants to protect himself, but not at the cost of Persephone's well-being. That's not fair to her. He knows they both want this conversation to be about Thanatos - easier to try to problem solve for him than to delve into things they don't want to talk about - but...

"If you want to talk about it," he says softly after a few moments of silence, "I'm here. I'll listen."

"No--no it's not really important. Really I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore."

She doesn't want to hurt him and--and it's true. She doesn't really know what she's talking about. It's all muddled up, worrying and missing. Guilt over feeling like she doesn't want to become her mothers shadow, something about Thanatos and food and home. Food is such a part of home and her mother is wrapped up in both and it's impossible to disentangle her thoughts.

"Okay."

...this conversation is a mess, isn't it.

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. He has questions, but this conversation isn't about him, and he doesn't want to upset her further, and he doesn't know what to say, and-

Well, it's a mess. It all just keeps coming back to that.

"Thank you for the peach," he says instead. "It's really good." It's about food, sure, but it's also the truth, and at least it's a place to start.

"Oh--you're welcome."

She looks down at her peach and up at the tree. There's plenty she could say, about who asked for it and how hard it was to reign in her powers, to stop them from spilling over into something too tall and grand for the greenhouse. But she's exhausted. Instead she just takes another bite and gestures.

"Take some whenever you like."

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