Healing?

[Lamai]

Spiders had been the tip of the iceburg, just as she'd suspected. How right she'd been. How frighteningly correct. This was a private part of his suffering that she doubted he had ever shared with anyone. Possibly not even Rhaena.

Oh, Glenn.. Lamai whispered. How many times had his mind drawn him back into that torment to replay over and over again? Not again.

Did he know who she was? Did it matter? She was a winged creature in white in this replay of darkness, and when his hand outstretched, it found a pale one to grasp onto. His pain was touchable, and almost as if she heard the drow moving like spiders, those Catch-healed wings extended as she pulled him in.

His mind might make her a target. His mind might make her a statue in the drowess' garden. Lamai wasn't entirely sure. Either way, the ebon-skinned Glenn was pulled up against her as if he was a child to cradle, and those wings circled around them close, hiding every inch of him.

I have you. Shhh. Not a sound. You have been so brave, my friend. So very brave. It wasn't quite a murmur against his ear, but one of her hands shifted down to that shattered leg. His physical leg would never quite be the same, but the mental one could be fixed. Regardless of the chaos, she let her strength flow into him. Is there more, Glenn? Do I need to see more?

[Glenn]

Her question was a mercy. Perhaps it was the first true mercy she had provided as of yet. Did she need to see more? The pain and hopelessness of his early life had been the cause of him running away from the monastery and making his first dire decision; that had been a beginning. The pain of his reluctant travels from one doomed place to the next had shaped who he was when he arrived in Myrken; that was a beginning. The torment heaped upon him as he learned to stand upon his own in Myrken Wood had prepared him for single-mindedly driving that sword through Sarayn; that was a beginning.

And this?

All of this?

Oh, this was a beginning as well. That she understood that now was a mercy for both of them.

The dark skinned Burnie leaned against her, delirious still. He would not accept her succor and be done with all of this. They had to keep moving. She cradled his leg in her power and his body in her arms, but he was dragging himself forward with her. They had to reach the gate. She had hidden him, and she was supporting him. It eased the memory of pain associated with that crawl to the gate. Things that had been surreal and twisted became clearer.

Practical concerns rose to the forefront. "Can you see?" The Glenn within the memory was acknowledging her, even if he didn't seem to know her, didn't seem to think that she was out of place. Maybe he simply thought he was speaking to himself, or to some ghost of Rhaena in his own mind. "it's so dark." And it was, it was so very dark. He had to feel his way around, his eyes not genetically or magically suited for this environment. He had prepared himself for the worst in his study of Drow, but in his current condition, he had be unable to take advantage of that. He'd walk with her, groping his way against walls, until he, a mapmaker of the first degree, would not have been able to find his way back to Sarayn's territory even if given days to try.

There WAS more to see, for her, and not just physically, but there was danger in making too much clear to him. He had spent the first week on his own in Underdark in a fevered haze. Burnie only remembered glimpses of the beatings, the humiliation, the hunger, and the pain. That too was a mercy, for him to not remember such terrorible moments, for him to have been oblivious, even as his humanity had been wrenched further and further from him, even as he found himself committing more barbaric and inhuman acts just to survive. Would she peel that haze back and force him to relive all of this so she might find exactly what led him to his current state? One thing was exceptionally clear. Despite all logic, he did not revisit this time, not in his dreams, not in his waking hours, not at all. Were the spiders a defense mechanism to prevent introspection, to prevent him from doing just that?

Or was there something more to be found even further along this path?

[Lamai]

There was a reason that she never let anyone in her head as she often did for others. Reasons why someone as shallow and single-minded as Agnie could suddenly cause her to explode into violence that she had barely remembered the next day. Reasons why these trips were so carefully guarded so that her own nightmares didn't seep into the minds that she healed.

I can see, Glenn.

It was rather ironic, really. But the mind was a strange place and Lamai didn't need physical eyes to slide her way through memory. Already, she had decided that he would not remember the sordid details of what he showed her. She could sweep up the tracks as they moved, now with her protection.

Let me see everything. You know you can trust me, always.

No matter what Agnie thought.

[Glenn]

Glenn trusted Lamai? Really? The outer Glenn Burnie, the Glenn Burnie she had been dealing with as of late, the REAL Glenn Burnie didn't do anything of the sort. She was a foreign sympathizer, and on top of that she was grumpy, unpleasant and difficult. Worst of all, while she wasn't particularly hard to manipulate in general, she was downright impossible to manipulate SUCCESSFULLY. Otherwise they wouldn't be here. They were here, however. For some reason he had trusted her enough, despite it all. More than that, he had claimed to the very end that there was nothing wrong with him, even in the face of all she was seeing now. Was he so blinded by his own psychosis that he could not see it at all? Or was there something else afoot, something deeper?

The memories began to cascade before her. Things that were just a haze to him became increasingly clear to her. He was the lowest of the low, nearly blind, virtually deaf without enhanced senses, crippled, starving, fevered, with just a dinner knife to protect himself. He belonged to no House. He had no allies. No chance. She witnessed passing predators both humanoid and otherwise preying upon him. She witnessed him doing things far worse than what Sarayn had wanted just to stay alive. She witnessed him mercilessly killing those not much better of than he in order to climb up the social ladder. All of this over a span of a week. He was outside the normal, set way of things. He was willing to cross social divides that were ingrained as uncrossable within this race and he was willing to do ANYTHING, anything at all, to survive. The fever hastened his decline but it hadn't taken long at all for basic human dignity to leave him.

She would witness a drow that looked very much like Suede Roschen pass by though even in his memories as she could delve into them it was unclear if that really occurred or if it was a hallucination. She would witness a clearer encounter with Jirai. As the fever began to subside, reason returned to him and his atrocities became more daring and ever easier to rationalize - and why wouldn't they be? These were monsters born without compassion, without hope. They were the lowest of the low, soulless beasts. His clothes quickly became nicer. His mastery of the language, already academically impressive, grew at an almost supernatural level. The leg began to heal, albeit incorrectly and he was able to stand with less outside support than before.

Days passed and she witnessed every moment of it. She witnessed him slowly pulling himself back towards reason and coherence. A whispered word from that hallucinatory encounter with the black-skinned version of the tailor led him to...

Ah, but now he turned his head to her once more, looking very much a young drow upstart though he was in truth anything but. There was some cross between a sneer and a smirk upon his face and such emotion in his voice as he spoke. This was NOT the Glenn Burnie she saw around Myrken these days. Whatever had created that being was still yet to come. Unfortunately, she had to deal with this sneering figure in the here and now. He rasped the wretched language almost lyrically and she understood it all for what it was. "I think you've seen quite enough, mourning dove. It's time for you to leave. You wouldn't want to get those pretty wings dirtier than they already are." He looked at her with derision and amusement both.

[Lamai]

So many secrets to keep. So many hurts. So many sins. She bore it with the full knowledge that he would never know that she knew. His soul needed someone to see what had been done, and what he had done to survive.

It came at no surprise that the eyes that turned upon her were different and unappreciative of her protection. Yet, Lamai had been bitten. Her head turned towards that voice and her own smile was almost dark itself.

I am not going anywhere. Your concern is touching, but I am beyond you. Let me see what has been done.

It was not a request. Drow or angel, there was no mistaking a female's voice that was used to giving a Command when it was required. And they all thought Christoph had married down. Yet, this winged creature was imperial in a way that was beyond faking, especially in such a place.

Show me.

[Glenn]

The Burnie before her winced. The Burnie before her, black skinned, regal, arrogant and haughty, glared at her with hateful eyes. He had pulled himself up from nothing, from NOTHING. From less than that, and he had made something of himself. The exact reason behind it all was a bit lost on him, yes, but that hardly mattered because he knew the general thrust of it. Freedom. Status and Power, yes, but all in the name of freedom and this... this intruder.. this WOMAN threatened to chain him with her voice.

And there seemed nothing he could do to stop her. The background began to change. A group of male drow, insurgents, quixotic fools who sought to fight the establishment without realizing that they were hopelessly part of it appeared and near them was...

"No!" Burnie as he was then, in the guise of the drow, the scowl upon his face, shouted at her. He could not refuse her, but he could try to bargain, try to force out an explanation. "Wait! You'll not learn what you need this way, you puny, wretched witch. The images will have no meaning, no basis, no context." A dark smile crept over his face as he spoke that last word with his raspy undertone. He KNEW the futility of such undrstanding. Of course he knew because he had lived it. There had been a lack of understanding then. Now, outwardly, for the true Glenn Burnie, not just this afterimage of who he had been, there was a lack of caring, a lack of even trying to understand. There was no need. Here she was though, finding the rarest of things: a truth buried that even Glenn Burnie no longer cared about.

[Lamai]

I. Don't. Care.

Truth be told, even Lamai had a limit to her patience. Here was a truth that not even Glenn cared for? She wasn't here because of what he did or did not care for. She didn't need him to tell her what was important and what was not important. Nor was her time so limited that she needed to be careful. Here she was.

Not a moment later, her tactics almost seemed to shift. Her fingers were a soft stroke against that memory-self, and her smile lacked the eyes to tell him if it was truly warm or frightening. Show me. I will see it willingly or unwillingly, my dark shadow. Do not misunderstand me. I am not gentle because I am required to be. That oath was long ago broken.

Odd, that feeling of cathedral bells that seemed to enforce it. It wasn't something as sensitive as a sound. It was more the heavy throng that would be associated with each turn of the bell till the hammer clapped its overly low vibrations.

[Glenn]

Images began to cascade once more. First was that brotherhood, as it was, being betrayed and crushed down, of the drow Burnie being secrety lauded for it, of it allowing him access to a certain privileged and pious young female, of access to her dreams. The manipulations that followed were the sort that Lamai hated so, but then he was no longer the Glenn he had been. He was the creature that she had just enountered...

which, oddly enough was not at all who he was now.

"Actually," the scene was now that of a the courtyard of another compound, another House, and that young woman was speaking with the drow Burnie excitedly. The voice, however, came from a different direction. It was Burnie but younger, perhaps as young as he seemed when she first encountered him. He was sitting upon some sort of monolith in the courtyard, kicking his feet a bit, the smile on his face youthful but weary. His skin color was as it should be and he had yet to develop all of the athleticism that came with being Ariane's student. "He was right. Seeing the image won't matter. *I* didn't understand what happened at the time. I still don't. It's just... We're so smart and know so many things, Miss Carver." By now some aspect of Glenn knew her title and new last name, of course, but this one seemed not inclined to use it. "I'm not being arrogant when I say that. But we only seem to fail, to really, truly, fail, in two areas. Common sense, and faith in anything we can't see." He spoke those last words begrudgingly, the tired smile becoming a little frown.

[Lamai]

There you are.

Perhaps there was a touch of relief in that tone. Pressing didn't always get the expected results, but sometimes, what seemed to be the expected results weren't the results that were the wanted ones.

How young he was, then. How innocent. Lamai had forgotten what that was like. Certainly, there had been innocence in her, once. There was a pause in the winged creature, as if she suddenly pondered if such a thing could be found inside of -her- if someone pushed hard enough.

The thought.. was not pleasing.

It would seem that there is a failure in both areas, Glenn. I cannot heal faith, and I cannot heal common sense, but I can heal the damage that destroys both. There needs to be a little of one or the other.

There really shouldn't be an owl in the Underdark. But the hooting from the rooftop seemed to jerk the sightless attention straight to it. That face twitched, and then she forcefully swiveled her head upwards.

So tell me. What am I supposed to be seeing? There is something that needs to be done. I'll not see you utterly destroyed as I was.

[Glenn]

"Here I am." Burnie the younger' voice was quiet, full of hope and pain and so much more, with that undertone of defiance against everything and anything mixing with the youthful innocence. "But I'm not, Miss Carver. I'm sorry. He was just a memory given form, the mind's defense against your presence, maybe? You were going into some bad places. Me? I'm just a guide, probably more of your own making than anything else. I'm just another memory." Then he closed his mouth, sadness taking over that frown.

We're just images. We're memories. We're gone.

I'm just a ghost.

The scene shifted again. Now they were down in the catacombs of the House, the catacombs of an already underground city, deeper into the earth than any living being should be. Two large double doors made of some death black metal were at the end of this specific tunnel, barring their way further. "If you really are going to go through there, Miss Ca... Lamai. If you're really going to go through there, I have to explain something to you first. You're not going to like it and I'm sorry. I really am. You've come all this way, after all."

It would have been a lie to say that he held any hope that she would simply walk away. Still, there WAS a moment of hesitation before he continued.

"Our mind is healed. It's as healed as it's been in a very, very long time. We came to Myrken with so much trauma and pain. Even when you healed us before, it was only to that initial state. We came to Myrken CURSED. And behind those doors, the curse was shattered forever. We came to Myrken and were swallowed by doubt and loss, and what happened in that room destroyed all of that. Our mind is healed. It's just.. healed wrong. Just like our leg. The leg can be rebroken and reset. Healed properly. But what happened behind those doors." The youthful image of Glenn just shrugged. "It's still driven by all the things it was before, a denial of fate, love for those that matter, an appreciation of the first home that we ever had. That's why we became who we are now and didn't stay like HIM, but..." And then he shook his head one last time and the doors started to creek open. "You won't like what's back there, Lamai. You don't have to go further. You really don't."

[Lamai]

There was something sadly amusing about the speech. It summoned up everything Glenn believed about her. Perhaps he was just a memory. A guide she'd invented into being. A ghost. But it was also still him, and he had made it so very clear, as he always did, what he expected her to do.

It made her tired.

Glenn..

Those doors were opening, and she held a hand up to pause the revelation for just a moment. It could be done; she believed it could be done. In spite of that poison sliding through her mind, Lamai waited. There was a rustle of wings that were not her own. An echo of countless, endless feathered, flapping wings that made her shudder and cringe.

I'm not here to like what I see. If you remember anything out of all of this, I want you to remember what I tell you, here.

I was young like you, once. An amusing thought. She was hardly old, now. And when I arrived in Myrken, my mind was scarred. Slowly and surely, it devoured me and spat me out. The creature you know, the one you remember, it had begun to sour long before you ever laid eyes on her.

When Kerrak ... It was everything that could be done to shield him from that pain that made her shudder, but behind it, the knowledge of her own curse became quite evident. It was all about belief, and Lamai believed that it wasn't Kerrak's insanity that caused his death. It was the fact that she loved him.

When I failed to keep Kerrak's insanity held together, my poorly healed mind shattered into pieces. All of the poison, all of the belief that I was a danger, everything that Ariane had ever told anyone about me, I thought it was true. Like everyone else she'd convinced, even I finally believed myself to be a danger and an evil creature. I wanted to die. I begged to die. Do you understand?

I didn't heal myself.

I am not here to make friends. I am not here to be gentle. I am here to heal you. Just as a leg can be rebroken and reset, so can a mind. And I assure you that if that is what it takes, then so be it.

There is already one of me. Myrken doesn't need another.

That hand lowered, and a sober-faced, blind creature allowed it to come as it was. At least, she knew what she was going to have to do, now. Glenn.. was going to be pissed. Pity, that.

Then again, she was quite used to pissing him off.

[Glenn]

The Glenn of today was not the Glenn she saw before her now. This younger being, scratching the back of his head, looking at her sadly was something entirely different. He asked questions. The Glenn Burnie roaming Myrken in the present? He demanded answers.

This Glenn, however, he looked to her and frowned that sad little frown. And then he spoke, even though it may not matter. Even if he was a figment and wasn't even there, wouldn't even remember any of this, he had to ask. He just had to. It was who he was. "What are you?"

Didn't she understand? Agniezska Kaczmarek, for instance, was as clear as could be. You saw her. You spoke with her. You knew her and what she was. Ariane Emory could be delved into, peeled back layer by layer. There were hints and clues and secrets and Glenn Burnie KNEW them, and if this forceful observer wanted to go poking for them, the cost to all involved would be large indeed. Calomel, Rhaena, the Ashfiend, even Catch to some level. Glenn knew them. Glenn understood. Glenn EMPATHIZED, even in his current state.

But he didn't even have a starting point when it came to Lamai. By now he disregarded Ariane's words about her. He was old enough. He knew well enough not to use those even as a starting point, but it left him with nothing. A few bits of trauma on the public record. A few frustrating conversations. Nothing more. Glenn Burnie lived to learn what he did not know. Glenn Burnie thrived in the midst of the unknown.

And Glenn Burnie truly hated the unknowable.

So he asked his question but as he did, the sad look remained on his face, There was one truth, the truth, hidden behind those door. It wasn't about her not liking the memory itself! It was never about that. She didn't understand, but soon, soon she would.

[Lamai]

Dead.

It seemed a complicated answer, didn't it? She obviously wasn't dead. But the thought had been pulled out of her without a hesitation. In fact, the hesitation came afterwards, as if she hadn't wanted to respond that way. Something more cryptic had been necessary.. and then.. she smiled.

That's what I've been the entire time you've known me, Glenn. Dead.. until Kerrak scarred the lake.

Eleven years ago, I died in childbirth. I gave birth to the daughter of my first love's twin. Eight months prior to her birth, her father died, and I cut the heart out of my lover and broke my vow of non-violence. Eleven years later, I still hear the cathedral bells taunting me with his evil, threatening to swallow me whole.

He could touch minds, just like me. Both of the twins could.

I had my own house. A house that was eventually on tainted land, land poisoned by David. By Mephisto.

I tried to heal through the pregnancy. I almost lost her. I almost lost myself. I ended up confined to a bed for six months.. and then I died.

What you saw.. what you knew.. I was given strength and wings to curb my restlessness. It never worked. It was never enough. I craved success. I wanted to put everything right. I wanted to make sure everyone was safe, and I wanted them to love me for doing so.

It seemed like the more I tried, the more I felt shunned and hated, and the more I felt hated, the more I hated trying.

It was Kerrak that carried me out of the cultist's caves. Kerrak who allowed me into his head to betray Thadius. Kerrak that gave me hope that perhaps I had something to give.

Did you know that I held his sanity in my hands? I saw into his chaos, just as I've seen into Catch's.. just as I've seen into yours..

I longed to be mortal, Glenn. I longed to breathe as you all did. To feel as you all did. To be able to marry, have children. I begged for it. And I got what I wanted.

But blind Faith is a foolish endeavor. Oh, I got what I wanted. And the transition broke the link I had with the channeler, and he thought I'd died. That black spot on the lake is the reminder of my morality. Of my foolishness. Kerrak died there when I drew my first breath in over a decade.

It had come out like a flood. It seemed like the thoughts simply wouldn't stop. They churned and flowed as if they'd been held in far too long, left to fester and rot. Lamai was the healer. No one needed to see her pain. What kind of healer let another see their pain?

He could almost feel it get choked off, and she refused to let him hear or see anymore. Tiny hands were clenched at her sides in representation of that. She almost seemed as if she might bleed.

I am mortal, Glenn. Just. Like. You.

That sightless face turned towards the younger version and stopped as if she was waiting to see if he had any more questions.

[Glenn]

She spoke and this time there were no cascading images, but then none were necessary. She spoke and he listened. He listened with a surprising calm, a surprising compassion, perhaps. He listened with the look of someone with a true purpose. She healed. He witnessed. It all burned around him and he witnessed. Again and again and again. There was a journal in the room in which their bodies rested now, a journal that had survived when other things had not, a journal of stories so terrible that hers could sit along with them like family.

He hadn't deemed it necessary to take that journal with him when he left Darkenhold.

Two years prior to that, he had decided to no longer just witness, but to instead act and fight. To make everything better. He stopped running, and it all had led to this.

Some skills never left truly left you, so she spoke and he witnessed with grace and affection. Still, it had been terribly clumsy... that question. Three words. Blunt. Chaotic. Yet he handled the deluge that followed with compassion, with understanding, but no emotion.

Until... "You died. She died." If only Lamai and Ariane could have SPOKEN. If only they understood what each other had... but then it wouldn't have mattered in the least, would it? He barked out a laugh, a wild thing, and young Glenn wiped at his wet eyes. "Dying made her better. Made her whole. Not Agnie, not you, not Calomel or Catch. Not the Ashfiend, or Bromn, or Quincy, not anyone. Just her. Typical, huh?" He was smiling now, but it was a waning thing.

Then, he looked at her with finality and his expression was grave again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that. All of it, the WAVES of it, and I'm sorry.." He nodded to the doors. "I'm sorry that I didn't die instead." Just like that, the image of the younger Burnie was gone. She was in the catacomb tunnel alone, the opening of the doors continuing from where she stopped it before.

[Lamai]

There is nothing to be sorry for..

It was told to the semblance of emptiness, though nothing was ever empty in the mind. It held a note of weariness, and underneath that, fear. Fear that he might -remember-, even if the rest of her was fearless. She didn't want him to remember. She didn't want anyone to know.

Her pain was an intense thing, but it hadn't ended with Kerrak. Christoph, in his own way, had healed her shattered mind. It had fought back against a fever that would've destroyed her -- that she would have welcomed had the channeler's son not healed her in his rough way. It had survived the destruction of their home.

Agnie may not ever understand why Lamai so easily put her lot in with the Thessilaneans. The girl -- woman, now -- might not ever be able to grasp the safety that Lamai felt there. Lamai would likely not ever explain it to her.

Now, Glenn could. If he remembered.

Please don't remember.

She waited, letting those doors creak open to show her the finish.