come_sailaway | Love Does not Discriminate

Entry tags:

Love Does not Discriminate

Who: Valdis and Open with Some Closed
What: Valdis does stuff around the Serena Eterna, feel free to join her
When: February
Where: All Over
Warnings: In Starters

It takes and it takes and it takes | Erin | CW: Nightmares

She’d be lying if she said she hasn’t been avoiding Erin a little, despite their conversation at her hollow. But the woman is important to her, even if just as friends. Sometimes she thinks Erin is trying too hard to be something else, but Valdis isn’t anywhere near ready to move forward in that manner, and Erin has implied very strongly that she is willing and happy to wait. But Valdis can’t stop thinking about what Erin told her back when they first met, about her ability to enter dreams, and there’s something just outside of her reach within the nightmares that plague her every night. If Erin can help her go that extra step, then it’s worth a try, even if the intimacy of it may be uncomfortable for them both. She knocks gently on Erin’s door. It’s a little late for visits, but she can’t go another night in those hallways without knowing what lies at the end of them.

“Erin?”

And we keep loving anyway | Max Maximum | Stellar | CW: None

It’s their first actual date, and of course it’s also Valentine’s Day, which, for the first time in a long time she’s not going to spend alone. The short, tight, sequined black dress with a plunging neckline leaves just enough for the imagination that she knows he’ll be delighted to remove it later. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but she loves how he marvels every single time, like he can’t believe he has her.

For once, she’s early instead of exactly on time, feeling like a schoolgirl on a date with her first crush. Childish perhaps, but the next step beyond just friends with benefits. She may never have his whole heart, but she is happy enough with just a piece of it. The memory of how he felt when he learned she returned his affections was pure magic. The one time that being able to feel what others feel is more of a blessing than a curse. Who else has the power to feel love so incredibly deeply from both sides, especially when one side is your own?

We laugh and we cry and we break | Reading Around The Ship | Open

The Library is the best refuge she has these days and she’s reading romance novels this month. The spicy kind that she’s actually hiding behind a larger book. When she’s not reading romance, she’s rereading the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, or Pride and Prejudice, or some other less spicy book. Occasionally she’s reading out by the pool, lounging in an almost sheer wrap in the sun, she is wearing a bikini underneath so not too much can be seen. You may also find her reading in the lounge or in Sanddollars.

And we make our mistakes | Just Around the Ship | Open

From trying different foods at the various restaurants around the Serena Eterna, to Sundries and the sports deck, Valdis is all over the ship. She meditates every morning on the top deck, practices sword maneuvers or works out in the gym later in the day. In one instance she is lugging a beautiful red ball grown across the ship, grumbling about how Friday needs to stop giving her dresses she’s never going to wear. In another she’s watching Aladdin on the TV at Sanddollars (she borrowed it from Klaus), and sketching cartoon versions of the passengers she’s met on the ship. When they aren’t cartoon versions, they are detailed sketches of flowers, places and people she doesn’t really want to talk about, but ask the right questions and she might be willing to tell people a bit more.

And if there's a reason I'm still alive | Palamedes | CW: Rolled a 5, so there is blood

Sleep doesn’t come easily these days, especially since opening the box with the three feathers from Friday. It’s restless, filled with images and twisted memories. Dreams. But she’s mostly able to cope without causing any issues for her roommate. Until the dreams burn into reality with a searing, stabbing pain in her side. The massive amounts of death energy seeping into the room are suddenly banished by a flash of light and soul energy. The pain increases, followed by something wet streaming down her stomach and back. Blood.

She tears off the sheets and races into the shower fully clothed, almost breaking the handle as she turns on the cold water to fight the burning pain. The pink water swirls down down around her feet. Palamedes is likely awake, that light is still so bright it might as well be daylight inside their room.

“Crap.” At least the bleeding has already stopped.

I'm willing to wait for it | Wildcard

Choose your own adventure! Valdis can often be found in the library, on the sports deck, or wandering around the ship, so anywhere you wish to encounter her works.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That darn scholarly sense of curiosity and observation will never be easily swayed when something new and interesting happens.

"Give me a few more minutes for the internal bleeding to stop and then, yes, I will be fine."

The old external injury had already healed over, though the two scars might never fade again.

"I suppose that's what happens when the embodiment of Death itself gets hit with...Thalergy? Life energy?"

Though it's more likely that it's a side effect of the Void disliking the energy of Creation, but she can't know for sure unless it decides to tell her or she has more memories come back.

Palamedes sits up a little straighter. Valdis won’t welcome help, and yes, she technically doesn’t need it. That’s the only thing that stops him from leaping out of bed and going to her side. “Very well,” he says, though there is something like a warning in his voice, a kind of we’ll see about that.

He knits his brows together. “I’m not sure I follow. Sit down, Valdis, before you faint. And them tell me what happened.”

For once, she actually listens without protest. She had hoped the dreams would stop when she and Erin had gone deep into them, but they had only subsided for a short time. She pulls the towel tighter around herself, her wet hair dripping down her back.

"Remember when I told you that I was an Angel of Death," she replies, "I was honestly just being defensive and trying to intimidate you. It fell flat of course. But now I believe that to be true. In my world, there are divine beings who have power over death, and ferry the souls of the dead to their proper afterlife. I...cannot do that, but I was supposed to be able to. And...apparently I was also supposed to have power over life...as in resurrection."

It would explain in some ways why Death could not keep her in her world.

The fact that Valdis doesn’t protest is concerning all on its own. Palamedes’ eyes are sharp, his gaze almost boring into her, but otherwise his expression is gentle. He listens with a faint frown. The fact that her title, extravagant as it had been, is more literal than she had initially let on doesn’t entirely surprise him. But something about the way she explains it does.

“Now you believe it to be true,” he echos. “Meaning you didn’t believe it before. What changed?”

"Did you know Erin can help people dive into their dreams?" she replies, "I asked for help with mine because they were...more like memories, twisted and morphed into something else. I've never had dreams before, so I'd been trying to deal with them on my own."

Valdis doesn't pause long to give him time to process the fact that her kind can't dream. It's not really important now.

"With Erin's help I opened a door to a memory that contains some information that has been verified here and some that I know from back home, so I have no reason to doubt the rest of it. I'm missing a lot of memories, so I could try to dismiss it, but I can't. I just feel that it's true. Especially since it was very upset by the whole ordeal."

“I did not know that.” It fits, though, given what else he knows about Erin’s powers, which are structured around the logic of dreams. Pal finds it fascinating, but not entirely surprising, that she can enter dreams themselves.

But that isn’t the crux of what Valdis is telling him, no more than her previous inability to dream is.

“Other people have had new memories appear in their minds, but never via dreams, as far as I know,” Pal says slowly, thoughtfully. “What is it, Valdis?”

"A seven headed serpent that lives next to my soul. I'd call it a symbiotic relationship, and perhaps it was when the soul wasn't there, but now it's more like a parasite. It didn't take kindly to Erin and I digging around in my dreams. Removed us quite violently."

She gestures to the sword still glowing in the corner.

"It and Revelations seem to be in conflict so it could be the cause of my injuries, but I don't know how the energies work when faced with the embodiment of Death...In truth, Palamedes, I am an abomination that should not exist and many back home are invested in making sure I don't. It is rather hard to kill someone who is immortal though, especially when you can't even find them."

Palamedes has heard and seen a lot of strange things in the last year; he has met vampires, and demons, and a man who could call down the moon. But a seven headed serpent that lives next to my soul is still weird enough to make his eyes go wide with surprise and curiosity.

The rest of what she says, though, is decidedly more personal. “Well, sucks for them. You do exist, abomination or not.” He takes off his glasses and turns them over in his hands. “Does Revelations protect you, or or does it merely…provoke this conflict?”

His question prompts a drawn out silence, then:

"Revelations was designed to kill my kind." Still covering the important parts, she lifts the towel to show the scar high on her side, then twists to show him where the exit wound had been. "It failed, but now I am the only one who can use it. My...brother said it is tied to my soul now. I don't know all the details, but the serpent devours souls yet can't destroy mine."

Another pause.

"It...is possible that Death beyond thanergy was leaking out and Revelations reacted to...stop you from dying."

“And that’s why you keep the sword, even though it can also kill you,” Palamedes guesses. He smiles without humor. “And it seems your life dances on its edge. Assuming you are right, I’m glad it saved my life as well.”

He pauses, turning over all that Valdis has shared with him. “You say you were supposed to have the power of resurrection. Are you not certain?”

Perhaps her life does dance on the edge of a blade only she can wield. There must be some sort of poetic meaning behind that, but she cannot think of any art that could describe her relation to the sword. Valdis can almost see his mind working through complex algorithms to solve some puzzle she can't see.

"Oh, I am certain. The memory was quite clear. My younger self brought a bird back to life."

It was her choice if the bird stayed dead or returned to life. A power no one should have and she doesn't want.

"That does sound like uncontrovertible evidence," says Palamedes. Though he is politic enough not to say it, he is inclined to agree with Valdis--having that sort of power over life and death is too dangerous for any single person to yield.

"Where I come from, only the King Undying is capable of such a thing."

"Is this King a benevolent one?"

An immortal king seems more like a god, but it could mean many things to him. She still knows so little about his world and how it functions. He's more doctor and scholar than someone who actively works with the dead like the necromancers in stories. Though, he has spoken of raising skeletons in the past.

Palamedes smiles humorlessly.

“I suppose that depends on one’s perspective. Ten thousand years ago, after humanity was destroyed, he resurrected us. He gave us the Houses. He protected us from threats. He became God.”

He shrugs. “But he left a lot of carnage in his wake.”

"Ha, I suppose it was foolish to even ask. No gods are faultless or perfect. Most makes things worse before they get better, and they usually just get worse."

But someone with the power to bring so many back is impressive. She doubts that even if she had had all her power and been a full fledged Angel Of Death she could have brought so many back. She also has not been alive for ten thousand years.

"What destroyed humanity?"

“Documentation is scant, but historians have theorized that there was some kind of climate disaster or war—or, perhaps, a combination of both. No one knows for certain.” Palamedes shrugs. The apocalypse has never been his area of expertise. He is curious, the same way he is curious about everything, but he has never seen much reason to examine the matter closely.

Valdis sighs.

"Who are you, Palamedes?" She asks, "You seem to like learning about others, are someone who is interested in healing. You have spoken of raising skeletons of using cell death to accomplish goals. You are experiementing with blood samples. You can tell the age of an object by holding it. You are quiet. Thoughtful. Far too patient for my liking. Nothing seems to faze you."

“Who am I, Valdis?” Palamedes smiles without humor. “I’m heir to the House of the Sixth and the youngest Master Warden the Library has seen in ten thousand years. I’m the son Master Archivist Juno Zeta and Senior Scholar of History Marius Genep. I have the honor of calling Camilla Hect my cavalier and Hand, whose presence I miss like an absent limb. I owe a debt to the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and I mourn every day for the Duchess Dulcinea Septimus, who I never had the chance to meet in person. I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation. I thank God for my life, but if I ever meet him in person, I will politely tell him to fuck right off to hell. I have known too many people whose lives were far too short for what they had to give to the world, and too many ancient beings of endless power who wasted their precious immortality on cruelty. And just between you and me, and I awfully tired of it.”

Despite the long winded answer, Valdis listens to every word, processing and organizing it in her mind.

"Preaching to the choir, Palamedes." She says with a sigh, "Immortality is a curse I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I have no doubt that most who possess it would fall into cruelty. But I get the feeling that..." She pauses, turning over his words in her head, "People are not supposed to live forever, you know that, right?"

"I do," Palamedes says slowly. "But sometimes circumstances lead you where you are not supposed to go."

"Sometimes immortality--or, at the very least, a little bit more life than should be properly allowed--is the best of a series of troublesome options."

"You at least seem aware that you should not seek immortality, but something tells me that you were, or are."

She feels like she just caught him in a lie, or at least some sort of subject he might be wary of speaking to her about. Or perhaps to anyone about.

"Death is a necessary part of life. It doesn't need to be fair, nor does it desire to be."

“As I said, sometimes immortality is the only option available. That doesn’t make it a good option or a right option. I had things to do, Valdis.”

Palamedes sighs and shrugs in the darkness. “We called it the Contingency. At first it was a little more than a necromantic thought experiment, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t expecting to have to apply the principle because I wasn’t expecting to die—not so soon, and not so inconveniently.”

"Right, things to do. Because that's always how it starts. Just this. Just that. Just one more thing. Then another. And another. And soon enough you start to justify it because society needs you. Leaving your work behind isn't enough. It has to be you. Because you're the only one capable of making them understand. Greatest necromancer of your generation, and all the generations after."

He was already justifying it as if it wouldn't come back to bite him or those he cared about. As if he didn't have the potential to become the very thing he hated.

"It's a slippery slope, Pal."

Palamedes purses his lips. For a long moment, he seems poised to argue.

But in the end he doesn't. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm doomed. And maybe the immortality I will find is not at all the sort I'm looking for." His mind drifts back to his bubble at the edge of the River. If he is never able to return to his body, he will be trapped there forever. His mind will eat him alive, and what's left will be torn apart by ghosts.

"But it was worth the risk."

"You mean you've already done it..."

Perhaps not in the same way, perhaps not permanently. She doesn't know the rules of his home, but the consequences of immortality on the soul are too high.

"You may think me a hypocrite. But watching the world change around you, seeing everyone you meet and care for fade away and die while you linger. It's not a life. And no matter what you think you may accomplish, it's all empty in the end. If you ever get the chance, maybe you should ask your King Undying about it."

Love Does not Discriminate

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