Let's Talk

Aaren

That evening

It's still raining. Just a gentle shower, beating its quiet tattoo on the roof and sides of their cart. Its dark out, and chilly, and the cart is warmed both by its hearth, and the hot water that pumps through the wood.
Aaren finishes up the last of the corispondince. The note to the family was hard to write, since it had to include their most recent adventure, and the horrible things that had happened to their aquatence and, more importantly, Kelly. (The letter includes a private note to Dad freaking out about the effects of torture on Kelly and asking for advice.)

Aaren folds the letter and hands it to Daina for Frankie. Then she stands up. She picks up her biggest poncho from where it was serving as a pillow benenth her, adding its calm purple song to her own.

"Kelly," She sings, in her serious-talk-dad song, "Will you go on a walk with me?"

Fate

As Aaren approaches, the music of her voice and her beads and bones and shards heralding her as ever, Kelly looks up from where he and Esta and Janin and a couple caravan members were playing cards. Esta places a pair of cards down, her victory song driving her sharp, confident movements. A smug grin crescendos through her and she gathers up the various trinkets and animal-shaped candies that currently make up the betting pool as the other players struggle to register her triumph through their disbelief.

Though his face doesn't so much as twitch, his heart-dropping song pounds its way through the mild fun song under which all the other things hid. He hums a casual affirmative and gives his hand of cards to the dealer (leaving the anklets and charms he'd bet in the pool), and joins his big sister.

Aaren

Aaren takes them on a path that winds a bit through the various carts to get to the forest outside their circle.
She hums the rain, and the silence, letting it stay between them until they get out of earshot of the group.
As they pace a wide circle around the camp she lets the rain hit them. It's nice to be... well, wet. To let something touch her for a moment.

Then, amidst the soft song of damp wood and whispering leaves, she finds a way to use words to explain herself.
"You're still quite injured." She sings softly, to a song of 'I'm not sure you know'. "Really injured." She vocalizes for a moment. "Really greviously injured."

Fate

His fear song surges forward, sending his heart a-pound, sending a dreamlike warmth blooming up his throat and the back of his skull. But his pace is steady, his expression still and unreadable to the eye.

After a moment, he asks, "How?" His voice is steady too. And then, after he hangs onto the conversation for another moment, he asks, flat, "Am I gonna die?"

Aaren

"No." Aaren sings, calming. "At least, not any sooner then you were anyway." Her words catch up with her, and she smiles. "Which means probably seventy or eight years, before you ask." Then she shifts her song, to something soothing, that won't effect him more then he'd expect.
"You're injured in your song, in your way of being with yourself and other people." She pauses a moment, singing the woods and the rain. Just making space incase Kelly wants to say something before she goes on.

Fate

He takes that opportunity instead to breathe, and listen to the patter of his heart as it evens out to the patter of the rain, and feel the water trickle down his face. The fear in his rhythm slows and pours steadily out of his song.

Aaren

"I can't fix stuff like that quickly. At least, not in a way that will stay fixed. It's going to take you a long time to heal."
Aaren purses her lips for a moment, and then asks, "Do you want to hear your song?"

Fate

Kelly shrugs with a noncommittal-ness that has a harmony which is too brusque to be entirely apathetic. "If you think it'll do any good."

Aaren

Can I have a more in-depth empathy ping here? How's his song sound?

Fate

Angry, despairing, angry, a little afraid, angry, helpless.

Aaren

Aaren supresses her urge to snap something. Instead, after a moment of being deeply calm, she sings, "It might, if it helps you understand what is going on."
Aaren pauses again, takes a deep breath and then sings, in a small, quiet version of her own scared song, "I'm frightened. I want to give you treatment suggestions, but I don't know if that's what you need from me right now. I would appreicate knowing more about how you feel. Would you mind talking to me about... you?"

Fate

His gaze drops, his song falters into something that's almost apologetic. "Okay." There's no more evenness to his tone. Instead it's quiet, sounding a little scared in its own right. His brow furrows, and he tucks his hands into his pockets, strung through with uncertainty—uncertainty of what to say, of where to begin.

Aaren

Aaren waits, singing her listening song and walking. (And monituring their body tempatures to make sure they aren't getting too cold.)

Fate

"I guess..." He begins, still uncertain. It doesn't go anywhere for a while. He listens to the chattering of the rain against the leaves and tries again. "I dunno." He lets out a laugh entirely devoid of humor, a sound of just raw offloading of emotion, and swallows, hard. "There's a lot." He lets out an unsteady breath. "I feel... worthless. Like what I do doesn't mean anything, doesn't really contribute to anything."

Aaren

Aaren listens, because that's part one in the 'How to Help People Song'— and probably the most important part. She listens with her whole being almost, but not quite, actually muffling the world around her.

Fate

"I kinda felt that way already, before..." He trails off, not knowing what to call it, instead using a strain of a meaningless filler song. "I mean, you can sing any problem away, and if you can't Daina can use plants or fire or dancing or Frankie or something." Another trail-off. "And Slavina has wayfinding, and is really good at figuring out and putting words to the things I only ever see." He considers a moment, letting the distant birdsong have a space while he does. "But then..." Everything about him tightens, from his voice to his stride. "It was so easy for them, Aaren. They... they... I mean, I was fuckin' broken. I-I couldn't move, I couldn't do —" He stops: stops talking, stops walking, even stops breathing for a moment. His chin is planted on his chest and his eyes are as clenched shut as his fists, mouth twisted and twitching.

Aaren

Aaren moves closer, reaching out to hug him and then stopping about an inch away. "Do you want help? I can help you get it out." She keeps her fear out of her voice, but she lets her sadness in. She sings a song of reassurance. He's hurt. It makes sense to be hurting, he's wounded and bleeding.

Fate

Kelly tightens further, his tears visually indistinguishable from the rain (but their music loud and clear). Then he nods, once, stiff, and lets out a harsh exhale as if giving up.

Aaren

The exhale is enough. He's already crying. Aaren listens for a moment and then, instead of singing him softer, she reaches over and hugs him. The warmth and saftey and comfort of her song reinforces the hug-ness of the hug.
She listens, expecting that to be enough for him to have space to express a little bit of what he's feeling.

Fate

He eases and opens enough to allow himself to cling to her, to bury himself in her hug. His noisy weeping is muffled into her shoulder.

"What... what'd they want?" His words are twisted, barely recognizable. "I would've given them it, Aaren, I would've given them anything... Ilvers or Aurika or a fucking ball... or..." His sobs wrack him, from throat to stomach. "I didn't know what they, what they wanted... they wouldn't tell me, they just kept..." The rest is indistinguishable just noises of agony and despair and self-loathing.

Aaren

Aaren holds him, rocking him back and forth as they gently collapse onto the wet ground. She starts to cry too, silently. She doesn't want to, but it's hard to be trying convince him to express his emotions and hold hers in at the same time.

"I love you." She sings, softly and smoothly. It's not an answer to his question, or to the pain he's feeling. But it's all she has, and it's really, really important. She keeps holding him, smoothing the hair out of his face and pretending her tears are just warm rain.

Fate

Kelly doesn't say anything else, just bleeds out as much as his limited supply of energy will allow him to bleed.

In the end, when he calms at last and his song returns to an exhausted equilibrium, it's not enough.

But it's something.

Aaren

List of things Aaren told Kelly (Not exhastive incase something comes up that probably she should have said.):
Things Kelly will probably experince:

• Lasting feelings of shame, helplessness and humiliation
• Self-doubt and self-loathing
• Bad dreams, intrusive memories
• Easily startled and angered
• Increased difficulty trusting new and also old people
• Really sad and depressed also
• Pessimism about humanity
• Not wanting to people
• Less or different emotions then expected
• Being stressed all the time!!!! (Including difficulty learning and adjusting to new things)
• Physical pain even though his body is supposed to be all better, and also uncomfortable physical sensations like sudden heat or crawly-feelings.
• Probably significantly more nervous about going out drinking and also getting locked in dungeons. XD
• General anxiety

Aaren will think of all of these things as symptoms of his internal injuries from being tortured. So, her language is going to focus on the process of healing, including the acknowledgement that injuries of this magnitude often change our songs forever (since our songs are in a constant state of change this is normal, but of course it is strange to have it happen all at once and so painfully and so out of our control).

She'll add feelings of not knowing yourself and disorientation to the list.

Also, she will recommend he get familiar with his new song, since he was out of date on his calm song already and that's something he uses to cope—we don't want his coping mechanisms any more compromised then they already are.

Things Aaren thinks can be done to help the healing process:

• Talk, think, express about the event. Aaren will recomend dance, song, and maybe some visual art—in fact, Kelly should experiment with new kinds of art and stuff. It's good to take breaks from thinking about being tortured (obviously) but it's also important that Kelly, and the group, not allow the even to sink into the morass of silence and shame.
• Keep exercising, scouting, hunting, practicing with the spear. Keeping active will help with all the emotions.
• Keep doing the things you are good at and keep trying new things. (Aaren would encourage him to keep learning Esta's language, among other things) even though they will be frustrating and hard.
• Lots of talking with Aaren about how he feels now, how his thoughts and feelings and song and way of being are doing now, and working out how to change thigns to make it better for him. (Both inside things about his thoughts and feelings, and outside thigns about the world to make it more comfortable.)

They'd also talk about how to make a safe space for Kelly. Aaren thinks he'll need to have somewhere safe in order to work on healing, so it's really important.

Also, at some point she'd make sure he knows that she asked him to come because she likes him and wants to be with him, and that 'usefullness' is kind of not the right way to catagorize something like that. (Not telling him this in the context of trying to help him feel better, but just want to make sure he knows for other times that his value doesn't come from him being able to do things she can't do—and not just in a 'people are valueable' way, (not sure Aaren belives that...) but in a 'Aaren likes how she feels when you are around' way.)

Aaren would also talk to Kelly about torture and what it does to people, and what it does to the people who do it, and stories of other people she's known who went through the same thing. She wants to make sure he knows he is not alone, and that 'breaking' under torture is normal and okay. (I think since Hometown doesn't have much a dioluge about torture they woldn't ahve a lot of stories about people getting torutred and herocially resisting or whatever, as a result, I think Aaren and Kelly will be able to talk about the shame he's feeling. I mean, it makes sense still for him to be ashamed and humiliated and all that, I jsut think it is important that Aaren can convince Kelly that his response to being tortured is the normal one and that's not bad, since he wouldn't have all those action movies tell him that it was bad.)

Also she would (when it was a good time) talk to him about what Ilwhateverhisnameis is probably dealing with and how to help him. It's different set of things, but Kelly likes helping people and Aaren thinks helping people is good for Kelly so she'd make sure to help him with that when he was wanting to do it.

Aaren's focus will be equiping Kelly for taking charge of his own recovery—getting him tools to understand what's going on and making sure he's supported in asking for what he needs. It's really important to her that he is in charge of this situation, and that he gets to be in control (since he lost control in such an awful way).

I think a big part of that for her would be teaching him all the songs and stuff, maybe mimicing his song for him so he can see what he maybe looks like, that kind of thing. (But of course she'd ask him if he wanted any of that... since she's putting him in control of this.)