Sending a Dream

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco’s new skill in sending dreams has already been used more than most other psychic abilities he’s learned. Mostly it has been to update Z in his time away; cursing him out for the psychic circle, promising him Teek’s safety, reporting news of war and beasts and new Guild Heads. Now, after the constructs have torn through town and the Saa worshippers have attacked, Rosco knows there is someone else he needs to talk to.

It’s late Sunday night and most of the inn has retreated to their bunks for restless slumber, leaving Rosco to an empty common room. He tucks himself out of the way in the medic corner, slumped gently against the wall and focuses his psychic energy towards Rudi.

The world melts away and reforms, pulling lush trees from the ground and planting loose moss around them. The sky is as pink as the sunset the night before, hints of orange hues casting through breaks in foliage. Rosco smiles. These woods are unfamiliar to him, but he expects they were once her home.

“Rudi?” He calls her name softly, looking around trees. It was common that the person he would send the dream to would appear in front of him, often in their own misty aura. Instead it is empty and nearly silent. Was she hunting? Hiding?

“Rudi,” he repeats, cutting himself off as his toe catches on a root. This is unfamiliar, he’s too clumsy to know where to step when he cant memorize a trail. Unhappy with this realization he huffs, finally deciding to sit at the base of one of the large pine trees to wait.

[Rudi]

Rudi, in Ner Batin, sits on a bed after a long shift changing bandages and cleaning patients. Her thoughts drifted to her friends and family in Holdfast as she lays down. She hoped they were safe. She hopes they aren't mad at her for staying behind, and she hopes she can gather the resources necessary to have made her absence worth it.

She doesn't dream often. When she finds herself in her home forest, pine trees and orange hued sky, she's surprised.

She spends a moment running through the woods that were once familiar. She pauses, though. She feels pulled, drawn, to a specific direction. Very used to listening to her gut, she heads in that direction.

She eventually sees a hint of a red cloak, and a halfling she knows all too well- with a frustrated look on his face she also knows all too well. She settles beside him, smiling at him. "Rosco! I hope this is you and not a dream version of you. I miss you guys." Her gaze is drawn to the tree he's sitting at. Huh.

This is where her and Brac used to meet. She processes that for a moment before returning her attention to her friend.

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco's arms instantly wrap around her. He breathes heavily as if he's choking back tears, and for a long time he just stays like that, holding Rudi in silence as he collects himself.

"We miss you too," he finally says. He gives her a last squeeze before pulling away. "I figured that sending you dream was the best way to get information to you. I, uhm..." He trails off and that same heavy breathing comes back. This time, he shakes his head as if to shake it away. Better start with the easy thing.

"First of all, Corin wants you to get six pieces of barbed hide on your way home," he laughs a bit as he says it, if only because he's still choking back tears. "There's a merchant in the market, sells them for two rocks a piece."

[Rudi]

Rudi lets herself be held by Rosco, squeezing just as tightly (if not tighter) in return. She listens, watching Rosco struggle to talk- he's struggling to breathe too. "I'll see what I can do. I'm working on getting a magic item- it's antidote tissues, and it's fairly expensive but i'm hoping I can get it." She's been trying to pick up work, while she's been here.

She stays silent for whatever he has to say next. There's obviously a lot on his mind. Things probably didn't go well. Asking him what went wrong might make him clam up, if he's already struggling to communicate it. So she listens, and gently places her hands on his.

[Rosco Agassi]

There's a moment of silence between them, Rosco in contemplation. Should he even talk about it now, or is it more worth it to tell her when she gets home? No, no it will be weeks before she gets home and he can't hide it from her for that long. He tries to think of what to say, an elegant way to phrase the destruction from the constructs. Instead, he only manages to squeak out and pathetic "Seven," before he starts to cry.

He reaches up to brush away his tears. He's trying to stop, but they just keep coming. He remembers his conversations with Merric and Briony; this wasn't his fault. The only thing she would have done differently was maybe get killed herself.

"Five to golems - constructs? I don't know. Then Marwel got Quill. Then we lost Ryn to snake...things; followers of Saa." He sniffles again, no longer trying to stop himself from crying. "I'm sorry."

[Rudi]

Rudi listens to her dear friend, hand reaching up to his face to wipe away his tears. Her heart breaks for him. If she was there, would this have happened? She shakes the thought away. Nothing would have changed. She wasn't there, but it probably happened too fast to stop.

"You don't need to apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sure you did the best you could." She pushes away her own grief, and her own anger at townsmembers causing the death of their own by Saa worship. "I trust you, Rosco. I trust that you did all you could. That whatever happened, you wouldn't have been able to stop."

She takes a breath. "Being a healer is hard. Losing people is hard. Sometimes, you suffer great loss and there's nothing you could've changed. Every healer has felt that weight." She presses her forehead to her friends. "That does not mean you are a failure."

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco sniffles, wiping his tears with the back of his sleeve. He feels small, pathetic and most of all guilty. None of those emotions are unfamiliar but all of them are painful. He pulls his body in even more, and only finds himself relaxing when Rudi presses her forehead to his.

"Emellia was one of them," he admits, "and Knife, Kez, Merric...Amber. Almost Amber twice, she tried to sacrifice herself to Saa, I—" he chokes, his sobbing and consequently breathing picking up again. "I'm sorry, I thought I was doing everything the way you would but I'm not /fast/ enough. They...they had projectiles, or something. They pointed them at you and shot and they /hurt/ and I didn't have any armour on so I ate dirt immediately. Next thing I know Amber is getting me up on the other side of the inn and I'm screaming about them killing people. It was too late then, we'd already lost three."

"I've seen bad things, Rudi. I was around for Godo and the queen dollface, I've seen armouries, Rakash and skeletons wipe the inn. There have been times I was sure we were never going to make it out...nothing compares to that night."

The inn floor was more crimson than grey. It was covered with bodies of the dead and dying, too many to heal with more than a slap of magic or psychic. The corpses of his friends were mutilated, leaving just headless shells of what they once were. And Briony...her screams still echo in his mind.

The trees fade as the memories get stronger. Rosco starts to alter the space of Rudi's dream purely by accident, emotion begging to show her what he went through. With a grimace and a small jump he forces stability back into the woods. He refuses to let her see it, wanting to protect at least one person in any way he can.

[Rudi]

Rudi continues pressing her forehead to his, listening, pulling him further into an embrace even as he tries to make himself smaller and more closed in.

"I'm so sorry you went through that but I think it's important to know. You're not Rudi. You're Rosco. You can't do things like me, because you aren't me. No one could do things like you, either." She breathes, willing her own emotions away for the moment. she can deal with her grief later. She left Emelia in charge... Rudi wills it away. Later.

"You aren't alone. I've seen some pretty bad things too. Jenny... and the pumpkin games. I can't count the number of times i've been sure things have been hopeless, that i'll never see anyone I love again." Rudi notices the shift, the beginning of the backround changing to a blood-soaked inn.. and feels it when Rosco forces it back to the peaceful forest.

"If there's one thing i've learned from being part of a pack it's this." She holds his face, so she can look him in the eyes, forcing him to look her in the eyes. "You don't have to carry all of it yourself. If you are a burden, you're more than a worthy one to carry."

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco struggles to meet her gaze until forced, yet even then it feels wrong. He sniffles, holding back more tears and instead nodding in silent understanding. 'A burden more than worthy to carry', the phrase is appreciated but hard for him to grasp. He's not used to being accepted in such a way - hell, before Holdfast he barely even expressed emotions.

"We miss you," he says again. "We're all falling apart a bit... Briony really struggled with Merric's death and Yanna has been having visions about her family. There's...there's a lot going on and none of the surgeons are okay."

"But we're doing it!" He quickly adds, seeing the worry behind Rudi's eyes. "I made reports and paid almost everyone for May and I haven't had to do any foregin body surgeries so that's a win in my book." So many things done right, yet all he can do is focus on everything that went wrong - the curse of being a medic. When things go wrong, lives are lost, and they don't always manage to come back like Holdfasters do.

That's what he warned Amber about when she tried to sacrifice herself. That's why he screamed at her as he cried over Ryn's body - any day now his friends could stop coming back, and that's one of his biggest fears.

[Rudi]

Rudi releases Rosco from the curse of having to look her in the eyes soon enough. "I'll be home soon. We'll all pull through. I'll talk to Yanna, and Briony. Give them dreams, if they want to talk to me before I come back. You won't have to carry anything alone. Thank you, for being honest. I want you to be honest with me. I miss all of you too, so much." She shakes her head, bemused when he mentions reports. "No foreign body surgeries is good! I'm glad you made a report too, though I would've understood if you didn't." She adds talking to the guild about going on contract after the war to her to do list.

She lay her hand on Rosco's back. "You know, if you ever wanted to stop healing, I wouldn't blame you. It's... a heavy burden sometimes. The weight gets to you." She turns her gaze to the stars. "I don't wear it. I try not to, y'know? I have to smile for other people, especially when things are bad, but i've thought of giving it up sometimes. It's okay if you need a break." Her mind drifts to before Rosco, before the medic corps.

It was worse, back then.

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco laughs, pained but not forced. He shakes his head at the concept of doing anything else. What else is he even good at? He's a healer, that's all he ever has been, and that isn't a bad thing.

"I'll die with a scalpel in my hand," he says with a bit of a grin. "It hurts, sure, but as much as it hurts it is worth it."

For every patient he has lost there are fifteen more he has saved. Rosco thinks about Morty's 'thank you's and promises to help protect him. He remembers Everett remarking to new townsmembers how Rosco saved his life. Vindle, back from the brink of death as ichor was drained from his blood and Misty, free from parasitic eggs and safe - well, as safe as a teenager could possibly be in Holdfast.

He could never give that up, even if it meant the pain and guilt he felt now. The town trusted him to help them.

"Besides, if I stop healing you'll be forced to spend your time in the inn. You'll be clawing at the walls like a caged animal."

[Rudi]

Rudi smiles at finally getting a laugh out of him. Good. That helps.

"I think so, too. Despite any doubts... it's worth it, sometimes. It's worth it to take care of people. They may not have paid us, but they've never needed to. Though.." She laughs herself. "It's nice that we DO get paid now!"

She'd never give it up, either. It's the first skill she's ever had, the first use she's had. She wouldn't be able to stop healing just as much as she could stop breathing.

She nudges Rosco's shoulder at his next comment. "Hey now, I wasn't THAT feral when you came to town. Though, you could've seen it differently back then, considering you used to call me 'Ma'am." She sticks out her tongue at him. "I'm glad to have all of you, new and old."

[Rosco Agassi]

He reddens at the comment about his first weeks in town. He was so naive then, trying to earn respect; quiet and meek, rather than commanding. It didn't last long, the small-town respect was beat out of him quickly. He could never go back to who he was then, not even when he goes home to visit.

Was that such a terrible thing? While his family may grimace at his new attitude, it had gotten him far. One of the top surgeons in Holdfast, one of the people first introduced to new townsmembers. He couldn't possibly complain about that.

"Old habits die hard-" he responds, smiling to himself. "Or really easy when you're in Holdfast. I used to call Gull "sir", that's a weird one to think about." He chuckles, staring through the woods. The dream is starting to fade, this time not being replaced by anything. Rudi is waking up.

"I'll see you soon, yeah?"

Before she can answer, the scenery fades to white and Rosco wakes up back in the corner of the inn. His cheeks are still wet with tears, his eyes heavy. Around him, even the latest of sleepers have gone to bed, leaving him in dark, empty silence. He's alone again.

[Rudi]

"I'm proud of you, though. You've come a long way. I'm happy to have you as part of my family away from family." She shakes her head at remembering how he used to call Gull 'sir'. That seems like it was ages ago, even if it was only a few years. A lot has happened, since then.

She feels the dream ending in herself, first. She's the one waking up, Rosco becomes distant.. his voice less clear.

"I'll be back before you know it. You'll be okay." She says, as she wakes up to her empty room that the medics guild has provided for her. The night sky outside her window, the city asleep. Rudi takes a moment to curl herself into a ball, thinking of the rest of her family.  

She was still worried, even if she got Rosco to laugh. Rudi hopes beyond hope that they aren't falling completely apart without her.

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