emily welling (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} extra_sensory) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} angelesic,@ 2025-04-24 21:00:00 |
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ulrich o'daley
emily welling
WHAT: ulrich intends to take emily out, but comes across a much, much more disturbing scene...
WHERE: emily's apartment
WHEN: shortly after this
WARNINGS: extreme sads, death, grief, loss of a sibling, mentions of the ritual so tw for the ritual also apply
STATUS: In Progress
“Did it happen? They got to her?”
Before she could take it back, though, Ollie was gone. A kiss to her forehead and without any fanfare he left. She felt the change in air when he opened a portal and disappeared through it. For a moment, she stopped breathing, frozen with what she had seen and what she had done. The sadness crushed her briefly, before the rage took over instead and Emily threw her hand forward, connecting with one of the cups that had been on the table, knocking it over and onto the floor. The satisfying sound of it breaking fueled her. Nothing was safe. The one place Emily knew where every single thing was was her own apartment. She’d lived here over half her life at this point, each knick knack, each piece of furniture was always exactly where it was supposed to be. So finding the little glass objects, the ceramics, vases with flowers in them - it was easy. So easy to grab each one and throw it - against a wall, straight to the floor. There might not be an end to the destruction - Emily was showing no signs of fatigue, no need to slow down. She was more running out of things to throw. In her rage, she stumbled against the couch and fell to her knees. As she did, she let out a guttural, animalistic like scream, arms wrapping around herself for a hug.
Ulrich had intended to take Emily out to celebrate Dawson’s birthday, but as he approached her apartment his heart started to race. Bursting in the front door, he was met with the mess of broken fragments of anything and everything scattered about. His heart dropped to his stomach as soon as he saw Emily on the ground. “Em…” He announced himself before kneeling down beside her and wrapping her in his arms. Ulrich knew. Not like she knew, but he had known when the group of Pantheon agents were in the woods that they were too close to finding Sam. He had hoped that she was cunning enough to get to the campus when she was so close to it. But seeing Emily in pieces meant the worst. “Did it happen? They got to her?” He asked quietly. He had seen so many die in his lifetime, He had lost his entire family long before he could outlive them. He knew the scream Emily had let out because it had been the same scream his mother did when his brothers and his father didn’t come home. Ulrich pulled her into him tightly.
The door was almost always locked, but with Ollie there it had been left unlocked allowing Ulrich’s entry. Fortunately he announced himself, so her startling was minor in comparison to what it could have been. She didn’t have it in her to be embarrassed by the state of things, though. Ulrich, it seemed, already understood what had happened. In his arms she crumbled, burying her face into his chest. “She’s…” It took a minute, but she managed to sob out “dead.” She was dead. “I saw it.” Her voice sounded hollow even thick with tears, and she shuddered out a deep breath, pulling Ulrich closer as if she were trying to crawl inside him so she could get relief from how she felt. “It’s awful and it’s my fault.” What if her interference with Roman is why they had chosen him? Did they know? Was it going to be her fault, too, if Roman didn’t come home? She was supposed to be a senior agent, his handler, and most importantly - the eldest Welling sibling. The Seer, responsible for them all and making sure nothing bad happened. She had failed so horribly.
Ulrich blinked back tears of his own. “I’m so sorry, Em.” He held her as close as she wanted to be. His arms tight as if he would never let go of her even if she wanted to. He couldn’t imagine what the Pantheon did to kill deserters and to have to witness your youngest sibling be killed. Ulrich nuzzled into her hair. “It’s not your fault. Don’t say that. You tried. We all tried to get her to safety.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have let those Pantheon agents go, but we were worried how close they were to the students' survival tests. So- I’m partially to blame.” There were enough pains under his belt that he knew just telling her it wasn’t her fault did not make the feeling go away, but he would also take the blame. He knew they were there looking for Sam and the boys could have handled the fire.
“I missed the signs. I couldn’t figure it out. Not when she left here, not when she wanted to come back.” If, if, if. It was the sort of thing she tried to warn parents away from thinking when encouraging them to send their kids to Angeles, where they’d be safe. Where they’d learn to control their abilities, enough so they could hide in society, blend in and lead normal lives. How could she convince anyone now? They were the school that let their kids defect to Pantheon. Ulrich wanted to take part of the blame, just like Ollie did, just like everyone else would. Eager to take a piece of the guilt from her, like if they could all shoulder it a little bit it would relieve the crushing pressure of failure that was suffocating her. “That won’t help, blaming yourself, or anyone else.” She said, her voice hoarse and still barely understandable through the tears. “They killed her in front of everyone. Like some kind of sick show.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell me what I can do to help.” His voice was gentle. He knew he could shift her memory so she didn’t have to have the visual of her sister’s death in her head. The knowledge could stay intact, the memory that it happened but not to have to watch it in her nightmares. Ulrich knew that feeling. Not every healer in the asylum lot had as strong of skills as the doctors had saws. He kissed her head, pressing his face into her hair and rocked her slightly for comfort. Ulrich would never use his abilities like that without her permission. He had learned the lesson the hard way about the ethics of mind control when he met his sons for the second time. But all he wanted was to make sure Emily felt safe and her pain expressed the way she wanted to. If she wanted nothing more than for him to hold her forever, he would. He would clean her space when she was okay to let go.
“I don’t know. I don’t - I sent Ollie away and I broke his heart, too, and I messed it all up, not telling everyone sooner about Sam.” She could drown in her regrets, in all the mistakes she had made. She felt like she would. Without the reckless abandon of destroying everything she had, all that was left was the hurt, and Emily felt her breathing shift. Rapid, short breaths and she felt her heart pick up in pace, beating much faster and harder than it had been. “Oh God, I can’t breathe.” Logically, she probably knew it was a panic attack, but it felt like her broken heart was giving up. That it couldn’t handle the grief she was feeling now. What did she need? She needed Oliver, she needed Ulrich, she needed to be alone. She needed Lavender and to clean her home and have some tea and gather all the people she had left together to mourn. She needed to be sick, again. She needed and wanted so many things and nothing at the same time. “Just - just don’t let go yet.”
“It’s not your fault, dear. You don’t make her leave and you didn’t make the Pantheon do some sick ritual killing. Please don’t take the blame for it. We can’t control everyone. They have to make their own choices.” He took another deep breath, keeping his own tears at bay. She didn’t need that now, but he felt for her on such a raw level. “I can make you not see it in your mind anymore,” he offered quietly in a whisper. He decided the offer was best left for her to decide on. Not everyone thought about his actual talents other than him never dying himself. When she started to have a panic attack, he rocked her just as softly. In a low, gentle voice he began to sing her a welsh lullaby like he would to calm his children when they got scared when they were little. The song vibrated in his chest as he held her close. His voice wasn’t perfect but the words rolled out so much more naturally than when he spoke in English, something no one would have ever noticed unless they heard him sing a lullaby in his native language.
Everyone did have their choices - but if she had seen it more clearly, if she’d seen it all, could she have convinced Sam otherwise? Gotten her to change her mind, to stay with them? Either way, hearing how it wasn’t her fault did not penetrate her thinking at all. She didn’t want to hear that. Her guilt was nearly equal to her grief. Ulrich’s offer was tempting. So tempting. She knew his talents well, she’d seen them firsthand over the years, she’d studied everyone’s files. He was much, much more than the man who stopped aging. She couldn’t, though. “No. I - I need to remember it, like that. It’s like… Like she wasn’t alone.” Like if she thought hard enough, Sam might have known Em was there with her in the last moments. This was absolutely not the way she had wanted to hear that lullaby, but it did stop the oncoming panic attack. Her breathing slowed as she listened to it. His voice was soft, it sounded more natural than it usually did and she focused on that, allowing herself to be washed again in the sadness, tears sliding easily down her cheeks. “I never meant for you to see me like this.”
Ulrich kissed the top of her head, accepting her choice in the matter. Not every horrific thing that one witnessed needed to be taken away, sometimes there were reasons to keep them, and Em’s reason was valid. Sam shouldn’t have been alone and maybe she had sensed her sister there like an angel. “We are still human, dear. We are allowed our tears and pain.” He took deep breaths to try and unconsciously get her to do the same. His grip around her never changing, staying as tight as she needed to feel safe to express her grief and know she was not alone in it. “I love every version of you,” he whispered, pressing his cheek to the top of her head where he had kissed. It was the first time the word had come from him in forty years, when not directed toward his sons.
I love every version of you. The words fell on deaf ears. She couldn’t hear those words - not right now. Not when she felt barely worthy of existence, let alone worthy of anyone’s love. Her heart couldn’t take it. His comfort was difficult enough to accept, and she had half a mind to send him away the same way she had Oliver - asking for her space. Thinking that just brought on a new round of pain and she pulled away from Ulrich, wrapping herself up in her own arms, knees up to her chest, face buried into the divet between her knees. “I can’t - oh Ulrich, what a terrible time to say that.” She said with a wet, choked sort of laugh. “I can’t, right now. I can’t - I can’t feel anything but her and her pain and my loss, our loss. My family’s loss.” My failure. Emily took as deep a breath as she could, lifting her face up only a little, her chin now resting in the divet of her knees instead of her whole face. “I’m sorry.”
Ulrich nodded, silently, even though she couldn’t see it. He had meant it and it didn’t have to be more than what it was, even if he rarely used the word in his life. He did love her in all her emotions, it was one of the subtle reasons why he had let himself give into her cute demands of dinners. “Come on.” Scooping her up in her position, he placed her on the couch where she would be safely away from the broken items and able to continue to pacify her emotions any way she could. In his silence, he went off to the kitchen to put on some tea and began to clean up all the broken things on the ground. “I understand how you feel more than you might be aware, dear. You don’t have to be sorry.” He said as he delivered her a cup of green tea. It might not be his extensive collection of teas, but he was grateful she had any. Green tea had amazing calming properties, especially when emotionally distraught.
Ulrich lifted her like she was weightless, settling her on the couch without difficulty. She didn’t want to let him go once he’d held her again, but she did. Instead, she curled up on the couch, reaching over to grab the blanket that was usually there. Except it wasn’t, and she sighed. Instead she grabbed the pillow behind her and cuddled that, instead. “I know you do understand, far more than I ever could.” His long life wasn’t just a blessing - his own families grew older and passed and he saw it all. Family after family. “Time heals all wounds and all that, but it never gets rid of the scars. I can tell that about you, you know. I feel it when you’re around.” Not in an empathic way, but in the way the air was around him, the psychic energy. He had seen so much, been through so much. Some people were like that, and Ulrich had it in spades. She took the tea when offered, waiting only a second before having a sip. “I have a good selection of tea, by the way, don’t be so superior.” Em said, giving him a look before immediately feeling guilty for having any levity, even for a moment, and began crying again.
With the tea in her hand, he pulled the blanket over that had been tossed along with all the other things and wrapped it around her before he sat down beside her, arm around her to keep her close. “I was the seventh son in my family,” he started quietly. “I was thirteen when three of my brothers died in The Battle of the Somme and my father followed in 1917. I watched my oldest brother die in the twenties and I was gunned down for the first time before prohibition ended.” Ulrich never talked about his original life, and he had no happy stories to tell really, but he was expressing that which she picked up on. “There are a million scars on me just from the beginning of my life. Losing a sibling, no matter what your relationship with them was will always be there. But a little piece of them stays there, scarred over but in your memories for the rest of your life. As long as someone it there to remember then they’ll never truly be lost, Em.” He wiped away her tears. “Sam would want you to think of the good times and be happy and live for her. We grieve the what might have beens, but we still had the happy times that make the loss of the future that potent. We still have them in us, to carry them forward.”
“Oh, Ulrich.” Her heart broke for him - or it would have, if it could break any more than it was already broken. What might have been left of it was warring with the i love every version of you and how that might heal her heart a bit and wanting to break for him, disintegrate into nothing. Especially when she, too, would end up another person he lost. It was difficult not to dwell on all the negative when she was feeling so low. She felt his hands on her face, wiping away her tears. She smiled at him as best she could, leaning forward to set her tea down for a moment to cool on the table which was surprisingly still close enough to the spot it should be that she didn’t drop the cup on the floor, too. She leaned into Ulrich instead, head resting on his chest. The blanket was pulled up a little, the bottom of it touching her chin in a comforting sort of way, rubbing against her skin. “I know what you’re saying is true, I really do. I am so sorry for everything that you’ve lost… I know that I can handle this because you’ve handled so much more and I have you to lean on its just…” It had just happened. She was still in shock. She had raged. She was rapidly going through the stages of grief that she knew she would be going over and over until she could reach acceptance, switching between the earlier stages for who knew how long. She knew there would be a time she could look at it as Ulrich did. “I love you too, you know. Always have, even before we were a thing.”
Ulrich wasn’t looking for her to be healed that night or even the next day or weeks. He knew the pain took time. He knew that even once you got to acceptance you could still go backwards because of some small thing. All he wanted was to be there for her and for her to know that he would be, no matter how long it took her to normalize. “Don’t be sorry for my losses, dear. I didn’t tell you to put your pain in perspective. I told you so you know that I will not rush you through your grief. I do know. I understand the process of it.” He smiled softly at her confession. “Well, you might have told me before I completely missed your cues,” he laughed, just as soft, just as accepting.
WHERE: emily's apartment
WHEN: shortly after this
WARNINGS: extreme sads, death, grief, loss of a sibling, mentions of the ritual so tw for the ritual also apply
STATUS: In Progress
“Did it happen? They got to her?”
Before she could take it back, though, Ollie was gone. A kiss to her forehead and without any fanfare he left. She felt the change in air when he opened a portal and disappeared through it. For a moment, she stopped breathing, frozen with what she had seen and what she had done. The sadness crushed her briefly, before the rage took over instead and Emily threw her hand forward, connecting with one of the cups that had been on the table, knocking it over and onto the floor. The satisfying sound of it breaking fueled her. Nothing was safe. The one place Emily knew where every single thing was was her own apartment. She’d lived here over half her life at this point, each knick knack, each piece of furniture was always exactly where it was supposed to be. So finding the little glass objects, the ceramics, vases with flowers in them - it was easy. So easy to grab each one and throw it - against a wall, straight to the floor. There might not be an end to the destruction - Emily was showing no signs of fatigue, no need to slow down. She was more running out of things to throw. In her rage, she stumbled against the couch and fell to her knees. As she did, she let out a guttural, animalistic like scream, arms wrapping around herself for a hug.
Ulrich had intended to take Emily out to celebrate Dawson’s birthday, but as he approached her apartment his heart started to race. Bursting in the front door, he was met with the mess of broken fragments of anything and everything scattered about. His heart dropped to his stomach as soon as he saw Emily on the ground. “Em…” He announced himself before kneeling down beside her and wrapping her in his arms. Ulrich knew. Not like she knew, but he had known when the group of Pantheon agents were in the woods that they were too close to finding Sam. He had hoped that she was cunning enough to get to the campus when she was so close to it. But seeing Emily in pieces meant the worst. “Did it happen? They got to her?” He asked quietly. He had seen so many die in his lifetime, He had lost his entire family long before he could outlive them. He knew the scream Emily had let out because it had been the same scream his mother did when his brothers and his father didn’t come home. Ulrich pulled her into him tightly.
The door was almost always locked, but with Ollie there it had been left unlocked allowing Ulrich’s entry. Fortunately he announced himself, so her startling was minor in comparison to what it could have been. She didn’t have it in her to be embarrassed by the state of things, though. Ulrich, it seemed, already understood what had happened. In his arms she crumbled, burying her face into his chest. “She’s…” It took a minute, but she managed to sob out “dead.” She was dead. “I saw it.” Her voice sounded hollow even thick with tears, and she shuddered out a deep breath, pulling Ulrich closer as if she were trying to crawl inside him so she could get relief from how she felt. “It’s awful and it’s my fault.” What if her interference with Roman is why they had chosen him? Did they know? Was it going to be her fault, too, if Roman didn’t come home? She was supposed to be a senior agent, his handler, and most importantly - the eldest Welling sibling. The Seer, responsible for them all and making sure nothing bad happened. She had failed so horribly.
Ulrich blinked back tears of his own. “I’m so sorry, Em.” He held her as close as she wanted to be. His arms tight as if he would never let go of her even if she wanted to. He couldn’t imagine what the Pantheon did to kill deserters and to have to witness your youngest sibling be killed. Ulrich nuzzled into her hair. “It’s not your fault. Don’t say that. You tried. We all tried to get her to safety.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have let those Pantheon agents go, but we were worried how close they were to the students' survival tests. So- I’m partially to blame.” There were enough pains under his belt that he knew just telling her it wasn’t her fault did not make the feeling go away, but he would also take the blame. He knew they were there looking for Sam and the boys could have handled the fire.
“I missed the signs. I couldn’t figure it out. Not when she left here, not when she wanted to come back.” If, if, if. It was the sort of thing she tried to warn parents away from thinking when encouraging them to send their kids to Angeles, where they’d be safe. Where they’d learn to control their abilities, enough so they could hide in society, blend in and lead normal lives. How could she convince anyone now? They were the school that let their kids defect to Pantheon. Ulrich wanted to take part of the blame, just like Ollie did, just like everyone else would. Eager to take a piece of the guilt from her, like if they could all shoulder it a little bit it would relieve the crushing pressure of failure that was suffocating her. “That won’t help, blaming yourself, or anyone else.” She said, her voice hoarse and still barely understandable through the tears. “They killed her in front of everyone. Like some kind of sick show.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell me what I can do to help.” His voice was gentle. He knew he could shift her memory so she didn’t have to have the visual of her sister’s death in her head. The knowledge could stay intact, the memory that it happened but not to have to watch it in her nightmares. Ulrich knew that feeling. Not every healer in the asylum lot had as strong of skills as the doctors had saws. He kissed her head, pressing his face into her hair and rocked her slightly for comfort. Ulrich would never use his abilities like that without her permission. He had learned the lesson the hard way about the ethics of mind control when he met his sons for the second time. But all he wanted was to make sure Emily felt safe and her pain expressed the way she wanted to. If she wanted nothing more than for him to hold her forever, he would. He would clean her space when she was okay to let go.
“I don’t know. I don’t - I sent Ollie away and I broke his heart, too, and I messed it all up, not telling everyone sooner about Sam.” She could drown in her regrets, in all the mistakes she had made. She felt like she would. Without the reckless abandon of destroying everything she had, all that was left was the hurt, and Emily felt her breathing shift. Rapid, short breaths and she felt her heart pick up in pace, beating much faster and harder than it had been. “Oh God, I can’t breathe.” Logically, she probably knew it was a panic attack, but it felt like her broken heart was giving up. That it couldn’t handle the grief she was feeling now. What did she need? She needed Oliver, she needed Ulrich, she needed to be alone. She needed Lavender and to clean her home and have some tea and gather all the people she had left together to mourn. She needed to be sick, again. She needed and wanted so many things and nothing at the same time. “Just - just don’t let go yet.”
“It’s not your fault, dear. You don’t make her leave and you didn’t make the Pantheon do some sick ritual killing. Please don’t take the blame for it. We can’t control everyone. They have to make their own choices.” He took another deep breath, keeping his own tears at bay. She didn’t need that now, but he felt for her on such a raw level. “I can make you not see it in your mind anymore,” he offered quietly in a whisper. He decided the offer was best left for her to decide on. Not everyone thought about his actual talents other than him never dying himself. When she started to have a panic attack, he rocked her just as softly. In a low, gentle voice he began to sing her a welsh lullaby like he would to calm his children when they got scared when they were little. The song vibrated in his chest as he held her close. His voice wasn’t perfect but the words rolled out so much more naturally than when he spoke in English, something no one would have ever noticed unless they heard him sing a lullaby in his native language.
Everyone did have their choices - but if she had seen it more clearly, if she’d seen it all, could she have convinced Sam otherwise? Gotten her to change her mind, to stay with them? Either way, hearing how it wasn’t her fault did not penetrate her thinking at all. She didn’t want to hear that. Her guilt was nearly equal to her grief. Ulrich’s offer was tempting. So tempting. She knew his talents well, she’d seen them firsthand over the years, she’d studied everyone’s files. He was much, much more than the man who stopped aging. She couldn’t, though. “No. I - I need to remember it, like that. It’s like… Like she wasn’t alone.” Like if she thought hard enough, Sam might have known Em was there with her in the last moments. This was absolutely not the way she had wanted to hear that lullaby, but it did stop the oncoming panic attack. Her breathing slowed as she listened to it. His voice was soft, it sounded more natural than it usually did and she focused on that, allowing herself to be washed again in the sadness, tears sliding easily down her cheeks. “I never meant for you to see me like this.”
Ulrich kissed the top of her head, accepting her choice in the matter. Not every horrific thing that one witnessed needed to be taken away, sometimes there were reasons to keep them, and Em’s reason was valid. Sam shouldn’t have been alone and maybe she had sensed her sister there like an angel. “We are still human, dear. We are allowed our tears and pain.” He took deep breaths to try and unconsciously get her to do the same. His grip around her never changing, staying as tight as she needed to feel safe to express her grief and know she was not alone in it. “I love every version of you,” he whispered, pressing his cheek to the top of her head where he had kissed. It was the first time the word had come from him in forty years, when not directed toward his sons.
I love every version of you. The words fell on deaf ears. She couldn’t hear those words - not right now. Not when she felt barely worthy of existence, let alone worthy of anyone’s love. Her heart couldn’t take it. His comfort was difficult enough to accept, and she had half a mind to send him away the same way she had Oliver - asking for her space. Thinking that just brought on a new round of pain and she pulled away from Ulrich, wrapping herself up in her own arms, knees up to her chest, face buried into the divet between her knees. “I can’t - oh Ulrich, what a terrible time to say that.” She said with a wet, choked sort of laugh. “I can’t, right now. I can’t - I can’t feel anything but her and her pain and my loss, our loss. My family’s loss.” My failure. Emily took as deep a breath as she could, lifting her face up only a little, her chin now resting in the divet of her knees instead of her whole face. “I’m sorry.”
Ulrich nodded, silently, even though she couldn’t see it. He had meant it and it didn’t have to be more than what it was, even if he rarely used the word in his life. He did love her in all her emotions, it was one of the subtle reasons why he had let himself give into her cute demands of dinners. “Come on.” Scooping her up in her position, he placed her on the couch where she would be safely away from the broken items and able to continue to pacify her emotions any way she could. In his silence, he went off to the kitchen to put on some tea and began to clean up all the broken things on the ground. “I understand how you feel more than you might be aware, dear. You don’t have to be sorry.” He said as he delivered her a cup of green tea. It might not be his extensive collection of teas, but he was grateful she had any. Green tea had amazing calming properties, especially when emotionally distraught.
Ulrich lifted her like she was weightless, settling her on the couch without difficulty. She didn’t want to let him go once he’d held her again, but she did. Instead, she curled up on the couch, reaching over to grab the blanket that was usually there. Except it wasn’t, and she sighed. Instead she grabbed the pillow behind her and cuddled that, instead. “I know you do understand, far more than I ever could.” His long life wasn’t just a blessing - his own families grew older and passed and he saw it all. Family after family. “Time heals all wounds and all that, but it never gets rid of the scars. I can tell that about you, you know. I feel it when you’re around.” Not in an empathic way, but in the way the air was around him, the psychic energy. He had seen so much, been through so much. Some people were like that, and Ulrich had it in spades. She took the tea when offered, waiting only a second before having a sip. “I have a good selection of tea, by the way, don’t be so superior.” Em said, giving him a look before immediately feeling guilty for having any levity, even for a moment, and began crying again.
With the tea in her hand, he pulled the blanket over that had been tossed along with all the other things and wrapped it around her before he sat down beside her, arm around her to keep her close. “I was the seventh son in my family,” he started quietly. “I was thirteen when three of my brothers died in The Battle of the Somme and my father followed in 1917. I watched my oldest brother die in the twenties and I was gunned down for the first time before prohibition ended.” Ulrich never talked about his original life, and he had no happy stories to tell really, but he was expressing that which she picked up on. “There are a million scars on me just from the beginning of my life. Losing a sibling, no matter what your relationship with them was will always be there. But a little piece of them stays there, scarred over but in your memories for the rest of your life. As long as someone it there to remember then they’ll never truly be lost, Em.” He wiped away her tears. “Sam would want you to think of the good times and be happy and live for her. We grieve the what might have beens, but we still had the happy times that make the loss of the future that potent. We still have them in us, to carry them forward.”
“Oh, Ulrich.” Her heart broke for him - or it would have, if it could break any more than it was already broken. What might have been left of it was warring with the i love every version of you and how that might heal her heart a bit and wanting to break for him, disintegrate into nothing. Especially when she, too, would end up another person he lost. It was difficult not to dwell on all the negative when she was feeling so low. She felt his hands on her face, wiping away her tears. She smiled at him as best she could, leaning forward to set her tea down for a moment to cool on the table which was surprisingly still close enough to the spot it should be that she didn’t drop the cup on the floor, too. She leaned into Ulrich instead, head resting on his chest. The blanket was pulled up a little, the bottom of it touching her chin in a comforting sort of way, rubbing against her skin. “I know what you’re saying is true, I really do. I am so sorry for everything that you’ve lost… I know that I can handle this because you’ve handled so much more and I have you to lean on its just…” It had just happened. She was still in shock. She had raged. She was rapidly going through the stages of grief that she knew she would be going over and over until she could reach acceptance, switching between the earlier stages for who knew how long. She knew there would be a time she could look at it as Ulrich did. “I love you too, you know. Always have, even before we were a thing.”
Ulrich wasn’t looking for her to be healed that night or even the next day or weeks. He knew the pain took time. He knew that even once you got to acceptance you could still go backwards because of some small thing. All he wanted was to be there for her and for her to know that he would be, no matter how long it took her to normalize. “Don’t be sorry for my losses, dear. I didn’t tell you to put your pain in perspective. I told you so you know that I will not rush you through your grief. I do know. I understand the process of it.” He smiled softly at her confession. “Well, you might have told me before I completely missed your cues,” he laughed, just as soft, just as accepting.