Sunlight gleamed over her splayed fingertips as she continued to wait, watching the particles of dust rendered visible by its partial illumination from where she stood. There was nothing else to do for the moment but to idle, to dance along the complex paths of memory and reverie until someone or something gave ample cause to pull away from them. Her ears took in the sound of doors opening and closing, glancing over her shoulder momentarily. There was no one else awake in her vicinity but herself and the person she was waiting for, and the echoing impact of oak appendages pulled closed came from the originated from the direction of the chantry.
Deidre pushed herself off the pillar and moved around it. Alderic was visible the moment she decided to leave her position, taking in his sleep-deprived state and the fatigued way he was leaning against the double-doors. She had not slept herself, having spent the night awake with Aurin in the kitchen and worrying over a few glasses of whiskey. In looking at her now, however, one would be hard-pressed to discern the fact -- she looked alert and determined; intensity shone from irises speckled by their unique emerald-and-amber mosaics.
She did not look particularly happy.
A single shoulder leaned against the side of the pillar, her hands sliding back into the confines of her pockets and finding their linings, promptly bunching them up between her fingers once she found them. She said nothing for a while, the fae-lines of her expression the most serious he had ever seen them, lips pressed together in a pliant but displeased line as her eyes worked to pin him against the chantry doors with her stare. At the moment, she displayed all the corporeal trappings of a force of nature ready to be unleashed -- launched from a flimsy human shell that may very well be all too slender to contain it.
Her voice was surprisingly neutral when she spoke, a fact that surprised even her. She expected heat, fire and rage, the torrential undercurrents of her temper spiraling out of control and ready to consume everything in her path. Something about his present state of being mollified her a little, though for now she was at a loss as to why that was.
"If I hadn't run into you this year, would you have told me?"
The archaeologist gestured a hand to the side. "If you and I haven't been told to go to the same place, would you have let me know? I'm not your mother, or your sister. I don't expect you to tell me everything that goes on in your life but I would think for something this important you'd try a little harder to communicate the fact that you're throwing yourself in the path of darkness personified. Did you think I was going to stop you if I did know? Or that I wouldn't care?"
It had only been a year. Not nearly enough time for heartbreak to knit itself whole.
Her jaw set, a tick pulsing from the delicate point where the hinge met the side of her neck. "I know I haven't been around," she continued, barely taking a breath for the next barrage of words. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry and I should try harder to be. But you ought to know that I'd never-- " She took a deep breath. "I'd never stop you if this is what you want to do. If I would've said anything it would've been to ask you whether you were certain -- really certain -- that you were prepared for this, despite knowing that they'll probably engage in methods you would never agree with. Methods you would have a serious problem with. It's not like I would've...I don't know. Thrown myself dramatically in front of you to prevent you from trying to right a centuries-old wrong. I know this is important. I wouldn't be here if I believed otherwise. But you have to know that all I would've done at that point was..."
She squared her shoulders. Even if he didn't like what he was hearing, or if he had a serious issue as to what she was going to say next, she wasn't the sort to back down. "You know that I've seen and experienced too much to blindly believe in an absent god," she began. "But I would've prayed. I would've prayed for you."