nyx ulric (galahdan) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-05-18 15:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: eleanor shellstrop ii, ₴ inactive: nyx ulric |
It was getting on in the night and the crowd had started to clear. Nyx spotted Eleanor still near the end and after he finished with the order from the guy in front of him he moved down toward her end. It had been busy earlier, but not so much that he hadn't noticed Eleanor more reserved than her usual mood. He picked up the bottle she'd been getting her drinks from and filled up her glass, grabbing another glass for himself.
"You've been pretty quiet," he said as an opener. There to elaborate on if she wanted, and something he wouldn't push if she didn't.
Time travel hadn't exactly been the most welcome interruption to her life, but Eleanor had appreciated the fact that it had mostly served as a distraction from her ongoing existential crisis. Back in normal, Vallo, however, she was having a harder time ignoring the fact that she could have died in the past and never returned to the future. And if she had gone back to the good place, she would have been on the verge of the end there, too.
"Oh, you know," she said. "Just over here thinking about Buddhist death waves."
Chidi had put it so much more eloquently. But Nyx occasionally attended the death group, so she felt comfortable mentioning that to him.
Death was a tricky thing. For all Nyx had seen of it - the massacre of his people in the invasion, the decade plus of fighting a war afterwards and even his own end - he'd yet to figure out how to truly feel about any of it. Especially his own.
That the subject was on Eleanor's mind wasn't a surprise. It felt like fairly common ground with those in the death club. Thinking about death.
He filled their glasses and set the bottle down. "You might have to explain that one a little." He was better than he had been in terms of "earth things", but there were still gaps in the knowledge.
Eleanor's experience with death was far more personal and unsurprisingly self-centered. But the fake good place had provided her with with genuine friends, and had turned her into a better person, so she had long accepted in death club that everyone's stories were going to be different, and hers was okay.
But catching Nyx up was going to be tricky. "So I watched my show because I wanted to know what happened?" she said. "And that was annoying, because I got to see that I had this long, happy relationship for years and years in the afterlife, but the first time it happened my memory was wiped and they rebooted, and then this time I only was watching it. But then before Ancient Vallo, I got one of those memory things that really just fork with your head? And I got to live out hundreds of years I think in one night which is just unfair, really. I mean, thanks, Vallo for the Spark Notes version but really? Bit too condensed. ANYWAY, at the end, I was about to step through the last door, which is the end the end and not just death the end."
When Eleanor didn't correct fake good place swears, it was a sure sign her mind was preoccupied.
She took a long drink from her glass. "Anyway, Chidi…" She'd rambled about Chidi before to Nyx. "Gave me this view of the end from the Buddhist perspective, which is basically life is a wave washing up on the shore and then returning to the sea, over but still there in a different form? Nyx, you should meet Chidi. He makes this all sound beautiful and like it's okay to let your soulmate walk through the last door ahead of you. I can't do it justice. But the point is, if I ever leave here, I'm going to be standing in front of that door, ready to move on. So Vallo? Vallo is all I have."
And that hadn't been the case before. Which was the very long version of why she had been moodily staring into her drinks.
Nyx listened patiently as Eleanor spoke, taking a drink from his glass at about the mid point. In a way he and Eleanor were sort of the outliers on the death club. Most had died and then arrived in Vallo, where they'd had an inbetween. Eleanor in the fake good place, and he after being suddenly thrust back to being alive after a decade of not. Nyx knew if whatever force being all this decided to toss him back home he, theoretically, had some time ahead of him. What that would look like, he had no idea. He'd gone from fighting the gods themselves with his brother to dimension hopping.
He knew though that whatever life awaited for him back in Eos would be a pale comparison to the one he'd carved out here. That was a marked difference between having a life and having a life worth living.
"Those memory updates are a bitch," he agreed as the rest mulled around in his mind. "Bucky's gotten a couple and it's always been a couple weeks of trying to sort shit out."
He shifted his glass between his hands and shrugged a little. "As for Vallo being all you have? I get that," he said and glanced up at Eleanor. "I think even without the death aspect of it a lot of us would get that." He paused briefly. "But I know what that's like, standing at that door to the end - having some kind of peace with it, and then losing that peace with it." He'd given his life for the greater good, willingly and without hesitation - Nyx knew that decision would be far harder these days.
Eleanor nodded. "Living all that out in one night just doesn't seem fair. Even if it was the best life I could have made for myself in those circumstances. I'm greedy, Nyx. I want more time." She wanted Chidi to show up there in Vallo, to see what life could actually be like with him while she actually lived it out, not just in memories or through the lens of a television show.
The possibility remained, of course, that she could find that same happiness with someone else. But there was always going to be a part of her that would want to know what her first love was really like.
She took another drink and then said, "You've been here a while, right? I mean you're pretty settled in, now."
He shrugged a little and gave Eleanor a sympathetic look. "There's nothing greedy about that, wanting time with someone you love." He doubted anyone would think her that for wanting what they all wanted. Time. "I know it's hard, living on the slim hope that one day this whole dimensional hopping thing might do you a solid and send you someone you love, but I'll throw my bring Chidi vibes out there for you, and I hope you get to see him again soon."
Nyx nodded a little at the question. "Yeah, over two years now and pushing three that I've been doing the whole other universe thing in general." He took a drink. "The settled part took a while though," he added.
Something about Nyx offering to hope along with her caused Eleanor to get misty eyed, which she quickly dabbed away. "I'm cutting myself off after this," she decided. She didn't need to cry at the bar, after all. Thank goodness she'd avoided going to Marina's that night.
"Things worked out though," she mused. That alone was reason for optimism. Just maybe it wouldn't take years.
Nyx just gave her an amused smile. "Noted," said as he made a show of sliding the bottle away from them. Truthfully though - after watching his friends in the Glaive live their lives on hold, get hurt, or die - he'd always want good things for the friends he made here. Different things than what he'd known for so long.
"Yeah, things worked out," he paused. "Maybe not in the way I ever pictured them to, but I sure as hell don't have complaints." Because really, if someone had told him back in Insomnia he'd be married, settled - well, that would have gotten a good laugh. "I'll work out for you too, Eleanor - maybe even without you noticing." A small shrug. "You just gotta keep focusing on moving forward, try not to lose yourself too much to what was left behind. I know it's impossible to never think about it but if this is all you got you might as well live it, right?"
"Yeah," Eleanor nodded. She knew all of this, and really needed to kick the brooding to the curb, but at the same time, she also clearly had needed this conversation, so maybe the brooding wasn't the worst thing in the world.
"Well, I'm happy for you. And maybe one day someone will be saying the same thing to me. Because I will make the most of this place. Eventually. After I finish sulking about it first."
Eleanor was at least honest about it?
"Hey now, I didn't say remove sulking from your lifestyle entirely," he pointed out with an amused smile.
"Nothing wrong with a good sulk here and there." Hell he still had his bad days himself, still felt like doing not much more than lounging around the house and hermiting. "When I showed up in my first place like Vallo I spent a good three or four months eating nothing but cereal and doing not much other than watching Wheel of Fortune so I get it."
Nyx gave her a warm smile. "And I look forward to the day I get to say I'm happy for you," he added. He was sure Eleanor would get there. She was tough, stubborn, and seemed open to making friends in a place like this. The rest he had no doubt would come with time.