[Nexus Alt-Plot] Nothing and Nightmares {Beans & C'nor}

[Lady Serpentine]

The blonde girl shakes her head, retreating a tiny bit deeper under her covering, though it's only when she speaks that it can be told exactly where she is.
"Not going back. Temple-people did this to me," she says, pointing at a curving scar that goes from the outer corner of her left eyebrow to the back her jaw on the right side. "Burned me, too. Worse. Nice to you, maybe, not me. Never me, not with what I am."

[The Bushranger]

Dani merely nods, and stands in place, fidgeting nervously as she shifts from foot to foot.

[Beans]

The winged girl makes a sort of uncomfortable sound. The church girl looked nice and helpful and help was amazingly hard to come across... but the blonde girl was important too.
Come into the garden 't least?
Not gon' hurt you there with me w' you...
She pokes her head back out to see if the redhead remains there, giving her a conflicted, "this is going to be really difficult" look before deadtiming.

[Lady Serpentine]

The other girl had wings. That simple fact had taken a while to connect with anything in the pain filled, at least half hallucinatory, haze that filled the runner's mind, but now it did.

It meant, simply enough, that she was in danger too, if this church was what she thought it was. She would not, if she could possibly stop it, let the other runner go through what she had. And if it turned out, by some miracle, not to be... Well, then they'd both end up better off.

So, contrary to expectations, the girl crawled out of her makeshift, though shockingly effective, hiding place, and, very hesitantly, stepped out of the alley, looking like she might bolt at any moment.

[Beans]

The winged girl ushers her back toward the redhead.
Hi.
She's here.

[The Bushranger]

Dani looked up with a start as the two girls returned, giving them an earnest, and genuine - and genuinely hopeful - smile.
"Hi...I'm Danielle. What's your names?" she asked, trying to break the ice.

[Beans]

... Carrie...

...
She looks expectantly at the blonde!

[Lady Serpentine]

"Aernis Bastion,", the scarred girl answers, false name sliding easily off her tongue, through long practice using it when she's had to talk to people, or when the memories get too strong, just like now, when she hears the fire burning, and sees the frame on the wall out of the corner of her eye, the frame that isn't there, that's down below this church-girl's temple if it's anywhere here, feel the hands on her, rough and hard and ready to drag her onto it, or maybe to somewhere else, somewhere worse, even with how bad that is, if there's a special thing planned for her...

[The Bushranger]

Dani smiles a bit more brightly. And hopefully!
"Those are pretty names. Um, you looked troubled...I wanted to help. Do you have a place to stay? It's pretty lonely around here and I was hoping maybe we could, I dunno, talk over dinner or something like that!"

[Beans]

D...
I-I don't have anywhere t'stay... and...
D-dinner...
She blinks, abominably hungry.

[Lady Serpentine]

"Lots of places. Just none like you mean," Bastion offers, shivering at being so exposed, wanting to get back into the shadows and the small places, where no-one would think to look for her, the places where the things around her helped her hide, deep in the dark and the quiet where she could hear people coming and wouldn't be seen, hide back in her little den...

[Beans]

Carrie turns to "Aernis".
Food, Aernis.
Food. Shelter.
Don' tell me you'r'na turn down this offer, 't least the food...

[The Bushranger]

"I won't let anything hurt you," Dani declares, the statement almost sounding silly coming from the tiny redhead but being so earnest that it's clear she'd go up against a hundred hungry Insecticons to make it so.

[Lady Serpentine]

"Aernis" shakes her head jerkily, rapidly moving it from side to side in short bursts, before pausing, then suddenly starting again, and sometimes simply going over to one side before the pause.

"Not turning down. Not the food, anyway. Just being careful, don't want to say something that's not quite right, have it be a problem that I didn't say exactly what's the truth."

[Beans]

Carrrie shrugs and gives Dani a nervous, half-real smile.

[The Bushranger]

Dani shakes her head quickly.
"I...I don't know what you've been through, but you don't have to worry here. And if anybody wants to hurt you...well, they're going to have to go through me!"

...given her size, the declaration is, somehow, adorably ludicrious...

[Lady Serpentine]

"No. If they try, let them, send me back where I came from, don't try to get in the way," "Aernis" says, looking torn, and terrified, but also determined, as she stares at Dani. As much as she can stare when she can barely see her behind the rows of chains, hooked chains, hanging from the ceiling (what ceiling?), the ones she's going to be set on in a minute, to have her flesh slowly pulled away while they think of new things to try, that is. "They'll just take you, too; I'm not worth going through that for, especially when it won't change anything for me, except maybe make it worse, to know someone else is going through that because of me."

[Beans]

Carrie tries to gently shake the blonde's shoulder.
Stop.
'S not... wherever you were. Just a church, nice garden, nice person. She gestures from the building to the plants to the redhead, frowning.
'S'gonna be 'kay.
'N now you say yes.
'Kay?

[The Bushranger]

Dani looks like she's going to have a, possibly ascerbic, retort to Aernis' comment, but then Carrie speaks, and she closes her mouth, just nodding and looking hopeful.

[Lady Serpentine]

The scarred girl twitches, almost trying to shrug off Carrie's hand and run, but the gentleness of the contact combined with what she says proves to be the anchor that she needed to draw herself into the real world again, out of her memories, and so instead, she turns towards her, trying to cling to the winged girl, shaking.

"Yes."

[Beans]

Carrie puts an arm around her and gently ushers her toward Dani, ready ti head in and accept the hell outta some hospitality.

[The Bushranger]

Dani smiles at them reassuringly, and turns to hurry inside, leading the way to the nice, warm monastary. Which is filled with the smell of fresh fried chocobo.

[Beans]

((Wait, I think monasteries are exclusively male (while convents I think are all-female). So wouldn't this be an abbey or a convent, depending on whether there's dudes or not?))
The winged girl is, understandably, ravenous and struggling against the urge to go kind of nuts on the food.

[Lady Serpentine]

As does "Aernis"; in her case, the ever-present fear helps a bit, but it's still pretty unlikely that she'll be concentrating on much else until she's eaten.

[The Bushranger]

((Abbey then. ))

Dani quickly sets out plates of fried chocobo, baked potatoes and crabapple pie. "I can fix some more if you need it!" the ravenous little redhead declares with a smile.

[Beans]

Carrie sits down shakily, staring as if she'll explode.
She makes a little squeaky noise.

[Lady Serpentine]

Bastion just stares for a moment, transfixed. The last time she had food like this...

Was in the Temple. They told her she was free, and she was happy, for the first time in a year, for she was going to be going somewhere she wouldn't be hurt, and best of all she still had her magic, just a little spark, but it was hers, and precious, and she'd won, because she still had it, and they thought they'd burned it out of her, so she'd eaten as much as she could.

And then she'd found out that not only was it a lie, the food was poisoned, been stuck back in her cell to throw up everything she'd had that day, and keep trying to make more come out long after there was nothing left, until her muscles were seizing, and even then she couldn't stop...

"No. This is not there, not then. Sit down. Eat."

And so she does, at least to some extent, though she barely manages to get the first bite down before retching, unable to convince her body that this is safe to eat, not something she get rid of as fast as she can, though she does at least get that much to stay down, for now.

[The Bushranger]

Dani takes a seat, then looks up, surprised. Then concerned.
"Hey, are you alright?"

[Lady Serpentine]

"Aernis" shrugs, nodding weakly, and drinking a mouthful of water, assuming that glasses of such were provided with the meal.

"Just bad memories..."

[Beans]

Carrie frowns, pausing in her annihilation of the food to scoot over and pat her fellow unfortunate's back.
'S okay. Don' worry.
She points to the chocobo bone she stripped nearly clean.
See? 'S fine.