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[erbier]

Shame on us; doomed from the start.

May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts.

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right after the event ends

[crowned_clown]

Ilde?

['Are you OK' doesn't seem appropriate, but he's very worried for her.]

[erbier]

Hello, Allen.

[ Her voice is soft, drowsy. ]

[crowned_clown]

Can I come over?

[erbier]

Yes, I have not locked the door.

[ Her home security is very lax, perhaps naively. ]

[crowned_clown]

Thank you.

[He usually wouldn't invite himself over, but these are special circumstances. He doesn't often lock his door himself, so he can't comment on security and simply lets himself in - looking around for her.]

[erbier]

[ She's in her bed. Curled up in one corner with a pillow, small on the large mattress. She has the shutters drawn against the artificial sunlight set behind her windows. She calls for him when she hears him, ]

Come sit with me.

[crowned_clown]

[Allen sits down beside her. He looks a little tired, but freshly scrubbed and in clean clothes he's almost back to his normal state after that last, bloody day. He's more than well enough to be concerned for her.]

It's been a long few days [he says, quietly].

[erbier]

Hm. [ A little murmur of agreement. ] I'm very tired. When the madness subsided, it felt like it took so much from me...

[crowned_clown]

[He holds out his hand, not sure if she'll want to take it or not but the offer is there.] I didn't see much... Do you feel yourself again?

[erbier]

[ She lays her fingertips against his palm, a light touch. ]

I think so. Just...

[ She doesn't even know what to say. ]

Dispirited.

[crowned_clown]

[He sits quietly for a moment. He doesn't believe he can find some sort of perfect way to word it, so he just speaks from the heart.]

I'm glad you're here.

[erbier]

A part of me will always live in that place.

[ The Otherworld was not so terribly different from her life in the Godking's palace. ]

[crowned_clown]

I know. [He says, quiet as before. After all, there's part of him that will never leave the circus or the streets or the Black Order. And yet -]

You live in the present, too.

[erbier]

Yes, sometimes. But my mind is never really mine alone, even when it is quiet... I know it is there.

[crowned_clown]

...Do you mean literally or figuratively?

[erbier]

It is true. Madelyne and her visitor banished the creature when it showed itself, but I still hear its voice in my mind. I always have.

This thing that drove the Godking mad. A demon?

[ She really doesn't know what it is, but it brings madness and destruction and suffering. ]

[crowned_clown]

I have something like that too. I couldn’t always hear him, but I have for a while now. He wants to erase me.

[Followed by destruction and suffering and death, and Allen doesn’t find the idea that he won’t be there to see it comforting.]

I know how hard it can be, even after such a short time…

[erbier]

[ She turns her head and really looks, hand inching the rest of the way into his. ]

I am afraid of what it will do. If it will drive me mad, or if it is a beacon for the creature to find me again. It has already been here on the Barge once, what if there is no one here to beat it back?

I was... so certain it had come again, that it had turned the Barge into that corrupted place.

[crowned_clown]

I don't know.

But I think that if it comes here... there will always be people who'll try to fight it back.

[erbier]

I don't want to be its herald.

[crowned_clown]

Then you shouldn't be.

[It's often not simple, but sometimes he wishes it could be made such through pure force of will.]

[erbier]

Hm. [ A familiar small noise of agreement. ] I thought I might be safe on the Barge, that if I had to live this might be the only place to hide.

[ Then it appeared, and it's no wonder she had a paranoia freakout as the madness and fog rolled in. ]

[crowned_clown]

I don't know how safe the Barge is, but I think it can grant safety.

That's why I'm here. To erase the Fourteenth, so I don't have to hide from everyone.

[erbier]

I hope you get your wish.

[crowned_clown]

I will, unless I die first.

[A statement of fact. He's not going to stop trying. He shifts to look directly at Ilde.]

If it would take a wish to banish whatever demon might want you for a herald, I'd stay for that too.