hadriel | 001

Probably not. I mean, it's sort of just trying to get you to set things straight inside yourself. If you're comfortable telling me more about it, I might be able to help more.

[But he doesn't want to force her to tell any secrets she's not ready to share. He pauses, looking at the bowl of water and then away before he can see anything. He's here to help her, and, well -]

I'll go first. Uh, I sacrificed myself to a magical forest on a ley line in order to give it the energy it needed to fully manifest itself. Part of it lives in my head now. I see things, and sometimes I can manifest them. Like - branches, leaves. Thorns. Other things. Magic stuff.

[He can't expect her to open up if he doesn't. It's not everything, but it's something. The basic gist of things.]

That sounds fucked up. [ There's some amount of judgement to her tone, to the way her eyes narrow (the word sacrifice has such negative connotations for her), but she refrains from digging in to him. His past is his own as are his reasons. She barely understands what a ley line is, or how it affects his world: where can she judge?

She looks down, to her feet or the bowl or the crumpled grass beneath them. What is she to say in return? ]

I used to have only a fraction of a soul. [ The words are stiff, like they're tough to get out. She swallows before she continues. Her eyes remain on the grass and ground beneath them. ] It's as complicated as it sounds, but the cult that's been after me my whole life... They burned a girl alive in the 70s. She got revenge by pulling them into a another world, a world filled with monsters of her own design, but she was as trapped as they were. She split her soul apart, and created me with what 'goodness' she felt was left inside of her after years of being trapped.

Before I came here, we... we became whole again.

It was.

[He won't try to pretend otherwise. It needed to be done, and in the end he doesn't regret it - it's given him so much. But he was in a bad place at the time, not thinking as clearly as he should have. It was a dangerous decision, it could have gone very wrong, and he sacrificed part of himself, part of his autonomy.

Pretty fucked up.

He listens to her quietly. After what Adam has been through, he doesn't disbelieve anything she's saying.]

So is she inside you? Is she what's making it hard for you to control things?

[ It's tough to explain something that Sharon herself doesn't fully understand. She shakes her head. ] There isn't any separation between who Alessa was, and who I am. We're as we're meant to be, as we always should have been. The abilities I have, though, I never had before I was whole.

I had dreams that came true sometimes, but never... never fire, never the things I can do now. [ There may no longer be separation between Alessa and Sharon, but these powers are wholly Alessa's, manipulated and grown through the years; they feel beyond her. ]

[Maybe it shouldn't make sense, but it does. Adam nods. They're one person, and that's given her abilities she either doesn't or can't control. It's not the same thing he went through, but it's not completely different, either.]

And it happens without you wanting it to. Well, I can't promise this will help, but it probably won't hurt. When I did it - I guess it was sort of about setting boundaries, about figuring myself out so I couldn't be as affected anymore. If that makes sense.

I love the use of probably there, Adam. Really instills within me confidence. [ It's a nervous sort of sarcasm that spills from her lips, an attempt to be easy with him, friendly, even. She has some hope that something will come from this, that things inside of her will calm some. She swallows. ]

All right, how do we...? [ How does she start? ]

[There's the faintest twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips. It's true, he's not exactly approaching this with certainty and confidence. But he does think that it could help - and if he's here, maybe he can keep anything bad from happening.]

Look into the water, and try to relax. Try to let go.

[When Adam does it, it's easy, because Cabeswater is always reaching out to him - trying to pull him in, so it's easy to let himself be pulled. He doesn't know if it's the same for her. It might be harder.]

[ The idea of relaxing sounds like an impossibility, but she tries. She watches the water, brows pulled down tightly as she tries to force something to happen. She feels like an idiot, but the water is nice to watch. It takes several long minutes before her expression eases somewhat, shoulders loosening.

All right. That wasn't exactly easy, but we're basically there! ]

[He sees her shoulders relax. That's good - that's a start. But the more difficult part comes next, because he doesn't know whether her powers will reach out to her the way his do - if she can face them inside herself, or if this will just turn into an intense meditation session. Which could be helpful, but is not necessarily what he's going for.]

You have some contact with your magic. Try to reach for it - don't try to use it, just try to communicate. It's there inside you somewhere.

[Adam thinks maybe, like this, he could pull her into Cabeswater if he needs to, if this doesn't work, but he's wary of that. Better if she manages this on her own.]

[ This is the thing Sharon tries to avoid: contacting her abilities. There have been moments within Hadriel where, in a flurry of panic and fear, she instinctively unleashes it, but those moments were few and far between. She does not dare practice with it—Hell, she rarely wants to acknowledge it.

She tries to reach out to it, but it scares her. It flows in currents beneath her skin, a crowding, choking darkness; smoke, and fire, and out of control. She tries to remain relaxed, but she's slipping quickly.

It's a wounded beast inside her, twisted and gnarled after years, and years, and years of suffering. It is as much wound now as it is power. ]

[He can't quite sense what she's doing - his powers don't exactly work that way - but he can feel her power, when he's half in a trance and accessing his own powers. He can feel that she's got something inside her, that she's powerful, that she doesn't know how to use or communicate with it, not really.

Adam understands that. He was in the same place once. But Cabeswater was never actively malevolent, it just didn't understand how humans worked, how he works. It's not the same thing.]

If it's too much, come back. Don't let it drag you down.

[He stays calm, because right now he thinks she might need that.]

[ His words make sense, but Sharon is remarkably stubborn—she pushes on. She's never done this before, never tried before, and to give up on the first go is failure to her. She wants control, needs it.

The people here, regardless of her level of like of them, do not deserve her nightmare, and the threat of it increases the longer she's here. ]

It's like fire. [ She tells him, a whisper. And it promises that she, too, will one day be fire. ]

[It's not fire to him, but everyone's powers are different, and certainly hers are very different than his. It's good, he thinks, that she can talk at all - it means she hasn't been consumed by it. Adam is still worried, though, because he knows his own inexperience. He doesn't want anything to happen because he didn't know what he was doing.]

Does it burn?

[Or, maybe more importantly:]

Can you use it?

I... [ The words won't come out, not as she tries to use it. It does not burn, not in any sort of typical sense, but it makes her feel like fire; a phoenix that was birthed from the ashes of its last hollow self.

Without any warning, the water in the bowl boils, steaming, out of control. ]

[He goes very still. Adam doesn't think that's a good sign, not unless she meant to do, and there's no indication she did. He thinks of Cabeswater, summons its strength - thinks of a still, clear, deep pool of water in the middle of a forest, something even fire couldn't touch.]

Hey. Come back, all right? Step back from it. Let go.

[ It seems like minutes pass before she can pull herself away, taking quick, small breaths. ]

S-Sorry. [ Her head feels light, and her stomach feels sick. Without any warning, she leans to the side and empties the contents of her stomach. The world smells of smoke, and ash, and burnt flesh to her. ]

And for that, too. [ that will take time to get used to. ]

It's okay.

[It's a little alarming, sure, but Adam can't really judge. He did a lot of things he cringes to think back on when he was first figuring out his magic. He's not entirely sure whether to label this a success or a failure, but it was something.]

Are you all right? It... well, you seemed to reach out to it easily.

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