The price that I pay to survive seems so high

[silentabyss]

WHO: Noah & You!
WHAT: September Catch-all
WHERE: Around :)
WHEN: Month of September
WARNINGS: Self-harm, suicide attempts, PTSD, general angst, literally none of the threads in here are going to be happy folks I don't know what to say



Unfortunately, they've been separated.

All prompts listed are OPEN unless stated otherwise and trigger-tagged appropriately in the headers. This is literally the saddest shit I've ever written y'all. I cannot be sued for emotional damages.

Feel free to wildcard on this log too, with the caveat being that the thread must be sad, because this is the sad log for sadness.

Comments

[silentabyss]

...how... how do you... learn to cope with it?

[Noah's eyes flick up to Tali, and then back to the spellbook, where he closes the pages and pats the cover as if reminiscing.]

I lost my brother pretty young, and I never... I never learnt how to deal with loss. I always chased after the person who took him from me with the intent to deliver the killing blow, but...

[But here, he doesn't know who took Clamor from him, and he's not sure vengeance is possible if the guy's already... gone. It demotivates him.]

...Sometimes that's not possible, I guess. So... how do you cope...?

[unimmune]

I...wish I had a good answer for that. [How did she cope? She lost her mother when she was young. It wasn't unusual to have a lot of losses in quarian culture. It didn't take much to kill them, after all. One bad cold was enough. Her father dove into his work and coped in that way.

When she lost Shepard, she did the same. She dove into work, trying to help her people against the geth, given everything she had learned about them in their adventures. If she lost Shepard now? After everything that had happened between them? She knew for a fact she wouldn't stop until she stopped the person responsible.

As for her father, well...]

I bury myself in work, keep myself busy. But I...made sure to honor him. I made sure my people didn't forget the good he did in his life. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure his dream of returning to our homeworld happens.

[silentabyss]

[There's a little pause, and then Noah gives a brisk nod as he takes in those words. In some ways, he supposes, you don't cope. But he can do all of that — he can bury himself in work and he can honour the memory of the person he once knew. Even if that's all he can do, it might be enough.

He'll have to press on, for Clamor's sake. He still has a cult to defeat back home, after all.]

I've been... when I have the time and energy, I mean... I've been studying some of the magic lessons he left for me.

[Noah motions, vaguely, to the spellbook.]

It's hard to just... keep going. I'm tired of all the loss. I guess I hope that this is enough and that he'd be proud of me for trying. He always seemed like he was, so...

[unimmune]

[Tali understands. She's watched so many people die over the last few years. And with the war against the Reapers not even over yet, she feared how many more people she was going to lose. But she knew she had to keep going.]

All you can do is the best that you can. And I'm sure he'd be proud of that. [She's going to risk putting a hand on his shoulder, just to give him a little comfort in that moment. If he tries to push her away, she won't try to force it.]