Don't Worry, Be Happy??

[firstbump]

♥ Who: Ardbert, Gaius, Emet-Selch, Era, Estinien, and potentially others (so, mostly closed except CR?)
♥ Where: Their two houses
♥ When: A span of time after the untempering plot from last week. Various scenes.
♥ What: Dealing with the aftermath
♥ Rating: PG-13 because I'm sure someone will have a filthy mouth.

The days after they succeed feel strange, like a moment stuck in time. But they succeeded, and there are days after. It's a start.

Comments

[judging_you]

[The anger, for good or ill, is not likely to be going anywhere in a hurry.  Even now, he's still holding onto it (stubbornly, defiantly), but in absence of a catalyst, it remains mostly unfocused.  A gentle haze, hovering over him, rather than the sword he has wielded it as on more than one occasion.  (The sword it might well become again, should Basch return to the city.)  For now, however, that same lack of immediate anger means that it's easier to catch glimpses of who he is underneath all that anger.  Of who he could be, perhaps, were he given enough time.


That said, for all that he has managed to offer something at least closer to a jest, neither can he quite bring himself to follow up it either.  Not when he's still not entirely sure of what is or isn't appropriate - if Gaius is paying particularly close attention he might spot the flicker of suggestion that might accompany a comment bitten off and thrown aside.

(Though his experience - limited though it is - is more with Occuria and espers, he's still fairly certain no good will come of seeking immortality that way.)

Thankfully, then, Gaius has offered another topic.  One that he is at least more familiar with, if nothing else.]

It will pass.

[Restlessness is not a weakness, this he knows.  Nor is wariness, given his position.  But neither are things he can afford to show, with Archadian politics as they are, and the habits of nearly two decades are not so easily undone by a mere handul of months in another world.  No matter how strange the battle might have been in comparison to what he's used to.]

[forgarlemald]

[It's a flicker he almost misses, as out of place as it seems on that face at first. One of the many, increasing number of differences between this Gabranth and the one of his own star, though before Gaius can prompt the man for what he was about to say-]

[Well. As much as he may have expected such a response by now, it still earns a raised brow, and a quiet scoff along with it.]

Which doesn't answer my question in the slightest.

[It's not quite an "I'm fine", which he supposes he should be at least somewhat grateful for. But it does also somewhat bring down the attempt to lighten the anxious aura that had seemed to settle over all of them these last days, and while Gaius isn't annoyed... The concern is clearly there as he leans back, watching Gabranth a little more intently than he had been before.]

You came to my aid when you had no reason to put yourself at risk for us, and I owe you much for that. But I can hardly help in kind when I don't know what is going on.

[judging_you]

[It doesn't, and he knows it. But neither is it incorrect for all that it is both unhelpful and not conducive to lessening the anxious aura that has settled in around the house. He might not know how long it will be until it passes, absent any other attempts to deal with it, but if nothing else he's used to burying his emotions out of sight. (Even if they only sometimes get properly processed afterwards.)

That Gaius is concerned, on the other hand is... not unexpected, at this point, but still something that has yet to become truly familiar, either. Still, there's a moment of silence - one that stretches on very nearly too long - before he offers a sigh into that silence.]

There are... few beings in all of Ivalice that might possess such abilities as I saw, there. And none are foes that even a Judge Magister might be asked to stand against.

[He's a good fighter, and more than capable - as the Untempering itself had proven. But even so, he had been badly out of his depth, when it had come to the sheer scale of the abilities and how much he had been expected to deal with all at once. Enough to leave him... uncertain of what to make of much of it, much less how to settle again now that it's done.]