milliways_bar | (no subject)

Hel has dropped Ramon off with Random, and is swaying her way toward the lake door.

Mostly because she's fairly certain that a seven and a half foot tall drunken death goddess is a bad thing to have in a room full of itty-bitty people.

He tilts his head.

He remembers when he walked like that.

And when he went to the lake.

So up he is -- carefully -- and at her side.

"Hel?" he asks. "What are you doing?"

"Goin'...going outside. 'M...I am. Drunk. Atlantean."

And she giggles softly, before hiccuping a tiny proto-sob. Hel is an angsty drunk.

"Come, Lady. Sit. I will have tea brought. Do not go wandering about the damp lake."

He gently leads her toward his booth.

"Atlantean is troublesome," he murmurs as he sends for tea. "Who has given you such a thing?"

"I like the lake. No little bitty people to trip over."

She allows herself to be led, but looks toward the door with longing,

"'N all the leaves. Bright red...I like red. Ramon and I had some. Said I'd make him a sword. Don't like tea. Can't taste it."

He remembers also what his mouth tasted like after a bottle of Atlantean.

"Hel, I would be surprised if you could taste anything right now. The tea is more for me than you."

The Vala helps her to sit -- making certain she is as comfortable as possible -- then slides into the booth across from her.

"Ramon has gotten you intoxicated. Did he become so as well? And why would you make him a sword? He does not strike me as a man who would use such a weapon."

She leans against the wall and sighs,

"I can't taste most things, ever. Could taste this. Was pretty...sparkly, like sunlight. Miss the sun, in Niflheim. Miss lots of things down there."

Then she nods, slowly and with a faint sigh,

"Uh huh. Drunk 'nough to lie to me. 'S a pretty lie, though. He wanted it. Gonna learn."

"I know what it is like to not have colour and warmth."

Pauses.

"What did he lie to you about?"

"So long..."

She says quietly, wrapping her arms around herself,

"Sometimes, when he was feeling in a good mood, Fenrir? My brother? The wolf, not the snake. He'd let me snuggle up with him. I loved that. So warm. Jormundgand would too, but he wasn't warm."

Then she looks up at him,

"Said I was beautiful. 'S a nice lie, but it isn't true. 'M kinda nice, sometimes. But not beautiful. Beautiful is a skin thing, and I'm not. Not not a skin thing, I have that. Just not beautiful."

She doesn't cry. Crying means that you haven't internalized the situation. Her living eye is as dry as her dead one,

"Should have been. Would be if I wasn't half dead. But I'm not. Better if I were all the way ugly. Wouldn't matter as much."

He tilts his head.

"Hel, Ramon is a lot of things, but he is not a liar. And I agree with him. You are very beautiful. Beauty is not only a skin thing. It goes far beyond the skin. If you are an ugly soul, it shows. But you are kind, very sweet, and it shows. Therefore, you are lovely to behold."

Námo shifts to come sit by her.

"I do not lie. I think it is a silly thing. And Ramon would not lie about something like that, either. To toy with another is wrong, even if it is in the best of intentions."

And that was a hard lesson to learn.

"That's not the same!"

She'd wail it, but by this point he's sitting next to her and she droops until her head rests on his shoulder and she's somewhat muffled,

"Just look at the Valkyrie. Should'a looked like that. Almost do, and its not fair. And I'm huge, the only part-giant here. Ever'body but you is miles shorter than me, and you're shorter too and I feel awful 'cause I look down on everyone."

Okay, now? Now she's crying. Only from the living eye, though.

A crying death goddess is not something the Vala is accustomed to dealing with.

But he does as best he can. He slides an arm around her, pressing close to her and offering what comfort he can.

"Hel," he says softly, bestowing a kiss to the top of her bent head. "It is so much more important to be beautiful of spirit than of body. And that is not saying your body is not beautiful -- it is because it is the form that your lovely spirit lives in. Fair is a myth. Something people wish for, but never really existed."

On one level, she is a goddess and understands that.

On another one, however, she's a physically imperfect teenage girl who was thrown away by her relatives for something, and if it wasn't for how she looks it must be, must have been, because she's evil.

They are the gods, after all, and even if you hate them...they are the gods.

So she just cries, drunk and unhappy and unloved.