dear_mun | (no subject)

Yeabutwut...?

*face, girl. Eyes on the face*

Well, ah... Wow.

[Yes, well, same reaction.]

Elisa.

[He'll never get used to meeting multiple versions of friends and loved ones. Especially not versions of his best loved one with a ~~very attractive~~ set of wings she doesn't regularly in his experience have.]

My team, er . . . fell victim to a captured spellcaster.

[Could've happened to anybody already human, but of course, it happened to the team that wasn't.]

Goliath.

[She really should be used to this kind of thing by now. But yet she's not.]

Eeeesh. Reversible,I hope?

We succeeded in rescuing the spellcaster. The transformation should only last another night.

[Probably best that he not let her get too close a look at all the injuries he got punching things that he shouldn't have punched as a human. Maybe she won't notice the bandages are more than cosmetic.

And hopefully he isn't upsetting her with being able to return to his natural form when she cannot.]

I'm glad to hear it. You all right, though? Looks like you've gone a few rounds with something nasty.

[Detective, remember? And... not especially. Some, yes, but that's nearly the norm for her. She had her good days, her bad, but she has a good life, good friends, and a true love. She manages.]

[That idle hope didn't account for her attention to detail.]

This being human has a way of making my usual approach to battle . . . less effective.

[He doesn't take his eyes off her as they speak, because of course, she is an immense curiosity to him. A version of his best beloved who is not the version he knows, complicating much of how he would speak to his Elisa - how he still feels compelled to speak to her. Really he has to work to refrain from reaching out to touch her, as he would if his own Elisa were here. How complicated this is, to be speaking to his love, when she is not his love.

~~Maybe he's~~ He's definitely overthinking this.]

My regard for human warriors who endure their long process of healing has grown.

[Elisa has a little more experience with alternate counterparts... but it's never easy, other Goliaths, and the effect she has of them. She never really does know how to talk to them, how their relationships with their Elisas have progressed or not progressed, or spun their wheels like she tried to do for so long...]

I imagine. We do all right...

[Unconsciously, she touches the scar from when she'd been shot, a leftover reminder of human days.]

But it takes a lot more out of humans.

[He very nearly reaches out to take her hand, before thinking otherwise. The half-gesture is about as awkward as it sounds. And in the process it exposes his own scar, a ring around his right wrist where his hand recently had to be magically re-attached. Lately his battles have taken a lot more out of him, human and otherwise.

He doesn't always struggle for things to say, but when he does, boy can it be awkward.]

But you have . . . been well as of late, I hope?

[Elisa knows all about awkward half gestures and struggles to say things. She's dealt with much of her own, and been on the receiving end of just as many.

The scar around his wrist, though, that gets a sharp intake of breath and a very nearly taken hand too.]

Well enough. We're safe, and the city's back to regular New York levels of craziness instead of our brand of crazy, so that's saying something.

And you're happy?

[This is obviously very important.]

[The all important question. One she's been asked all too often by friends, family, her Goliath, and even herself. A question she's wrestled with ever since she'd finally crawled out of her hole of depression. And one she can answer. A small smile forms.]

Not exactly what I planned out of life... but I am.

And do I ask you this enough?

[Meaning not him himself, but the version of him who shares her world. It is among the stranger things in the universe to be questioning your own behavior in another continuum of time.]

[The meaning is quite clear to her, and the answer comes quickly to her mind. Strange to be asked, in some way, but Goliath wouldn't be Goliath if he didn't care about her, whatever universe it was. She closes her eyes, smiles, and then nods.]

Yeah. You do.

Good.

[At least if he himself cannot be there for her, another him is still doing it right.]

I am glad.