letsplayamurder | Epilogue: A New Day

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endgame

Epilogue: A New Day

In the end, hope triumphed over hate. A new pantheon of gods, gathered from all corners of the universe, came together to unlock the ultimate power and it it flow over the land once more. They proved one goddess that her wisdom was correct, and another that her wisdom was keeping her trapped in a vision of the world that would never be.

You exit the temple of Olympus, battered and bruised, but more together than ever before. Athena raises her hand and drags it before her. In the distance, the keen-eyed will see the barrier that's long protected you finally fading away.

The sun shines down. Two months and you're finally, finally free.

Athena takes care to thank each of you personally. This was exactly what her and Fenyx had theorized was possible - not exactly, but the outcome is greatly acceptable. And now, Athena is bound by her oath to return you home... or wherever it is you'd like to go. You're gods now, you have the privilege.

Speaking of! Once everyone's rested and healed, Fenyx prepared a little get-together for everyone on the cliffs, with a special bonus: they can bring in any person you desire. Family and friends are preferable, but who are they to question if you want to smack your rival across the face for the first time in weeks?

They may react in confusion, however, if you tell them about the bits of Hope buzzing in the air like glowing fireflies. They're not gods, after all. They can't see them.

Dipping lower around half-day, you may peer over the side of the area and see far, far down into the valleys of ocean and cities. And beyond all of that, sailing in from the horizon, ships. Old ships of man-made nature. Sails billowing in a wind that no longer tears them asunder. Now that the storm has passed, life can resume picking up the pieces.

It will be messy, probably a disaster at times, but there's always hope. And if that carried you here, then maybe it will bring those people to the top of the mountain.

[This is the final post of Let's Play A Murder! Players are welcome to invite cast members to this log for the purpose of tagging out reunions (Fenyx and Athena will have personally greeted and asked to bring them here). You may tag this at your leisure, whatever last-minute endeavors you'd like your characters to get into will go here.

Thank you for playing.]

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[He knows it hurts to have to relive that, but the apology is so damn important. He can't wait on it any longer. Some part of him - that terrified, uncertain part of him he tried so hard to ignore for so long - wonders if Seymour will pull back. If he'll get angry and leave, and destroy Zvei. And sure, he'd deserve it, but he doesn't know if he could ever recover from it. He's not nearly as strong as Seymour is.

But what Seymour says instead gets him to pause, blinking owlishly.]

I— Really?

[Zvei figured that his betrayal had only cemented Seymour's desire to see this path through to its completion, but everything that came after... Well, to be honest, he hasn't given it much thought. He'd wanted to protect and help Seymour regain himself. Everything else was secondary.

To think that somehow, he managed to save the God of Salvation. Hah.]

I'm glad, then. Truly, Seymour, that's... I'm happy I could help. That's all I've wanted to do for you since I realized... well, everything.

[How badly he screwed up. How much worse he made it when he tried to explain himself. And everything in between.]

[For all that it had hurt, for all that he'd felt betrayed (and it was a betrayal, he won't deny that much)... it was coming face-to-face with the dying Typhon in Tartarus that had allowed him to see himself from the outside and recognize just how futile his actions were. If he had kept on with his blind attempts at salvation, he would have become just like that, a broken shell beyond fixing--

-- no, he already had been that. Dying and everything that came along with it had, in numerous senses, been the best thing that could have happened to him. He still bears the psychological scars, yes, and he isn't sure whether he'll be able to fully regain control of his magic. But being freed from that spiral...

It means so, so much to him, and he doesn't have anywhere near the words he needs to be able to express that, if it even can be expressed in words. The words he knows how to use are pretty ones that can disguise lies, gloss over the ugly truths of the world. He isn't versed in words that express any sort of sentiment or feeling, because he's never had any occasion to make use of those.

... so rather than attempt to cobble together words that he's sure won't come out sounding the way he wants (that can't possibly hold all of the emotions he wants to get across), he decides he simply won't. Instead, he reaches up to cup Zvei's cheek before leaning in to press his lips to Zvei's.]

[Zvei exhales at the touch, and when Seymour leans in to kiss him, he meets the summoner eagerly. Maybe it's selfish to still cling so desperately to the man he hurt so badly when he hasn't yet made amends. But even if it is, Seymour's the one who gets the final say. Zvei is his until he decides he doesn't want or need Zvei any longer.

The tentacles and his arms wind tighter around Seymour - still not enough to hurt, but getting closer, as if to express the desperate, selfish thought of don't leave me.]

[Their first kiss had been desperate, needy, a culmination of pent-up physical desire coming to the fore. This, however, is the complete opposite-- gentle, and tentative because Seymour doesn't know how to be gentle when he's never experienced such things in his life. He only knows that he wants Zvei to understand just what this kiss means; that he wants Zvei, and more importantly that he loves him, even if that's a word (and a feeling) he can't acknowledge for himself just yet.

He may not know what the feeling is, but he does know all of the things it isn't, and so as he holds Zvei close and kisses him, the pieces slowly start to slot themselves together in his mind.]

[It isn't desperate or needy or impatient and rushed, a release and a show of desire - this is something much deeper and that's terrifying in its own way. Sure, Zvei knows how to kiss; even Ivilezlei knew that. But being gentle is something he has to rely on his past self's memories for to guide him. Zvei would cling and his grip would likely be too tight, but Ivilezlei knew better.

He remembers Syzi, and though he doesn't feel the same connection to the deimori as Ivilezlei once had, there's no denying that the feelings here and now mirror Ivilezlei's - the only word to describe it is love... though really, he's known that since he died. It's hardly an earth-shattering revelation even if he can finally put a name to the feeling.

His hands slide up to the sides of Seymour's face, not to angle him but just to hold him. Zvei's touch remains gentle, reverent. The tentacles move to properly embrace Seymour; tight, but not strangling. The balance he struggled to find in Tartarus so soon after being reunited, but now feels so much easier to maintain.

He would go immediately back to kissing Seymour the moment he's caught his breath, but...]

You've given me a new reason to live - and in that, you've saved me too. You know that, don't you?

[The God of Salvation needs to know that he at least lived up to his title for one person, after all.]

[Zvei holds his face as though he's something precious and immeasurably valuable, and for the first time in Seymour Guado's life, he feels wanted. Needed. Not just for his magic or his summoning (and now he finds he truly can't care whether he ever regains that ability or not) or because he's a maester, but because his presence - his existence - means something to someone. For eighteen years of his life, if he were suddenly to disappear from the world, there would have been no one who mourned him. There would have been no one who even cared, because he meant that little in the grand scheme of things.

But Zvei is here and holding him and telling him how much he matters, and even though he's lost the conscious ability to cry, his breath catches painfully in his chest at the words. The emotions he's spent the past few hours trying so hard to suppress all bubble up to the surface at once until he's shaking, nearly overwhelmed, and he drops his head down to Zvei's shoulder to try to ground himself. Now it's his turn to cling tightly in the embrace as though he's drowning.

He wants to tell Zvei that it isn't true, that he can't save anyone... yet at the same time he knows those words aren't a lie, because he knows Zvei wouldn't lie to him. And the fact that Zvei means what he says terrifies him with the realization of just how deeply and intensely he feels for this man in a way he's never felt for anyone before...

... ah. So this is what love feels like.]

[He allows Seymour to claim his shoulder, and Zvei's hands move back into the summoner's hair. Gentle, no longer exploratory or fascinated, but appreciative of Seymour's differences from anyone else he's ever met. He leans his head against Seymour's, mismatched eyes drifting closed.]

Thank you, for all you've done for me... and for giving me another chance.

[He can't guarantee that he won't mess up again. He's terrible at all of this, really. But he wants to try, and Seymour wants to let him in, and that's all he needs.

A third and fourth tentacle join the other two, winding around Seymour's back.]

I'm not going anywhere, don't worry.

[Seymour laughs into Zvei's shoulder, and it's watery, strained, yet wholeheartedly genuine.]

How could I do anything else when I love you?

[There it is, out in the open, no takebacks. If he gives voice to it, that makes it a certainty. He can't run from it anymore. He doesn't want to run from it anymore, no matter how afraid he may be to feel it for the first time. He wants to allow himself to have this feeling that is born from what he wants for himself, not what he feels he's expected to do or has to do.

Spira has no hold on him anymore. Yevon, Sin... none of those things matter. The only thing that matters is right here in front of him.]

[Zvei's breath catches at the words, spoken like it's the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe it is, given everything that's happened since Zvei's betrayal and death - would Seymour truly have taken it so badly if he didn't care? Would he have allowed Zvei to cling to him so after arriving in Tartarus if he didn't want to see him again? Logically, he can follow it. Logically, it makes sense. But emotionally...

Emotionally, it's so damn overwhelming. It feels like he's forgotten how to breathe entirely for far too long. He has to force the tentacles to loosen before they risk squeezing too tight, and the words follow without the proper thought to temper or control them.]

Even after everything I did to you? Even after leaving you on your own? I— Seymour, I—

[Zvei still doesn't know how to cry, but apparently the closest thing his body can manage is that uncontrollable shaking as it starts up again, the shuddering even traveling through the tentacles as well.]

I love you too, [like he has to force the words out, because they're so damn important to say,] and I wish I could have recognized that sooner. You— You mean the world to me, Seymour.

[They're a mess, shaking and clinging to each other like this because neither one of them is capable of shedding tears. There's nothing even remotely romantic about this situation. It's as messy and disastrous as they are, yet at the same time it's the most raw and honest thing Seymour thinks he's ever experienced in his life. And in that, it's a hundred times more romantic than any moonlit stroll or dinner date for two could ever be; they're baring the ugliest parts of themselves to each other and embracing and loving those parts for what they are.

Seymour isn't a good person. He's never been a good person. Zvei knows this and doesn't care, loves him in spite of that and hasn't tried to change anything about him. He's not sure he can ever be a good person, but he also knows that Zvei won't care about that either just as he doesn't care about the things Zvei has done. Other people wouldn't understand this; Seymour doesn't care.

He laughs again, breathless, turning his head just enough to brush a kiss to Zvei's cheek.]

Would that we both could have recognized it sooner...

[He couldn't, of course, because it took the clarity that death and the subsequent shattering of his mind brought. But what's done is done, and now it's time to look forward, not back.]

[That's exactly it - anything else wouldn't be them, now would it? Two broken, messed up, lonely individuals who have had to learn how to let their walls down to let someone else in, and the struggles that come from that terrifying emotional intimacy. It's not just Zvei who isn't good at it, Seymour's also stumbling through this for the first time, and maybe together they can eventually form one semi-functional person. Maybe.]

We're quite bad at this, aren't we... Well, what matters now is how we move forward with it, right?

[He leans into that kiss with a quiet, pleased exhale. Theirs will never be the storybook romance of Velvet and Ferdinand, but it hardly needs to be. It's theirs, and there's nothing more Zvei could ask for.]

I'll be right here by your side, wherever you'd like to go - for as long as you'll have me.

[It doesn't matter how long it is, it'll always be worth it. Always.]

Wherever I'd like to go?

[He makes a show of considering this, and though Zvei won't be able to see the smile that curls at the edges of his lips, he can likely feel it against his cheek.]

I think I would like for both of us to go back to my room.

[The same invitation as the first time, though with a completely different intention underlying it. The first time had been about fun and pure physical pleasure; this is about much, much more. Somehow he's ten times more nervous about this than he was the first time he'd made the offer, but... they'll fumble their way through it together, and that's what counts.]

And I would like to have you there for quite a while.

[Is this worth it, Zvei. Is it really.]

[You can probably hear and feel the sheer amount of !!! in his expression before he even starts laughing; it's the sort of laugh that is genuine and surprised, caught off-guard by Seymour's boldness once again, it seems.]

Then I'd be delighted to join you~ As though I would ever want to be anywhere else?

[The tentacles wind a little tighter around Seymour to squeeze a bit for just a moment before they loosen and withdraw entirely. Zvei's hands move to take their place.]

Whenever you'd like to move, Seymour.

[Of course it's worth it. He'd go through ten times the amount of hell he just went through in this damn game if it meant he got to see Seymour so damn happy again.]

[Funny how Zvei seems to be an expert at bringing out that boldness in him, really. Yevon knows he certainly wouldn't even think of behaving like this with anyone else.]

I am trusting you'll make sure that I will not want to be anywhere else, either.

[Zvei keeps walking right into this and he's just going to keep on taking advantage of that because it's entertaining. That's his excuse and he's sticking with it!!

He takes those hands, lacing his fingers with Zvei's as he turns to begin walking.]

Perhaps we should inform Astarion... but I believe he will be able to figure it out. He is rather perceptive.

[And look, if the two of them are suddenly nowhere to be found, there are only so many things that could be going on...]

[Another of those bright, almost-startled laughs from him; he sure does keep giving Seymour plenty of opportunities today, huh...]

Don't worry, I'll make sure of it!

[He eagerly accepts Seymour's hand, squeezing the summoner's claws between his fingers as if to remind himself that yes, this is indeed real. He's not sure he'll ever get used to the feeling of holding Seymour's hand like this, despite the fact they've been doing this for like an entire week by now.]

We certainly can't be blamed after the complete lack of privacy in that place. [And also Seymour's mental breakdown.] Astarion will undoubtedly have plenty to tell Tav, surely they can wait for a bit longer~

[And this time we don't even have to pretend to be subtle about what we're doing! Fantastic.]

[If he actually cared to think about it, Seymour might stop to marvel at how he went from disliking physical touch of any sort to outright wanting to hold Zvei's hand whenever possible in the span of approximately one week. But there are a great many other things he could be thinking about instead right now, and so that particular thought gets placed to the side for later consideration. It's not as though he's going to stop wanting this, after all.]

And surely they have catching up of their own to do.

[Wink wink, nudge nudge, he's not going to judge if they come to a similar decision. It has been two months of separation for them...]

... I do hope Athena's soundproofing still holds. If not...

[Ah well, sucks to be anyone else!!]

True enough!

[Good thing Astarion's room is on the opposite side, anyway...]

Oh, that is a good point. Well, one more reason for them to dislike us, then!

[Ask him how much he cares about pissing anyone else off. He does not. Astarion and Riful are excused from this, but both of them would probably just find this funny.]

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Epilogue: A New Day

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