strangetrip | [GP] All we can do is learn to swim

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. - Vicki Harrison

"You're sure?" Regina already knew the answer but demanding that Sam tell her what she already knew satisfied something petty in her. Or maybe just something hurt that hoped he'd have a different answer than her locator spell had already provided.

"Yeah." Sam half-rolled his eyes at her as he leaned across the pink bar counter to grab bottles of beer from the Silver Bar ice bin -- probably the results of Rebekah's last work-effort at the Inn -- for himself and his newly arrived companion.

Briefly, Regina considered burning a hole in the seat of his jeans, but it wouldn't bring Rebekah or any of the absent ones back. Instead, she took refuge in straightening her A-line and walking around the stylish counter Sam lay across like he was surfing the waves of grief. She took down a bottle of pointlessly pricey champagne, and then found the precise cut-crystal glasses Rebekah and Miss Fisher had preferred for their afternoon indulgences. She poured herself a glass and one for the person who dared her openly bitter expression.

"So who all are we missing?" they both said at once, glared at each other and sighed. They both knew the answers, in their own way and for their own reasons. And neither of them wanted to say.

Rebekah Mikaelson. Henry Winchester. Jack Robinson. Phryne Fisher. Dorothy Williams. Angua von Uberwald. Jaime Vegas. Harry Dresden. Lydia Martin. Raleigh Becket. Yasmeen. Joanna Beauchamp. Constance Bonacieux D'Artagnan. Lindsey McDonald.

"Grief is like the ocean," Sam clearly quoted from some fucking where, and Regina tuned him out until he added, "All we can do is learn to swim. Rebekah told me that."

Now Regina rolled her eyes; they weren't friends. "Shut up, Sam."

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Faced with that gaze, wild, hurt and mean, Kash felt puny. Nothing he could say and none of his magic could fix that kind of hurt and he had the clear sense there was nothing he could destroy either. Best he could do would be make her sleep, but it would all be there again when she woke up.

He rubbed a hand over his face and then gestured out in front of him. "Don't stop on my account. Nothing worse than having a scream trapped in your chest, scratching and clawing to get out." Hell, he'd join her if he could. That just wasn't his heart's sound.

Eyes burning like the coal her father had compared them to--an idea that would only make her more mad--Snow only breathed for several heartbeats. Sharp, jerky breaths that could mean anything. More screaming, an attempt to calm herself, a threat to cry. In the end, what came was only two sharp words. "Yasmeen's gone."

Yasmeen. Kash scoured his memory for the name and finally came up with a reference. Vax and Percy's friend. The Captain.

With someone else, it wouldn't matter. The loss of a friend was the loss of a friend. But Snow wasn't like everyone else. She was more like him, before Zahra. Even after, some of the time.

"And something was a little bit better when she was here?"

"She scared me," Snow admitted. Because that much had probably been more readily apparent than the idea that she had any affection for the woman. "But she was there when I had the nightmares and didn't have Mama."

The Captain scared anyone with two thoughts to rub together. Which explained why Vox Machina had taken to her, including Pike. "The way I hear it, Yasmeen was good but not soft. The kind of person you want at your back in a fight. Scary friends make nightmares seem less dangerous," Kash suggested.

Snow wrapped her arms so tightly around herself, she might manage to squeeze the air from her own body. "She said I was crew. She said she'd look out for me."

"Wherever she is right now, she's probably cursing herself that she can't anymore." He'd heard enough about her to know she took that bond seriously, above all others.

It wasn't his way to invade other peoples' space, but he did take the opportunity to move a little closer so he didn't have to raise his voice so much. "People like her don't make that claim lightly. She'll be thinking of you, too."

Snow made a sound in the back of her throat that could have been anything from agreement to a 'fuck you.'

"Mama's the only one left," she said after a long time. It was inadequate. Words in general were just complete bullshit, they were meant to convey information and yet she could never seem to find enough of them or the right ones.

Intimately familiar with sounds that substituted for words that didn't exist, Kash just nodded in response to Snow and waited to see if she had more to say.

When she did, she might have dagger-dagger-daggered him for the grunt he let out. Mama's the only one left meant the same as I let myself love you and you're gone. And it meant I'm afraid of being alone again but I don't want anyone to know it. Tack on why bother? and is this really better than not caring? and it's not fair.

Mama's the only one left felt a lot like Z's everything for the way it put the entire weight of a shattered life on one set of shoulders, sturdy or not.

For the first time, Kash considered that one by one Vox Machina could return to Exandria and leave him here alone and Pike's the only one left or Vax, Vex, or Percy. It moved him to say something he'd never thought to hear himself say, and never planned to say again, or admit to having said.

"She doesn't have to be." Not quite no she's not, but neither of them was the sort to take that kind of assertion well.

Snow's breath hitched, something which only seemed to make her mad from the way her scowl deepened. And even though she knew what he meant, she had to ask, "Then why's everyone else always going away?"

That was not entirely accurate. It was she who had left home, so long ago now, leaving her bear and her fox and her brother behind. It was she who had disappeared from that grassland, abandoning Charming. It was she who had disappeared from Gotham, and Bear and the others who could not follow. But she had not had a choice in those matters. And her mother had left, even if by dying. And her father had abandoned her to Mrs. H. And dammit, that was what it felt like, under everything.

As far as he could tell, people leaving the Inn had no more choice than those arriving, but that wasn't what she meant. He understood. He'd been left alone after Vesh murdered the Guide and the Brothers, and everyone else. They hadn't had a choice either, but he'd still been the only one left. And he'd believed Z that he could love her, but where was she?

He scowled at the dirt, less than pleased with how this dredged everything up. "Truth? I don't know. I'm still working on that one myself."

It was a terrible answer for anyone seeking comfort, but Snow was rarely seeking anything that simple. At least not from any but a very few people at very rare times.

This? Was... acceptable. "Yeah," she said.

[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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