diatu | I am the nothing you have saved.

I am the nothing you have saved.

who: Yotsuyu and...maybe you?
what: The witch has discovered that the knight is missing.
where: Temple of Raida grounds
when: Any time during the first week of November really
warnings: Well, Yotsuyu has a temper, so that's worth a warning...

It was useless scurrying, was it? As if she were some sort of rodent. From one edge of the island to the other, from one end of the campus grounds to the other. Searching, endlessly searching, but not finding. She did not want to admit the truth, Yotsuyu did not, but in the end? The truth was nothing but impossible to dismiss, impossible to ignore.

Hendrik was gone.

She sat in the courtyard of the temple, head bowed, back against a young sapling. In her lap, she cradled a sheathed dagger, one hand clasped on the hilt. And yet, she only held it, eyes downcast.
Yotsuyu had nothing to say...but despite that, a bitter laugh escaped her, and she bowed her head.

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Eleven emerged from the temple, shrugging his shoulders and adjusting his baldric. It always felt a touch strange to trade his acolyte garb for his travelling clothes at night. But this night, like the last, failed to greet him with the presence he'd grown so accustomed to. Hendrik didn't always walk him back, but more often than not..

"Yotsuyu," he breathed, stepping more quickly toward her once recognition flashed. She didn't look as though she'd come to walk him back. Rather, her downcast expression and the dagger she cradled spoke of another reason entirely.

"..I'm sorry," he said automatically. "I didn't know how to tell you."

Yotsuyu glanced up at Eleven, lifting one arm to wipe at her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. Once, perhaps, temper would have flashed and had her snapping at him for the lack, but grief clenched its claws deeper into her heart, and she took a sobbing breath. She would not cry again, damn it...

"I understand, I think. I certainly cannot fault you." After all, how does one explain such a thing? 'Oh, Hendrik's disappeared, just thought you should know.' At least Eleven himself seemed to be taking it...as well as one could expect.

"Are you all right?"

Eleven crouched down in the grass- near enough to reach out for, if she wanted.

"I'm all right," he assured with a soft smile. "Hendrik hasn't left me- not really. I know he's back there, protecting me with everything he has. And he might yet return one day."

"That is a blessing, at least." That Eleven was all right. He'd grown much in the time since he had disappeared--and even that sent a pang through her, as she remembered that time.

She inhaled and let out another breath. "I am not certain I want that--he should not be separated from you once again, unless you are here. And he returns here. If not...no. I cannot ask the gods to be so cruel to him."

They'd been cruel enough to her, and truly, Yotsuyu wondered if they were laughing at her even now.

"... Hey."

Webby slowly and gently began to approach her, hands knotting and re-knotting, unsure how to handle this situation.

"Hello, Webby." As sad as she was--and Yotsuyu was, that was certain--she could not help but offer the duckling a small smile.

And, because she was fair certain she was worrying Webby, she put the dagger back in its place on her belt. "No worries there, my friend--'twas only a gift. One...he gave me. Hendrik."

She sighed, then, because there was little else she could do.

Webby fidgeted again before sitting next to Yotsuyu, looking her over.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

He had not really known Hendrik, nor known the extent of their relationship together. But he knew when he saw her that Yotsuyu had lost someone dear.

The end of this month had been difficult on the Sundered students of the magicacademy. There had been a fair number of disappearances of classmates these last few months--friends, family, people whose faces and presences had just become part of the general landscape of the world. Their experience here was changing, because people formed the basis of one's experience of a world (not the food or the arts or the places, but people or a person), and change was frightening. Change often meant a loss of something one was fond of.

None of that was comforting at this end of Allhallowtide. None of it reversed the changes of the past few months. It did not bring those people back and it did not undo Aziraphale's own failure to create change. Commemorating the departed souls had always a bittersweet affair and he could offer little to his friend other than the usual condolences and platitudes.

He carefully took a seat beside her and placed a warm hand over hers on the hilt of the dagger, and said nothing.

Yotsuyu had heard someone approaching, but had paid little mind. There were priests and priestesses making their way through the temple, after all. She was not here to bother them, simply to mourn and hopefully, not be too much of a nuisance as she did so.

Raida was supposed to be a benevolent goddess, after all. As much as one could be, to such as she, Yotsuyu supposed.

But she was not expecting company, and glanced up to see Mr. Fell as he settled himself and laid his hand over hers. Nonetheless, she offered him a smile--a smile that was small and sad, true, but one that said wordlessly that she was glad to see him.

Comfort was not his strength, though for her, he gladly made an effort. Whatever her actual intentions were for that dagger in her lap--sentiment or action--just the presence of it frightened Aziraphale. Yotsuyu, more than anyone else here, had been his friend and confidante. She was his only true confidante here, even if he had never necessarily been the same to her. Their time together was cherished and he knew, someday, all too likely either he or she would be faced with the other's untimely disappearance. But he was a selfish angel. He did not want her to leave today.

Especially since he knew that death awaited her back home.

He watched the priests and priestesses, the other parishioners, and let the gentle murmur of prayer wash over him. And though Aziraphale had never quite come to terms with these foreign gods, he silently said a prayer to whoever would listen--his own God, or Raida or some other great entity somewhere in the cosmos: a prayer for her and for the man she had been unwillingly separated from. That they might be safe, and find happiness, and if they truly desired it, that someday they might be reunited.

After a very long time, he turned to her and said softly, "My dear. If you should like to talk--I am always here for you."

Lena had taken a moment to just watch Yotsuyu, and somehow recognized the familiar feeling. Then, slowly, she made her way over.

"...hey."

Yotsuyu looked up, then. She shook her head ever-so-slightly, and gave Lena what could only be termed a tired smile.

"It has been a while, no? How have you been?" She tucked the dagger away in her belt, and patted the grass beside her. "Well, I hope?"

It wasn't even that Yotsuyu was trying to hide how she truly felt, now. She was rather glad to see the young duck again and genuinely curious as to how Lena had fared since the last time they had talked. She couldn't force much more of a smile than she had, however.

Lena definitely noticed the faint smile, but decided not to comment on it for now. Instead she shrugged, taking a seat next to Yotsuyu.

"I'm hanging in there," she said after a moment. "Just kinda been keeping busy. What about you?"

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I am the nothing you have saved.

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