even if the whole world changes

[prophecized]

Somehow, the world keeps getting stranger. Elora hadn't even thought that was possible, but then, she was also having the same thought regularly before she went and found herself here, wherever here is. Darrow, apparently. She still doesn't get it. It wasn't so very long ago that she left Tir Asleen for the first time in her life, at least the first time that she knew of. She's gone so, so very far from home, farther than should even have been possible, and then wound up even farther beyond that, stuck and confused.

It's not just the trappings of all of it, either, though those certainly don't help. She doesn't have the first idea what a phone is, or why there are so many buttons on the oven in her apartment, and the first time she managed to turn her television on, she sat there transfixed, directly in front of the screen, until she wound up with a headache so bad it promptly sent her to bed. There's so much here that seems infinitely more magical than anything she's ever managed to do.

She would be fascinated by that — and she still is, really — except that it's also part of the problem. For so long, she was no one, wanting desperately to be someone; then, she was not only someone, but the someone, practically downright mythical, and wanting nothing more than to be back home in her simple life, where the most she had to worry about was burning baked goods or whether the boy she liked might like someone else. And no sooner did she embrace being that someone then she wound up no one again. She gives her name here, the one that still barely even feels like hers, and no one so much as blinks. It doesn't mean anything, leaving her relieved and desperately sad in equal measure.

At least there's still the one constant in her life: the kitchen. Confusing though her oven might be, the refrigerator is absolutely miraculous, and she knows no better way to shut her brain off when it starts buzzing with thoughts she can't manage to make sense of. This, she knows, and while it may have required some adaptation on her part, it's still the easiest thing to throw herself into. The only problem is knowing when to stop. She's already spent most of the money the city has given her on ingredients, and it's entirely too easy to let that turn into more than any one person can eat on their own. She needs all the stress relief she can get, though, and not long after her arrival, she found a place called a soup kitchen around the corner from her apartment building that feeds people who might not have the resources to feed themselves. She's already offered to go in and cook there, and to bring in anything extra she might wind up with.

There is, in fact, a lot of extra. It won't go to waste, which is the important thing, but still, she feels a little silly when she makes her way out of her building with her arms full of containers — Tupperware, she heard someone call it, which she thinks is a very stupid name — of muffins and other assorted things she's made. Abruptly, she decides that she may as well lighten her load a little. She'll still have more than enough to leave at the kitchen if she gives away some of the rest. "Hi, excuse me, do you want some muffins, by any chance?" she asks the first person she passes by, only to nearly double-take as she looks up, and up, at the man in question. "Whoa. You are... very tall."

Comments

[onlythebranch]

Sweeney takes them, because at this fucking rate, he'd be an idiot not to. Darrow is better in a lot of ways, but so much of the belief that fuels him still comes from myths and stories that don't actually makes a bit of sense when one looks at him.

It's why he barely remembers Lugh most of the time. No one else does either.

"Thanks, lass," he says, then smirks a little and reaches out. It's a stupid magician's trick, but he tugs a gold coin out of the air from within the waves of her hair and holds it out toward her between his thumb and his finger. "Mad Sweeney."

[prophecized]

The way he produces the coin seemingly out of nowhere makes Elora think of Willow again, of the spontaneous sleight of hand that apparently saved her life. It's a fond memory now, at least, thrown as she might have been by the revelation at the time. Maybe it's just being a world away from her friends — her makeshift family, really — that makes it hard to be bothered by things that once weighed on her. Besides, it's not like she can't understand why someone might feel like a fraud and not want to admit it or let people down.

"Elora," she replies, curiously plucking the coin from between his fingers and peering at it, smiling as she does. The name may still not feel like hers, but she does her best to hide that. Looking up again, she asks, "Is 'Mad' really part of your name? Or just a title?"

[onlythebranch]

Briefly, his brow creases. No one really asks that, not any longer, and there's no simple answer to it.

"Oh, that's a complicated response, lass," he answers as he peels back the lid of the container and selects a muffin, then holds the container out toward her in offering. No reason not to share, after all.

"Many thousands of years ago, I was called Lugh, and somewhere along the way somethin' happened. Not sure when, not sure what, but Lugh became Suibhne mac Colmáin and then he was driven mad by a curse, so he became Buile Shuibhne. Mad Sweeney." He smiles, a bit sad. "Suppose it may be a touch of both."

[prophecized]

Elora doesn't get it, not really, but the way she sees it, she doesn't need to. The world is a bigger and stranger place than she ever imagined while she was growing up, and being here in Darrow has only made that become even truer. He certainly doesn't look thousands of years old, but who's to say that's the sort of thing a person can see? She wouldn't look at him and expect that he would give her luck in exchange for baked goods, either, but she believes him all the same. A story like that is too bizarre to be made up, anyway.

"I used to be Brunhilde," she offers with a shrug, the look on her face making clear how she feels about that particular name. It's not the same, really, but going from one name to another is something she can at least sort of understand. Taking one of the muffins, a lemon poppyseed that she knows is delicious, she picks a little off its rounded top to eat. "So what do I actually call you? Sweeney, Mad Sweeney..."

[onlythebranch]

"Christ, lass, Elora's a hell of a lot nicer than Brunhilde," he answers. She doesn't look like a Brunhilde and by the look on her face, maybe she'd never felt like one either.

"Sweeney," he answers. "Or Mad Sweeney, if you're annoyed with me." He flashes a grin to indicate it's a joke, but truly, he doesn't much care. Names matter, he knows, it's what brings him belief, it's what keeps him going and for that alone, he values his name.

It's just that both mean the same. He's both, he's Lugh, he's a number of things he used to be and still is and may be in the future. In another thousand years, he may yet be something else entirely.

[prophecized]

"Sweeney, then," Elora says, giving him a smile. She has no reason to be annoyed with him, after all — at least, not yet. At least, too, it's a simple, straightforward response, easier than going into detail about her own name. That topic is still far more complicated than she thinks something involving a name should be. Trying to explain it here seems all the more difficult, too. Back home, for the small amount of time she was Elora Danan, everyone knew what that name meant.

Here, she's no one again, kitchen maid or fated empress of the realms making no difference, and it's way too confusing.

"And, yeah, you're not wrong. It was Elora when I was born, so that's, I don't know, my real name. It got changed when I was a baby. Really long story."

[onlythebranch]

Sweeney shrugs and extends his hands to indicate that he has all the time in the world. He's holding a muffin in one, the container in the other, and he sort of wants a smoke, but instead he just stuffs the muffin into his mouth.

"I ain't goin' anywhere," he says, the words muffled. "If it's a story you care t'tell. Names... they matter."

They matter more than some will ever know.

[prophecized]

Elora lets out a little sigh, though not of any kind of displeasure. He's right, after all, and that's a deeply complicated subject for her. Names matter, and she spent most of her life without hers, so long that now that she has it again, it doesn't feel like hers, a lot of the time. Maybe that's all the more reason to tell him, though. Between what he's told her about himself and the sudden stifling sense that who she is doesn't matter here, she wants to say it, to explain as best she can. She doesn't want to be alone with it anymore.

"Well, the short version is," she says, and takes a bite of muffin, figuring she might as well, "when I was born, I... fulfilled a prophecy. It was a whole thing, there was an evil queen who wanted to kill me, et cetera, et cetera. That didn't happen—" She gestures to herself. "Obviously, as you can see. But then the new queen, not evil, decided it would be best if I had a normal life. If I never knew who I was, never learned to do magic. So I was Brunhilde, the kitchen girl. And that was all I knew, until not very long before I got here."

[onlythebranch]

"Christ, lass, she could have picked a better name than Brunhilde," he says, firm in this. Elora suits her better, but even if they'd had to change it, there are worlds of other names to choose from.

"Prophecies, magic, yeah, I get all that," he continues, his gaze drifting off. He has his own prophecy, to die by the spear, and hadn't he in the end? Not here. Never here. In Darrow, he's in possession of the spear and he's in no hurry to give it up.

"So what happened?" he asks. "They decide you needed to know?"

[prophecized]

"Not... exactly," Elora says, rolling her eyes in amusement. In spite of the subject at hand, though, she's a little relieved. It hadn't taken her long at all to understand that Darrow isn't at all like the world she left behind, full of a different kind of magic, maybe, but making her story feel like an out of place one. Given what he's told her about himself, it isn't as surprising as it might be that he apparently gets it, but it's nice all the same, not to sound crazy talking about it. "Kind of the opposite, actually. There was..."

She barely knows how to explain it, really, or at least where to start, until she does. "There was a boy," she continues, her voice making clear just how trite she knows that to be. "The prince. And he and I were. Well." It feels so long ago, she realizes — not just what happened, but how she felt, who she was, the kitchen girl who fell in love with a prince and ran off after him. "He was taken. By followers of this ancient evil being. The same one that the evil queen was a follower of, too, but I didn't know that yet. So, when they put together a group to go try to rescue him... I followed them. Went right to the person who saved me as a baby. Who told me then because he pretty much had to."

Huffing out a laugh, she adds, "Like I said. Long story."

[onlythebranch]

"What is it with ancient fuckin' beings and all their plots and prophecies and plans?" he asks, the question rhetorical, as he thinks of Odin. The man may not have been evil, but he sure as shit hadn't been good either. No gods are.

Sweeney counts himself among those, not good or bad, just... there. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Less a pain in the ass than most, at least, so he counts himself lucky in that regard.

"So did you save your prince?" he asks. And now he's thinking of Laura. She had been about as far as one might get from a princess, but he'd loved her anyway. Hadn't saved her, as it turns out.

[prophecized]

At his question, although obviously rhetorical, Elora shakes her head, at a loss. All of that hasn't even been a part of her life for very long now, and she's utterly sick of it. They came out on top in the end, but she knows in her bones that it isn't over. She knows, too, that no matter how powerful she's learned that she is, there's no way anyone could ever live up to a being of legend like she became through no doing of her own.

It's pretty freaking stupid, actually, how a baby could fulfill a prophecy. Unable to walk or talk or remember anything from that time, and yet a threat to an evil sorceress. She'll never understand it.

"I did," she answers. "We did, all of us. His sister really did the hard part." Had it not been for Kit, the love between her and her brother, she doesn't think they would have been able to save Airk. She's utterly relieved, of course, that they did, but unable to hide the melancholy she feels, thinking about that last battle. "We lost someone else, in the fight. But I guess it could have been a lot worse."

[onlythebranch]

"Yeah," Sweeney answers. "There's always someone who gets lost in the process."

It's the shit eating truth of it all, that this world eats people up and spits them out, and when you tangle with gods, usually against your fucking will, because the gods don't give a shit one way or the other, someone gets lost. Or hung from a tree. Or stabbed with a spear.

"Just 'cause it could've been worse don't mean it's not fucked up," he advises. "Gods... they don't give a shit about people. Complete fuckin' dicks, you ask me." And he's including himself in that.

[prophecized]

"Honestly, I'm beginning to agree with that," Elora says, her voice a little dry, though still with a friendly lilt. She's not really sure if or how gods come into play with her situation back home, but it seems close enough. There were still too many things decided in advance and too many people who served as collateral damage. Her mother, a woman whose name she doesn't even know. Ballantine. Graydon. Madmartigan. It's all just so senseless, even when it's all necessary, too.

"So, yeah. That's the story behind the name, and why it... doesn't really feel like mine." She almost adds yet, but that seems overly optimistic. Maybe it never will. Still, it beats the hell out of introducing herself as Brünhilde.

[onlythebranch]

"And now you're here and you can be whoever the fuck you want," he says, even though that doesn't always feel true. He goes back and forth, sometimes certain of who he is, sometimes lost in the memories that come and go, the lives he used to lead.

He's a leprechaun who has been a king who has been a bird and a god and a warrior. Some days he still doesn't know which one he is.

What he knows is that in this place, he has pillars. Foundations. He has Spike. People like Greta, like Jyn, like Rapunzel, and that helps.

[prophecized]

"Now I'm here and have to figure out who that even is," Elora replies, brow arching slightly. That's the thing, she supposes, what it all comes down to. For all her life, that was decided for her, whether it was as a kitchen girl or the chosen one; she never picked any of it for herself, just found herself cast in different roles. The only real choice she ever made on her own was to go after Airk, and all of that wound up being not at all what she could have imagined.

Now, there's just nothing, no expectations, nothing to live up to. It's freeing, and it's sort of great, but how to be whoever the fuck she wants is so far unknowable when it's not something she's ever had the opportunity to want before.

"But at least baking is one thing that's the same from one world to the next."