Fix It

Rowan doesn’t know where she is. There’s blurry shapes and shadows that contort into humanoids, but she is lost in an unfamiliar place. Something tells her that she should recognize this, that she should be used to it all by now.
 
When this happens it always feels like the time someone dumped her in the Church lake. Her chest aches and anxiety writhes beneath the surface. Her limbs weigh her down, frozen and numb against the coolness of panic. Part of her wishes that whoever is dragging her around will stop and leave her behind. At least that would be familiar.
 
The person (tiefling?) carrying her step through a door and sets her down. Rowan barely stops herself from clinging, choosing to write in her journal. Rowan presses herself into a corner and writes like her life depends on it (perhaps it does). She selfishly finds herself wishing she’d been left alone. One of the humanoids approaches her and she looks up at him in a moment of clarity.
 
He wants something from her. That much is clear from the pleading tone of voice he’s using. She tunes in a bit, hearing something about “contacting Mateus” and “fixing him”. Rowan can work with that. She’s spent her life fixing people. The man’s eyes flit towards a bed in the room, and Rowan mechanically marches over to assess the situation.
 
A bruised elven body lays on the bed and Rowan reaches out to him to heal him. As unstable as her magic can be, she manages to bring him back to a stable state of consciousness. Like any good healer, she assures him that he’s safe and looks for other injuries. She finds him unable to speak and seemingly terrified of her. She starts to put the pieces together as he presses himself against a bedpost.
 
By asking him “yes or no” questions she confirms her suspicions. The atmosphere only grows heavier throughout the conversation. Rowan discovers that the elven man had run into someone who looked exactly like Rowan, and she connects his experience to the Rowan-esque form used by EB. Surely this can be fixed with a simple visit?
 
Rowan has feeling that EB’s attention won’t be caught so quickly. She tries to communicate, and ultimately summons a boon to speak with said entity. She curls her fingers around the boon and feels someone snatch it away from her. People are arguing and a familiar looking tiefling grabs Rowan by the shoulders. Her name slips through Rowan’s mind like a raindrop, cool and soothing but impossible to catch.
 
Oh. This tiefling (Eli?) must have an injury for Rowan to heal too. Why else would she be commanding Rowan’s attention at this moment? She begins to check the tiefling over, paying little attention to the rising emotions throughout the room.
 
Passing over limbs and scarred tissue, her hand lands on something hidden in the tiefling’s sleeve. A fragile boon that feels so familiar to Rowan that her automatic reaction is to hold onto it. The boon seems to beat along with the rhythm of her own heart, a consistency among chaos. It’s unsettlingly comforting.
 
Rowan’s breathing steadies and she opens her eyes to see they are no longer in a room. The dark opens a gaping mouth and swallows her, spitting her out to stand by the people she now recognizes as her traveling companions. Comic and Nyx stand apart from the group, and they seem angry. Their voices are too loud and Rowan has nowhere to run. Nyx shouts louder and Rowan clenches her fists on instinct. She feels something break (the boon!) as her nails dig into her skin. Rowan’s dazed, feeling as though someone smashed her with a sledgehammer over the head. She wouldn’t blame them if they had.

Comic speaks to Severim, mentioning something about a deal and Rowan’s stomach lurches with unease. She has a terrible feeling that this wouldn’t have happened if she told everyone the truth. And she would’ve, but some part of her thought she could fix it on her own. That if she told everything, then everyone would treat her like they had Mateus. Like a vicious animal that might turn on them at any moment. Rowan is hit with a sudden longing to see Mateus again. He would’ve known what to do.
 
She should’ve just bitten the bullet, spilled her guts to avoid the slow death of bleeding out. Rowan stands before the Watchers and she is terrified at how easily they can see through her. The others aren’t much better. She’s seen the way they look at her, and it was only a matter of time before they outgrew her.
 
Rowan snaps her eyes shut. There has to be a way to fix this, and perhaps it can start with Rowan telling the truth. That way, the knowledge she’s gathered will stay with them when they choose to leave her behind.
 
Rowan hopes that they’ll let her stick around a little while longer. It was nice to be around people that didn’t only see her as a healer or an observer. It was nice to be treated like a person.
 
Resigned to her fate, Rowan opens her eyes.