#v: and truth be told i never was yours ( chyla )

[exitiumparit]

@interphrase || closed starter

She’d been at the hospital for three days straight now. Siri is Ferus’s power of attorney, but given that Chyla is his second emergency contact and an employee of the hospital, no one’s been trying to tell Chyla Donnen to go anywhere when her brother in all but blood is hospitalized.

Her father’s been a god send. Wil’s got Trever and the only reason Chyla’s even briefly left the hospital is to check on her nephew. As soon as Chyla asked Nerra for help, he’d kept Adiri. He had enough things to take care of her until Chyla felt okay to come home and let things be here, and Nerra just....took care of Adiri so Chyla could help take care of Ferus.

But, now over three days of not seeing her daughter, Chyla’s desperately missing her little girl.

Nerra brought Adiri up to go over some paperwork with Siri--assuaged her concerns that there was any contention with Trever’s custody agreement, he was Ferus’s son in the eyes of the law and while social security maybe in contact, his second legal guardian is the one caring for him right now--and Chyla, feeling all the guilty for it, took off with Adiri’s bag and went to find a quiet spot to just....hold onto her little girl...who quickly started to fuss.

Well...the hospital chapel was usually pretty empty at this time of day....

It felt a little selfish, but it was the only place she could think of, and well, the pews were some of the most comfortable seats there. Exhausted and aching, but grateful to have Adiri close, Chyla ducked in to the quiet, serene chapel and when the coast was clear, settled into a pew and sat at the far side for some privacy. After some difficult managing and shuffling, Adiri was nursing, one hand of tiny, precious fingers wrapped around her pinky.

Honestly? Chyla was surprised she wasn’t crying from the relief of just getting to sit with her daughter.

Her peace was short lived, however. Just a few short minutes after relaxing, she heard the chapel door open behind her and quickly draped a blanket over her chest. At least she wasn’t in her hospital scrubs so if whoever it was realized what she was doing, she wasn’t likely to get in trouble---

Except when she glances back, it’s one Father Tyler. Chyla flushes a deep red. The priest had always been kind, warm, and friendly, but she didn’t exactly know much about him more than soft hearted water cooler talk, and wasn’t sure if he’d be alright with a nursing mother in his chapel.

“Uh, um, hi, Father Tyler,” she blushes. “Sorry, if, um, you’re about to have a service. I’m here for a family member and was looking for a quiet place, I apologize--”

[solamederis]

@bellassan is indulging me

She was walking out of the library and about to unlock her bike to head home when she’d heard yelling just around the corner. A little curious--and mostly worried--Chyla headed around the edge of the building just as two more kids were running the opposite way.

“Hey! You okay?” When she’d turned around to the alley, there was one kid left. She recognized him as Ferus Olin--they only had talked once or twice, but Chyla really didn’t talk to anyone. Rumors always said Ferus won a lot of fights, but figured by the amount of blood coming out of his nose, that this hadn’t exactly been a fair fight. (Jerks, whoever those kids had been.)

She slipped off her jacket and offered it to him to hold something to his face.

[exitiumparit]

@interphrase || liked for a starter

It’s been exactly one month since Ferus has gotten to go home, and things have been slowly, even if painfully, finding degrees of normalcy. Wil, Siri, and her all swap shifts staying with Ferus and Trever, and the days are still long and hard, but it’s getting better.

It’s getting better. He’s home. He’s in pain, and Trever is angry, but things are getting better.

It’s at least why Chyla tries to tell herself.

Adiri’s at her grandparents’ right now---Chyla’s just getting off the graveyard shift and she was lucky that Rel’s parents would take care of her when she had to work. As much as she wants to hurry back to pick up her baby, she’s also, frankly, exhausted, and hasn’t gotten to just sit for more than a few minutes in over twelve hours....so she makes a small detour for a familiar place of quiet that has turned into something of a regular visiting place for her the past few weeks.

Joseph’s been quite the friend lately. Frankly, Chyla’s not sure what she would have done without the small breaks she’s taken visting him in the hospital’s humble chapel. He’s been kind and understanding to her, and given her a place just to....be. It’s the only place she can think of--even if he’s not there yet, it is early right now--to take a few minutes to rest. 

She sits towards the back, as she always does, and sets her jacket--one of Ferus’s hoodies--and bag next to her. With a heavy sigh, she starts to unlace the tight braid down the back of her head, freeing her scalp of its bounds. It’s dark and quiet and here, and just the place to just.....be.

[exitiumparit]

@bellassan || closed starter

“I swear, she leeches the attitude off of you whenever you’re over,” Chyla teases when she comes back downstairs from putting Adiri to sleep for a nap. Her toddler is her world, with the sweetest smile and the most angelic head of curls that matched her mother’s, and she adores her Uncle Ferus to death, but every time Ferus came over, her curious sweetheart turned from pliable and reasonable to insisting she doesn’t need to sleep and demanding she wants to continue to play with Ferus.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Having an attitude?” she jokes and squeezes her friend’s shoulder when she walks by the couch he’s loundging. He’d come over to fix a program on her laptop and replace her WiFi modem, which turned into catching up on how Trever was, a book read to Adiri, and now a pot of coffee shared Ferus had put on whenever Chyla had climbed her stairs with a drowsy toddler in her arms.

They’re both at an age Chyla is sure neither of them expected to be at some days. Foster kids turned adults with families turned widows with smaller families than they ever had wanted, but here they are, alive and well and still as close as the teenagers that watched Twin Peaks on each other’s couches in high school.

“Oh, I almost forgot, I was cleaning through my attic last weekend and I found something I wanted you to have,” she says and walks past Ferus to one of her many bookcases. There’s a frame that’s lying down at the top and she grabs it with a moment’s pause. The picture is happy and sweet, but she knows the topic is more melancholy than they ever imagined it’d be.

“I’ve got another copy in a photo album upstairs, but I thought you’d want to have it,” she offers and hands Ferus the frame after sitting next to him. It’s from Ferus and Roan’s rehearsal dinner. Chyla’s sitting between them and they’ve both got their arms around her. Ferus is kissing Chyla’s cheek and Roan’s pressed against her, the only one looking straight at the camera.

“Siri took the picture, right?” It’s the only lifeline she feel like she can throw him if this is too much of a gift.

[exitiumparit]

so about that whole Chyla being retired thing---

[exitiumparit]

@enneads b/c cute is cute

He’d find her in his office with Adiri in his chair as she pulled out some containers of stew she’d been slow cooking most of the morning. It’d been her day off and with nothing to do around the house and her turn to cook something, she figured she could take the opportunity to surprise Ribial.

“I only brought lunch--she climbed into your seat all on her own,” she laughed as he walked in. Adiri’s smile turned brighter as she waved at Ribial.

“Figured I’d surprise you with some lunch with my day off. We can go get ice cream if you’re busy.”

[exitiumparit]

@enneads;ribial & chyla

For having a toddler, it was a mostly quiet Saturday afternoon, and the ambient noise actually had nothing to do with Adiri.

She’d just dropped off the kiddo at her grandparents for the weekend and came back to Ribial in the living room with a book. A window was open and the music student the floor up from them was practicing, piano harmonies drifting in through their window. However, his shoulders weren’t totally relaxed, his eyes not completely focused on the page, occasionally drifting away. 

Humming along with the music, Chyla slipped in on the couch, lying on her stomach and resting her head near him. She rested her hand on his leg, tracing patterns aimlessly as she looked onto his book.

“Wanna talk about whatever has you distracted or want me to grab my own book and sit here with you?” She asked.

[exitiumparit]

‘i’ll make you something, yeah? your favorite dish, just for you.’ Ribial at Chyla

@enneads || idk the meme is from somewhere

“Ribial, honey,” she reached up for his hand as he sat up. He was trying to fix things, trying to make it better, just as she did herself all the time when an easy solution was still so far away from her grasp. They’d weathered small storms before and adjusted to each other’s lives, her learning about him and him growing closer and closer to her. He grew into a parenting role for Adiri and they’re little found family of sorts was great but it wasn’t without its own ghosts.

“We’ll be okay. It’s okay. And Adiri will be, too,” she promised, pulling him back to the edge of the bed. “So Chess and Adiri met. It’s not fun. It’s not great. I don’t like it, either. But, we’ll be okay, okay?” She said quietly, looking up at him as she still held his hand. 

Chyla pulled him close to wrap her arms around his waist, rest her head against his chest. “We’ll be okay.”

[exitiumparit]

‘it’s okay. i couldn’t sleep anyway.’ Ribial at Chyla

@enneads || i love you starters || tbh accepting give me the soft

“Wait--you couldn’t?” she sat up a little more on the couch--the place she’d relegated herself to when she decided sleep was futile--and reached over to take his hand, lightly pulling him down to sit next to her. That surely didn’t make her feel better, and worry spiked in her stomach as she massaged her thumb over the back of his hand. Comfort for him, but a little for her, too.

“I’m sorry,” she frowned, tucking her legs to the side. But, it was nice to have someone to stay up with her when sleep was evasive. A sweet, gentle smile, a comforting presence--it did enough for her nerves to offer a form of calm she could accept for the moment.

Chyla leaned over to rest her forehead on his shoulder, a hand still in his. This was a lot of new, but also a lot of the same.Sometimes she got nervous about having a relationship again, but then he’d smile, and everything would make a little more sense.

“Thanks for coming out to check on me.”

[solamederis]

@roanlxnds liked for a text

[Roan Lands: 8:23 PM] ......

[Roan Lands: 8:23 PM] Mario Kart?

[solamederis]

okay so after talking with @rinnlaochra about Nerra and Chyla’s relationship in modern, another retcon is happening on Chyla’s modern bio.

Chyla wasn’t a planned pregnancy for her biological parents in a failing marriage. They tried really had to care for her in the beginning, but ended up hating each other so much they’d shove Chyla back on each other instead of actually caring for her. She’d go days without seeing either of them. A teacher reported concern when Chyla was ten. She’d gotten sent home from school with a fever, but came back to school the next day still sick. DFS found evidence of neglect, and Chyla became a ward of the state. She was placed with Nerra when she was eleven and he petitioned the state for the right to adopt her when she was twelve. Her parents failed to show proof of rehabilitation after getting out of jail to reinstate their parental rights, and Nerra got to adopt Chyla just after her thirteenth birthday. 

[solamederis]

“Pain is weakness leaving the body”

@onceinamoon || send “pain is weakness leaving the body” to find chyla… || accepting

16. after running into a door

She heard him picking her lock and headed for the door to cut him off in the middle. He found her with a face full of bloodied paper towels and a scowling expression.

“I tripped on Elaine and fell into a door. Listen--you’re taller than me. Can you reach in the top of my closet for my extra gauze?”

[solamederis]

50

@bellassan || meme || accepting

high five

            “Do you have the rings?”

           “Yes.”

           “What about your vows?”

           “Yes, Chyla.”

           “Oh, and your shoes?”

           “Chyla, I’m wearing them.”

           She looked back at her best friend--her best friend on his wedding day--and grinned only half apologetically for wanting everything to be perfect for him. For not the first time today, tears welled in her dark green eyes as she looked at Ferus. Ferus, her quiet friend. Ferus, the loyal, Ferus, the hacker, Ferus, the foster kid--and Ferus, who was totally and irrevocably in love with Roan Lands and who was getting married today.

           It wasn’t hard to look at him and just feel everything coming back to her. When they started becoming friends and she carried the conversation because she could tell he was fine with her just being close. When she was starting nursing school and he’d let her fall asleep on his couch at least a night a week, or the hug she got at the airport when she’d returned from abroad, or when she walked in to his apartment and saw this glow on his face looking at his phone. 

           “What’s got you so smiley?”

           “Who.”

           “Who, what?”

           “It’s a who.”

           And that started watching her best friend find a special shred of happiness Chyla had always been sure to be more fact than fiction. And here they were in an ultimate culmination of their happiness and their love to get married and, honestly, Chyla was sure she was going to end up crying her makeup away by the end of the night because there was not a person on Earth she could imagine being more deserving of this than her Ferus.

           Ferus had always understood her; foster kids, displaced in worlds they didn’t understand who were more often than not angry at the world but swallowed it down to allow the room to move on. He’d been her best friend and her shoulder to cry on and her first ally for years and so much more and here he was. Smiling at her on his wedding day and the kind of happy honesty in his smile was everything she’d ever dreamed for him.

           Instead of turning into a blubbering mess (again), she hugged him tight and he wordlessly wrapped his arms around her. (He’d always given the best hugs.) They stayed like that for just a moment, because honestly, as cliche as it was, this wasn’t like she was losing any part of her best friend and she was only gaining another wonderful friend in Roan. There was not a sliver of bittersweetness in her mind; all of her was happy for all of Ferus, and she just needed one hug to convey all of that.

           There was a knock on the door and they turned to see Siri peer out from the edge of the doorframe.

           “I’ll let you two have a moment. I gotta go check on Roan, anyways. I’ll see you out at the altar,” Chyla grinned, holding her hand out for a cheesy high five. He laughed and answered her back with a kiss on the cheek.

           “See you, Chyla.”

[solamederis]

@bellassan liked for a starter

“Y’know, you and Roan are pretty cute,” she mused, looking down at him as she balanced a nursing textbook on the arm of her couch, his head in her lap, and his laptop in his with some kind of coding of something up on his screen. (She didn’t pretend to even kind of understand.) There was a glass of sweet tea on her coffee table with Ferus’ cooling cup of (disgusting) black coffee, and Elaine was pouting in a corner because Ferus had taken her spot.

They’d gone on a couple of dates and there was just something about Ferus that looked generally a little...Chyla didn’t know. More himself seemed a wrong way to put it, and she wouldn’t call his demeanor necessarily particularly rom com, but whatever it was, Chyla liked seeing Ferus like that.

“I mean--I haven’t met him, of course, but you seem pretty cute about him.” It was her obligation as best friend to tease him about any particular boyfriend that could come around, especially since dating was so very not usually his thing. (Not like it really was hers, though. Technicalities.”

[solamederis]

v: and truth be told i never was yours                                                                                                                                                                     ( modern au )

You grew up in a foster system without names to your parents. A girl with bright eyes and a head full of fiery curls, you hid yourself in books to hide your loneliness. Birthday after birthday after foster family after foster family passed, until you got assigned to a social worker with a heart of gold that never pressed your worries and let you read instead. Finally, you were given the chance to be a kid; to dream underneath the sun. But, you never forgot the sad little girl with only a suitcase to her name and dedicated your life to making anyone’s life you met a little sweeter.

         Chyla Richi was orphaned as infant and turned into social services after being found outside of a church. Her file was thin; in all her life, no one ever gave names to her parents. A shy, quiet girl, Chyla kept to herself through her immense love of reading and learning, as books were much kinder to her than kids who didn’t understand what it was like to have foster parents instead of moms or dads.

        At eleven, she was given a new home; Nerra Waran, social worker, and for the first time in so long, she had a home that cared about her frizzy hair and love of books and the glasses that never fit quite right on her nose. Six months later, she was adopted and had a bed and a room to herself and a dad who took her to the library every Friday after school.

        For all of her new home, though, she never could a place where her head rested easy. With few friends, Chyla continued to keep to herself and spent her time helping what she could. So used to taking care of others as not to have to think about herself, she grew the reputation of the quiet girl in the back of the class who always had a granola bar for a hungry classmate and always gave rides to freshmen who forgot to ride the bus.

        Becoming a nurse was not a surprising path for her, but college wasn’t easy. Stuck in a place she didn’t feel like she belonged, she clung to her textbooks and her dad and her own spirit. The coursework weighed her down, though, and in a university of so many kids, Chyla could only feel like the same lonely foster kid who hid behind the covers of books.

        After she graduated, she spent nearly two years abroad, volunteering around the world in health clinics and cities where health care wasn’t accessible. In her volunteerism, she found in herself a renewed sense of confidence that had never been able to really stick to her in the past.

        At twenty-four, she returned stateside and got herself and apartment and a dog and a couple of tattoos because why not. And, finally, could shake the feeling that she was more than just a girl who didn’t have parents; she was Chyla, and that was enough.

Most settings will take place either when Chyla’s studying in school, or after she’s returned stateside. So either 18-22, or 24+~.

After she returned, she got the underneath of her hair dyed bright pink and two tattoos: one on her foot of a constellation, and one of bluebirds on her forearm.

Chyla’s adoptive dad: @rinnlaochra

Chyla works as a nurse in the pediatric ICU and volunteers at hospices

[solamederis]

✘

@onceinamoon || meme || accepting

send ✘ for a text that should never have been sent

[text: Trever] I’m sorry that I snapped you[text: Trever] It wasn’t your fault and I know you don’t like hospitals[text: Trever] But listen I spend all day around sick and dying kids and you’re my favorite kid and seeing you on a hospital bed was rough[text: Trever] I’m sorry that I snapped. You didn’t deserve that. Just. Please let the people who care about you do that? Please?