isolt griffin
Ah yes, she was in fact quite familiar with this particular "mode", this harrowing want of salvation from the wantonly barbarous cruelty of a chemical matron. Hardest was the battle against chains one had come into willingly, hardest the pursuit of freedom when the well of entrapment had been dug by one's own hand. Isolt had seen this all before, in a life so far set apart from the one within which she curently existed and yet, here and now, did it manifest in the weeping flesh of this man of whom she knew so little. Aaron had succombed to the incessant pull of his chains, to the siren's song of this very same mistress, the battle for freedom having proven too grueling, his soul too splintered to have ever been made whole again.

But she had tried. With every last ounce of her heart and soul had she toiled and bled for him. Her proclivity for medicine had been far lesser than it was now, Isolt herself merely a tenacious and yet absolutely terrifed medical student during the later portion of her brother's descent into the gaping maw of writhing black oblivion that had been his untimely end. Passion had been her drive and yet budding had her knowledge been... too green, too raw to have been his salvation. And though she had given Aaron and his demons all that she had possessed, he had wholly and violently repudiated her attempts. It was for this reason, this greatest scar upon the tender innocence of her soul, that Isolt hesitates for a flickering moment as he moves to touch her. Few times in the sprawling history of her brother's toils with substance abuse had the young woman's attempts to aide ever been met with such tenderness, such acceptance, and so for a lingering moment do her red-rimmed eyes peer at him in a fashion most uncertain. His words, however, rob her of whatever sentiments would have danced upon her tongue, a solemn nod and a half-hearted simper all she is capable of offering in these few moments precluding his greatest revelation.

The crimson-locked girl says nothing as her companion tells his tale to the darkened room, the air about them laden thickly with the shared sorrow of loss and the furrows of her brow delving themselves only deeper into the porcelain scape of her facade. Had they not, after a fashion, known the smarting sting of the same catastrophic loss? Aaron had existed as one of the greatest of what few loves had accented Isolt's human life and the one that would transpire after, the fervor with which she had loved him and Harley had been forthright and unwavering... it had been beautiful and above all it had been absolute. And thusly would she mourn her own losses for as long as fate would deem it fitting for her to walk upon this earth. Because of this could she and does she afford him the greatest empathy.

Silence swathes them once again in the wake of Davante's revelation, Isolt herself remaining static but for a pair of dainty hands coiling about a single feverish and still-quivering hand of his. Laboriously does she swallow passed the clenched nodule that has clasped within her throat, allowing her eyes to fall to their hands before she commands that their gazes meet. "I think that sometimes good people do terrible things, but that doesn't mean that you're at fault and it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. My brother did and said horrible things to me while he was contending with his addiction, I think because he was afraid... or angry. But he was-," she pauses then, the melodious lilt of her voice fracturing with the momeries, the emotions, that she had shared with perilously few individuals. "... he was my everything, so I did everything I could think of to try and help him, to save him... but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough and now I have to walk through eternity knowing that if I had tried harder, if I had been better, that maybe I could have saved him... maybe he would have thought he was worth it." She crumbles then, the tide of crimson tears against which she had warred so valiantly finally washing ashore, drawing a dark avenue down the otherwise delicate pallor of her flesh. Her jaw clenches in a futile attempt to still the quiver that rattles her lip as she moves to impart upon him one last sentiment, one last homage to her own festering wounds that, she can but hope, would help him to see. "You have people that care about you, Davante, people that love you. If you give up, they'll be left to wonder if they could have done more... if they could have been better for you. You're worth saving... because you're someone's everything."