In the absence of those disordered, chaotic images, a subconscious cry for help she hadn't even known she'd made as she instinctively fled from the torturous pain and humiliation her body and mind was experiencing... There is nothing. Not the feeling of being shut out, or rejected... but the lack of anyone able to answer. Whether that was via unconsciousness, death, or leaving Kenos... Who knew.
But from a certain point, sometime in the middle of the night... Hayame's status in communion slowly, hazily becomes "rejection", and not "absence". A mind shut down so tight no message will get through, no matter who or what it was.
... Unless, of course, perhaps... that other person was an Iconoclast, too.]
[ She did look. It was leisurely, casual, as to not draw any attention. But she does look. She cannot find Hayame, of course, her timing is off, her search ineffective, but it's late when she turned in.
There is an unsettling sense of... Wrongness.
She does not know what, but she feels it low in her gut. That something is Wrong.
At night, she senses it, when it happens. She's still reaching out, with her mind, looking for —
Ah.
There she is, and Akua swallowed, before she tentatively reached out, the sensation of a gentle knocking at her mental door. ]
Hayame, I heard your cries —
[ She does not ask if she is okay. But nor does she want to leave her. ]
[Hayame's captor has done a very thorough job. He had stalked her in silence for some time to learn her routine and find exactly where no one would see or intervene in their reunion, the signs of a struggle left behind where she had been taken are all swept away, and the makeshift surgical suite she had become an unwilling patient in was hidden in the foulest depths of Kowloon away from prying eyes. What is there to find, when your kidnapper is a demon of the most meticulous variety?
But Hayame isn't...
She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know whether to rage and smear what had happened to her all over the space shard-bearers shared or hide her humiliation and never tell a soul in the hopes that she could erase what had been done to her. She doesn't know if enough people will even believe her, when the demon took such pleasure in insinuating how much more beloved and respected he was by their fellow shard-bearers and he had seen to it that every injury she took in his company was magically healed, leaving no proof of the agony behind. She feels betrayed by how little faith she'd felt in those she could potentially cry out to for aid, hobbled and strapped beneath that blinding light with a demon's fingers in her eye socket.
Perhaps... perhaps Akua, who had said she would aid her in her quest... ? It is so hard to believe in it sometimes, when the other women had interceded before she could crush Sebastian's shard beneath the roots and still seemed to take some sort of pleasure from cavorting in the demon's presence, but perhaps...
It is as if Hayame tentatively begins to open the door, just a glimpse of tear-streaked cheeks in the crack between the door and the frame... before she hears that Akua heard her. There's a sudden flood of confusion and shame, she hadn't meant- she hadn't meant to call out to anyone, to broadcast how weak and helpless she had been, but she had?, and not just one person had heard it but Akua... Akua, too? What exactly had she heard, how long had it been, what had she- ? The "door" slams back shut, Hayame's presence collapsing in shame behind it even though a fellow Iconoclast couldn't be so easily shut out.]
[ Akua does not force her way in. She does not push through, and force Hayame to do anything that she did not want. That was not the way with her, that would not allow them to be closer, and Akua wants to be closer to Hayame. She considers her a friend, after all. She wants to be close to her, and have friends, and show her what a friend could do. She had once eschewed them as readily as Hayame did, and now...
Now she wants them, and Hayame is brave, and strong, and perhaps sometimes lacks caution, but that is where Akua sees that she can help her.
But now she wanted to shut her out, as if there was something she did not want her to see. As if the fact that he had been trying to scrape and pull at her mind earlier was something she did not want to admit. ]
You do not have to allow me in. You do not have to talk. I will stay here, though. In case something is needed, or...
[Hayame doesn't feel strong or brave. Certainly not now.
She is angry. So angry. The hate burns bright and hot because it has to, because if she doesn't stoke it then she will only have humiliation and shame. She kills the demon now masquerading under the name "Sebastian Michaelis" a thousand times behind that door, not even realizing others she had accidentally contacted, people who were not Iconoclasts, might be trying to reach her. She rages... But it's useless. It's all so useless. Even locked away, that demon's sadistic smile and his rotten whisper follow her.
I will never kill you., he'd said, forcing the bit into her mouth to prevent her from once again attempting to sever her own tongue and bleed to death, I will only take from you until there is nothing left. And what did she have now, that he'd robbed her of her pride, her dignity?
Wailing like a babe already? She hadn't, she hadn't, she wasn't going to scream or to cry or give him anything that would satisfy him, but will alone hadn't been able to prevent her from screaming once the bit kept her from closing her mouth, and it hadn't been enough to stop tears from springing to her eyes hot and shameful from the sheer pain of having her scarred and shriveled optic nerve pulled from the back of her skull.
But who would come looking for you?
... That one-
That one...
Behind the "door", something is happening. Someone is in her house when she returns home, when all she'd wanted was to collapse alone and not let anyone see her weak. But now that person has, she's told that she'd been heard across communion, and the fear is rekindled. Had she not... heard Akua's voice? Had it not seemed to say something... something about hearing her?
It is still hours before Akua hears anything. A voice colder and weaker than it had been last they'd spoke. One burning with betrayal even fiercer than when they had met in her stables after the Iconoclast Oracle.]
I do not know if I can call it words, but I saw (Felt)(Heard) something had happened. That you were...
[ Worried is not the word for it. Nor is distressed — perhaps tortured, but she does not want to ascribe that to Hayame. That would do nothing but upset her, and she wants to do nothing of the sort. She dozed while she waited, and now... Now that Hayame sees fit to return to this space, she worries that perhaps she should have reached her in the physical world, too. She had looked, but...
But she had never seen anything. Hadn't heard from her.
She had nothing to go off of, but Hayame's coldness, her chill. Her unwillingness to share, but she knew she had to. She needed to find some way to reach out.
Wasn't that what friends did? She knew it was what Catherine would do. ]
... She should be warmed, somehow, that Akua had looked for her. That she had been worried. Is that not what "friends" did? It had been apparent from the start, when the other woman had first used that word with her, that the two of them might have very, very different ideas of what duties came with that label. But they might agree on this. "Friends" should look for each other if they were in danger, they should be concerned if they heard them in pain...
But something keeps Hayame cold. (Something like Akua stepping in to prevent her from crushing the demon's shard under her hoof in the roots when she'd had the fucking chance before any of this happened to her, something like lurking in Liem's communion report and watching them flirt and proposition each other in some sick mix of possibly-violence, possibly-bedding before he-)]
You were worried?
[And that something makes her lash out, vicious and hurt like an animal that scents its abuser on a would-be rescuer.]
Did your dear demon neglect to tell you what he was planning last you "danced" so that you needn't have wasted the effort?
[ That tells her all she needs to know. That it was Sebastian, and that it had been some measure of their... game, in a way. Well, perhaps a one-sided game. Hayame had taken everything personally, down to the way the demon talked, and the way it lived its life. It should not be surprising, that she was so wounded that Akua had flirted and toyed with the demon.
She also saw her promise to Hayame as a part of that. A challenge, a puzzle to pull apart and see what she could find. She wanted to see if she could bind the demon, and then, Hayame could kill him. Oh, not permanently, she firmly believed that shattering the first shard was a... greatly disastrous act that would escalate their battles beyond what shard-bearers could handle. Shattering a shard would leave them permanently dead, and in that --
In that, they did not know how permanent it was. If the shard was shattered, could they return to their worlds in the end? Would they be permanently held from their restored worlds, when they revived? It was an escalation of the level of the Ealamael, and something she did not want to have a part in. It was why she stopped Hayame, and why she would stop her again, if needed.
Even now.
After all, torture was torture. Intimate and personal, and likely with a purpose. Oh, she would worry over her friend, seek her out, and help her — even save her if she could — but it was all a dance, a game. Sorcerers of her caliber did not take such things so personally. Hell, she had helped save the man who had killed her own father, the most personal of crimes.
She would walk the line, and her path, as she needed. ]
No. I would not discuss such things with the demon, and if he mentioned it, I would warn you. I would think he not so foolish as to allow such a slip of the tongue. Just like he does not know that I plan to bind him, so you may kill him.
[ She was a villain, after all. In her mind, it was just rules of engagement. ]
And Hayame is not a sorceress who does not take things personally. There had been no path available to her towards escaping the fate of most mares in the breeding stable that did not require the burning, desperate passion of envy, offense, and rage- rage against the way the world worked even as she made no efforts to truly defy it, only to claw her way towards the scraps of respect and dignity available to her.
And she-]
Is that supposed to make me happy? That between the two of us, you might choose me?
[It still put her in the same category as a demon. One whose scent (stain) is so recent on Akua that even though, in her desperation, she had reached out for her... now it burns her, to think of the two of them together, smirking, laughing, maybe even... even touching, like they had touched, and the thought makes her so sick and feel so stupid that she almost runs right then and there, but-
Akua says she'd help, she'd bind him, she'd let her kill him, but Hayame knows that isn't true, and her "voice" cracks despite her best effort, embarrassed by how emotional she sounds compared to the other woman but unable to stop, wailing in her hearts but snapping with her teeth.]
If you had let me kill him properly in the roots then none of this would have happened, Akua!
[... None of this would have happened. Whatever "this" was.]
[ She says it simply. Frankly. Hayame is correct, and she will not shy away from the consequences of her actions — all of the consequences. ]
In fact, I think if I had allowed you to do so, Zenith would have sought revenge upon you. Do not think that Sebastian has those whom favor him, or find him useful.
If they had found you, you may not be sitting here breathing — they may have eliminated and then shattered you. Perhaps they would have done so prior to the Oracle, and we would not have found victory, thanks to your tireless work.
You are alive still. Yes, harmed, but alive. You can seek him out, and take something precious of his, perhaps. But more importantly: you are still here to fight. Would you rather be shattered right now? Unable to save your home? Do you not see that among us you are a stalwart, valued ally?
[ Perhaps it is twisted, of her, to see it this way. To see Hayame as a warrior, but she does not think she would want to be seen as a woman, but as a weapon.
She hopes, anyway, but she knows that she cannot truly soothe her anger, and perhaps she never could. Hayame was wounded, and harmed. She was going to be angry, and who better than Akua Sahelian?
It is not as if she has not had other, more dire, accusations leveled at her feet, after all. Of all the crimes she has committed, this is perhaps the most minor.
That demon has never let me forget for a single second that he has those who favor him or find him useful! That he has far more of them than I no matter how much I strive to prove myself or how despicable he is!
[Akua asks if she did not see that to Meridian she was a valued ally, and perhaps that cuts to the core of one of her many angers, to the reason the demon was able to worm so easily into that wound and exploit it. No, she did not feel as if she was. The few people who did seem willing to listen to her could not outweigh how alienated she felt in any group setting, where her opinions were often dismissed or ridiculed as too hard-line, too "outdated", too straightforward, or too cruel. And yet, like a fool, she kept trying and trying and trying...
She had always been reduced to just a weapon and a tool, if not one striving to be a "warrior". She had always been fine with it. But here... here, she kept being told she could be more, that she should be more, except every time... Yet the literal demon, the thing that ate souls, that could not even form bonds outside of benefit and business- ?
Hayame's spirit rails against the unfairness of it, against the way this world had made her think that she could be more but then constantly reminded her she might not, that she might never escape the confines of the world she'd come from. Her "friends" want her to survive, to be grateful to be alive, but-]
A true warrior would rather be dead than suffer this humiliation!
[Once, she would have rather been. She, a woman who had grabbed her enemy and tried to throw the both of them off the edge into a raging waterfall, who had agreed to bring the flame to a man who had festooned himself in gunpowder to cleanse her dishonor, and now...
Now she has to live with the knowledge that the demon could simply stick her with that poison and kidnap her off the streets gods only knew when, that he wouldn't kill her? That he would only take, take, and take until she had not a single scrap of dignity, not a single "friend" left? Like a caged beast her spirit clangs and collides with the "bars" of their communion, the wound so fresh that she struggles for rationality, for sense, for calm. She knows she should stop, that nothing she's doing is productive or helpful, and still...]
What can I take from a demon that he will actually care about? You tell me, Akua, since you are such good friends!
[... Now that the demon isn't watching, can't derive perverse satisfaction from it...
[ Akua allows her to scream, and cry. She lets it wash over her, and does not rise to it. There is the sensation of a warm hand at Hayame's shoulder, inviting if she wants it, but not pushing. She does not wish to belittle Hayame, or tell her that she is wrong. She reaches out because she knew Hayame was hurt, and though she had not known who caused, it, she had sought to...
Soothe it? Comfort her?
Oh, how far had she fallen? What would her mother say to this? To the attempt to comfort a... friend. What would Catherine say, to this? ]
Demons like he are not infallible, Hayame. Death is a strict avenue, and does not truly punish him, even if you were to succeed in the final blow.
To take from him, you must destroy him, utterly. Take his prestige, his respect, the power he so cherishes. You must think like him to destroy him, not like a mortal.
Demons are creatures that can be tortured, just as any. You must be.. as creative as he.
[ She answers it seriously, instead of taking offense, or walking away. She wants Hayame to learn to do more than simply destroy. She wants to help her become formidable. ]
[Only the fact that Akua is an Iconoclast that had known her intimately, in... more ways than one, keeps her there in Communion while Hayame rails against what she views as the humiliating and unjust and traumatizing thing that had happened to her. Out of nowhere, when she had considered her business with the demon done, in the middle of the godsdamned day when she'd been walking down the street with no warning, no chance to fight back-
They do not truly "exist" here. So she can rage and cry and scream and slam herself against the confines of desert and stone mountain even while she is also somehow slumped there in a half-defeated lump with Akua's hand on her shoulder, hating that this woman had stayed her hand in the Iconoclast Oracle's trial, that she'd managed to convince her to leave demon alive because she'd made them even. And it is that one of her that looks up suddenly, anger and pain blazing in her eyes.
Eyes. She had never shown Akua what was beneath the eyepatch on the left side of her face. Even when they had been entwined, when things were too hot, sweat beading on skin, flesh overheating against flesh, she had kept it tightly on. But now it's gone, and there's no injury, no scar, no burn there to warrant covering, just an eye a sickly green shade that doesn't belong to her, that doesn't match the stormy grey of the one she'd been born with, once upon a time somewhere far, far away from here.]
I will shatter him! I will make him a shard and bury him so deep in hallow earth that no one will ever find him! I will blind him! I will steal every one of his "meals" before he can devour their souls! I will grind his "Master" into dust!
[Did they think she wasn't creative? That she couldn't be a villain, for all that she framed her actions in honor and rules of engagement that others called outdated and inflexible? All of those things were within what the honor others derided would allow. But.
But-]
Were you not the one who told me you understood me? That you, too, were fighting for redemption that can never be achieved?
[She'd thought that part of them was the same, even though the other woman was obviously willing to do things differently than she was, far less loyal in certain ways, far less "upright". But now-]
Now you want me to be no better than a demon?
[A demon who did not view friendship or bonds in any human way, demanding no loyalty and cherishing no one over their own interests. A demon who did not care at all what means were used to achieve their end.]
[ The phrasing holds weight to Akua, who had utilized Demons since she was merely a girl. Something that she did not see as lesser, or unwanted. It was merely... different. A difference in perspective, perhaps. Demons were just that. They were eldritch, and unknowable. Inhuman and thus separate from others in their own way. ]
A demon is a demon, Hayame. In the same way that an Orc is an Orc, or a Jinba is a Jinba. We all have our own moralities to ascribe to, and it is not "stooping" or lowering yourself to defeat them. In my world, Orcs eat the flesh of their enemies, and Goblins kill the weakest of them to weed out the ones that would hold them back.
I am seeking redemption, yes, but that does not mean I will deny whom I am. I took it too far, when Liesse fell. I committed a crime that went too far. That does not mean my redemption is to deny whom I am.
I understand you in that you want it, but the shape of our redemptions are different. I will be never be anything but a Villain. I wear this proudly, for it is not just whom I am, it is my culture and my history. Villainy is as a part of me as is my Gift, and my Name. To deny it and give it up for redemption is no better than my path of guiding fellow villains in how to achieve their goals, without tipping over the worst of crimes.
[ And wasn't that the sticking point between them? Hayame would not want to be a villain, there was no redemption separate from that. There would be no redeeming herself and remaining the villain.
Akua, on the other hand, would always tread this path. It was hers, and it was different than anyone else's. It always would be. ]
[How it burns her, to hear Akua dismiss her hatred with excuses of race, equating the behavior of a demon with the behavior of her own kind, seemingly claiming them unworthy of judgement or anything but acceptance as simple nature. Just because it was nature did not mean it was not wrong, or that some things were not better. She was not some god or immortal being or wise mage able to so easily separate emotion and sever connections between beings to judge them all as individuals independent of context. She isn't like Set. She isn't like Akua. So why-]
I am not telling you to change yourself!
[.... Is she? So what if the shape of their redemption was different? It did not need to be the same shape, as long as it ran parallel. Akua's level of "villainy", surely she could tolerate it for the sake of her goals, for the sake of how much the other woman brought to Meridian, for... for what she had done for her personally. But-]
I am telling you-
[What? Everything is so raw and fresh in her mind that it clatters around in her shattered sense of storm-wrought communion in a jumble of chaotic rage and bitterness and despair, and all she wants is-]
I am begging you-
[When she had refused to beg the demon for mercy, for relief from pain, for even death... Her rage flares, remembering Akua's words that she had foolishly let stop her from killing "Sebastian Michaelis" beneath the Great Tree, the disgusting, flirtatious phrases she had heard them exchange on communion. How is she supposed to stomach it? (Why should she have to stomach it-)]
Do not flaunt before me what I cannot forgive.
[She screams and she cries and she snarls and she rails, but a part of her... also clutches at Akua's hand. Even if the demon's insinuations were right, and no one would ever choose her over him, if she could never experience the type of loyalty her betrayed hearts had always craved... She did not want to see or hear something that would force her to either snap her principles over her own foreleg or abandon the first woman who had almost made her believe they were friends.
She wants to ask Akua to come to her. She wants to tell her what happened and feel her warm hand caress her cheek, brushing over the skin that had been healed to make her look like a liar if she claimed to have been kidnapped and tortured in a room that smelled of filth and chemicals. She wants the other woman to examine the eye that had been forced into her skull and tell her that she could do something about it. She wanted-
[ She doesn't ask, and Akua cannot provide what is not asked for. She is no sage, or healer, or even great at being a friend. She's barely learned to embrace it herself, from the woman who ripped out her heart, and then stabbed her with a dagger. The woman who killed her own father before her eyes was the one who taught her about Friendship. It is the friendship of Villains, of people who knew that they would fight, disagree, and perhaps even kill each other.
But they were still friends.
In communion, Hayame will feel the sense of her hand holding Hayame's, warm, sure. Present. As if she held her hand, and then there is the feeling of her hand on Hayame's cheek, a ghost of it in communion. ]
I am your friend, Hayame, all you have to do is ask.
[ She says. She will not change herself. She will never truly be that different from the Doom of Liesse, even if she regretted the decision. She'd changed marginally, and became a person who would not partake in genocide, but she was still a villain. The scope of her arc truly was as far as she could go.
But Hayame... Hayame was so principled. So stringent. Stuck to the laws of her own code of honor, to what she saw was right. She could never accept such betrayal as a way of life. It was like asking Cordelia Hasenbach to look the other way as the Doom of Liesse joined with the Woe. Impossible. (Akua, of course, has no clue that she will be the 4th in a square involving said Hasenbach. Fun!)
So she can only promise: ]
But you must allow me trust, Hayame, that everything I do is for Meridian, in the end. I will not falter in that.
[Is that “all” she has to do? She has to ask for everything, to beg for the things she had always thought would just… happen, if someone were to stumble into the strange and crippling bond that “friendship”? The respect, the loyalty, the understanding, the affection… she had never craved it, because to have a friend was never something she even dreamed as possible in the harsh world she had been raised in, clambering over the dead and better-off-dead bodies of her shamed kindred to try and reach for half of human dignity. But she had thought…
She doesn’t know anything in this world. Hadn’t she asked Akua a similar question the first time the other woman had used the word “friend” with her? And yet even now… Every time she thinks she might grasp it…
Even as part of Hayame’s soul claws at what she had become, this humiliated thing with two eyes who only knew rage and vengeance, she sags pitifully into the brush of Akua’s hand, longing for a friend and for comfort so much that she forced herself to accept what her pride would never be happy with. She wants to ask Akua to choose her fully, to condemn the demon who had done this to her, to hate him even a shade of how much she does-
But her pride is wounded, not broken. Their friendship… could not survive Hayame hearing “no” to that. Maybe Akua could even sense it, through the Iconoclast aspect they shared that had stopped her from locking the other woman from her mind in the first place, that she almost asks it if her, demanding and desperate. But what she actually lets out is-
Nothing.
Can she say that she trusts Akua fully? That she believes everything she does is truly for Meridian’s sake? How many times has she cursed what seemed like everyone else’s fickleness and disloyalty? When Akua had dabbled in Zenith, when Liem had let himself be corrupted, when Set allowed himself to take that Yima bitch’s flower into his heart…
… She wished she could. She wanted to believe she could trust.]
Never falter, Akua.
[She says it like a prayer, like a threat, like a vote of confidence, like a plea. Maybe it is just all of those things.]
I am asking you to come to me.
I am asking you not to breathe a word of what I tell you, and what you see.
I am asking you… to try and find out what that monster actually did to me…
[“Sebastian” wasn’t even its name. Just like Farnese wasn’t, just like Gabriel wasn’t. It was a writhing mass of shadows and eyes and too many mouths that ate souls.
And despite what he had promised her, as she was strapped helpless to the table and hobbled to the wall, a bit shoved into her mouth to prevent herself from trying again to bite off her own tongue and escape into death… she was going to eventually force it to either kill her or to perish. If she didn’t, if she couldn’t-
Akua might as well just leave her weeping on the floor.]
[ Akua's fingers do not falter from Hayame — or the impression of them does not — and Akua lets a flicker of that warm affection for the proud, strong Jinba flicker through communion. She disagrees with Hayame on the virulent hatred for Sebastian, but she does not let it color her affection for her. She would touch her fingers to Hayame's flank, and elsewhere again, should she only ask, or give indication that it was welcome. Even now, her fingers linger in this mental space, and Hayame can feel warmth, in its own way, traversing the space between their homes.
She does not question the promise that Hayame sends. She knows that of all of them, Hayame sees what she does as Right, and Good. When one believed in Right and Good, was there anything that could not be compromised? Hayame reminded her of the Saint of Swords, a hardened grandmother who had fought Evil for so long that she had become hardened to allowing compromise, had been so unbowed, unbroken, uncompromising that there had been no negotiating with her.
She had died. Killed by the Warden's Sword that was Not a Sword; old age something that a Hero could not withstand forever. She had died, because she would not allow Good and Evil to work together.
She hoped that this would not be Hayame's end. That she would learn to bend, and bow, when necessary. ]
I will come to you. I will see it for myself, and I will understand.
[ She promises it. She will. She will look upon Hayame with two eyes — something that had not happened for so long — and she will know that it was both a gift and a curse (as most things with Devils were) and wholly exactly a punishment from Sebastian. ]
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no subject
In the absence of those disordered, chaotic images, a subconscious cry for help she hadn't even known she'd made as she instinctively fled from the torturous pain and humiliation her body and mind was experiencing... There is nothing. Not the feeling of being shut out, or rejected... but the lack of anyone able to answer. Whether that was via unconsciousness, death, or leaving Kenos... Who knew.
But from a certain point, sometime in the middle of the night... Hayame's status in communion slowly, hazily becomes "rejection", and not "absence". A mind shut down so tight no message will get through, no matter who or what it was.
... Unless, of course, perhaps... that other person was an Iconoclast, too.]
no subject
There is an unsettling sense of... Wrongness.
She does not know what, but she feels it low in her gut. That something is Wrong.
At night, she senses it, when it happens. She's still reaching out, with her mind, looking for —
Ah.
There she is, and Akua swallowed, before she tentatively reached out, the sensation of a gentle knocking at her mental door. ]
Hayame, I heard your cries —
[ She does not ask if she is okay. But nor does she want to leave her. ]
no subject
But Hayame isn't...
She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know whether to rage and smear what had happened to her all over the space shard-bearers shared or hide her humiliation and never tell a soul in the hopes that she could erase what had been done to her. She doesn't know if enough people will even believe her, when the demon took such pleasure in insinuating how much more beloved and respected he was by their fellow shard-bearers and he had seen to it that every injury she took in his company was magically healed, leaving no proof of the agony behind. She feels betrayed by how little faith she'd felt in those she could potentially cry out to for aid, hobbled and strapped beneath that blinding light with a demon's fingers in her eye socket.
Perhaps... perhaps Akua, who had said she would aid her in her quest... ? It is so hard to believe in it sometimes, when the other women had interceded before she could crush Sebastian's shard beneath the roots and still seemed to take some sort of pleasure from cavorting in the demon's presence, but perhaps...
It is as if Hayame tentatively begins to open the door, just a glimpse of tear-streaked cheeks in the crack between the door and the frame... before she hears that Akua heard her. There's a sudden flood of confusion and shame, she hadn't meant- she hadn't meant to call out to anyone, to broadcast how weak and helpless she had been, but she had?, and not just one person had heard it but Akua... Akua, too? What exactly had she heard, how long had it been, what had she- ? The "door" slams back shut, Hayame's presence collapsing in shame behind it even though a fellow Iconoclast couldn't be so easily shut out.]
no subject
Now she wants them, and Hayame is brave, and strong, and perhaps sometimes lacks caution, but that is where Akua sees that she can help her.
But now she wanted to shut her out, as if there was something she did not want her to see. As if the fact that he had been trying to scrape and pull at her mind earlier was something she did not want to admit. ]
You do not have to allow me in. You do not have to talk. I will stay here, though. In case something is needed, or...
[ In case you will accept me. ]
no subject
She is angry. So angry. The hate burns bright and hot because it has to, because if she doesn't stoke it then she will only have humiliation and shame. She kills the demon now masquerading under the name "Sebastian Michaelis" a thousand times behind that door, not even realizing others she had accidentally contacted, people who were not Iconoclasts, might be trying to reach her. She rages... But it's useless. It's all so useless. Even locked away, that demon's sadistic smile and his rotten whisper follow her.
I will never kill you., he'd said, forcing the bit into her mouth to prevent her from once again attempting to sever her own tongue and bleed to death, I will only take from you until there is nothing left. And what did she have now, that he'd robbed her of her pride, her dignity?
Wailing like a babe already? She hadn't, she hadn't, she wasn't going to scream or to cry or give him anything that would satisfy him, but will alone hadn't been able to prevent her from screaming once the bit kept her from closing her mouth, and it hadn't been enough to stop tears from springing to her eyes hot and shameful from the sheer pain of having her scarred and shriveled optic nerve pulled from the back of her skull.
But who would come looking for you?
... That one-
That one...
Behind the "door", something is happening. Someone is in her house when she returns home, when all she'd wanted was to collapse alone and not let anyone see her weak. But now that person has, she's told that she'd been heard across communion, and the fear is rekindled. Had she not... heard Akua's voice? Had it not seemed to say something... something about hearing her?
It is still hours before Akua hears anything. A voice colder and weaker than it had been last they'd spoke. One burning with betrayal even fiercer than when they had met in her stables after the Iconoclast Oracle.]
What did you hear?
I did not call upon anyone.
[She hadn't. She hadn't... meant to.]
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[ Worried is not the word for it. Nor is distressed — perhaps tortured, but she does not want to ascribe that to Hayame. That would do nothing but upset her, and she wants to do nothing of the sort. She dozed while she waited, and now... Now that Hayame sees fit to return to this space, she worries that perhaps she should have reached her in the physical world, too. She had looked, but...
But she had never seen anything. Hadn't heard from her.
She had nothing to go off of, but Hayame's coldness, her chill. Her unwillingness to share, but she knew she had to. She needed to find some way to reach out.
Wasn't that what friends did? She knew it was what Catherine would do. ]
I have been looking for you. I was...worried.
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... She should be warmed, somehow, that Akua had looked for her. That she had been worried. Is that not what "friends" did? It had been apparent from the start, when the other woman had first used that word with her, that the two of them might have very, very different ideas of what duties came with that label. But they might agree on this. "Friends" should look for each other if they were in danger, they should be concerned if they heard them in pain...
But something keeps Hayame cold. (Something like Akua stepping in to prevent her from crushing the demon's shard under her hoof in the roots when she'd had the fucking chance before any of this happened to her, something like lurking in Liem's communion report and watching them flirt and proposition each other in some sick mix of possibly-violence, possibly-bedding before he-)]
You were worried?
[And that something makes her lash out, vicious and hurt like an animal that scents its abuser on a would-be rescuer.]
Did your dear demon neglect to tell you what he was planning last you "danced" so that you needn't have wasted the effort?
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She also saw her promise to Hayame as a part of that. A challenge, a puzzle to pull apart and see what she could find. She wanted to see if she could bind the demon, and then, Hayame could kill him. Oh, not permanently, she firmly believed that shattering the first shard was a... greatly disastrous act that would escalate their battles beyond what shard-bearers could handle. Shattering a shard would leave them permanently dead, and in that --
In that, they did not know how permanent it was. If the shard was shattered, could they return to their worlds in the end? Would they be permanently held from their restored worlds, when they revived? It was an escalation of the level of the Ealamael, and something she did not want to have a part in. It was why she stopped Hayame, and why she would stop her again, if needed.
Even now.
After all, torture was torture. Intimate and personal, and likely with a purpose. Oh, she would worry over her friend, seek her out, and help her — even save her if she could — but it was all a dance, a game. Sorcerers of her caliber did not take such things so personally. Hell, she had helped save the man who had killed her own father, the most personal of crimes.
She would walk the line, and her path, as she needed. ]
No. I would not discuss such things with the demon, and if he mentioned it, I would warn you. I would think he not so foolish as to allow such a slip of the tongue. Just like he does not know that I plan to bind him, so you may kill him.
[ She was a villain, after all. In her mind, it was just rules of engagement. ]
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Hayame does not dance.
And Hayame is not a sorceress who does not take things personally. There had been no path available to her towards escaping the fate of most mares in the breeding stable that did not require the burning, desperate passion of envy, offense, and rage- rage against the way the world worked even as she made no efforts to truly defy it, only to claw her way towards the scraps of respect and dignity available to her.
And she-]
Is that supposed to make me happy? That between the two of us, you might choose me?
[It still put her in the same category as a demon. One whose scent (stain) is so recent on Akua that even though, in her desperation, she had reached out for her... now it burns her, to think of the two of them together, smirking, laughing, maybe even... even touching, like they had touched, and the thought makes her so sick and feel so stupid that she almost runs right then and there, but-
Akua says she'd help, she'd bind him, she'd let her kill him, but Hayame knows that isn't true, and her "voice" cracks despite her best effort, embarrassed by how emotional she sounds compared to the other woman but unable to stop, wailing in her hearts but snapping with her teeth.]
If you had let me kill him properly in the roots then none of this would have happened, Akua!
[... None of this would have happened. Whatever "this" was.]
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[ She says it simply. Frankly. Hayame is correct, and she will not shy away from the consequences of her actions — all of the consequences. ]
In fact, I think if I had allowed you to do so, Zenith would have sought revenge upon you. Do not think that Sebastian has those whom favor him, or find him useful.
If they had found you, you may not be sitting here breathing — they may have eliminated and then shattered you. Perhaps they would have done so prior to the Oracle, and we would not have found victory, thanks to your tireless work.
You are alive still. Yes, harmed, but alive. You can seek him out, and take something precious of his, perhaps. But more importantly: you are still here to fight. Would you rather be shattered right now? Unable to save your home? Do you not see that among us you are a stalwart, valued ally?
[ Perhaps it is twisted, of her, to see it this way. To see Hayame as a warrior, but she does not think she would want to be seen as a woman, but as a weapon.
She hopes, anyway, but she knows that she cannot truly soothe her anger, and perhaps she never could. Hayame was wounded, and harmed. She was going to be angry, and who better than Akua Sahelian?
It is not as if she has not had other, more dire, accusations leveled at her feet, after all. Of all the crimes she has committed, this is perhaps the most minor.
She doesn't even regret it. ]
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[Akua asks if she did not see that to Meridian she was a valued ally, and perhaps that cuts to the core of one of her many angers, to the reason the demon was able to worm so easily into that wound and exploit it. No, she did not feel as if she was. The few people who did seem willing to listen to her could not outweigh how alienated she felt in any group setting, where her opinions were often dismissed or ridiculed as too hard-line, too "outdated", too straightforward, or too cruel. And yet, like a fool, she kept trying and trying and trying...
She had always been reduced to just a weapon and a tool, if not one striving to be a "warrior". She had always been fine with it. But here... here, she kept being told she could be more, that she should be more, except every time... Yet the literal demon, the thing that ate souls, that could not even form bonds outside of benefit and business- ?
Hayame's spirit rails against the unfairness of it, against the way this world had made her think that she could be more but then constantly reminded her she might not, that she might never escape the confines of the world she'd come from. Her "friends" want her to survive, to be grateful to be alive, but-]
A true warrior would rather be dead than suffer this humiliation!
[Once, she would have rather been. She, a woman who had grabbed her enemy and tried to throw the both of them off the edge into a raging waterfall, who had agreed to bring the flame to a man who had festooned himself in gunpowder to cleanse her dishonor, and now...
Now she has to live with the knowledge that the demon could simply stick her with that poison and kidnap her off the streets gods only knew when, that he wouldn't kill her? That he would only take, take, and take until she had not a single scrap of dignity, not a single "friend" left? Like a caged beast her spirit clangs and collides with the "bars" of their communion, the wound so fresh that she struggles for rationality, for sense, for calm. She knows she should stop, that nothing she's doing is productive or helpful, and still...]
What can I take from a demon that he will actually care about? You tell me, Akua, since you are such good friends!
[... Now that the demon isn't watching, can't derive perverse satisfaction from it...
She wants to scream. She wants to cry.
So she does.]
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Soothe it? Comfort her?
Oh, how far had she fallen? What would her mother say to this? To the attempt to comfort a... friend. What would Catherine say, to this? ]
Demons like he are not infallible, Hayame. Death is a strict avenue, and does not truly punish him, even if you were to succeed in the final blow.
To take from him, you must destroy him, utterly. Take his prestige, his respect, the power he so cherishes. You must think like him to destroy him, not like a mortal.
Demons are creatures that can be tortured, just as any. You must be.. as creative as he.
[ She answers it seriously, instead of taking offense, or walking away. She wants Hayame to learn to do more than simply destroy. She wants to help her become formidable. ]
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and traumatizingthing that had happened to her. Out of nowhere, when she had considered her business with the demon done, in the middle of the godsdamned day when she'd been walking down the street with no warning, no chance to fight back-They do not truly "exist" here. So she can rage and cry and scream and slam herself against the confines of desert and stone mountain even while she is also somehow slumped there in a half-defeated lump with Akua's hand on her shoulder, hating that this woman had stayed her hand in the Iconoclast Oracle's trial, that she'd managed to convince her to leave demon alive because she'd made them even. And it is that one of her that looks up suddenly, anger and pain blazing in her eyes.
Eyes. She had never shown Akua what was beneath the eyepatch on the left side of her face. Even when they had been entwined, when things were too hot, sweat beading on skin, flesh overheating against flesh, she had kept it tightly on. But now it's gone, and there's no injury, no scar, no burn there to warrant covering, just an eye a sickly green shade that doesn't belong to her, that doesn't match the stormy grey of the one she'd been born with, once upon a time somewhere far, far away from here.]
I will shatter him! I will make him a shard and bury him so deep in hallow earth that no one will ever find him! I will blind him! I will steal every one of his "meals" before he can devour their souls! I will grind his "Master" into dust!
[Did they think she wasn't creative? That she couldn't be a villain, for all that she framed her actions in honor and rules of engagement that others called outdated and inflexible? All of those things were within what the honor others derided would allow. But.
But-]
Were you not the one who told me you understood me? That you, too, were fighting for redemption that can never be achieved?
[She'd thought that part of them was the same, even though the other woman was obviously willing to do things differently than she was, far less loyal in certain ways, far less "upright". But now-]
Now you want me to be no better than a demon?
[A demon who did not view friendship or bonds in any human way, demanding no loyalty and cherishing no one over their own interests. A demon who did not care at all what means were used to achieve their end.]
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[ The phrasing holds weight to Akua, who had utilized Demons since she was merely a girl. Something that she did not see as lesser, or unwanted. It was merely... different. A difference in perspective, perhaps. Demons were just that. They were eldritch, and unknowable. Inhuman and thus separate from others in their own way. ]
A demon is a demon, Hayame. In the same way that an Orc is an Orc, or a Jinba is a Jinba. We all have our own moralities to ascribe to, and it is not "stooping" or lowering yourself to defeat them. In my world, Orcs eat the flesh of their enemies, and Goblins kill the weakest of them to weed out the ones that would hold them back.
I am seeking redemption, yes, but that does not mean I will deny whom I am. I took it too far, when Liesse fell. I committed a crime that went too far. That does not mean my redemption is to deny whom I am.
I understand you in that you want it, but the shape of our redemptions are different. I will be never be anything but a Villain. I wear this proudly, for it is not just whom I am, it is my culture and my history. Villainy is as a part of me as is my Gift, and my Name. To deny it and give it up for redemption is no better than my path of guiding fellow villains in how to achieve their goals, without tipping over the worst of crimes.
[ And wasn't that the sticking point between them? Hayame would not want to be a villain, there was no redemption separate from that. There would be no redeeming herself and remaining the villain.
Akua, on the other hand, would always tread this path. It was hers, and it was different than anyone else's. It always would be. ]
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I am not telling you to change yourself!
[.... Is she? So what if the shape of their redemption was different? It did not need to be the same shape, as long as it ran parallel. Akua's level of "villainy", surely she could tolerate it for the sake of her goals, for the sake of how much the other woman brought to Meridian, for... for what she had done for her personally. But-]
I am telling you-
[What? Everything is so raw and fresh in her mind that it clatters around in her shattered sense of storm-wrought communion in a jumble of chaotic rage and bitterness and despair, and all she wants is-]
I am begging you-
[When she had refused to beg the demon for mercy, for relief from pain, for even death... Her rage flares, remembering Akua's words that she had foolishly let stop her from killing "Sebastian Michaelis" beneath the Great Tree, the disgusting, flirtatious phrases she had heard them exchange on communion. How is she supposed to stomach it? (Why should she have to stomach it-)]
Do not flaunt before me what I cannot forgive.
[She screams and she cries and she snarls and she rails, but a part of her... also clutches at Akua's hand. Even if the demon's insinuations were right, and no one would ever choose her over him, if she could never experience the type of loyalty her betrayed hearts had always craved... She did not want to see or hear something that would force her to either snap her principles over her own foreleg or abandon the first woman who had almost made her believe they were friends.
She wants to ask Akua to come to her. She wants to tell her what happened and feel her warm hand caress her cheek, brushing over the skin that had been healed to make her look like a liar if she claimed to have been kidnapped and tortured in a room that smelled of filth and chemicals. She wants the other woman to examine the eye that had been forced into her skull and tell her that she could do something about it. She wanted-
... Was it really so much to want?]
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But they were still friends.
In communion, Hayame will feel the sense of her hand holding Hayame's, warm, sure. Present. As if she held her hand, and then there is the feeling of her hand on Hayame's cheek, a ghost of it in communion. ]
I am your friend, Hayame, all you have to do is ask.
[ She says. She will not change herself. She will never truly be that different from the Doom of Liesse, even if she regretted the decision. She'd changed marginally, and became a person who would not partake in genocide, but she was still a villain. The scope of her arc truly was as far as she could go.
But Hayame... Hayame was so principled. So stringent. Stuck to the laws of her own code of honor, to what she saw was right. She could never accept such betrayal as a way of life. It was like asking Cordelia Hasenbach to look the other way as the Doom of Liesse joined with the Woe. Impossible. (Akua, of course, has no clue that she will be the 4th in a square involving said Hasenbach. Fun!)
So she can only promise: ]
But you must allow me trust, Hayame, that everything I do is for Meridian, in the end. I will not falter in that.
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She doesn’t know anything in this world. Hadn’t she asked Akua a similar question the first time the other woman had used the word “friend” with her? And yet even now… Every time she thinks she might grasp it…
Even as part of Hayame’s soul claws at what she had become, this humiliated thing with two eyes who only knew rage and vengeance, she sags pitifully into the brush of Akua’s hand, longing for a friend and for comfort so much that she forced herself to accept what her pride would never be happy with. She wants to ask Akua to choose her fully, to condemn the demon who had done this to her, to hate him even a shade of how much she does-
But her pride is wounded, not broken. Their friendship… could not survive Hayame hearing “no” to that. Maybe Akua could even sense it, through the Iconoclast aspect they shared that had stopped her from locking the other woman from her mind in the first place, that she almost asks it if her, demanding and desperate. But what she actually lets out is-
Nothing.
Can she say that she trusts Akua fully? That she believes everything she does is truly for Meridian’s sake? How many times has she cursed what seemed like everyone else’s fickleness and disloyalty? When Akua had dabbled in Zenith, when Liem had let himself be corrupted, when Set allowed himself to take that Yima bitch’s flower into his heart…
… She wished she could. She wanted to believe she could trust.]
Never falter, Akua.
[She says it like a prayer, like a threat, like a vote of confidence, like a plea. Maybe it is just all of those things.]
I am asking you to come to me.
I am asking you not to breathe a word of what I tell you, and what you see.
I am asking you… to try and find out what that monster actually did to me…
[“Sebastian” wasn’t even its name. Just like Farnese wasn’t, just like Gabriel wasn’t. It was a writhing mass of shadows and eyes and too many mouths that ate souls.
And despite what he had promised her, as she was strapped helpless to the table and hobbled to the wall, a bit shoved into her mouth to prevent herself from trying again to bite off her own tongue and escape into death… she was going to eventually force it to either kill her or to perish. If she didn’t, if she couldn’t-
Akua might as well just leave her weeping on the floor.]
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She does not question the promise that Hayame sends. She knows that of all of them, Hayame sees what she does as Right, and Good. When one believed in Right and Good, was there anything that could not be compromised? Hayame reminded her of the Saint of Swords, a hardened grandmother who had fought Evil for so long that she had become hardened to allowing compromise, had been so unbowed, unbroken, uncompromising that there had been no negotiating with her.
She had died. Killed by the Warden's Sword that was Not a Sword; old age something that a Hero could not withstand forever. She had died, because she would not allow Good and Evil to work together.
She hoped that this would not be Hayame's end. That she would learn to bend, and bow, when necessary. ]
I will come to you. I will see it for myself, and I will understand.
[ She promises it. She will. She will look upon Hayame with two eyes — something that had not happened for so long — and she will know that it was both a gift and a curse (as most things with Devils were) and wholly exactly a punishment from Sebastian. ]