[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 āallā she has to do? She has to ask for everything, to beg for the things she had always thought would justā¦ happen, if someone were to stumble into the strange and crippling bond that āfriendshipā? The respect, the loyalty, the understanding, the affectionā¦ 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 thoughtā¦
She doesnāt know anything in this world. Hadnāt she asked Akua a similar question the first time the other woman had used the word āfriendā with her? And yet even nowā¦ Every time she thinks she might grasp itā¦
Even as part of Hayameās 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 Akuaās 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 friendshipā¦ could not survive Hayame hearing ānoā 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 Meridianās sake? How many times has she cursed what seemed like everyone elseās fickleness and disloyalty? When Akua had dabbled in Zenith, when Liem had let himself be corrupted, when Set allowed himself to take that Yima bitchās flower into his heartā¦
ā¦ 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 youā¦ to try and find out what that monster actually did to meā¦
[āSebastianā wasnāt even its name. Just like Farnese wasnāt, just like Gabriel wasnāt. 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 deathā¦ she was going to eventually force it to either kill her or to perish. If she didnāt, if she couldnāt-
Akua might as well just leave her weeping on the floor.]
[ Akua's fingers do not falter from Hayame ā or the impression of them does not ā 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 ā something that had not happened for so long ā 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
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?]
no subject
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.
no subject
She doesnāt know anything in this world. Hadnāt she asked Akua a similar question the first time the other woman had used the word āfriendā with her? And yet even nowā¦ Every time she thinks she might grasp itā¦
Even as part of Hayameās 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 Akuaās 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 friendshipā¦ could not survive Hayame hearing ānoā 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 Meridianās sake? How many times has she cursed what seemed like everyone elseās fickleness and disloyalty? When Akua had dabbled in Zenith, when Liem had let himself be corrupted, when Set allowed himself to take that Yima bitchās flower into his heartā¦
ā¦ 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 youā¦ to try and find out what that monster actually did to meā¦
[āSebastianā wasnāt even its name. Just like Farnese wasnāt, just like Gabriel wasnāt. 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 deathā¦ she was going to eventually force it to either kill her or to perish. If she didnāt, if she couldnāt-
Akua might as well just leave her weeping on the floor.]
no subject
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 ā something that had not happened for so long ā 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. ]