[... She should have waited. She should have waited until she had a better hold on those visceral, consuming memories, until they were farther behind her, sealed away, so that when he says those words... She isn't instantly back in that room in Kowloon where those things had been. The eye. Light. A blade. The demon. The smell of filth and the acrid burn of chemicals suddenly floods their sense of Communion, awful and nauseating to someone with a sensitive nose. A smell she wouldn't soon be forgetting.
The rest of it... is even worse. She saw him? Which him? The one she had called her friend, or the one who stood over a man's body dripping crimson down his chin as his eyes glowed blood moon red? The demon makes sense, but a child- ? What child? She doesn't know what to ask, what to ask first, and in her confusion she almost half-turns back towards him. On the left side of her face, there is the briefest hint of something sick and green, incongruous and Wrong.]
- Why?
[But in the end, her question of what to ask is answered for her with the almost accusatory-sounding word escapes a throat that sounds hoarse from screams in her mind, even though in person the demon had healed away any proof he had touched her and she hadn't wanted it.]
Why are you still worried about me?
[The whisper is dark and bitter... and scared, and hating that she hadn't felt she could cry out for him in her time of need, and doubly hating that the demon had whispered so many doubts about her bonds into her hearts.]
I called you a liar.
[She'd thought far worse than she'd even said. In the immediate, visceral reaction to the act she'd thought him no better than a demon, just as she had thought of that dark colt in the mountains when he revealed he had been eating human meat.]
A traitor.
[Again. Not to Meridian this time, but... to her. Again. And yet she... even she knew she was a woman who was so, so easy to betray. So why-]
You do not even trust me-
[Not with what he was, anyway. So why- ? Why had he reached out to her after they'd won the Exalt Oracle? Why did he bother worrying about her now? If he had cut her away, if he condemned her for her reaction to him and instead sought refuge with those people he'd flaunted to her who didn't care for depravity and whose bodies touched his lips...
She wouldn't have been able to claim she wouldn't do the same in his position. Yet he's here, in the borders of her mind. Waiting patiently again for her.]
no subject
The rest of it... is even worse. She saw him? Which him? The one she had called her friend, or the one who stood over a man's body dripping crimson down his chin as his eyes glowed blood moon red? The demon makes sense, but a child- ? What child? She doesn't know what to ask, what to ask first, and in her confusion she almost half-turns back towards him. On the left side of her face, there is the briefest hint of something sick and green, incongruous and Wrong.]
- Why?
[But in the end, her question of what to ask is answered for her with the almost accusatory-sounding word escapes a throat that sounds hoarse from screams in her mind, even though in person the demon had healed away any proof he had touched her and she hadn't wanted it.]
Why are you still worried about me?
[The whisper is dark and bitter... and scared, and hating that she hadn't felt she could cry out for him in her time of need, and doubly hating that the demon had whispered so many doubts about her bonds into her hearts.]
I called you a liar.
[She'd thought far worse than she'd even said. In the immediate, visceral reaction to the act she'd thought him no better than a demon, just as she had thought of that dark colt in the mountains when he revealed he had been eating human meat.]
A traitor.
[Again. Not to Meridian this time, but... to her. Again. And yet she... even she knew she was a woman who was so, so easy to betray. So why-]
You do not even trust me-
[Not with what he was, anyway. So why- ? Why had he reached out to her after they'd won the Exalt Oracle? Why did he bother worrying about her now? If he had cut her away, if he condemned her for her reaction to him and instead sought refuge with those people he'd flaunted to her who didn't care for depravity and whose bodies touched his lips...
She wouldn't have been able to claim she wouldn't do the same in his position. Yet he's here, in the borders of her mind. Waiting patiently again for her.]