[Clear. It was clear. All her life Hayame had striven to never let any weakness show, to conceal any crack in her armor or her hearts, because to let them be seen was to ruin everything she had ever worked for and condemn herself to the same life as the weak. The Armless. The stable broodmares. She had once been so, so good at it. But after months and months in Horos, a year in Kenos...
... It was clear. (She knows... She knows he means because of this Communion she is supposed to have sent, but-)
Everything grows darker around them. Everything seems smaller, narrower, closing in on them claustrophobic and suffocating. She can still feel the bite of the leather straps that had held her upper body and arms down to the makeshift surgery table, the burning rub of the rope hobbles on all of her legs, the scent of blood in the air as she struggled and struggled and struggled until she'd rubbed all the dun coat away, rubbed her skin away-]
You were my-
[Liem had been the third person in her entire life to call her his "friend". At least, in a way that she was able to risk believing in. Some of the shard-bearers called anyone and everyone that, and what value then could there be then in the word? But even though he had not been the first to say it... she had always considered him-]
My first...
[How could she not? She had known him longer than anyone here, owed him longer, relied on him longer, trusted him longer than she had any shard-bearer here. When she had returned "home" from the Exalt Oracle's trial, the knowledge of his nature fresh and burning, she had resented walking through the doorway he had built for her. A few days later, when he had reached out for her, she had shut him out... because she did not want to be reminded of it. How he had trusted others and not her, told others an not her, that he drank blood from the vein. A few days before she had been injected with some sort of poison and kidnapped from the streets of Springstar... she had gone to the academic district and looked for a scholar to find her a book about vampires, putting down coin after coin to make them keep reading aloud.
Apparently, he had to drink blood. To survive. To live. It made him... less of a monster, ironically. Less of one than the colt that had cut the liver from a freshly butchered human corpse and offered it to her with a smile.
... But he hadn't told her as much. She'd had to find out like that, her reaction... even if she felt guilty for it, in some way, she still felt so justified in it. Just because they had seen horrors since coming to this world, just because some of the freaks among the shard-bearers didn't judge anyone for anything, gleefully encouraging debauchery and violence and indulgence... she was supposed to be magically alright with seeing a man she had known for over a year suddenly bite into another man's neck and drink the blood than ran from it?
She hadn't contacted him after hearing the contents of that book. She didn't know what to say yet. She hadn't found the right words, or wrestled her pride, or gotten over the remaining insult and sense of betrayal that finding out about dhampir nature could not erase. She had been thinking about it. ... What to say. If she could have accepted what Liem was if he ha come to her, like he says, on his knees in confession, or if she still would have recoiled in horror.
Now they'll never know. If she could have been a better, more understanding person... or not.
And she still hadn't prepared the words. What does she say? That she wished more than anything (no, more than anything she'd wished for the strength to fight the drugs and rip through her bindings and throttle the demon and shatter his shard, but she'd still wished-) when the demon was cutting into her eye socket that she could have at least cried out to Liem for aid, instead of feeling as if he belonged in the category of her other "friends" who might hold her close one minute and then laugh with the demon the next.
Her words stick in her sore throat as she turns to "face him" properly, her fingers clutching uselessly at her breast. Her eyes glisten with tears painful, bitter, shamed and angry.
Eyes. The dying light of the candles illuminates just enough of her face when she anxiously turns that it illuminates an eye in what was once a scarred and empty hole, the iris a sick, putrid green instead of stormy grey.]
no subject
... It was clear. (She knows... She knows he means because of this Communion she is supposed to have sent, but-)
Everything grows darker around them. Everything seems smaller, narrower, closing in on them claustrophobic and suffocating. She can still feel the bite of the leather straps that had held her upper body and arms down to the makeshift surgery table, the burning rub of the rope hobbles on all of her legs, the scent of blood in the air as she struggled and struggled and struggled until she'd rubbed all the dun coat away, rubbed her skin away-]
You were my-
[Liem had been the third person in her entire life to call her his "friend". At least, in a way that she was able to risk believing in. Some of the shard-bearers called anyone and everyone that, and what value then could there be then in the word? But even though he had not been the first to say it... she had always considered him-]
My first...
[How could she not? She had known him longer than anyone here, owed him longer, relied on him longer, trusted him longer than she had any shard-bearer here. When she had returned "home" from the Exalt Oracle's trial, the knowledge of his nature fresh and burning, she had resented walking through the doorway he had built for her. A few days later, when he had reached out for her, she had shut him out... because she did not want to be reminded of it. How he had trusted others and not her, told others an not her, that he drank blood from the vein. A few days before she had been injected with some sort of poison and kidnapped from the streets of Springstar... she had gone to the academic district and looked for a scholar to find her a book about vampires, putting down coin after coin to make them keep reading aloud.
Apparently, he had to drink blood. To survive. To live. It made him... less of a monster, ironically. Less of one than the colt that had cut the liver from a freshly butchered human corpse and offered it to her with a smile.
... But he hadn't told her as much. She'd had to find out like that, her reaction... even if she felt guilty for it, in some way, she still felt so justified in it. Just because they had seen horrors since coming to this world, just because some of the freaks among the shard-bearers didn't judge anyone for anything, gleefully encouraging debauchery and violence and indulgence... she was supposed to be magically alright with seeing a man she had known for over a year suddenly bite into another man's neck and drink the blood than ran from it?
She hadn't contacted him after hearing the contents of that book. She didn't know what to say yet. She hadn't found the right words, or wrestled her pride, or gotten over the remaining insult and sense of betrayal that finding out about dhampir nature could not erase. She had been thinking about it. ... What to say. If she could have accepted what Liem was if he ha come to her, like he says, on his knees in confession, or if she still would have recoiled in horror.
Now they'll never know. If she could have been a better, more understanding person... or not.
And she still hadn't prepared the words. What does she say? That she wished more than anything (no, more than anything she'd wished for the strength to fight the drugs and rip through her bindings and throttle the demon and shatter his shard, but she'd still wished-) when the demon was cutting into her eye socket that she could have at least cried out to Liem for aid, instead of feeling as if he belonged in the category of her other "friends" who might hold her close one minute and then laugh with the demon the next.
Her words stick in her sore throat as she turns to "face him" properly, her fingers clutching uselessly at her breast. Her eyes glisten with tears painful, bitter, shamed and angry.
Eyes. The dying light of the candles illuminates just enough of her face when she anxiously turns that it illuminates an eye in what was once a scarred and empty hole, the iris a sick, putrid green instead of stormy grey.]