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2023 catch-all
Who: Liem & various
What: Catch-all for non-event threads
Where: Various
When: Throughout the rest of 2023
Warnings: Will be in headers as appropriate
What: Catch-all for non-event threads
Where: Various
When: Throughout the rest of 2023
Warnings: Will be in headers as appropriate
no subject
Or Zenith and despair might take her, too.]
It is not-
[She wants him to rouse, to fight her, to argue, to just... What did it matter if her fate was to die when she returned to her world? What possessed so many people to accost her fate these last weeks? She can hear the voices in the back of her mind even now. Claude trying to offer her a place in his world, to come to hers with enough power to prevent the disaster that required her life to circumvent. Set accusing her of being a warrior who only wanted to die without the courage to fight for a different outcome.]
It is not my goal.
[Her goal was to cleanse her dishonor, to make up for her mistake, to save the orphans of that village she had put in danger...]
It is the only way I can accomplish my goal...
[She had been relieved, when Matsukaze had grabbed her hand and pulled her from the raging waters she had chosen as the place of her suicide and his death. How ashamed she had felt, to be confronted with the truth... that she desired to live just as much as anyone. But to return to the life of a slave awaiting sale in the breeding stable, to exist as a traitor who abandoned the only people who had offered her freedom...
Did they all think that of her? Why... Why was he asking her this, now, of all times?]
no subject
The people I left behind have their own war to fight. They didn't stop, even though I left them — and though I didn't return, when they called.
[Is he talking about his colleagues in Taldor, or in Springstar? Is there even a difference?]
If I don't give them up for lost, if I go back home — my friends might still die. [Not his colleagues; his friends. Friends who he'd lived and worked and taken meals and bled with for months, and missed terribly in the year he'd been away.] There might be nothing I can do. I could return home only for it to be torn apart by war.
[Through the fog of apathy that has been weighing him down more and more over the last couple of weeks, Liem manages a spike of frustration that he would need to speak with Hayame this way — with her fists bunched in his coat, and his feet dangling off the ground. He cannot move like this, cannot go to her or move further away under his own power. And, he realizes… he wants to. He wants to be able to go or stay of his own volition; how else is she to trust that he even wishes to be there?
He releases her hands, slides his grip up her arms instead, gripping her tightly, pieces crumbling from his bare fingers where they split apart.]
Hayame… When you are fighting to return home, and trusting that it is still waiting for you — I need you to keep fighting for yourself, too. I need you to become someone who can return home and fight, and win, and survive. Because I… I cannot find hope in sending my friend to her death.
no subject
A month ago she would have claimed to know nothing about such things. Actually, does she even know anything about them now? Even though Set had suddenly thrown the word at her, Akua had attempted to explain why she should believe she cared for her, and Amos had casually used it despite the fact that they might need to kill each other for their factions... Hayame still doesn't really understand it. She's supposed to believe in it anyway? She's supposed to believe that despite how disloyal these people are, how viciously they disagree, how much they argue... that they can be friends?
He talks about the unsure future that would await him in his home, not knowing if he could save his friends or prevent a war, but... She wants to shake him. She wants to yell and condemn his weakness, insult him for not being able to take that chance when she was willing to bring back her world even knowing that death is likely the only way that she can save those who matter to her. She had promised Set she would try, and now Liem wants that promise, too? Liem wants-
- to call her his friend, also? His fingers, flaking, cracking, seize at her arms and Hayame startles, her pupil dilating sharply. As if she hadn't even realized she was still holding him up off the ground, she suddenly releases him, allowing him to drop the foot or so back to the ground.]
Why-
[Her now empty hands hover uselessly in the air until she suddenly curls her fingers into impotent fists, her short nails pressing into her palms with no bite.]
Can you not just hope for your own world? You have people who wish you would come back, who may survive if you return... Your god awaits you-
[The responsibility that he lays at her hooves looks so heavy. And despite how she had just claimed to be strong, demanded he should have relied on that strength rather than cave to the whispers of Zenith's hopelessness-]
Why would you stake your belief on something like that?
[She had demanded that he rely on her strength in this world... And he wanted to instead rely on her ability to hope and survive?]
no subject
It is not belief.
[His gloved hands travel down her arms to her clenched fists, curling bare fingertips around them, worming them in to insinuate them into her grip. He did not leave Meridian because he was tired; but he is tired now, of looking at the people in his life and seeing them hurting, seeing that he has been the one to hurt them, and accepting that it has to be that way.]
I don't know whether Meridian is right, or whether Zenith is, or whether both of them are misleading us completely. None of us know what we will leave this place to find, in the end. I want to find out, but I can't keep making my decisions based on supposition. It will only cause me grief.
[Isn't that what happened when he'd let Zenith sway him? He had them persuade him that if they were truly right, then his duty should lead him there. But he still did not know. None of them did, and he suspects that none of them will, unless they are willing to tear apart the very premise of their place here in looking. And until that happens, and he still doesn't know, he has to make a choice, just as he had when he'd first joined Meridian.
But this time, if he is going to make a choice based solely on his own wants and his own convictions, he may as well go all the way.]
This is my bargain with you. I will stay true to Meridian, let it be my hope and my salvation — as long as it is yours, and Set's, and that of everyone else who stands at my side.
no subject
What is she supposed to say? She wants to rail at him still, to demand that he choose Meridian because they are right, because returning to the worlds they belong is the proper path rather than attempting to play god and create some sort of perfect world by fucked up Zenith committee. She doesn't want to believe in supposition, she wants to believe in the only path that offered her any hope, she wants the people she cares about not to be her godsdamned enemies-
She should slap away his hands, demand he be strong enough to stand and choose Meridian on his own...
And instead she is clutching them. Because as many times as she has labeled him a traitor, insulted him for betraying Meridian, and claimed to others that she cared nothing for anyone who defected... She had cared about Liem defecting. She had cared that Liem left her. And now... she has the chance to get him back.
Will she be able to trust him again? Will it be the same? Will-
Her fingers tighten.]
It is mine.
[After the roots and the loss of the Iconoclast Oracle, she had turned to Meridian even further, throwing herself into duty and work to try and make up for the failings she thought she saw in the faction that she had chosen to rely on to get her home. Perhaps "we" would be more convincing... but Set is chaotic, too free with his affections regardless of loyalties, and she had seen Yima's flower blooming in his soul. Allowed to bloom there. If it is her, she will be stalwart, and unyielding, and true-]
So come back. I will take your damned deal- !
[Is just deciding enough?]
no subject
But it is hard to feel anything other than this deep, yawning apathy, even now. He cannot help but feel as though even this decision matters not at all, like it is a concession Hayame has made simply to wrest him away from Zenith: one less enemy, and one more ally, even if he is an inconstant one. He will keep letting her down, and she will continue to keep him at arm's length, as she should have done from the beginning. What is the point in hoping for anything else, when they both know better?
Liem grits his teeth, his fingers tightening in hers. He is tired of giving up on the things he wants because he knows better than to think that they might come true — and if the only way he can force himself to strive for something better is by dragging his companions kicking and screaming into the light of that futile hope, then that is what he will do. If he must try to believe in the impossible, at least he will not be alone.]
I will. But I need you to take something else, too.
[His chilled fingers pull free of hers, but only so he can strip the leather gloves from his hands. If he is to divest himself of any of his discord, he will need more than just his fingers to be bare.]
no subject
The thing crackling up his skin and making his blood cold, making his eyes waxy and dead. Now that they are opposites, Meridian and Zenith, she will be even more effective at cleansing it than she had been before, relying only on their complimentary Aspects. At least, for now, while they are opposites- something he has promised will not remain the case for long.
In that tent, hidden away from the rest of the mingle Liem Talbott had organized, she had insisted on holding his hands because that was the only way she'd known how to cleanse Discord in her limited experience. He had been strange about it, she'd thought so, cagey about how something so insignificant could do the job. It hadn't been insignificant to her. But she isn't the one crumbling from the inside. He's taking off his gloves, like he's going to try that same method again, for her sake, but. She does not want to wait that long. She does not want to stand here in this patch of land that used to be wood and was now a house just awkwardly lacing their fingers and waiting for his Discord to ease.
Hayame's own Discord is not an issue she considers. She's more concerned with the fact that she has never been taught how to comfort or hold another person, and she doesn't know if she'll even be capable of it now. But regardless of all of that, without thinking much further beyond the immediate desire to bring him back, drag him back... She reaches out not for his bare hands but to enfold him in a tight, somewhat awkward embrace, clutching the smaller man tight to her chest(s) and curling her fingers tight in the back of his clothes.]
no subject
His mind has to catch up to the startled, wary state of his body, for which the sensation of a sudden embrace is so unexpected. Slowly, cautiously, he makes himself lean more of his weight against her, raising his arms to rest cold, stiff hands against her warm coat. Given her height, the only reason she doesn’t pull him straight into her bound bosom is, in fact, because he is not even tall enough for that. He leans his head just below it instead, breathing out a small, tentative sigh.
She… hugged him. She is hugging him, and after a moment’s consideration, he slides one hand to gently grasp one of her forearms. And he tugs it up, until her fingers come free of his coat and find their way instead to his hair.
Purification cannot work properly through clothing, after all.]
no subject
She hasn't done it herself. She doesn't know the right way to hold so that she doesn't hurt them by accident, she doesn't even know if she has the capacity to make someone feel better. The closest she had ever come to holding someone else... had been Liem's shard, in the dark of the northern Alenroux woods, her hands slick with blood and her only remaining eye blinded, clutching the sharp gem to her chest after desperately groping about in the grass for her companion only to find stone. She had meant to catch his body in the roots in her arms... but he had been dust before she could.
This time... this time he is a man, and he is alive, and his Discord fairly radiates off of him, but she doesn't care. He'll be able to feel her hearts pounding in both her chests where she clutches him close, her forelegs pawing at the earth on either side of his legs as she tries to find the right height, the right angle... So taken by the confusion of the motion and attempting to do it well, she doesn't even realize until he takes hold of her forearm that... skin contact, of course, they have to-
The last time she had touched him, she had snapped his neck, thinking to save him from the despair of Meridian and punish him for his betrayal all at once, but now... Her hands move tentatively into his hair and cradle his head, a low, pained sound rumbling in her breast as she tries to open herself up to the cold lash of his Discord.]
no subject
But slowly, he does yield to her embrace. His arms slide more insistently around her equine shoulders; the hair beneath her fingers begins to feel soft instead of cool and smooth. Vitality and colour return to him like a landscape being unearthed from beneath snow and frost. He takes a breath, inhaling the familiar scent of her clothes and skin.
And when he takes another, it is closer to a gasp. His fingers tremble against her withers as the apathy that has weighed heavy on him since almost the very moment he first harmonized to Zenith finally sloughs free, and something like homesickness crashes into him at full force.]
Hayame.
[His voice is a rough whisper, and he has to fight the urge to tuck his suddenly-damp face against her clothes. He left. He just left her behind, and he never even said goodbye. Why— Why would he ever—]
Are you… still angry with me?
no subject
They grow warm and he melts, instead.
Her larger body curls over his, as if she could somehow protect him from Zenith surging back in where it was banished from, her fingers sinking into his hair. What- Should she- ? Her fingers stroke over his scalp in an attempt at comfort (comforting him or her, she doesn't know), something hitches in her throat that she cannot control... and he wants to know if she is angry at him. He is crying and he wants to know if she is angry with him.]
...
[Hayame thinks a better woman, a kinder woman, might tell him "no", even if it were a lie. Or she might forgive him then, on the spot, granting absolution for his betrayal so that he cold return to Meridian unburdened, but she-]
Of course I am still angry-
[Her hold on him tightens, as if she was offering him a sanctuary where he might hide the tears on his face, instead of trying to hide the ones on her own.]
I am so angry with you-
[But she is holding him still, his Discord dissolving in the heat of her obsidian shard.]
no subject
As long as she still cares, as long as she still hopes, he can weather any amount of her rage and her disappointment.
If it were not for the tense, quiet unsteadiness of his breaths, the soft roughness in his voice and the smell of salt in the evening air, he might simply seem grateful. He clings to Hayame desperately, pressing his face into her shirt as though he might disguise his lack of composure that way. He does, at least, manage not to make a single sound as tears slide traitorously down his cheeks.]
no subject
But this- Now it is her burning with salt and water, stinging in her eye and in the hole where one used to be. Unlike when she had been a filly and her brother had crept into her stall... She doesn't rebuke him, or demand that he stop crying and be strong. Instead... instead, she finds an awkward, stilted rhythm to shift her weight between one foreleg and the other, pulling him along with her as she rocks ever so slightly.
Back and forth, back and forth, until she can speak without betraying herself when she says,]
Your shard...
[She swallows, inhaling his scent, trying to remember-]
I want to see it.
no subject
Hayame is… so warm. He can hear her heartbeats distinctly, pressed against her like this, and feel the heat of her even through the layers of their clothing. It tugs at the covetous, hungry part of him that always rouses when he's this close to another person, and the demands of that hunger help him recall himself to the present.
When she asks after his shard, he doesn't respond at first. It takes a long moment before Liem gathers himself with a breath, and pries himself away from Hayame to slide his hand over his chest. He does not undo the layers of clothing covering his chest, but simply draws the shard out to hold it gently in his hand.
Before, it had been scorchingly cold, enough so that he'd been shocked that his own flesh didn't freeze and blister at contact with it. But it has warmed now, from freezing to simply cool, like the rest of him. And within the opaline depths, a spark of light now kindles, soft and pale but growing slowly stronger with each slow breath he draws.
It is the first time, he realizes, that she would have seen his shard while he's still breathing.]
I feel... better, Hayame. And I will keep my promise.
no subject
But Liem had seen her. Liem had not judged her. Liem had been patient. Liem had waited for her to be able to move.
So she waits until he's ready to stop, until he pulls away, and she lets him. She had left most of her own tears in his hair, keeping her cheeks mostly dry, but... there is redness. There is a damp line trapped along the bottom edge of the leather patch that covers her ruined eye. The demon who had taken her eye out had done such a hellishly good job with it that her tear ducts were undamaged. The salt doesn't sting anymore. The inside was all scar now.
But her remaining eye... Ever since she had devoted herself further to Meridian, in the wake of the Iconoclast Oracle... she had become able to See. There is something different in the stormy grey of her iris, something like Meridian's glow, when she looks at Liem's shard in his hand. She isn't content to just look, though. Her hands reach... and grab both sides of his. There's no reason for it. He was holding it close enough, his fingers weren't obscuring it. But she does it anyway. And the pulse of Meridian in her eye... reflected its reborn pulse in his shard.]
... It's back to normal.
["Normal". How it was supposed to be. How she selfishly wanted to be. She'd needed to see it for herself. She'd thought coming to Kenos, that finally... finally she had repaid the debt she incurred that first time they'd met, the one he'd never asked for. But it wasn't... it wasn't about debt anymore, and that's what had made his "betrayal" so much worse. It's what made her doom her reputation to that of a hypocrite by being willing (wanting) to bring him back to Meridian after all the harsh words she had traded with her own so-called allies.
He said he would keep his promise. And hers-]
... You have to help me keep mine.
[He asked her to want to survive. To fight to live even though she had long resolved to die for her honor, to save those her mistakes had damned. To do so well enough that it would keep his hope alive. And though she had sworn she would do it...
The glaze of True Sight is fading from her eye when she turns her gaze from his shard back to his face. In it's wake... there is only pain and desperation and relief.]
If you and I are... friends.
no subject
And he recalls the compassion that had given him the patience to wait with Hayame in that space between worlds, when she had not had a scrap of belief in herself to rely on.]
I will. I will stay at your side.
[He gazes down at the shard in his hand for another moment, lingering in the novel experience of Hayame holding his hand in both of hers. He cannot really expect her to fully accept him, to befriend him and want him for all that he is — not Hayame, not if accepting all of him means accepting the foul and unclean parts of him as well. But if he can go back to being the man that she wanted him to be, the priest and fellow Meri whom she had put her faith in… then perhaps he can be the ally she needs to go back home and live.
As he looks up at her, his expression is intent and serious.]
If we can cross the boundaries between worlds and change the fate of existence, we can win for you an atonement that you live to be proud of.
no subject
But he'd shredded them by using it, and now... She has to (gets to) use it, too, even if she still lingers uneasily over whether she had done enough for it, whether she was capable of maintaining it, whether he would not betray Meridian (her) again... For now, though. He says he will stay.
Hayame's hands remain holding Liem's, tight and desperate. She wants to believe fully in everything he says, that they can return to their worlds, that she can cleanse her dishonor in a way that doesn't result in her and Matsukaze's death... But for now, it is still hard- even harder than believing they were friends or that he would remain by her side. She cannot help but say,]
If.
[But if they could...
Her own gaze drops back to his shard, lingering on their hands. He isn't as cold anymore. His skin isn't cracking. Eventually, the one storm grey eye rises... and moves past him, to the nearly completed home behind. She'd told herself there was no reason she was here in particular, of all places on Alenroux, and yet...]
... When will it be finished?
no subject
He brightens a little, when her gaze rises to regard the house resting just beyond him. His fingers close automatically over the shard in his hand as he turns his head to glance back at it.]
Soon, [he says with satisfaction. The home looks visibly close to completion; the roof and walls are all whole, as is the rather tall, broad front door. At this point, most of the work still to be done is internal.]
It should be done within the week, if there aren't any further delays. Issues with the blight set the schedule back some, but we were spared the worst of it, since most of the materials used were local.
[After a moment, his expression settles and he looks back up at Hayame, a serious cast to his pale blue eyes.]
You will take it, won't you? It'll just sit empty otherwise.
[The house isn't even in the more populated part of Alenroux; anyone considering purchasing it would have to be willing to brave the long, monster-filled nights all by themselves. Probably most shardless inhabitants wouldn't be keen on the prospect.]
no subject
Her own expression is... conflicted, when she meets Liem's gaze. His fingers have curled back protectively around his shard, but... her fingers have not released his hand. If anything... the grip may be slightly tighter, confronted by this... this choice she has been avoiding.
But even in that avoidance... She had come here, even though she would not have been able to give a truthful reason why she needed to pass by this area of Alenroux in her day's patrol. She had not told herself she would meet him here, which meant that she had come to see... that. The house. The symbol of what might have been if Liem had not gone to Zenith, if he hadn't rendered this place a symbol of betrayal and unfinished business-
He is back, though. It is not accepting a tainted gift from a traitor, now, it's... something a friend had done. Done partially for her. So even though the words are still not easy to say, heavy and awkward on her tongue... Hayame tips her head to the side slightly and averts her gaze awkwardly, summoning up the courage to say something as supposedly simple as,]
...
[Just say it. All she has to do is say it, but it is... harder than she thought. Never in any moment in her world had she ever thought to live anywhere but a stable, because that... that is where jinba were kept. She had always known she would never step onto a proper floor, never have a door to close and lock for privacy, never have a bed like humans had, never own something. But now, after all Liem had done...]
... I will accept it.
[... "Thank you".]