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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
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".]