[Her hearts are not supposed to be so weak that they would be swayed by the threat of abandoning her so-called responsibilities. Before she had accepted his bargain to save this woman in exchange for receiving his surrender to Pleroma's custody, she had sworn to herself that she would see the black sludge purged from his body to repay him for the patience and kindness he had shown to her in the black of a broken space, when she had felt the weakest she'd ever in her entire life and wept like a filly over her inability to cleanse her dishonor, save a single person she cared for, or even find the courage to end her life.
But that simple demand, one key phrase... it echoes deep in the core of her shards where those shameful memories hide even as she bears towards Liem and Makoto with a fierce, bloody anger the likes of which might even rival The Red-Haired Tiger of the Mountains. It reverberates back in her own voice, in her own head. What can foreigners who care nothing for me do to make me worthy? You would have me pledge my service to strangers and hope they make an honorable warrior of me- ? She had felt so sure, so justified in her rejection of that word, responsibility, but-
It had sounded like something Matsukaze might have said... if Matsukaze was even still alive. If Matsukaze wouldn't die the moment he embraced her on the morrow, even if she returned to where she belonged. What is a wrong in the world that you wish to see righted? How can you use your hands, your legs, your back, to work against it? If you are lost on your way, the words and actions of others can guide you— but the responsibility of your own actions, and your own honour, lies with you.
She wants to fight. The hateful fire in her hearts burns and flares and demands that she selfishly take back from this the person she wanted, the one who might believe in her, who might help her believe that she was worthy of that life she'd once been offered and been unable to truly imagine. A world where it was alright to feel happy about being alive.
But the woman cries out in fear and pain behind her. Her baby wails in her arms as she clutches it desperately, turning her body to try and protect it over herself as black-armored Achamite guards grab and tear and manhandle her towards arrest. Her hearts falter, recalling the cries that sometimes came from the breeding stables at night, as Armless broodmares still able to care like her own mother never had wept into the hay after the foals they couldn't hold were taken from them by human hands. Her legs weaken, recalling the weeping, sniffling faces of the orphans in that mountain village who had been robbed of parents by the jinba hunts and had only other children to attempt to be adults and comfort them.
Hayame meets Liem's eyes across the courtyard, the conflict, anger, and desperation clear in her gaze. But despite it... her hooves scramble on the cobblestones to arrest her charge, words bubble up unbidden and strangled in her throat, but she manages--]
Do not dare forget what I have been entrusted with, Liem, follower of Abadar!
[The sacred book tucked carefully into the saddlebag hanging off her withers, that she had promised would be returned to him only when he joined her purified in the forests of Greentruth, that he had sworn he would rather lose both eyes than part with. More than the book... the words then both it and I am in your care. And if he bids her abandon one, even though he said that Your honour cannot be restored to you by those you leave behind---
There is failure in either direction. Shame in both. Blood on her lip where she bites so hard that her fangs pierce skin as she forces herself to turn tail, dodging around the swordsman she longs to fight and leaving behind the man she wished to save in the hands of a demon she wants to kill. Aions were powerful in a variety of ways, but the Achamite soldiers... they are nothing to the physical prowess of a half ton jinba. She falls among them like a wolf amongst sheep, kicking, bucking, bodily picking up men and throwing them across the alley into the stone walls of Venera, ripping them from their target in a whirlwind of violence until she can take the woman and her child in her arms and hold them tight to her body, throwing it forward into a hard, miserable gallop away from the Kenoma for as long as adrenaline will mask the pain of her injuries and until it is possible to make her way to the Veneran rebel safehouse.
She wants to.
But she cannot risk turning back around for one last look.]
no subject
But that simple demand, one key phrase... it echoes deep in the core of her shards where those shameful memories hide even as she bears towards Liem and Makoto with a fierce, bloody anger the likes of which might even rival The Red-Haired Tiger of the Mountains. It reverberates back in her own voice, in her own head. What can foreigners who care nothing for me do to make me worthy? You would have me pledge my service to strangers and hope they make an honorable warrior of me- ? She had felt so sure, so justified in her rejection of that word, responsibility, but-
It had sounded like something Matsukaze might have said... if Matsukaze was even still alive. If Matsukaze wouldn't die the moment he embraced her on the morrow, even if she returned to where she belonged. What is a wrong in the world that you wish to see righted? How can you use your hands, your legs, your back, to work against it? If you are lost on your way, the words and actions of others can guide you— but the responsibility of your own actions, and your own honour, lies with you.
She wants to fight. The hateful fire in her hearts burns and flares and demands that she selfishly take back from this the person she wanted, the one who might believe in her, who might help her believe that she was worthy of that life she'd once been offered and been unable to truly imagine. A world where it was alright to feel happy about being alive.
But the woman cries out in fear and pain behind her. Her baby wails in her arms as she clutches it desperately, turning her body to try and protect it over herself as black-armored Achamite guards grab and tear and manhandle her towards arrest. Her hearts falter, recalling the cries that sometimes came from the breeding stables at night, as Armless broodmares still able to care like her own mother never had wept into the hay after the foals they couldn't hold were taken from them by human hands. Her legs weaken, recalling the weeping, sniffling faces of the orphans in that mountain village who had been robbed of parents by the jinba hunts and had only other children to attempt to be adults and comfort them.
Hayame meets Liem's eyes across the courtyard, the conflict, anger, and desperation clear in her gaze. But despite it... her hooves scramble on the cobblestones to arrest her charge, words bubble up unbidden and strangled in her throat, but she manages--]
Do not dare forget what I have been entrusted with, Liem, follower of Abadar!
[The sacred book tucked carefully into the saddlebag hanging off her withers, that she had promised would be returned to him only when he joined her purified in the forests of Greentruth, that he had sworn he would rather lose both eyes than part with. More than the book... the words then both it and I am in your care. And if he bids her abandon one, even though he said that Your honour cannot be restored to you by those you leave behind---
There is failure in either direction. Shame in both. Blood on her lip where she bites so hard that her fangs pierce skin as she forces herself to turn tail, dodging around the swordsman she longs to fight and leaving behind the man she wished to save in the hands of a demon she wants to kill. Aions were powerful in a variety of ways, but the Achamite soldiers... they are nothing to the physical prowess of a half ton jinba. She falls among them like a wolf amongst sheep, kicking, bucking, bodily picking up men and throwing them across the alley into the stone walls of Venera, ripping them from their target in a whirlwind of violence until she can take the woman and her child in her arms and hold them tight to her body, throwing it forward into a hard, miserable gallop away from the Kenoma for as long as adrenaline will mask the pain of her injuries and until it is possible to make her way to the Veneran rebel safehouse.
She wants to.
But she cannot risk turning back around for one last look.]