[Semi-Open] An Esteemed Guest of Lohkimareen

[warmare]

WHO: Hayame (warmare) & Makoto('s Head) (affal) & You
WHAT: Visits, interrogations, supply drops, medical aid, nightmares, maybe an eventual rescue?
WHERE: Lohkimareen, near the Valley of the Innocent
WHEN: Throughout Sekiseri (Sept.)
WARNINGS: there is a living severed head in this log and almost no one is going to be nice to him + a variety of referenced CW's (torture, amputation, SA, etc.)

[There is a new resident of the forest of Lohkimareen, to the west along the border with the Valley of the Innocent. It had taken portals and days of travel to make her way there, but Hayame (and her unwilling "guest") now call those woods... "home", following the advice of the aion Tehri, who assured that the Regent's eyes should not be able to penetrate the trees. So for now, Hayame and the severed head of the Kenoma Makoto tied to her withers spend their nights in hollow trees and caves, moving location each day, just in case, even though the forest is supposed to protect them.

Perhaps she would have spent those days quietly, putting her efforts into recovering from her injuries... if Makoto would stop waking in the night and mouthing off at her, and if he was not a valuable potential resource to the Pleroma, some of their number which desire to speak to him. But she will not trust his "care" to another, not when he was... something. Her trophy, her hostage. Even when others come to call, she refuses to leave the "room", even if she will largely leave them to their devices as long as the visitors do not touch or attempt to mess with the shard in the man's skull. ... There's a bit for when he gets too mouthy, blinders and earplugs for when sensitive information needs be discussed between only the Pleroma. Other than that, he looks... almost well taken care of.

Supplies need to be brought, Hayame needs medical care for the raw eye socket where her left eye had been, there are interrogations and talks with Makoto to be done... But what business has brought you here today?]

starters and wildcards go below! please use the OOC plotting post to check-in first, plz and thanks!

Comments

[warmare]

[There is something strange, lurking in the corners of their communion then, like some strange pain and another thing, too... But Hayame cannot identify it. She doesn't actually know (or think she knows) what it feels like.

Having a friend.

He cannot ignore when that demon is in pain? Hayame can only respond to the words, the "words" in her head, her presence growing even more intimidating as she looms above him and her expression darkens, the stain of sickly dampness growing on her makeshift eyepatch as those same words anger her.]

And yet you have no problem ignoring all the pain he causes?

[Perhaps she could be called a hypocrite. She has caused plenty of pain, killed people herself... But she never ignored it. She never delighted in it, despite how so many of the Pleroma had seemed to imply that she was barbaric or overbearing in her methods.]

All the suffering those servants of the Regent inflict, the way that twisted little freak delights in it?

[She'd seen through Estinien's eyes, through this very same method of communion, how M had sadistically taken advantage of the Innocence weakness in Venera. She'd seen him take Liem from her, on the cusp of escape. She'd heard of what was delivered from the torture chambers of Achamoth. She'd seen him (felt him, as she begged with the monster Estnien had become to turn back into a man and retreat before it was too late) punch through the Sanctifier's chest with the power of the abyss cloaking him.

The demon M was no poor, brainwashed lapdog obeying a leader because they couldn't think well for themselves or found themselves lost. Certainly not in her eyes.

Eye.]

[passio]

[ the gore of hayame’s missing eye doesn’t bother him nearly as much as her anger does. with their shards exposed, he feels so much—too much, and he wants to turn her away. her demand is nearly trapped underneath the rush of blood in his ears and the sensation of weight. dextera draws a shuddering breath as he, after one quick glance at her face, looks away again and searches desperately for words.

his mind feels emptied of anything. he only knows how he feels; he doesn’t want to defend makoto, but he can’t explain all that’s in his heart besides. ]

Nnh…

[ he swallows down the sound. ]

I’m not ignoring it! I don’t think he could ever be an ally to us. But I…

[ his voice raised only because he’s desperate, not because he’s angry. the volume drops as soon as his hesitance gets the better of him again. ]

I can’t stop anyone from hating him… but I don’t… so I needed to see him…

[warmare]

[There is a reason Hayame dislikes communion, to the point that she continues to avoid using it despite being told (and acknowledging) that she will never improve her weakness without practice. Communion is to her no different from looking at a raw wound, to tearing open her own chests and exposing both of her large hearts pumping in twin pulses. She has been guarded her whole life in her body language and her face, forced to conduct herself perfectly, all cold and obedient steel in order to save herself from a fate of disgrace and use as an animal, not even a woman, but that- That was all the surface.

Beneath, she has always been afire. And in her shard now is rage, burning bright to fight a desperate battle against despair and pain. To someone who does not shore up their mental defenses to make up for her lack, there are so many chaotic images. The rain of blood and scales on her from above as she stared up at the sky in Achamoth. The jumbled images she’d received from others that showed the events of that death in Venera. M’s knife sliding over Liem’s throat a second after he commands her to save the innocent woman and her infant instead of him. Estinien smiling at her, saying that he trusted her. The searing pain of the abyss she had felt from the Sanctifier as keenly as if it were her own chest M burst through before the desperate tethers of communion between them burst.

He cannot stop anyone from hating that demon? Hayame’s splayed fingers pull off the stone behind the her visitor’s head, and though anger makes her ball her hand into a fist, prepared to break skin and delicate cheekbone, eye socket, anything at all with the strength of a jinba who might look human-like on the surface but had a far different musculature to draw from… this shaking little mute wasn’t worth the punch she would give a man.

Hayame opens her hand again and slaps him as she would a woman.]

Then I will hate him enough for ten of you!

[A foreleg pulled off the ground and slammed into the wall on the other side of his hip should prevent him from toppling over and widening the height disparity between them, give her time to grab his shirt and jerk him back up straight.]

Did you not go to Achamoth under the banner of the Pleroma and their so-called friendship and hope? Do you need me to be the one to tell you how pathetic it is, that I am the one who at least tried to bring back something of use to defeat the Kenoma while you snivel and make eyes at the enemy?

[Despite not giving much time for a reply, Hayame still shakes him bodily as if he has kept her waiting for the answer she demands, blood spotting on her bandage as her fangs glisten in the low light of the face and her remaining eye burns with shame. (Tried, she tried, and even now, she had probably failed again-)]

Well, mute? Answer me!

[passio]

[ dextera is ready to be hit. he wouldn’t have been able to hold it against her for killing him, even; although he can’t stop his feelings from manifesting the way they have, he doesn’t expect anyone to understand or like them. this is why he can’t ever atone. he knows that. no matter what he does to or for anyone else, the sin runs deeper than something that actions in the name of justice can heal. he’s fundamentally corrupted, so a mere slap feels almost like a disappointment. a sick part of him wanted her to just hurt him and get it over with, so he could at least feel like his treacherous emotions were balanced out.

but, she’s strong. it’s not like it doesn’t hurt, an open palm full of fury against his cheek. it’s the first flush of life in his sickly-pale skin, rising to the point of impact like a meager defense. no other part of him seems to have the instinct—he doesn’t so much as tense when she strikes him, instead going limp with humiliation as she shakes him. ]

…

[ he needs to answer her. he will. he just needs a moment to— sin, death, pain, fear, guilt, not all of these emotions are his own, but— he— ]

I know it’s pathetic.

[ his inner voice is becoming uneven, beyond even the struggle someone might have to express themselves through tears. it’s like his ability to even think coherently is being pulled apart into strings that each unto themselves have no individual meaning. ]

I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know.

[warmare]

[The naked, shivering fears and aching pains of shame between them collide, swelling much like a storms cannibalizing one another and just growing into one, stronger force. But instead of lashing winds it is humiliation, and is instead if blinding rain it is useless, worthless fucking apologies-]

I don’t care if you’re sorry!

[A thousand apologies wouldn’t bring back Estinien, and it wouldn’t free Liem, and it wouldn’t let her finally die instead of suffer one more despair-filled day in this awful, foreign world, and Hayame slams the slighter man against the cave wall again as if trying to force him to fight her, to react, to do something but be limp and act weak when he was a friend to demons and surely wasn’t-]

If you’re sorry, stop it! Stop failing at every gods damned thing you try to do!

[At some point, her voice had gone out, strangled in the tight clench of muscles in her throat and the bitterly, violently suppressed surge of emotion that in a lesser woman might have produced tears. In its place, her voice continues in communion.

And that snarling wail barely sounded like it belonged to a person. Or that it was even still directed at Dextera at all.]

[passio]

—

[ dextera hits the wall, and like the slap, oh, it hurts.

he’s still injured, after all, and without organs to feed on, his body is not healing at the rate it should. he probably would have simply died if he were a little weaker, after being defeated at the hands of his own sword and luo binghe’s deft movements, but he’s instead survived at great pain—both physical and emotional—to himself.

his shard lightly falls from his hand as if jostled free from a mannequin’s grip by the movement. he can’t speak with his focus taken away, but he can still hear through communion, and hayame’s anguish comes off even more acutely than before with the mild but very real distance between his physical body and his shard.

if it hadn’t been obvious already, it is now—she’s speaking not only to him, but to herself, more pained than he would have expected by not only what happened in achamoth but perhaps by events long before it. the empathy that is forced into him is not a logical recognition. rather, it feels like her pain and his cross over one another, finding every little groove they can fit into in order to maximize the agony, and therefore the comfort, dextera might find in someone else’s suffering. it’s terrible to feel alone in the world.

he doesn’t know what she might be feeling in kind. it’s hard for him to think of anything concretely. it’s beyond whatever becoming an aion in this world has done to them: dextera’s unique, faltering sense of self practically forces him into nothingness in order to survive this onslaught. ]

…

[ at least, until he manages one small, pitiable whimper. if nothing else, his body more than his mind wants to be let go. ]

[warmare]

[If she put her hands around his neck and squeezed until he went more limp or she heard a crack… When she examined his shard, would it be dark and tainted? It had to be. He claimed to care for the demon M, and anyone who could sympathize with a freak like that…

They had to be a monster. There was no doubt about it.

Except his shard bounces against the stone floor of the cave, dropped from a hand as fingers slip and loosen, and- It’s the same sound. It’s the same sound that her own had made when she’d released it on that roof in Achamoth to clutch desperately at the pain burning up her chest where M had punched through the Sanctifier mid-communion, straining and then severing their connection. It’s the same damned sound-

And for a second she’s back on that roof, her hair whipping wild in the wind of the draconian entity’s flailing wings, her expression twisted with pain and despair as she only watched, all she could do was watch-

She can’t breathe. She forgets how to inhale, how to blink, how to swallow. Her hands shake where they hold up his rag doll body.

The whimper sounds much the same, too, to the one that had managed to slip past her lips before her back legs went out from under her and spilled her to the stone below, howling uselessly at the empty, shadow-filed sky.

Hayame releases the mute as if she’s been burned, stepping back and slamming her shard back into place as she tries to remember-

How did she inhale? How did she use both sets of lungs? How did she wipe at the blood now pooling at the bottom of her bandaged eye?

How did one of her hands clumsily find its way into a pouch at her harness, coming back clutched tight around something pearlescent and pale, hard and roughly triangle-shaped?

How did she salvage this, how did she-]

Pick it up.

[Before she stomps upon it and does Pleroma the favor before they lost precious information or fighter power to the enemy when this demon sympathizer turned traitor.]

[passio]

[ dextera is already scrambling to get his consciousness back above the thick, murky waters of all that’s wrong with him when she releases him, so if nothing else, he’s able to catch his own fall. he still hits the ground with a grunt, but he can make sure some dignity is spared by letting his knees meet the stone rather than his face. ]

…

[ he does as he’s told and picks up his shard, but remains on the ground as he curls his shard close to his chest. he wants to go back. he doesn’t want to be here anymore, talking to hayame. he anticipated this being a painful, difficult conversation, but he hadn’t expected how much she’d been holding back.

she’ll kill herself if she continues on this path. dextera can see that with distant awareness, like another person watching them both from very far away. he wonders if she can be purified.

body aching, dextera turns as much as he can to look up at her. the message is there if she’ll receive it, inexpertly crafted in dextera’s fractured mindscape. ]

You did help. It’s me. I know. I’m the one…

[warmare]

[The edges of the scale bite into the flesh of her hand, near where there are distinctive puncture marks from M's demonically sharp teeth. Just like she had on that roof, she tries to focus on it, the pain, the throb of it in her hand just- If she inhales with every other twin pulse of her hearts she feels there, if she exhales every other-

Since she left Achamoth, it has largely just been herself and the severed head of her enemy. She sleeps beside the reminder of her failure and she wakes to it, they glare and fight and she can't fucking sleep because his nightmares bleed into her dreams and she has to keep moving because what if the Kenoma come, what if they come for M like the Pleroma had come for Abel and Himeka and she will be reminded once more that everyone, everyone else in this damn place had friends and allies and she-

Matsukaze is gone. Yubari is gone. Estinien is gone. Everyone she ever-]

Shut up-

[Her flanks are heaving like she's run ten miles, her legs splayed awkwardly and her tail stiff, frozen, her one remaining eye just a pinprick of pupil. She hasn't been able to release any of it but the anger, not the despair, not the shame, not the bottled up isolation-

Certainly not the grief. She can't let M see her crack.]

Just stop lying! I don't need the friend of a freak to pity me!

[She had tried to help.]

[passio]

It’s not…

[ well, dextera knows. it doesn’t matter if he was actually pitying her or not—and truthfully, maybe he was. that’s the impulse to purify. when there’s a creature in pain of their own making, it’s pity that urges him to put them out of their misery.

he doesn’t actually want to kill hayame, though. he never wants to kill anyone for the merciful reasons he’s forced to claim. that’s why he goes quiet. ]

…

[ his fingers tighten around his shard, not half as hard as hayame is holding that scale, but still with the same impulse of needing something to hold. if he squeezes it, he can force himself to stay quiet in his mind, because it does ache to have his shard handled like this even if he’s the one doing it.

he nods, acquiescing to her demands. ]

[goldendeceiver]

[ Leaving the two of them had seemed like a bad idea at the time, especially when Dextera had asked to be Ernesto's plus one to the bodyless man chat to begin with. He didn't know what Hayame's relationship was like with the scraggly little guy, but he knew what Hayame was like in general, and she knew her patience seemed paper thin.

It's just... it's just that when he acquiesced to the request to let Dextera have his peace, he hadn't expected it to go this badly. He'd been slow to fully leave the area, still feeling that gnawing doubt, and when the distant screaming had started, he found himself glad he'd listened to that gut instinct.

It still takes him far too long to make his way back to the pair, his own chest heaving from the exertion of the running he did as they come into view...

Distressed looking, but apart. That was probably as good a sign as any, right? ]

Aha... things took something of a turn here, huh?

[ His laugh is broken, partly from his own panting breaths, and partly because of the horrendous understatement he just made, but he takes a hesitant step towards them, trying to best gauge the situation. ]

I'm not really sure what happened in here, but...

[ He makes his way slowly towards the pack he had dropped off earlier, the supplies he'd brought Hayame in exchange for his own audience with Makoto. ]

Hayame? Any chance you want to break into this right now?

[ He's not going to say it looks like she needs it, though it does. She's so prickly about people making assumptions, and he's learning that quickly enough. Still, he kneels down to pick up a waterskin, holding up to show her what he's talking about. ]

[warmare]

[Though a part of Hayame knew that the sounds of someone approaching should belong to Ernesto, the dog-earred man who had been the guest she actually invited to her hidden location this day... She isn't taking chances, especially not when she's this on edge, panting in place and ragged with the adrenaline from the surge in pain, guilt, despair, and rage stoked by communion. When the man bursts into view running, Hayame has already half-drawn the blade from the sheathe at her "waist"-

But no. It is Ernesto, as she should have known, if her senses weren't all stopped up and her lungs burning, the twisted fusion of anger and grief plain on her face, literally dripping down her cheek where her she'd broken the seal on her lids beneath the bandage over what used to be her left eye. What happened? What happened here?]

You have a potential traitor in your midst, is what happened.

[The blade goes back in it's sheathe. But her other hand hasn't stopped clutching the scale, spasming along the sharp edge to refocus on the pain. Just that pain. If she only feels that pain it would be so much less than all the others... But she peels one finger from the pearly surface to point accusingly at Dextera where he lays slumped against the cave wall on the floor clutching his shard.]

This man is in debt to the demon M, even professed a loyalty to him!

[It's shocking perhaps, how easy she swallows the hypocrisy in that statement, but despite others viewing her thoughts as black and white... She herself saw plenty of gray in her world. She was in debt to Liem... But that would not stop her from killing or hurting him if need be. And Liem... Liem was not the sort of killer that delighted sadistically in the deaths of others, like the man now reduced to a muzzled and blinded head in the corner.]

You'd be best to make sure after you leave this place that he isn't slinking off to Achamoth next to tell the enemy where their ally can be found!

[Was that a lot to accuse a man of, based on the conversation they'd had? Debatable. But Hayame was not taking any chances-

... She is taking the waterskin, though, woodenly jerking it from Ernesto's hand and struggling to make herself actually drink it.]

[passio]

[ a potential traitor…

dextera is grateful for ernesto’s intervention, but hayame’s quick dismissal—warranted though it may be—makes his stomach twist in anxiety. it’s one thing to be accused by someone who doesn’t like him, but if ernesto were to believe her, this could become something much worse than it already is.

as much as he cares for makoto, he doesn’t want to betray the pleroma. ]

…

[ he raises his head to look guiltily at ernesto, but it’s the guilt of a man who has caused more problems than he’s solved, not one of someone who’s been caught in the act. he just hadn’t meant to get ernesto stuck between them.

he shakes his head then, quietly standing up for himself. as a sign that he wants to commune, he holds up his shard. ]

I don’t want to betray anyone.

[goldendeceiver]

[ Well shit... this sounds like a much more complicated situation that Ernesto was expecting it to be. He keeps his expression neutral as he listens to Hayame's accusations, and as his eyes trail over to Dextera, he betrays absolutely nothing about what he's thinking in the look on his face.

He'll let the man say his piece too though, and though he hates doing this in front of other people given the location of his shard, he slides a hand under his shirt to pop the crystal out and listen to what Dextera is saying right now.

He's silent for a few seconds looking at the sad, crumpled looking man on the ground, before glancing over at the seething centaur next to him. From all he knows about her Hayame isn't a liar, but at the same time Hayame's view of the world is somewhat skewed... He wants to believe Dex when he says that he doesn't want to betray anyone.

But he also believes Hayame when she says he professed some sort of loyalty to Mr. M. He doesn't exactly know what that means, but he does think about the fact that Dextera had begged Ernesto to bring him along on this. If he just wanted information he could have simply asked another Pleroma to ask specific questions and relay the answers back, but he didn't... ]

I don't think you're looking to betray anyone, Mr. Dextera. At least, I don't think your intention is to do harm to anyone here.

[ A quick, pleading look at Hayame. Don't get angry with him yet. ]

But I think it's best for everyone, you included, if you keep your distance from Mr. M in the future. I don't know what the relationship between the two of you is, but he's a dangerous guy. You know that, right?

[ His attention focuses back on Dextera as he speaks as calmly as possible, trying to be diplomatic. ]

And Hayame's already putting herself at pretty big risk by keeping him captive for the rest of us.

[warmare]

[For a moment, she sees the dog-earred spice trader as someone else. She almost hears Matsukaze's voice in her ears, assuring her that the monster she saw in the young jinba Mikuni was redeemable, that he wasn't lost like she thought he was. That all he needed was someone to bring him back home.

But she couldn't- She hadn't been able to be that person. Matsukaze was that person. The one who had grabbed her by the wrist before her slaps rained down on her charges for their poor behavior and mistakes, strong enough to stop her but not harshly enough to hurt. The one who had showed her what genuinely good people did and how they acted.

Those two months of learning had been ruined in just two weeks in Horos. Her fingers curl tight over the scale in her hand, and though Ernesto's plea for her stay her hand or stay back is enough to keep her physically distant for now, it isn't enough to prevent her from snarling out accusations. Mr. M is a dangerous guy?]

He slit Liem's throat when he tried to leave the Kenoma! He killed Estinien, I felt it!

[Well, he had been one of many, but the wound he'd left, that she'd felt through their active communion in that moment... had been the beginning of the end. And she could not believe the dragoon had survived such mutilation. Hayame blindly rubs at the thin blood and serum leaking from her bandage before going back to pointing aggressively.]

He's not just dangerous, he's a demon!

[In heart, and... seeing as he'd survived what he had, perhaps in body, too. And any friend of a demon...]

[passio]

[ perhaps dextera could give everything he has to try to defend the way he feels about makoto. he could explain all that makoto has done for him, beyond just arming him, the kindness and genuine care that he’s shown amidst all these horrendous acts. in all dextera’s memory, makoto is the only person who knows how deeply sinful dextera’s existence is and doesn’t mind it. it’s easy for people to spare him kindness when they don’t know what he’s done. it doesn’t make them less sincere, but it does give makoto a weight that the more pure-hearted among them just can’t offer.

but what good would explaining any of that do? he knows that hayame and ernesto aren’t wrong. makoto is dangerous, he’s wicked. makoto is tied to the regent in a way few, if any, others are, and he seems to relish his own importance in it all. none of those things are forgivable, but dextera has an unshakable sympathy for that very quality. ]

…

[ he tries not to give into the petty impulse to go silent, even though anything he says will probably make it worse. if he can at least make his case to ernesto, he’ll be content with being hated so long as he can just go home. ]

He’s not… worse than I am.

[ the words themselves don’t help, obvious even to the person saying them, but there’s a profound self-loathing the comes with them. ]

But I know. I won’t ask to see him again.

[ there are two tangible facts that nonetheless remain unspoken in dextera’s mind: he is attuned the pleroma, and makoto has hurt him less than hayame. only the same self-loathing as before keeps him from biting it out to defend himself, but it doesn’t stop them from flickering through his thoughts. ]

[goldendeceiver]

[ The crimes aren't comparable, not really, but Ernesto had done something not too differently himself, hadn't he? When the Kenoma had imprisoned Rand with the intention of taking him back to Achamoth, Ernesto has slit Amos throat rather than even risk talking to the man. He'd broken into the jail they held his friend at with Akua, and he'd attacked without hesitation or warning.

He hadn't killed him that time though, at least he thinks he probably didn't. He hadn't killed anyone yet in this world, but his hands weren't exactly clean either.

Ernesto is silent as he takes it all in for a moment. Hayame clutching something tightly in her hand, the feelings leaking from Dextera through the communion connection. There's a flash of understanding that comes from Ernesto at the, gone in a second and replaced by some lingering doubt after.

No, Ernesto's own hands weren't clean either, and he couldn't claim to be a good person...

But he felt remorse for his actions. Though he might not be at the point that he hated himself for what he did, the guilt still existed, and it made it easier to recognize that feeling in Dextera too. If he really was just as bad as M, then he doubts that those feelings of self-loathing would be there in the first place. ]

I'm not really sure I can make a judgment call on anyone at the moment, but if you know then that's enough for me right now.

[ He glances up uncertainly at Hayame, not sure if she feels the same way. ]

The two of us can head out of here if that'd be better for you, but...

[ And here he hesitates, he wonders if this offer is just going to make her angrier or not. ]

I can stay if you'd rather not be alone with Mr. M right now.