nothing is working with me

[lipochrome]

Who: Open, but due to the content of the prompts, please PM me before tagging if we don't already have CR
What: Winter Mournings
When: December
Where: The Locked Tomb; Trench

Content Warnings: Marked in comment headers, but expect death, child abuse, self-harm, and Nona the Ninth spoilers throughout


[ starters in the comments! ]

Comments

middle stages; cw: abuse, self-harm

[lipochrome]

[ It still doesn't feel good. Razor-thin crystals have begun to sprout from Kiriona's joints, and it is the first time in six months that her body has changed. She welcomes it. They make it harder for her to move, but easier for her to feel, and this time, it will feel good. This time, she will get it right.

When the Crown Prince turns to you, there are no bags under her eyes or creases in her face to make her look tired. Her body will always and forever be a perfect mask of death. But there is exhaustion in the set of her shoulders, in her slight forward hunch. She is no longer the perfect picture of royalty. She's more dangerous.

The old man barely finishes volunteering before Kiriona lunges forward, grabbing him by the neck. ]

Listen to me. This is the part where you fucking listen to me.

[martyrofduty]

Though Pyrrha scans the scene for all details she can take in, blurry or not, her focus stays razor sharp on Kiriona. The terrible posture. The stiffness that goes beyond a corpse. The crystals. The pain in her voice.

Pyrrha pulls out a gun, normal bullets, and presses it against the old man's side. "You really should listen," she says, "This"—she means if she pulls the trigger—"won't kill you, but it'll hurt like a son of a bitch."

To Kiriona, "We're listening."

cw: violence, abuse

[lipochrome]

Here comes Pyrrha, trying to be Kiriona's mother, once again. But Pyrrha doesn't understand. Kiriona doesn't want a mother; she wants Crux to die.

Pyrrha should be a part of this memory. She should be among the crowd of judgmental faces. She should want to chew Kiriona up and use her, just like everyone else. At least Tridentarius is honest about it.

But, well, if Pyrrha is listening, then maybe Crux is too. Although his sneer doesn't look promising. Hollow and heartless, Kiriona explains.

"This is Crux. He hurt me -- kicked me, froze me, starved me, you name it -- because he could. Because I was alive." Crux is so weak like this. He still sneers back at her; Kiriona kicks him in the chest.

"And now he's going to apologize," she snarls.

cw: violence, abuse

[martyrofduty]

His title hardly matters to Pyrrha in that moment, though she recognizes the raiment amid the horror of the situation. To have authority and to abuse it, to terrorize a child—for what? What good comes of that? Nothing. None. There's a lot Pyrrha could offer, horrors of her own, but they don't help. They won't help Kiriona, and they won't open the tomb. Besides—

Kiriona wants to do this herself.

Pyrrha let wrongs like this take root by fighting the bigger fight.

Can't fight them all. The price of their long lives was high and not only in the blood of cavaliers. It keeps them from their homes. It keeps them from nipping more problems like these in the bud, from checking on the institutions to correct for negative drift. It's been ten thousand years. It was going to happen. She knows that. She's always known that. This confrontation's only a microcosm of the whole.

No apology immediately leaps to his lips. They hate each other, clearly. "You'll die for your mistress," Pyrrha says coldly, "Is that where you draw the line? Will you let her die rather than eat crow?" It's a memory. Pyrrha can let Harrow die.

[necroprince]

[Ianthe stands back, watching this unfold. She knows it's Kiriona's memory, of course, but her concern for the moment isn't Kiriona so much as what happened after she fell. She watches the others, the Resurrection Beast inhabiting Harry, Pyrrha, the old man.

But of course, she came in the middle. And Kiriona's seen all this. The tomb required a death, and the old man volunteers. It's not as if she and Kiriona had spent seven months swapping stories of abuses, but she can still recognize it for what it is, that cannibalistic hunger for revenge.

It won't help. Nothing ever satisfies the hunger. Becoming a saint - a lyctor - hadn't helped Ianthe. The best damn necromancer since the original ascension. It still wasn't enough.

But - even though this memory tells of a betrayal, of Kiriona choosing John over her, the empire (okay, Kiriona never really gave a shit about the Empire), over... well, really anything - she looks at the hand grasping the old man's frail neck and it's got the stupid fucking friendship bracelet that they made as a joke. Maybe they can have some fun with pretending. The ferocity in her rage is... frankly, kind of hard to watch, but also very sexy and very relatable, so she steps forward.]

Careful, your highness. [She places a cold hand on Kiriona's even colder shoulder.] You don't want to kill him too quickly, do you?

Want me to sew his mouth closed?