deercountry | 06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[Kaworu, to his minimal credit, does stay next to Paul, though looking comically unprepared next to him. He's still in his school uniform and his sneakers, at best, he's added a dark hooded jacket over his short sleeves. He looks like a school kid, not someone who should be here.

His face darkens when the door closes and he realizes they're trapped, but aside from stiffer posture and the clenching of his fists, he keeps in control. The person who introduced herself as "Shannon" but is now a different name (or a different person entirely) however, unnerves him almost as much as this room.]

Those are the Pthumerians.

[He up at the tiles, up at his patron Nevermind, until his gaze is pulled as though by some unseen force towards the tile of Mariana. He doesn't seem to be able to look away.]

Then take notes.

[Paul straightens up with a plastic-wrapped notebook and pencil in one hand, securing the pack over his shoulders once more. His expression is opaque as he unwraps the notebook and approaches Sayo with it outstretched.

Her behavior should be unnerving, or at least irritating. He should ask what's wrong with her, either gently or in rebuke. He's aware of this. But those open up lines of conversation that, either way, don't advance his goals - one of which is now keeping her hands preoccupied and her mind on task.]

You think this is a drowning trap?

[It's not an unreasonable conclusion, and she has shown a great deal of insight into previous pitfalls. The trickle of blood merits a brief glance, before he looks back at Kaworu staring up at a specific tile across the room.]

They are the Pthumerians. [Softer, encouraging.] Do you see anything unusual about them? Any markings or patterns that stand out?

[Sayo snatches the notebook and pencil from Paul without a second thought, although she at least has the good graces to mumble something along the lines of "thank you" as she sketches out the layout of the room. She nods, then without any other warning violently kicks one of the tiles near her as she continues scribbling in the notebook Paul gave her.

It moves a millimeter and Sayo reels back, clutching her foot and hissing in pain, but she keeps her eyes on the streams of blood trickling in, her grin widening and revealing her fangs when she sees what's happening.]

There it is. [She sounds like a child unwrapping presents on their birthday, unable to contain her unbridled delight at exploring a real ancient tomb with real deathtraps. Any fear of the consequences of failure is dampened by how little Sayo regards her life at the moment, which she views as an advantage for clear thinking.] Looks like the Pthumerians gave us a < pop quiz >! [She says those words with a peculiar cadence that would sound strange to Paul, but Kaworu might recognize as a Japanese person peppering English into their sentences to sound < cool >.]

The tiles are themed after the moons, the seasons—which we can already see arranged on the wall— [she twirls her pencil, stopping its momentum three times to point at the murals covering the walls of the room,] and most crucially, the Patron Pthumerians. This is a calendar.

I reckon that our best bet is to solve the tile puzzle so that each of the tiles are placed in the appropriate order for the full Waking World year. Problem being that every time we move one of these, the blood starts to run faster! Ingenious, really. If we dither too long on puzzling out the optimal combination of movements, the blood will eventually overtake us. If we carelessly shuffle the tiles around, the flood will accelerate and we'll drown in no time.

I have to admire the form. Pity I'm caught in it rather than just observing it.

[Kaworu manages to pull his gaze away from Mariana with a shake of his head. No, he doesn't notice anything. He recognizes them thanks to his interactions with the Old Man and so generally knows the order, at least that part is straight forward.

He turns back to go stand next to Paul, reaching over to give the taller boy's arm a few gentle taps, before turning his attention to Sayo.]

So should we get the ones that are closest out of the way? Or move the furthest ones? At most, they can only be six out of place.

[He watches Sayo. There's something... something about this he doesn't like at all. Not really her attitude. The flippancy doesn't bother him even though he's not above the pot calling the kettle black. It's just... the contrast of their first interaction and then this one. It's like she shed her skin like a snake.]

You're different from the girl back on the beach. What happened?

Edited 2022-03-07 20:49 (UTC)

[Sayo isn't the first person Paul has met in Trench who reminds him of mentats. She's not even the first to remind him of their twisted counterparts, the specially constructed amoral mind-bent thinkers who whirl through unbalanced mental computations to otherwise unimagined ends.

But Kaworu is right. She is different than the girl back on the beach, who trained with Sensei Lawrence and sung along to the music in his films. He puts his hand over where Kaworu tapped his arm absently as he considers her, and the room.]

We should solve it before we move anything else. Every time we've touched a tile, there's been more blood.

[He says 'we' as if he hasn't watched Sayo eagerly lunge towards the possibility - certainty, now - of danger. He drops his hand (brushing it against Kaworu's shoulder on the way down) and walks back to the closed door, tapping it briskly in the prearranged 'all's well' signal he insisted everyone at least listen to once before they went out into these claustrophobic tunnels and chambers.]

Kaworu, you remember the order of the Patrons. Would you please help Sayo with it, if she doesn't? And Sayo, do you think you can draw out the tile pathways? We can work the puzzle on paper first.

[His tone stays gentle and guiding, a correction from cool authority. There's no reason for anyone to be agitated, this tone suggests, laden with inflections that might as well be 'all's well' themselves.]

Edited 2022-03-07 21:40 (UTC)

I suppose I am quite different from Shannon, aren't I? [Her mania fades, a half-smile twisting her lips upward with melancholy in its place. Paul may have caught a sparing glimpse of the person before him now on occasion, when she was wrapped up in an animated conversation with Sensei Lawrence. Carefree cackles, deadpan humor, casually slung barbs, that wide, fanged grin... but even then, her expression didn't have the crazed, bleeding edge that's possessed it throughout this expedition.] Shannon was a convenient, beautiful lie. A fiction to comfort an acquaintance from home and to ease the sting of my own cowardice.

Even so, truth is a harsh mistress, especially so when concealed in a place like Trench, hm? So she had to die. Although I suppose that fiction was useful enough in providing defanged counsel, even if people refuse to listen to it.

[She quickly moves past that snide remark, winking at Paul.]

But from now on, what you see is what you get from the actual, factual Sayo Yasuda~! Unless I'm casting an illusion, pfffft. Anyways, on it, cap'n!

[Leaning against the wall, Sayo rapidly alternates between gnawing on the end of her pencil and sketching out potential routes to shuffle the tiles through the optimal pathways with startling speed.]

Edited 2022-03-08 04:12 (UTC)

Shannon... wasn't real?

[It's hard to reconcile that person he met on the beach, who helped him, fed him hot chocolate was just facade. She had seemed so real. He knew that humans lied, of course, to make things easier, to hide their true feelings. But to invent an entirely new person?

This is barbs at him. Digging deep into his skin and he can't seem to scratch feeling away and every movement "Sayo" makes seem to drive it deeper.]

How can something unreal die? Why say it like that?

[As Sayo careens through her explanation of herself, and her self's complications, Paul crouches by one of the growing shallow puddles of blood on the floor. He dips two gloved fingers into it and brings them to his contemplative eye level. The smell of it pervades the room already, but he brings his fingers closer and breathes it in, sifting through the layers of metal and salt and biomarkers for anything unusual. Unusual for the blood of this place, at least.]

Sayo doesn't have to talk about that if she doesn't want to, Kaworu.

[She wants to, or some part of her does. Paul can tell that much. It might be better if she does, instead of continuing with the barely veiled barb about defanged counsel going unheeded - a barb that somehow doesn't seem directed at Paul, which makes him look up, glancing between the shattered smirk on Sayo's mouth and the uncertain twist on Kaworu's.]

We can talk about all of that when we make it back to the surface, if you do want to. [They're not going to listen.] And don't call me that.

[The blood doesn't even taste strange when he touches the tip of his tongue to it. Mildly gritty with cave dust, but otherwise - nothing.]

[Once upon a time, Shannon had been Sayo's "real" self. Who she'd been when Kanon unburdened her from her dark thoughts and Beatrice lived out her fantasies in her place. But as the years wore on and terrible truths burrowed their way into her heart, she had become just as much a façade as the rest. Sayo Yasuda had no face to call her own by the time everything came tumbling down.

(Truth be told, there were still fragments of Shannon's kindness and warmth lurking within Sayo's soul. But at the moment, it was a laborious effort to properly resurrect them.)]

If you suddenly vanished without a trace, then came back years later, the version of "you" in peoples' minds would be dead, would it not? You've changed, the memories have faded, and the you that knew your friends and family is stuck in the past, never to return. It's... a similar principle. By shattering that mask, I kill the person whose name was "Shannon."

And aye-aye, major.

[She snaps a faux-salute as she continues carelessly sketching out the routes, her mind racing with the thrill. Sure, she could retreat to Rule Y and spend as much time as she needed solving this "game," but it's much, much more thrilling to do it with the actual threat of death hanging over her head. Or pooling under her feet at any rate. She's always been a gambler.]

Could people really not change their perceptions of you? I thought memories were supposed to keep people alive. Not kill them if they don't come back how you want them to. Memories show that someone mattered.

[Right?

He'd never thought of what Shannon... no Sayo, had said before and there's a part of him that agrees with it and... he hates that. What does that mean for him and his final desperate attempt to be preserved into Shinji Ikari's memories? What does it mean for the old man? What does it mean for anyone who's here?

He steps back a little, his white sneakers turning pink where the blood pools around them.]

[The way Sayo attempts to provoke people scans as reflexive defense more than purposeful attack, so Paul lets 'major' pass with a slight nod of acknowledgment. It's an improvement on 'captain', which is what matters, and she's still drawing, still present.

It's the effect her words are having on Kaworu that brings Paul to his feet, crossing the short distance between him and the other boy to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. (Red threads bloom and spill from his eyes, streak down his cheeks, but Paul is used to that, by now.)]

She's being metaphorical. [He soothes, pressing his thumb down lightly.] She was pretending to be someone else, and she stopped. Shannon only existed as a fiction. Isn't that right, Sayo?

[There's a light pointedness in the question to match the glance he shoots her way. He can imagine what (who) Kaworu is thinking of. (And if he's honest, which he would prefer not to be, her words are unnerving, as is her behavior. Something animal in him has raised hackles.)]

< Bingo >, Atreides. [Once upon a time, Shannon was the "real" Sayo; Beatrice and Kanon existed so that Sayo could comfortably live in dreamlike bliss as her "real" self, without dark urges and darker thoughts tormenting her. But the stain of bloody truth decayed even that facade, leaving a woman so hollow that no happiness could reach her (or that she couldn't reach happiness?) no matter how hard she tried, puppeteering her own life from backstage.] Although...

[Something harrowing and genuine passes across Sayo's face, and she turns to Kaworu, expression flat and weary.] Memories are liars to a fault, Kaworu.

The most important day in your life, the most impactful thing anyone has ever said to you... it could be an easily-forgotten joke to him, just one more breezy summer day of his youth and you a side character in his story.

Don't repeat my mistakes.

[Her words cut to him like a knife. Perhaps that's what she intended. He inhales through his nose to keep steady, to steel himself against her. He doesn't know her. She doesn't know them. Why are they saying anything to each other? It's just a waste. Just obligation.]

Maybe, you just weren't easily remembered and the problem is with you.

[Paul understands the underlying dynamics of this exchange the way Sayo seems able to visualize the mechanism inside the walls, or Kaworu to perceive the seams along which space folds. Both of them are suffering, and in their suffering, they wound each other. It has the weary weight of an inevitability. Perhaps that why Paul doesn't intercede in time to avert it - he's had such poor luck undoing fate, lately.

He's already at Kaworu's side. It's where he stays, subtly grounding his feet on the floor where blood is starting to lap at the soles of his boots. The air is filling up with the smell of metallic brine. It sticks at the back of his throat.]

Stop it. Both of you.

[They're not going to listen. He lifts his chin slightly, swallowing salt-sour.]

I know this is difficult. We're all not at our best. [Paul embeds an appeasing tonal note in his words, an invitation to face-saving disarmament.] Let's not take that out on each other.

Edited 2022-03-09 19:21 (UTC)

[Sayo stares at Kaworu, frozen with shock, as the blood slowly fills the chamber to the brim. Paul's words fade into the background, overtaken by the roaring tide of crimson pooling around her shoes.

Then she starts laughing. Laughing, and laughing, and laughing, because someone, some stranger whose mistakes sent her plunging into Hell (literally this time), has seen her heart. She sways to her feet, pacing around the chamber like a predator circling its prey, coming ever closer to Kaworu.]

< Bravo >, Kaworu! < Yessssssssss, you got it! > After all, who would ever remember some shabby, inhuman thing only PLAYING at being a person, huuuuuuuuuuh? A mask is more forgettable than my real face, but who'd ever want to look my monstrous self in the eye in the first place, hihihihihyyyyyahahahahahaaaaa!

After all, you never took notice of Shannon's words, Shannon's advice, SHANNON TELLING YOU THAT YOU WERE GOING TO HURT EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT, but you both obviously hate me so much and would rather have her back anyways!

Well, TOOOOOO BAD! I can't oblige, since ugly, abominable Yasu is the only one who can get you two idiots out of here! So get used to dealing with this tarnished pyrite witch, since that sweet, forgettable side character Shannon you're both so attached to IS NEVER COMING BACK!

[It's at this point that Paul and Kaworu will notice that she's been shuffling the tiles with her feet as she's been circling the two of them, all going through their optimal routes to their proper places. Although despite Sayo's expert planning, the blood is accelerating anyways. Like she'd said at the start, this truly was a Scylla and Charybdis scenario.]

Edited 2022-03-09 23:01 (UTC)

Shut up! I didn't... It wasn't... It was already too late! Maybe she should have said something sooner if she really wanted to stop it! You're so smart but you didn't figure that out either, did you?

[Or maybe, he should have stopped sooner. Maybe he knew something was wrong but didn't tell anyone because he didn't know what else he could do. And if he couldn't help then no one would have wanted him there at all.

But if no one had wanted him then the Old Man would still be here. Paul wouldn't have gotten distracted...

Kaworu lets her circle until she gets close and then he moves quickly towards her, closing the gap. His eyes ~~and eyes~~, now black and hollow, like pits on his pale face, glare into hers as the corruption takes hold. Skeletal wings of light flicker on his back casting odd shadows across the room, and in the blood.]

We're not human, we're monsters. We're just like that thing in the sea. No one cares what happens to us. No one cares what happens to you so just... shut up! You didn't do enough, you didn't say enough back then! So just shut your mouth!

[And he lunges forward, trying to grab at her throat with desperate, furious hands.]

[When Sayo begins her predatory circling and vicious rant (an orifice vomiting venom and writhing tendrils of clinging black hate--), Paul shifts. It's a much more subtle alteration of stance and focus than Sayo or Kaworu's explosive pain. His spine straightens, his pupils dilate, his expression flattens. He turns as she walks only so much as is required to stay acutely attuned to her, a magnetic arc of attentiveness with her as its fixed point.

A rising tide of blood, the stink of it coating his nose and his mouth, worming into his own humming veins. A mouth echoing maddened loathing, inward and outward. (You're hurting him--)

There is surely some kind of meaning to be divined from Sayo's tumult of words. There is some sad, lonely story there, the kind that would have made Paul's heart ache, once.]

Don't talk to him like that.

[As cool and edged as one of the knives still in their sheaths at his side, and then Paul half-steps aside to let Kaworu lunge for her.

He heard the shift in Kaworu's positioning, the ragged affront in his voice - it didn't take a Paleblood to see what was coming next. Catharsis, Paul thinks, and can't quite remember why. He'll intervene if it escalates too far, but this, clearly, is what Sayo wants. Who is he to deny her that self-abnegation?

How many times has he wished for the same?]

[It's only when Sayo sees that achingly familiar glare of loathing (and self-loathing) on Kaworu's face does she realize that while all the stakes of burning accusation that she slung toward Kaworu's heart may have hurt, it's those that she drove into her own that truly hit their mark.

For a precious second, she freezes, a look of suitably self-abashed horror on her face as she sees Kaworu's body distort in the same way she felt her soul slowly warp over the course of years on Rokkenjima.

But then his own words dig thorns into the battered organ weakly pumping black bile through Sayo's veins, and her face twists in turn as she takes up a stance to meet Kaworu's charge.]

OhhhHHHHHH, of course! Why didn't I THINK about that before! Timing, timing, time, it's always TIMING, always a meeting far far far TOO LATE FOR IT TO MATTER! SO BLAME ME FOR A QUIRK OF DESTINY! After all, monsters like us, by body or by nature, ARE ALWAYS DESTINED FOR TRAGEDY!

BUT AT LEAST MY WEAK WILL WASN'T WHAT SENT THE OLD MAN INTO HIS PERSONAL HELL! THAT WAS ALL YOU, KAWORUUUU NAAAAAAAGISSAAAAAAAAAAAA!

[Sayo's leg snaps up into an impressive roundhouse kick, one that would probably be enough to knock Kaworu's reckless charge off course... if he wasn't supernaturally protected by his AT field. Clicking her tongue, Sayo slides back through the slowly pooling blood, not caring that she's brushed against a few more tiles as she takes up a Cobra Kai stance and starts bouncing on the balls of her feet.]

It's not-!

[He throws another hand at her, trying to grab her but it's all fury and no form. Just a mindless attack, like an animal in a trap, lashing out at anything that tries to come near. And every word twists out a violent lash towards her and each one digs the teeth of the trap further in and the pain keeps blinding his eyes and deafening his ears.

Then suddenly it stops. The last syllable of his name echoes in the air and he stills as the final reverberation fades from the room.]

What did you say? How... do you know that?

[His voice is calm, soft even, but almost too calm. Like the stillness of the shore as a tsunami pulls in the tide before the destructive wave comes crashing onto the land.]

[She remembers Alisaie's lessons—balance in all things. White and black. Front and back foot. Offense and defense. While she's fairly certain that Johnny would mutter unkind things about her magic mentor's teaching style, here, it had merits. She parries Kaworu's wild grab with her arm, sliding out of the way and delivering a knee that would lodge itself in his ribs if he wasn't protected by his AT field. (Some part of her finds no small irony in being foiled by some vaguely defined magical barrier; Shannon betraying her even from beyond the grave.) There's a visceral satisfaction as she sees the kick almost land, a thrill that races through her. Maybe Lawrence-sensei was onto something after all.

And then the brief flare of something resembling a good mood is soured when Kaworu asks his question. Sayo skips back once more, then throws back her head and cackles. She remembers the look on Forneus's face as he cast her out while she was scrambling to fix the ritual, to save him too, find a way to take the person who was actually worth something with her rather than just the fragmented soul of a worthless furntiure being returned to a different abyss escaping.]

Oh, only because your little screwup stranded my soul and Forneus's whole self in his own personal hell! We had PLLLLLLLLLENTY of time to discuss how, exactly, we ended up in such a dismal situation between dodging gunfire and grenades!

Edited 2022-03-12 22:22 (UTC)

[The next blow lands as her words wash over Kaworu, seeping into every fold of his mind, every beat of his abormal heart, and obscuring the light of his soul.

It catches him in the ribs and there's a sickening crack as they break as easily as twigs and stumbles sideways, colliding heavily into the wall. He gags, heaving up a little bile and water into the blood, reacting more to her words than the pain. He's used to physical pain as baseline for existence. There's no reaction when there's a few more small little cracking noise, starting soft and then growing louder as his ribs realign and heal.]

I know.

[The words are like blood in his mouth, metallic and thick, and as though they just fall from his mouth.]

I know it's my fault. I just... [His shoulders shake a little and he throws himself against the wall again, hard enough that it makes a noise that echoes in the room.] I just don't understand how if it's my fault... how he could... still say that he cares for me. That he loves me.

[The words end with a ragged, pained, tone. A hiss that's holding in a howl underneath. Then Kaworu approaches Shannon... Sayo, once more, slowly like he's not poised to attack but instead like he can barely stand and might collapse at her feet.]

Tell me how you got out. Tell me more about where he is. Tell me anything. And you can do what you want. You can kill me.

I don't care.

[The last sentence is so soft that it betrays itself. Of course he cares. He's terrified that if he ends up deep in that ocean again, he'll never return. Never see the Old Man saved, never train with Gideon again, never get to have Midoriya sleepover, never learn from Teacher again, never watch another film with Harrow again, never get to make Paul smile again.

...But he needs this. More than anything.]

[In some hour long after this, Paul will return to the moments he stood in stilled observation as if confronting the actions of a stranger. It could not have been him who stood by, as Sayo vented her reeking bile. It could not have been him who let the exchange spiral out with his head slightly tilted, expression remote and thoughtful, as Kaworu drew out a poisonous fountain of information with his artless vulnerability.

Then Kaworu hits the wall, and emptiness fractures into cold fury to the sound of his fragile ribs snapping out of and back into place. The blue of his eyes ignites and spreads, virulently bright, and he steps between the two of them as Kaworu finishes speaking.]

Enough.

[The snap of a thrown knife, a broken hyoid bone, a command like a lashing chain. It echoes more than it should in this room.]

She's lying. [Flat and soft, a perverse, vicious gentleness.] Because you think it's your fault, don't you, Sayo? Your fault that Kaworu didn't listen to you. Your fault you left Merlinus behind.

Was it? [He cocks his head, curiously.] Where did you leave him, pyrite witch?

[Even if Paul's words hadn't made every nerve in Sayo's body lock up, she would've stopped when she saw that look in Kaworu's face. The pleading, the need in his voice-

It reminds her of that night where she plead with her reflection, shattered across the floor, for Battler to come back.

The brutal, sadistic glee that had burst forth from her wellspring of pain washes out to sea when the tide of blood recedes, and it leaves behind only the dull ache it had been trying to bury. Sayo's unhinged grin falls from her face and she staggers as if she had been the one struck in the chest as her frenzied strength leaves her, and she clutches her arm (as if reaching for someone who isn't there, the one person who could understand the depths of her pain because he was her), looking away from Kaworu.]

I...

[Her throat closes up. What can she say? Paul's right. It's her fault that Forneus was still in the twisted realm of all his worst fears made manifest. Her fault that the ritual had failed. Her fault for being the one who was too late this time.]

He's in his worst nightmare, Kaworu. I'm sorry. Every possible thing he feared that his home would become came true in that abyss, and...

It was my soul- no, part of my soul that was stuck there. Only the parts that could fit the mold of the Golden Witch. So... why not play to part? Enact the ritual. Gather the power. Let the twisted gameboard self-destruct when midnight rang out, letting us go free.

It didn't work. Of course it didn't work. Shabby Sayo Yasuda is pyrite at best, never true gold. And besides that, we didn't have the power to see it through.

Except... He used the magic of Beatrice against me. Forneus usurped what little we had cultivated in my failure of a ritual to send me back to the realm above. It's easier to send a fractured soul across the barrier between realms than a whole person, after all. He- he saved me, and I...

[Tears fall from Sayo's eyes, mixing with the blood.]

And I hate him for it. We could've found some miracle, a way to keep going or try again, or, or-

But that stupid, stupid bird left himself behind to rot and gave a villain like me the light so that I could ruin the lives of my best friend and the victim of my own mistakes. And no matter how hard I think, I can't... I can't do anything to save him.

I know he wanted me to look after you, and yet, [Sayo chokes on her own laughter,] here I am, kneeing in your ribs. What a horrid, spiteful creature.

[She's silent for a few moments more. Then, still refusing to look Kaworu in the eyes, she says,] ...and don't...

Don't say that.

Don't say you don't care.

I convinced myself of the same thing, when I lost everything. But that wasn't- it wasn't true. There's always something to care about, no matter how much you wish it otherwise.

And there's... always someone to care about you. Despite everything.

Edited 2022-03-13 09:11 (UTC)

[When she breaks, there's a moment where savagery takes over. He knows where Sayo hurts and he can can aim a perfect shot right at her weak spot. Paul identified the target and now he can swoop in for a killing blow.

This is her fault. This stupid witch's fault and she tried to make it seem like it was his fault to spare herself the pain. It's such a pathetic thing that humans do. They do whatever they can to avoid pain. Stupid girl. Stupid witch.

Kaworu steps closer, boxing her in between himself, Paul and the wall. She couldn't run if she wanted to. It would be so easy to activate his AT Field and crush her. There would be the satisfying sensation and sound of her bones being crushed and gurgling gasps as her lungs flattened out and then he'd never have to hear her shrill voice ever again.

And he can't do it. He looks into her face and realizes that his face must have looked the same just a few moments ago. There's nothing but pain and guilt etched into every line of her face, clouding her eyes, twisting her mouth. It's hard to look at, it makes him sick, it makes a sensation in his stomach twist like it's full of snakes. It takes him a bit to realize that it's pity.

"And there's... always someone to care about you. Despite everything." Kaworu wants to argue that but all he can think about is the words written on the page by a bird so thinly tethered to reality that she was almost more of a specter than anything else: "welcomed, and well-loved". He still does not understand how the Old Man came to love him, or why, but it's the only time he'd ever heard those words and he'd do anything to hear them again.

So as much as he wants the satisfaction and catharsis from causing Sayo pain, instead he finds his heart opening against his will. It will probably hurt. It will probably make him suffer through the guilt he's been trying to keep under control like a rabid animal trapped within him. It probably won't make him feel better. But... it might be the only change he has to hear those words again.

Wading through the blood, he approaches her. For a second, he only gazes at her, coldly, before he reaches out a hand to her. A small, pale peace offering.]

Just tell me everything you know. I don't care if it's your fault and I don't care if you're here. He'd save you over himself even if you begged him not to. That's his nature. I just... I have to save him. I have to. I don't care if you tell me it's impossible, just tell me everything you know.

[Paul observes Sayo's attempt at amends from a remove of only one step, his fierce expression softening to one of reserved patience as she unfolds this new version of her story. He nods, here and there, a slight incline of acknowledgment for this fact and that explanation. The only reaction not of a piece with his composure is the twitch at the corner of his mouth when she calls herself a horrid, spiteful creature, a gleam of something not wholly kind in his eyes when he tilts his head.

Then Kaworu steps forward, and Paul expects nothing in particular, so there's no surprise to ripple through him at his offer of grace to the volatile girl in front of them.]

Kaworu is right.

[The undercurrent of precisely calibrated coldness in the gentle tones of his sympathy is gone as if it wasn't there to begin with, leaving only the brush of compassion. Paul softens with the words, sadness-tinged warmth thawing his gaze as he sets a hand on Kaworu's shoulder and, in the same moment, offers his other alongside the angel's to Sayo.]

It wasn't your fault. [He looks to Kaworu.] It wasn't yours, either. Don't hate him for thinking you were worth saving. That you are worth saving.

And I care what happens to you. [A flicker of something deeper, blood-soaked, before he returns to Sayo, composed once more.] We can bring him back, together. I know that we can.

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forwantofahorse - 2022-03-21 18:33 (UTC) - Expand

06 . the sleepy town expedition.

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cw: eye horror, hallucinations (ongoing in thread)

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cw: broken bones, light emeto, death seeking

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