|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:29 am
Her breathing slowed as she stared at the black dust the monster had become. Even now, it blew away, finding purchase only in the cracks of the sidewalks and against the solidity of the curb. The old lady stirred, and Avalon slowly stretched out her left hand, her knuckles a solid mass of torn flesh and red blood and deeper red chunks that bore less examination. It ran in rivulets down her fingers, which ached. How many times had she punched the pavement? The monster’s chitinous exoskeleton?
She didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” she said, softly, “I don’t understand. Why is it okay to kill this monster? And not that other one? They feel the same. They do the same things, don’t they? They’re the same. They’re both monsters. Aren’t they?” Aren’t they?
Was it the man-shape that made the other different? Where was the line drawn? She looked at Babylon as if he were a revelation, as if he were a sunrise or a supernova just for her, soft-eyed and trusting. “You know they don’t really die, don’t you? These. It doesn’t help to kill them.” It didn’t even make her feel any better. There was a great yawning hole where her heart should be, and this hadn’t helped fill it at all.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:29 am
Babylon took hold of her hand, cringing at the sight of the injury. They’d best get home so he could clean this up: no point bothering Nick with it, Arkady still gave him chills. “That’s a good point,” he said quietly. He’d never considered it that way - Chaos was chaos. But some of its agents were further gone than others.
“Sometimes the ones who still look like people can still be saved,” he said, after spending a while considering her question. He held out an arm, in case she wanted to walk closer. “They can be reasoned with. I think I might be able to reason with Melanite and get him to come to our side. I have a few officers like that. They’re projects.” Like she had been, before Cosmos swooped in and changed their fates.
(Truth be told, Avalon had likely been beyond saving without that divine intervention.)
(But he didn’t like to think about that.)
“They don’t?” he asked, resisting the urge to glance back towards the Youma’s remains. “I hadn’t known that. We’ve all always thought that we were releasing them by destroying them.” This had the potential to be game changing, he thought, mind spinning. What if they’d been making the Youma plague worse by trying to combat it!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:30 am
Avalon looped her arm through his, wincing when her knuckles brushed his coat. It hurt. It burned. She stiffened her upper lip and blinked back tears, quickly. No matter how much it hurt, she couldn’t let Babylon see. He would worry. She didn’t want him to stay up all night again, worried. “They come back in a few days,” she said. “In the dark place, past the other monsters. Sometimes they go away forever… but not very often.” Something scratched at the back of her mind, some little fact, some story that was missing. She couldn’t think what it was, other than that it was important. Maybe.
“You can’t release them,” she said, probing gently at her aching wrist. It wouldn’t bend past a certain point--it didn’t even hurt that much, it just wouldn’t go anywhere far from the posture it’d been in when she’d landed on it. “They’re lost. They’ll always be lost.” Forever and ever and ever. “All it does is knock that one out for a while.”
She fell silent, and stopped walking, and buried her face in Babylon’s hair. “You should have let me kill him,” she said. “Those don’t come back. They’re dangerous, but they don’t come back.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:30 am
“You remember that from Before?” Babylon asked, taking hold of her wrist carefully. Wincing, he looked at her knuckles and concluded she’d really done a number on them, but he thought he could take care of them without involving Nick. Her wrist he was less sure of - she’d hurt it when he tackled her, hadn’t he? He’d wait until he got home to ask.
The new information about youma was interesting, and he had to wonder how it wasn’t wider knowledge that they were fighting the same monsters over and over. When he put it that way, it certainly sounded hopeless. Plenty of people had tried to tell him over the years that this was a losing battle Order was fighting… perhaps they were more right than he’d thought.
Should I have killed you when you were corrupt? he thought, but it stank of blatant emotional manipulation, so he decided not to say it. “I know they don’t,” he sighed. “Perhaps I’m too much of an optimist, but I’d rather purify them than kill them.” He could only imagine what she was thinking: oh, you silly boy. You’re so soft and naïve. How the hell have you made it this far?
As they neared Florence court, he powered down and waited for her to do the same. “Let’s go fix up your hand,” Babylon said softly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:30 am
She shrugged. If she remembered it from before, then it came attached to no memory; she didn’t recall learning it, or seeing it in action, she just knew it. The same way she knew about driving or reading. Avalon let him look at her hand, held her fingers stiff because they hurt less flexed that way. “You can’t save them all,” she said, and she let go of her henshin reluctantly--she knew the rules, even though she thought they were silly. “But if you want to try, I guess I’ll help you.”
If she did that, he would love her. Wouldn’t he? Arkady leaned down and kissed the corner of his jaw, gently. “You’re all scratchy,” she complained, scrubbing a thumb over the stubble on his face. “You need to shave.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:32 am
Finn lead her inside, treading lightly past Tallulah and Nick’s front door and up the stairs. It was awkward to have two former arch enemies under one roof, and he was doing his best to make it less-so. “I know that they can’t all be saved,” he sighed, resting a hand gently at the small of her back. “I’m not going to try to save all of them. Just… some of them seem more likely than others.” He couldn’t rest knowing he hadn’t at least tried.
“Am I?” he asked, smiling at her. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been told that.” Someday, he would have a full beard. Today was not that day. “Let’s take care of your hand first, okay? And then I’ll take care of that.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:32 am
He was naive, thought Arkady, but sweet. And she loved him for all of those parts of him, but he needed someone to look after him. That, she decided, would be her. “Okay,” she said, nudging her way through the door and sticking her hand promptly under the faucet. The cold water hurt like a b***h, and she hissed through her teeth at the damage she could see now that all the blood was out of the way.
This would put a dent in her job hunt.
“Do you want to cuddle,” she asked, “because I would like to cuddle.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:32 am
Finn, for the record, would always like to cuddle, but he made her hold still while he dried her hand and placed bandages over the cut. “That’s going to take a while to heal,” he said apologetically, “But it should scab up pretty quickly.” At least it didn’t look like she’d broken any bones, even if her knuckles would be raw for a while yet.
That done, he settled next to her on the couch and folded himself around her in the way that had become familiar over the last month. “How’s this?” asked Finn. “Are you okay?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:32 am
“You hurt my wrist,” she said, curling over Finn and burying her face in his hair again. “It hurts. I can bend it but it hurts.” She held her right hand up before the pair of them, and flexed it; it bent mostly alright, but not as far back as she wanted it to. “I still wish you had let me kill it,” she said, scooting down a little so she could comfortably curl her bandaged hand around his neck, fingers idly tangling in the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “I think I need to shower, soon,” she said, after another moment. Dried blood marked rivulets down her arms to her elbows, and it hung thick in her hair. “I feel icky.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:33 am
“It’s probably sprained,” said Finn quietly, watching her flex. “I’ll splint it later.” He felt absolutely awful about that, by the way, and didn’t understand why she wasn’t holding it against him more. Shouldn’t she have been more angry with him? It was honestly a bit unsettling that she wasn’t, and it brought up that niggling fear that he was inflicting some kind of Stockholm syndrome on her.
“I think Melanite is one of the ones we can save,” he said softly, and considered her request for a long time. Against his own judgment, he added, “If it turns out I’m wrong, you can kill him.”
As for bathing, well, he was not going to argue with that, because it was a good instinct.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
