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 Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2017 9:32 pm
It was always the same old story, with Labyrinthite. No matter the situation, he insisted that he wanted to be there, that he belonged there. He wore Metallia's shackles like fine jewelry. Hvergelmir sighed, feeling her breath fill up the space between them as Labyrinthite stepped back. It was easier, safer, to have him farther away -- but it was also more of that purple uniform filling up her view, more of the ghost of Crims standing just out of reach. A painful reminder. "You suffer because people are vicious. You endure it because you're a survivor. And me, I -- " She shook her head. It wasn't Labyrinthite's business why she subjected herself to something like this. Hvergelmir let out a long, slow breath. Her eyes traced the lines of his uniform -- it was a lie in every violet thread, but a lie that cut deep. It hurt to look at. "Your name was Tarren. Your title was Crims of Saturn." His latter question, too, she left unanswered. Her emotions, she assumed, weren't really of interest to him -- just the information he wanted.
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 7:54 am
Despite everything, Labyrinthite was a man of loyalty and if someone earned it from him then he upheld it until he couldn't.
He was a leader who led by example, forever impressing the importance of how they were stronger together than separate even if he expected his recruits to be able to stand on their own two feet. It hadn't served him as well as he would have liked, the shambles of his team a result of what happened when the head of the metaphorical table left for two long. He could only be the glue that bound them all for so long.
That was a lesson he had not learned from Tanzanite's fall and disappearance well enough, but he kept her ideals for the Negaverse alive in his heart. That was the organization he strove for and one day, he'd have it. He just needed to be persistent, to endure and survive so that one day he and his would be thriving.
One day.
One day seemed like too far away during moments like this and he only snapped back into focus, yanked from his thoughts by Hver's exhaling breath. "And what of you?" He seemed to look at her with sharper focus than before as she took in the false uniform. If it was touched, it would feel the way it should have, but the oppressive swirl of chaos was ever present. That he couldn't hide.
The pockewatch was turned over in his hand until the insignia glistened in the streetlights. "Crims," he repeated. "Your image-- the memory of you was strongly impressed upon him, but you knew that didn't you?" The general felt like the knight always knew more than she said. That was how she held leverage and retained power when she herself chose not to bear arms like the rest of them.
His gaze fell to the mark of her oath on her shoulder, the one that he thought might have resembled the one this Crims had worn on his skin too. "Cared enough to be branded by you, but you're never enough are you? To save the people who might care and rely on you." His tongue clicked in disappointment, with Labyrinthite forcing himself to look at her when he closed the face of the watch and slid his thumb across the top, the shimmering light dissolving the guise of the Saturn knight. The hands had indicated only another minute, if that, anyway.
"Did looking at me hurt?" He asked, something in the way he said it implying that he hoped it had.
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 9:15 am
And what of you?Hvergelmir was caught, pinned by the reinforcement of the question he'd asked once and she'd tried to avoid. He was interested, somehow, in her answer. Maybe he meant to mock her with it, to undermine her confidence. Maybe he simply took pleasure in the way her heart twisted in the wind, a victim of her reckless emotions. It didn't matter, she decided. Telling him didn't change anything. Her eyes fell back to the fallen sailor soldier nearby, the pale glint of Labyrinthite's scythe in the lamplight. The sort of person who abandons an ally to die like a dog in the gutter deserves to suffer. That's the penance I owe. "My way forward is littered with bodies like this," she explained, gesturing. "People die because I swore an oath that betrays my own kin. There's nothing I could suffer that can ever balance the scales for that. The worst thing I could do would be to turn away because it seems too hard." And even if she could -- Labyrinthite was different. He wasn't just anyone. He was Crims in her past and her reaper in her future -- and none of this was just happenstance. "We were close," she said. "I told you that. Neither of us had many people we trusted with our secrets. But no -- I've never been enough to save anyone. I couldn't even transcend when it would've saved someone's life." Companionship was all she'd ever been good for. Friendship. Conversation. Some people weren't cut out to rise above mediocrity. Laney, at least, had made peace with that much long ago. Hvergelmir looked back, taking in the familiar lines of Labyrinthite's hooded cloak, his navy and pink trim. He was the real prison, the one even Crims wouldn't be able to break out of. "It hurt more than you know."
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 10:41 am
He waited. If there was anyone that he could be patient with, even with the rattling of the beast within his bones demanding he do something, it was Hvergelmir. So, he waited and he watched with narrowed eyes an the hints of a sneer trying to twist his mouth up.
"Victory stands on the back of sacrifice," Labyrinthite offered, though he suspected that wouldn't mean much. Like the cause he stood for, the one she held likely wouldn't lead to victory any more than his. Collateral damage was something wars were made of but he saw no point in saying such. They both knew and voicing it wouldn't change that. "But balance is a precarious thing, Neph." She hadn't told him to stop calling her that and the name flow freely on his tongue as if it were second nature. "A slight shift and the scales become unbalanced."
As expected, insight wasn't something he received from the pale haired woman even as she offered things up to him. If he was a book written in another language, she was one that had suffered the wears and tears of time until the letters bled together and became virtually illegible. But, Labyrinthite was a creature of pride who was proud of his perceived ability to read people well enough and yet-
He could barely read anything of her, even if he lied and bluffed his way through it.
There was nothing for him to say, if he were someone else then perhaps he would have offered her words of comfort or even insight but he was the creature barely posing as a human these days and she would receive none of that from him. If it had been before, when he was younger and not quite as damaged, maybe he would have allowed her to lean on him like she had done for him.
But they were not those people and the man she once relied on was still buried on Saturn in an unmarked, shameful grave.
"Best get used to it then." He lifted his hand, the watch falling from his hand to be grasped solely by the chain while he held it before him. "This won't be the last time you see him."
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 11:51 am
There was nothing more to say to Labyrinthite's warning about how easily a scale could be tipped off-balance. That was true on large scales as well as small ones. This thing between them, for example, that always felt like it would come crashing down if Hvergelmir said the wrong thing or made the wrong assumption. Labyrinthite was content not to hurt her, for now -- but for how long? When would he decide this aberrant knight was no longer interesting, or her information no longer held value? The next time the world tipped on its axis, whose side would it favor? Hvergelmir moved, finally -- slowly and roundabout, picking her way over the ground and into the pool of blood where the fallen sailor soldier lay. Red soaked into the starlight pattern of her skirt, bleeding upwards. She gestured toward Labyrinthite's scythe in a request for him to take it, but she made no move to touch it. Hvergelmir had no desire for the storied, well-blooded weapon -- only to gather her dead for burial. "Then I hope, when I see you again, you can remember more of your old self," she answered, biting back on her own pain at the prospect. "You were truly someone special."
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Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:12 pm
Labyrinthite's gaze dropped, watching her skirt soak up blood like a red wine stain on pale carpet while she passed him. Feet shuffled in a slow circle but took no forward steps even when she beckoned for him to collect the weapon embedded in flesh and concrete. The edges of his mouth twitched like a snarl was poised on his tongue and ready to break free. No sound came and instead, his head lifted and aimed to meet her eyes. His tongue wet chapped lips before he finally moved forward bare hand reaching for the spine staff of the scythe.
Dark, heavy bones were gripped firm and confidently and with only the slightest of strains lifted-- pried from the ground that was splintered from where the blade had cracked the earth and the skull had dented it. Welding it was second nature, an extension of his own limbs but banishing it was a easy act that required no further thoughts or acts of concentration. One moment it was in his hand with blood dripping from the dark metal and the next, it was gone banished back into subspace where it would remain until he wanted it again.
"Must've been something special, indeed, Neph if it causes you visible pain." Labyrinthite sounded amused at the notion, pleased that he could inflict or bring to the surface such emotions from her. "Remember, the dead are gone and the living are hungry." That was when his teeth flashed, the sharp points of his canines visible from how wide his grin stretched.
It would be a shame to see her lose herself to ghosts if it came down to it.
Blood squilshed beneath his boots when he shifted, arm lifting so two fingers could press against his temple. A mock salute was offered before that same hand swooped to catch the edges if his cloak. "Keep an eye out for us, we'll be looking for you," Labyrinthite promised complete with a sweeping bow before he disappeared with unnecessary flourish to leave the woman alone with the dead she saw fit to bury.
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