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Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 12:18 pm
Hvergelmir's hand twitched, a little ticklish, where Labyrinthite's gloved fingertips skated across her palm. The skin was scarred there, in a distinctive six-pointed Cosmos star that matched the one scarred on the small of her back, but luckily she hadn't lost much feeling from the inury. Other people had worse scars. She might have worse scars someday, she knew, and the man who now studied her might well bear the responsibility. But right now, she didn't. Right now, and for however long it might last, she wasn't the target of his trail of violence and murder. If he had something like good graces, she was in them. She let out a breath. Smiled. "I was reckless and foolish long before I ever met you. And a fugitive long before you were, too. The difference is, I didn't have anyone chasing me for a long time. You always did." How often had Nephthys paced one dock or another when Tarren was late to arrive, imagining him shackled in heavy, ugly irons, or rotting away in the brig of some Martian starliner? How often had she left warm beds and warm partners, because nightmares of him caught and killed had driven her from sleep? How often had she sifted through the news, gossip and rumors Dionysia had passed along, dreading some bad news about Crims? Often enough that, even with her fragmented memory of her past life, she could recall it. She liked to think of Crims, sailing from one star to the next, with the rising star tattooed to his skin: a part of her that was always with him, always watching over him. Labyrinthite was right: such a mark was no small gesture. "Tarren would've sailed through hell and back, for my sake," she confirmed -- not out of ego, but because they were that close. "And so would I, for his."
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Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 1:46 pm
Labyrinthite's only memorable scar, in his opinion, was one on his ankle. A gift from Sailor Iris that had set the stage for his entire career as a solider in Metallia's army. The details were fuzzy at best, now, but he could remember the way the rainbow had burned his skin and he couldn't remember if it had been intentional or not.
He had been ordinary then and those days were the most difficult to remember.
Now, he didn't know if he would know how to live as just Chase.
Thankfully, he didn't have time to dwell on the wayward thought. "I was a rebel-made king," he replied, the teasings of a genuine grin on his lips before it faltered and faded with the weight of the rest of that memory. His breath hitched, the same as it had when the sword had pierced his back and his eyes unfocused. For a long moment, Labyrinthite stared off blankly.
When he came back, he blinked, returning his attention to the woman with eyes that almost matched his. "He thought you more clever." He couldn't remember the conversation where they'd said their goodbyes, but he remembered the twisting dread in his gut. "I don't want to say goodbye," he said, as if it would mean anything.
His hand shifted, the heel of his palm pressing against hers and his fingers lightly resting atop hers. "Would you have loved him now as you had then?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2017 1:17 pm
It was the ideas that bled through Labyrinthite moreso than the memories, Hvergelmir was coming to realize. He described the memories themselves as being few and scant -- save for his death -- but it seemed he had at least some gift for inference, as his mind had clearly siezed upon what mattered and drawn from it what he could. I was a rebel-made king. And so he had been, in his way. The answers he lacked, Hvergelmir could supply. Some of them, anyway. The way he said I don't want to say goodbye wrenched at something fragile in her heart -- and she understood it to be some small scene, some fragment of memory that was still lost to her yet, because it brought tears to her eyes without understanding them. It was tied to some thread she couldn't see, couldn't follow, but that was certainly there. Something that belonged to her and was missing. Nephthys felt nearer and hand and yet farther away than she ever had. She smiled through her tears. "I was clever enough not to get caught until I turned myself in," Hvergelmir promised. "And even then, I escaped." Not without cost or suffering, and not unscathed -- she'd lived with the huge barcode tattoo down her entire right arm after Angaria, and the name of her crime written forever beneath it: THEFT OF LABOR. But she'd been free. It took little effort to shift their point of contact, to lace their fingers together. His gloved hand fitted to hers, bare and scarred with the Cosmos star. It took a little more effort to answer Labyrinthite's last question. Nephthys might have offered a coy reply there. I'm trying to, she might have said with a sly smile, but you aren't making it very easy, you devil.But Laney was not Nephthys. The relationships she held in her heart were fewer, but no less ardent, no less devoted. They were slower, more careful. So she said, instead, with her eyes on Labyrinthite's face, "I've changed since then. So have you. But I don't think my heart's ever been fickle."
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Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:02 pm
He did not need all of the pieces to the puzzle, just enough to solve it, and while Labyrinthite did not think that he had enough pieces of the puzzle that made up Crims things were slowly coming together. Hvergelmir provided the answers to several blanks and loaded his figurative gun with bullets.
It made him wonder if the vial he had come across was happenstance or if he could find more.
Labyrinthite was possessed with the desire, no need, to know more.
The she-knights tears didn't seem to phase him, even if his head tipped ever so slightly at the sight. He had managed to strike some sort of chord and while normally he would have felt a curl of pride, it was curiosity that burned brightly in response. "Did you mourn his death?" It was a simple question, with an obvious answer, but he wanted to hear it from her lips anyway.
The more she affirmed that she loved him, or that Neph loved him, the better.
He was surprised, however, by how well her hand fit in his. In all the time they'd known each other in this life, Labyrinthite was not a stranger to being touched by her or touching her but this was different. There was an intimacy to the simple hand holding that should have been startling and it wasn't. It made something within him ache, but not enough for him to pursue an understanding.
"Time is not always a kind mistress," he mused, like he had any true knowledge of what they'd been like before the galaxy fell and they were all reborn. "Is that heart set on him?" He paused, making sure their near matching gazes were on each other. "Or me?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:46 pm
Nephthys had mourned Tarren for weeks. Hvergelmir didn't remember receiving the news, though she assumed it had likely come from Dionysia, whence so much information about current events across the galaxy flowed. She had no idea where she might've been standing when she was told, or how she'd reacted in the moment. She only remembered after. The quiet solitude of her temple, away from prying eyes -- only Eikthyrnir's quiet breath occasionally at her shoulder when she went to the garden for vegetables. She had shut herself away with her grief, refusing missions and people alike. Visitors to her island received no hospitality beyond what was available when the knight wasn't in residence: just the pier and the fuel that ran to it. She offered them no beds and no bonfires. She was poor company for any stranger. She'd sat at her loom for days on end and worked a grand tapestry, its colored threads wending together -- though she could no longer recall what the tapestry depicted or what had become of it since. She remembered only that when she grieved -- when she truly grieved -- she liked to grieve alone. But for all the misery of that thought she laughed. It was unexpected, and bubbled out of her, and she answered, "That's just what you would've asked." 'Come on, Neph, did you cry for me? Did you wear black and tear at your clothes? Have out with it.' And she might have rolled her eyes and called him a blackguard and ignored the question entirely. If Crims were here. "I mourned you in my own way," was what she told Labyrinthite. "And longer than most." But Crims wasn't here, not quite here -- and nothing made that more obvious than the question Labyrinthite asked her, his gaze so focused. Him or me. And it had only one answer. "There's only one of you," she said, the momentary lightness of her tone already starting to fade away. "And there's only one of me. All that changes is time. We just grow. It's only Metallia's hand on your heart that makes you think otherwise. You're Crims, and always were. No matter what rocks you name yourself after. No matter what hoods you hide behind. No matter how many people you kill. No matter what power she grants you and no matter how much you love it, and no matter how much I despise it. This is the person you've grown into -- and if you took all that away, if you wore a knight's clothes again and the name that was born within you, you still wouldn't be the same as you were a thousand years ago. But he'd still be you." It was an answer, and it wasn't. The rest was obvious. I will always care about you. But that alone will never be enough.She studied his eyes, gold like the rising moon at sunset. "Let me ask you something. If you won this war -- if all your enemies were killed or converted, and Metallia held this world in her hands, and the only knight left walking this world was me, and my oath -- what would you do then? Would you let me live?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 2:28 pm
Labyrinthite admired Hvergelmir's tenacity.
She provided him with so much information, endless insight into things, but still kept so much hidden and protected from him. As much as he wanted to force it out of her, there was more enjoyment to be had by the slow coaxing that they both seemed to favor.
He wondered if she hoped that prolonged exposure to her would grant him a change of heart.
"You keep saying it, that we aren't so different." That they were the same and maybe the woman had a point. The starseed within him was the same, but the person that lived in the skin of it's host was not. No matter what he remembered, no matter what she said, or what anyone said they would never be the same person.
Two separate entities that once inhabited the same starseed.
"You can believe that if you want Neph, but it doesn't make it true." The cauldron took in starseeds and spit them back out, but that didn't mean they were the exact same. Something was always lost in translation, he was certain, from one life to the next.
Her question made him sneer, shifting so he wasn't impressing on her space as heavily. Still, his hand held hers like he wasn't capable of letting go.
"What makes you certain that I would get to that point, where it was simply you and I left standing on the battlefield?" While he was a survivor, he still knew he was a dog of war.
And dogs of war never really survived the end of it.
"You would live, but not as you." Once he said it, he knew it to be the absolute truth. Given the chance, Labyrinthite would take Hvergelmir and drag her into the darkness with him before he would ever be able to kill her.
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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 1:53 pm
He didn't want to believe it -- that he and Crims might be cut from the same cloth more than just technically, that they might be more than two bodies that had shared the same starseed. Maybe he couldn't believe it. Maybe Metallia got in the way. Or maybe it was just that he hadn't quite imagined it yet -- the idea that he could be Metallia's servant, wearing her livery, and still be someone who'd once found his calling beyond Saturn. He hadn't retraced his footsteps yet, had he? He'd barely seen a few of his nearest footprints in the snow, half-disappeared. "Find out for yourself, then," she offered. "If I can find more of these vials, and bring them to you -- then see for yourself who Tarren was, and if you really would've been in that much disagreement with him. Learn your own history first-hand." She'd search her own Wonder, first. After that, perhaps Olympus held answers -- or one of the other knights of Saturn. Perhaps such vials had been made on their planet, or perhaps someone had recorded something about it that they could find and decipher . . . but if one small bottle of liquid existed that had the power to restore lost memories, it had to have come from somewhere. There had to be more, somewhere in the universe. "As for the other thing . . . " Hvergelmir shivered, her hand tightening in Labyrinthite's as though unconsciously seeking warmth. "I don't want to be Metallia's slave. I don't want to have to kill on someone else's command. I'd be miserable. I don't want to live that way."
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Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 9:18 am
Labyrinthite knew that they did not, and likely would not, see eye to eye on this. Somehow, Hvergelmir thought that buried deep beneath the layers and layers of cloak and chaos laid a man she once knew. Someone from another lifetime, another universe, a you could be, maybe where he saw nothing but what he was as he saw himself. Still, something in him wished to entertain her, to let her hold onto the grains of sand that she thought could in her hand.
Of all of the ones he played games with, the she-knight was his favorite.
"If you find them, then I will drink from them." His doubts about her ability to locate any were hinted in his voice, but the tone remained as even and steady as the smirk on his mouth. "But I wouldn't put any eggs in that basket." The memories, if that's what they were, were hazy and scattered at best. More like a dream he would try desperately to cling to and remember what he'd been given. Somethings were clearer, he could still feel the way the sword had pierced his back and the blood had made it's way up his throat and out his mouth when he hit his knees.
Others were a foggy haze of a thing he half remembered.
He wondered what might come if he came into possession of more vials.
Labyrinthite shifted, interested in the way she shivered and held tighter to him. His free hand reached to run along the side of her face, fingers tucking beneath her jaw and he leaned in. "But you'd be mine." And the general was a selfish enough man who was willing to take what he wanted even at the cost of the person he was taking when it came down to it. "Who knows what kind of person you would be at my side."
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Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:26 am
Hvergelmir let her hand go slack within his -- it would fall back down to her lap unless Labyrinthite held on to it. They were close enough that she could feel his breath warming her face -- and yet, his words left her chilled beyond measure. "I wouldn't be yours. I'd belong to that thing you call a queen . . . just another slave at the end of her chain, condemned to bring her endless bodies, endless souls for her grist mill. You have to know that would kill me. I can't . . . I couldn't." She looked at him imploringly, desperately. "I'd be a corpse at your side. Would you trot me around like a pet? Keep my quotas for me so Metallia didn't slit my throat? Would you be happy, knowing that I hated you?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 7:24 pm
When she let go, Labyrinthite allowed her hand to fall back down and his own retreated to rest upon his knee. It was too easy to lose himself in the false comfort that Hvergelmir provided because she had known him before.
Had held him back when he had started to fall apart before Metallia came to his aid and reminded him of how they had always been there for him and how she had always pulled him back onto his feet.
He remembered the dark timeline that should have come to pass but he knew wouldn't if only because he was still a general and not the Reaper-King he'd been damned for.
Labyrinthite didn't know if it was better or for worse, only that he'd been poisoned by thoughts of turning tail and fleeing.
Hvergelmir's words brought him no comfort but didn't anger him either.
"You could be an example," he answered, shoulders rolling back in a shrug when he leaned in. "I would keep you and you would be mine. A gift from Metallia to her loyal knight." Something he proved over and over again.
Metallia was his sovereign and he her knight.
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:22 pm
This was the dance Hvergelmir and Labyrinthite were always doing: two people always bouncing off of each other, never meeting in the middle, always holding firmly to their points of view. If they were alike in one respect, it was in having a core of incredible stubbornness; even Hvergelmir's most strident pleading had had no effect in getting Labyrinthite to promise not to drag her into the Negaverse against her will. He'd made his decision. Well, Crims had been profoundly obstinate too. It was one more thing his present incarnation had in common with Tarren as he existed in her memories. "Maybe," she said, though she had no desire to live on Metallia's sufferance. "Or maybe there's a world where you run away from all of this with me instead -- where we find an old spaceship that's still starworthy and we sail the universe exploring the ruins of all the old planets. Somewhere where Metallia can't ever reach you again. Maybe there's a lifetime where no one owns either of us, and we're just free." Her gaze drifted up and away to the sky, imagining flying far away from a life of war and anxiety, imagining something different. "But the truth is, I don't expect to be there for the end of things, either. So I guess we can both imagine whatever ending makes us happiest -- for all the difference it makes."
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:32 pm
Of those that sat on the opposite of him, Hvergelmir had always been interesting. She sought to be an ally that encouraged people to her side, but she often left herself open and vulnerable and yet...she always slipped through fingers, like water through the cracks.
Once, he'd nearly taken her as a trophy after he had taken so much from her.
He wondered if it would happen again, if he ever proved himself worthy of the rank he'd been given in that future, the one that wouldn't come to pass the same way with everything that had become different as a result.
"You wouldn't leave," he replied, the certainty absolute. If she was anything like Neph, settling with one person wasn't enough. "You care too much about others."
Whatever she offered was wishful thinking and unlikely to ever come to pass no matter where they are.
"Even if you had me it wouldn't be enough."
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 9:59 am
Hvergelmir conceded the point with a smile. "No, you're right, " she admitted. "There are people here I wouldn't want to leave. And I like what it is I do -- I like helping people. I have to keep going until the work is done. But if you think my desire to stay near people I love means more to me than your freedom, than anyone's freedom -- then you don't really see me for who I am." She looked up at him imploringly, studying his eyes. "Don't you have people who'd make sacrifices for you? People you'd make sacrifices for?" There were plenty of days where Laney had dreaded another night at her bench where things might go badly, another day trying to push the same stone up the same hill. There were days when she despaired, days when she imagined running away -- sometimes with Orah, sometimes just alone. But she didn't - she couldn't -- and those feelings always passed. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercifully, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.People needed someone to talk to, especially during a war. She couldn't leave that behind. Not for one person she cared about, and not for all of them. But she wished Labyrinthite could leave his red path behind him instead -- could set aside his brutal calling with as much honor and bravery as Tarren had once set aside his nobler Saturnine calling and follow the road dictated by his own heart. Crims had been anchorless, wild, a bird in flight. Labyrinthite was a man moored to his own damnation.
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 12:08 pm
He nearly scoffed, a wordless noise slipping free when the edge of his mouth twisted upward.
"What would be different then," he asked, low and gravely, "you running away with me and leaving others behind for my freedom and you coming to stand at my side, on my side? You would be shackling yourself to me either way." Same chains, different reasonings.
"You can't expect me to believe that your definition of freedom for me weighs more heavily than this cause you dedicated to yourself. You pretend to offer yourself to me, like it's not something I could just take, as if you'd be able to stop wanting to leave just to 'help' people you think need help but don't." The fantasy was just that, fantasy. Labyrinthite wasn't foolish enough to take any of it seriously.
Maybe a different him would have loved to go running through the universe hand in hand with the she-knight but that wasn't him, it would never be him, regardless of what she might have yearned for.
"If you think I haven't made sacrifices and done what I needed for whatever reason, then you don't see me either." He laugh, sharp bitter, and too loud for how soft they'd been. "Now that you know, you only see him and he's dead, there's no resurrection for him."
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 9:37 pm
It was rare for Hvergelmir to snap at someone. Rarer still, probably, for it to be Labyrinthite, whom she was always so careful with, so delicate -- and whom, he had surmised correctly, she now thought of in her mind as Crims as much as she did Labyrinthite. Rare, when she set such store by her self-control, her decision to choose gentleness again and again. Rare. But not impossible. Even then, snap was perhaps a strong word for it -- but there was an uncommon fire in her eyes when she looked back at him, a furious sense of certainty and implacably hard will that came from a lifetime far beyond this one, something that had driven Nephthys beyond just her own life and still lived within Hvergelmir here in her next incarnation. "It would be different because it would be my choice," she hissed keenly back, looking as indignant and insulted as if she'd just been slapped. "I'm no one's slave, not yours or Metallia's or anyone else's. The shackles I wear, I wear because I chose them -- don't imagine that's anything like being dragged into your cage." The last time Hvergelmir had spoken so forcefully to a Negaverse agent like this had been . . . Had been years ago, had been Bischofite. It wasn't like her. This time, Labyrinthite had fired an arrow that had struck true, found a way to get under her skin. Damn him. She curbed her outburst there. Her distress, she reminded herself, wouldn't help the situation. She shut her eyes for a few long seconds and breathed. "Maybe you're right," she offered. "Maybe I don't understand enough of your life to really see you for who you are. You don't really talk to me about how you ended up in the Negaverse or whether you're actually happy. I don't even know what happiness looks like, for you. "
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