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 Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:54 am
Amphitrite had hardly slept since she'd been taken here. On the rare occasion that she did drift off - she was just grateful when she did that no one else was there. She'd been trying so hard to maintain herself, to preserve her pride, to be anything but the girl who'd been a weak, sobbing mess for the days turned to weeks strapped to that chair.
That was how she'd worn her wrists and ankles raw, waking from one nightmare and realizing it had, in fact, become her reality again. She did not scream. But she had worn the inside of her cheek and the whole of her bottom lip raw, bleeding here and there, dry and chapped and abused relentlessly between her teeth as she fought to keep herself silent. She would not give them the satisfaction. She refused. She would say she'd die first, but she would not. They will come. They will come, and there'll be hell to pay - or I will find a way on my own. This will not stand.
Easier said than done, her chest achingly tight and her breath constantly shallow, her eyes occasionally wild as they darted about the room, fighting off bouts of raw panic. It was in one of these moments that she spotted a shadow at the entrance to her cell - if a shadow could glow. She drew a slow breath and returned her gaze to the ceiling above her - easy to do, bound to a bed. "Yes? - Can I help you?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 11:41 am
He'd been standing there for a minute or two, simply observing her, Celsus' arms folded across his chest, his face expressionless. But eventually she seemed to notice him, and he lifted his brows, stepping inside without much effort.
"That depends," he said lightly, and there was a clatter and a jangle as the door to the cell slid shut again. Celsus crossed the room to stand in front of her, the tenseness in his shoulders sharp and stuff.
"What can you tell me about your kind? You're not in the Negaverse, are you?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 5:33 pm
Amphitrite glanced down briefly without meaning to, regarding with him a quizzical look. "My kind? - corrupt senshi like myself?" Just to clarify. But it seemed to be that way. "That all depends on who you talk to. Many officers still regard us with suspicion. Many others have come to accept us as equals. We have to earn their trust, as we should." There didn't seem to be a whole lot of harm in saying that. Especially not when -
A slow smile curled her lips. "In my case - given the Negaverse spared my life when you people abandoned me - yes, I am part of them. Proudly."
Then she looked back at the ceiling again, drawing in a deep breath. "Hmm. You know. You're not the first glowing one I've seen. But you're the dimmest. You'd think you were the one chained to the bed."
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 5:45 pm
"I don't believe I stuttered, so yes, like yourself," said Celsus, with a touch of annoyance in his voice. "Corrupted senshi are hardly equals to anyone in the Negaverse. All they do is pretend to be a part of something that's quite out of their league."
He gave a snort, rolling his eyes.
"If we abandoned you, we must have had a reason to do so," said Celsus, ignoring the way that his heartbeat had quickened, the way his chest had tightened at her words. A flinch passed across his face, fleeting and unseen with her face to the ceiling, the fingers of one of Celsus' hands curling into a fist at his side.
"Fortunately for me, I'm not," he said flatly. "What's your name?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 11:22 pm
Irritation fueled by barely suppressed anxiety flared up in her white-hot at his comment. "Are you in the Negaverse?" she spat without looking, fingers curling into fists, her own nails biting into her palms. This was not the first time in recent days. "No? - then what do you know? What do you know of how I'm treated and what my place is? - if that's what you truly believe, then you know nothing, sweetheart."
A reason to do so. She laughed - it was a hard, dry sound, too tight for her own tension, and entirely too bitter for someone her age. "There must have been - given you saved everyone else just fine, " she spat, a humorless smile on her face. "Either you didn't think my life was worth your life, or you just forgot about me. I wonder which is better?"
As for a name - she had no qualms about sharing it. "Amphitrite. Senshi of shells. - so you didn't compile a list of captives, then? - glad to know this damn operation is as much of a wasteful mess as the last one, " and then she laughed again, maybe harder. "Too bad you won't get me out of this one. I was the best thing to come out of the last, you know."
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:45 pm
"No," said Celsus tonelessly. "But I've been around long enough to know what they are, what they do. And believe me, sweetheart - they don't think of you as a part of them at all. Not really. You don't really belong with them, and they'll never really accept you. You're just an expendable toy to them, to do with as they wish."
He had begun pacing back and forth, and a laugh escaped, harsh and short.
"Why would my life have been worth the same as yours, exactly? And what exactly are you referring to, me saving everyone else, because I rarely am able to do that, sweetheart."
He threw the mocking tone back at her, Celsus' idly twisting the whip he'd summoned to him, curling the strands of the tails around his shaking fingers.
"You're not worth getting out of this one, sorry."
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Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 11:00 pm
Expendable. The word triggered a fierce jerk of her gut, and she swore she tasted bile in the back of her throat. (Would they be forced to let her up, she rationed inside of her own head, if she were to vomit? Or would they let her lay there, risk her choking?) Amphitrite knew she wasn't. She knew that, and still - "You're half right, darling, " and for as ragged as she look, as much as her fingers tightened in their balled fists, nails digging into already raw skin on her palms, she managed to make it sound light, almost airy. "That's what I was to you people. Expendable. A toy. Never really a part of you at all."
I remember being lonely - I remember being alone - I remember feeling this.
Was it so entirely different from now?
Yes. I am so much more now. I am. Laurelite herself acknowledged me. This isn't the same at all.
His comment there - the one about rarely being able to save anyone - it actually made her laugh hard, hard enough that her ribs ached. (They'd already ached. But this was a different kind.) "Listen to you, throwing yourself a little pity party where the enemy can see - woe is you glittering knight."
She writhed, both stretching and straining, coaxing a smile onto her lips. "I'm referring to last year. The New Year. A handful of people were taken captive - I don't know all the people, but I know the names." She remembered well from her little exchange with Valhalla. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe he hadn't been involved - but he was a knight, and a glowing one. Odds were he'd at least heard of it. "Maybe you know one of them? Acrucis, Penthe - she's a real delight, that one - Mintaka, Helicon, Celsus, Kairatos, Pisces, Skadi, Korlandria, Valhalla, Ganymede - a princess now. I think I really liked her once. Pity she's not here."
Another laugh, with the corrupt lulling her head idly to a side. "In any case, all were rescued. Happily ever after. Except for one."
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Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:42 am
He could almost feel her anger, burning into him, the rage filling the room and his senses. The tenseness was so sharp it was able to be cut with a knife, and Celsus kept pacing, kept moving the whip through his shaking hands without casting a glance at Amphitrite.
"You can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better," he murmured distractedly, the voices thrumming and pressing against the inside of his skull, lashes fluttering behind his glasses. "Whatever helps you sleep better at night, go on."
The taste in his mouth was of something bitter, something twisted and ugly. Celsus felt it growing, felt it stating to twist spindly black arms around his throat and in his chest, until there would eventually be nothing left but the blackness that threatened to consume him.
The New Year.
He hadn't forgotten. He'd simply pushed it back into the recesses of his mind, and Celsus lifted his chin, feeling his heart hammering painfully. A wave of nausea was rising in his mouth, and he swallowed it achingly back, closing his eyes briefly before turning to face her.
"I know them," he said quietly. "And it was never a happily ever after."
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Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:58 pm
"I think you're talking about yourself again, pet, " and she did not watch his motions, exactly, but kept her head lulled to a side, staring off at the far wall, staring through him whenever he paced through her field of vision. "Must not be working. You don't look like you've slept in weeks. - I hear white noise is great for that sort of thing." As though she was one to talk; it'd been only days, but it felt like so much longer with the constant pressure of trapped trapped trapped looming over her like a weight.
He was facing her now, and something in the way he said it - and the 'no happily ever after' - she laughed harder still. "Do you know how long they kept me waiting for you people before corrupting me?" she asked once the fit of laughter had passed. "They kept me alive because they expected it. They saw my value, " which was what it was, for all those captors who'd called her useless and weak - but they'd been counter-balanced by people like Cinnabar, like Laurelite.
Amphitrite didn't wait for his answer. "Five weeks. Four of them I spent alone. Waiting and hoping and pleading, " and she'd taken on an almost sing-song quality then, "But no one ever did come."
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 5:33 pm
He had slept, but badly, if at all. His dreams were twisted and black, horrible, shadowed things that could hardly be called dreams and were more accurately described as night terrors. Waking, he couldn't often tell what was real and what wasn't, screaming himself hoarse and hating every possible second of breathing, of living.
Her nicknames grated on his nerves like fingernails against a chalkboard. Celsus had started pacing again, and Amphitrite's words faded in and out of his thoughts and mind like a badly tuned radio, flinches and scowls warring with each other on his face.
They took you too. They tortured you too.
And yet you never went to check to make sure that everyone was okay. That everyone was out.
But you were in pain. You had to survive.
Since when did survival mean leaving someone behind?
Celsus barked out a laugh that did not sound like a laugh at all.
"So these people who supposedly saw your value kept you locked up for five weeks. How very kind of them. You should send a fruit basket, maybe a Christmas card. ' Thank you for kidnapping me, keeping me locked up, and then pretending I was one of you. ' "
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 6:45 pm
There was something off about him. That was a given now, with his expression shifting back and forth between pained and annoyed. Now that she'd noticed, Amphitrite was staring more intently, her eyes flashing darkly. The suddenness of the laughter that was hardly anything resembling that made her smile in response, although it was a slick thing, tainted with bitterness and foul intent.
"I begged them to kill me, " she 'confessed' rather airily, canting her head to a side. "I didn't want this at first. I can't remember why, now - " Which was true. She could not. He did not have to know how it bothered and rankled and chafed like a sore that could never be mended. "I remember before they took me away, I heard you people come. I heard the battle, and I cried out - I did so much begging when I was one of you - "
The corrupt laughed. "I was such a sad little thing then, really. Lonely, weak. Maybe it's no wonder you left me behind."
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Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 9:31 pm
The air felt sickeningly thick around him; as though it was cloyingly trapped with smoke and something else, something sweet and poisonous that clogged his lungs and made his head spin unpleasantly. He wanted to step away, wanted to run away, but his feet wouldn't move.
Stop talking.
Stop it.
I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't -
I wouldn't have left you behind, I would have gone after you if I had known -
"Stop it."
His hands were over his ears now, and the pain was deafening in his head, pounding against his skull. Celsus was gasping for breath, his eyes wide as he staggered, and he clenched his teeth against the onslaught of nausea, giving a violent shake of his head.
"I - didn't - know - stop it - " he hissed, and it was unclear if he was talking to himself or to Amphitrite anymore.
This is why you were never made to be a knight. This is why you were a mistake. You couldn't even save one person, all you did was save yourself and now look where it's gotten you, look where it's gotten her she's broken now and it's
all
your
fault.
"STOP IT!" came the shrieking, half-strangled cry, and Celsus was bent double now, unable to catch his breath. "I didn't - I didn't know, I didn't know, I would - I didn't - just - stop it - "
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Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:54 am
Just what and who this knight was eluded her. But Amphitrite was beginning to think that it didn't matter at all; it felt so good. There was something so goddamn satisfying about this, how even from her position, prone and helpless, she wasn't. She still had power - more than that, she had enough power to make a grown, transcended knight break down bit by bit before her very eyes. She knew she was not doing it alone. It was visible from the very start that something was wrong with him, that he was defective, flawed in some way. But she had triggered this, this meltdown, these desperate screams as though he were the one strapped to the bed and being tormented rather than the other way around.
"I said that too, " and again, her voice was airy, almost soft. "Stop it. Please stop it. I said it when they threatened me - " She began to lift her head, bit by bit - the corrupt could not sit up, tied as she was. But she could try, straining against bonds, and her voice grew a little louder. " - I whimpered it when they broke my bones for information I didn't have - "
Her voice was growing louder, then, bit by bit. She didn't even realize. " - I screamed it when they fondled my starseed - for laughs - " The ache in her chest grew heavier, whether from the strain or the memory that still haunted her almost every night. " - I sobbed it when Laurelite did this to me. Stop it, please. Please, anything but this. Please!"
The bonds ached. But the euphoria of her return to glory, however brief this was, coupled with the unyielding bitter rage she'd carried in her heart for more than a year, she could have pulled her own arm from the socket without batting an eye. Just to get a better look at this face. "You could have saved me! But you didn't! You didn't, and now look at what you've done!"
She threw her arms once, kicked her legs violently in their restraints, tossed her hair hard enough that the room nearly spun. "You made me, and now you want to break me again?! - you hypocrites! You goddamn hypocrites when your half-assed apologies and your useless words and your - how could you do this to me again?!"
Amphitrite spat in his direction, still straining, almost panting - but the glint in her eyes had grown no less vibrant, no less malicious. "You. You're disgusting! You're pathetic! All of you!"
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Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 11:49 am
It was as though parts of him were being splintered apart; as though bits and pieces were being broken, falling to the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces so that the idea of putting everything back together was ludicrous, almost laughable in nature.
He heard her voice, low and almost sickeningly sweet in his ears. Celsus couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move, and the world was slowly shrinking down around him so that all of the air in the room felt as though it were being compressed, sucked out of his lungs.
"Stop it," he whispered again, and it came out a plea, desperate and hoarse, galling him, but he couldn't bear to hear it, couldn't stand to know that he'd done something like what she was telling him, even though he knew he had. He'd left her there, he'd abandoned her, she was right, she was right and he'd -
- he'd left her -
"Stop," Celsus breathed raggedly, but Amphitrite's voice was growing louder, and louder.
She might as well have been the one holding the whip. Her words flayed his heart as well as the tails might have flayed her skin, but the positions were reversed. He was the one bound and she was the one attacking, and he could do nothing against it.
There was no defending himself against the truth of it all.
"NO!" screamed Celsus, and there was a crack of the whip, wild and aimed randomly so that the tails cracked through the air somewhere beside Amphitrite without hitting here. He staggered, his feet slipping on the stone flooring, and his back slammed against the wall, scraping through his cape and his uniform.
"I didn't - I didn't - stop - stop - "
But it was true, and her words were poison in his veins, reminding him.
Pathetic.
Celsus felt his legs moving, felt his body go on autopilot towards the door. It slid open with a clatter, and then he was slamming it shut again and running, because there was nothing else to do, and nothing else he could do. It was all he was capable of, at any rate.
Just running far, far away.
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