[ The scene flares with her anger, hazy at the edges, focused only on the traders, their toothy smiles, the one who had been playing with a knife as she had spoken to him. Her sharp disapproval for their poor manners, their embarrassment to be chastised by a girl barely twenty years old, small and with golden hair. His death itself happens in a flash, lashing out instinctually when they follow her as she turns to walk away from them. Barely the glitter of the knife before she's buried it deep under his jawline. Swift, thoughtless, assured that it is the best course of action, act now or suffer later. ]
[ His thoughts are muddled: anger and concern for her as the scene with the men plays out, threaded with shock over the simple answer for her actions. ]
(No.) [ then: ] (We would have come.)
[ To help her. Any of them. Maybe there wasn't time but - ]
[ Utterly stern, there is no moment in her life where she will hesitate upon the notion that anyone might come for her. It has never been an option before, and to consider it stinks of weakness to her now. ]
[ That rings as something he would say himself, under different circumstances. But he remains firm in his stance even as misgivings flutter in the background. ]
[ She doesn't entirely understand. She doesn't understand why it matters, death is everywhere, burned into the palm of every hand. It was human to kill. To fight it was futile, as futile as denying the flames of her lord. His voice winds around her thoughts like a serpent, rhythmic, almost poetry. It lulls senses already dim from sweltering heat and dehydration, yes and fear...
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone, when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with, when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world, when you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone... ]
(It has always been this way.)
[ Not an excuse. A statement, a plea, shuddering beneath the weight of the Godking's hold on her. Poisoned deep, irradiated from long years in the world of his making. ]
[ There's a pause in the argument from his end, a sense of someone tilting their head to get a better angle on whatever it is they're looking at behind the bubbling of self-righteous anger. ]
(Not anymore - no going back.)
[ That's what she said to him. This isn't her dead world, the same rules don't apply anymore. ]
[ She had given the dagger to Prince when he had asked for it, but in a way it is always with her. A relic of her fear, a piece of steel embedded into her heart the very first time she understood kill or be killed. She does not know how to be rid of it, nor does she wish to be. Her instincts were what kept her alive. ]
(Perhaps we will learn from each other.)
[ There is no perhaps, the bleed will come. The question is how will he weather the viciousness of his brood when he is alone in temperance? In that way... Ilde feels that perhaps she is the one to listen. It won't be Ren nor Anakin. ]
[ Maybe. He doesn't know what they have to teach him. Fighting, he'd thought before. He didn't think he was so sheltered from violence. Their brutality seems beyond what he knows, senseless. It's against his nature.
His response is a wordless hum, prickling with anger over the incident with Ren. The connection begins to wane. ]
[ She lets him go, as far as he can in the web of their brood. She won't even fret if perhaps he goes elsewhere before coming to join her, but now she is waiting. ]
[ He argues with Ren first. That's why he takes his time coming to find her again, he's not following that man's orders. By the time he reaches for her again he's still radiating muted aggravation. ]
(What are you doing?) [ If she gives him a location, he'll go to it. It might be best for him to get out of town, but even he's not stubborn enough to wander off on his own for too long in the climate they've left in their wake. ]
Edited (found a pronoun typo an hour later ) 2016-04-20 07:19 (UTC)
[ A faint pang of guilt (they'd all be laying low now). She'll be able to sense his approach if she looks for it, picking his way across the muddy grass long before he comes into sight. ]
Hey. [ A tension runs along his shoulders. He pulls his hood down as he gets closer, eyebrows knitting together. ] What're you doing out here?
Why not stay at the hotels? [ He frowns, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the port town. ]
If you're worried someone's gonna bother you... [ - because of what happened. He turns to look at her again. She shouldn't have to be out here, it's no safer. They can look out for each other. ]
[ She still just looks kind of amused with him. She was used to this. Even once she had been taken into Dreus's palace... she slept in the dirt with her plants. After all the bother that had been caused in the port, this was quiet and familiar. She doesn't know if he would understand even if she explained so instead she just says, ]
It's wet. [ He doesn't understand, not on his own. He knows what it's like to sleep in the freezing cold, or unbearable heat, circumstances not of his choosing. It'd be one thing if the weather were better, he's slept on a fire escape during cool summer nights.
He frowns at the look she gives him, but offers no argument in return. Instead he sits so that she doesn't have to keep looking up at him, a sharp burst of pain lancing through his leg as he folds one over the other. ]
[ She agrees, almost with pleasure. She had only seen it rain once or twice in her entire life, and the greasy ashy substance which had fallen from their perpetually overcast sky had been nothing like this at all. She is utterly satisfied with it. She scoots a little closer to him as he sits down next to him, aware of his pain. ]
[ Maybe that part makes sense to him then, in some distant way when he thinks about her world (tries not to tumble back into the memory of it).
A light huff, and he shakes his head, rubbing a hand over his knee. ]
It's nothing. [ He dressed the wounds on his own, places where the claws sank in. His mother was a nurse.
He eyes her again. ] You're okay?
[ From her own fight in town. He doesn't see any wounds on her, and can't sense any immediate feedback. Most of his anger has simmered by now - the rest redirected toward Ren. ]
I am. [ She had reacted too quickly for them to even think about laying a hand on her, that was how she preferred things. She pushes some of her frazzled curls out of her eyes, reflecting further on the comments made to her on this issue. Prince's harsh and immediate disapproval, Steve's appeal to new ways, Lexa's understanding shrug.
She chews over the emotion, and though there is a faintly sour note to it, she says, ]
I am sorry if I caused you trouble or concern.
[ She is not sorry for what she did, and that is where the sourness comes from, but... She cannot and is disinclined to deny that she has grown rapidly fond of both Steven and Ren. Her actions had caused them trouble. She is not used to her actions having effect on anyone else. She has not cared for anyone else in what feels like her entire life, whatever childish feelings she might have had quickly eclipsed by fear and her utter sycophancy for the Godking.
[ He wasn't expecting an apology. Not after their previous conversation. His lips part, sucking in a short breath. ]
We're a team. [ The word comes more comfortably than brood. They need to work together.
His thoughts stray for a moment, then: ]
I've never killed anyone before.
[ He doesn't want to have to. Not unless there's no other choice. But even if he's not the one to carry out the deed, from this moment on the blood on their hands is also his. ]
[ She wonders what that feels like. She has killed a handful of people personally, and has watched innumerable die, seen innumerable dead. It was all the same, she was complicit in it all as a denizen of her ugly fractured world with its mad king, who she adored. It did not cause her pain the way it did to Steve. Or maybe it did and she was merely used to ignoring it. ]
I... hope you will not have to.
[ She purses her lips. Not sure how to articulate what else needs to be said. She can contemplate her own actions, but then there was Ren. ]
Me too. [ But there's a sense that he knows things will shift. He was preparing to go to war before he came here, to fight for something he believed in (to prove he could carry his own weight).
What both Ilde and Ren had done were different.
The conversations falls away from him after that, his expression somber. ]
[ She is quiet for a long moment as well, not wanting to continue because to talk about Kylo Ren was to talk about herself. They were entangled because they were alike beneath their divergent exteriors. They were fearful and weak and used devotion and dogma to make themselves feel safe. For all the independence and personality each showed, they were shadows of people, their minds twisted, parts of themselves lost years ago. It drew them together. They saw it in each other. ]
Sometimes I become so agitated that it hurts those around me. [ He knows. He's felt it. She swallows. ] It swallows me, as if burning inside. Ren is... I understand him.
[ In the silence he pulls his knees up, resting his chin on them while his gaze fixes on some point in the distance. ]
I know. [ The line between his eyebrows deepens. ] But I think you care if you hurt people.
[ Forceful words, lines drawn. Understanding can only go so far. They're each they're own person, no matter how easy or tempting it is to blend and echo thoughts. No matter how much their pasts mirror each other. There's strength to those differences.
Between Ilde and Ren, Steve sees the big difference in that the latter has no desire or intention to learn control. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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( Why? )
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( Such things happen. )
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( No. ) [ then: ] ( We would have come. )
[ To help her. Any of them. Maybe there wasn't time but - ]
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[ Utterly stern, there is no moment in her life where she will hesitate upon the notion that anyone might come for her. It has never been an option before, and to consider it stinks of weakness to her now. ]
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( - not the only way. )
[ Killing first. ]
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When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone, when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with, when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world, when you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone... ]
( It has always been this way. )
[ Not an excuse. A statement, a plea, shuddering beneath the weight of the Godking's hold on her. Poisoned deep, irradiated from long years in the world of his making. ]
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( Not anymore - no going back. )
[ That's what she said to him. This isn't her dead world, the same rules don't apply anymore. ]
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( Perhaps we will learn from each other. )
[ There is no perhaps, the bleed will come. The question is how will he weather the viciousness of his brood when he is alone in temperance? In that way... Ilde feels that perhaps she is the one to listen. It won't be Ren nor Anakin. ]
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His response is a wordless hum, prickling with anger over the incident with Ren. The connection begins to wane. ]
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[ She lets him go, as far as he can in the web of their brood. She won't even fret if perhaps he goes elsewhere before coming to join her, but now she is waiting. ]
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( What are you doing? ) [ If she gives him a location, he'll go to it. It might be best for him to get out of town, but even he's not stubborn enough to wander off on his own for too long in the climate they've left in their wake. ]
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[ There is a smidgen of hesitation, an unfamiliar exchange, ]
( Come join me. )
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Hey. [ A tension runs along his shoulders. He pulls his hood down as he gets closer, eyebrows knitting together. ] What're you doing out here?
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I did not want to camp too far away from the port.
[ Lest someone in the Hive find further trouble... ]
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If you're worried someone's gonna bother you... [ - because of what happened. He turns to look at her again. She shouldn't have to be out here, it's no safer. They can look out for each other. ]
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It's fine. I'm comfortable here.
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He frowns at the look she gives him, but offers no argument in return. Instead he sits so that she doesn't have to keep looking up at him, a sharp burst of pain lancing through his leg as he folds one over the other. ]
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[ She agrees, almost with pleasure. She had only seen it rain once or twice in her entire life, and the greasy ashy substance which had fallen from their perpetually overcast sky had been nothing like this at all. She is utterly satisfied with it. She scoots a little closer to him as he sits down next to him, aware of his pain. ]
You may tell me, when you are hurt.
[ It's not at all a demand. ]
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A light huff, and he shakes his head, rubbing a hand over his knee. ]
It's nothing. [ He dressed the wounds on his own, places where the claws sank in. His mother was a nurse.
He eyes her again. ] You're okay?
[ From her own fight in town. He doesn't see any wounds on her, and can't sense any immediate feedback. Most of his anger has simmered by now - the rest redirected toward Ren. ]
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I am. [ She had reacted too quickly for them to even think about laying a hand on her, that was how she preferred things. She pushes some of her frazzled curls out of her eyes, reflecting further on the comments made to her on this issue. Prince's harsh and immediate disapproval, Steve's appeal to new ways, Lexa's understanding shrug.
She chews over the emotion, and though there is a faintly sour note to it, she says, ]
I am sorry if I caused you trouble or concern.
[ She is not sorry for what she did, and that is where the sourness comes from, but... She cannot and is disinclined to deny that she has grown rapidly fond of both Steven and Ren. Her actions had caused them trouble. She is not used to her actions having effect on anyone else. She has not cared for anyone else in what feels like her entire life, whatever childish feelings she might have had quickly eclipsed by fear and her utter sycophancy for the Godking.
There is much to be learned. ]
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We're a team. [ The word comes more comfortably than brood. They need to work together.
His thoughts stray for a moment, then: ]
I've never killed anyone before.
[ He doesn't want to have to. Not unless there's no other choice. But even if he's not the one to carry out the deed, from this moment on the blood on their hands is also his. ]
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[ She wonders what that feels like. She has killed a handful of people personally, and has watched innumerable die, seen innumerable dead. It was all the same, she was complicit in it all as a denizen of her ugly fractured world with its mad king, who she adored. It did not cause her pain the way it did to Steve. Or maybe it did and she was merely used to ignoring it. ]
I... hope you will not have to.
[ She purses her lips. Not sure how to articulate what else needs to be said. She can contemplate her own actions, but then there was Ren. ]
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What both Ilde and Ren had done were different.
The conversations falls away from him after that, his expression somber. ]
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Sometimes I become so agitated that it hurts those around me. [ He knows. He's felt it. She swallows. ] It swallows me, as if burning inside. Ren is... I understand him.
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I know. [ The line between his eyebrows deepens. ] But I think you care if you hurt people.
[ Forceful words, lines drawn. Understanding can only go so far. They're each they're own person, no matter how easy or tempting it is to blend and echo thoughts. No matter how much their pasts mirror each other. There's strength to those differences.
Between Ilde and Ren, Steve sees the big difference in that the latter has no desire or intention to learn control. ]
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