[closed]

[sufferist]

Who: Signless and the Disciple
Where: Disciple's house.
When: April 7th ish.
What: Signless shows up at Disciple's house.
Warnings: Some injuries and some suicidal ideation.


He leaves a speckled blood trail when he enters, his wounds still seeping blood through his body suit. The gaps in the bio material haven't yet had the chance to heal, and neither has his body. It doesn't seem urgent, and so he ignores it, the idea that he's bleeding only a passing thought as he searches the house for the Disciple. He can't feel her anywhere.

She must be gone.

It doesn't matter, he thinks. He came and that's all he needs to do, isn't it? This was his destination, and now that he's here...well, he doesn't have any more planned. This is as far as he's gotten.

He eventually curls up on the couch, trying to rest away the exhaustion of electrical injuries. If she shows up, she does. If not...it doesn't really matter. It doesn't.

Its chill without his cloak, having discarded it in the fight, but by the time she returns he's asleep.

Comments

[scribes]

Well, that was good. If the Condesce wanted it, then it needed to be kept away from her. Di didn't normally think on such simple terms but her view of their Empress was pretty straightforward.

"In doing that, you did. You went against her," Di spoke, trying to be careful with her wording, "and I'm sure that caught her off guard." Doubtless the Condesce expected Signless to be nothing more than an obedient servant. Di gained some pleasure in imagining her anger--pleasure that quickly faded when she remembered it had been taken out on Signless.

"What was it that she wanted?"

[sufferist]

"A weapon. It doesn't really matter," he says, distantly. "They will just..." He trails off. He doesn't really have words for what they will do, but he instinctively fears it. He knows that things have been done to him, and they will be imminently happening again. Some part of him believes that it will be for the best.

Part of him just wants to take the opportunity to let all of this go.

"You don't understand this."

[scribes]

They will just? They will just what? She's becoming increasingly more worried about what he is going to return to.

"I don't but if they are going to hurt you, don't go back, Signless. Even if you can't stay here just. You don't deserve any of that. I know that at least."

[sufferist]

He looks at her, though this time some of the bitterness is gone, leaving behind a genuine melancholy.

"It doesn't matter what a person deserves," he says. "There is no justice in this world."

[scribes]

That's even worse than the bitterness and anger he has shown her. She once more breaches the distance between them, reaching a hand to gently cup his cheek.

"Justice. I don't know enough to say whether it exists in this world, but you certainly aren't going to find it up there with her. Not justice, not peace, not happiness, not whatever it is that you need to make up for what has been done to you."

She gently pulled his head down so she could press her forehead to his. "But here we can work together. If you stay, day by day, I know we can find a way to make things clear for you. I won't hurt you like she does, Signless." Di knew she was being pushy, and indeed she had to fight the urge to hold him once again and to kiss him, but she refused to just give up on him because things were difficult.

[sufferist]

He growls in his throat without really knowing why, but he doesn't pull away. This feels right and wrong all at the same time, and that contrast fills him with a wordless frustration. He should hate her, he thinks. He should have killed her a long time ago. But he hasn't, and looking at her right now, he doesn't want to.

His tries to think, over and over: what is wrong with him? What's happening? What is he? He can't focus, and he doesn't have the answer to anything. And the longer this goes on, the more he feels like he needs to run.

But she's so close to him right now, and she's promising an end to his pain. Bullshit, part of him says. He put his faith in others before and ended up like this. If she didn't save him before then why would she save him now?

The memory stirs something inside him. Thoughts of when he was alive - when he was someone else, a long time ago. He thinks of them, all of them, and he can barely contain his sorrow.

He leans down and sets his lips against hers.

[scribes]

There is a small start--surprise that he would initiate a kiss but it quickly evaporates and she is kissing him back. The hand on his cheek moves to the back of his neck, and the other threads through his hair. She moves her mouth slowly against his, gently, afraid that one wrong move and he will shut her out again.

It's hard to keep her mind focused on that fact and to keep herself restrained but she manages and nuzzles his face in the way she always used to, finding happiness and comfort in his closeness and unique warmth.

[sufferist]

He lingers there for a while, and while he isn't exactly passionate, he isn't quick to pull away. It's more like he's trying to understand the gesture through exposure - to figure out his own motives. He is distant and confused even as he's so close, the touch of her lips inescapably familiar but so out of place.

He slowly pulls away, and the sorrow is still there. It doesn't feel right. He's different now, and he doesn't know how to connect to this, and it makes him feel like his insides have been hollowed out.

He doesn't speak.

[scribes]

It's not like before, and while Di didn't expect it to be, she hadn't quite expected this either. In a way him being put off, or disliking the kiss would have been better than this--than this nothing.

She pulls away the same time that he does feeling, awkward, hurt and ashamed, feeling like she took advantage of his emotionally vulnerable state. She should have known better. She should have kept her distance and not so eagerly pounced on the faintest hint of affection.

"Sorry."

She looks into his face, trying to discern what's going through his head. "Will you try? To not go back. To go somewhere safe instead?" To stay here.

[sufferist]

"I don't know," he says, because he doesn't. He has nothing grounding him enough to consciously make a decision like that. He's taken returning to the Empire as an inevitability and it feels like as much of one now as it did before.

"I'll end up there regardless."

[scribes]

"Maybe you won't," she suggested timidly, "if you don't go back on your own. This isn't her domain where she can control and know everything. Earth has been out of her reach, and only grows stronger to counter her advances."

[sufferist]

He makes an uncertain sound, shaking his head to himself. He doesn't believe that - it doesn't feel right. But he doesn't have the words to argue with her. He pulls away, moving back over to the couch.

"I'm going to rest for a while," he says, diverting from that train of thought.

[scribes]

She nods, watching him and turns to head to her bedroom. "I'll get you some blankets." At the very least he'll give himself some time to recover, and even if she hadn't convinced him of everything that she would have liked to, Di felt more progress was being made. That he had come here at all was proof of that and no matter how difficult things became she was going to continue trying to convince him to leave the Empire.

He was still in there, she believed that wholly.