[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]

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.