[There's no reason for her insanity to take his name, just because it's one of the few that she actually knows in this strange world. Hayame knows this, and still she hesitates. Still, she looks for a physical source... and finds none.
Instead, her mind is invaded. Not just by his words, but by... images, impressions of a visual that involves pulling the gem in her body... out of it. At first, unable to control herself in this strange way and not even realizing he might be able to feel it, the only thing transmitted is disgust and distrust. She hasn't touched it since she arrived, for fear doing so would... do something. She wanted it out of her, but to touch and feel some reaction in her body was so disgusting a thought...
But eventually, that distrust becomes... a faint sense of embarrassment. Why, when there is no one there? But what if he could see her, with magic eyes? He's talking to her somehow, isn't he? With some magic spell- ?! Her fingers hesitate on the tie holding her shirt closed, ashamed that her cheeks feel hot when she's been seen bare by prospective buyers plenty of times-
The impression vaguely shaped like close your eyes, first somehow makes it through.]
[Estinien, of course, has no idea what that means. He glances around the area he's sitting while doing this, half expecting some sort of unfathomable trick. Eventually, though, he just does what he's asked, frowning to himself as he does.]
Fine.
[His accent comes through, at least. He also stops probing quite as urgently, in the event she meant that metaphorically.]
[... Is he closing them? How is it that she feels like he's closing them? Hayame doesn't know, just like she doesn't know how he's even talking to her at all. But he is. She can't have gone insane in such a specific way as that...
So after another long bout of hesitation, Hayame carefully undoes the ties of her top. From there, she hesitates again, before swallowing her learned disgust over what she will see and undoing the ties of the thick fabric she wears tightly wrapped around her chest to bind her breasts down.
But once she has bared herself, something even more difficult presents itself. With a sense of bodily horror leaking through the bond... Hayame touches her fingers to the arrow-shaped chunk of obsidian embedded in her sternum between her breasts. She has no nails to use to pry it out, she cuts them to the quick so that they won't interfere with her archery, but if she gets a decent grip...
[He's relieved to finally hear her and to know his message has actually been received. After having honestly wondered if she'd died, he must admit he's pleased to hear from her, even if he can never really guarantee a pleasant conversation with Hayame.]
Ah, full glad am I to hear from you. I'd come to wonder if you'd been slain.
[Something happened. Something worked. Somehow, she’s standing half-starved and half-naked in a pale excuse for a mountain cave and Estinien is talking in her head.
Maybe- Maybe she hadn’t gone mad. Maybe it was something in the water, and she was hallucinating…]
I am not so easily defeated.
[The problem with these shards and shared legacies… is that the words are that, but the impression is despite best efforts.
The knife is still out, unsheathed in her non-dominant hand.]
Is it your intent to convince me of the efficacy of your “spells”- ? I won’t use those things that make my body disappear again.
[Estinien wonders if he, himself, was ever this difficult. It is sometimes strange to be on the other side of that equation. All the same.]
Nay. Mine only intent was to find out if you were still living, and if so, if you wanted for succor. Make no mistake, if you have simply opted to travel alone, I will not pursue you... but I offered you my service, in the event you should call upon it.
[...As maddening as it is that she is apparently running the whole way back.]
Hayame is hungry. Both of her stomachs have been empty of anything but foraged mountain vegetables and fruits for two days now, and even then… it wasn’t much. This wasn’t her world, she didn’t know the flora, and she could only half trust things she saw the native fauna eat first or that she’d seen on the banquet tables in Greentruth.
If she were being honest…]
There is no point in pursuing me. I am yet days from the wood.
[And that’s where he was, wasn’t it? With everyone else who simple left Venera for that “shrine” and then vanished into thin air.
Right?]
What does it matter, if I am still living? If it is the knife you are worried for, I will put it back in your hand.
Hayame... you know full well why one person might care if another still lives.
[He might have wondered if she'd ever cared about anyone before coming here, but he's seen enough to know that she definitely has. She must be being obtuse to say these things, he thinks.]
Do you imagine that I am offering my service to you for my own benefit?
[He's not Himeka, or Abel, or Ernesto. He's not reflexively friendly to every person he speaks to. The fact that he cares about her is apparent through the emotional ebb and flow of communion, and he isn't going to mince words about it.]
[... There's a moment when Hayame wants to bite back that she didn't. That how would someone like her ever know? She had been property in the womb, bred from an armless husk that used to be a woman, raised to be sold as warrior, mount, or broodmare, with no room for caring whether anyone but herself and her master lived or died. But to do that would be to deny the precious few attempts she had accidentally made at caring, the half-brother she had wanted to accept, and Estinien-
He had seen. That she... That she had once almost hoped, almost been able to care, and the emotion that floods their link... is shame. A deep, dark shame, laced with guilt. For a long time, it's just reactions she doesn't know how to psychically shield or control, no words. How can it be care coming from his side? How could she believe it wasn't... it felt so real, but maybe it was a trick-]
[Though he's thankful, in a way, that this act of communion has seemingly caused her to feel his sincerity, he can't feel completely at ease about it. After all, he himself finds it all a bit daunting, to feel these things from others and to know he's being felt in turn. He's a man that's prided himself on keeping his emotions shielded, who has never been particularly astute when it comes to understanding the people around him...
There are a few things he does understand, however, and Hayame's overwhelming despair is one of them. That much has been clear to him since the day they first spoke, and the form of it has become strikingly clear in the time since them. There are many things about her that he could never compare himself to. Not all her sorrows are his. Yet, he can comprehend the results. He recognizes that dark sea of hatred and grief as plainly as he recognizes the sun in the sky.
He falters for a moment, unable to disregard the profound emotional impact this is having on her. He can't quite let it go, either.]
I once drowned in a sea of anger and grief, so deep that I could no longer remember how it felt to breathe. Everything I was had been consumed by it, and I was certain that I would die ere I ever felt true peace. I... have not lived as you do. Not in every way. But yet... the devastation inflicted upon you... I, too, would believe it a fatal wound had I not survived my own.
[Though he doesn't want to overwhelm her, there are flickers of the emotions he describes - the faint image of a village not unlike the one he'd seen in her delusions, burning and littered with the dead, the lone child witnessing it overcome with despair and fury. He shakes away the image as soon as he feels himself sinking into it, but even to this day, it causes his heart to beat out of rhythm.]
I was... not someone worthy of the second chance I've been given. Better men and women died before me while, somehow, I lived on. Yet, it's because of this that I know... that no matter how tarnished you believe yourself... there is a chance. You can live.
[The painful sincerity of it all goes without saying. He wants her to understand. If he had been alone in his darkest hour, he knows for certain he would not be here now.]
This truth is all the more clear to Hayame now, when a hot, salty tear drops onto the obsidian shard in her palm and makes her realize… she is crying. She is alone and hungry and half-naked in a cave on a godforsaken hell world one more indignity away from plunging the knife in her other hand into her belly and like some weak… some woman she is-
Crying, just from the overwhelming sensation of being known and maybe even understood, her usual defenses of cold mannerisms, disdainful expressions, and harsh words bypassed completely shard to shard. If he had said these words aloud to her she might have accused him of lying, of attempting to trick her, but like this-
She can feel it. Almost see it. Is afraid that for every flash of a burning village and an orphaned child that he might be seeing through her eyes. How she’d glared hatefully at the armless woman that had born her being led again to the breeding post. How she’d swallowed her pride to stand perfectly obedient as a prospective buyer had roamed sweaty hands over her horseflesh, tail still somewhat fluffy with youth trembling in fear. How she’d trained and trained and trained until she was strong enough to surely, surely be sold as a warrior-]
I-
[I don’t want to live. She tries to say it, and yet… and yet… She remembers. The roar of the waterfall she’d thrown herself over in attempt to end her life and the life of the strongest obstacle standing between her master and his prize. She remembers when someone else, that same man from the vision who had smiled at her, who she’d wanted to smile at her… had told her that she deserved to live. That there could be a place for her in the world that didn’t rely only on her worth at auction or her dedication to a master.
And instead of I don’t want to live… She has to admit that she does. She wants to go home, she’s afraid to die here instead of there, where her sacrifice will mean something, and yet-
The knife quakes in her grip. Her fingers curl anxiously on her shard. Her voice in their minds is disgustingly weak sounding when it says-]
It’s hard…
[To hope. To believe. To live, when that world and that man and everything she’s ever known is either impossibly far away or gone. Perhaps more importantly, after all of her failures…
[That's all he can say, at first - to acknowledge that it's understandable to struggle, to thrash and gnash one's teeth with the pain. These dark images in her mind cause him to flinch, not because they shock him but because he can feel her despair. He's glad that at least one man in her life seemed to get through to her, even if he's uncertain if that man has survived the jinba's tormented lives or if she'll ever be able to see him again.]
This man... You have been cared for. Whether or not you see him again, honour your memory of him by living. Remember that he believed in you, and aspire to become the person he dreamed of... that he saw in you that day.
[He remembers Ysayle's final moments, how she'd given everything to save him and the others. She had entrusted to them her dream of peace, her faith, and he had taken it upon himself to protect that dream with his life.]
Many people she has spoken to since arriving in the place had refuted what she has said. Told her she was wrong, tried to convince her of something different, insisted she was mistaken... But Estinien just tells her she is right. For once since she came here, she is right.
It's hard. There's another woman in her head (hearts? mind?), entrusting Estinien with something grand and good, and all Matsukaze had asked of her was to be happy to be alive. But how can she be, in a world that isn't hers where everything she'd been offered is gone, and what remains to her is a life without... without him. Without her brother. The only two people she'd ever almost cared about.
The knife hilt is heavy in her other hand.
Her sense of responsibility is heavy everywhere else.]
If I can't go back... it's nothing. It's all for nothing.
[Whether she did it by her own hand, or finally found someone strong enough to kill her instead of leave her limping or bleeding or bruised... She can't help but speak far more easily still of death than she does of life, because even if she tried to live, eventually-]
Are we to die here and rot in this foreign soil... ?
[Though he had contemplated filling her in on recent events when he first reached out to her, by this point in the conversations he's mostly abandoned the idea. With the state she's in, he's not certain she would be willing to hear about the Innocence entity or his death and revival, or any of the other insanity related to it. She seems stressed enough with the basic functions of magic.
Of course, when she brings up the idea of dying on foreign soil, he can't keep his heart from twisting... and with how open and freely emotions and memories are channeling between them right now, he can't hold it back from her either. He's not afraid of dying. Not for a purpose, not for a cause. What he is afraid of is dying meaninglessly, dying piteously, dying as nothing but a burden to the ones he cares about.
His recollection of his recent death flashes through him, of the way he's been trapped by the infection petrifying him, of the way Makoto had leisurely broken apart his ailing body. He'd been afraid when he died, humiliated, and that's what hurts him more than anything else about it. He'd been so powerless, reduced to a shard, at the mercy of his enemy.
He wrenches himself back from the memory, realizing that Hayame is most likely being exposed to it, too. He didn't want to talk about this right now, he just wanted her to come somewhere safe but...]
Forgive me. I did not intend...
[But what can he say? He tries to push it all away, even as flashes of that experience gnaw at him mentally. It would probably be easier to control if they weren't alike in spirit.]
[To master the art of communion, Hayame will need to find a way to practice. She will need to find someone she trusted enough to risk seeing the things about herself she has always hidden for fear of what happens once people see you as weak. She will need to force herself to accept that there is a jewel embedded in her flesh, that magic is somehow a part of her now.
And with such high hurdles… How will she ever master it?
But until she does, it is an open, chaotic press of mind upon mind, his thoughts and memories bleeding into hers, reacting and reacting in turn in endless, emotional loop she feels she has little to know control over.
So who is that, hardening to stone? She- she had seen the stone creep up her legs, seen it crack when she had lashed out at a Kenoma who attacked her, called her an animal, and it had been his beast-like ears that broke cleanly off his head under hoof. But this-
The sense of horror and confusion in the link is clear. But so is the disbelief. Because that man…
It is the same face that had smiled and extended a hand to her when she was “birthed”, she knows that face and it is mirrored in her own memories from when he tried to convince her to come with him, to leave the Firebrand Shrine for somewhere safe, where her pride might remain intact…
And Estinien crumbles, but he can’t, because he’s-]
[His head had been knocked clean off his shoulders, and his consciousness had remained with it long enough to hit the ground.
She's confused, horrified, and it's just the sort of reaction he'd hoped to avoid when telling people. Like her, he has an aversion to pity, even if it is better tempered by his learned ability to accept care from others. He decides his only option is to explain it as plainly as possible.]
A Kenoma came upon me while I was ill... and took the opportunity to destroy my body. It... seems that Aions can survive their 'deaths', if their shard - the stone you hold now - is spared. I was only saved thanks to the comrades that arrived to ferry by shard to safety. I was born again, much as we all were when we first arrived here.
[Impossible. Another thing that would normally cause her to call him a liar, except... she sees it. Or perhaps more acutely, she feels it. Senses it. The fate of a criminal, to have their head lopped off before the eyes of the condemning public, of a jinba hunted down in the field, only their head and a hoof brought back as proof of their death.
What she doesn't give him is pity. If she feels anything beneath the shock and confusion... It is anger.
That man, who had spoken to her like he knew what her pride meant, how to play to it, as if-]
How-
[No, he doesn't... Know, does he? How that could be-]
I spoke to you before of the man that had put a knife in my back. It seems the shrine I encountered him at wasn't the only one he visited that day. If he tried to lure you away as well...
[Estinien is angry too, but in a controlled sort of way. He's had days to ruminate about it by now. The most troubling parts are the ones the doesn't want to get to, as he fears they may be a bit beyond her understanding at the moment.]
I know not what the Regent has asked of him, but I would not be surprised were I a marked man to the Kenoma. More than one of them assaulted me as I struggled through the streets, saying I'd made a problem of myself... Makoto was simply the one to finish the job. The only thing I know for certain is that he regretted he could not make my death more painful and wretched than it already was. 'Twas revenge, at least in part.
[A darker fury weighs more heavily in his chest - one tinged with regret.]
But those are all thoughts that do not fully distract her from the fact that estinien claimed to have died. His head had come off. He had been… what? Her gaze moves to the shard in her hand, seized with the urge to squeeze—
She doesn’t. Instead-]
You went to them… ?
[She thought that the Aions before her all had much stronger views on the factions, based on having experienced the Regent’s rule first hand. But he claimed to have… tried to befriend them?]
When we arrived in Venera to investigate the illness, the Kenoma were already present. I was reluctant to see my comrades simply wander among them, collaborate with them, as if they offered no threat - but the only alternative was to either leave the city or battle them in the streets. If I were to do the latter, unprovoked, I know well enough that few would support me.
So I listened to the urging of the other Pleroma. I chose to stay my lance, to simply watch over them in the event a conflict arose. I indulged in the unspoken treaty between sects, thinking that the plague ravaging the continent had taken priority...
I spoke to the Kenoma, here and there. They seemed genuine in their desire to help the sick. But yet...
[His frustration, his feeling of impotency, is obvious. He doesn't know whether to feel this as a betrayal, or whether it was simply his own foolishness that lead to his fall. He was wrong for having trusted.]
...'Twas only when the illness had taken me that they struck. One after another, they took advantage of my addled mind, until I could go on no longer... and then, when I'd been taken to pieces, the same Kenoma that had assured me of their mutual dedication to Venera were among those defending my killer from justice.
[How well does she know this first feeling he speaks of. How many times already in this world has she felt justified in challenging or physically reprimanding another person only for no one else to stand by her? How many times have people implied that her way of doing things, the only way she'd ever known as correct, was wrong somehow. That she should shut up, that she should not act, that she should accept the insults piled at her feet-
Surely it was a betrayal. Surely it was right that he view it as a betrayal.]
All of their names.
[Wait, no- She does not know those. She barely knows the names of the people supposedly on her "side", even-]
All of their faces.
[If he can... If this foul magic can show visions as well as transport speech and feelings across the land...]
[He's caught off guard for a moment, the passion in her demand mostly unexpected to him. He hadn't assumed she would care that much about what was done to him, or about the conflict between sects in general. He has to pause to sort through why she would ask this so urgently. Truthfully, he might have thought she'd just call him a fool.
Though some small part of him questions putting her on this path, another angry part feels validated by her clear intent. It's indulgent, maybe, to take someone up on this that is similarly inclined towards removing problems instead of letting them fester. In the heat of the moment, he lets the unexpected connection drive him forward.]
I'd met all of them before... some, their ill intent was less surprising.
[He begins trying to project the images of their faces to her. First, Makoto, who she already knows of. Then, he has to focus hard on the second-hand memories Himeka had showed him of what happened after his fall.]
Eustace came to Makoto's aid when he was struck down... he was one of the Kenoma that tried to keep me imprisoned, back at the start. Luo Binghe... I believe he would gladly see me killed, and he's tried before, but this time... he seemed content to watch. I know not his reasons.
[Each of their faces are supplied in turn. Then, the frustration and anger in his thoughts becomes sharper. He thinks of Kaeya.]
Kaeya was the man who behaved as if our goals were the same... he was also the one that, without hesitation, shielded Makoto from Himeka's vengeance.
[Estinien is right about one thing. Hayame does not care about the conflict between the sects. How can she, really? She had heard tale of what happened to the first Aions brought to this world, but to her they are just that- tales. Even coming from Estinien, who she hadn’t thought a liar, torture, brainwashing, and magical black sludge forced down throats is so removed from her own reality (at least, the magic part) that it sounds like a fantastic story. She had never met the regent. She had no friends among the native populace who might be affected by this world’s fate and may try to sway her one way or the other.
But what she does have is a knife, one that she’d once gratefully thought could be used to slit her belly open if need be. Now… perhaps even that will be denied her. And if it were…]
You offered me a blade when I had nothing.
[And though the charity burns…
She knows some of those faces. Makoto, who had tried to convince her to come with him from the Firebrand shrine. Kaeya, the man who had pretended to be her brother in an Innocence fever dream and who had held her hands so tenderly… only to turn mysterious and cagey in the aftermath. Eustace- so that was the name of the man who had looked at her and proclaimed that all he saw was an animal that needed to be put down. And she may not know the one other, but-
What else does she have? What else can she do? If she cannot die properly, if she cannot think of a better way to live-]
[It's a touching gesture, as much as it is a worrying one. It's not that he's literally forgotten that he gave her the knife, but he realizes for the first time that the gesture is clearly weighing on her mind more prominently than it has his. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised. When he was first given the knife by the valley's guardians, he had felt liberated, too.
It feels like progress has been made here... which would be great, if it didn't seem like she might be consigning herself to another reckless objective, just as foolhardy and stubborn as trying to run across the continent had been. He's glad to hear her passionate about something, but what he wants most is for her to find something to live for, not something to die for.
He has to pause for a moment, considering how to respond.]
...Bringing their shards would be of the most use. [He's not even sure what would happen to their heads after they passed.] If brought to the forest, 'twould provide us the best hope of either cleansing the Kenoma's taint or preventing them from causing further harm.
[He won't tell her not to fight them at all, but...]
...Though I would much rather fight by your side, and see it done together.
But what else does she have? If she cannot die, if that path of last ditch escape is closed to her, then what is she to do about honor? What is there to do about this despair she feels, so heavy and oppressive that each day she wakes surprised she has not choked in the night?
If there is no death… then the only thing else she knows well is violence.]
Their shards as well.
[It seems she isn’t to be swayed about the heads, without the sense to explain that in her culture… that is how one knew the mettle of a warrior. That she had once dreamed of being bought by a warlord into whose hands she might deliver the severed heads of his enemies, proving herself worth perhaps even a fraction of the respect a human man received.]
There is a Kenoma I became indebted to before I knew… one who drank the foul curse and became darkened. I will bring his shard back, too, for I could not force the sludge out of his body any other way I tried…
[And she’d tried, but the only thing that had come from his stomach was vile and her own blood nicked on his sharp teeth. If she swears enough, if she makes enough vows, enough debts, will she cease wanting to plunge that knife into her belly and then her heart? Will she earn enough goodwill that perhaps Estinien might even-]
I could see it done.
[She wants to believe that. If he were there also… Well, perhaps it were more sure. She just doesn’t know well how to say it, “we could see it done”. Perhaps the link in their minds would fill the blank in for her.]
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Instead, her mind is invaded. Not just by his words, but by... images, impressions of a visual that involves pulling the gem in her body... out of it. At first, unable to control herself in this strange way and not even realizing he might be able to feel it, the only thing transmitted is disgust and distrust. She hasn't touched it since she arrived, for fear doing so would... do something. She wanted it out of her, but to touch and feel some reaction in her body was so disgusting a thought...
But eventually, that distrust becomes... a faint sense of embarrassment. Why, when there is no one there? But what if he could see her, with magic eyes? He's talking to her somehow, isn't he? With some magic spell- ?! Her fingers hesitate on the tie holding her shirt closed, ashamed that her cheeks feel hot when she's been seen bare by prospective buyers plenty of times-
The impression vaguely shaped like close your eyes, first somehow makes it through.]
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Fine.
[His accent comes through, at least. He also stops probing quite as urgently, in the event she meant that metaphorically.]
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So after another long bout of hesitation, Hayame carefully undoes the ties of her top. From there, she hesitates again, before swallowing her learned disgust over what she will see and undoing the ties of the thick fabric she wears tightly wrapped around her chest to bind her breasts down.
But once she has bared herself, something even more difficult presents itself. With a sense of bodily horror leaking through the bond... Hayame touches her fingers to the arrow-shaped chunk of obsidian embedded in her sternum between her breasts. She has no nails to use to pry it out, she cuts them to the quick so that they won't interfere with her archery, but if she gets a decent grip...
It comes out of her. No blood follows.]
... Estinien.
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Ah, full glad am I to hear from you. I'd come to wonder if you'd been slain.
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Maybe- Maybe she hadn’t gone mad. Maybe it was something in the water, and she was hallucinating…]
I am not so easily defeated.
[The problem with these shards and shared legacies… is that the words are that, but the impression is despite best efforts.
The knife is still out, unsheathed in her non-dominant hand.]
Is it your intent to convince me of the efficacy of your “spells”- ? I won’t use those things that make my body disappear again.
[… Hence the delay.]
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Nay. Mine only intent was to find out if you were still living, and if so, if you wanted for succor. Make no mistake, if you have simply opted to travel alone, I will not pursue you... but I offered you my service, in the event you should call upon it.
[...As maddening as it is that she is apparently running the whole way back.]
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Hayame is hungry. Both of her stomachs have been empty of anything but foraged mountain vegetables and fruits for two days now, and even then… it wasn’t much. This wasn’t her world, she didn’t know the flora, and she could only half trust things she saw the native fauna eat first or that she’d seen on the banquet tables in Greentruth.
If she were being honest…]
There is no point in pursuing me. I am yet days from the wood.
[And that’s where he was, wasn’t it? With everyone else who simple left Venera for that “shrine” and then vanished into thin air.
Right?]
What does it matter, if I am still living? If it is the knife you are worried for, I will put it back in your hand.
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[He might have wondered if she'd ever cared about anyone before coming here, but he's seen enough to know that she definitely has. She must be being obtuse to say these things, he thinks.]
Do you imagine that I am offering my service to you for my own benefit?
[He's not Himeka, or Abel, or Ernesto. He's not reflexively friendly to every person he speaks to. The fact that he cares about her is apparent through the emotional ebb and flow of communion, and he isn't going to mince words about it.]
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He had seen. That she... That she had once almost hoped, almost been able to care, and the emotion that floods their link... is shame. A deep, dark shame, laced with guilt. For a long time, it's just reactions she doesn't know how to psychically shield or control, no words. How can it be care coming from his side? How could she believe it wasn't... it felt so real, but maybe it was a trick-]
Then why?
[Why did he offer her his service?
Why did he care?]
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There are a few things he does understand, however, and Hayame's overwhelming despair is one of them. That much has been clear to him since the day they first spoke, and the form of it has become strikingly clear in the time since them. There are many things about her that he could never compare himself to. Not all her sorrows are his. Yet, he can comprehend the results. He recognizes that dark sea of hatred and grief as plainly as he recognizes the sun in the sky.
He falters for a moment, unable to disregard the profound emotional impact this is having on her. He can't quite let it go, either.]
I once drowned in a sea of anger and grief, so deep that I could no longer remember how it felt to breathe. Everything I was had been consumed by it, and I was certain that I would die ere I ever felt true peace. I... have not lived as you do. Not in every way. But yet... the devastation inflicted upon you... I, too, would believe it a fatal wound had I not survived my own.
[Though he doesn't want to overwhelm her, there are flickers of the emotions he describes - the faint image of a village not unlike the one he'd seen in her delusions, burning and littered with the dead, the lone child witnessing it overcome with despair and fury. He shakes away the image as soon as he feels himself sinking into it, but even to this day, it causes his heart to beat out of rhythm.]
I was... not someone worthy of the second chance I've been given. Better men and women died before me while, somehow, I lived on. Yet, it's because of this that I know... that no matter how tarnished you believe yourself... there is a chance. You can live.
[The painful sincerity of it all goes without saying. He wants her to understand. If he had been alone in his darkest hour, he knows for certain he would not be here now.]
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This truth is all the more clear to Hayame now, when a hot, salty tear drops onto the obsidian shard in her palm and makes her realize… she is crying. She is alone and hungry and half-naked in a cave on a godforsaken hell world one more indignity away from plunging the knife in her other hand into her belly and like some weak… some woman she is-
Crying, just from the overwhelming sensation of being known and maybe even understood, her usual defenses of cold mannerisms, disdainful expressions, and harsh words bypassed completely shard to shard. If he had said these words aloud to her she might have accused him of lying, of attempting to trick her, but like this-
She can feel it. Almost see it. Is afraid that for every flash of a burning village and an orphaned child that he might be seeing through her eyes. How she’d glared hatefully at the armless woman that had born her being led again to the breeding post. How she’d swallowed her pride to stand perfectly obedient as a prospective buyer had roamed sweaty hands over her horseflesh, tail still somewhat fluffy with youth trembling in fear. How she’d trained and trained and trained until she was strong enough to surely, surely be sold as a warrior-]
I-
[I don’t want to live. She tries to say it, and yet… and yet… She remembers. The roar of the waterfall she’d thrown herself over in attempt to end her life and the life of the strongest obstacle standing between her master and his prize. She remembers when someone else, that same man from the vision who had smiled at her, who she’d wanted to smile at her… had told her that she deserved to live. That there could be a place for her in the world that didn’t rely only on her worth at auction or her dedication to a master.
And instead of I don’t want to live… She has to admit that she does. She wants to go home, she’s afraid to die here instead of there, where her sacrifice will mean something, and yet-
The knife quakes in her grip. Her fingers curl anxiously on her shard. Her voice in their minds is disgustingly weak sounding when it says-]
It’s hard…
[To hope. To believe. To live, when that world and that man and everything she’s ever known is either impossibly far away or gone. Perhaps more importantly, after all of her failures…
To hope for and believe in herself.]
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[That's all he can say, at first - to acknowledge that it's understandable to struggle, to thrash and gnash one's teeth with the pain. These dark images in her mind cause him to flinch, not because they shock him but because he can feel her despair. He's glad that at least one man in her life seemed to get through to her, even if he's uncertain if that man has survived the jinba's tormented lives or if she'll ever be able to see him again.]
This man... You have been cared for. Whether or not you see him again, honour your memory of him by living. Remember that he believed in you, and aspire to become the person he dreamed of... that he saw in you that day.
[He remembers Ysayle's final moments, how she'd given everything to save him and the others. She had entrusted to them her dream of peace, her faith, and he had taken it upon himself to protect that dream with his life.]
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Many people she has spoken to since arriving in the place had refuted what she has said. Told her she was wrong, tried to convince her of something different, insisted she was mistaken... But Estinien just tells her she is right. For once since she came here, she is right.
It's hard. There's another woman in her head (hearts? mind?), entrusting Estinien with something grand and good, and all Matsukaze had asked of her was to be happy to be alive. But how can she be, in a world that isn't hers where everything she'd been offered is gone, and what remains to her is a life without... without him. Without her brother. The only two people she'd ever almost cared about.
The knife hilt is heavy in her other hand.
Her sense of responsibility is heavy everywhere else.]
If I can't go back... it's nothing. It's all for nothing.
[Whether she did it by her own hand, or finally found someone strong enough to kill her instead of leave her limping or bleeding or bruised... She can't help but speak far more easily still of death than she does of life, because even if she tried to live, eventually-]
Are we to die here and rot in this foreign soil... ?
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[Though he had contemplated filling her in on recent events when he first reached out to her, by this point in the conversations he's mostly abandoned the idea. With the state she's in, he's not certain she would be willing to hear about the Innocence entity or his death and revival, or any of the other insanity related to it. She seems stressed enough with the basic functions of magic.
Of course, when she brings up the idea of dying on foreign soil, he can't keep his heart from twisting... and with how open and freely emotions and memories are channeling between them right now, he can't hold it back from her either. He's not afraid of dying. Not for a purpose, not for a cause. What he is afraid of is dying meaninglessly, dying piteously, dying as nothing but a burden to the ones he cares about.
His recollection of his recent death flashes through him, of the way he's been trapped by the infection petrifying him, of the way Makoto had leisurely broken apart his ailing body. He'd been afraid when he died, humiliated, and that's what hurts him more than anything else about it. He'd been so powerless, reduced to a shard, at the mercy of his enemy.
He wrenches himself back from the memory, realizing that Hayame is most likely being exposed to it, too. He didn't want to talk about this right now, he just wanted her to come somewhere safe but...]
Forgive me. I did not intend...
[But what can he say? He tries to push it all away, even as flashes of that experience gnaw at him mentally. It would probably be easier to control if they weren't alike in spirit.]
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And with such high hurdles… How will she ever master it?
But until she does, it is an open, chaotic press of mind upon mind, his thoughts and memories bleeding into hers, reacting and reacting in turn in endless, emotional loop she feels she has little to know control over.
So who is that, hardening to stone? She- she had seen the stone creep up her legs, seen it crack when she had lashed out at a Kenoma who attacked her, called her an animal, and it had been his beast-like ears that broke cleanly off his head under hoof. But this-
The sense of horror and confusion in the link is clear. But so is the disbelief. Because that man…
It is the same face that had smiled and extended a hand to her when she was “birthed”, she knows that face and it is mirrored in her own memories from when he tried to convince her to come with him, to leave the Firebrand Shrine for somewhere safe, where her pride might remain intact…
And Estinien crumbles, but he can’t, because he’s-]
What is that?
[He’s talking to her right now.]
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She's confused, horrified, and it's just the sort of reaction he'd hoped to avoid when telling people. Like her, he has an aversion to pity, even if it is better tempered by his learned ability to accept care from others. He decides his only option is to explain it as plainly as possible.]
A Kenoma came upon me while I was ill... and took the opportunity to destroy my body. It... seems that Aions can survive their 'deaths', if their shard - the stone you hold now - is spared. I was only saved thanks to the comrades that arrived to ferry by shard to safety. I was born again, much as we all were when we first arrived here.
...I see you, too, are familiar with his face.
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What she doesn't give him is pity. If she feels anything beneath the shock and confusion... It is anger.
That man, who had spoken to her like he knew what her pride meant, how to play to it, as if-]
How-
[No, he doesn't... Know, does he? How that could be-]
Why... On orders of that so-called "Regent"?
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[Estinien is angry too, but in a controlled sort of way. He's had days to ruminate about it by now. The most troubling parts are the ones the doesn't want to get to, as he fears they may be a bit beyond her understanding at the moment.]
I know not what the Regent has asked of him, but I would not be surprised were I a marked man to the Kenoma. More than one of them assaulted me as I struggled through the streets, saying I'd made a problem of myself... Makoto was simply the one to finish the job. The only thing I know for certain is that he regretted he could not make my death more painful and wretched than it already was. 'Twas revenge, at least in part.
[A darker fury weighs more heavily in his chest - one tinged with regret.]
I was a fool to walk among them peacefully.
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“Makoto”. She would remember that name.
But those are all thoughts that do not fully distract her from the fact that estinien claimed to have died. His head had come off. He had been… what? Her gaze moves to the shard in her hand, seized with the urge to squeeze—
She doesn’t. Instead-]
You went to them… ?
[She thought that the Aions before her all had much stronger views on the factions, based on having experienced the Regent’s rule first hand. But he claimed to have… tried to befriend them?]
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So I listened to the urging of the other Pleroma. I chose to stay my lance, to simply watch over them in the event a conflict arose. I indulged in the unspoken treaty between sects, thinking that the plague ravaging the continent had taken priority...
I spoke to the Kenoma, here and there. They seemed genuine in their desire to help the sick. But yet...
[His frustration, his feeling of impotency, is obvious. He doesn't know whether to feel this as a betrayal, or whether it was simply his own foolishness that lead to his fall. He was wrong for having trusted.]
...'Twas only when the illness had taken me that they struck. One after another, they took advantage of my addled mind, until I could go on no longer... and then, when I'd been taken to pieces, the same Kenoma that had assured me of their mutual dedication to Venera were among those defending my killer from justice.
sorry for the delay! business trip kicked my butt
Surely it was a betrayal. Surely it was right that he view it as a betrayal.]
All of their names.
[Wait, no- She does not know those. She barely knows the names of the people supposedly on her "side", even-]
All of their faces.
[If he can... If this foul magic can show visions as well as transport speech and feelings across the land...]
Do you know them?
it's trips kicking butts all around
Though some small part of him questions putting her on this path, another angry part feels validated by her clear intent. It's indulgent, maybe, to take someone up on this that is similarly inclined towards removing problems instead of letting them fester. In the heat of the moment, he lets the unexpected connection drive him forward.]
I'd met all of them before... some, their ill intent was less surprising.
[He begins trying to project the images of their faces to her. First, Makoto, who she already knows of. Then, he has to focus hard on the second-hand memories Himeka had showed him of what happened after his fall.]
Eustace came to Makoto's aid when he was struck down... he was one of the Kenoma that tried to keep me imprisoned, back at the start. Luo Binghe... I believe he would gladly see me killed, and he's tried before, but this time... he seemed content to watch. I know not his reasons.
[Each of their faces are supplied in turn. Then, the frustration and anger in his thoughts becomes sharper. He thinks of Kaeya.]
Kaeya was the man who behaved as if our goals were the same... he was also the one that, without hesitation, shielded Makoto from Himeka's vengeance.
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But what she does have is a knife, one that she’d once gratefully thought could be used to slit her belly open if need be. Now… perhaps even that will be denied her. And if it were…]
You offered me a blade when I had nothing.
[And though the charity burns…
She knows some of those faces. Makoto, who had tried to convince her to come with him from the Firebrand shrine. Kaeya, the man who had pretended to be her brother in an Innocence fever dream and who had held her hands so tenderly… only to turn mysterious and cagey in the aftermath. Eustace- so that was the name of the man who had looked at her and proclaimed that all he saw was an animal that needed to be put down. And she may not know the one other, but-
What else does she have? What else can she do? If she cannot die properly, if she cannot think of a better way to live-]
If you desire it, I will bring you their heads.
[“Or die trying”. Hah.]
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It feels like progress has been made here... which would be great, if it didn't seem like she might be consigning herself to another reckless objective, just as foolhardy and stubborn as trying to run across the continent had been. He's glad to hear her passionate about something, but what he wants most is for her to find something to live for, not something to die for.
He has to pause for a moment, considering how to respond.]
...Bringing their shards would be of the most use. [He's not even sure what would happen to their heads after they passed.] If brought to the forest, 'twould provide us the best hope of either cleansing the Kenoma's taint or preventing them from causing further harm.
[He won't tell her not to fight them at all, but...]
...Though I would much rather fight by your side, and see it done together.
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But what else does she have? If she cannot die, if that path of last ditch escape is closed to her, then what is she to do about honor? What is there to do about this despair she feels, so heavy and oppressive that each day she wakes surprised she has not choked in the night?
If there is no death… then the only thing else she knows well is violence.]
Their shards as well.
[It seems she isn’t to be swayed about the heads, without the sense to explain that in her culture… that is how one knew the mettle of a warrior. That she had once dreamed of being bought by a warlord into whose hands she might deliver the severed heads of his enemies, proving herself worth perhaps even a fraction of the respect a human man received.]
There is a Kenoma I became indebted to before I knew… one who drank the foul curse and became darkened. I will bring his shard back, too, for I could not force the sludge out of his body any other way I tried…
[And she’d tried, but the only thing that had come from his stomach was vile and her own blood nicked on his sharp teeth. If she swears enough, if she makes enough vows, enough debts, will she cease wanting to plunge that knife into her belly and then her heart? Will she earn enough goodwill that perhaps Estinien might even-]
I could see it done.
[She wants to believe that. If he were there also… Well, perhaps it were more sure. She just doesn’t know well how to say it, “we could see it done”. Perhaps the link in their minds would fill the blank in for her.]
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