Sin Eaters

[Kuzo]

"If I only got the answers I wanted, then what would be the point in asking at all?"

A playful smirk ghosted over her lips. She let him draw her closer, turning her head slightly to keep eyes focused out on the city below them. But her hands slipped reflexively up his arms, coming to rest just above the insides of his elbows, thumb curling ever so slightly to the inside grip. His breath was warmer on her skin than even the rain, and she closed her eyes, breathing in for a moment, deep and taking in the scent of him. It was there, beneath the ozone and damp of the air. Earthen and warm, traces of rust that no rain could ever wash away. She breathed in deeply against his chest, washed in rain and memories of an evening.....

Until he took the rain away and left only that night.

"I'll hold you to that," she said softly, echoing back. "And when the time comes I want you at my side."

Face brought up, also as he had then, and he found a certain glimmer in those eyes again. A crinkle at the corners.

"Do you remember what I hoped to repeat? I'm wondering if you still think they are worth earning."

Her hand paused before tracking back down to his. She brought the blackened hand, nails trailing over a particular bruise, wrapped around her forearm one that had been absent at the beginning of the night, to a stop.

"Not all of them I'll be giving up," she breathed. "Some of them I hope to repeat."

He'd left that, already welling to the surface against pale skin, not ten minutes before. When he had drawn her into the alcove, hand wrapped around her arm. She bruised easily and quickly now, but-

"And when that time comes, you'll simply have to work harder for them."

There was mischief now in those hazel eyes, a challenge and a promise, if he wanted them. But that was for the future, once she had fought tooth and claw for yes, but it wasn't now. It wasn't this moment, and in truth, Irajah didn't have much room to live far beyond the now.

She didn't wait. Fingers curling between his, pressing the palm of his injured hand against her own, she rose up on her toes and brought her mouth against his.

Right now, all she could do on that path toward vengeance was not allow a silly little thing like death to take more from her than she was willing to give.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

There it was. That hint of what he saw in the night, a shadow of her former self lurking beneath ever deepening oceans of hazel. Dark, glinting in the low grey light, brought to view with every snap of lightning. The sound gave him thoughts of a small place, where they both could persist, beneath a low overhanging canopy - softly patted by the falling rain. His blackened hand, just as before, turned inward and glanced across the phantom remnants of her former pain and affliction. As if, with just mild abrasion, the flakes of foundation might fall away to reveal them sitting there. Present and persisting.

"They will always be worth earning...perhaps more than ever."

His hands moved down hers, shirking away the mild grip she found in the bends of his elbow. Or perhaps, he instead simply enticed them to firmer purchase. With a flex of his muscles, corded twitch reaction that could be felt through simple touch, he grabbed her by the waist and lifted. With a twist, she was suddenly not standing, instead sitting on the narrow railing that looked outwards to New City. A precarious position, one that demanded trust and consent. With the shield still flickering above, he leaned forward, hands gripping her legs far harder than what was needed.

"Perhaps you could remind me of these hopes..." He was all too aware of her inclination, of the matter she spoke. And with a sarcastic smirk, half lips and half teeth, he made that acknowledgment as plain as day. With a firm hold of her, he leaned forward ever more, dragging his nose along the wet rivulets of rain that ran down the formerly apparent trails of branching lightning. Memories flashed of a red eyed sith pure blood, anger shown in indifference, through causality tied directly to defiance. Her defiance. Defiance of power, defiance of death, defiance of anything that caught the flicker of her anger. He took in the smell of that, the warmth radiating from pale flesh, as he made every promise that was needed.

To stand with her, dripping in the slicked blood of vengeance. To play whipping boy, when her desire for vengeance couldn't be sated. To scar and bruise this ivory flesh in all the ways she wanted. It was only through feeling, through the zenith of suffering and comfort, that growth would be obtained. And that was the surest path towards retribution.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

There were no hidden bruises beneath the façade of perfect flesh. No secret scars, no physical traces of lightening scars in delicate branching. But the memories were there, blunted now by other moments in time, beneath the surface and waiting.

Her hands did tighten on his arms, fingers digging in when he unexpectedly lifted her. Reaction, instantaneous and tight chested cracking the ice surface hard ​with gasp and grip as he set her on that precarious perch. Heels braced on the bars beneath the railing, hands tight enough that they might hurt someone other than who this was beneath them. She balanced by the pressure of his hands, a counter weight on her thighs teetering the fulcrum of her body. But she did let him, did not fight it, but her grip on his arms stayed tight because she couldn't not.

Especially when he gripped harder and leaned in.

She closed her eyes, lips parting as her head tilted back slightly. Trusting him. Trusting the grip of his hands hard around her thighs. Just enough to upset the equilibrium and garner her a tightening from him to keep the center of balance steady. There was trust there. Consent. Because if he let go suddenly, there was nothing but air and a twenty story drop at her back. There was also growing invitation in the sharpness of breath and fingers digging into his arms.

"Lover's bruises," she whispered, lowering her head, dark hair falling around both of them. She murmured into his hair where his bent over her arm, nose tracing lines that no longer existed. "Invited pain and pleasure, alternated or together."

She'd wanted to be rid of the pain of Gideon. And without it, she knew freedom. But also the cage of the edges of a body that had no memories of flesh.

"Of teeth," came the breath of her voice in his hair. "Hunger and thirst and the goodness that comes from sating them, even if they both only come again and again and again. Marked and remembered, for an hour, a day, until the galaxy grows cold and still."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

Every edge spoke of a duality. The very thing that might offer balance, sure footing upon Shrike Mountain, might cut the soles with each step. Or the balcony she rested on, offering leverage and peril upon the same surface. Words uttered, spoken from the crescendo of risk and sensuality, hinted at such notions. That with the bleak, comes the bright. Within the folds of agony, she could escape her plight. Indifference, like a weight cape that was dragged out from the darkness, could be undone with a kind bruise or shallow cut. By her hand or upon it, it didn't seem to matter.

Like a glacier adrift among the deepest of oceans, it now eroded beneath the burden of rain and thawed with the promise of salt. Her hair moved over him, draping him in the very length she once wore to conceal her wounds - except on the nights when it mattered. And now, it grew because it didn't matter, there was nothing left to hide. Her body, like a thousand words written across darkened eyes, had consumed those wounds to become something else.

"Lovers bruises..." He gripped her thighs harder, pulling inward to find stable position between clamped knees. Barring teeth, hair slick with the rain and hanging over his face, he bit down against the arch of her shoulder - hard enough to bruise, at the very least. "Teeth." Words lifted against the tug of her skin as he spoke, leaving the bite with a lasting kiss. "Lips and blood."

He moved a hand up the white of her dress, finding comfortable spot at the arch of her back. Pressing her towards him, the rain spattering heavily against the shield with a dangerously close arch of lightning, he lifted his face to match her gaze. "Hunger and thirst, persistent and without sating...I could want for nothing more."

Pain and pleasure, intertwined.

Marked and remembered, endless.

Eternities spent in the wave.

"These are hopes worth pursuing..." A smirk followed the statement as he leaned forward, kissing her for the first time since she had returned from death. To truly kiss her, that melody and rhythm that could be replicated with hands hovering over the piano and skin pressed against a metal table.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfaHZXWV0g8[/media]​

Her eyes were closed as he spoke, as his hands and mouth offered punctuation to her own murmurings. She felt the press, the heat, the pressure. Warm water poured across the ice, cutting the channel deeper with each breath until only a brittle layer of ice, clear and cracked, held up between the larger slices of glacier. Chasm deep, cut through to the other side by him, with just the tap of persistent knuckles or a heart beat loud enough, a breath exhaled- warm enough only to fog glass but enough. Settled between her knees, pressing against her back to pull her into him, he didn't merely slice, just enough and with precision, through the final layer.

He dove through it.

Her lips were still beneath his. One heartbeat. Then another.

And suddenly she was breathing in, as if the very air from his lungs could sustain her. She kissed him back, hungry and searching.

Dark waters rushing through the channel. No longer a simulacrum, distant doll and copy, she let it wash over her. But instead of being consumed by it, she welcomed it, wrapping it around her like a cloak and sinking into it. Those deep waters were [member="Reverance"], but it was just as easy to feel as though she were pulling him down with her into the depths. Shadowed yes, but there was no fear in darkness. She did not need the light to see by here. Here was touch, weight, insistent and earnest.

In that moment she accepted those promises. Unspoken but taken, her own offered in return. To let him in, beneath that ice. To give and to take. ​To invite him to stand beside her, in vengeance, in blood, in silent justification and judgement. To scar and be scarred in turn.

To understand. And welcome with that understanding. Not despite it, but because of it.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

There was a give and take to flowing water, rushing through ravines carved from the surface of thawing blocks of ice. Blue crystalline, revealing undertones of white, that steamed and sublimated from contact. Whether that were the rains or simply bleeding upon itself, it was impossible to tell. With the rush, what might have been a trickle could turn into a flood, exposing those very things that were needed beneath. She was once a metal structure, laid bare beneath the erosion of agony and obtrusive waves. But now, there was concealment in the ice that surrounded her. Protection, for herself or for others, or perhaps a simple artifact of self destruction.

Sacrifice that was needed was still sacrifice, it still had affect. But that affect could be undone. And as the warmth returned to her lips, as the light reflected in such a dissimilar way through pools of hazel, it was clear that things could change. They could always change, it was just a matter of finding the proper footing. And where their interaction had been one that culminated into something that was full and overwhelming, this felt deeper. As deep as the canyons would need to be, to find her beneath the ice once more.

He recalled the way she moved in the club, the way she felt so weightless without the pain. He recalled the way she dripped with blood through use of her force powers, something stirring deep beneath. Whether she knew it or not, that thing had been freed, she simply need to latch onto it. Break it against her will, bend it to her needs. Vengeance.

In the view of a fish lens, he pushed off from her body and the way the white dress clung to it. Stepping to his right, the shield dropped as he moved to the component of the balcony that extended out from the building like a rigid tongue. Standing on the edge, where railing was absent to prevent falling, the tips of his shoes hung over the edge. Adorned with fleeting moments of pensiveness, body drenched in the deluge, he jumped from the ledge. But it wasn't the ground that caught him, not fire. A clap of thunder roared around the building and blue lightning smacked into him, sending an arching trail down 20 stories to the ground below. Impaled by cerulean energy that ran from shoulder to hip, he bounced from the ground after limp free fall and landed in a slump. Even over the sound of the rain, the roar and wails of the people could be heard that were in his proximity.

He moved his lips from hers, nuzzling his nose against hers. "You have power in you." The vision wasn't one of mentalism. It was simply a hypothetical thread, now missed for the steps he didn't take, that he wanted her to see. Moments later, that lightning bolt struck close enough to raise hairs on end. "This power. To see all the options. To take advantage....Or to let it pass you by."

Somewhere between here and there, his hands had moved to her neck. Just as they had on that night, feeling a strong pulse that thumped beneath. "Will you let me teach you?"

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

It wasn't the same as when Matsu or Carach offered images of what could be. Those were merely that, images, imaginary moments, invited moments, only able to take form in the choosing. It was difficult to find words that separated this- he didn't shift the image into her mind from the outside, rather triggered something within her, flicking a switch that he knew she had little control over. Like a child, reaching up on farthest toes to reach a light, height insufficient to pull the string with any reliability, he stepped in, fingers tugging the bulb on just above her.

Her hands tightened on his arms. She knew it wasn't real, and even if she hadn't- she knew this was something only a half step off of potential. He had told her, and she had believed him, that he ran toward that end. As surely as he had known hers was coming for her, so too did she know that he was chasing for his. And yet her hands tightened anyway, because it was impossible to not react to that moment. He was real and solid beneath her fingers, his mouth on hers even as she watched the sky shatter around him behind her eyes.

That was no way for someone like him to die.

It was the comfort she could take from it.

She knew what he had triggered. They had spoken of it before, and there was nothing that felt quite like it. The potential for a thousand right angles off of reality, like pieces of a broken mirror. She'd studied the smaller applications with Ashin at Blackwater, but he was holding out something more, the places that sunk dark and deep where inclination and talent settled against each other.

Tilting her head up, her nose ran beside his in turn, an almost affectionate nuzzle even as her hands gripped tightly to his arms, an anchor against the alternative flash of lightening.

"I want to learn to choose when I use it," she murmured finally, just before the lightening struck. The smell of ozone lay thick in the air, in the back of their throats, the skittering of electricity light but sharp on their skin.

She hissed slightly, only opening when his thumb stroked against the delicate skin of her throat. She could feel her pulse against his hand, and she smiled, crooked and true.

"Yes, I want you to teach me. There's nothing holding me back now," there was a certain gleam in her eyes, a definitive wake. Irajah didn't hunger for knowledge, she devoured it, and there were few things he could offer that would receive that look in return. Of black holes and anticipation.

The weight of Gideon was gone, replaced by a hunger that there was no filling.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He looked on, eye fluttering open amidst the touch of flesh, as he felt and heard her answer. Like watching a star turn over, full burning surface transitioned into something far more powerful and enclosing. Suffocating, if not for the joy of breathlessness. At one time it could repel, and now it would consume. Dragging him in, willingly or clawing at the ground in resistance. How could he possibly ignore desire? For vengeance, for pain, for stimulus and touch. It was as much as he could want, promises made on a metal table but solidified on a balcony.

His fingers crawled along her legs, moving from knees to the exterior of her thighs. Pushing past the ruffles of a damp white gown, he pulled her to him by the haunches. Lifting her off the balcony, he turned, placing slick lips against hers. A foot scraped at the balcony door, sliding it open to allow them entrance back into the room. As he stepped in, the enveloping shield dispersed, allowing the fall and deluge of rain to stampede behind them. What replaced it was the cool air of the bedroom, kissing at the wet surfaces of their skin.

Carrying her across the room with ease, he stopped at the piano. Leaning down, he set her across the keys. They sung out a cacophony of noise. Beautiful and chaotic, far from the music they had created moments prior. But the two went hand in hand, order and chaos. Songs and nonsense, spindled about and impaled against one another, constantly turning and overcoming.

Pressing a hand against her throat, he lifted her lips to meet his, water trickling down the contours of his face and scar. "To wield this power, as I do..." He whispered, wanting and needing and feeling the sting of the cold. "I need you to admit something for me." His hand extended out, pulling trimming shears from the vanity with a simple tug of telekinesis. Leaning forward, he sandwiched the item between his hand and the keys, ringing out in deeper tones. "That you are better...stronger...smarter...more capable..." He tilted his head. "...than anyone else."

That was the only way he knew how to use the power. To discern threads, to descend like a God, and decide which thread was the path that should be traveled. The nature of causality was inherently God-like and to manipulate that, when she chose, was to act as a God. "And I need you to mean it."

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

Her legs wrapped around his waist, hands sliding behind his neck and holding on, though she hardly needed to. He carried her easily, settling down equally so, though she did not give up her grip on him. The notes jangled, discordant and raw, but sometimes the greatest lessons came wrapped in nothing understandable.

Tilted her head with his hand, she looked up at him. Eyes half lidded, pupils large and reflective in the darkness. His lips ghosted against hers, asking for something that was, to someone on the outside, or who only thought they knew Doctor Irajah Ven, surprisingly easy to draw up.

But he had seen the choice she had made on that mountain. Had watched every step through that hellscape. Knew that something had been burned away in the Nether.

"Admit it?" She murmured against his mouth.

With his hand on her throat, the way he settled against her, from the outside and up until that moment perhaps, it had been his show. He had led the dance. And while, physically nothing changed, suddenly there was a weight in the air. The feeling that she was only there, in that position, because he had her permission.

Her hand cast out over the keys, brushing his where it held the shears before plucking the instrument from his fingers.

She knew the shallows of his proclivities. Only barely wading their last time together, just enough to reach that shelf. To curl her toes over the edge of the abyss, aware but not diving in. Inflicting pain did not give her pleasure in the sense that receiving it did for him. But she had come back with a curiosity. Hidden beneath the ice, but with each successive fissure cut through it welling up from deep hot springs and melting uneven ripples along the edges.

Hand that had never physically held a scalpel before let the shears fall open. She preferred a single cutting edge to the dual, and cupped the joint in her palm, held there with one curled finger and intent. Thumb and index guided the blade, suddenly a different sort of instrument in her hand.

"There is no one," she said, her voice soft in tone but with a certain bite at the edges. Not anger or malice. But the tightness of teeth on a throat, an alpha waiting for the lesser to accept. "No one who is worth more than I am. There is not a soul beyond or a body here that I would not sacrifice if the choice was laid between me and them."

As she spoke, she laid the blade against his arm, the long line of his forearm down to the piano a canvas. Applied pressure with her thumb, she pushed down, the skin dimpling for a moment before the blade punctured and she drew a long line down from just beneath his elbow to the tension of his wrist. Not deep, but welling blood.

"Not one person in a million could survive what I have," she whispered. She watched his face, head tilted up for him by his hand but because she liked it, not because he wished it.

"I am stronger, better, smarter- but I am also patient, Rev. And I have nothing to prove."

Shifting the blade, she poised for another line.

"To you or to anyone."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He felt her legs wrap around him, the wet cloth of fabric that separated them, and listened to the sound of key strokes and breath - flickering and dancing together in amalgamation, painting the world in vibrancy that foiled harshly against the drab that had occupied it upon initial entry. She was so quiet at first, almost to the point of downtrodden, but he now felt life threaten to course through her. Through pools of hazel, through lips that moved and whispered, and through hands that grabbed at sharpened shears...

He took in a deep breath as the blade pressed against his arm. Not because of the pain. The idolatry of agony was something that rested deep within his foundation, marbling across duracrete and giving the house above the structure for which all knew him. He took a deep breath because of the words she spoke, in how she spoke them, and the way the item moved beneath her fingers. Once, a life time ago, she had stitched him back together - a key, laced between flaps of skin, that sealed the monster in the chasm beneath and fixed stitched vision upon her. But now, she threatened to peel it all back again, to see the abyss that lingered below.

His grip on her jaw softened. Nails, occasionally laced with venom, strafed across her exposed skin. The green hue of his black tattoos was suddenly mixing with visceral red, paint rattled with angles changed, as it branched down his arm. Nothing major was hit, nothing that could derail this event, but it was enough to know that she meant every word that escaped her lips. No, not escaped. These were things intentional, falling in line with his request only because she desired it. That was all that mattered now.

Those sins that she would wear across slashed pupils now stood exposed, floating effortlessly between him and her. He wanted to be on her list, to see the things she had done to him, curling across orbs of empty black glass. Read in blind wandering while wailing atop Shrike Mountain.

Leaning forward, he pressed teeth against her shoulder. Not biting, that invitation wasn't there yet. Just resting, collecting himself, with shallow breath.

"You have nothing to prove to me...I don't think you ever did." Warm breath flared from his nostrils. "It was...just a matter of convincing myself." Lifting his mouth from the unmarred ivory skin, missing the lightning arcs that once crested the edges and crawled across back, he moved to kiss her. Blood trickled across the ivory keys, dancing along the gloss before seeping between. His arm pressed against the blade, leaning into the harm, asking for more. He didn't know if he agreed with everything that she had said but the fact that she believed it, that was enough. Enough for Shatterpoint, but never enough for him.

There was a difference between need and proof. One required intent, one required evidence. And he had all the evidence he would ever need.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

Though she had nothing to prove to him, she gave him everything he asked for and more. The press of blade on skin, into flesh. Lips hungry and demanding. Asking and telling in the same breath. She drew him into her and he dove in readily, only to envelope with teeth and hunger in return.

The storm raged outside and within, the smell of rain, ozone and blood thick in the air of the room before the sun rose, both storms only quieting in the early heartbeats before it peaked above horizon. Red orb looked down over a shattered landscape ringed in hot mist. A black piano bench splintered. Buildings broken and shattered from lightening strikes. Piano keys slick with blood. Consternation and murmuring in the streets where denizens of the city gathered to see survivors. Slow, quiet breaths, calming further with each inhalation as both remembered to breath on their own without the other filling their lungs. Gutters full of debris, bodies clogging up the running waters as the storm slunk back into the sea along the earth. The litter of clothing and blood, dropped carelessly and unwanted as the dead below.

The city below awakened, those who survived the volcanically fed storm picking their way through what was left, and wondering just how to move on from here.

In the room in the tower above, two monsters, lulled by heat and hurt, drifted into slumber.

Neither wondering any longer just where they would go from here.

[member="Reverance"]