Stars and Bones (Complete)

[Kuzo]

"Four."

It seemed like a very, very strange way to respond to his "We better move before they get back up.".

"It wasn't three," she said simply. No accusation, just a statement. "You missed one."

Irajah stepped to the side as the trio had closed with Reverance, once again watching. To say that it was impressive would be meaningless. There was not a shred of pity in her for these men, paper dolls throwing themselves onto a black and hungry flame. It would have been as simple as leaving them alone, no more, no less, and they could have continued their petty little two dimensional lives. Unshredded.

And then the moment shattered.

It had happened before. On Maena. On Panatha. She knew now what it was, what it meant. As long as she fought with Gideon inside of her, she couldn't properly harness it, use it when she decided it was time. But it would come, in moments when life or death hung in the balance. Shatterpoint. A dozen alternate paths all over lapped and crashing around her like broken glass- sharp and cold and deadly. Beyond merely the sensation of danger, this was a gift still largely untapped, but offering itself now.

*Flash*

A fourth. The man stepping up behind her as she stepped back, his knife sliding between her ribs and surprise on his face.

*Flash*
​
A fourth. Her turning to fight back, to bring the blade in her hands to bear. Too slow, blood spilled.

*Flash*

A fourth. Holding her with knife to her throat and using her in a futile attempt to bargain-

NO.

A fourth. She stayed still and he sidled in behind her, already the hand with the knife coming up. Not there yet. Wait.

"You need to be more careful in your choice of friends-"

He never finished the sentence.

The blade in her hand, hidden in shadows, angled up and back. How tall? Yes, there was his voice, the echo of words falling from lips just above the crown of her head. Angled and thrust backward. He grunted, just once, as the blade slide neatly up and under his breastbone and into his heart. Human anatomy was so achingly predictable, and so easily taken advantage of. Hi knife clattered to the floor a heartbeat before his knees crumbled and body tipped forward. She pivoted, drawing the blade out and catching him. Lowering him to the ground, eyes dark and wide and pitiless.

She had killed before. In self defense. In the lab. But never like this. Never this close, this personal. A small, distant part of her wondered if it shouldn't bother her far more than it did. But most of her agreed on the course of action. After all....

She was not a thing to be bartered.

There was blood on her hands, spattered up to the elbows, black dress hiding the wetness in the shadows. The body crumbled and rapidly cooling behind her.

She saw his gaze sweep and said only, "None of it's mine."

The movement of the two men who had been following them caused ripples in the crowd, angry words overcoming the languid motion and heavy sensations.

Time to go.

He had told her that he expected her to lead the way and she did. She could slip through the crowd easier, without making waves, but the height and bulk of him meant that they were all too easy to follow. She cut them to the right, around the stage and there was a half flight of stairs leading down to the door, the red of the emergency light above it bathing the well in blood.

 

[Reverance]

"I know." He stated with a keen sense, eyeing her hands and dress, stained in the felled assailant's blood. The sort of sense that indicated he saw without ever needing to see. The inflection of her force presence was one that he had not truly noted, beyond simply being there. The storm that offered gentle and deceiving breeze, an up-welling of energy and dynamics that merely hinted at the true potential - the sort that was just as likely to fizzle out as it was to turn over into something more prominent . But what occurred was nothing like that. It was the sharp updraft of current, the kind that could have formed downpour without a seconds notice. And in absence of deluge, the arc of lightning shot across the sky, thumping and resonating with a crescendo. And then silence.

It was there. And then it was gone. The quantum mechanics of Shatterpoint, the unfolding of a thousand alternatives to discern the most advantageous. For the myopic, it was a power for the manipulation of matter at its weakest point. For the more attuned, it was a power that treated time as matter itself. And unfolded like a stripped accordion, the practitioner stood still in the riffles of time to select which outcome suited them best. He hadn't met anyone else to use the power, not in that way. Yet it felt jagged, slivers cut with a desperate hand.

Natural talent, in need of a steady hand.

He followed her as she ran. Where she faded into the moving current, as if she was always meant to be there among the dancers, he formed a much harsher wake. The sort that involved flinging people from his path, wedging between gyrating lovers and hip thrusting spice addicts, until the door became evident. Showered in strips of crimson light, originating from the sign overhead, he moved behind her and closed the door as more rushed towards them. Twisting the handle hard, he disrupted the internal locking system to buy them a few moments as they continued running.

A long hallway, lit by sickly yellow long lights that ran along the floor, guided their movements. He kept moving and she kept leading, the air shifting from the stagnant atmosphere of the dance club to something more clear and crisp. Like walking out into a cool winter day. But it wouldn't last long as he assumed their continued descent would only take them deeper. Just as they round a corner, he heard another door 20 feet back - slapping open with the thump of soles. That same sense, desperation and the smell of cheap cologne that signified underpaid mercenaries, poured out.

Grabbing her arm, he yanked her into a door alcove before they could be spotted running along the next stretch of hallway. With little room for maneuvering, he pressed her against the dimly lit wall, leaning against her as he dragged his nose along the curve of her throat - from clavicle to ear. Perhaps he was smelling the scent of blood across her flesh, the tones of death that hinted at her future, or perhaps he was looking for another hit of the drug that dragged them into this mess in the first place. Either way, he paused, giving a brief show of intimacy, as the mercenaries ran past them and further down the hall.

"Where did you learn that ability?"

He had miscounted. And her last minute maneuvering had indicated that she did not. He was an animal of instinct, years of practice allowing him to thrive in the throws of ability, absent forethought towards consequence. Counting was rarely his concern. Pulling skin and teeth from pale tones of bruised flesh, he looked down the hallway and sniffed. "This leads to a smaller room. The air has tones of glitteryll and sweat."

Tilting his head, he let out a long exhale as he injected just a bit of space between the two - they were quite the pair, spattered in the blood of foolish men. And now, she'd have a spot of his on her dress. The reminder put his hand across his ribs, blood flowing freely but with decaying speed. "Which way do we go? Back the way we came...or further down this hole?"

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

She cursed inwardly at the sound of the door opening and heavy tread falling behind them. She'd hoped they'd have more time-

And then his hand closed around her arm, encircling it without trouble and pulling her- pushing her- a half a heartbeat between one moment running and the next caged by his body against the unyielding wall. Reflexively, her hands came up, fingertips in his hair. In her surprise she barely had a moment to blink, to suck in a single sharp gasp, before his face, breath hot against her skin, skated up her neck.

"I didn't learn," she murmured, low as she tilted her head to the side, lips moving against his hair. "It just started happening. Someone...." Her breath hitched slightly. The barest press of teeth, not a bite but a promise of one, pressed against the pulse of her neck just as it quickened beneath his mouth. Ever so slightly, her grip against his head tightened.

"Someone taught me....." She searched for the right word- if she was distracted, well, she couldn't really be blamed. "Small. The small applications of it. But."

But indeed. 'Small' was the truest indicator of the aspect of Shatterpoint that she had been deliberately taught- but only after she had discovered the far more expansive horizon of it.

She let go when he pulled back, but there had been a moment's pressure before she did.

"Can't go back," she said, voice low, and she could hear her own pulse thundering in her ears. Did she mean into the club, or something else? She clarified a moment later, but there was a certain weight in her eyes that spoke volumes her words did not.

"Made enough of a mess that they'll have called club security. It's onward or stand and fight until they stop coming."

She didn't sound particularly bothered by the prospect of further fighting. In truth, he was a joy to watch. But a frown flickered over her face as he pressed against his abdomen and she reached out, placing one palm against the gash gently, then a touch more firmly- the heat, the way she could feel his pulse beneath her hand, the change in the flow of blood, all told her what she needed to know.

"Onward," she confirmed, peering up at him. Not concerned, but gauging. Watching.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He would have continued on the question of Shatterpoint but...Small fingers slithered beneath this, soft things that pried at the wound and wrenched his hand free. Gentle at first, firm in finality, as her eyes met his gaze. Confirmation might have been the goal, but it felt to him like a command. A command spoken from poised expression and bated breath, slower than the foot steps of running soldiers.

A command. He liked that.

His eye twitched, brow furrowed in response to the stab of the pain. Like being sliced all over again, nagging across the skin in more than a simple superficial sense. The way the nerves worked, he felt it through his back and along his right arm. But amidst all the confusion of pain, his expression only changed in a small way. A brow that furrowed, expression caught somewhere between the act of killing and the act of intimacy. If he could know one, he could surely know the other.

"Onward..." His wounded hand, caked in drying blood, lifted to move locks of hair from her pale visage. A thumb across the lower jaw, fingers across the nape of her neck, a sense of warmth that seemed entirely alien to the circumstance. His finger strafed back and forth on her jaw line, a moment of contemplation caught in the midst of pain and pleasure and everything that stood between. But as much as he could stand here, frozen in the sensation, a sense of duty called to the notions of entropy.

He could sense that Irajah, with her own sense of impending doom, was a approaching a cliff face that she would never be pushed from. With arms wide open and full of brazen defiance, he could see a future where she jumped with all her might - knowing full well that she would survive that fall. But that decision wasn't happening tonight and as she had said, the night was starting to sound very long. They could spare the time, the moments between now and then.

"Onward..." He grimaced as he reached down, grabbing her wrist with a controlled grasp. Slowly lifting away from the wound, she could likely feel the hesitation in his movement as he felt the pain receded. "A rain check, then."

One he would assuredly cash, when he no longer felt the insult of interruption. Now these mercenaries were getting in the way and he felt the sting of impatience. "I can't hear them anymore. Lets..." he released the touch of her cheek as his hand curled into a ball. "Go."

Knowing she would be right behind him, he moved out the alcove burdened with a reinvigorated purpose. Anger from a high being cut too short, he steamed as he walked down the hallway. The next area would open up into a small facility. Quite tunes of soft music floated through the air as they cut into a room, haze moving about the low hanging ceiling. He looked out, through the scent of drugs, as he caught vacant expressions of patrons - sprawled out in sofas and armchairs that hovered along the floor. He looked from one side to the other, a bar lining the back wall and various pieces of furniture pushed about.

"What the hell?" He whispered under his breath, not expecting what he was seeing.

"Hey man, you don't look too good. Can we get you anything?" One of the floaters moved past them, like a roomba blitzed out of its mind and stuck on the slow crawl. The reveal of Reverance's teeth, in a silent snarl, also indicated an abundance of black lights throughout - despite the overall purple tones.

No mercenaries in sight.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

It was just a moment, but it was crystalline in its clarity. Few and far between, an understanding like that. Her eyes closed for a moment as his fingers traced across her skin, but only that long heartbeat before opening again. A certain invitation and promise, unspoken but held out to each other by such unlikely connections slowly solidifying. Still too soon, too early to see just what the trace of tunnels and lines would form the shape of, or if it would collapse, unsupported, before fully raised.

"A rain check indeed. I'll hold you to that."

She only pushed away from the wall when his hand fell from her face and he removed her own from him. The reluctance, just a flicker, that hesitation, wasn't lost on her, and she filed it away under the mental category of explore, where she filed all curiosities she crossed paths with. In truth, most of [member="Reverance"] himself fell under that category now. The more that was uncovered, stones over turned, the more she saw that did not merely earn that interest, but demanded it. Grasping that nascent curiosity and thirst by the face and insisting that it attend. To see and understand.

And that was not the inquisition of a single night, no matter how long before the dawn.

For Irajah, the room was not entirely unexpected. She had spent more time, while not indulging herself for reasons that would be obvious to those who knew of the lurkings of Gideon, but at least watching- [member="Carach"] had once called her a black hole for knowledge, always hungry, always watching, and if there was anything at it's core that Irajah excelled in, it was to see.

"A certain method of processing glitterstim," she murmured at his whispered invection. "It..... blocks out certain faculties. Low doses merely block pain and certain inhibitions. But higher doses or regular use...." she trailed off with a shrug.

It wasn't that they couldn't walk, but the desire to do so was entirely absent.

"I'm surprised this one has the faculties to care or comment though," she added drily, her opinion of this particular indulgence clear from her tone.

The idea of taking anything that would deny a person the desire to function- not the ability to function but the *desire* to do so- to say that she was unimpressed would be an understatement.

"This one? Well. I can't even really be offended by that. You should try it," the figure drawled, head lolling back against the backrest. As though he couldn't even be bothered by that any longer.

"These aren't people," she said bluntly, a hint of disgust in her voice as she pushed the floating platform out of the way. It started to spin and a low "Whyyyyyyy maaaaaaaaan" went along for the ride.

"They aren't even properly animals any more."

No one here posed them any hindrance. She moved across the room without interest or pity. As she passed, someone reached out to pluck at her sleeve- but he moved too slow and instead scrabbled against Reverance.

 

[Reverance]

He wasn't at all surprised by the revelation of processing for production of the drug haze. In this specific case, he would have been more taken back if she wasn't aware of it - given her profession. Perhaps the assumption put him far in the realm of presuming, but he landed on solid footing. However, her view of the drug user did surprise him. As she spoke, he was caught adrift in her logic and her views. And it occurred to him to perhaps she resented them. The level of pain she felt couldn't be dulled by drug use and, he suspected, would cause more harm than good. In her tone, he found a certain pride in her capacity to handle the struggles of life without needing the high. And in that pride, she looked down upon those that did.

He wondered how she would feel about him, knowing that he wasn't far from the addiction displayed here. The fact that he conquered worlds or destroyed civilizations in an effort to pursue such euphoria - felt removed from the fact. In truth, he found the judgment entertaining if not potentially provocative, a reaction catalyzed by his inability to understand the minutiae. Without ever knowing this individual, Reverance would have assumed him lower than animal on principle alone. Incompatible with the act of suffering, they pivoted away from the component that made others strong. So, in a way, he agreed with her - though to a far more extreme view.

Provocative for an entirely different reason, then.

As she moved and pushed the floater on by, the wrathful figure followed in a pensive haze. The grab at his arm was negligible in impact, he hardly even felt the tug. But an instinct forced him to lash out, grabbing throat with wounded hand. Running along the throat, a medical necklace, containing information and memories that were was easily gathered through the force.

Bearing his teeth, Reverance was smacked with flashes of a life, spanning all the way back to birth, through the eyes of Pyschometry. Medical treatments peppered the vision, countless credits spent on the Maena native. Once a prosperous family living in New City, they were forced to thieve and live in the slums to afford healthcare. The warrior watched with held tilted downward as he filtered still frames of mugging, killing, and begging for life - from the perspective of the man that now sat in front of him. It was simply misfortune that landed him in the wrong place at the wrong time, beneath the clutches of a figure who cared not for begging and cared even less for propping up the weak. Especially when the weak sought constant removal from their own reality.

"Heeyeyye maaan, I didn't mean anything by it." The words were spit out beneath the tight grip, threatening to cut off his breathing.
"It must have been hard for you, growing up." Reverance opened his eye as the voxyn hand moved to the figures chest. "You could never afford the surgery. No matter how much they tried."
"Hey hey hey, what are ya, what are ya doin?!? Stop!"
"Shhh..." He whispered as the room grew deathly quiet - a funeral party that had arrived just a bit too early. Just as Irajah had utilized Shatterpoint, he too sought the fractal edges of certainty and uncertainty. That should he hold this man up to the light, he would see where the beams pushed through the thin spots of the body. Searching and finally pinpointing his target, Reverance smiled. "I'm curing you of your...aortic tortuosity."
"How, how did you -"

Before he could finish, Reverance quickly jabbed the man across his solar plexus, exerting a level of telekinesis that pushed through the sternum in a quick wave. Within his chest, the kink in the descending aorta flattened out and straightened. The other alternative result would have been the artery sheering apart altogether - an alternative conclusion that had just as much potential as what actually occurred.

Despite his chosen profession, Reverance had once lived his life beneath a vengeful father - who worked as a renowned doctor on Arkania. Before his final fall, Reverance was on a career path that would have given him the same profession as Irajah - though he would have carried on the familial practice as an Adasca.

Dropping the man to the carpet below, the drug addict looked around, feeling his chest. "What did you?"
Reverance knelt down, gesturing with his hand. "You shouldn't have wasted your money on these drugs...you should have stayed on the thrombolysis."
The man looked confused, almost as if it was an acute condition.
"I've cured you of that kink. But it was shielding you from an extremely large clot. I wager that soon, it will enter your brain and you will die...slowly."

Reverance looked towards the bartender as he stood up, carrying a neutral expression, and he turned to walk back towards Irajah. Just then, the man fell over and grabbed Reverance's leg. "Why...whhy?" Speech was already starting to slur as he grabbed his head, rolling over on to his back. Reverance looked back with a pointed gaze. "Why not." It wasn't that he had made the choice on a whim, though it was entirely likely. No, the point of his answer was in the significance of the victim - in that he had none. He was a waste of life, as Irajah had implied.

Turning back to her, he raked the length of his jaw with his wounded hand, pointing an index towards the exit. "Unless you want to stay and see what happens next?"

The bartender was scrambling now and despite his shaking, pulled a barrel from below the counter-top. Leveling it towards Reverance, he trembled with the grip and screamed. "What's wrong with you!?!"

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XhJJAJN3S0[/media]​

If she could have known his assumption, she might have corrected him. It wasn't pride, or resentment that fueled her response.

It was disgust.

Not for the drug use, or even the desire for that high- she would not have judged them, or him for that. Who would she be, to deny someone the pleasure of anything? No. The disgust for those who willingly gave up their self determination and turned it over to a drug for keeps. Not for the decision to gain that high, but this dismissal of drive. The price of *that* high, where the desire to walk, was given so freely?

She didn't understand it.

Euphoria? She understood that. The desire for it.

But this particular drug gave up not merely free will, but the desire to even carry it for oneself. To give up, not out of despair but out of drug induced laziness?

No. That was not something she could ever understand.

She turned as the tension rose and voices moved low and rough against the undercurrent of the music. Hazel eyes watched, listened, and weighed.

There was a time where she would have stepped in. Would have bent over the man and offered to bring him to her clinic and arrange for the surgery he needed in a way he could afford. In truth, that time had not been all that long ago. As recently as Panatha (she hated that she used that as a calendar marker) she would have done it. And she would have done it with the warm glow of goodness.

It had taken Gideon, yes, but also Matsu, Carach, Maena itself even, to bring about the slow realization that she had never, not once, done something because she was good. Perhaps she had done good things- certainly she had. There were no doubts about that, and she knew that she would do good things again. But not because they were, by their nature, good or just or right.

But because she was selfish and it felt good to do so.

There was no doubt in her mind that [member="Reverance"] suffered no illusion of that nature. But.... why he did he do it exactly? That was what caught her attention. Moreso than the dying man himself. Her head cocked slightly, she watched him. A small arch of her eyebrow was the only question raised. It didn't really seem the time or the place. Beyond the why, though, was also an interest in the how. His words to her broke the spell, and she shook her head, blinking for a moment before answering.

"Not particularly," she said with a shrug.

She could save the creature on the floor. A clot? That was child's play when you knew it was there. But she stood by the fact that this man had given up his desire to even walk, let alone live. So why should she go out of her way for something he hadn't been willing to fight for?

Even the trembling sound of the bartender didn't draw her attention away from the one eyed man. Her eyes on him, she addressed the man with the gun.

"You offer drugs that eventually lead your clients to stop excreting of their own volition to the point that those lovely floating coffins must prod their bowels to do so at regular intervals. And you ask."

She paused, an incredulous smile filtering across her lips as she finally turned to look at him.

"And you ask. What is wrong. With us?"

The marveling are you karking chitting me tone in her voice cut as deeply as the words did, and the barrel of the gun dipped slightly as he looked back and forth between the two. Her words were calm, almost amused, but they lashed out as surely as a surgeon's scalpel.

"You sell them. The capacity. To give up their souls. So that they need not concern themselves with anything outside of their high. You, my friend, have ultimately killed every one of your customers. In the end anyway. Just in their homes, when they are too far gone to make it here to the club. Because the part of them that cared to act for themselves was burned out of their minds. Until they die of thirst because they simply do not care that they are thirsty. That they waste away, because their hunger means nothing. Until their insides melt because the bowel obstruction from *not caring to eliminate* had caused a back up of chit so great that it brings about massive necrotic tissue death and they die writhing in pain as their bowels rot from the inside out. You sir, should be careful about throwing stones. At least he was honest about the death he offered. And he didn't charge him a cent."

By the time she was done, tears tracked down the bartender's face. The gun had dropped to the counter, forgotten as the man shook his head back and forth. Denying and yet....

Irajah was no longer smiling.

"Let's go."

She didn't wait for his response. Just turned and walked calmly out the door.

 

[Reverance]

If there ever was a time for the man to stand guffawed, now would be that time. But his inclination lied in a more evenhanded form of appreciation. His crimson eye drifted upon a tether, tying unfortunate bartender to his vociferous assailant. The small, fiercely opinionated, fiery woman that entered the hobble with him. From time to time, between the lines of exposé, his gaze drifted to the figure on the floor. Reeling now, shuttering with every nerve that fired off in absence of the oxygen, the slur of speech was indicated further in a derailed form of movement. Caught somewhere between a seizure and restless slumber, the man turned over as his muscles tightened. Based off what he hypothesized, Reverance was surprised the reaction was taking this particular turn.

Irajah had stated that she had no interest in staying but in her shared words, they were given a taste of what would occur. It was a simple thing, the likes of which most doctors could handle. But it seemed, for the time being, that there was either no one capable of handling it or no one interested in making the effort. In this case, she couldn't be bothered. She wouldn't be.

Running a hand over his mouth as she finished, walking off thereafter, he paused in quiet admiration. Shaking his head, he leaned over the bar top and grabbed the blaster rifle out of the mans hands. It wasn't that he disagreed with her but more that he was surprised. Continually surprised.

Vermilion tones of sight heightened as he cracked open the blaster, looking through the ammunition chamber. It was empty. Pulling the lock across the barrel, he disassembled it and threw the pieces back towards the barkeep. "What can I do..." He looked over. "That she hasn't already done?" There was a certain level of suffering that could distilled from the truth, particularly when it came so harshly from such demeanor. That this figure was having an otherwise normal night and could have everything ruined in a single instance, it brought an iota of joy to Reverance's expression. In killing the man, he would only alleviate such suffering. No, instead he was content to revel in the sorrowful expression that stood before him. Trembling, crying, begging for forgiveness.

Letting out a laugh, he walked in the women's emboldened wake.

The next door cracked open and revealed a short hallway. Clean, well manicured and lit, it was as far removed from the former locations as possible. Stylistically, it was closer to what he found upon first arrival in Matsu's tower. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the ache of his wounds was becoming an incessant issue - not the joy he relished initially. Gritting his teeth, blackened fingers pressed against the wound as he approached the end of the hall, Irajah steadfast in leading the way. The hallway ended with a metal door, embossed and brass, with a frame that displayed a single ivory button that was lined in electrum. With nothing to do but move forward and onward, he leaned over and pressed the button. As he retracted, he realized that he had left a bloody fingerprint behind.

"There was nothing truly wrong with that man..." He stated, looking up at the medallion that indicated the level of the elevator. The lift was intricate and well built on the surface, but slow. "The one we left dying on the floor. He did have a kink in his descending aorta and his family wasted hundreds of thousands of credits to fix it. But none of that matters...not really." He looked over to her. "He was running from what he was. He lived in fear and he ran from his pain. He had no intent on conquering his own weaknesses...Or facing it at all." He looked back towards the elevator. "He could have lived a peaceful life, adrift in a haze of glitterstim. But he didn't deserve it. Because he wasn't willing to fight for it."

The buzzer rang and the elevator door creaked open.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah frowned at the bloody finger print left behind, following his hand from the button back to his side. She listened with only half of her attention to his words- not because she wasn't paying attention, but because she already agreed with them- and while for some people, the nod of agreement was a balm that drew their attention and fed the ego, hearing things she already knew held very little interest for her. The fact that she learned in that moment that he agreed was the only new information, and that was why his words got half of her attention instead of a much smaller fraction.

In the high, the haze and the sheer unadulterated freedom that his removal of her pain had offered, she had left behind the medical kit that was usually as firmly attached as her cybernetics were. She went no where without at least basic first aid supplies, and the realization that the high itself had blinded her to their absence was enough to make her curse internally. Not with any particular vehemence, perhaps, but at least out of irritation with herself.

Not him, not for what he'd given her. The responsibility of remembering to bring her own things was squarely on her own shoulders- Irajah was not in the habit of foisting blame where it was not due.

Not regret.

But the grounded sensation that slowly started to weigh- recognizing the irresponsibility of the forgetting- Irajah was aware that slowly, the pain would be returning. It wasn't there yet, just the promise of it. Like the silence of birds in a forest, it presaged what was to come.

She would do her best to enjoy however much time there was until that happened.

But first.

The door to the lift opened and

"Yes," she agreed simply, not needing to further elaborate, not when his words already covered what she would have said.

Stepping inside with him it took only a moment to hit and key, and then she put her hand on his chest and pressed. It would take more strength that she had, to push him against the wall if he resisted. But there was a certain expectation, a firmness in her hand and set on her face when she looked up at him. In this type of interaction, at least, Doctor Ven was very accustomed to being obeyed.

The door closed and the lift started to make it's strenuous journey up to the ground floor.

"Rest for a moment and let me take a look at that," she said, punctuating her actions.

Slender fingers danced carefully, peeling back the fabric. It stuck to his skin, which meant things were trying to clot, which was something at least. She grimaced slightly, not because the sight of the wound particularly upset her, but because, "Even if I had my kit, I couldn't do much for you here," she muttered.

"Continue to keep pressure on it until we can get back to my office." She didn't prod at it too much, not here, not now. The bleeding had slowed, even if it hadn't stopped, but the uneven nature of it concerned her, and she didn't want to risk making it worse here and nose.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

In silence, there lies agreement. When adorned in metal, in the mercenaries suit, he leaned towards that same philosophy. Even when removed from it, there were times when silence was preferred. A strong gaze, the tweak of a brow, or the purse of the lips - all could give the affirmation that was required. And even when she spoke in agreement, it was hardly needed. That lull between all the movement and noise, where even shallow breath could be heard, was a thing he often sought - glue holding all the shattered pieces of his mind together.

Slow steps, favoring the side that wasn't so wounded, pushed the man into the elevator. In one swift movement, her hands were pressed against his chest. Maybe she expected him, in at least some fashion, to push back against her effort. But where he hand pushed against the stone of corded muscle, sand gave way and he found his back held against the square hand rail. Fingers latching onto the knurled grooves of brass, a crimson gaze watched as she inspected his wound.

A twinge in the creases of his eye, enough to see were she looking, would reveal that he wasn't entirely immune to the effects of pain. More that it translated differently, that suffering transformed into pleasure over a succinct time. While his flesh hadn't turned ashen from any exorbitant blood loss, it remained clear that the wound had had a draining effect on the man. One overturned by the complexity of his stimulus interpretation.

As she pulled away at the fabric, he bared his teeth, mourning what clotting had taken place.

Wounded hand, wrapped in bloody cloth, reached down to grab her prying digits. Not so harshly as to issue intent for harm. More to simply warn her. The likes of which came with the diversion of his siphon, stealing what essence of pain he could find. For in these moments, he gave way to the vice of gluttony.

"Careful Doctor..." His vision narrowed as his thumb found the center of her palm - threatening to yank her towards him. His thumb moved in circles with the slightest application of pressure. "You'll give me the impression that you care."

Caring came with affiliation, affiliation to man who committed genocide on a whim. The actions she felt indifferent to where the same that brought him purpose, forever fleeting. It wasn't that he wanted to do die of blood loss or from some innocuous wound across the ribs. But he suddenly found distraction in her assertion, in the way she took control. And the threat of demise, in turn, took a back seat.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

She caught it. Just a flash in his eyes of something most certainly not pain. It clicked in that moment, a clarity that had been muddied by her own high and the swirling events- a detail missed until now, at least in a deep enough understanding to truly see it. And she realized that he wasn't drawing her hand back because the pain was unpleasant.

The epiphany merged with his drawing on her own pain again as it was slowly rising. The sensation, both of the siphoning and the way his hand captured hers, made her sway ever so slightly. It was not the overwhelming high of when he had done it the first time, but this time there was less to take and she was familiar with it, even if she hadn't been expecting it again. She did nothing to hold onto what he sought, letting it flow between them without reservation.

The lift vibrated around them, caging the moment. There was a threat, a promise, in his hand on hers, and when hazel eyes met his singular gaze, there was a challenge there in direct response to it.

It was so interesting, she thought, a chuckle escaping her lips as she looked up at him after his warning. She had asked if he danced. But this was not the one she had expected.

"Whatever gave you the impression that I didn't, Rev?"

He had seen, after all, exactly what not caring looked like from her. Indifference, dismissal. Not merely for the men who had attacked them but for that hapless soul in the room they had just left behind. If he wanted to know what she looked like when she didn't care, it was only a dozen steps behind them.

It would have been perfectly easy, and reasonable, to brush it off- because he mattered to [member="Matsu Xiangu"] that there was simply a transference. Where she would safe guard him (and wasn't that an amusing image?) because she cared about the woman who cared about him. And that would have been enough if they had merely met in this moment by happenstance. But instead they had traveled to this point with her pain coursing through his center, and the way he moved reflected in her eyes. There was enough there to recommend him on his own, separate from that connection where they met in rotation around her. It was no grand emotion, and she didn't pretend that it was. But it was an interest. A willingness to invest in learning more about just what, and who exactly, he was. To invest in the experience of him even if only as a brief alignment of satellites. If it could, or couldn't, be anything beyond that seemed entirely irrelevant to her in this moment.

Her hand tightened, fingertips sliding experimentally to press against the wrapping- not enough to cause damage, just a pressure against his palm- and she watched deliberately this time. A single flash, after all, was just one data point.

Science always insisted on more.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

Eye narrowed at her answer. Narrowing at the sound of humor escaping full lips. The expression filling her eyes, as if the very thing he warned of had already occurred - and he was simple bystander to the effect. Matsu had caught him in her web so early, killing and destroying in the small streets of Annaj - allure provided by an almost entirely false history of demure. Aver had pulled him in through the years of battle, a moment spent fitted in armor to eternities spent dancing on the battlefield - it felt all too natural. But here he found himself lost in a sea of wonderment and pain, unsure of what was currently working to keep these two together. Trapped in an elevator, confined by the passing moments of motors spinning and repulsors firing, he found himself in a state of passing confusion. Within the notions of finding common ground through worship of another, but discovering longevity in other reasons altogether, he landed with an aura of consistency.

"I've given you no reason." To care.

He felt the movement before it happened, that age old observance of the tide receding before the massive wave. His eye darted over to her hand, watching instinctively as the pressure was applied. He felt the pain threaten and turn over, pinching a nerve in the back of his neck. Were he more inclined to take it, his knees might of buckled and he might have been swallowed whole at the prospect of this poking and prodding. But instead, his eye and mouth flinched simultaneously, the baring of a dogs teeth to show the potential for submission. His free hand pressed against the delicate and ornamental fiber at her waist, the unneeded material that further defined her petite frame. Pushing, as she had, he pinned her against the adjacent wall of the lift. He guided her hand up and out, pressing the back of her hand against lift wall. And pressing down with his own wounded hand, he exerted enough pressure to self inflict pain and instruct in a less delicate approach.

He was no scalpel or precision instrument, not in the matters of stimulus. Here, he was a hammer, held back by the searching expression of her eyes. He wondered if given his current action, he would find fear lurking there in pools of hazel or more in tune with the nights theme, an inflection in tone - one that sought participation. Perhaps that was the catalyst for his hold. Consideration.

"Tell me, Raj..." His gaze drifted down the cut of her dress, doing little to hide a certain lurking hunger, as his voxyn hand moved with nails skittering across exposed skin. Enough to rouse goosebumps from soft flesh. "...When you've said goodbye to this body, where will you go? When it has been consumed, what will be left?" His finger pressed against the outline of a bruise, peeking out just above the clavicle. "Can you give up these bruises that you wear now...unabashed?"

They weren't trophies. They were ephemeral scars. The sort that came and went with the tide. Always persistent, always moving. Unlike them, most notably now that the elevator had come to a stop. With the door sliding open, he made no effort to leave. Instead, he waited for her answer, testing the waters. He knew her to be more than this pain, despite hardly knowing her - something to be rectified. Like clay once propped up by wooden sticks to harden and fortify, these things were no longer needed.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

"I've given you no reason."

"No," she agreed. "But you have my appreciation. My interest."

Wasn't that enough? At least as a place to start?

Just as he hadn't resisted her, neither did she resist him as he pressed her back against the wall. Two steps and she was looking up at him with the unyielding surface behind her and the consideration in his own gaze. As his hand pinned hers, she laced fingers between his, squeezing as he applied pressure, adding it and magnifying that sensation as she watched.

His reaction to the pain was of definite interest. Irajah was not a sadist. She gained no joy from the act of inflicting pain on others. Beyond the means to an end, it did not enthrall her. But this was different. His reaction was one more akin to what could come from very different stimuli. And that? That she could respond to. His enjoyment, that feral pleasure.... that she could enjoy.

"My attention."

He didn't find fear there, in her eyes. Perhaps he should have, considering what she had seen him do, the blood that had dried on skin and clothes that belonged to neither of them. He saw searching. Curiosity. But also a reflection of hunger. And of invitation.

Her free hand came up slowly, finger tips running up the blackened hand and arm as it traced lightly across her skin. Breath caught in her throat for a heartbeat before she let it out in one long, smooth exhale, the goosebumps an almost traceable line that she could follow through her skin and into her core.

"It's just a body," she murmured. "No more me than the dress, the shoes. Borrowed for the first act, costume change at Intermission. And not even all of it is me. Where will I go?"

A smile curled again over her lips and she shook her head with a small chuckle of laughter. It had taken her so long to realize that, to let go of that desperate clinging to this life. This body. She had killed, for that, more than once. There were no regrets, even if the deaths had ultimately been entirely in vain. Because she knew now just how far she would go to live. And that made it real.

"Every where I wish to," she whispered.

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.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He listened, perhaps more intently than he was letting on. Despite her musings and bated whispers drawing his full attention, the actions of her movement pulled at his gaze. Some invisible tether, imperceptible twine, drew his vision to her body language and the way she held her breath or chuckled or shifted against his pinning. And the way she not only refused to struggle against him, but seemed entirely approving, only made the circumstance more enticing. Inviting.

He felt the sensation of her skin, the raised edges of bumps, as he was guided over the contours of a fresh bruise. Recalling the way she looked in the nights light upon the balcony, he knew it was new. And with the way it was embossed, it had the partial prints of a grip. Incomplete and circumnavigating her forearm, he remembered the passing seconds in the hallway. And how deep the moment felt, just as this did. The sort that reminded him of an abyss, gaping wide, and beckoning with a promise of warmth and comfort.

Even if this promised thing rode on a transitory warning, she spoke in defiance of it. She wouldn't be undone by her disease, that much was clear. And in every way he could see, she was formed in contempt of the fate it promised. Whatever she was before the forecast of eventual end, the negative formed in the wake of such fatal prognosis.

As she stood up on her toes to press her lips against his, she would find the same lack of resistance that was there when they first entered the elevator. The same sort of desire that brought his fingers across her skin, that guaranteed a eventual collision across an ever lasting night. Where his blackened fingers were wrapped around her arm, they now perused their way up the length of her torso, until they found the interior of her neck line and delicate edge of her jaw. As the kiss lingered on the precipice of something more involved, he winced against the caress. Perhaps it was the persistent pain of the pressure between their hands, a dull ache that pinched all the right nerves. Or perhaps it was the sound of the elevators alarm, chirping in its passive aggressive urging for them to part ways.

​Begrudgingly, he pulled away from the kiss and stepped back. As his right foot struck the sensor of the elevators safety beam, he slowly persuaded her to come towards him with a soft grip on the hand. "Good." Eye drifted down her form, stopping at each mark of necrosis - acute or chronic. "These bruises are worth earning."

They weren't trophies but maybe they were notches. Counter balance on what would otherwise be perfect skin. He wondered if his eye would have been caught in their absence or like stars that connected to form the constellations of her life, he was drawn in by the story and the mythos of her creation. And death.

As his feet shifted from the metal of the elevator to polished interior flooring of a classical hotel, his gaze drifted upwards to a high loft ceiling - painted in excessive detail. It occurred to him that they were now woefully out of place, no longer hidden in the dark of chasms and catacombs. He looked around, putting a concerted effort into finding the nearest exit. He could already see the shift in security as they spoke to one another on wrist communication devices.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

Again, circumstances required a physical parting, but she was unconcerned. A promise of exploration, even if only for a span of heartbeats, stretched between them. Invitation offered, and accepted, but in which direction? It seemed, from her perspective at least, that was a two way street. It took no coaxing to follow him down it and see where it led.

Of course, the world beyond the pair existed. And seemed stubbornly persistent in its desire to intrude. The brilliance of white and gold gilding, corals and peaches warm and inviting but in all of the wrong ways. This, after all, was not a place for blood spattered black and hunger. Hazel eyes flicked over the scene, the pair of security guards just turning toward them, the squawk of radio chatter still indistinct and confused, even knowing as she did just what they were panicking about.

Make your decisions in the span of seven breaths.

She didn't need that many.

"Lean on me," she instructed softly, stepping up beside him and wrapping one arm around his waist.

It was, of course, ridiculous. But that was part of the point.

Unlike the hunters on the lower levels, unlike the druggies and dealers, these two men were simply doing a job that in no way offended. There was no doubt that he could cut them down without effort. In truth, even she could have, and she did not have the long history of danger and violence that was written in every strand of his muscles.

"Oh thank goodness," she gushed, not needing to fake a struggle against his weight.

Unable to make sense of the panicked mewling coming from the comms, the pair hurried over.

"Please, there's a mad man, attacking people in the club," she spoke swiftly, tripping over words, looking up at Rev with a certain panic now in her own face. Irajah was not a particularly good liar, and she didn't pretend otherwise. But in this case, she didn't need to be. It fit with their assumptions, with the garble coming to them over their radios. A small, bruised and bloody woman (even if none of the blood was hers), despite the looming and distressing appearance of her companion, engendered a certain response.

One nodded to the other who immediately headed toward the lift.

"What do you need Miss? We can call an-"

"Yes, call more support," she nodded emphatically, even though she knew that's not what he was going to say. And with it, the slightest pressure. Suggestion.

"I'm going to get my friend to a hospital, but there are still people in danger down there!" Not a lie.

"Yes, I'll call for more support," he agreed, "I'll have an ambulance called as well."

And with that he was off running, following his partner, and there was nothing between them and the night.

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

His vision moved from those who stood before him to the woman next to him. With her skinny arm wrapping as far around his waist as it could, he felt her finger slide and curl into a belt loop. It wasn't that he had any notions of going against this particular grain, it just hadn't occurred to him to try such creative maneuverings. Yet, as soon as he heard the command whispered from her lips, he made the connection. But more than anything else, he felt a certain comfort in being told what to do. In a universe where planets wilted before his presence, sometimes all he longed for was a firm hand that gave stern command.

So his right hand moved to the wound on his side, picking at the flesh, as it moved to the scar where his eye used to be. Before he plucked it out. Feeling the ravenous inclination of the voxyn hand, he did his best to stifle the hunger, as he smeared blood down the side of his face. Enough to warrant concern and disregard, all in the same motion.

He applied his weight to her, enough to sell the deception yet...he remained oddly cognizant of her condition. But why? He might have felt a cheapening effect if every contusion would result from simple pressure. Or perhaps he simply had no desire to topple her here. While he was powerful, despite his wounds, he wasn't inclined to fight his way out of a grand hotel - spectacle for the Sunday news, rebirth of a particular figure as he once more graced the holonet as titan and terrorist. Until this point, he had done well to remain out of the spotlight, to keep his face concealed following rebirth. So it was clear, everything he did was for himself and self preservation.

No. Even if he repeated those very words, he knew it to be a lie. The subtle shift in mannerisms, in what exactly he cared about, strafed far from the concerns of a man in an iron suit. Absent the soul saber, absent any trigger for mania, the difference was pronounced. Above anything else, he looked towards his painful end. But just because he had passion, it didn't mean everything else fell into the void of his indifference. And while he wasn't exactly sure why he felt this way, he knew Raj to exist far beyond the sphere of his indifference. Instead, she gravitated to a place more readily defined by his high regard.

"He's not looking too good..." One repeated as Reverance lifted his head, chuckling quietly. "Looks like he's close to shock."

"Yeah, he needs treatment. We'll send word..."

They reassured Reverance as they continued towards the lift, knowing that there were more important things to deal with. He recognized the convenience in the fact that his white sleeves hadn't been tattered, otherwise he might have had come up with a reason for way his arm looked the way it did. Just another lie against the heaping one, served by the Doctor.

As they exited the hotel, they were once more on the ground floor of New City. Sirens echoed in the distant night, lights flashing down alley ways and illuminating the otherwise sickly yellow tones of a volcanic world. Looking over his shoulder and realizing they were far enough removed from the lobby and view, he stood upright as he turned to Raj.

Some of the blood she wore, now, was his. Between the hand wound and the cut across his ribs, it was inescapable. Moving to touch a spattering of it across her collar bone, he realized even his blackened hand was now coated and drying in it. And he stopped.

"Do you have everything you need to fix me...back at the tower?" He caught another flicker of the emergency services. "Or should we wait for them and take what we need?"

This might have been the part where he informed her that wouldn't allow the use of bacta. But it simply didn't occur to him.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

She snorted derisively.

"If I needed to, I could put you back together from spare parts with what I have in the lab," she murmured, clearly contemptuous of the 'medical' care available in New City. "I may have shut down my primary research, but no, we don't need anything they can offer."

The could be limited simply to the sirens and flashing lights filling the night behind them as they headed down a shadowed side street. Or it could be extended to reach every corner of the city. On the surface, it seemed like such a simple sentence, and yet...

They made it back to the Tower without further engagement. While investigators and emergency medical responders were scratching their heads and trying to figure out just what, exactly had happened at that distant club, Irajah was indicating a steel table for him to sit on in the depths beneath the lair of [member="Matsu Xiangu"].

"If you are attached to that shirt you might want to try to remove it," she said over her shoulder as she washed her hands. "Otherwise I'll be cutting it off."

It wasn't that Irajah became someone else when she had work to do. But the job had become like a mask, something she could draw on and off again as needed. Despite the weight that still hung with a certain invited tension, it was child's play to switch her focus to the practical in this moment.

Scooting onto a wheeled stool, she hooked a cart with one foot, positioning everything with a particularly smooth and practiced motion next to him.

"I'd ask you to rate your pain," she said with a small smirk, eyes casting up beneath dark brows to regard him for a moment as she readied the antiseptic. "But I suspect that would be a futile effort."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

...Back together from spare parts with what I have in the lab. ​It wasn't that he was fixed in some form of disbelief, it was just that he couldn't stop the flash of incredulity. For someone that seemed inherently stuck within the twilight of the force, not entirely devoted to either side, she seemed to carry all the tools for a proper descent. Arrogance before the fall, the fall that would elevate, the elevation to something different. He completed his mental gymnastics, traipsing around the notions of gaining significance - as that would imply that it wasn't there in the first place. And removed from Point Nadir, his thoughts felt far more lucid than that.

He followed her to the tower. Up the lift. And then back down. Until he was deep enough in the system that he could swear he heard the rumbles of a spider in the darkness around them. Crimson eye crawled along the ceiling, listening to the woman as she moved about her various instruments. With guidance, he did as he was told, and sat down on the metal table.

"Only attached in the physical sense." Fingers traced down the fine trimmed center of the shirt as he slowly moved ebony buttons through their respective holes. One by one, he felt the cool air touch his skin, until he peeled it away and resumed the slow bleeding that often occurs with departing scab. Skin of sandstone, carved by eons of war and injury, and decorated with black tribal markings - with just the slightest tint of green. In almost every way, he showed the tones of Kiffar across his marred flesh - every inch showing a varying experience or unique stimulus.

Though he couldn't recall each one off hand, he knew the pleasure that came from the pain. And the recollection. Such as the flay of flesh, just below his belly button, where the ink of the dark lord was removed by Matsu. Or that in it's stead, half of the ternion revealed itself, peeking out from above his pants line.

Lifting his blackened arm, crude process for attachment now clear as day for the doctor, he curled his hand over and grabbed his left shoulder. Exposing the wound for Raj, he watched her closely. The way a snake approaches still hypnosis, waiting for the right moment to strike. This was his sustenance, the hands that would mend. Where he was remade beneath her digits, he wondered if she could undo it with the flicker of pain he expected. Desired.

"Is that what you want, Doctor?" He smirked. "Would you like me to describe my pain?" His view drifted to the table as he let out a breath, like he had been holding it the entire time. "Keep it to sutures and staples...please."

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

When she had first seen him, something about him had reminded her of her mother. She knew now at least some of that- his blackened arm, the underlying connectivity of the Vong playing in the open air but silent and subtle. But now her eyes tracked over the tattoos. Black, a trace of green. The curves and dots carved into her psyche and deeply familiar. Not like this, just as his arm was not her mother's, these were simply a parallel to the tattoos that had covered the right side of her father's face, and dotted in staccato counterpoint in the single line below his left eye. The surprise on her face when she had turned and caught that sight was not hidden, and it wasn't with strangeness but with familiarity that she had traced their lines across his flesh. The frank appraisal had only been a moment, wondering just what chances would bring Kiffar and Vong together in another person before she had refocused on the job before her.

Head tilted down to focus on his wound, only her eyes flicked up at his face when he spoke. Carefully, she set aside the slender forceps and the soaked gauze they held tightly, unused. Under other circumstances, a different patient, she would have bullied her way into doing as she needed- not as she wished, but what was necessary for the patient. But just as with the sight of his tattoos, the sight of his blackened hand that first time, she did not question the final necessity of his words, a request only by courtesy.

"Pain is very personal," she said softly as she reached instead for the curving needle and medical thread. "Purely from a doctor's perspective, it can tell you so much about a patient's situation. There are dozens upon dozens of words for describing pain. Each of them diagnostically relevant, but also deeply subjective."

Pale hands, slender fingers pressed the sides of the wound together after a gentle probing now that they were no longer at risk. No damage within that she had to cope with. Deep, but ultimately, superficial. One hand pressed firmly, the other starting to pierce the flesh, drawing the needle through and beginning the line of sutures. Practiced hands and delicate finger tips meant that the work hardly required her gaze, and she watched him from that vantage point.

"Not only the intensity, but the quality matters. Does the pain burn or tear? Does it stab, and if so is it sharp or dull? Does it crush, does it weigh heavy, does it elevate to a white dizziness only to crash into the depths again? Does it grab at the spot, vice-like, or does it gnaw, as a creature seeking freedom from a cage? Does it clench or does it sigh. As a doctor, it is not only my job to understand what each one has the potential to mean.... but also to translate from imperfect language into something that maps what is happening within a body. Pain is a language all its own."

Needle rose and fell.

"So. Yes, Rev. I want you to describe it."

She tilted her face up then fully.

"If nothing else so I have one more dialect I did not have before."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

Heart beat sputtered and rose at the sight of her pale and accomplished fingers, curved needle pinched between thumb and index. She held it like it was an instrument for vocation, a brush used too add the final touches against a splotched canvas. He sensed no inherent attachment to the tool but in the prospect of experience, therein lied significance. He could see it in her eyes, the way she spoke to him, all while penetrating flesh with cold surgical steel. A performer who played the song from memory without ever looking down at their hands. And being active participant in the audience, he had no need to see it - but to hear and feel it course through his body, that was a entirely different thing.

Nearly closing his eye, his vision drifted upward as one suture became many, absent the fog of anesthesia. "Every stimulation is different, every instance of pain is old and new, all at the same time. I have known an endless void of it, from large to small." His gaze dropped, finding hers looking back up at him. "You would have these terms to define what I feel. I would give you my point of view, instead." He stopped, his expression shifting to one of hunger. "Every time that needle pushes into me, it enhances the wound that still remains exposed. Every inch of wound is sensitive to breath, making the very act of life painful - like a large hand that's slowly crushing me. Anxiety, worry, fear. The mind creates dread, in anticipation of pain, that comes from breathing and moving." He tilted his head, gaze never looking towards the needle. His breath might have been bated, but he did his best to conceal it.

His voxyn index finger tapped against his left shoulder with every plunge and pull of string through flesh. With another push in, he took a deep breath. "If I close my eye, I can see it. Like a hammer smacking an anvil, ships colliding in space, or the impact of a meteor against a planet. Partial synapses firing in separate arcs, tracing paths through muscle and tissue, all looking for the fastest route to my perception. This particular wound is more of a constant ripple, but your needle changes that. Like throwing rocks into a fountain."

His expression took on one of complexion, a mixture of crestfallen and sarcastic. "My father thought I was broken when my mother abandoned us..." In truth, both parents felt that way, given their attempt to abort him from birth. Such was the common response to a parasitic twin, latched on to the shoulder and soul of his brother. "But I think he just didn't understand me, even when he was cutting away pieces of me. Or of what I was capable."

He shifted, his crimson view tracing over the movement of her hands. "When I take others pain upon myself, for their benefit or not, I experience the world from their point of view. When I took on your pain..." He stopped to consider what it was, knowing now that it felt muted compared to the first touch. It was a well that needed filling, a drink that was strongest at the first gulp, but he was content with the act of sipping. "I saw a shred of electric blue. Like the sensation of licking a hot battery, it moved through my body, enveloping me in your pain - for all of the empty spaces of my perspective, they were filled with your chronic agony. Like a dilapidated building, you were the mortar that filled the cracks. And through your pain, I felt close to you. Heartbeat, breath...desire."

His lips twitched as she pushed the needle in, again.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​