Stars and Bones (Complete)

[Kuzo]

She listened in silence,

The answer was far more expansive than she had expected it to be. While the process of pain, the acute sensation nagging and hungry, did not motivate her in the slightest, that wasn't all he offered here. He offered a deeper understanding, and that she drank deeply of. She appreciated the depth of his response- dark waters that offered no bottom- and she could drown there if she wanted to, dragged down into the unmeasurable soundings and still she'd never reach the sea floor. For now, though, she tread in that water, head above the surface despite the fact that she wanted nothing more than to duck below it and plunge into the black. Not merely understanding, but an intrinsic satori waited there for probing fingers- if she could survive the pressure of years.

"Thank you again.... For that," she said softly. "You said that you had given me no reason."

To care.

"But even one night, where my body is my own? Without the piggy backed weight of an uninvited guest? That, Rev. That is reason enough."

The implications that such a thing, with permission.... with invitation....

Her work was neat- despite the proliferation of uncaring scars across his body, she worked with the intent that this one, if left alone, would heal with as minor a mark was possible, given the circumstance. It wasn't done with thought to him, but simply because she worked in no other way.

Small hands drew the last stitch, tying off swiftly. But instead of reaching for the scissors, she leaned in. Pulling the thread taut, her breath was hot against his skin as she used her teeth to cut the tail of the string.

"So thank you," she murmured as she moved back again. "For the answer. And for the evening."

It sounded like a goodnight. But her hand stayed flat against his flesh, thumb tracing the top of the ternion absently, as if she could read it, skin to skin.

She chuckled suddenly, looking back up at his face.

"I suppose that my plan to show my appreciation by showing you New City did not work out the way I had intended."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

Bumps rose across his flesh as her breath pressed against his wound. Just moments ago, he confessed what brought him pain. And in the very next moment, she teased the sensation from the now sutured injury. Wide eye turned to a slit as he looked down at her, expression following her movement. As he drifted somewhere between the deep pools of hazel and the fullness of her lips, speaking words of kindness and gratitude, he was lost in the sea of his own thoughts. There was a rarity in such a thing, that he might show where he was vulnerable and instead of taking full advantage of it, she pulled at the threads that held him together. For some, there was offense to be had in the showing of their stomach only to see it pawed at. But there was an inherent trust, one that surpassed expectation, born from their long dance through New City. And even still, she had a solid grasp of how the cogs moved beneath vermilion eye - tantalizing pain with titillating gestures, wandering with some inkling of focus towards the edges of his acceptance. Down to the very way she bit the thread to sever it, like sowing up the entirety of his presence to keep him in place.

He paused, his voxyn arm moving down to the table as her finger drifted over the ternion. The cyclic feature, marking flesh below his belly button, was something far removed from simple tattoo. Marking a connection to Aver and Matsu, more than simple flesh and idolatry and infatuation, it seeped into the very blood itself. He felt his breath quicken at the touch, the dragging of fingers across flesh that was absent wound. "You offer gratitude..." He looked back to her expression, filled with searching. "...absent need."

Pushing off from the table, shoes set down on the cold floor. "If this night wasn't what you intended...than I'm glad your plans went awry." He had killed men, dipped his hands deep in the life that spilled from them. He brought a man to his fated end, watched as she lingered on the notions of his death. He found indifference and interest in her eyes, swirling beneath hues and brown and green. And he found her pain, held at the surface and unwanted, except for the life that it formed. Was he that thing now, that she might consider invited? Through the course of the night, had he become something different?

Lowering his hand to her chin, he applied enough pressure to indicate his desire. For her to stand, for her to no longer be the doctor in her stool with her needle - now coated in his blood. Pivoting, he twisted enough to lead her back towards the metal table. In truth, he wanted to see her on the railing of the balcony again - the way she looked just as relaxed as she did now, even in the haze of her own pain. Maybe he would get what he wanted, maybe he would be stuck with whatever choice she made. The lack of control, the very notions that he was without power, excited him.

"You are more than your bruises and your disease, the thing lurking beneath pale flesh..." He broke eye contact as his gaze drifted down the cut of her dress, to the way the memories of a life could be revealed in the simple hint of a scar. Or to the way skin never properly adhered to prosthetic. All it took was for someone to look, to read the progress of ones life in etchings and ancient runes, to know the truth. And he was looking. "Each one of my scars, my markings, holds a memory. Skin cut loose for commitment, arm ripped free for assertion. Eye ripped out for defiance." His finger trailed downward. From chin to neck, neck to collar, collar to shoulder. Until he felt the transition from skin to shoulder strap of dress. "What memories are hidden beneath this?"

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

In that searching, he'd find that the invitation from earlier was still very much there. Set to the side perhaps, crisp parchment and heavy lines scrawled, balanced on a side table, but easily within reach. And when his hand found her chin, it was oh so easy to reach for again. Right, indeed, at his fingertips.

They took turns at the wheel, neither fighting the other- at the very least curious to see where the path led, yes- but more often eager to be turned and pressed where desired by the other, each in turn.

"Perhaps it didn't go as I planned, but I certainly think it went the way it needed to."

Need could be seen as too strong a word in this instance, but it was chosen deliberately. That delicate balance between curiosity and hunger had so far been maintained. It had started as a light touch on the scales. But each unfolding scene had added ingots to both sides, until the bronze arms groaned beneath the weight of it.

Pressed against the table, her gaze followed the path of his hand down. There was an intimacy in vulnerability. Irajah did not believe that to be the same as weakness, no. There was nothing weak about the showing of throat that allowed friendly teeth to lay across it. This was not a fight, a struggle for dominance. This was a dance where instead of that, what was gained instead was the weight of trust.

I showed you mine, now show me yours.

Both hands moved back and she boosted herself up onto the table with support from the pressure he kept on her. Even there, shorter than he by a full head, but here knees settled lightly on the outside of his thighs. Right hand reached up to his, where it paused at the shoulder of her dress. Gently but firmly, she curled his finger beneath the fabric with her thumb, hand guiding his from shoulder down the length of her arm.

The telltale pucker of flesh married to cybernetics at the joint of her shoulder.

Her eyes never left his as she reached to her other shoulder and drew down.

​Lichtenberg figures, the trees of lightening, crawled across her left side, up and over the meat of that shoulder. The scars of the knife, wielded by Carnifex, the marching lines of sith runes carved deeply into the flesh, from center of sternum down to the inner curve of hips.

"The burns for defiance," she murmured, mirroring his last series of statements. Unlike him, however, none of these were self inflicted. But there she paused for a moment.

"I never knew what the rest were for. What the point was."

There was a certain frustration there. In the not knowing. When Samson had cut these same lines into his own flesh, she had let go of some of the haunting pain. But the sheer annoyance of not knowing why still irked her.

She let her hands drop slowly.

"But I know what it taught me."

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He inhaled as she moved herself on to the table, not a single word needed to indicate what he wanted. A gentle request, pressure applied, was all that was required to see it done. Her hand pressed against his, leveraging free the strap of the dress to first expose the graft at the shoulder. He looked up, catching the stern eye contact that beamed from her determined expression, as she moved to drop the other shoulder strap. And with it, the curtains opened to reveal the mysteries that plagued him from the very beginning of the night.

Defiance.

His eye contact had remained fixed on her, removed for the time from his desires for rain. He hadn't realized it, but his hands fell away from her torso, hanging lazily at his side with fingers gingerly curling beneath her legs.

What was the point?

He felt the frustration ooze from her lips, the anger of being subjected to something that was entirely alien to him. But for only so long, the inherent implication of her actions gave way to invitation. Lifting his left hand, he hovered over the indications of lightning that ran across her shoulder. As finger tips pressed against raised flesh, he felt the stillness of time as images and partial movement passed between skin and fingers and mind. A memory, held across flesh and scar tissue, that told of kidnapping and anger and defiance. Through her eyes, he saw the blurry image of a Sith pureblood. The way that even when no expression was held, she could still sense his anger. A leveled punch across the face, a tightness from the throat with applied collar, the smell of skin as it was burned from a blue current, and the sound of cracking fingers beneath pressure. With an idle mind, lost in the images of her past, his hand drifted down her arm. To where he expected to find the remnants of broken fingers. What he found was something else entirely.

A dark room, silence and questions. The world turned inward and distorted, fish lens, as he watched a particular individual who stood upon a throne - One he immediately recognized. What was a moving image turned into still frames, as it always would, where his senses were flooded with the taste of blood on the lips, the sound of breaking limbs, and the feeling of air deprived from the throat. Where his crimson eye had closed, it opened to find her looking back at him, as his hand crossed over the runes across her sternum. Running from breast bone down to her hip, he traced it with a delicate touch, as if he was carving the runes himself. He bared his teeth as he felt the remnants of that energy, coursing through her mind, to keep her conscious and writhing in pain. He felt the edge of that blade as if it was pressed against him, cutting in patterns that indicated possession. All amidst eyes that were forced open, conscious forced intact. Until it was released with a simple phrase. "You will be remade..."

Vision and sound were filled with the clinical, the images of a ceiling and the huff of a respirator. Clicking and breathing and clicking and breathing. He felt the well of panic as one is consumed by their to lack of mobility, broken and mending. Words carried on the distance, tears and panic for being punished for being a victim. He blinked, while staring at Irajah, though his gaze pierced through her as his hand froze just above her belly button. Vision was replaced instead with trembling hands, gripping a sink, as the transition of flesh and cybernetics became apparent. He felt the urge to rip it from the wall but knew, more than any other truth, that he lacked the strength to do so. And vicariously, he felt her anger as he heard the request as she aimed her request towards Braxus. Will you teach me?

He couldn't take this from her, he wouldn't. And while she lacked understanding in the reason, he knew she needed the consequence. As he supped on the memories of her past, he found opportunity to stop, to collect himself upon the edges of her foundation. "What happened to you, that wasn't fair. But nothing is. You know that more than anyone." He placed his hands down on the table, propping himself up, as he leaned forward. "Kaine is a butcher, his progeny and family are no different." Reverance was rarely given the chance to speak out about the man. But he was once denied something in the Vain Hollow, a grudge that could never be forgotten. Tilting forward, he pressed his lips against her skin, just above the beginning of the rune. "You weren't remade because of them. They were simply bystanders to your suffering. And you can own that. It was yours to endure." Moving up her sternum, warm breath raking across exposed flesh, his left hand disembarked from the table to caress the fingers of her right hand.

Leaning back, finding her eyes once more, he searched for a reason for her suffering. But it struck him as odd that he even needed to, given his belief in the premise of agony and growth. That both are correlated, even causal. He envied the catalyst and the growth of those moments, spanning such a short distance. That in that time, she was taught an important lesson. And that lesson involved trust. "Why are you so special..." He smiled, finding humor in misplaced skepticism. "What a stupid question."

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Kuzo]

It was impossible to sit still and unaffected as his eyes and fingers traced the passage of her pain. Twice, she shivered beneath his touch, but did not draw away. She could not see what he saw, not through his eyes, but the memories were there to pick through again with a more critical internal sternness. Where he focused on the sensations, the physicality of each sense laid bare beneath his hands, she had been over these memories enough times that was at least in part dulled, certain edges worn smooth and taking some of the bite out of them. She thought she saw her mistakes, the ones leading to these moments, clearly. They were not the mistakes Braxus had tried to pile upon her, but they were mistakes nonetheless. But rather than wallowing in them, she integrated them.

Irajah learned.

Everybody sought something. Everyone needed something. Do not trust those who claimed to seek nothing but the well being of those beneath their thumb. Professed altruism was to be deeply scrutinized, and ultimately rejected as a true means of interaction.

She watched him as he read, hazel eyes half lidded as she held herself still by the time his passage brought him to the hollow of her hip.

"I have never accused the galaxy of the sin of being fair, Rev," she murmured softly.

She was only certain of his intention when his mouth found her skin. She inhaled sharply, knees tightening, eyes closing. As his fingers slid over her right hand, her left reached up to slide around the back of his head.

"And I give that butcher nothing of the credit for what I am now. He has earned none of it," she whispered, voice low but fierce. "He did not remake me. I made myself. I am the sum of my experiences, yes, but not the victim of them."

Her eyes opened after he moved back, only when she felt the weight of his gaze on her again. Her fingers were still laced in his hair, and the chuckle, the last words, brought that crooked smile to her lips.

"Full circle."

He'd asked that, with such quiet earnest, just hours before.

"You have your answer now." She didn't move, didn't let go of him. "Are you content with it? Is that all you are looking for?"

They had walked a line all evening, teetering one way and the other as balance swung precariously.

"Or are you hoping the weather will change?"

[member="Reverance"]

 

[Reverance]

He listened, vibrations of her words moving across her skin, across his lips. He could feel the focus, the clarity found in her suffering and in her view as it shifted upon those ephemeral moments. How fleeting and lasting they were, it might only be obvious to those who were paying attention - just how significant the difference could be. A broken thing, looking down at her broken pieces, asking for help - to the woman who sat before him, confident and forever changed.

"I have my answer, yes..." He responded, finding the challenge in her voice, the recollection of a promise within the moments of the night - somewhere in the near and distant past. "But am I content with it?" Her fingers moved through his hair and he instinctively pushed her bangs away with a gentle nudge of his thumb, revealing the runic symbol that she had once hidden in the memories of her past. "No. Never. Not now or in the eternity that follows." With a slight smile, recognition of her inquiry regarding the weather, he silently wondered if it ever rained on Maena.

Leaning forward, enveloped in her grip, he pressed his lips against hers. What hand once pushed her bangs away now gently moved down the length of her neck, pressing thumb against the edge of her jaw. His blackened hand coiled around her, applying pressure to the small of her back, as he slid her close. There would be nothing left between them except for garments and scars. And the former would be done away with, soon enough.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​