[She doesn’t seem to recognize that he is there until she is “whole” again, a chimera puppet who thought she was walking under her own power until the strings were suddenly cut and she was left sprawled useless on the floor. But that screaming, useless, humiliated part of her she’d almost wish he would just crush under his heel is returned to her by a hand pressed up against her shard, warmth and light pressure against her diaphragm and the curve of her breasts, and she-
She curls tighter in on herself, half-trapping Set’s hand against her instead of lashing out or throwing his touch away, shoulders and back legs quaking as the part of her soul wailing over pain and injustice returns. It suddenly smells like the harsh chemicals and Kowloon filth of her makeshift surgery suite, strong enough for someone with a sensitive nose like hers or his to want to retch. Just as suddenly it’s gone, and it smells like salt instead as Hayame’s blood-smeared lips twist beneath the blind of her hands over her eyes, pursing and parting around the lingering feel of a bit and the stinging splits it has left in the corners of her mouth where the skin was stretched wide.
He’s not a liar? Set had come to her, and he comes with that? With things that now, when it’s all so fresh, only sound like blame or confirmation in her ears. So the demon was telling the truth, when he smiled and asked who would bother to come rescue her? So he was telling the truth when he mocked her with how no matter how foul he was inside he would always be more beloved and more believed amongst their shard-bearing fellows?
Again, it falls to her to change, to somehow twist herself into knots or snap her own steel will over her knee in order to win or keep what little she had that mattered to her? Change, change, it feels like every other time they speak now he mentions how she needs to change and in this instance, consumed with bitterness and pain and the added betrayal of all but being told the demon was right…
Hayame curses the world. The one that gave her scraps and then once she’d finally found the courage to value them… told her to change to keep them or fall back to watch them smile and embrace the enemy who trampled on her pride and left her like this in the dark.
No one was supposed to see her like this. In the real world, the physical one, there wasn’t a single mark on her body where she lay exhausted on the floor of her home, only able to collapse once the door had been shut and locked. The demon had seen to it, making his lackey use magic to heal every wound to make it even more difficult for her to try and claim to anyone that she hadn’t wanted what happened to her, that she had fought it with all her strength. But here, where the body was shaped by the mind…
Here, her arms are covered in bruises from the straps that had held her down tightly to the table no matter how much she bucked and thrashed, the complex back muscles where upper and lower body met torn from their moorings by how she’d twisted a large frame already strained into place. Here, her fetlocks have all been rubbed in bloody, raw hide rings from the rope hobbles she’d jerked and kicked and struggled to pull from their anchors, because if she could just get free enough to lash out-
The worst is on the left side of her face. But she’s still hiding it, clutching her hands over it as if she could deny it existed, but she can’t and-
Set gathers her into his arms. He says I have you, like he had that night at the masquerade when he had held her and granted her the blessed, cursed knowledge of what pleasure might do for a woman who had never let herself feel good or wanted or loved, like she… that’s where it had come from. In the dark of a hotel room in Xanadu, when she had finally found the trust and vulnerability required to take a proper lover, to touch him, to feel him feel good because of what she’d done… she had whispered into his hair something that felt like deja vu, not quite remembering in the haze of heat the exact words but they’d been-
I have you.
And the shame of it, of all of it, of it being made public, of being so helpless, of knowing the demon might be right, of not being able to kill herself, of now bearing the shame of the demon’s touch for potentially anyone to see, it all- It just bursts, and Hayame is weeping in Set’s arms, her words barely intelligible between the sobs.]
What are you doing here-
[She wants to push him off of her, she doesn’t want him to touch her with hands that might have touched that demon, doesn’t want him to speak with her using a mouth that had laughed and invited him-]
Go, just go, and let that demon regale you with the tale of his latest amusement!
[The image of them smiling, laughing, of Sebastian’s lips curling into coy, playful description and Set idly sighing and shrugging and going on about how he’d warned her, how this is what happened to those who didn’t adapt, as if she was just some toy of the demon’s he barely knew, not someone he called a friend… it’s so possible and real in her head, and she hates it, she hates it more than anything because-]
Go laugh at what he has done to me!
[Because she’s lashing out in wet, garbled words, but her hand… one still covers the left side of her face, but the other has clutched on to Set so desperately hard he might not be able to pull away if he tried, breaking in his arms and unable to push away anyone who might hold her in that moment.
no subject
She curls tighter in on herself, half-trapping Set’s hand against her instead of lashing out or throwing his touch away, shoulders and back legs quaking as the part of her soul wailing over pain and injustice returns. It suddenly smells like the harsh chemicals and Kowloon filth of her makeshift surgery suite, strong enough for someone with a sensitive nose like hers or his to want to retch. Just as suddenly it’s gone, and it smells like salt instead as Hayame’s blood-smeared lips twist beneath the blind of her hands over her eyes, pursing and parting around the lingering feel of a bit and the stinging splits it has left in the corners of her mouth where the skin was stretched wide.
He’s not a liar? Set had come to her, and he comes with that? With things that now, when it’s all so fresh, only sound like blame or confirmation in her ears. So the demon was telling the truth, when he smiled and asked who would bother to come rescue her? So he was telling the truth when he mocked her with how no matter how foul he was inside he would always be more beloved and more believed amongst their shard-bearing fellows?
Again, it falls to her to change, to somehow twist herself into knots or snap her own steel will over her knee in order to win or keep what little she had that mattered to her? Change, change, it feels like every other time they speak now he mentions how she needs to change and in this instance, consumed with bitterness and pain and the added betrayal of all but being told the demon was right…
Hayame curses the world. The one that gave her scraps and then once she’d finally found the courage to value them… told her to change to keep them or fall back to watch them smile and embrace the enemy who trampled on her pride and left her like this in the dark.
No one was supposed to see her like this. In the real world, the physical one, there wasn’t a single mark on her body where she lay exhausted on the floor of her home, only able to collapse once the door had been shut and locked. The demon had seen to it, making his lackey use magic to heal every wound to make it even more difficult for her to try and claim to anyone that she hadn’t wanted what happened to her, that she had fought it with all her strength. But here, where the body was shaped by the mind…
Here, her arms are covered in bruises from the straps that had held her down tightly to the table no matter how much she bucked and thrashed, the complex back muscles where upper and lower body met torn from their moorings by how she’d twisted a large frame already strained into place. Here, her fetlocks have all been rubbed in bloody, raw hide rings from the rope hobbles she’d jerked and kicked and struggled to pull from their anchors, because if she could just get free enough to lash out-
The worst is on the left side of her face. But she’s still hiding it, clutching her hands over it as if she could deny it existed, but she can’t and-
Set gathers her into his arms. He says I have you, like he had that night at the masquerade when he had held her and granted her the blessed, cursed knowledge of what pleasure might do for a woman who had never let herself feel good or wanted or loved, like she… that’s where it had come from. In the dark of a hotel room in Xanadu, when she had finally found the trust and vulnerability required to take a proper lover, to touch him, to feel him feel good because of what she’d done… she had whispered into his hair something that felt like deja vu, not quite remembering in the haze of heat the exact words but they’d been-
I have you.
And the shame of it, of all of it, of it being made public, of being so helpless, of knowing the demon might be right, of not being able to kill herself, of now bearing the shame of the demon’s touch for potentially anyone to see, it all- It just bursts, and Hayame is weeping in Set’s arms, her words barely intelligible between the sobs.]
What are you doing here-
[She wants to push him off of her, she doesn’t want him to touch her with hands that might have touched that demon, doesn’t want him to speak with her using a mouth that had laughed and invited him-]
Go, just go, and let that demon regale you with the tale of his latest amusement!
[The image of them smiling, laughing, of Sebastian’s lips curling into coy, playful description and Set idly sighing and shrugging and going on about how he’d warned her, how this is what happened to those who didn’t adapt, as if she was just some toy of the demon’s he barely knew, not someone he called a friend… it’s so possible and real in her head, and she hates it, she hates it more than anything because-]
Go laugh at what he has done to me!
[Because she’s lashing out in wet, garbled words, but her hand… one still covers the left side of her face, but the other has clutched on to Set so desperately hard he might not be able to pull away if he tried, breaking in his arms and unable to push away anyone who might hold her in that moment.
Even if at first… it just hurt even more.]