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β i'll say a prayer, as i cast it to the flame
WHO: set & others
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: check headers for specific dates/times
WHAT: a catch-all for everything during his time in-game
WARNINGS: physical violence, mentions of sexual abuse, hanahaki syndrome, etc.
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: check headers for specific dates/times
WHAT: a catch-all for everything during his time in-game
WARNINGS: physical violence, mentions of sexual abuse, hanahaki syndrome, etc.
( 2/2 )
Tell them what? [ it's a signal of her submissiveness, not a question. without waiting for his response, she begins to chatter: ] Oh, we need to clean this up and get you some bandages. I've been learning medicine from the Dottoressa Sakura, you know. I'm not the cleverest student, but I'm certain I should be able to do this much for you...
[ she turns his injured hand over in her delicate grasp as she speaks, as if inspecting the wound. her gaze does not lift to meet his. ]
why are they so unhealthy for one another ( cw more abuse talk )
And truly, he does feel humiliation. To need to be saved by a cringing coward of a girl, who cried and threw money at the shopkeeper because Set was incapable of speaking, of thinking beyond the sudden, aching need to shatter the mirror and not be seen by the judgmental, pitying gaze of the individual haunting him inside of it -- ah, of course Ruby thinks he's going to beat her. Even if he has no intention of it, instead drawing her aside ham-handedly to be able to hide himself away from prying eyes.
He cannot focus on the terror in her face, the way her eyes diminish into pinpricks and the hollowness of her gaze when he meets it, in this small, dark place. She thinks he's going to beat her, he is suddenly, painfully aware. As aware as he is of the fact that his own expression, haunted and agonized, reflects hers in so many ways. He, too, is afraid of some oncoming agony. Some pain he expects will befall him, that he cannot prepare for but must scramble to survive in the aftermath. ]
What do you want?
[ He rasps it, so quiet that it's nearly inaudible.
What the fuck does she want, in exchange for her silence? What is she going to demand of him? ]
because we have good taste
Nothing. [ she isn't in a position where she can be greedy, and to request any compensation would cast her as too calculating a character. still, she needs to signal that she understands the way the world works too, and so she continues: ] You saved my life in the Shadowlands, and I was never able to properly express my gratitude for it. This is my repayment.
[ in her gentle grasp, Set's hand is brought to her face, where she cradles it just shy of touching her skin, nothing but a layer of warm air between his bloodied palm and her cheek. it would be easy to twist free: for that hand to seize a fistful of her hair, or for his fingers to wrap around her throat. Ruby carefully arranges her expression—she stares at him with the clueless, uncomprehending trust of a dog that cannot conceive of being hurt by its beloved owner.
All I want is to survive. ]
no subject
She doesn't trust him. ( This is not what bothers him; there is ample reason not to trust in an evil god such as him, slayer of child and woman alike. The bane of Egypt, he who had led his brother's legacy into disrepute and decay. It is not that she lies with her eyes and her small smile that bothers him. It is -- ) ]
Don't.
[ The word is terse, and quiet.
His blood is so bright upon her pale cheek. ]
Looking at me like that, you. You --
[ You look like I must have. Desperate. He could believe her, if not for that guileless expression on her face. The way she leans on her toes. The way she contorts herself to be pleasing, to do whatever she must to accomplish a degrading task. Near to her ankle, there is a small puddle and he glances upon it. He glances and grows green with the sight contained within it ( -- arms crossed, expression calm, so judgmental and perfect; sighing 'set you are ruining all things, yet again, why must you put yourself through this?' as HIS eyes glance towards HER and he just, he cannot --
He crushes the puddle into the mud, baring the too-large jut of fangs in his mouth. The dark, hooked claws that he wrenches away from her face before he slices into her. His voice is a dusky shriek, a hoarse and horrendous cry: ] Do not LOOK at her!
no subject
there would be no point in telling him that whatever he's seeing isn't really there. what a stupid thing to say; whether it's there or not, he still sees it. knowing that it doesn't exist in her eyes won't make it any less present to Set. but something is driving him mad, something so far beyond his capacity to bear that he is being torn open, and his sharp shriek rends her in kind. Rudbeckia's mouth is open to speak before she's chosen her words— ]
Set. [ in the echo of his rage—his fear?—her own voice seems a small whisper. ] It's okay. It doesn't matter, I'm fine with it.
[ what she means is: if there is some horror he's trying to protect her from, there would be no need. what humiliation exists that she hasn't already suffered? ]
cw allusion to sexual assault, cause yanno' this is just their life
[ Who, or what, 'he' might be dies on his tongue once more. She makes herself smaller, smaller still before him. She diminishes herself in ways he acts as though he is not. If he were her, he would feel small and seek to make himself small; instead, in the wake of what happened he'd made himself bold, cruel, loud and violent as though to tear away the veil of vulnerability and shame that had been lain upon him. The weight of a mouth, the smooth strength of hands in all sorts of places, the unyielding press of another body. He does feels small, torn open by the implacable gaze of his own kin.
He just, doesn't want Osiris looking to her in such a way; a way that he know his brother would gaze at her. With that thinly-veiled animosity, dark and steady in his desire to tear away all things and souls that Set might know, isolating him. Osiris is not here, for he is trapped in Duat -- but Stygia? Stygia is a land of the dead, the half-dead, or whatever they are. It is a place they are trapped, and Set has been --
he's just
counting the days until Osiris comes for him. ]
You don't know what you're agreeing to be 'fine' with, girl.
[ Her attempts at placating him only exist to rile him, to make his skin crawl.
Submission is, after all, one of his greatest fears. Perhaps it is not Ruby he fears, so much as her ability to contort herself into such a guileless thing. He cannot bear to touch her again, eyes flicking to the puddle still reforming on the ground. ( Persistent. ) Slowly, the red of them slides back to her face, and there, in that dark alleyway, swept aside from prying eyes and muffled by encompassing walls, he looks at her -- unfortunate and knowing.
And he strikes, whisper-soft: ]
Do you know what I've done to women like you?
[ ( Flee him. Leave him be. Don't come back. He will spare her his own mind's memory of Osiris's considering gaze, and spare himself the loss he'll feel when she learns of his shame. ) ]
cw abuse.... that should just be ruby's username at this point
there is a shadow over Set's face, an oppressive darkness. she only sees the bright blood red of his eyes, blazing with fury, with violence. he's going to kill her. ]
I... I'm sorry. [ the apology is wooden. a marionette string shifts, and Ruby's head bows forward. she continues to speak in that strange, stilted way as though reciting words, inflected only by desperation so intense she shakes with it: ] You're right, I spoke out of turn, it was presumptuous of me... I-I was wrong. I know I should be punished for my arrogance. I'll accept whatever you deem appropriate.
[ perhaps this is a good thing. isn't it a relief, not to be left waiting for the sting of the whip? this moment was going to come sooner or later; better it be sooner. better to get this out of the way now, rather than fret over the inevitable. it won't be so bad. Set isn't always this angry, and this was her own fault. she'll learn the new boundaries and she'll play her role within them, and if she's fortunate, it might only take a few beatings for her to know the reach of her chain. ]
no subject
As Ruby flinches, her voice a flat litany that only wants to appease him, he feels sick. Angry, and sick. He hates her so much, in this moment. He hates that he hates her, because really, he doesn't feel anything for her but a sort of pity. A revulsion, that uses her figure as the medium through which he aims to hurt himself. She doesn't deserve it, not his ire or his twisted need to punish himself, not his doubt or his fear. ]
I hurt them. For centuries. Thousands of women.
[ He tells her that, in an impossibly quiet voice. Ruthless, but subdued -- he is a tempest of emotion, and that cannot be good for her. To not know where his tone will travel, where his mood will go next? Horrendous. ]
I'm very good at it, Rudbeckia de Borgia. Generations of Egypt's women have nightmares about me, burnt into the collective memory of their human souls. I -- [ He doesn't touch her, though his presence seems to bow over her; it seems to spread and stain the world as he hovers over her dipped head, her hunched shoulders. It's as though he has become the sky, like his dark mother, his voice low and slow against the back of her head. ]
You resemble them. [ You resemble me. ] I don't believe I am good for you. I am not going to hurt you, for something you're not at fault for. You only want to survive, lovely coward.
no subject
[ the pain she expects does not come. his cruelty he had wielded seems to bleed from him now, even as she remains bowed, afraid to see his face: afraid to see another's face where his ought to be. she listens to the low hum of him voice instead, her hearing strained for any change in tone. any warning sign of imminent violence.
(lovely, he calls her, his voice soft and sad. there is enough clarity in her mind to register it as absurd. who in the world—in any world—has ever thought of Rudbeckia—of βββββ—as lovely? what a poor joke.)
the confession, however—that means nothing. does he think that it will frighten her? she doesn't need such things to be frightened. as though he has the monopoly on hurting others, on violence, on nightmares. every person she has ever known has proven themselves capable of the same. what a strange god, to explain himself like this. if he wished, he could have simply struck her. so— ]
No, it was all my fault. So—
[ Rudbeckia raises her head. her eyes are still glassy with terror, but she looks at him with something fervent and stubborn, some determination or desperation, and she does not shy from him.
a rope that burns her hands as she holds it is better than none at all. ]
Please don't throw me away.
no subject
I have a temper.
[ She wants to take the burden of this onto herself, and he is desperate not to let her. For centuries, for millennia, he'd outsourced the crux of his pain onto others; he'd let them carry the blame for his actions. While not entirely ready to confront it, nor even acknowledge it, he knows she's not at fault for his lack of control. While she may not view his potential for violence and harm as a rarity, but an expectation, he is a being that was not born, possessed of an existence and a mind that is unfathomable to mortals; it is not that he has a monopoly on violence, but that he is a fount from which violence flows.
Humans would not know bloodshed and battle, if he did not exist. It is a fact inexorably linked to his presence as her will to live is to her; foreign and unknowable, and bitterly lonely. The Egyptian gods were so independent, that they did not require bonds of family or love, though they gazed upon the humans they shepherded and wondered, one day, why not? ]
I will frighten you again.
[ A hum builds in his mind. Unwittingly, the old spark bestowed upon him from months ago, from the fraught journey across the seas to reach Stygia -- the ability to blink from location to location, and the hum. The resonating thing that had linked him to Gilia St. Loe and torn them into shreds -- a saint and a divinity. Now, that same spark ignites slowly between himself and Ruby; the pouring of himself against her, two streams combining into a dark basin in which they might know of one another.
In the depths of it, is a poignant little curl of loneliness. His answer, muted and hidden behind layers of ignoble deeds and monstrous urges: I wish you would leave me. For he cannot turn away a human who actually needs him. For they never need him, they do not seek him. Ruby will see the temples to his name, unpopulated and void of voices and warmth in the way that his siblings' domains were filled with. Blood pools in rivers across the sand and stone, slaughtered animals offered up to appease him. ( Let this sate your lust for blood, o red lord! / Spare our land, spare our people your wrath! ) ]
I don't want -- [ There.
Broad hands. The press of fingers along the side of Set's ( Ruby's ) jaw in play, and the clap of that palm along the line of his spine; the steady rumble of a voice, chiding him and praising him -- and dark eyes, kind and distant before the roar of their people and warm, so warm, when looking upon ( them ) in private.
Those eyes are in the reflections he batters with his fists. His blood smears across the mirror shards moments after he breaks Osiris's face with a punch, with the strike of his heel into the puddle. ( Don't look at her, he had said. Don't look with such a narrowing of those black eyes, with some spark of possession ripping through the beloved face of his older brother. Some knowledge within Set, that Osiris would wield Ruby like a tool to get what he wants -- ) ]
But. I will not abandon you, Rudbeckia de Borgia.
no subject
[ now he feels like a real god. all of a sudden, she's flooded with it. what flows from his heart into hers is vast, like being dropped into a pool so deep she can discern neither the surface nor the bed. there are depths to his feelings that she cannot understand: the silent temples, the sand wet with blood, the immutable nature at the centre of him beyond human recognition. ]
Really? You won't get rid of me?
[ amidst the murky waters of his mind, though, are fragments that seem familiar to her. a writhing bitterness, a wish that she would simply leave him be—it isn't the first time someone has wished that of her. the night she begged her husband not to send her back to Romagna, when he had wrenched her upright, gripped her shoulders so tight she thought she could feel the bones grinding together; his face twisted, distorted by a fury so intense it seemed to cause him pain; and she had squeezed her eyes shut, certain in that moment he was going to strike her across the face, but instead it had only been his cold voice in a low, vicious growl: I hate you so much.
yeah. she knew that already, back then. she didn't have to hear Set's thoughts to know it this time either. nobody needs to tell her that she's unwanted. and yet—
I will not abandon you.
it's not as if the words touch her heart. she doesn't believe them, not really. perhaps he views her as a burden, an obligation, a pitiful thing. whatever Set intends, all that matters is that he's offering her something she can use for as long as the feeling lasts. ]
Thank you... I'm truly grateful. I'll do anything, I mean it. I...
[ the last word rasps and she trails off, swallowing to clear her dry throat.
because. there is another piece of Set's mind that resonates through her, nerves struck like a tuning fork. she knows the image haunting his reflections. the chill she feels is instinctual—through Set's eyes, the man wears an expression Rudbeckia doesn't understand, but one she is intimately familiar with. she's seen it so many times on another face: Cesare gazes upon her the same way, touches her the same way. standing in this alleyway across from him, Ruby feels, suddenly, absurdly, as if she is a mirror. the blood on Set's palm, and a matching dark smear across her cheek. ]
... We should get you cleaned up.
[ Ruby doesn't reach out to touch him again. she only offers her hand, palm turned up.
it's not something she can think about. she doesn't have a single shred of real feeling in her heart to spare for anybody, no matter how they look at her. she only needs to focus on making it past the next step, and then the next. ]