— i'll say a prayer, as i cast it to the flame

[redsoil]

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.

Comments

cw abuse.... that should just be ruby's username at this point

[appeale]

[ —ah. she made a mistake. just because he'd lashed out in defence of her, she had to go and open her stupid mouth. her expression twists with horror, the face of someone who has heard the last support of her delicate footing break beneath her, frozen in the moment before the inevitable plummet—but it is not a fresh wound. the dread in Rudbeckia's pale face is old and tired. a chilling voice speaks, pressed close against her ear, slithering beneath her clothes and over her skin: Why are you so fucking stupid? How many times will it take for you to learn your lesson?

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. ]

[redsoil]

[ He's seen women cringe like this. Hell, he's been the reason women cringe in such a way, seeking solace against the threat of pain and death, seeking mercy for their flesh or the flesh of their offspring against him. In all their faces, he saw nothing of their individuality; all of them, women with lives and minds independent of one another, transformed into the shape of -- into Isis, who had escaped him and Nephthys, who had betrayed him.

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.

[appeale]

... No.

[ 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 █████—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.

[redsoil]

[ Please don't throw me away. ]

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.

[appeale]

... No one has ever said that to me before.

[ 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. ]