— 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

[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. ]