[ the memory ends, leaving them hanging there for a moment in the space of the bubble, and percy blinks, feels the sensation of it fading away from his fingertips. the memory, for as long as it had lasted, had been his, through the eyes of another. as the bubble wavers, but doesn't break, he furrows his brow.
"these were evil men, vin."
he places a hand, colorless for a moment against the bubble, his lips tightening just a bit. he turns a moment to look at her, his expression quiet, but there's. an odd understanding to it.
taking a life holds a weight to it, taking more than one like that in quick succession just to stop. it's like the heft of his first gun. ]
Are you all right? That... it was yours, wasn't it? What I just saw...
[percy's been kind to her, but vin is a wary person by nature, even paranoid. she sees that understanding, but once she realizes he saw the same thing she just relived, she looks like she's thinking very hard about what to say, and gauging his reaction once she does respond.]
[ he nods. and he doesn't seem unhappy with it, more... unhappy with the invasion of what should be her own personal memories. the bubble just sort of wiggles around them, unaffected, and only partially colored, as if beckoning for just a bit more to let them pass. ]
It's a lie to say it ever gets easier.
[ in some ways it does, but never all together. to give pause over every life you take. it doesn't always happen right away. but it happens. it stares you in the face from time to time. ]
Yes... to start young. Even when you expect it, it catches you by surprise.
[ he glances at the bubble and then back at vin briefly. ]
The world likes to force us into corners. Best we can do is beat our way back to see it doesn't swallow us whole. We're better for it.
[ with pink at his fingertips, a soft rosy color, he offers her a weary smile. ]
Let's get out of this wretched thing... and then we'll talk?
[ to let her touch it again would feel wrong. scales unbalanced. he's witnessed something personal. his hand brushes the surface of the bubble and— ]
Edited 2022-03-08 13:15 (UTC)
2/2 (cw: mentions of torture, violence, sibling loss)
You are running for your life in the freezing cold of what was once the forested grounds of your home. Your fingers are numb, but you cannot let go of her, your sister. cassandra stumbles behind you, younger, just as under-fed and beaten and bruised and bloodied and fed upon as you are, if only by slighter bits to keep her alive. the both of you were needed alive.
all of the briarwoods' men are catching up to you. their horses are pounding the frigid snow, the hellish huffing of their steeds fogging the night behind you like an entourage meant to see you both to your doom. back into the dungeons, or worse for your insolence and the way you keep telling them that you don't know anything, nothing about the passages beneath whitestone, nothing beyond the catacombs of your ancestors.
cassandra is sobbing, and you hold faster to her wrist. you know she's just as desperate for you both to escape—it was her nimble fingers that picked you both out of that fetid cage with your scraps of molded bread and festering wounds. they rip open again, bleeding fresh. the inner corner of your eye aches, and youo remember her, ripley, in that one moment, looming over you with hook and scalpel and—
her hand is falling, she's stumbling and screaming your name, but as you turn to go and fetch her—
arrows cover her back and she looks at you, whimpering your name as the blood gushes from her body, as her fingers tremble on the snow. where she was once crying your name, her eyes are rolling back.
she's still in the snow.
the horses are racing, faster and faster. your shock of white hair does nothing—the shattered remains of your glasses mean that the entire field of view that you have is twisted in threes. you're starved, you're aching, and now cassandra is laying in the snow, still as stone. you reach for her. just the once.
"cass..."
and then you bolt like a rabbit. tears are stuck to your cheeks, cutting clean paths through blood and dirt and gristle. your body aches, gashes drawn in your chest started to pull apart, the wound in your shoulder and throat bleeding anew. you're sobbing as you clamber through the woods, trip over a log.
(cassandra, cass, cassie—waking you up from your daze in the cell, ushering you out, crawling through her small passages meant at one point to hide from you during your bouts of hide and seek.)
and now she's dead, feathers in her back like some macabre angel, not breathing, not moving. she's dead and as you crest over what looks like a cliff that leads to the river you know will wash you out to sea... as all of the briarwoods' and all of their men close in upon you...
you leap and let the frigid cold water wash you away. from whitestone. From cassandra. from your family left dead in the grand halls of your home.
the de rolos are dead, their name dies with you. it's no longer safe. you may as well be dead yourself.
[ the bubble merges the amber and crystalline together, satisfied, and for a moment it swells before it pops around them, percy's hand still lifted as if to touch the invisible barrier still. softly: ]
[it's strange to come back from something that intense. the physical pain makes her wince, but it's the emotions this memory carries that really make her pause after it finishes. the grief, the loss - trying your hardest to protect someone you care for, only to have to watch them struck down while you can't help. the sickening realization that the rest of your family has met the same fate.
it's invasive, to be in what she's sure must have been one of the worst moments of his life. so she hesitates, looking for words - but saying nothing has to be worse. after a moment:]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"these were evil men, vin."
he places a hand, colorless for a moment against the bubble, his lips tightening just a bit. he turns a moment to look at her, his expression quiet, but there's. an odd understanding to it.
taking a life holds a weight to it, taking more than one like that in quick succession just to stop. it's like the heft of his first gun. ]
Are you all right? That... it was yours, wasn't it? What I just saw...
no subject
...It was.
no subject
It's a lie to say it ever gets easier.
[ in some ways it does, but never all together. to give pause over every life you take. it doesn't always happen right away. but it happens. it stares you in the face from time to time. ]
no subject
...You have experience with it, then.
[it's not exactly surprising - even if she hasn't read many of the profiles, he's from the same place as vax, after all.]
1/2
[ he glances at the bubble and then back at vin briefly. ]
The world likes to force us into corners. Best we can do is beat our way back to see it doesn't swallow us whole. We're better for it.
[ with pink at his fingertips, a soft rosy color, he offers her a weary smile. ]
Let's get out of this wretched thing... and then we'll talk?
[ to let her touch it again would feel wrong. scales unbalanced. he's witnessed something personal. his hand brushes the surface of the bubble and— ]
2/2 (cw: mentions of torture, violence, sibling loss)
... I see...
no subject
it's invasive, to be in what she's sure must have been one of the worst moments of his life. so she hesitates, looking for words - but saying nothing has to be worse. after a moment:]
...I am sorry.