waltz of retreat // warringkingdoms

[candorosa]

[align=center][div style="width:70%; text-align: justify; padding: 1px; font-family: helvetica;"]Lemy's hearing returned with a pop, followed by the roar of the wilderness. He paused to listen, staring at the sky as he filtered through the noises. The cry of a bird here, the buzzing of an insect there, the soft whisper of the breeze everywhere. He flexed his claws, trying to calm his ragged breathing.

It hadn't been the first time his hearing was taken from him, but he found that he could never get used to it. Without the backdrop of the world, he was well and truly alone with his thoughts. Sometimes, he wondered if a sense taken from him would ever return.

He closed his eyes and hummed to himself, listening as his voice rang through his head. Was it truly his voice though? Certainly, it was the voice of Lemy Abelard. But--

He clicked his tongue and turned on his heel, ignoring the way his back flared up from pain. There was no time for introspection. His hearing returned, hooray. No need to dwell on it. If he didn't make a big deal out of it, nobody will and they'd just forget about in a week and leave him alone. Clearly they were content in just letting him sort it out; no one had even bothered to ask him for the reason behind his hearing loss. Fine by him. The less they tried to get to know him, the better.

Now he wouldn't be caught off guard when--Ah. He still needed to talk to Rin about the other god that was gunning for them. He had gotten the gist of the meeting from some chump, and frankly? He was pissed. Annoyed, frustrated, seething, enraged, all of those words could accurately describe how he felt about the threat. He had reasons, several of them, ranging from legitimate to petty for feeling that way.

Lemy began his frosty march to Rin's quarters, rigid steps at odds with the constant smile on his maw. With every incident, he could feel his mask cracking under the pressure of his emotions. He lost his hearing protecting her martyr ass from Pluto, he had his back torn open. She [i]better [/i]recognize that.

'If you decide to take him up on his offer, I understand,' she said. Fuck off. He held no love for Rin, but if some dipshit decided to sacrifice her after he spilled his sweat and blood then he'd personally castrate them. She owed him and she wasn't dying until she payed her dues.

"Rinny! My hearing's back! Wanna talk about how we're all gonna drown soon 'cuz of that new god?" Lemy, once again, started banging on her door. This time, he was aiming to break it down. Unfortunately, he was a cat. A rather light cat, so he only succeeded in bloodying his paw. "Seriously. We need to talk. Without your stalker or some other Elysite hanging around for once."

[Warringkingdoms]

  [font=trebuchet ms]Lemy's hearing was back, and the first thing he did afterwards was try to break down her door. Typical.

  Well, it wasn't entirely a surprise. Rin had expected Lemy to come and demand answers at some point, most likely after his hearing returned- and so it had. It also wasn't surprising that he wanted to talk alone, considering how wary he'd been of Nemhain from the very moment she showed up. Discomforting, maybe, but not surprising.

  After he'd gotten himself seriously injured protecting her, though, it was the least she could do to agree to a private conversation. I'm having a private conversation, please go about your normal duties, Rin projected across her bond with Nemhain. She was hoping to avoid any emotional outbursts anyway, but in case she didn't, at least their conversation wouldn't be interrupted.

  Adopting a stoic expression, Rin walked to the door and opened it just as Lemy finished speaking. "Can't really call her a stalker when half the time she gets there before me," she remarked dryly, "but whatever. She won't be part of this." Glancing down at his now-bloodied paw, she heaved a long sigh. Clearly he had been convinced that the doors were of dubious-enough quality that he could actually break them down. Such were the perils of joking.

  "...Please," Rin said, her eyes narrowing, "let me bandage that up while we talk." She didn't feel like performing another act of debt-judo right now- really, she shouldn't have to. She was a trained medic, and she was pretty certain that Lemy was not. Walking back into the room, she quickly retrieved the bandages from one of the desks, and some marigold as well. The odds of his paw getting infected were slim, but she wasn't about to risk it.

  Taking the supplies back to the door and looking out at Lemy, she continued, "Come in, but don't put any weight on the injured paw." He was probably going to do so anyway, but as a medic she had to give advice regardless of whether or not the patient would heed it.

[candorosa]

[align=center][div style="width:70%; text-align: justify; padding: 1px; font-family: helvetica;"]Lemy's smile curdled at her defense of Nemhain, lips curling into a sneer. Then, as quickly as it appeared, his expression smoothed back into a polite smile. "Sorry sorry, guess you're right, huh? Okiedokie, no more calling Nem a stalker then," he giggled, cradling his injured paw close to his chest once her eyes hovered over it.

He ignored her words as he shouldered his way into the house, making sure to drag and push his paw into the floor to smear it with his blood. It hurt, it really truly did, but he would gladly deal with some pain in order to inconvenience Rin. He wouldn't give her what she wanted so easily. Though he entered the house, he lingered near the entrance, too hesitant to go deeper.

Lemy gave a cursory glance around then returned his attention to Rin as she approached. He stared at the supplies with something akin to disdain. "You're wasting your supplies on me," he said plainly. He hesitated for a moment, then quietly added: "I have a regenerative mutation...I'll be...fine eventually." He didn't have a say in the matter. His spiteful urge slowly abated with his confession, replaced by an exhaustion that settled into his bones.

Lemy glanced off to the side, smile finally slipping from his face. His blue eyes trailed off to his bloodied paw. "What's your endgame, eh? What are you hoping to accomplish by killing all of these gods?" He was curious, he really was. She said that she wanted to protect all of them, but he had a hard time believing that. No one was that selfless; she either likened herself a martyr or she had a savior complex.

[Warringkingdoms]

  [font=trebuchet ms]Rin didn't miss the sneer on Lemy's face, even as he quickly replaced it with his typical smile. As he pushed past her, she watched him drag his bloodied paw against the floorboards like a paintbrush on a canvas. More stains to try and scrub out of the wood- great. Pointedly avoiding looking at the bloodstains, she instead met his eyes as he spoke. "Wasting supplies," he said. No one in the history of ever had listened when she said things like that, why would she listen this time?

  "I have a regenerative mutation."

  That got her attention, one of her brows raising. ...Come to think of it, that would explain a lot. It wasn't the strangest explanation she'd ever heard, either, and yet just strange enough to not be a plausible lie. If he wanted to keep her off his back, he could easily have said that Playerone was already treating him, or that he could treat himself.

  What was she to do, then? She didn't feel comfortable placing faith in his ability to regenerate completely- there were so many ways it could heal wrong, or get infected. If she had a better idea of how it worked, then maybe she could plan around that, but... Lemy had already revealed enough to her. Pressing for more wasn't going to end well.

  "It's not a waste," she said finally, with a sigh, "but... if you really think it'll regenerate properly, at least take some painkillers. I have plenty of those." She could monitor his paw, at the very least, and if it was showing signs of infection, then she could take action. She didn't want him walking around in constant pain, though.

  Then he steered the topic back around to the gods- and her motivation. This was going to be fun. Tugging at her scarf, she exhaled slowly. Where to start, that was the question...

  "Well, at the moment I'm trying to break that curse first and foremost," she answered after a few moments, twitching her whiskers. "But before I knew about that, even before I ended up in Elysium? It was revenge. It's petty, but I couldn't just... let them go unpunished for everything they've done up until now." She could go into more detail, but honestly, Lemy probably wouldn't care. No matter how she tried to frame it, she'd endangered his life for the sake of revenge. No amount of gory details about what the gods had actually done would make it better.

  With a heavy sigh, she shook her head. "Once we've killed the last of them, or at least broken the curse for sure, I'll probably step down and leave. Nemhain will probably be coming with me." Getting to explore would probably do her persona some good. As for what she'd do after that... if Lemy cared about that, he'd ask. She wasn't sure what she'd say.

  Curling her tail around her paws, Rin glanced out the window, then back at Lemy. "I don't think I ever properly thanked you for saving my life," she said quietly. Invoking the debt she owed him in order to make him agree to the checkup didn't really count. "So... thank you. And I'm sorry for putting you in danger in the first place."

  /this is very ish but whatever, I'm posting it anyway