Aurora - Rean Heart

[awakenerd]

You float in a void--darkness around you, above, below, in every direction, nothing. You stand on nothing, you even breathe nothing. But you do not feel in danger, you are not suffocating. You are simply existing in… Nothing.

Crow | Towa | Dusk | 80H | Rufus

Comments

[voreaciously]

"Thank you very much, My Lady." She nods in grateful understanding--she can do specific--and tries to think, to focus.

I wish to be in a place where I can understand why he does not like himself.

[awakenerd]

The woman nods, regal and sedate.

And then the scenery simply changes around you. No longer in the water, no longer wet, simply standing in a large room.

It is not... An empty room.

The room is filled, piled, strewn, and stuffed with corpses. Blood is up to your ankles and on a mountain of the dead is a throne of skulls and bones, and on the throne is a man, and that man is bound in chains that stretch to the ceiling like a puppet's strings.

[voreaciously]

[well

time to climb!!]

[awakenerd]

Some corpses slide and slip and make the journey difficult but eventually you reach the top! Yep the guy on the throne is Rean and he looks like he's as lifeless as the dead bodies except he's breathing a little.

[voreaciously]

[hey so what she wants to do, what she needs to do, is break those chains, which she'll do by freezing some carefully and then shattering them, careful not to hurt him.]

[awakenerd]

She can do that! There are... Oh so many chains. But they fall one by one as she shatters them.

About halfway through Rean grabs her arm, looking at her intensely. As if he hadn't been half catatonic when she arrived.

"Don't."

[voreaciously]

"Why not?"

[awakenerd]

"Don't break things you don't understand, 80H."

[voreaciously]

That gets her to stop.

"Then help me understand."

[awakenerd]

His voice is... Tired, but his grip loosens.

"You want to know why I hate myself, right?"

[voreaciously]

"Yes, I do. Everything, really." She can guess, but she should not act on conjecture, he was right to stop her in that case when she doesn't understand this aspect of him.

At least not yet, anyway.

[awakenerd]

"There's a lot of reasons. I've always been scared of myself as long as I can remember, I've never liked myself. I've always had--a rage within me. And now I bear a curse. I cannot control myself without help, I cannot contain this power and this viciousness without control.

In life I worked constantly to maintain my humanity. In death...

My shame helps me keep it buried.

...No, maybe I'm not being very clear. There's a lot of things even I don't remember clearly.

But even if I didn't need to suppress it, still--I would not deserve to like myself."

[voreaciously]

She listens intently. "And whose strings are you on?"

[awakenerd]

"Mine. Crow's. Randy's. My existence. The past. My responsibilities. My duties. My regrets."

[voreaciously]

"Are they tethers or meant to control you?"

[awakenerd]

"Do you know what I am?"

[voreaciously]

A history teacher.

"A Divine Knight."

[awakenerd]

"No. Me. This aspect you are talking to."

[voreaciously]

"...You're the rage."

[awakenerd]

"Bingo."

[voreaciously]

"Denying a part of yourself like this is only going to make it worse."

[awakenerd]

"So do you want to break all the control I have as the solution?"

[voreaciously]

"No, certainly not that," she sighs. "I do apologise, I should have acted more critically." but she saw him here and her first thought was to help, but she's not going to admit that. it's not very like how she should be.

"But it's very black and white, and I have seen what happens when people predisposed to great and deep rage lose control and themselves in it." It's not great!

"I seek something more moderate. Integration."

[awakenerd]

Mrhg.

"I know you only want to help. That's why I haven't killed you."

He slumps back onto the throne, the bones creak.

"I'd rather not integrate if it's all the same to you. There's a lot more to me than anger."

[voreaciously]

"What else is there?" her tone is very patient. She needs to understand and partial simply won't do.