Day 64: Chapel

[she_is_ruin]

Exchanging life stories with a being she had no personal attachments to? Yomi could do better. Once her nurse came to check up on her at the end of shift, she excused herself, leaving Skulduggery to his own devices. He had gotten some answers out of her, which was more than she owed him. Let him count that as a success.

As for herself, she didn’t feel any more inclined toward company than she had before Skulduggery had found her. If there was no amusement or payoff in spending time with others, there was no point. And in truth, there was some company in particular she would be happier avoiding.

With stronger strides than she’d managed last night, Yomi veered away from the common activity areas, letting her feet carry her out into the hall and up the stairs to the second floor. She felt closer to her old self--which old self, she wasn’t sure--when she was moving with purpose, even if it was only an illusion.

But often illusions had proved themselves more comforting than reality in Landel’s domain, she had to admit. Reality had been nothing but a burden the last few days.

At the end of her walk, she found herself in the Chapel, which was appropriate, since it was the last place she remembered before blacking out the night prior. The fountain, though, that was gone. She stood looking down at the spot where the inscription had been and wondered if she should make the Chapel her destination again in a few hours, when the sun had gone down. Now that Skulduggery was off her case and all.

Comments

[purgatio]

A discussion with one's sibling on the topic of death and words to say to ones yet again living was well and good, but by the end of the shift, the fact remained. Both that girl's words and the note on the board pointed to the fact of Yomi being alive, and it only left Albedo's own experience to see.

One could wonder why he was surprised about her apparent revival, but it came down to the methods. Her wounds that opened on her body during the course of that night hadn't closed but only worsened, as if she had no healing whatsoever. And yet, she did, didn't she? Have some kind of regeneration. So the only factor that could be considered was that it had been turned off. Therefore, when he killed her....

She should have remained dead.

His feelings on the subject weren't as clear as that statement, but he believed what he had thought the day before. If her words in the coliseum were true, then Yomi--

She mourned the loss of the chance of death. He understood a sentiment like that, placed within such a familiar method. Perhaps it wasn't a surprise, then, when he saw long dark hair moving up stairs, that he used what was allotted him to follow behind. By the time he reached the top, the sound of the chapel's doors came, and belatedly, he followed.

Was there an irony to be found? He remembered Meche suddenly, Saint Magdalene, and was thrown off by the corresponding memories. Brothers, death, and defining regeneration. Defining wounds.

The boy swallowed, head cocking as he stared at the back of Yomi, her hair pooling down her back. Like someone pulled, not a moth to a flame, but a creature to something like, he took a step inward, then another. Albedo paused, waited.

Watched.

[she_is_ruin]

That there were eyes on her, even here, was no great wonder. Being watched was a familiar feeling for someone who’d been watched all of her life. Proud gazes, intimidated gazes, jealous gazes, pitying gazes… they’d chiseled out her identity and made her recognizable as the person she was.

The watching wasn’t the problem. It was what they were seeing.

Yomi transferred her weight from her good leg to her bad leg, wondering when it was one of her merry Coliseum acquaintances had decided to follow her. Who else could it be but one of them? No one else had cause to follow her so far, or likely the hospital privilege to do so. Doubtful anyone else would bother.

Hatred roared forth inside her, black and bottomless. It had the taste of helplessness to it.

And after a few moments, the silence still remained unbroken, a contrast to Klavier’s insistent dialogue the night he’d found her. She waited to see if anything would come out of it, angling her head with a whisper of cloth. Watching had its limits. "What?" she asked without turning around. "Only the dead don’t speak."

[purgatio]

Time seemed to pause, and in the aftermath of that frozen moment, she spoke, without movement to claim as her own.

Only the dead don't speak. How ironic. It seemed that she was closer to herself than broken than a girl would have had him believe. At the least, Yomi was able to move. As he was. As Ritsuka and Nigredo did. Still, his throat dried up, syllables swallowed under his tongue. His fingertips found his opposite arm and tightened into a sleeve. He stared.

Only the dead don't speak. "...Yet we still are vocal when we need," he said. "Even after we've died." Even after we've returned.

[she_is_ruin]

The sound of the boy’s voice confirmed her suspicions. Figures that it would be Albedo. When one’s murder victim was still strolling around after the fact, it would be rather hard to ignore them. And likewise ignore him--her murderer, in a sense.

"If you’re being vocal, then you’re not dead. That‘s obvious," Yomi pointed out, looking over her shoulder. "What’s the problem, afraid you’ve seen a ghost or something? Don’t worry, I’m not a hallucination come to haunt you. I don’t think Landel ever intended to have me die."

Her heart had surely stopped, but maybe that had been enough to appease Landel and the Coliseum's rules. The illusion of death.

[purgatio]

"You'd have to define alive first," he quipped back, the threads of taunt nerves shifting around his eyes. She, at least, seemed not to have suffered for her fate. He wondered if he should put any stock in what that girl had said. Or if Yomi had just evolved past it in the day since.

He continued, "I don't hallucinate." You, the unsaid sentence ended. He wouldn't hallucinate her. "You were dead, though." That had been determined. Her waveform dulling to nothing. "You didn't come back from your own power? You came back from his?"

It meant something, that difference. Something he didn't want to consider at the moment.

[she_is_ruin]

Ah, yes. ‘Alive’ had many shades to it. She had more than enough personal experience to testify to that fact, but she resisted chasing the comment further. At the end of the day, the only important thing to keep in mind was that alive was alive and dead was… well, not. Everything else was just water under the bridge, as she’d told Noriyuki once upon a time.

She had to remember that she was back now. That she was still in the Institute, still a player in the game; there was no room to continue to pick at invisible wounds and sob over her beleaguered fate. The sesshouseki wouldn’t tolerate a weak carrier.

So she smiled a little, smooth and easy. “Oh, I apologize, tough guy. Of course you don’t.” The other questions were a bit harder to address, however--just thinking about them created ripples in waters she’d tried hard to still ever since her awakening in the morgue. “Yes, I was dead… I assume putting my body out of commission was enough to release you all from the arena. Regardless, I don’t know. I haven’t tested my limits, but…” She looked at the fountain, smile thoughtful. I made a wish and the wish came true. That was the easiest answer and closest to the truth, she thought. “I think you must have left my body as it was afterward: intact. Or near enough to it, anyway. That might have done the trick.”

Moving away from him, she stepped into a row and took a seat on one of the pews.

“So… what was the mood like? Did anyone cry? I always imagined attending my own wake and seeing what everyone said about me. Was I cast in a heroic light, after the fact? Spare no details.”

[purgatio]

Here was her words, the normal flow there as if nothing had transpired. He wondered, then, if it mattered. If it mattered that he had stuck her down when given the choice. Ironically, it was Nigredo's words that drove him opposite. Because it was his responsibility to face her with that knowledge.

And she gave knowledge in turn. Nothing that he could solidify into facts, but if one took her regeneration like his own, then it was possible. More than, actually. That if left alone under the right circumstances, she would return. It was that girl he had encountered that had spoken differently. That strange girl....

The boy swallowed, then exhaled, forcefully shifting his mood as an aspect of brevity, even if it wasn't close to any sort of 'normal'. This woman, though, had been the one to see him at his worst, in sorrow and in anger, and it no longer mattered, did it? What kind of face he showed her. "Sorry to say, I've been mostly by myself lately. And the night ended right after." Simple sentences with no details to place things to light.

"You're not doing anything wrong."

"I'm sorry."

He inhaled roughly, and looked sharply to the side, a hand coming up to clutch at his shoulder. "...There was a girl though. She said that you were upset when you came back." He glanced to her, a small look through his fringe of hair. "You didn't want to." To return, to find life again. "Did you."

[she_is_ruin]

“Oh…” She trailed off, looking almost bored at the boy’s response. “That’s disappointing.” It was nice to hear things about herself from other people’s perspective; it like hearing someone talk about a stranger. So many faces and there wasn’t a single person who knew the real one.

But then she smiled and gave Albedo a look. “And you? Were you sad? Ah, but you must have been a little happy that it wasn’t Nigredo--there is that, isn’t there?”

It was easy to talk about her own death (murder, more to the point), and she didn’t really care if it wasn’t quite as easy for others. Albedo had had a simple task. Not to kill someone he loved for love, but merely to kill for love. It didn’t get much simpler than that, not to people born for combat. But she had also given him permission. Taking away her life was nothing, and now that even death itself had proven temporary, there wasn’t much to be upset about.

Upset. Her smile became dry. Upset! Oh, the power of understatements.

Yomi knew at once who Albedo was talking about, though. That oblivious rag doll of a girl. Unfortunate, that her rendition of events had made the rounds--if there was one disadvantage to other people speaking about her, it was when they did so with a complete lack of context. “Oh, her. I guess you spoke to her.” She thought about how to answer, what the answer even was or what it should have been. “You said what you want is complicated--well, it’s the same for me. Too complicated for a short answer. But do you remember what I told you? I told you I’d already died. So if you want to keep things simple, then I’ll say you were doing me a favour back there.”

[purgatio]

He waited until he was done speaking, until she went over each item and left them hanging. There was something he couldn't quite understand, something that seemed off about this scenario, but he had no way to tell. Something was different, but whether it was Yomi or Albedo was left untold. "A favor," he repeated, once. "A favor that didn't take. More like a torment then."

A life that could not cease. Yes, he knew that very well.

As much as he knew what he would do to keep family unharmed from others--and this place as well. Wasn't he happy that it wasn't Nigredo? Of course he was. And she already knew that entirely. But that wasn't all that she asked. And he stared at her for a beat, violet staring at the same, before dropping his gaze to a place around her shoulder. "...I didn't want to kill you." As if that wasn't obvious. As if hesitation hadn't been mirrored in every movement he made. But still. "I didn't want to kill you at all."

late? ffff, what do you mean, late? :'D

[she_is_ruin]

Was he waiting for her to say 'yes'? Yes, she'd wanted to die? Yes, she was displeased to be back? He was going to be waiting a while then, because Yomi didn't particularly want to hang herself with her own words.

Not now. Not after everything that had gone into putting her back together.

You're a little late, Albedo. You could've heard me scream earlier.

She stared back without faltering. "Mm..." For a long moment after Albedo's words, the soft sound was the only sound she made. "So I see. I wouldn't have thought I'd here something like that again. Is this a guilty conscience?"