Salvation 1: Leashed
Day 19: 3:30 PM - The town of Mainz; The Docks/The Longshot]
[NOTE: This thread picks up from HERE.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to Lover for coming up with the "leashing" euphamism.
This post may contain vaguely disturbing content. Reader be warned.]
( The corpses looked almost as though they were dancing with one another. )
[NOTE: This thread picks up from HERE.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to Lover for coming up with the "leashing" euphamism.
This post may contain vaguely disturbing content. Reader be warned.]
( The corpses looked almost as though they were dancing with one another. )
"Take me to my cabin."
The boy complied immediately, leading the redhead below deck to the passengers' cabins. Their room was nice, Yozak noted with pleasure. There were several single beds in his cabin, a table with chairs, and a small desk. He found a pen and paper in the desk and settled down to scrawl out a quick letter to the Maou.
It was a short salutation, light on details and full of cheer, but Yozak's heart wasn't into it. When he finally rolled the scrap of paper shut, he was glad it was over. The letter, the journey, the mission...everything.
It was all over.
Now what?He lingers for a while after sealing the letter. The silence in the cabin is comforting, giving him a minute to collect his scattered thoughts. And besides, he doesn't want to be above deck while those lynched half-breeds are still swinging in plain sight, falling apart at their seams like rotting dolls. It brings back bad memories. This whole damn ( ... )
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He had not expected the other man to come near him after their ride--especially given how much they had been avoiding one another. For a moment vitriol sits on his tongue, but he swallows it and turns to look at the redhead. Yozak is . . . pretty. Soft in strange ways that Conrad would not normally associate with a man, but almost breathtakingly beautiful when the light catches him just right.
The hatch cover shifts slightly as Yozak settles down beside him, his cool blue eyes watching the dissapearing coast. Conrad wants to reach out and touch him to see if he's real, but then and odd sort of sadness casts a shadow over those eyes.
"No matter how many times I visit home, I never get tired of leaving. It looks better from this angle."
The tension in the brunet's shoulder slips away and he relaxes his hand.
"I ( ... )
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The pigeon coos softly when Yozak stops petting it. He quickly begins to pet the animal again, but he can't keep the curious expression off his face as he looks over at the brunet.
Why is Conrad sorry? He didn't do anything wrong...
"Why?"
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He picks the closest item at hand and shrugs loosely. "If I hadn't been captured, you would never have had to come back here." He watches the fingers of his left hand work over the knuckles of his right. Occasionally, he forgets that that's not really his own arm. "So I'm sorry."
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Yozak scoots a little closer to his friend, looking over at Conrad and waiting for the other man to meet his eyes. "And anyway, I wouldn't have trusted this mission to anyone else. I wanted to come."
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Is this pity?
The idea makes him want to snap. Reject him? Fine. Don't touch him? Fine. But pity . . .?
... But Yozak doesn't pity people, right?
The brunet looks over, features clouded by suspicion, and finds only sincerity. Trust it, or don't? Risk it, or . . .
He can't even stand to touch me. Saints, I must reek of that human.
Conrad rolls his shoulders, feeling itchy, as though his skin is too tight.
"And are you still glad you came?" The bitter words are out before he can take them back and the smaller man looks away abruptly, turning his face in the opposite direction as his companion. He hadn't meant to say that. He really hadn't.
But there it is.
That wine. His bed. The box . . . It feels like it's all tattooed itself on his body.
And now are you going to run away?
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The bitter words catch Yozak off-guard and he draws back a bit as Conrad turns away.
That was...unexpected.
The redhead looks down at the pigeon in his hands. Of course he's glad he came. Conrad is free. The mission was tough, of course, and dangerous, and
...and then the images of the box come to mind, and Conrad crying inside it, and then the sounds of snapping bones and stink of burning wood and the screaming screaming screaming and ( ... )
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He finds nothing. The lack of any weapon to use against the other man leaves him floundering in the conversation for a moment, annoyed and confused. Conrad looks back out at the sea, wondering what Yozak sees out there that makes him looks so calm.
I don't want to go back home. Don't you see how I am? If they saw me like this . . . But this time, he controls his tongue ( ... )
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He desperately wants to ask what happened, but holds his tongue. It's too soon, and their wounds are still too fresh.
He closes his eyes, thinking. "Gwendal came back...eight or nine days ago, I think? He told us what happened and where the spies were headed. He went with Hoka-Geika and Gunter to get Greta back, but we didn't find that out until we were in the city. By the time we got to Shimer City, they'd already left."
And that's when I heard you were married, he adds mentally. He desperately wants to ask Conrad about what happened, but seems wrong to mention that yet. They're still reacquainting themselves with small talk, after all. And Conrad hasn't asked about how Yozak spent those five or six days yet; the least the redhead can do is show him the same courtesy. Their wounds are ( ... )
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"Ten days, then. Since I was taken."
He opened his eyes, brow slightly furrowed. "Did anyone . . . Were any of the men lost?"
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The pigeon coos again. It's getting noisier, much to Yozak's annoyance. He vows to release it the second that Dai Shimeron disappears entirely beneath the horizon.
He opens his mouth to agree, but Conrad continues: "Did anyone...Were any of the men lost?"
"Just one: Eduard Herbst. Do you remember him? Widower, joined the unit last autumn, I think? They cut him down while he was trying to send a letter."
His eyes harden as he remembers the aftermath of that unfortunate setback. The smell of smoke and the dead bodies and the parts in the street ( ... )
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Conrad remembered. The man had been so, so proud when he was accepted in the unit. He went around town showing his new insignia to everyone who would stop look. He had been nice. Liked stray cats, if he recalled correctly.
Conrad looks over at Yozak. The other man's expression is dark and troubled and it takes a serious effort not to reach out and touch his face. The guilt is misplaced. Herbst had been doing his duty.
And the others . . . Well, their blood is on Conrad's hands. Not Yozak's.
"I have used you to rid my city of the parasites within it. All Mazoku in Shimer City are dead. I remembered, my boy. I remember who you associated with. They remembered who tried to seek you out. Even the exiles and the disillusioned, you were a powerful magnet. Thank you for that."So many failures to lay at his door. Should he tell him? Offer another weak apology? It isn't enough ( ... )
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"Nothing I did? I couldn't even walk in the streets without a hood on after that," he chuckles grimly. "I still think I made an impact."
He tilts his head towards Conrad slightly, again wanting to reach out and pull the man's defensive position apart. It's unfitting. Conrad looks so small when he does that, like he's trying to curl into himself and disappear. Yozak doesn't like it one bit, and he really doesn't like the way that Conrad keeps pulling more tightly into himself.
Throwing caution to the wind for the moment, he holds the pigeon securely with one hand and reaches over with his free hand, wrapping it loosely around Conrad's shoulders.
"Hey...are you all right?"
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"Hey...are you all right?"
He forces himself to meet Yozak's eyes. "Yes."
The lie sounds stupid the moment he says it, though, and he smiles shakily and looks away again, unable to maintain eye contact. ". . . No," he murmurs.
He stands on a dangerous edge for a moment; Yozak's touch is warm and very, very real and Conrad is ready to break apart--wants to break apart, even. But he can't. He won't. And so he steps away from that line by taking in a deep breath and shaking his head slowly. He wishes that he could explain or make an excuse, but he's not okay and he knows it ( ... )
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Yozak breathes softly, waiting for an elaboration, but Conrad just shakes his head slowly. The redhead thinks he understands, though. What he heard in the city, saw in the castle, and witnessed in the bedroom leaves little to his imagination. He doesn't need to hear all the gruesome little details right now, and he doesn't particularly want to. He just wants to be close to Conrad and watch Dai Shimeron fade away like a bad dream.
"I lost the charm!" Conrad blurts out suddenly, and Yozak blinks in surprise at the anguish in the other man's voice. "I tried to escape and hid all the pieces I could find in the dark, but then I got caught and I lost them and--"
Conrad looks away again, squeezing his knees tightly. "He took it."
He took it?Somehow, the thought of Belal pawing his hard work doesn't upset Yozak like he expects it should. And he's really not all that surprised when Conrad says 'pieces ( ... )
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And just like that, what was lost is replaced.
Conrad steals another glance at his former(?) lover. Yozak had yet to move his arm. He'd even offered to make him another charm.
He doesn't want to ask the question burning at the front of his mind, nor does he want to talk about that man or Dai Shimeron anymore. So that just left one thing.
"Where are we going now?"
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