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. )
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 look exactly like my father did. Exactly. There was no point trying to pretend that I wasn't half-Mazoku, but they gave Hahaue a chance to escape. She wouldn't take it, so the soldier arrested us both. The other people in the village burned our house down with Chichiue's body still inside, because that was the custom there-to "cleanse" the area. I was twelve."
Conrad looks away. I f he stares very, very hard, he can almost see the bodies swinging over there. Almost. He can feel the thick, bunched up leather of the collar in his pocket. I said that you were mine. I said that I would protect you.
Conrad looks down at his loosely clasped hands. ". . . I'm sorry."
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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-
-he should have killed him, should have cut his throat and thrown him to his own dogs, should have drawn and quartered his corpse, should have-
Yozak closes his eyes and breathes deeply.
The mission was a success. He regrets nothing.
He opens his eyes again. The light reflecting off the water calms him slightly; it reminds him of where he is, and more importantly, who he's with. Being reminded of that is comforting and helps him relax again.
The pigeon coos up blankly at him.
"It wasn't easy," Yozak finally concedes, looking over at Conrad and wishing he could read his thoughts, or even see his eyes. "But yes."
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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.
The brunet leans back, crossing his arms to rub his biceps briefly. The muscles there feel too soft. He's lost his toning.
For a moment, he doesn't say anything, then he remembers that Yozak had mentioned Gwendal. It takes a minute for it to dawn on him that he really has no clue what happened or how Yozak found him. He feels a small pang of shame for his selfishness.
". . . What happened?" He pulls his legs up atop the cover and wraps his arms around his knees, resting his chin atop his knees. Yozak doesn't respond and he was waves a hand vaguely through the air as though to explain himself. "With Gwendal. And Greta. Everything."
Sunlight shimmers on the sea's surface.
"How did you find me?"
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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 still too fresh for that kind of intense probing.
Yozak chews on his lip, mentally moving through the past few days and trying to get a sense of time. "That was five days ago.
We haven't contacted the castle since we left, so I don't know what happened with them." He holds the pigeon a little higher. "Yet, at least."
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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.
"I take that back," Yozak says, suddenly turning his head to look out at the sea. Dai Shimeron is quickly slipping beneath the horizon line, but not quickly enough. "There were more casualties than just Herbst. The same day he went missing, the soldiers swept the city and dragged out all the Mazoku. They burned down the inn where we'd been staying."
Yozak tilts his head back, letting more of the sun fall onto his face. "We weren't there when they attacked, but the innkeeper and the waitresses..."
He sighs heavily and tips his head forward again, suddenly feeling much less talkative.
Damn letter.
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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.
Conrad looks away, returning his gaze back to the sea and the land of his ancestors as it slides away to merge into the thin line of the horizon. It all seemed so strangely peaceful. Too peaceful. It's surreal. Even the bodies of the swinging corpses had seemed more like paper dolls than real things.
He wraps his arms more tightly around his knees, pulling himself close.
"It wasn't anything you did," he admits at last in a low tone. "They brought a Box with them to exchange for Greta, but it was a fake. When he discovered it . . ."
"Strip him. But leave the collar."
"It wasn't anything you did."
Because they trusted me and I was the one who led him right to them.
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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.
Neither of them speak for a moment and the damned pigeon coos again, as though to remind them of the world away from the hatch cover. Conrad watches the little bird for a moment and suddenly--randomly--he remembers something.
"I lost the charm!" he blurts out, pouring a strange amount of guilt and anxiety into the words. "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--" He cuts off, suddenly aware that he's babbling and probably sounds like a lunatic. Besides, ending that sentence with 'And then he killed you,' was not going to make Yozak stop looking at him like that.
The brunet looks away again and squeezes his knees, embarrassed. ""He took it," he resumed softly in a much more reasonable tone.
He touched everything.
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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.'
He rubs Conrad's arm reassuringly, wishing he knew what to say to unravel the brunet's self-imposed cocoon. "Honestly, I expected it to get destroyed during the battle anyway. But as long as you enjoyed it while you had it, it doesn't matter to me what happened to the thing." He smiles softly. "I'll make you another one, if you want."
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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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Yozak smiles at Conrad. "What do you think? It's supposed to be at its best this time of year, and I need a break before we go back to that stuffy castle."
And so do you.
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