32 - Tie Your Heart At Night To Mine

[worldofourown]

... This again?

[ Karl's expression, dripping disdain, says it all. ]

Any familiar faces out there? Hm~?

Won't you come out and dance for me, Saya?

[OOC: Have at him! Anything goes!<3 ]

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[worldofourown]

[ What might become of Solomon? Oh, Saya. You'd be shocked. The very family he betrayed, the very brother he killed, has kept him as a houseguest in his manor. Karl's feelings for Solomon are a racemose pattern -- resentment and hatred dovetailing with empathy. Can't be helped. ]

[ They are obsessed with the same woman, after all. ]

[ He smells her blood, rich and spicysweet, as it infuses her sword. He sees her lunge at him, and multiple flashes of her strobe through his eyes, flaring and fizzling, each a different time and place -- but identical in their aura of radiant violence. While her eyes are hard, Karl's are filled with fury and morbid delight. His left hand distorts, a jagged green claw. The right remains hidden in the folds of his coat. She'll notice in a moment, but it's missing. Traded to the Deities in exchange for Diva's babies. ]

[ The empty sleeve flaps behind him as swoops in, lightning-fast. ]

[sangreine]

[Perhaps not shocked so much as guilty. She never managed to give Solomon all that he needed from her; she'd always known she never could. It took everything she had to manage merely herself while her own grief suffocated her.]

[Saya does notice the missing arm, in that distant, tactically-oriented way that tells her to pivot right instead of left. She brings her blade down in a bright arc, its blood-tinted edge driving down toward the empty sleeve in a rushing blur.]

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[ Allow him, Saya, to suffocate in emotion with you. He's always seen them as a pair -- two beings straddling loneliness and ruin, lapsing toward nothingness. There's so very little for them in life. But perhaps, in death, they'll find a perfect oblivion. ]

[ When she swings the sword, he pivots, deflecting with his claw. Steel crashes off leathery flesh with a clang not unlike metal on stone. He's spent the past few months in the City slaughtering monsters, sparring with angels. He's quicker than he was -- if no less reckless. ]

[sangreine]

[She too is faster than when she last fought him, training day and night with Haji at her side, defeating Karl's mistress. There's no more hesitation left over from Saya's former life, back when she had Riku and Kai and everyone to lose. Now it's just her and her blade, and the thing she wants to drive it through.]

[She pushes off, jumping back before launching overhead, her momentum focused in her sword arm as she whips it around, the tip aimed at the back of his neck. Just one good hit...]

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[ Every lethal move, every livid expression -- he relishes it. The closest she's been that that terrifying Valkyrie in Vietnam. The one who chopped off his arm and sent him spiraling into utter desolation. She'd shown him how very lopsided and incomplete his existence was. ]

[ She'd proven that unless he could destroy her, he'd never know peace. ]

[ He whirls -- a sweeping flourish like a dancer's, deflecting her blow with his demonic forearm. Blood thrumming, exhilarated to finally play out their battle. One he's tried to replicate in every spar, every deathmatch, but found no likeness of anywhere. His smile is equal parts sanguinary and dreamy. ]

A splendid move, dear Saya.

How wonderful, that you've stopped hiding from what you truly are.

[sangreine]

I was never hiding. [She lands spryly on the balls of her booted feet, rocking forward in preparation for another attack. But not yet, without Haji beside her she has to be cautious.] I'm just not what you think I am. I'm not like you.

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Do you truly believe that? [ His voice is thick with disdain, barbed to cut. This is better than best, it's perfect. It doesn't matter when they're clashing like this that the City is surreal or that Karl is not truly breathing. Everything falls away. This is what he knows -- it lets him forget everything but the tangle of screams in his head of black hair and blue/red eyes. ] How many days would you go without blood, hm~? How many weeks pretending to be innocent and pathetically human -- before you give in to what you are. Attack the first person in sight? Friend. Foe. It wouldn't matter. Because you're a monster -- driven by instinct.

And that's all you'll ever be.