Léonie Tremble (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pythonissam) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ourhaven2015-09-20 12:42 pm
pythonissam) wrote in ourhaven2015-09-20 12:42 pm
video; (mild horror warning)
[It's been so long since she last had anything to say on the rune, since she last did anything much more than travel from Veldime to the Market and back, perhaps to the Steppe once or twice for a few extra things. One might be forgiven for thinking she'd left, returned back home to whatever terrible deeds she has waiting for her but no, still here, still quiet, still in the shadows.
When the rune flickers to life, white lines flash through it, as if it's somehow managed to fall into disrepair through lack of use; she's had time to study it, to play with it, not quite so easy to play with curses but well, there's not any real social media here in the first place is there?
Eventually something plays, something she's been working on for some time.]
[In the Market the central carousel spins and spins as black figures crowd ever closer, as Leonie sits with Persephone coiled about her throat, gold and fierce and hissing. The screen cuts to black, only her voice that still rises above the din of the Market and the discordant music approaching a frenzy behind her.]
And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
[The screen brightens. Veldime, her kitchen, her quiet little house and the rows of plant pots crowding every ledge. Three cards she turns over one by one.]
This your past. [At the turning of the first card, a man on a white horse, bearing aloft a banner is revealed.] This is Death; no one is surprised, Death is transition, one stage to the next. It usually sticks; we are born, we age, we die, we move beyond and the body withers, the spirit fades, the soul goes up or down or it stays stuck and screams. Death brings change, transformation. [A chime rings, echoes, back and forth like a metronome.] The Hermit. [A second card, a man old and done, his lit lantern containing a star of six points, stood in the wastelands with the mountains beyond.] He is your present; the answers you seek, and you do seek them, they gnaw at your bones, they would crack them open to get at the marrow, they are hungry, howling, always wanting. These answers can only be found inside you. [The last card, a sly smile on the reveal, a figure cloaked in black and again the land is barren but for five cups.] This is the future and this card is never happy. Grief, disappointment, regret – this card is all of those. It means you have taken things for granted so you don't value life. But look, there are five cups. Three are spilled but two are not. It means that change may come, though this man can't see those two cups. Remember that.
[It shifts, a low humming growl as the chime strikes louder, smoke pluming around the edges. A strange scuttling of some many-legged beast. A reedy hiss of the fire lizard. A bark from a beast of the Steppe made to bend and yield.
A figure kneels in the midst of a chalk and salt circle. His eyes are fevered even in the dark but he kneels of his own free will and when she steps between the sigls, toes at the edge of the circle he tips his face up into her hand without flinching, smiling in wonder. She hands the rune off and up, up to her fire lizard who grabs it in her mouth and wings upward to some dark spot, peering down on proceedings.]
Remember, the kindness of witches. We break the chains in this world and the next, we walk the paths we made ourselves because you would have set the rest with thorns to stop us. You should always place your trust in a witch though; we know. We remember.
[Four little altars, each alike but not flank the circle, nestled between the swirls and lines and symbols of her sigils. The smoke that curls through the air as she walks is too thick to make out any real details but if this place brings people and places, why shouldn't she bring the names of demons and angels and everything else with her? Why shouldn't she invoke them and offer them such gifts for a price?]
When has a dragon ever given you this?
[The north point is air, it is the mind; long white feathers so delicate and fine they could be snow or ice, covered with a square of cloth so thin it might as well be glass, small bird ornaments dotted around it that appear to take flight.
The south point is water, it is emotion; a bowl of water filled with silver fish – are they real or is it the smoke and the height and the flickering of candles that sets them to swimming – and a bowl of blood because blood is the water of life, too dark, too red to tell where it came from.
The east point is earth, it is the nature of balance even if the point they dance on is a fine one; there is sage, small trees in pots, other plants from all about the havens and beyond growing green and strong, sand poured in a long lazy curving line and fresh dark earth shining black.
The west point is fire, it is the nature of purification and all things are pure depending where you stand, and it is change, the nature of will and she has always been fire; there are candles, of there are so many candles of different colours and shapes, a dragon hemmed in by them because a dragon is fire, and this one snarls as if to escapes, the flickering play of light and shadow bringing the carved features to life.]
This is the world and you are the core, with air and water, earth and fire, man and woman, sun and moon, life and death. It's not so difficult to make a world. It's even easier to unmake it. You came because you dared. Because you wanted the dark – I let it in here, I let something in and I haven't forgotten that.
[Time passes or it doesn't; it's hard to tell when the fire lizard holding the rune is above and wheeling restlessly in the opposite direction to Leonie, as if time is running forward and back, meeting twice in the middle for each revolution. The bowls boil, the feathers rise, the plants burst their pots; the candles collapse inward and paint drips from the dragon as it catches light, twisting the features into something monstrous. There is a cry above the chime, above that droning low note, wavering, pulsing until it stops and Leonie grabs for the wrists of the kneeling man, her hair a black curtain, her forehead against his.]
You can unmake a thing even if you never made it, sometimes that's even easier.
[The lizard wheels down, landing on her shoulders and Leonie takes the rune, her own eyes completely black, all the light swallowed up but the young man the rune is turned to kneels quietly, limp, shaking. There's a blankness about him, as if empty, a curious sort of slump.]
There are no strings on me. [A mocking little sing-song, soft but not sweet.]
Everything can fall. The air can topple it or whip at it to whittle it away, the waters can rise to corrode it bit by bit or drown, fire can melt if it has a mind to or all else can be consumed by it, the earth can rise to break and rupture or it can swallow everything. Anything can fall, no matter what they think holds them up. Not even faith is enough.
Everything falls.
When the rune flickers to life, white lines flash through it, as if it's somehow managed to fall into disrepair through lack of use; she's had time to study it, to play with it, not quite so easy to play with curses but well, there's not any real social media here in the first place is there?
Eventually something plays, something she's been working on for some time.]
[In the Market the central carousel spins and spins as black figures crowd ever closer, as Leonie sits with Persephone coiled about her throat, gold and fierce and hissing. The screen cuts to black, only her voice that still rises above the din of the Market and the discordant music approaching a frenzy behind her.]
And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
[The screen brightens. Veldime, her kitchen, her quiet little house and the rows of plant pots crowding every ledge. Three cards she turns over one by one.]
This your past. [At the turning of the first card, a man on a white horse, bearing aloft a banner is revealed.] This is Death; no one is surprised, Death is transition, one stage to the next. It usually sticks; we are born, we age, we die, we move beyond and the body withers, the spirit fades, the soul goes up or down or it stays stuck and screams. Death brings change, transformation. [A chime rings, echoes, back and forth like a metronome.] The Hermit. [A second card, a man old and done, his lit lantern containing a star of six points, stood in the wastelands with the mountains beyond.] He is your present; the answers you seek, and you do seek them, they gnaw at your bones, they would crack them open to get at the marrow, they are hungry, howling, always wanting. These answers can only be found inside you. [The last card, a sly smile on the reveal, a figure cloaked in black and again the land is barren but for five cups.] This is the future and this card is never happy. Grief, disappointment, regret – this card is all of those. It means you have taken things for granted so you don't value life. But look, there are five cups. Three are spilled but two are not. It means that change may come, though this man can't see those two cups. Remember that.
[It shifts, a low humming growl as the chime strikes louder, smoke pluming around the edges. A strange scuttling of some many-legged beast. A reedy hiss of the fire lizard. A bark from a beast of the Steppe made to bend and yield.
A figure kneels in the midst of a chalk and salt circle. His eyes are fevered even in the dark but he kneels of his own free will and when she steps between the sigls, toes at the edge of the circle he tips his face up into her hand without flinching, smiling in wonder. She hands the rune off and up, up to her fire lizard who grabs it in her mouth and wings upward to some dark spot, peering down on proceedings.]
Remember, the kindness of witches. We break the chains in this world and the next, we walk the paths we made ourselves because you would have set the rest with thorns to stop us. You should always place your trust in a witch though; we know. We remember.
[Four little altars, each alike but not flank the circle, nestled between the swirls and lines and symbols of her sigils. The smoke that curls through the air as she walks is too thick to make out any real details but if this place brings people and places, why shouldn't she bring the names of demons and angels and everything else with her? Why shouldn't she invoke them and offer them such gifts for a price?]
When has a dragon ever given you this?
[The north point is air, it is the mind; long white feathers so delicate and fine they could be snow or ice, covered with a square of cloth so thin it might as well be glass, small bird ornaments dotted around it that appear to take flight.
The south point is water, it is emotion; a bowl of water filled with silver fish – are they real or is it the smoke and the height and the flickering of candles that sets them to swimming – and a bowl of blood because blood is the water of life, too dark, too red to tell where it came from.
The east point is earth, it is the nature of balance even if the point they dance on is a fine one; there is sage, small trees in pots, other plants from all about the havens and beyond growing green and strong, sand poured in a long lazy curving line and fresh dark earth shining black.
The west point is fire, it is the nature of purification and all things are pure depending where you stand, and it is change, the nature of will and she has always been fire; there are candles, of there are so many candles of different colours and shapes, a dragon hemmed in by them because a dragon is fire, and this one snarls as if to escapes, the flickering play of light and shadow bringing the carved features to life.]
This is the world and you are the core, with air and water, earth and fire, man and woman, sun and moon, life and death. It's not so difficult to make a world. It's even easier to unmake it. You came because you dared. Because you wanted the dark – I let it in here, I let something in and I haven't forgotten that.
[Time passes or it doesn't; it's hard to tell when the fire lizard holding the rune is above and wheeling restlessly in the opposite direction to Leonie, as if time is running forward and back, meeting twice in the middle for each revolution. The bowls boil, the feathers rise, the plants burst their pots; the candles collapse inward and paint drips from the dragon as it catches light, twisting the features into something monstrous. There is a cry above the chime, above that droning low note, wavering, pulsing until it stops and Leonie grabs for the wrists of the kneeling man, her hair a black curtain, her forehead against his.]
You can unmake a thing even if you never made it, sometimes that's even easier.
[The lizard wheels down, landing on her shoulders and Leonie takes the rune, her own eyes completely black, all the light swallowed up but the young man the rune is turned to kneels quietly, limp, shaking. There's a blankness about him, as if empty, a curious sort of slump.]
There are no strings on me. [A mocking little sing-song, soft but not sweet.]
Everything can fall. The air can topple it or whip at it to whittle it away, the waters can rise to corrode it bit by bit or drown, fire can melt if it has a mind to or all else can be consumed by it, the earth can rise to break and rupture or it can swallow everything. Anything can fall, no matter what they think holds them up. Not even faith is enough.
Everything falls.
Video
[What a smile she gives, cold and hard, a woman who knows no mercy because her anger is too great. How dare he rise above his station, how dare those dragons he worships do the same and shirk any responsibility. Hence the warning, hence the lesson, all of it able to be seen by any in the havens.]
As if you would ever know what that feels like, don't forget that I know you. Intimately. I know your sorry life and how you bend the way the grass does under rain and foot and wind. I do only what the dragons have done to you but at least I'm kinder than they are and well you should know it. Did I leave you with the doubts? No. You came to me to learn the truth.
[How else do you break a person? You show them their life, you sum it up in so few words so it's the bare bones and all the ugly pieces, the things they fear and deny, and she makes them look. It's sometimes even better than the nightmares.]
Oh I can oblige there revenant, the havens is ripe for a slaughter when all of you chose to absolve the dragons.
Video
[Kain knows it was stupid to believe her words, of all people. He knows this mentally, and yet just the same as he'd gone to Golbez and ultimately Zemus' side, he'd been... taken in by her words. By her. Yet again, someone with a stronger will than his own had manipulated him.]
The dragons have always been far kinder to me than you've ever been. Hmmph. I have more doubts now than ever before... but not about the dragons. But about my life... my existence...
[She's made him question what he is. In those quiet moments while just falling asleep or waking... in those lonely grey hours of the morning... those are times when the thoughts intrude. Times when he wonders if he's still a shade. Times when he knows he's only some sort of undead. He shudders at those sort of thoughts, but they're always there, always chasing after him.]
Go ahead, try to kill me. I'll fight you with everything I have.
Video
[Time is the serpent devouring itself, pulling tighter and tighter until start and end pass one another, until you can’t tell anything apart. Time repeats and because the past is the past, it can be repeat as well, trodding the same path, wearing a groove so deep there’s no climbing out of it.]
Kindness isn’t always a kindness; the kindness of a witch is the truth, the kindness of a dragon is a lie. Which do you prefer? A bitterness that you would know of before or a sweetness that masks a poison and chokes you on your own bile in the end? How can you not doubt the dragons when you doubt yourself? If you hadn’t been brought here you would never have fought for them, had you never fought for them you would never have died for them and your...friend, you would never have been a shade and you would never have held any interest to me. [Can you imagine that? A life free of her, where you would have annoyed her for speaking so rudely to Shadow but her gaze would have moved on in time, found someone else to focus on and to torment the way she has with him.
She laughs. About her neck, charms jingle softly until she laughs so hard she has to throw her head back to get her hair out of the way.]
Oh revenant, whatever made you think I would slaughter you? I have no wish to bear the Mark of Cain, I must find myself an Abel and you must linger on.
Re: Video
[Except it is truth, a truth he'd like so much to deny. But he can't. No matter what he does, no matter how far he runs, he can't get away from the fact of what's happened to him. He can't deny that he's died and returned, a revenant in actuality.]
Perhaps that was my fate all along, before this. I've died in another world, after all, just before I arrived... and that had nothing to do with the dragons. But I truly wish it hadn't happened here.
[Now that he's drawn her attention in such a way, he'll never be rid of her and he hates that so much.]
Then what do you want of me, if not to kill me? Why do you endlessly torment me?
Video
[Anger has her hissing, her eyes darker than they have any right to be, her hands curling tight about the rune and Persephone lets loose a high discordant note that echoes strangely about the room. Leonie’s own rune has drunk deep of her magic by now and the way the screen warps for a moment is a sign of that before she breathes, some of the colour draining out of her cheeks again. Do you truly want to test her? It wouldn’t take much to push her into something more terrible. The rune pans down as she breathes and the man that’s no longer a man is cowering, sweat making his skin shine as he shivers and presses as low as he can, flat on his belly.]
Did you think it would make her love you more? That you would be the gallant knight? That’s not how it works, no woman like her wants a dead thing in their bed.
[You’re not with a witch after all and Terra is so beneath Leonie’s notice it’s laughable.]
Because I can? Why does anyone truly do anything? Maybe I want to know just how far you can go, how deep these delusions you hold about yourself and your place in the world go. Or maybe, it’s because you keep coming back and I’m nothing if not generous.
Video
[But, again, there's a tone of desperation there. He has to believe that her words aren't right about him, that she doesn't know all of the hideous secrets he'd rather keep hidden from the world.]
I'm not dead! Not anymore... I know what you've told me but at least... at least I'm not physically dead... My heart beats, my breath stirs and my flesh is warm... I'm far from a zombie.
[He's still not sure that's enough, though, and she's done plenty to convince him that some part of him never truly left the grave... some part of his soul, his essence is dead and gone for good.]
Video
[The snort of disgust is an ugly thing, as well it should be as she makes herself comfortable, almost wishing she had wine to enjoy all of this with because it's the most fun she's had in so long. She could make her new pet do it but she likes it down here where she can feel his heart fluttering, a bird in a cage.]
Or you think that. Look what the dragons have done; either you believe they have the power to make you think such a thing or to weave such an illusion or you have to deny they have such power.
Video
[Being told that he has anything in common with Leonie of course bothers Kain on a very deep level. He makes a face, beyond agitated at the whole conversation. Yet he can't make himself pull away. She gets to him in a way no one else can... she's gotten to him already, and it's too late to take it back now.]
The dragons restored my life. They fully restored my life, it can't be otherwise. It's not an illusion...
[But again, there's the hesitation and doubt.]
Video
[When he always gives such a reaction, it's little wonder that she has to go pressing down on raw wounds with a smile on her face, excited at the prospect of more.]
You can't restore life. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, not even a necromancer can raise a thing as it was. Your dragons can't even defend their own lands. Would they have allowed you to plant a seed of doubt, revenant?
[It was there, wasn't it? Who doesn't doubt themselves even in near-death? She only nurtured, let it grow good and strong.]
Video
[But that was in his own world and it was different entirely, involving a magical power on top of a mountain... and a battle against that darker self. He doesn't know all the details about what Cecil actually went through, but he has the basic idea anyway. And he assumes
unfortunately wrongly that he destroyed that darkness rather than accepted it.]I... I don't know. They wouldn't have meant to plant doubt in me. Surely they meant to restore me fully to life... and they must have done so. But... if energy cannot be destroyed, surely it's entirely that way for my own life energy, it wasn't destroyed...
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[The rune is set down, at her kitchen table and angled in such a way to show her victim as he sways, the sound of her footsteps enough to show that he leans towards her, a flower seeking the sun. Do you know your Shakespeare, revenant? His eyes are curiously empty until she reappears with tea, her hand petting the side of his face like a cat until he shudders, eyes rolling back and closed before he drops to his knees. The rune reclaimed, she settles herself, eyeing him over the brim of her cup, amused as she so often is with him because what must it feel like, to be so very deep in denial that you're drowning without knowing?]
But if energy is power, and the dragons needed you to fight their battle, how much came back? Are you even you? If we think of it as I do then you could be anything in there, some other life force shoved inside, harvested from where Druaga keeps them because I tell you this - I felt nothing when you came to me a Shade. My magic sensed nothing and I should have felt a pulse, a buzz, a spark.
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[Kain slams his fist down hard, growling and making other sounds of rage and frustration as he watches her mindless servant doing as she bids. He would either free or kill that man, and have no problem doing either. He'd certainly try the freeing first, of course, but if he couldn't... well... better to die than live as a mindless puppet. He glares harder at her, but then abruptly, his expression grows anxious. He has to ask, but he knows already what she'lls say. After all, he's gone to her since. Going to her had caused all of these other dark problems to surface.]
Do you... still sense nothing from me, even now?
[Kain tries to counter the rest of what she's saying, as much as he can, anyway.]
This light I speak of isn't the light of death... death is darkness, anyway, isn't it? This... this light helped my friend, it cast out his darkness and made him stronger than ever before.
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They cry when they know they’re going to die. They do as commanded, they fight as viciously as they need to but there are tears on their faces when she finds them later, blood still wet on their mouths and the body not even fully cold.]
You should come so I can tell you to your face, come for tea like you did before. We could make a whole evening of it; tell your boring little love a lie and come to me when it’s late, that’s the best hour for such things and if I need to, I can always kill my pet and have a Shade all my own.
[Bind the spirit and the soul and even when they depart they can be yours until you cut it away.]
Can something be only one thing? What if death is the great release? La petit mort, the little death, that’s what we call orgasms where I come from after all, so death can be many things and light isn’t always good. Light might cast out darkness but only light can cast a shadow so who is to say the darkness ever even left in the first place?
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[His dreams have never been the same since that meeting, even more filled with dark and terrible things. With truths he’d never wanted to face. What bothers him is that he can’t tell if it’s from the darkness already inside him… or from something she planted in him. He knows what he’s capable of and he knows he hasn’t been the same since that darker self was first stirred up. Dying seems to have make it all so much worse.]
I… I don’t know if it truly left, but… but he found some way not to let it control him.
[Not the way it controls Kain. He hates that his friend is better than him at so many things, including his power over darkness. After all, in the gods’ war, Cecil could shift with ease between his paladin and dark knight powers, something which still troubles Kain even now. He’d thought he destroyed, cast off the darkness completely. But instead he did seem to have… harnessed it somehow.]
When I died… it was unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. It was horrible, a loss of control…
[But he hesitates, because it had also been this incredible rush of freedom. Of release, as she’s said. He really doesn’t want to admit that to her, though.]
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You aren’t him. You’ll never be him. [No, she doesn’t need to know Cecil to know because she knows Kain, inside and out because Kain has her fingerprints everywhere now, in places no one else will ever see. There’s an intimacy to magic and it wrings you out if you go scrabbling for it - how else do you rid yourself of it without cutting off limbs and peeling back flesh?] You have a spine that bends and bends, not something made to stand or snap. You are weak. You think witches know only darkness? It’s light that casts the shadow, we know all things but you only know yourself and the hand of your betters scruffing you with their voice at your ear. Those who know the shadows and master them? We do it by acceptance. There is no world where you accept it. You will fight it or succumb.
[She leans forward and there’s something about her mood that makes the person sob pitifully in the background, not even a human cry, the cry of an animal lost and alone, too far gone to remember to be silent, to lie still in the long grass and wait.]
But doesn’t giving up that control feel so satisfying?
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[That’s the thing he’s always feared though. That it doesn’t come naturally to him to be that good person, that he has to fight against his true nature to find that better side. The darkness is deep and has a very firm hold upon him, he can’t ever deny that, unfortunately. There’s his appalling lust for Rosa, his best friend’s wife. There’s his overall envy of Cecil, a jealousy that’s nearly destroyed him. He probably has all seven deadly sins covered in full. Then there’s just… the darker self that Zemus stirred up in him. He can’t be rid of it, no matter how hard he tries. And it’s true, he realizes with a shudder. She’s seen his worst thoughts and feelings, peered into his darkness and glimpsed the truth. She probably knows him better than he does himself, a terrible thought indeed.]
I don’t want to be Cecil, I just… I want to be as good as him. Better than him.
[No use hiding it from her, all his life has been an attempt to surpass someone, whether his father or Cecil.]
And I am not weak! Never call me that. Giving up control is the best… no, no, NO- [Oh god oh god what’s wrong with him? How did that slip like that? He loathes the effect she has on him, uuuugh. This is wrong, so wrong. Yet there is that side of him that wants to accept the darkness, that wants the freedom of giving up....] The worst. The worst feeling imaginable.
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[And you covet, don't you. Oh how badly you covet the things beyond your reach revenant, all the things you want in this world and she knows it, she's seen it and run her fingers against the strings to feel them resonate, all the notes that make up his life. The lust was the surprise, she hadn't thought him capable of it, but that only makes her like it all the more, because lust is so often tied to shame, a dirty thing to be scrubbed away. That awful thing that lurks in him could be coaxed out, could be tempted and part of her wants to see it. Not a servant but a force of nature to be unleashed as the other part of him shrieks and pounds the glass until he shatters.]
Better. Oh revenant. [It could almost be mistaken for sincere if not for how she keeps smiling, if not for the pity in her tone that curls the corners of her lips, her fire lizard trilling as the bond broadcasts the perverse satisfaction Leonie feels in such moments and when he slips-
Oh when he slips it's sinking into a hot bath at the end of the day, it's making a world within a room until that world eclipses all other things, it's the ancient power that sings within her in places where power has always sat, invisible, unnoticed.]
I think you know what you want to say. You wear a chain you cannot lift alone, that drags in the dirt behind you. You need someone to take it up for you. Someone with the spine for it. You only want acceptance but you keep pressing your cheek to the wrong hands, darling revenant.
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[As always, Kain scowls at her use of her name for him, but he can’t really escape it, so he’s give up even fighting her on it. He’s more appalled at himself and what he’s just said. It had been an instant of slipping, of giving in to the side of him that longs to be chained and bound, that’s almost disturbingly aroused in a sense by the notion of forsaking all control forever to be a mere puppet, a pawn, a tool. He wants it bad and he’s so glad they’re separated by distance right now, or else she’d know the extent of how deep that craving goes.]
What’s so wrong with wanting acceptance? I ask no one else to carry my burdens as I’ve said, but… if there were some means to lighten the load… there’s nothing wrong with that… I do not want to be anyone’s puppet.
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[Of all the things he thinks of her, at least she hasn't every been prey to something so base or petty. Her wants are power and control, balancing forces when her magic is wild because entropy requires it. She will be content with the woman that will enter her life, with her place within the community, she won't reach too far and warm her empty bed with thoughts of breaking sacred vows.
When even something as supposedly despicable as her can manage that then oh revenant, how much further can you fall?]
You don't ask but only because people know that they must and they're better at hiding the irritation of you. You want them to love you because you think it will make you like them, as if their goodness, their humility, their contentment will rub off on you but all you do is blacken their hands.
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[But he does and always has, and probably always will. He can never be as good as Cecil, never be as admired or loved, never hope to aspire to reach him. Not even close. Kain hates himself for those failings, but he hates himself most for having this jealousy in the first place. Envy, his worst sin...]
It’s not like that! I’m not as black and awful as you say! It’s not true, it’s not… I’ve never corrupted anyone… I may wish that I could be as good as some others, and I try to live up to that… but I’m not… so horrible… Please. You must be wrong. There must be some good in me, there must… Isn’t that supposed to be a sign I’m still good, still redeemable? That I still strive and fight to reach the light?
[Something he might never reach, no matter how high he jumps.]
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[After all, Leonie is as guilty as any she knows for slipping into her future enough to know and plan accordingly to make sure she ends up at just the right destination. Valentina has waves but her hair is the same, fine-spun. One day she should tell him fairy tales, but the ones with the unhappy endings, where there are no heroes and hungry beasts licking their lips.]
You can struggle all your life and fail, and there are others who are not like me and who will feel sympathy. They will expend their energy on you, trying to drag you with them or carry you. Is that fair to them? That they care and yet by the very virtue of you being you that you will exhaust them and envy how they can move through life so easily?
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[He looks away for a moment, frustrated at what she's saying. It's true, he envies almost everyone else he comes across, because they have it so easy, their lives are so much simpler than his own. No one else has to struggle the way he does. No one else has this constant darkness inside them the way he does, not even Cecil's darkness was this bad.]
What are you saying, that I should give up? Find some way to fade, to return to the grave, is that what you want of me? [Kain clenches his hands into fists.] I've never asked anyone to carry me or my burdens, and I'm not about to start.