Post by Value on Mar 17, 2014 1:01:02 GMT -5
As Sekai listened to Kohara, he could feel her recoiling. It was present in her aura, the way that her warmth seemed to retreat from the surface. She had been trying to comfort him...trying to remind him that she was there. And then she had started withdraw...maybe the Shinigami wasn't as good at reading her emotions as Takua was. It was like she saw a cliff before her, or maybe a forest of blades, and started to scamper away. The moment that Hi-to said that he wanted to protect her, he could feel the welling emotions in her. But more than that, he could feel the moment she started to pull away from them.
It was the moment she looked him.
And said nothing.
Takua had expected fire and fury. The quiet, forceful insistence that she didn't need to be protected and that she was a player in this too. Instead, she retreated. The human woman didn't stand up for herself, despite being so insistent about standing up for other people, when her own agency was threatened, she...did what? She played small. He could feel, however much she tried to hide it, the tiniest of flinches in her reiatsu. She had looked to him for something. What had she looked to him for? Support? To tell Hi-to that he was wrong?
...and she had looked at him and saw him in the moment of hesitation. The spark of anger that started deep in his stomach started with himself. He should have considered her feelings more, nobody liked knowing that they were being protected. Nobody. Why would they? It would mean that they were weak...and he knew that he hated the feeling that he would need to hide behind Amaya at some point. And, in fact, had hidden under the floor during the attack on the throne room. That sense of weakness had been terrible, as titans clashed above him. He had counted on her being indignant that someone was protecting her, exactly as she had earlier with him. She had protested then. Why didn't she protest now? The swirling embers in his gut threaded his aura was the first, small prick of minor annoyance as he throttled what leaked out into his reiatsu. He had to see what she would do.
Smile. Act like nothing was wrong. Actactactact as everything inside of her started to fall to pieces. Was that how it was? Everything about his stance changed, sharpening toward attention as he stared intently at her. He had no eyes to look at her with, but the sensed of being watched would be the same, and his lips were a flattened line as he watched her.
He didn't like that smile. Oh, it was perfect. It matched everything that should have been a smile, its lines were perfect. If there needed to be a picture that appeared along with the definition “Smile”, it would have been that. It was quiet and demure. But it felt wrong. For someone who had seen her actual smile, it felt...no, it wasn't even that. She could have faked him even if he had seen her real smile. But it was the constant retreat he felt from both of them that proved that smile was toxic. It was the way that she had tried to lock down her emotions and feel nothing. The same way that he had, all of five minutes before. If it hadn't been for his experience in reading emotions and meeting her so much, he never would have guessed that that smile was false.
...and there were only so many reasons why Sekai would retreat from them. Especially like this, all smiles and politeness...while hastening them onward. She thanked him for keeping the village free from Hollows, and something inside him snarled.
No.
Sekai would never have thanked him for doing that. She had just protested that he had done it on his own, and he felt his lips curl into an ice cold smile. It was something that hid the growing heat inside, the molten fury that began to seep into his veins in an avalanche. She was running away from the. She dared to thank him for something she had been pissed for? Oh sure, he wanted her to understand why. But not like this. Never like this. The steel and the fire he had seen before was gone. Where were they? Hiding away inside as she ran away from the two of them? No, oh no, he wasn't doing that. Maybe he'd been fucking up so far, maybe this too was going to be a fuckup, but he wasn't going to let Sekai just waltz on out of here hiding what it was that had caused her to flee from her friends. She had never run from him after their first meeting.
If she could defend Nazomi to his face, with fury and iron, she could defend herself here.
She looked toward him, and Takua's face was a mask. Just as much as her's was, even if her's was far better presented. He had only just arrived, and she thought to turn him away with a “It's getting late”? As if time like that mattered in a world of endless night, under a dome of eternal sunlight. His lips slipped back over his teeth, and he spoke gently, but there was a edge to his voice. A rumble that hid the anger that lay in his core as anger spread through his body and flushed into his aura. You think you can turn me away like this. You think this is enough to get me to abandon you. “Sekai.” He spoke without the honorific. Either a deliberate slap in the face, or a reminder that he knew her well enough not to be fooled by this. Or perhaps both. He was angry all on his own that she would flee from them like this, without even bothering to say what was wrong.
She flinched from his voice.
He had done this once before to her, when she had dismissed her own sacrifice. And the same kind of anger roiled through him then. This was slower, but no less potent for it, and a spark lazily curled down from the air above him. If he had been an Adjuchas he would have been in full flare, covered with flames six inches deep. “Why aren't you angry?” He asked it as though it were the most normal thing in the world. The weather would have been more uncommon to talk about. “I expected you to get mad. Where are your teeth, Sekai?” The anger was flowing now, pulsing through his veins. His friend might be sweet and she might be gentle, but she had strength. Sakuya knew she had strength. He knew she had strength. Why was she hiding it?
And as a result his voice was thick, because he felt betrayed at this moment. Who was this noble stranger who had taken the place of his friend who felt so much? “You are just as powerful as the Captain. Why do you need that protection? Not even half an hour ago you protested that I hunted Hollows here, and now you thank me for that?” His own self-regret and hatred at his hypocrisy, that he had been doing the exact same thing but hadn't mentioned it, turned his words thicker and hotter yet as his voice rose. Fight back damn you. Get mad! GET ANGRY SEKAI. “BULLSHIT. Where did your fire go Sekai? You are just as much a part of this fucking world as we are, you are one of humanity's bright stars, where the FUCK do you get off bowing and smiling like that when someone tells you to sit down and let yourself be protected, when you're STRONGER THAN ME?!” His voice rose to an angry shout, and this time it was a flurry of lightning fast wicks of fire that escaped from his hands. An amused whisper in his mind, Oh, this must be why Sakuya is so angry with me.
The shout echoed, and he stared at her, not sure why he was so angry. Irritated, yes, but not angry. This was...unusual for him, and the Hollow in him slumbered still. Scratching, yes, but slumbered. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but there was still something he had to say. To wake up the warrior, to do something. He thought he had wanted to protect her from the darkness. But he had hurt her, clearly. By treating her so gently, he had hurt her. And Takua hated himself for it.
One last thing to say.
All too clearly, and all too calmly, he stared at the girl who was his best friend, and demanded a return to the fire, “Where is the woman who experienced what it was like to be a Hollow, and didn't give in to despair?” The Arrancar stared at her, and waited for the hell what he had just done would bring.
WC: 1505 | GP: 30 | Total: 345