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…Good Lord, Lords, above, it hurts. The feeling of her blade against his stomach stings like all hell. It feels like she’s toying with the nerves themselves, carving deep enough to reach anything and everything, yet merely choosing to pluck the web of senses that cover his whole body, playing him like an instrument. The pain is burning, burning him to what must surely be tears by this point, yet no matter what, she always seems to pull back on her ministrations mere moments before the calming lullaby of unconsciousness has a chance to bring him into its embrace. He wants to fight back against the pain, to thrash and flail and tantrum like his life is on the line, truly on the line.
But he promised her that he wouldn’t.
As she drags her nails across the crimson mass of his body, caressing the flayed skin and flesh like a lover or parent would graciously apply a band-aid to a scraped knee, he gasps in a breath like someone’s squeezed him flat, and is watching with glee as letting go makes him suck up twice as much. He desperately wants to push her away, to bring his shaky hands down to her blood-painted fingers, to drool out through sobs that he’s sorry, but he really can’t handle all this as well as he thought he could, that’s he’s sorry for even asking to be punished for something he did wrong.
But he promised her that he wouldn’t.
She works over him with the focus of a practised surgeon, noting every little intimate detail of his body as she personally unmakes him with nothing more than the blade sitting on the table next to him, and the two hands that search him like they’re grave-robbing. He finds his legs shivering, those desperate signals of all-encompassing fear squeezing just through the gap between the untouched normalcy of his back and the eviscerated carnage of his front, and screaming to his feet that they need to start running on the ground that they aren’t touching. He wants to stand up, to force himself off that splattered table he’s found himself upon, and take a few steps away from the torture she’s inflicting — even if he knows those few steps will spill what little blood still remains his body, and send him tumbling down to the floor with a fatal splat.
But he promised her that he wouldn’t.
Especially, after the mistake he made in her name, and what he asked for her to give him as revenge.
---
Sinclair remembers it all. Remembers exactly how it all went down. He remembers every single emotion that he felt on the spot as he grumbled out those words. The joy, from solving that mystery case plaguing the WARP Train, mere hours(?) ago; the trauma, witnessing innocent passengers without a clue regarding their situation, shambling along to that Bloodfiend’s side; the hatred, knowing that they could— no, would have been all been fine and safe if they just chose not to trust that red-eyed fixer covered in prosthetics, more calculating machine than living, breathing, feeling human…
It was supposed to travel right through him; cleanly leave her, filter through his mind, and come out of his mouth just as she originally intended for the phrase to mean. But he felt it, felt as that clear-grey sentence, ‘S.T.F.U,’ diluted itself in the mental paint-bucket of yellow, blue, red, green, and everything else, until what should have slid out clean and perfect, burst through in some imperfect, tainted, Heathcliffian mess.
“Shut The Fuck Up,” he growled at that Fanghunt Fixer, blurting out his own messy translation with a confidence that screamed his version was picture-perfect, exactly how Ryōshū had intended for it to sound, tinging every last syllable with an almost comical scorn, visible on his face, on his clenched jaw, if you looked for any more than a single second.
“Shut That Flaphole, Ugly,” is how she corrected him, swatting his faulty interpretation to the side, and leaving him dumbfounded for a moment, caught between venting another wild outburst from the depths of his lungs, muttering out a ‘sorry,’ or continuing on as though he hadn’t given a translation in the first place.
Just barely, he catches himself from choking out a disappointed sob at that very moment, muffling what little sound that managed to escape with a confused, shaky ‘oh,’ playing some dumb little hothead with words drenched in that same kaleidoscopic emotional volatility that tarnished her original message.
…Damn his stupid, feeling heart, corroded by such a simple experience, and so readily falling into habits that weren’t his.
---
When the group returned to Mephistopheles, not-so-eagerly awaiting the arrival of that grand, infested amusement park drenched in crimson, Sinclair was most certainly sorry. Biting his thumb — a habit he thought he buried along with the rest of his childhood, and burnt at the pyre when that curiosity of a man split all of his issues and trauma in two with those seven rings of light, both metaphorically, and literally — returned with fervour. Even as everyone else funneled back to the comfort of their rooms by the back of the bus — all preparing themselves for anything and everything that would come tomorrow — he remained, gazing out the window from his seat at the dull backdrop of the Backstreets’ monotone greys, thumb up against his teeth for every single moment he watched, until the windows all closed shut and whatever light dared to peak into the city disappeared behind its many walls, leaving him watching nothing in the darkness, yet teething nonetheless.
…By the time she found him, the ember of her cigarette — not even enough to keep her properly illuminated, save for the breaths that flare it up — the only sign of her existence in the dark, he didn’t even realise there was a steady streamlet of warm red from the very tip of his thumb, skin split open through his ragged chewing.
“C.H said the chick wasn’t following along like he normally does,” she states, one hand holding up her cigarette as the other most-likely rests in her pocket — there is no way in the Inferno she keeps that sword on her person at all times, not this late. “Asked me to find you.” The way she says these things, it’s as though she both cares enough to actively seek him out — rather than pass the duty along to someone else, like she usually does — but also couldn’t care less if she found him face-down in a ditch outside after a mugging from some Rats, instead of his bus-seat. He knows what ‘C.H’ means — months of translating such a simple phrase have practically branded the answer into his memory — but he almost finds himself not even speaking, not wanting to try and translate again after his stupid little screw-up.
“...I got your S.A.N.G.R.I.A wrong,” Sinclair finds himself sulking, head intending to turn just enough to regard her without seeming rude, but ending up fully focused on that ember of her cigarette anyway, no matter how much he tries not to — it’s the only real thing to focus on. “You said one thing, and I ended up… jumbling everything around into a mess.” Breathing in a lungful of air — half-tainted by the second-hand smoke by him — and forcing it all out a mere moment later, he only finds himself curling in on himself, instead of mellowing out across his seat like he thought he would — clearly, Miss Outis’s ‘foolproof techniques that make a soldier’ were wrong. “I’m supposed to have it all figured out, but I’ve scrambled things…”
“Jeez, you’re S.U.I.T.E today, aren’t you?” Puff, the embers flicker up for a moment, illuminating Ryōshū’s face for just a moment, before dimming back into a dull glow once more. “You look like a church-boy wanting forgiveness – minus the K.N.E.E.L. Puff, with a short grumble, and the quietest mumble of ‘four minutes,’ the cigarette presses into the side of his seat, searing just a tinge of ashy black into the leather before it — and, by extension, she — fully disappears into the darkness. …Only for a hand to reach out, and nestle itself atop his head. “Gonna go and P.R.A.Y, blubbering like that Toad, C.H?”
“What? N-No, I’m not gonna—” he retorts, stopping himself before he can even think about trying to go on another rant-y tangent, lest he start sounding even less like himself than usual. “I haven’t done that since I was living in Calw — you know I haven’t done that since Calw, Ryōshū…”
“...Can’t play a priest either, if you wanted me to,” and with a short pat, her hand removes itself from his head of hair, fading away once more, before returning to existence with the occasional flash of a flickering lighter — a dying lighter, engraved with a name he just can’t seem to read — no matter how many times he’s seen her light it — trying with all of its might to bring a grand flame to life, without the fuel to make any more than a light spark. “G.A.L, will you?” And, just like that, just like he always does, his hand is blindly searching through the inside of his jacket, yanking out his own lighter — courtesy of the same in-Company Workshop that provided every Sinner their tools of the trade — as she mumbles about getting the ‘stuff’ in hers refilled.
Sinclair’s lighter is still nearly filled to the brim; Ishmael taught him and the few other Sinners that were listening how to check how much lighter-fluid is left after he asked her nicely — and, after Don Quixote spilled half of the contents of her personal lighter over herself while she was trying to check it on her own, and nearly ended up setting off fire-alarms Mephistopheles didn’t have as she lit herself ablaze, almost taking out Hong Lu in the process, who looked over the incident as though he’d never seen an open flame in his life. After only a few goading flicks, it flashes to life, bathing the close area around it in that same dim-yellow light of Ryōshū’s notorious smoking. For but a moment, he holds the open flame up against the new cigarette her disembodied hand holds in front of him — letting the flame wrap itself against the paper in a flimsy hug, hidden from open view by her other hand — before catching ablaze, leaving him to flick his lighter shut, and hide it away once more.
“So,” Ryōshū is quick to breathe out with a cloud of smoke — barely visible when obscured against the black of unlit night — continuing on as though she never lost a cigarette in the first place. “W.Y.G.D, if you aren’t gonna solve your problems how you normally do?” In just a single step towards his seat, she feels infinitely closer, looming over him in that very same way Outis does when she’s looking for someone to tell off.
“I’m… not really sure,” Sinclair finds himself mumbling, knuckles knocking against one of his knees as though he expects it to open, and for him to not be left outside. He tries to think up a few other ideas, pushing them around for a moment before tossing them away, and carefully preparing the structure for such a suggestion. “Y-You could, uhm… ‘cleanse me,’ — or maybe it was ‘clear me’ — like you said, back on the Train…”
“...Wow, C.H.I.C.K, today,” Ryōshū drawls through her new cigarette, staring down as Sinclair mumbles out some kind of, for all intents and purposes, rather unexpected response. “C.H must’ve dislodged something in that brain of yours, last time they rewound.” As if to further illustrate her point, that free hand reaches out from the darkness to grab him by the head, fingers wrapping against his hair as she rattles him about just slightly. “No other way you’d offer yourself up D.U.M.B.”
“No, I haven’t been messed up, Ryōshū!” Despite himself, he still finds a comeback coming from his mouth every once in a while, no matter how much he tries to completely deny himself the opportunity to even think about being the slightest bit rude. “I’m just, you know, disappointed. I-In myself, I mean. I sort of thought that if I did wrong by you, I… needed the punishment from you, not a proxy, like the Manager…?” The reasoning comes out confused, as if he’s dumbfounded himself by trying to say them, his voice slowing with every word until ‘Manager’ comes out like it would be expected to have twice as many letters.
“That’s a S.L.O.T.H.”
“I-It’s not… you do something bad to someone, you need to go and personally prove that you’re sorry — that’s how I was taught.”
“Still a S.L.O.T,” Ryōshū half-chuckles out in response, puffing a stream of smoke up into the roof of Mephistopheles — despite constant warnings from both Vergilius, and far more casual threats from Charon. And, for a moment, there’s pause. Just the light in-and-out of Ryōshū and her cigarette, meeting Sinclair and his little sighs, teeth raking over the top of his thumb as if it hasn’t already been mauled enough in his stress, until she speaks up once more, stopping him in his tracks. “You’re S.A.T?” Of course, she doesn’t even wait for a response before continuing on — she never does; she’d never give up an opportunity like this. “Good, don’t want you flipping about and chickening out.”
“Fwoo… The Ring’s sloppy, but they certainly know how to make C.L.E.A.N.”
---
Ryōshū’s room is dark. Ryōshū’s room is quiet. It’s organised like a funeral, silent as the death Sinclair half-expected to find within, even with its homely wooden floors, lit only by the occasional misplaced candle drowning in its own wax and a grand, fervently-burning service of flames — above which her _dachi rests, red strings blending with the flames beneath it. In the very corner of the room rests some grand collage of canvases, the top one — the only actually visible one — covered in blind splatters, angry slashes left, right, up and down, too frustrated by a lack of direction to think up a proper direction to paint in. And, for what should be a bedroom, Sinclair can’t even see where her bed might be — save for a light scratching on the floor nearby the candle-bearing counter, where her bed probably goes — where it might have been moved to, he hasn’t a clue.
“...You certainly like to G.A.W.K,” Ryōshū is quick to comment, a targeted stream of blown cigarette smoke colliding with the back of Sinclair’s head to grab his attention. “Sure you aren’t T.T.D.Y?” Yet, even after grabbing his focus, sending him turning on his heel to face her properly, her eyes seem to be analysing anything and everything that isn’t him, combing over every little tool, canvas, or other such thing as she idly awaits some kind of response.
“No, I’m not, I’m just… O-Okay, I am,” Sinclair mumbles out, his gaze drifting away from Ryōshū by just a smidgen, glancing over at the set of canvases in the corner of the room once more — and silently hoping that she doesn’t notice him doing it. “Is this — the ‘C.L.E.A.N’ stuff, I mean — a common thing you do? I know that art’s something you do a lot, but…”
“...On a W.C?” Ryōshū finishes Sinclair’s question before he can fully get it out, as though she could see every little thought forming in his head — and his drifting gaze, as well, turning to fully face her collection of artful displays, continuing to speak as she snakes over to them. “Far too few understand the meaning of these P.I.E.C.Es — consider yourself one of the R.V.F.” And, with every word she speaks, she retrieves another canvas from the pile as though she were drawing cards, settling each down against the wall until they form a full screen of interconnected sketches, scribbles and splotches — all in a deep, crimson red. “Copying proper work onto parchment only serves to dilute it — working with the raw piece, that’s T.O.U.C.H.E.”
“Now,” she continues, dragging out a table from a corner of the room not covered by the candles’ vigilant-yet-dim light — its wooden surface tinged a tone darker than it should be, with dried blood that seeped into the most minute gaps. “Sit yourself down, and D.U.E.T.” Turning around once more, Ryōshū searches for just a moment longer, retrieving the katana that the LCB’s enemies have come to fear — and, perhaps now, that Sinclair might concern himself over as well.
For a moment, Sinclair remains where he stands, almost paralysed with thought as he runs through the choice he made in his head one more time — of course, he was the one that wanted this equivalent exchange, he can’t be having doubts now. And so, with one last quiet muttering, he finds himself slowly, slowly approaching that bloodstained table, clambering atop it, and closing his eyes as though this was a simple appointment with a doctor — even as Ryōshū’s hand returns, pressing a hand to his chest to make him lay down, before moving to push against his gut, surely aiming something.
He won’t move, he won’t complain, he won’t try anything, no matter what happens.
He promised her that he wouldn’t.