The Unforgiven

Log Info

• Title: The Unforgiven
• Emitter: Aya
• Characters: Aya, Aryia
• Place: Festival Grounds
• Time: February 20th, 2022
• Summary: A poor training target upon the festival grounds is getting the daylights beaten out of it by Aya, her searching for answers within the routine practice. Her sister by choice, Aryia, runs into her while she's on her jog and finds her troubled. After misidentifying the cause, Aryia learns that one death in particular weighs heavy on Aya's mind. She provides advice as best she can, sharing some of the developments she has went through to provide some insight as well as some future step for her: accept the past for what it is, as it shapes who one is now. It's a tough pill to swallow for sure. In the end, they go on a run together.

The morning is bright and clear, with only a few clouds drifting through the sky for occassional, intermittent partial shade from the recently-risen sun. Too early in the seasons for grand festivals, there are yet a few dedicated individuals about making use of the jousting targets. Less so for the archery and melee dummies, save for one.

Aya currently faces off with one of the latter. This particular foe of wood and rope stands out from the others: a black cloth sack covers its headpost, with two small splotches of red dye, likely for eyes. Said opponent appears to be losing. Perhaps falsely so: despite that it cannot truly retaliate, the mul'niessa does not maneuver as if it could. More accurately, she merely stands before it to pummel it repeatedly and forcefully.

Morning time meant morning routines, and one routine that a certain scarred mul has is jogging through the city, particularly from the Mountain Road down through this way. Shades pressed firmly against her face to dull the brilliant sun with her verdant buckle jacket tied around her waist as she jogs at a brisk pace.

She does slow at the entrance to the grounds, at first to check she wasn't going to get trampled by a jousting knight, then it was to a figure beating up one of the targets with their bare hands.

Her face softens some, and she adjusts course to intercept. She gives a little two note whistle in greeting, and waves a bare arm. She glances to the target, and raises a brow as she lightly smiles. "Hey." <Handspeech>

Aya pauses a beat at the whistle, though barely glances its way. Enough to recgonize or confirm the source, given that she states, "Morning, sister." Her eyes lock upon her target anew, she frowns anew, and then the beatings recommence. Given the quantity of splinters falling and those already upon the ground, she may have begun her training earlier. That and this may not be the original training tool, repairs were made, or they might be imminently necessary.

Aryia's smile thins out at Aya's demeanor, a tinge of concern taking its place. She draws closer, her dusting off her arms and patting her clothes down as a fine dust wafts from her tanktop and jacket. She purses her lips at the dummy, shakes her head then beckons with two fingers at her sister.

She raises her fists.

Aya notes the gestures, though takes a moment to respond to them. She pauses her blows, but does not immediately turn. Instead, she takes that moment to focus upon her faux-pponent before launching a singulare strike with an exhaled vocalized syllable of focused effort. The fist shatters and splinters the wood shortly below the red-eyed 'face,' leaving the dark head to topple over to the ground. She watches that fall until it ceases moving on the ground. Only then does she turn to face Aryia.

A brow lifts. "Did you wish to spar, or converse?"

Aryia affords the moment to watch the focused effort of blunt methods of decapitation, and nods in a slow approval It had been such a long while to see such efforts once more and it felt comforting once more, just a little bit to fill in the massive hole in her memories.

"You're off," she points out, cloth taped fingers gesturing. "Perhaps both might help." <Handspeech>

Aya cannot argue with Aryia's first point, so it is the second she comments upon. Her posture and expression tenses, hands lift to a ready position and... form gestures rather than strikes. "Training has not aided this morning. Slaying him a hundred times over changed nothing."

Aryia slides a foot back, getting ready for another bout of hands being thrown. But she drops it as it was language instead being tossed her way. A sigh leaves her, and she shifts to rest on her back foot. "It won't," she agrees, glancing aside to the destroyed target. "I find beating inanimate objects into dust just makes me only better at beating things into dust while still feeling agitated."

Back to Aya. She plainly requests, "Talk to me."<Handspeech>

Aya exhales a breath that drains her stance to sag. Her hands move further, her own focus upon Aryia's hands rather than meeting her gaze. A fringe benefit of handspeech?

"I have slain dozen. Hundreds. Their role and their faces forgotten the moment they fell. I thought that if I murdered him a dozen, hundred, thousand times more... his face, too, would fade to join the forgotten..."

A look of empathy crosses the mute's visage, her gaze, too, downcast. She purses her lips, stepping closer as if conspiring to any onlookers.

She doesn't say anything at first, no. Calloused hands reach out to carefully hold the other's. She turns them over, silently examining them, almost as if parsing every life they ended.

"You still hate him," she finally gestures, letting one hand go to speak. "The others didn't mean much to you. But this one... you hate because they took almost everything," she guesses. "And even when he's gone, thank fuck, you're still holding that hate. Like a hot iron pressed against your mind. It's just getting seared in." <Handspeech>

Aya's eyes drop further and her own hardened hands are limp in Aryia's grasp. "No... and yes," she now speaks, if softly. Her head and eyes lift, now, to meet her sister's, though they struggle wetly to hold gaze.

"It isn't hate, and that," her head tips back to the decapitated dummy. "That was not the fiend." Her limp hand now grasps Aryia's firmly, her words gaining volume and stance gaining energy.

"I loved him, Aryia... or did I? It was not enough. -I- took everything from -him-! He should have fled, but the fool trusted me. He is gone, yet I see him every moment..."

The burst of emphasis fades.

"I don't know what to do..."

Aryia blinks.

Oh. Well. Duh. Yeah that made a hell of a lot more sense. Good going on completely missing that mark, especially after the last meeting.

Such internal monologue is reflected in the mute's visage cringing slightly and looking aside, a hand reaching up to rub at her face. "... r-ght..." she murmurs softly.

She refocuses, and strengthens her grip on the hand in hers. She softly sighs, and pulls the fellow mul'neissa into a soft embrace. Quiet words hiss out in their subwhispered way, "You did, and still do."

A moment. "Perhaps he should have, but it would have mattered not. The thing puppeting you would have made sure of it." "Though... you could get him back. Perhaps that might be a step towards some sort of resolution for you."

The embrace is welcomed, and Aryia is both squeezed firmly yet also leaned upon, as if Aya's strength shifted to her arms at the cost of her legs. "It was me, sister. I recall every detail," she whispers back in admission. "I did this."

Aya lifts her head to look to her sister again. The course of action given is not a new idea, but it is direct, appropropriate, and yet her expression is torn, hesitant. "I wish him returned. I want him back... but what of his wishes? I stole that choice from him, then. Should I do so again? If he has peace, joy... what could I offer him? Even if he chose to return... why would he seek anything from me?"

The younger sibling keeps Aya aloft in their hold, though the surprise at the information is felt by her long ears pressing against the sides the of the mute's head. "... perhaps you did. Perhaps you didn't. I wasn't there so I don't know."

Pulling back slightly so look at Aya, she lifts a shoulder to push her shades up. Her lips purse, expression thoughtful, worried, conflicted. "That sounds..."

And perhaps a hard slap of truth. "... kinda selfish."

She takes a moment to continue. "You stole that choice, then now hesitate to give that choice back? To not even have a chance at him seeking something? People /can/ forgive others."

She pokes Aya on the sternum, glowing gaze squinted. "But can you forgive yourself?"

Aya blinks. Is it selfish? Her wanting him back for her reasons certainly is. It is one of her worries, but not the only one. Forgiveness? That has never been a virtue she has exactly displayed holding. And for herself? That ... has never been necessary. Work to correct a miscalculation, surely. Vengeance to right an unbalanced ledger, definitely. But that?

It may be vaguely tied to the fact that guilt was never exactly a thing, either.

Aya rolls her shoulders in as much an answer to that as she can concoct. "I... don't know."

Aryia's gaze doesn't abate its sharp, appraising manner. She's watching, seeking any iota she can latch onto. She inhales again for more quiet hisses. For more harsh truths? Grim realities?

"There was a time, while you were gone, that I was having trouble with knowing who I was."

Perhaps not.

"I had learned who I actually was. My smeared memories made more sense with each passing day. The nobility I was, the cause for my enslavement, the... pain thereafter. It caused some debilitating migraines and some other crap to crop up. But really, what helped me was I had to realize something important."

Her expression softens, hand squeezing the one in hers. "The past is immutable. What has happened must be accepted for what it is, and that it makes who you are now. Forgiveness isn't easy, especially for yourself."

She coughs some, and rubs at her throat.

Aya listens to this response before her eyes shift away. Not in avoidance, per se, but rather Aryia and see Aya's move about with the sense of calculation behind them. She does, after a moment, step back from her sister, becoming self-supporting and fully upright.

"He won't have a choice to return," she finally decides, eyes returning to Aryia, "if I do not give him the opportunity. So I must try." A pause before she adds, "Whatever he chooses, then or after... I must accept." There, that wasn't so hard... so why was it so hard?!

She then lifts Aryia's hand with hers and reaches to take the other to lift it the same. Shakes them both between their eyeline before releasing them to eye her sister firmly. "Use these. You should not be sore from a conversation. From sparring with me, perhaps, or an eager night with V..." the world trails off as she attempts to recall something, and frowns as some things remain vague and unclear. Aya promptly segues to, "... She is well?"

Aryia smiles warmly. It was some headway, and she'd take that readily over anything. She bobs her head once. "He'll need time too. Who knows, he may be waiting for you," she offers as a nugget of hope, rubbing her throat more as she's hit the uncomfortable point of talking near quietly.

She sighs, nodding as her hands are freed and recommended to be used. Though, she blinks twice, and her face colors a crimson. "She is well. We are well. Though... her past lingers as a threat, and she worries as such, so she goes by Violet in my presence," she motions. "So.. as well as she can be. If you uh, ever go to our place, please wear shoes. Sometimes she leaves caltrops out." <Handspeech>

The rise of color upon Aryia's face brings a familiar uneven upward curl to Aya's lips, though the smirk lacks edge. As well, the response after causes to other half to lift into an expression rarely seen, and the first since her... return: a smile. Mostly for her sister, but perhaps a morsel of that hope present, also. Her hands then move in comment, possibly to help reinforce Aryia's use of the same.

"Good. I am pleased to know that I didn't fuck everything up." (Well, she DID learn handspeech from Aryia's example and/or for their conversations, afterall.) "I look forward to seeing you both again." Now that there is something of a plan, she shifts to a new question, smile fading to a firm line. "Do you know what became of Daed? Was he taken to a temple?" To Charn? Left in the street? Those options she does not voice as she tries to push the thoughts of them aside.

Aryia pouts slightly in return at that smile. A natural response to a successful teasing. She pats her sister on the shoulder, and softly sighs with a nod. "I'm sure she'd look forward to seeing you too."

The mute scratches her head, thinking some. "... I... think he's being held at Daeus' temple. I'd ask Zeke, I think he received him. Not completely sure though, I was... distancing myself after I heard that happened," she awkwardly admits. "Maybe Jinks would know?" <Handspeech>

Aya simply nods with the answer, no longer pressing the successful tease. "I understand." There is no accusastion in her features nor signs. "I will speak to him. There may be more that needs said between us, at any rate."

Aryia gives a slight nod, along with a slow breath. "A lot will need to be said to a lot of people, and that may be the current of things for the present time.:

There's a moment of nothing being said, or motioned. Then, she lightly smiles, her bringing up an extended finger.

There's a little shimmer of silver light that wreathes it, and she reaches out, poking Aya on the nose. Leaving a little dot of bioluminescent moonlight. She snickers. "Turns out I actually just suck at shadow stuff." <Handspeech>

Aya nods, then her eyes cross briefly as she looks to her now alit nose. That a flicker of her smile returns makes the exprssion all the more amusing. Her own hand lifts, itself growing ever darker. "You are simply gifted elsewhere. One more aspect that makes you who you are. We may be mul'niessa, and sisters, but that does not make us identical. Nor would I have it any other way."

There it is, that light smile. Glowing gaze flicks to the shaded hand, and Aryia raises hers as well. As, it too, also grows a touch darker, it dripping umbra. "Oh fuck no, I wouldn't want to be identical," she motions with it, flinging little motes of darkness around before she shakes her hand to quit the effect.

She glances to the destroyed target, and steps towards what remains. A fist cocks back, it getting wreathed in light before it crashes into the base of it with a microburst of light, wood splintering out to fell the rest of it into the dirt. "Fuck this thing, it's not going to help. Come on. Run with me. I still have a lap around the city to finish," she smiles, beckoning and starting to walk backwards. <Handspeech>

Aya shifts her attention from the fading effects, her own doing likewise. She watches the remainder of the dummy obliterated, wincing slightly; for the prior representation, not for the construct, itself.

Then there is the offering, and challenge. A brow arches. "Oh? Shall we see who is the fleetest, then?" She begins to stalk towards, awaiting the cue to run. A much more friendly sororital challenge to get the blood flowing, with less chance of bruising.

Aryia grins. "Probably you!" she gestures before holding up a hand with three fingers extended.

Two.

One.

She claps her hands above her, a burst of moonlight coming from them before she breaks off into a brisk jog. Challenge accepted <Handspeech>

-End Scene-