[It is pathetically easy to pry her hand off of his pants. She is weak, not just from her recent rebirth, but from far before, her petite body thin and bony from years of living as unnoticed as she could between small wads of filthy cash. He holds it, and she instinctively clutches not just at her robe but at his fingers, her grip shaking with effort despite how pitifully lacking it is in strength.
Whether he intended it as comfort or not... She gropes for anything that she can use, anything that might tether her in this moment and keep her from answering the whisper of Hell's Gate pulsing behind her eyes.]
Please...
[People who will be cross with him... She doesn't want to ask it of him. She's sorry to. She was supposed to have someone who would do this for her, someone who had promised that he would kill her, if she turned out not to be able to accept her powers back without losing the precious scraps of feeling and budding emotion she'd been able to scrape together since she awoke in eastern Europe.
He reaches for her other hand, and though she seems to be trying to stop him... it's a bit more that she can't offer it to him. She has been clutching that fistful of robe for so long that all of her joints are locked, frozen in the claw-like curl and the occasional tightening to force her broken bones to throb with pain as a defense against losing her focus, losing the battle against the sludge coursing through her veins and spilling out of her shard and her ears.
If he can't give that to her... His question about what had happened to her hand reminds her of snaps and screams in a Syndicate safehouse, of Hei-]
Hei... Is Hei here? I need... I need to see Hei....
[If it were Hei... Surely she could convince him. He had held her cheek so gently when he told her that she could live, that she didn't have to die...
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Whether he intended it as comfort or not... She gropes for anything that she can use, anything that might tether her in this moment and keep her from answering the whisper of Hell's Gate pulsing behind her eyes.]
Please...
[People who will be cross with him... She doesn't want to ask it of him. She's sorry to. She was supposed to have someone who would do this for her, someone who had promised that he would kill her, if she turned out not to be able to accept her powers back without losing the precious scraps of feeling and budding emotion she'd been able to scrape together since she awoke in eastern Europe.
He reaches for her other hand, and though she seems to be trying to stop him... it's a bit more that she can't offer it to him. She has been clutching that fistful of robe for so long that all of her joints are locked, frozen in the claw-like curl and the occasional tightening to force her broken bones to throb with pain as a defense against losing her focus, losing the battle against the sludge coursing through her veins and spilling out of her shard and her ears.
If he can't give that to her... His question about what had happened to her hand reminds her of snaps and screams in a Syndicate safehouse, of Hei-]
Hei... Is Hei here? I need... I need to see Hei....
[If it were Hei... Surely she could convince him. He had held her cheek so gently when he told her that she could live, that she didn't have to die...
But he'd been wrong. She wasn't strong enough.]