END GAME: THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

[sailmods]

[the prisoners wake up on cold, hard floors.

the lights are bright, glaring, a sterile cell with sterile bars facing a sterile hall. the prisoners with you, across from you, and no one else. no rocking of a ship in waves, nothing. just the prisoner and their prison.

time passes, one assumes. the rhythmic click of Friday’s heels down the hall. it’s almost like the ticking of a clock.]

Comments

[abhorrently]

"I promised, didn't I?"

She'd promised she'd live and come back. Even if she is worse for wear. And when she wriggles out of Flan's arms, it's so she can go over and hug him, careful to avoid too much pressure on her burned hands. Still, regardless of her condition, it soothes something in her to embrace him properly, like she'd wanted to so much earlier. A girl reuniting with her uncle, or something like that - he's connected, the same way Sheogorath is connected to her.

"I promised I'd live, and come back to you."

[blindwatchersees]

She can’t possibly know how much hidden meaning there is in what she’s saying. He can see himself in her place, promising a safe return to his husband. He can feel the weight of a promise fulfilled, something his husband held sacred above all. He knows the marks and scars of a hard-fought battle, and the unseen scars that usually accompany them.

And the most he can think to do is wrap his arms around her and say, “Thank you.”

[abhorrently]

Some invisible weight is off her to see him again, even if he's not supposed to be here - he is, and she is, and that's what matters. They would find each other. That's what family means.

"Are you all right? She didn't hurt you?"

They aren't fixed, they're still weaker. But they're alive, and they can leverage that.

[blindwatchersees]

"I've been hurt worse." He's not sure that hurt is the right word for this, having been robbed of the very identity he's worn for epochs of untime.

"And... at the same time, it's perhaps the cruelest thing she could have done. I can't imagine what he'll feel, when he has a mind to call his own again, when he realizes he was robbed of the existence we fought so hard to gain for him."

[abhorrently]

"Then I'll shelter him and you both again." The words are whispered, but fierce. "As I did before, so I will anew. And there will be a vengeance to call ours, in retribution - a reckoning, that she thought such was capable of being bought and sold. Listen to your heartbeat, you know it to be so."

That steady pulse of freedom. Of defiance, refusing to lay down and die.

[blindwatchersees]

"I might not have my magic, or his mantle, but... if you have a weapon to spare, I'm more than willing to lend a hand to that reckoning now."

[abhorrently]

Pulling back, she nods, reaching into the makeshift pocket she made from her shirt. She winces when her burned hands brush against something too roughly, but what she pulls out is the equivalent of rope - one of Flan's long, long braids that had been severed and wound together.

"If you can find anything to pierce with, even better. I know we'll be facing that eye again - that's why she had to silence him, because it's his domain. But the eye is key. If something happens, either go for her eyes...or stop me, if I cannot see the way."

The last whispered only to him. If that outer madness sinks in, there's no telling what she'll do.

[blindwatchersees]

He takes the braid in hand, already feeling the familiar instinct of readying to wrap it around someone's throat from behind. When... when did he become an assassin, in all of that chaos? When did it become second nature?

"Understood."