honestly - the first thing strohl does is reach out like he can put himself in front of rosamund. it's almost instinct, because a person like that, suspended in briars, is such an eerily human image that it puts him on high alert, and it has to be awful to see yourself that way. to experience it all, all over again. his instinct is as always to protect, and this is no different.
but it's just a memory. and as the first half completes, as the shady looking priest and the clown watch the video, he stills, hand still on his sword. were these executions? this was what she went through? - and he thinks, again, about the words from last week. puppet on a string, it had said. the priest was right; that she took it into her hands is impressive in its own right, in all that horror.
(there's a moment of painful reality that flickers, too - a moment of twisted guilt at his own anger from last week, but its there and back again, gone in a flash.)
by the time the memory fades, his expression is torn open, eyes wide with surprise, breath caught, and it takes a full moment for him to exhale again, shaken. ]
-- Bloody hell, your highness.
[ the first phrase out of his mouth. strohl can handle a lot, and that was a lot. even for him. ]
Rosamund pales as the memory plays out. Temenos and Harley — she had only heard about it before. Not seen them climbing in. Laying eyes on the mess she'd made. And there's something unnerving about seeing your own corpse dangling in the wake, too. Dead blood marring your ghostly skin.
She doesn't register that Strohl has put himself between her and the vision. Not at first. It's when the damage is done and he speaks up, rattled and cussing, that Rosamund realizes he's taken guard. Even through the haze of shock, she takes a moment to wonder about it.]
I...I'm sorry... [She swallows thickly.] I'm sorry, Strohl, I didn't...you shouldn't have had to see that.
[ the first words out of his mouth come in some kind of - stunned surprise, disbelief. there's been many a conversation of apologies between the two of them since the first week, but, this is absolutely not that, and as the immediate vision fades, it's that that brings him back to reality, away from the horrors of brambles and goodbye.
strohl whirls on her, hands coming up - either side of her upper arms. callous hands, but they're gentle. insistent concern, immediate, layered over a righteous indignation at the scene as a whole. ]
What was done to you - I'm sorry. By god, what a bloody spectacle. What a damned cruelty these places are. To have to see it played out like that a second time, that's even more so beyond the pale - are you alright?
[Objectively she can understand the sentiment but the fervour with which he brings it startles the stupid response right out of her. He takes her by the arms and her breath hitches. Rosamund looks up at him with wide blinking eyes as he now turns the fury he'd held back against her in favour of her. Her throat grows thick, a sour taste taking hold in her mouth.]
I'm...I'm fine. [she lifts her hands and puts them to his shoulders, bracing. Quelling him down, if she can at all.] I'm all right. It was...I wasn't in my right mind anymore. The possession was going to make me keep hurting people if I didn't die, and I couldn't bear the thought of someone taking my life from me. I wish it didn't happen that way, especially without realizing how it might hurt the people who had to find me. I should have known using the one place where the briars might have their old power back would be dangerous.
I just...I wanted to see them again. Before I did it. [In a ship so cold and so callous, where she tried and failed to find footholds among the friends she wanted so desperately to make, she wanted her own loves the most. The ones who knew her best, the ones she fought and cared for, who stood on even ground with her and not miles higher, miles beyond. She wanted a reminder that the pitiful, jealous, insecure, murderous girl on the Eudora wasn't the whole of her. Rosamund wanted to see home.] To remember something good.
So it was just a foolish mistake made by a really, really messed up mind. I'm all right, now. It helped, in the end. To go to the other side.
[ god this - this sucks, actually, it sucks so hard to know that rosamund was put through this kind of thing twice the way that she was. the differences are stark, though - clearly, that was some sort of execution, a stopping point on what could have been a massacre, and, here...
... well. it's hard, because there's a part of strohl that will always be angry about what happened to vi. he's far, far more furious at the situation now than anything, having had time to cool, knowing that she's not all that far away, but some part of him thinks maybe it's better, here, in these different circumstances, that she has to be here, still alive. and then he hates himself for that, too, briefly, a stabbing sensation of the guilt of selfishness, a reminder somewhere at how similar circumstances of someone else caused an immeasurable amount of cruelty and pain to an entire world, how easily he could he fall down that same hole if he let himself.
it's all in a flash of a second, buried complicated underneath the heavier feelings of righteous indignation and camaraderie, of deep concern and care for a friend, because that's what matters the most, and it's what he wants to focus on. forward. you linger too long in the past, strohl, will said to him once. he has to move on. ]
... Your friends are capable. [ he says, eventually, voice soft. ] And I imagine as much as you hurt to know they may have been in danger because of something related to you, they might say they'd bear any burden to help you, no matter how much it hurt. It's certainly what I would say, were it me.
I don't think it's selfish to take your own life in your hands. When your choices are taken from you, then - if there's a choice you can make for yourself, you ought to.
[He'll always be angry. And he ought to be. Rosamund will always be sorry. And she ought to be, too. Circumstance or not, she was alive when Vi wasn't. She's the one who gets to have Strohl's hands on her arms, his earnest assertions, his concern. In the flesh and not just over missives on the phone.
At least he understands.]
I wish it weren't the only one I had left, then. But wishes rarely get things done.
[Maybe there could have been another way. Maybe she gave up before she got to try. But then she thinks about the hours after trial, under watch in the medical bay. The way her hands had shook when Owner gave her bitter parting words. When Kazuki refused to leave. When Charles tested his theory on her. She was within moments of killing any of them. Trying to. Only miracles restrained from following them out of the room, coiling her hands around their necks.
In the moment now, she lets her hands, so far steady on his shoulders, come to the sides of his cheeks. Her eyes stay fixed on his.]
I do think it's just as hard to stand aside. To allow these things to come to pass. To feel like you could have done more, even if you know it was never something you could change with your own two hands.
We're all bound to ugly things by these games. But it won't be for much longer. It will never be for forever.
[ oh. well. that's an intimate gesture, though that's not the meaning - she'll feel his face warm just slightly, a fair-skinned clemar prone to showing his flush, but he doesn't look away. rosamund's intense, sometimes, in ways that he can be, and he likes that side of her, finds it matching in fire to one of his own. there's a sturdiness to her determination. something iron wrought.
he'd look without the touch, but with it it's cemented. and what she says, in that simple gravitas, is something he agrees with so deeply that it resonates - words that promise forward motion. that promise revolution, the overthrow of this system they're all trapped in, one they've both sworn to take down, from the very beginning.
there's a pause.
and then he makes a noise - a soft huff of a laugh, and nods into her hands, the corners of his mouth lifting up in a smile. there's a spark in his eyes to match, and a softness to his voice holding gravity, words spoken in low, warm admiration. ]
Couldn't have said it better myself. [ it will never be forever. like seven years spent in the darkness, until light dappled across his path. like having no answers, until one day, they came.
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no subject
honestly - the first thing strohl does is reach out like he can put himself in front of rosamund. it's almost instinct, because a person like that, suspended in briars, is such an eerily human image that it puts him on high alert, and it has to be awful to see yourself that way. to experience it all, all over again. his instinct is as always to protect, and this is no different.
but it's just a memory. and as the first half completes, as the shady looking priest and the clown watch the video, he stills, hand still on his sword. were these executions? this was what she went through? - and he thinks, again, about the words from last week. puppet on a string, it had said. the priest was right; that she took it into her hands is impressive in its own right, in all that horror.
(there's a moment of painful reality that flickers, too - a moment of twisted guilt at his own anger from last week, but its there and back again, gone in a flash.)
by the time the memory fades, his expression is torn open, eyes wide with surprise, breath caught, and it takes a full moment for him to exhale again, shaken. ]
-- Bloody hell, your highness.
[ the first phrase out of his mouth. strohl can handle a lot, and that was a lot. even for him. ]
no subject
Rosamund pales as the memory plays out. Temenos and Harley — she had only heard about it before. Not seen them climbing in. Laying eyes on the mess she'd made. And there's something unnerving about seeing your own corpse dangling in the wake, too. Dead blood marring your ghostly skin.
She doesn't register that Strohl has put himself between her and the vision. Not at first. It's when the damage is done and he speaks up, rattled and cussing, that Rosamund realizes he's taken guard. Even through the haze of shock, she takes a moment to wonder about it.]
I...I'm sorry... [She swallows thickly.] I'm sorry, Strohl, I didn't...you shouldn't have had to see that.
no subject
[ the first words out of his mouth come in some kind of - stunned surprise, disbelief. there's been many a conversation of apologies between the two of them since the first week, but, this is absolutely not that, and as the immediate vision fades, it's that that brings him back to reality, away from the horrors of brambles and goodbye.
strohl whirls on her, hands coming up - either side of her upper arms. callous hands, but they're gentle. insistent concern, immediate, layered over a righteous indignation at the scene as a whole. ]
What was done to you - I'm sorry. By god, what a bloody spectacle. What a damned cruelty these places are. To have to see it played out like that a second time, that's even more so beyond the pale - are you alright?
no subject
[Objectively she can understand the sentiment but the fervour with which he brings it startles the stupid response right out of her. He takes her by the arms and her breath hitches. Rosamund looks up at him with wide blinking eyes as he now turns the fury he'd held back against her in favour of her. Her throat grows thick, a sour taste taking hold in her mouth.]
I'm...I'm fine. [she lifts her hands and puts them to his shoulders, bracing. Quelling him down, if she can at all.] I'm all right. It was...I wasn't in my right mind anymore. The possession was going to make me keep hurting people if I didn't die, and I couldn't bear the thought of someone taking my life from me. I wish it didn't happen that way, especially without realizing how it might hurt the people who had to find me. I should have known using the one place where the briars might have their old power back would be dangerous.
I just...I wanted to see them again. Before I did it. [In a ship so cold and so callous, where she tried and failed to find footholds among the friends she wanted so desperately to make, she wanted her own loves the most. The ones who knew her best, the ones she fought and cared for, who stood on even ground with her and not miles higher, miles beyond. She wanted a reminder that the pitiful, jealous, insecure, murderous girl on the Eudora wasn't the whole of her. Rosamund wanted to see home.] To remember something good.
So it was just a foolish mistake made by a really, really messed up mind. I'm all right, now. It helped, in the end. To go to the other side.
no subject
... well. it's hard, because there's a part of strohl that will always be angry about what happened to vi. he's far, far more furious at the situation now than anything, having had time to cool, knowing that she's not all that far away, but some part of him thinks maybe it's better, here, in these different circumstances, that she has to be here, still alive. and then he hates himself for that, too, briefly, a stabbing sensation of the guilt of selfishness, a reminder somewhere at how similar circumstances of someone else caused an immeasurable amount of cruelty and pain to an entire world, how easily he could he fall down that same hole if he let himself.
it's all in a flash of a second, buried complicated underneath the heavier feelings of righteous indignation and camaraderie, of deep concern and care for a friend, because that's what matters the most, and it's what he wants to focus on. forward. you linger too long in the past, strohl, will said to him once. he has to move on. ]
... Your friends are capable. [ he says, eventually, voice soft. ] And I imagine as much as you hurt to know they may have been in danger because of something related to you, they might say they'd bear any burden to help you, no matter how much it hurt. It's certainly what I would say, were it me.
I don't think it's selfish to take your own life in your hands. When your choices are taken from you, then - if there's a choice you can make for yourself, you ought to.
no subject
At least he understands.]
I wish it weren't the only one I had left, then. But wishes rarely get things done.
[Maybe there could have been another way. Maybe she gave up before she got to try. But then she thinks about the hours after trial, under watch in the medical bay. The way her hands had shook when Owner gave her bitter parting words. When Kazuki refused to leave. When Charles tested his theory on her. She was within moments of killing any of them. Trying to. Only miracles restrained from following them out of the room, coiling her hands around their necks.
In the moment now, she lets her hands, so far steady on his shoulders, come to the sides of his cheeks. Her eyes stay fixed on his.]
I do think it's just as hard to stand aside. To allow these things to come to pass. To feel like you could have done more, even if you know it was never something you could change with your own two hands.
We're all bound to ugly things by these games. But it won't be for much longer. It will never be for forever.
no subject
he'd look without the touch, but with it it's cemented. and what she says, in that simple gravitas, is something he agrees with so deeply that it resonates - words that promise forward motion. that promise revolution, the overthrow of this system they're all trapped in, one they've both sworn to take down, from the very beginning.
there's a pause.
and then he makes a noise - a soft huff of a laugh, and nods into her hands, the corners of his mouth lifting up in a smile. there's a spark in his eyes to match, and a softness to his voice holding gravity, words spoken in low, warm admiration. ]
Couldn't have said it better myself. [ it will never be forever. like seven years spent in the darkness, until light dappled across his path. like having no answers, until one day, they came.
what a great time for a memshare in return. ]