[PT-PP-F04] - ꞨħȺȾȾɆꞦɆĐ HOME -

[Lancaster 1]

As Mari would begin to crumble, some pang in his heart would sheer off layers that were long scarred and hardened. "There isn't any magic tricks left, mi amore." The man could only tighten his hand to clasp hers. "I have left Laughing Coffin, done the unthinkable. In front of the Faceless Lord no less." He pulled hard at the cigarette, as if to keep the strength he needed to follow through the explanations required of him by the pair listening on. "It gave me little choice, demanding that I settle the sheer mess that our love had caused." Lancaster leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers, enjoying her scent as if it would be the last time. "The lord was fishing, aiming to force me to do something drastic. It wasn't made fully clear what it had wanted, but I had my guesses." A lean to scan over her hair, locking eyes with the man of the hour. Freyd. "The motive seemed to have me kill you. I declined." Popping off a coy grin, to hide the pain of gravity crushing him. "When Mari told me that she'd defend you from me, it was made clear amico that you were.... off limits. When I had to choose between Mari's wishes and the Lord's...." His left fingers ran through her hair, trying so desperately to enjoy it. "Is obvious. Color me a romantic, a hopeless one."

"Let’s cut to the chase: you need me.”

"Mari... if he's left them.  There may not be much time."

The man would clutch at the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, using it like tool to gesture with more moxie. "Fare centro, exactly why I am here. Is why I am late." The man would pause and lean forward, pulling the woman close to his chest to bury her into it and deliberately covering her ears. The less she dove headfirst into this grave the safer she'd be. Freyd was already in the thick of it, from the look of things. Lancaster guessed that he wouldn't be changing much. "If you are hoping for more then rumor, tangible? verifiable? Your fighting a losing battle friend. Usable? Your only way of reaching the Faceless Lord is through necessity. Is and was my exact plan to take its place to begin with. The lord comes when a finger operates out of turn, and the others cannot deal with the problem. There in lies the weak point. They will come for me amico. That much is certain. But I will not go down without hell to pay. It would be too risky to send more then one against me. But it would be the only way to reach me. Unless..."

Pulling Mari tighter, as if trying to squeeze out her panic and fear. "I... suspect that the big cheese will be forced to deal with me personally, else risk an entire hand in a communion. You may not need what I can offer, but I would bet this is your only shot of ever getting the chance at an attempt at all. Am the bait to your little trap, amico. Mari is the only thing I give a damn about." Another huff of smoke from the jimmy stuck in his teeth. "You want to protect her, I do as well. This Lord wants you, and now it wants me. It knows Mari to be our chain or leash, and will not be afraid to use it. capiche? Am not asking to protect me." The expression would convey his intention as he'd match the mans intensity on equals, his tired eyes breathing realism on the almost weak retelling of consequences. "Just a truce, and defend her. As a friend, and if we happen to kill similar people. Is a win win."

[Mari 1]

♪ ♫ ♬

Mari saw that look on Freyds face. The tightening of his jaw. The way his cerulean eyes bore into her as if to say ‘this is not over’ a look that screamed silently at her. 

 It felt like something deep within her chest snapped at the sheer weight of that look. 

Memories of her Gemini telling her that Freyd was sick of her bullshit. Was Akir right? Was this it? It wasn’t just anger behind his eyes. It was disappointment, frustration, curiosity. Questioning. Was she worth it? And was she? It tore at her more than any blade could. It hurt.  It hurt Mari’s heart to see someone she cared for so irrevocably look at her that way. All Mari could do was offer him a pleading look - one that would not sate his concerns. No amount of silent glances would allow her the grace without some sort of explanation. One she could never give him.

Mari wanted to apologize to him, she wanted to tell him something, no, everything - but she made a promise. She couldn’t break it. It would shatter more than just trust between her and Raidou. It terrified her.

The tight feeling around her chest grew.

Mari struggled to breathe. Tiny flecks of white ghosted across her vision. Mari’s brows furrowed as she blinked a few times to try and clear it but the edges of her world were still frayed. 

 Every human being had a finite processing capacity, a capacity. Every soul a threshold to keep everything in check. A barrier to stop the sheer pressure that life threw at you at bay and Mari had passed hers long ago. 

Mari straightened and took a step back from Lancaster, shaking blue eyes on Freyd. It felt like there was a fog setting into her mind, Mari prayed her laboured breaths weren’t noticeable. She just had to get through this. Get through the dizziness. Push past the crushing pain. Push past the numbness that tickled at her fingers and threatened to throw her to the floor with unrelenting pressure.

Breathe Mari….
Breathe Mari….
Breathe Mari….

She was hyperventilating. 

"Mari... if he's left them.  There may not be much time."

Her world spun, and if it wasn't for the sudden rush of warmth she would have collapsed entirely. Mari felt Lancasters trembling fingers trawl their way through her hair. It calmed her. Grounded her. Right…these two didn’t know. Mari’s eyes fluttered shut as she  wrapped her arms around Lancaster, soaking in his warmth. The erratic thunder of her heartbeat slowly began to sync with the steady languid rhythm of his own. In that moment, it was enough.

Lancaster was still talking to Freyd- but if Mari were being honest - she barely heard it. It felt like white noise. A comforting static in her unravelling world.

He’d hold her together. Arms surrounding her like a shield. It wasn’t till that moment - until the heat of someone she loved wrapped around her completely - that Mari realized what had nearly happened.She was on the verge of a panic attack.

 Lancaster would move to cover her ears with his hands. A strangely sweet and childish gesture and Mari couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. A feeble attempt to stop her from hearing him. Mari lifted her head up to kiss the underside of his chin. 

Words broke through the haze of her panic. 

They will come for me amico
Am the bait to your little trap, amico
Am not asking to protect me

The way he desperately clung to her as though she was slipping through his fingers. How he would bury his face into her hair and inhale between words. It felt like this was a goodbye. Mari wouldn’t let it be.

With a weak, yet newfound resolve Mari took a step back. He didn’t believe her. That was fine. “G-Give me a moment…” She said, barely able to hold her breath steady as she stepped away from the two. “I almost….” She breathed, it was difficult to admit such a weakness. “I think I almost had a panic attack, I think. I just need some fresh air.”

Mari would give Lancasters hand a squeeze, followed by another kiss. Pausing to breathe in his cologne, the scent of ash, of gasoline, and everything else that was undeniabaly irrevocably him.

She headed to the front door, and closed it behind her. Now outside Mari opened up her messenger.

 

Spoiler

To: @Raidou
From: Mari
Subject: Help.
hesout
Please help.
wat di i nede to do?
Don respnd, Im delntin shi fom my mesage history.

The message was so hastily typed and sent away that it was riddled with errors. Mari removed it from her sent history, in case anyone would try to check then with a deep breath trudged out to the snow to collect her lost slippers. Tears fell from her face.

She would not lose him.
She would not lose Freyd.

Mari would become hell itself to protect those she loved.

She blinked when she got a reply from him almost instantly... hadn't she told him not to respond?

Quote

"Where, is he with you?"

Mari sighed. This wasn't going to be easy, was it? Then again. Nothing worth fighting for ever was.

 

Quote

With me, and Fryf.d.  

Another response from Raidou, quick.

Quote

Coordinates?

Mari sent him the coordinates before going through and removing everything from her inbox. Something she had done often anyway, so to those who knew her, it'd be no surprise to see nothing there. Mari picked up one slipper. It was soaked. Where was the other? Her entire body trembled, and it wasn't just because she foolishly ran out into the snow barefoot.

Was she doing the right thing?

It didn't matter.

What mattered was Lancaster.

What mattered was Freyd.

And their survival.

 

"I'll be the monster if it means you both live."

Edited 13 hours ago by Mari

[Freyd 0]

  ♪ ♫ ♫ ♪ 

Mari made quick exit, emotions overwhelming her.  Freyd suspected trouble imminent.  She would never leave these two alone without some other exacting scheme to set the cindered world alight anew.

“You really love her, don’t you?” 

Words rang out as conflicted as their speaker, they pained him just to voice aloud.  Freyd hated this man, for reasons more than two lifetimes’ memories could validate. Knowing every facet of his callous monstrous nature, this was the first and only moment he’d ever glimpsed even a modicum of decency in the bastard conqueror’s heart.  

So many friends lost to a Lancaster’s flames, effigies seared indelibly into the very definition of who and what Freyd was. Every part of him wanted nothing more than to give in to those instincts and rip the cocky bastard’s heart out with his bare hands, spraying shattered sprinkles across the freshly stained hardwood with the same gleeful disregard reserved for spilling the guts of a slaughtered overstuffed pinata.  Behind blue eyes, girded with dispassion, Freyd seethed for nothing short of brutal, violent, righteous murder. Only one thing held his finger from pulling back that trigger. Ever under the rigorous and demanding auspices of his own machine mind, he’d already parsed all the angles and considered every conceivable variable within a fathom’s reach.  None in the main viable subset of options were especially appealing.

One version would do Lancaster’s bidding and play out some scandalous farce of a battle between him and himself in a vain attempt to spare two reckless lovebirds from the maelstrom of consequences their own foolish lusts had set into motion.  They'd fed the beast till it threatened to consume them and all others in a sizably calamitous splash zone.  Too improbable and prone to propagating a problem already swollen beyond its breeches.  A non-starter.

He could literally do nothing, ironically giving Mari the very thing she thought she wanted by keeping out of her business, leaving her to suffer to the collapse of a world she seemed incapable of keeping from perpetually imminent doom. It would break her, and so many others by rippling proxy.

He could kill Lancaster, drawing forth a rapturous momentary bliss at the cost of Mari’s forever rightful wrath.  Oh, how he wanted this, every muscle coiled and ready to deliver.  But that would sacrifice the last iota of what kept him from becoming the very thing he hated.  That line was already so very, very thin. A thought spared for the mirror, Freyd’s eyes never parting from his quarry. Could he ever look at it again with that choice?

Every path led to the same inescapable conclusion, leaving him truly and forever Faceless, in all its ignobly oppressive solitude.

Unless...

“There might be a way,” spoken in quick and quiet conspiracy, the urgent privacy of their discussion clear. It stung just to think the thought, though Freyd clung to it like his only fraying strand of hope.  

“We only have a moment. I see that you’re willing to die for her.” Rhetorical, the crux of the other's insane plan being some absurd blaze of glory that might get many others killed, including the beloved he purported to spare.  The choice: an oubliette instead of death.  Stasis.  A risk of madness at the sheer stale boredom of it.  But it could stem the storm.

“Do you have the courage to live for her? How much would you actually endure for Mari's sake?” A rolled sheaf manifesting in his hand, unfurled as Freyd’s wrist pivoted to reveal a random dungeon map. 

“I can’t guarantee her safety if you die or if you remain free.  But I can offer you safe harbor here while the storm passes,” eyes pointing at the map.  

“Stay in the vestibule. You’ll be safe. When the Faceless Lord is dead, all will be forgotten and you can have your ever after.  But those stay here,” Freyd gestured to the pile of rings on the table, all visually counted against the sneaking of a shiv.  If kept, Lancaster's hot head would eventually fight the mobs and unleash chaos again, lest given motivation enough to soothe his ego and passion alike.  

Convince him he's the hero he thinks himself to be. Give the burning and drowning man something to cling to and scent it with the romance he so craves. 

Mari’s frantic agitation was visible through the glass. They were all about to be hit by the mother of all stormfronts, enough to make a category five hurricane feel like kitten cuddles.  

“I’ll hold the key,” the map shaken for effect, “until it's done.  And, keep her safe. You have my word.” Counteroffer delivered.  No better deal was possible. It was more mercy than he thought himself able to manage. Harshness faded but a tad, true pity beyond the plausible, some fragment of it granted here only for Mari’s sake.  Lancaster would know it.

"You know it’s the only way, or we wouldn’t be here. All other roads lead her to tragedy. Please.  For Mari's sake. Go. Now!”

A threshold opened. Rings swallowed by a Whisper's hand. A fateful choice in need of making. How rare to be granted the opportunity to choose one's destiny, especially at the hand of an enemy?

All that remained was to witness what mattered more to the lion: pride or love? 

Edited 7 hours ago by Freyd