chef_chocobro | MHA #18; Saturday Evening [10/07].

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MHA #18; Saturday Evening [10/07].

Even though it seemed like this week had provided copious examples of attempts to the contrary, it turned out that Ignis actually couldn't spend all his spare time with Liliana and would, in fact, spend time with other people, too. Well, with the other person he spent all of his spare time with. He certainly wouldn't want to overstay his welcome, and they were both clearly the sort of people who had lives beyond the blissful bubble of each other's company that they'd come to discover and had other things to do that day...

...Well, it seemed Liliana did, anyway. Ignis...had a make-up training session to attend to to appease his roommate, after which there was to be take-out because he was quite frankly a little exhausted and wanted to unwind a little with food made by someone else for a change and a glass of wine. And to at least make a marginal attempt to distract himself from wanting to be somewhere else and in different company again already.

No offense, of course, to Gladio.

"So," said Gladio from the couch, no doubt already leaving dusting of rice from his take-out container around where he sat, "what should I put on? Cooking shows to make you mad, or sports shows to make me mad?"

Okay, he took that back. Some offense to Gladio, after all.

[[ for those who know who they are and with some helpful little morsels of OCD like the rice Iggy'll find in the couch cushions later; CW for someone almost fucking dying ]]

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"Does it at least look good on me?" Ignis couldn't help but ask, though when he wrapped his arms around her a drew her in tight, it was clear that the lightness of the comment was meant to counterbalance the heaviness in that embrace. "We should both get cleaned up. My tub is not nearly as luxuriant as yours, but I'm sure we could make do."

"I have yet to see anything that doesn't," Liliana said quietly. "...But it's still not something I'd like to see you wearing all that often."

Her tone was light but there was a wealth of emotion beneath it. His blood, her blood, blood in general. It didn't matter, she preferred him without it liberally spattered on him.

"I don't suppose that offer of a bath comes with the possibility of you washing my hair, does it?" she asked, starting out with that lightness but losing it partway through to plaintive hope.

"It comes," Ignis informed her, simply, plainly, as of there be no other possible response, "with whatever you want it to."

It was very nice shampoo, too. Chocobros were notorious for their love of hair products, after all.

Another long moment where she just looked at him. "You spoil me," she murmured, only this time it lacked it's usual arch drawl, replaced by something more filled with wonder. And a kiss, soft, small because there is still so much blood, but fervent.

She let Ignis draw the bath, stepping into it with a sigh as the hot water hit tight muscles, and for a long time, was just content to sit in their tub, pressed against him, letting soap and water perform their magic.

Eventually, she said, "Kothophed - the demon I killed tonight - is the reason I'm here. I've been hiding from him."

Ignis' first thought, to these words, was, admittedly, a very selfish one, wondering with a dull ache if that meant, with the demon now dead, she'd have no further reason to stay. And who could blame her? With everything she'd done, and everything she'd been through, and the multiverse now right where it should be, entirely at her fingertips.

He was trying not to dwell on it, and instead on the fact that, at least in this moment, what he had under his fingertips was her warmed, still-cool skin, as he brushed them over her shoulder and leaned in to kiss it lightly.

"What happened," he asked quietly, "with him, that would have driven you into hiding?"

She was trying to figure that out for herself. And deliberately not thinking about how it was the existence of planar portals - that was, portals that let even non- Planeswalkers travel the Multiverse - that had spurred her into final action.

Trying to not think about a silly question, what would be your perfect day? and how she'd immediately thought of Nephalia with its silver beaches...

"From the minute he carved the words into my skin that said they owned me, I was trying to figure out how to free myself," she said steadily. "Eventually, he sent me to fetch an artifact that could help me do just that. So rather than return it, I ran. Well. Planeswalked. Asked an... acquaintance of mine for a place to lie low while I figured out how to use it. He sent me here, set me up with the Consortium. And here I've been."

She leaned against his chest. "I do not take well to being owned."

"I can't imagine anyone who could think that you would," he said quietly, which was a very different thing than being able to understand why someone might still want to try, especially with his own complicated tangle of emotions in that regard, the ones that had him repeating to himself daily, like a mantra, just how fleeting this was destined to be.

The next question on the tip of his tongue, so what now?, was something he was not ready to ask, nor was he ready to have answered, nor did he believe Liliana had the answer to yet, anyway, so he did not ask. It was a question that would get answered inevitably; why bring that pain on himself any sooner than necessary? And it had been a very long day...

But it pervaded every corner of his mind in that moment, leaving him with nothing else to say. So he just left it at that, pondering the irony of the fact that, as he said it, he couldn't help just wrapping his arms around her.

She did not feel like she was getting ready to run. If anything, she snuggled in closer, pulled his arms in tighter around her, lacing her fingers through his.

"There are three others," she said. "Griselbrand, Razaketh, and Belzenlok. I will not be free until they're all dead."

Her laugh was full of bitter, ironic amusement. "I don't set myself easy tasks, apparently. Especially given that Kothophed was the closest that an elder demon can come to being 'low-hanging fruit.'"

And that reaction, in that moment, was everything, strong enough to push even through those defensive barriers Ignis had been building around himself nonstop pretty much from the start. Squeezing her hands now held in his, wrapping himself into her even more, he closed his eyes and lowered his head to bury a raw, grateful sigh into Liliana's shoulder. And he held it there, for a moment, before he could trust himself with any other response.

"Hardly any challenge," he finally murmured, into that shoulder, interrupting his own words with a gentle kiss, "in easy, that doesn't seem to suit your style. Besides, there usually is a progression, with these sorts of things."

There was a pause, as he rested his chin now on her shoulder, before he added, somewhat cautiously, "And you wouldn't have to do it alone. I'm sure there are vast differences, between your daemons and mine, but I do have experience. With immortals and gods and dead kings as well..."

Another pause, another heartbeat of stillness from Liliana before she was craning around to look at him. "You would just...help me?" she asked, sounding baffled. "Without me even asking, you would just... volunteer to go up against three of the Multiverse's most powerful, most evil demons?"

Who did that? Who just watched somebody nearly die in their living room and think to themselves, 'Ah yes, this battle is one that I should sign up for as well. For funsies'?

Honestly, up until this last month, Ignis had been feeling dreadfully bored since arriving back here, really...

And while he couldn't exactly look back, he did feel the turn of her head and her eyes now on him and turned his head toward her in kind.

"Well," he stated, plainly, simply, he felt perhaps even a little obviously, "it would certainly be better than you trying to go up against them all by yourself."

It had clearly gone so well for her this time, after all.

Liliana huffed. "He didn't even have the chance to touch me," she informed him. "I left him in ashes around his gaudy throne room and he the most he could do was beg."

She'd nearly been taken out by friendly fire, thank you very much. Or whatever the Chain Veil was.

*Vessel of destruction...*

She was ignoring you, stupid spirits.

She also very nearly subjected Ignis to a frosty few moments, but her curiosity outweighed her displeasure. "And what in Phyrexia is Stark?" she snapped. "When he offered to help, I didn't know he meant with dying!"

Edited 2023-10-08 15:30 (UTC)

The light kiss now against Liliana's shoulder at the start of that potential frosty few moments was an apologetic one, and it became even more so with her question.

"I don't know," he admitted, shaking his head lightly. "I'm sorry. If I had had any idea that that was what he meant, I would have never..."

And he was still terribly unclear on what had happened, but, with the wide gaps in his perception of the event, Liliana had still managed to actually recover somehow, and for that, even if he didn't understand it, he was grateful.

That had once again been Liliana taking care of herself, thank you. She'd been doing it for two hundred years ~~and it had only gotten her enslaved by four demons~~.

"I should hope not," she sniffed. "Doesn't he work at the clinic?"

See? She had been absolutely right not to go.

"He sat down and took off his mask and glowed at me and at first it felt comforting. Soothing. Like my m--" She stumbled over that and then pretended that she hadn't, like a cat that had fully fallen on its face but wasn't going to acknowledge it. "Like warmth and softness. But rather than healing, it was just... telling me that it was okay to let go. To move on. That he'd help me pass. And then..." She stopped and just shuddered.

"Bad," she managed to say. "Then it got bad."

And she'd been so weak, so helpless. Everything she'd fought for two centuries to never feel again.

The intake of Ignis' breath at the words for how Stark had been apparently trying to help--to move on, to help her pass--matched the tension that suddenly caused the stiffness in his body, tension and a dull reminder of pain burning over his scars.

Then a long hesitation before he ventured, "Bad how?"

A long breath, and then said with the same lightness he'd heard that morning, when she'd dismissed their conversation about perfection, "Like something was trying to drag me down, slowly by inches, but inexorable." A sigh, like it had been all so very tedious, "And it was choking me, so I couldn't breathe. Or speak. Lying there--" On his lap "--unable to even whisper for help, even if I'd wanted to."

Which she had. Desperately. She just wasn't going to say that. For reasons.

Edited 2023-10-08 19:14 (UTC)

And him, the whole time, able to feel that something was going terribly, horribly wrong, but unable to do anything to actually help. In fact, having made it worse in his desperate attempts to find any help at all.

Ignis didn't say anything, at first. What could he say, besides an endless litany of apologies that wouldn't do anything to go back in time to change anything? An endless march of apologies for which he could only even half-heartedly feel because, even if he didn't understand how, it had lead to her here, now, better...far from good, but at least not nearly lifeless and helpless on his living room floor.

He didn't say anything still, not knowing what to say, but he did lift one of her hands in his, and, feeling the slight echo of something she's said not too long ago that felt like it had been ages when their fingers had been similarly laced--Happy. Perfect day.--to kiss her fingertips in lieu of the words currently failing him.

He couldn't even reassure her that it was over now, at least. Not when she'd still had three more to look forward to.

"So I lifelinked us," Liliana said softly, deliberately turning her mind away from that moment. And exactly what it had reminded her of.

"And through that," Ignis guessed, his voice reflecting hers in its softly, "you were able to pull yourself back?"

"He wished to use his glow to kill me," Liliana said, voice resolute and unforgiving. "I decided to use it to stay alive, instead." Then, in a drawl. "I am aware of the irony, yes."

"I much prefer your application," Ignis stated firmly, letting it be known for the record where he was going to stand on the matter.

"I was...tempted," she murmured. Or, well, had been tempted. "To do that. Earlier. Before he arrived. But I wasn't sure--" She idly rubbed a washcloth over her leg, a moment. "When I've done that before, it was until either they were dead or I was completely healed. And this seemed like a poor time to experiment."

There was a long, long pause after that, so long that maybe Liliana might have started to suspect that Ignis might not say anything at all, but then, he did.

"You would have only been doinv," he said, his words very slow and steady and chosen with heavy, deliberate intent, "what needed to be done."

"I likely would have," she said, looking dead at him, making no bones about it. She was who she was, Ignis. And you should know that. "Rather than dying. But then Stark tried--and I no longer worried about if I could stop."

She was who she was.

And Ignis was who he, and she should know that by now, surely. It was a combination that did not bode well for him any way you sliced it, and yet he found it impossible to actually care.

If he'd known...

...but it would seem his ignorance actually had worked in his favor for once, and he had a hard time feeling bad about that, too.

He hadn't even asked; he just assumed...

He'd gotten off easy.

"Come on," Ignis said, speaking after enough time that it got caught in his throat a little, as he shifted around a new complicated tangle of emotions that was going to be quite the task to unravel, "let's get you put of this quickly cooling water and into some nice, warm clothes, on a good soft bed..."

MHA #18; Saturday Evening [10/07].

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