It was quiet, cold, clammy. The cell beneath Ragyo’s manor, lit by only a small portion of moonlight cast from the small, archaic light well in the ceiling, was barren, stains of blood splattered against the walls and floor. Who’s blood it was, Aikuro couldn’t tell— they had recently caught a good number of Nudist Beach operatives, and all of their blood was red— there was absolutely no way to differentiate.
“…”
E let out a soft, inaudible sigh, wiping off some of the splatters from eir face, and releasing eir hair from the ponytail it had been in for the majority of the evening, and took a seat in the very chair that e had killed so many of eir own soldiers in. It was ironic— before Ragyo enlightened em, e always thought that e would end up here, if Ryuko hadn’t stopped her.
Fate had a funny way of making things happen, e supposed.
Eir cheeks were hollow, sunken, and eir expression was sullen, and e sported the eyes of a dead man, with bruised, black bags under eir eyes and eir skin clinging to eir bones. All of that health e’d had before, the vibrance and vitality of youth— gone.
Aikuro barked out a sharp, sudden laugh, at how much things had changed. It was very rare that e had moments of real clarity, like this one— and it was moments like these that only cemented how fruitless it would be to fight against eir conditioning, if only to die. E wasn’t afraid of eir end— but e was afraid of leaving Ryuko all alone, to suffer her episodes with only those demonic… creatures to torture her further.
The headache started to ease into eir head and e sighed again, massaging eir temples, coaxing the Life Fibers to ease back as e changed the subject of eir thoughts, away from the blasphemous truth and further into the cocoon e had no choice but to live in.
There was nothing else e could do, after all.
