“-- S-safe?!”

Safe? There, in the arms of the enemy?? Rois fails to think straight, healing, healer, the pains gone, it was all her, the absolute obvious. All at once the stupid man’s skull is filled with the previous and even further back, the image of Lucero upon her knees with her own blood like bars upon her pale face, a jail cell of their combined efforts and struggle amongst the ferns. He had kicked her down. She had been splayed upon the ground like he was now with rasping gasps and trembling hands, desperately clinging to the rapidly fleeing safety of consciousness; and now the shoe was on the other foot. This shadowy, private gap of theirs between the orange bricks of business would become a stage without an audience, but a single play would be airing, its theme would be obvious.

Revenge.

“No, no--”

Rois could not, would not die like Lucero almost had, there was a shame to the erasure of ones entire existence being so quiet and cowardly-- to take out an opponent already downed…! This bitch, her hands have moved but strength is returning to tanned muscles that rebel against the healers strength of touch, I don’t want you hurting yourself, liar. There was a knife at her waist. They both knew it regardless of whether it was now absent of the suns glare, with all the co-ordination of a slightly older kitten who is beginning to learn the basics of dexterity black nails are attempting to grasp at her wrist… of the very same hand she is using to touch his palm. The movement is awkward and unsuccessful. Fingers clambering for fingers. Thankfully there was another avenue, he is flushed with hair sticking to sweat-laden bandages, glaring up at her for a fragment of a moment to meet her attempts at being laughably stern--

And when one was dealing with a crocodile, its mouth should always be considered carefully.

Chomp.

The butcher bites the finger that had once been circling the skin of his brow now twisted with vicious expression, and it isn’t as harsh of a nip-and-hold as Rois had wanted it to be, but even with the little strength his flagging body possesses the cutting of his teeth breaks first exposed skin and then threatens to surpass even the threshold of the digits base in the way of leather glove. A non-subtle pulling is rewarded by the teasing of blood against his tongue, swallowing it down with a rumble and further attempts to try and lamely tear the damn thing from its birthplace. No, he is not succeeding. Yes, it does still hurt. A dazed, weak crocodile is still a damned crocodile, and those teeth are abnormal, for even the flats of molars have some kind of uncanny, inhuman edge as they seek to claim Lucero’s flesh. If the knife would ever be considered… better to disable the hand that seeks its hilt then to let the chance arrive unhindered.
 
“Jódete!” She hissed out the curse as soon as his sharp teeth clamped around her finger, piercing and shreding her skin. Lucero had never been bit before while helping a person, the wild monster she had come across with Syr Horoth when they went to rescue the white harpy Shoyna had tried to bite her, but never a person. Usually once they realized she was not hurting them they settled down, but even as she promised him no harm would come to him he had bit her. What was it with him always terrorizing her fingers? Didn’t anyone ever teach him not to bite the hand that feeds him?

‘Stab him,’ her little devil whispered with a seductive drawl. ‘Choke him out right now, if he’s going to bite off your finger then have him choke on it.’ Lucero cursed again in her mother tongue, the common language too bland to truly express how much her finger hurt in this moment, the betrayal growing in her heart, and still she ignored Devil Lucero because that was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

“No matter how much you hurt me I won’t hurt you,” Lucero cried with a keening edge in her voice, no longer soft and under control but breathless and hissing, sucking in air through her teeth. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought bitterly, feeling foolish as tears welled in her eyes. Too scared to try tugging her finger beneath his fangs, all Lucero could think was why? Why in Khurun did he only have sharp teeth, what was he? Why did she help him, why had she followed after him despite him trying to murder her.

“I refuse, I refuse, I refuse.” She said quietly, more to herself than Him. Of course she had followed after him because she had been curious and perhaps felt brave after he strode away from her. And of course she had gone to his aid because that was the sort of person she wanted to be, the sort of person who believed in people. Even if Devil Lucero mocked her and gave her a list of ways to get out of the predicament - none of them kind to Him, of course - it would be the same as admitting defeat, to go back on her heart.

Lucero was not the strongest Knight. She was young, she was blind, and she wasn’t worth much in a fight. But she liked to think that she made up for it with her tenacity and mental fortitude, that she was just as strong as the others because she was soft and kind. But by the gods was he testing her patience right now. ‘Stab him in his cheek,' Devil Lucero giggled.

Her hand was tight against his wrist, beginning to wrestle with that arm of his. Lucero was getting her teeth so tightly that she felt the onset of a headache pound at the base of her head, neck taut and tight and feeling like her veins might explode with the adrenaline. And he would feel it, Lucero’s feelings. Her empathy unchecked, her own emotions beginning to stir in the air between them like the waft of sweet breads or cooked sausages upon entering the market for the first time.

“You’re the one who’s on top of me with your big fat stupid head,” The Knight lamented, fighting the urge to hurt him the way he hurt her, the facade of the benevolent healer cracking. The smile she forced to her lips was open and gasping and crazed, her words coming out between grunts of pain. "I won't hurt you like you hurt me, I won't do to you what you did to me." Her smile grew wider, his teeth crushing her finger, fangs deep enough she was sure they scrapped against her bone. Eyes, wide and wild, as they twinkled. "So go ahead, bite off my finger and choke on it, I'll still smile down at you because I know it pisses you off."

'Pendejo,' her little devil crowed in her ear.
 

Red on black, spider lilies rising from the muck.

That had been Rois’s existence, every petal curled upwards had been like small daggers, first the prickling of sharpish pain and then the usual, familiar ache that asked him sweetly to remain upon the earth lest their points delve deeper… he always disobeyed. Sought out comfort and let the hazy recollections come later when he could be bothered to think without a savagely pounding headache, such disobedience against the warning signs produced a level of anguish that was entirely expected. It was always the same. There was no running from the inevitable, his story’s bulk saw to it that the most constant thing throughout would be a seizure and its loyal companion-- hurt-- closely following behind. So why was it now, with this womans finger betwixt the grasp of his teeth, did hurt flag so loosely behind…? Where had those flowers gone, had the grime been so egregious in its presence that it had drowned them all entirely…?

No matter how much you hurt me I won’t hurt you.

… She who sang her own choir of great deeds and accomplishments still, somehow, found empathy for lowly he. Such a thing should not be possible, it was entirely human to want revenge against the crimes of the past, people were supposed to be predictable but Lucero was not to easy to understand despite how much the butcher thought he had her figured out-- the healers expression had become just as twisted as his. There was an unknowing thrum to the air that was poorly understood. Why did he feel… sorry for her? For the way she rattled words so, for the bowing of her head, for the desperate grasping of tender hands who had only sought to… it clicked, finally. She had been plucking the flowers out root and stem with whatever magicks she claimed to have-- now proven true-- Lucero had been helping, his big, fat, stupid head had been upon her legs because-- Gods be damned-- why, why--

She is suddenly released from steel-like jaws.

Rois is not eloquent in his movement, finally managing to break free of her grasp he shuffles his large self to the side and sits up in a manner too fast for his shaken skull, almost immediately tipping over once again. This stupid woman and her God-complex, this ever nagging need to help, yes, it pissed him off. It is evident when the butcher begins speaking after a period of silence from the pair, loudly huffing out of sync with one another upon the ground.

“... Heh… I d-don’t know why… you didn’t k-kill me, fool.” Comes the familiar heated sneer, her blood was still sweet upon his tongue. Delicious. “D-Do you cling to y-your… saintly image so tightly… that you c-cannot bare to lose it?”

He is predictable even if she isn’t. Once again Rois is checking to make sure his coin purse is still there, the idea that maybe she took it during the lapse of his memories still prevalent at the forefront of that addled mind. No, you don’t feel sorry for her. Maybe repeating the words internally would rid him of the nagging, newly birthed feelings of empathy that were somehow stubbornly remaining at his core, so strange, none else was ever subjected to such soft emotion so why now…? Too many ‘whys’, too many unanswered things too tumultuous to speak aloud, they hang in the air like threats ever-keen to shatter the momentary ‘peace’ that had fallen the two… they demanded responses none-the-less. Rois would tepidly oblige.

“So… somehow, you did s-something… magkical somethings.” A motion is made tiredly with a hand in a blasé circle. With every minute gone recovery came swifter, oh, how great it felt to finally think without the marring of confusion’s suffocating grasp! “I know you did… ‘cause I do not hurt as much as I should. What I don’t… understand, is why you’d bother. That is what pisses me off, because it doesn’t m-make sense.”

… My goodness, the pitch of Rois’s voice briefly rises, hes mimicking her,

“I refuse I refuse I refuse!” And it isn’t a good impression whatsoever. A crimson gaze flutters downwards to the lady knights fingers, “You stupid bitch… look what your kindness has wrought.”
 
"Because I am not like you," Lucero had scooted away from him the moment he had let her go. Like two cats squaring up on each other, now they had their backs against opposite walls, facing each other with fast beating hearts and heads filled with too many questions. "If I see a person that's hurting I help them." Because he was right, she did cling to that idea of a healer that was tall and thin, blonde with blue eyes, lovely inside and out and able to fix any heart, any wound. Unlimited kindness, patience, a heart so pure it could heal the world.

But Lucero was not that. Beneath the sun her skin grew dark, in the winter her hair could look black, and forget the sky blue eyes, she was blind. She had to fight with herself to be kind, to fight against her own instincts when she was being hurt. She was not perfect, she was unable to be effortlessly beautiful and patient and able to heal all the woes. Lucero would rather bite her own tongue than to admit this to a stranger, she'd rather bleed out than let the man that degraded know how much he had gotten to her.

Before, she had felt like she could only walk while everyone else could run. After Him, now it felt like she had to crawl, to pull herself by her hands.

Rubbing at her injured finger, smearing blood over her gloveless hand. She brought her forefinger to her lips, using her tongue to run over the holes, wincing as she did so before putting her the middle digit in her mouth to clean it. She brewed in her silence, considering his words. When she released her finger with a pop it was no longer bleeding, but it hadn't been long enough for it to heal. That could wait, she had more important things to say to Him.

"You'd rather I hurt you instead of helping you, don't you? Because it's easier that way for you." She pointed her injured finger at him, raising her chin defiantly. "Bite first, ask questions later, Mr. Big Bad Wolf." Lucero had been wondering what he was, considering how sharp his teeth were now she thought him to be a beastkin of some sort. He didn't have ears but his teeth were so sharp... what else had razor sharp teeth?

"Well, I helped you. Even when you hurt me, twice, I still helped." This time her finger didn't tremble, because she knew how he had ran from her, that star of lightning bursting over his entire body, how he had fallen on his face, unable to speak, body seizing against his own will. And what had her kindness brought her? More pain? A disgruntled man that couldn't even say thank you despite admitting he knew she helped him.

"You're the stupid one, your voice is too deep to sound like me." If he wasn't going to apologize or thank her than neither would she offer the same courtesy. Insults it was.
 
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He does well to ignore the healers actions of correcting the torn flesh of her finger, leaning slowly against the crates on his left in a manner that dampened their whining at the weight. Colours came in a sluggish crawl. The vividness of the market afar was flickering fast into focus, only a few wandering souls drew their sight to the opening in minute interest that quickly fled at the sight of two people simply… perched there there. If it were up to Rois-- the mental side of him-- he’d drag his ass off of the ground and storm off in an unrelated direction to simmer and seethe like a man scorned, but no amount of mental willing could steel legs that the red-head knew would wobble violently if put to use. Falling in front of everyone flat on his face was a fear that justified the sitting… as lowly as that too was.

“You are a child reaching out to what you do not understand.” The words are spat with a forked tongue, not seeming to care that he himself had been the one to drag the conversation down to playground insults. “Do n-not presume you know how I think and act. You don’t even know what the ground below you looks like.”

… Because there was no way to know of Lucero’s sight beyond sight, the accumulation of the known hues come to delicately surmise the guise of a persons emotions… and their time together had seemed so barren of complex feelings before, but now those blacks came not so harshly. The wavering figure of a beast haunting the dark edges of the healers mind was losing its silhouette effect. Curious and curiouser, the reds of pain returning slowly to a skull leant against the cool yet rough touch of new-wood boxes, they were licked by the relief of a kinder, warmer yellow, an emotion that would never be shown upon that eternally angry face. Alleviation… the knowledge that if it were not for her he would be in an absolutely worse off place, somewhere familiar yet never without the snagging of its teeth upon a worn-out body. And so the daffodil yellow, like weeds once again rising, are a subtle yet undeniable thankfulness…

… Not that Lucero would ever be thanked aloud.

In fact, Rois remains as horrid vocally as he ever was.

“You are not like me because I’m not an i-idiot, this foolishness is exactly what I meant when we last crossed paths. You do not know what you are doing despite being a self-confessed ‘saviour’ of many. Di… Did any of your masters bother to educate you properly…? You are supposed to keep clear once someone has had a seizure.”

… Oh?

“When we wake up we aren’t… entirely there, we are guided by false emotion-- and if you knew that your finger wouldn’t need fixing. It was your fault you got hurt before and it is your fault you got hurt now; y… you are inexperienced and naive and motivated by the idea that you really are some gift from the God’s themselves… yes, I am very much not like you.”

Well, look who found his voice, it came numbly and with the fringes of a wobble but Rois managed to (at least, partially) keep the snideness up with the semi-snarled words. They did however leave him a little breathless, puffing and panting as poor, overworked lungs tried to shake themselves free of the sticky residue coating them from the seizures poor attempt to choke him to death with his own saliva. It was not like it wasn’t expected, the schools knew very little about the condition and so could either deny its existence or preach falsehoods about how to fix it and that was not the womans fault-- but he’d blame her anyway, just because. There was no sign of an apology either, just the clinical admission that he'd been confused, it was the truth after all, the man had panicked at the feeling of someone touching him and the beginnings of sight had spied not just anyone but an enemy, the butcher could never admit that those ‘false emotions’ had been… fear. So, he fought. It was all he knew how to do.

In an act of absolute obscenity, before a healer, in the aftermath of an episode and actively wheezing, he is pulling a cigarette from his pocket. Incredible. It is placed between teeth,

“Go, flee back to your blameless, selfish world… I do not wish to be troubled further by your aggravating presence."
 
With a huff, Lucero turned her head to the side. For most it would have been disrespectful, for Lucero it meant the opposite, craning her ears towards him to better hear him. She disliked the way he spoke down to her as if she were a child. Crossing her arms over her chest now, Lucero did her best to look annoyed without looking like she was pouting. She didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t known to stay clear of him, that whenever she had assisted someone who’s body refused to do as they say that it had never been as bad as his. He hadn’t just been twitching, his entire body had convulsed and it sounded like he couldn’t breathe. But next time, Lucero thought, she would do better with this piece of information.

Tobacco hit her noise hard, with a roll of her eyes, Lucero didn’t get up. She liked the smell of it, even more with the hint of sweetness from the sweet vendors. It was the same as liking the smell of leather in the sun beneath the sweet sugary scent of peaches, one of her first members after leaving the Monastery as a squire on a mission to administer aid.

“I may be blind but I can see you for who you are more than you think,” perhaps no longer a monster, but the darkness of his soul was unusual. Was that was caused the seizure or entirely unrelated? Lucero wished that he was the sort of man that liked to talk about more important things instead of being the sort that enjoyed lecturing others about how he was right. Not an unusual trait for most men to have. “So I will leave when I want to because you do not own me in any way.”

But in the distance, Lucero could hear her name being shouted. She could hear Yinka and Syr Silas calling out for her, could hear the fear in both their voices. Lucero bit her lower lip. Well, sometime had passed. She didn’t have her sausage on a stick. She felt around on the floor for her glove that she had taken off, leaning forward on her hands and knees to sweep one hand slowly in front of her. She had a system, long sweeping strokes close to the ground, fingers splayed wide.

“Lucero!” The Syr Silas’s voice was getting louder, announcing his presence. Yinka’s softer voice was much farther away. She wished it had been the other way around, in her gut anxiety grew. She didn’t want Syr Silas seeing the man with the sharp teeth.

[wheat]“Forget it,”[/wheat] Lucero muttered to herself. Her eyes had dimmed in their brilliance, veins no longer pronounced. She got up clumsily, leaning a shoulder against a wall. Syr Silas called out for her again and she used his voice to help guide her towards the exit, feet banging against a barrel. Her arms were out in front of her, helping her find that opening from before. Before slipping out, she turned her head over her shoulder so he could hear her clearly.

”I don’t know what you are or what you look like but I don’t think you’re a monster anymore, so maybe I am a fool after all, but for that and only that, not because I stayed true to my heart and helped you.” And with that, she left, shouting to Syr Silas that she was coming and that she had gotten distracted by a limping dog with a nasty bite. It was good enough to keep the Knight from peering too closely inside that alleyway, it was good enough to have him not realize until late that night that Lucero was missing one of her gloves, left behind in that dark alleyway.
 
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