hadriel_logs | what's behind the door i wonder

Entry tags:

what's behind the door i wonder

Who: Henry Percy and Maketh Tua
What: The aftermath of the wendigo event following this
Where: Henry’s apartment
When: March 2nd
Warnings: tw for discussions of gore, cannibalism, and suicide.

There was a gap between when the message was received and when the meeting itself would occur. Maketh felt childishly relieved at that. She’d found reason – one after another – to avoid seeking Henry out after she’d woken up in Hope’s temple, naked and not quite insane. There’d been no pressing issues to discuss, no new weapons for him to explain. Nothing pressing. Except now that he’d requested her presence, and Maketh knew a summons when she saw one. This couldn’t be avoided.

It felt a bit like a reckoning. Maketh supposed it had come due.

She spent the rest of the day trying – and failing – to write up an inventory list for what remained of the clinic, extrapolating the uses of a dozen unfamiliar medicines from their bottles – not all of which had labels, or clear indication of purpose. Later she pressed her uniform, such as it was, and righted her hair.

Then she put on her coat and went out to see Henry Percy, who she’d considered a friend and who she’d ordered to set another person on fire. Maketh had nightmares about the look on his face. About how—

Stop. Irrelevant.

Maketh stopped in the middle of the street, took a deep breath, and slapped herself across the face.

It stung. It brought her crashing back into the moment.

Better. She was a professional. She’d act like one.

By the time Maketh knocked on Henry’s door, she’d arranged her face into a careful, practiced blankness.

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After each encounter, it was vital that one thoroughly inspected one's equipment for damage, down to every link, buckle and strap. The certainty that one's arms and armour would withstand the next engagement endowed one with boldness.

The core of that practice was a principle Henry applied to other matters.

Following his mercy killing of Maketh, he anticipated some injury to their relationship. The cruelty of its particulars still weighed upon his conscience, for all that he had made it as clean as possible. There was but one way to find out how severe the harm inflicted was, and that was to face her directly.

Hence inviting Maketh to talk. He never shied from the consequences of his actions.

Henry opened his door without fuss and gave her room to enter. Though he had no reason to expect otherwise, he still felt sharp relief when he looked her over. She was her true self again, entirely human and free of the disfigurement that the wendigo's corruption had wrought.

“Maketh,” he greeted, his relief evident in his tone. For all of his flaws, he was honest. “Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

Two details from that day lingered in his mind, more intense than the rest: her terrible, echoing scream, human and monstrous at once, as she burned; the way that she had clutched her coat to her chest, the backward tip of her head and the glisten of her eyes as she awaited her death, brave and delicate. He had not known she could be the latter. Yet if his blow had shattered any part of her, she kept it hidden from sight now.

What that meant – well. Time would shortly tell.

One thing that had struck Maketh about her resurrection - there had been several - was that once she came back to herself, she'd found her clothes lying nearby. Neatly folded and utterly whole, without a single trace of smoke or linger kerosene. She'd put them on because she had to, saw no humor in walking back to the apartments naked in the aftermath.

The coat had survived just as it was.

She was wearing it now, zipped all the way up to her throat. Morbid, perhaps, but she found a sort of comfort at its presence. The weight of it. She'd held it as she died.

Perhaps it was weakness to cling to something like that, an object that likely belonged to a dead man. Maketh tried to tell herself it was entirely practical - a good coat was hard to come by, especially here - but that wasn't true at all.

She stepped through Henry's doorway and decided to stop thinking about the damn coat.

Inside, things remained largely as she remembered. Henry kept everything neat, his armor and weapons hidden away. There were a few knickknacks that he'd apparently found amusing or interesting - Maketh hadn't yet asked if he knew the purpose of rubber bands, or even about the existence of rubber.

It didn't matter, not really.

She stood at attention instead of sitting, hands clasped behind her back. For some reason she couldn't quite meet Henry's eyes, so she stared at the space directly beyond his shoulder. He looked - worried, Maketh supposed. But unharmed. She wondered if he'd forgiven her for the order she'd given. If that was the sort of thing a person could forgive.

"You look -- well," she managed, fighting the urge to bolt for the doot.

Henry shut the door and frowned. Putting aside the inherent rudeness of not looking someone in the eye, which was quite obviously not Maketh's intention, the aversion in the gesture and the tense formality of her stance boded ill. She looked more like one awaiting discipline than a discussion, which made no sense whatsoever.

"I am."

Rather than joining Maketh, he moved through the apartment and headed for the kitchenette at the back.

"But then, I was not the one who suffered," he continued.

If Maketh was too guarded then they would get nowhere. Putting people at ease was not one of his skills, however. To that end, he turned to a universal comfort.

In the kitchenette, Henry took two clean glasses out of the cupboard and grabbed the bottle of whiskey sat on the counter. A reward for his part in Hope's monster slaying quest, it was the only alcohol thus far that he was willing to drink, purely because of its origin. He had opened it yesterday to share with Dorian, but with luck more than enough remained to get both her and himself through this conversation. He poured out one glass, which he took up in his right hand before he tucked the bottle under his left arm. The empty glass went into his left hand. Only then did he return to Maketh.

Henry offered her the full glass.

"If you must insist on standing, at least take this."

That was an odd thing to say, Maketh thought. That he hadn't suffered. Of course he had - he'd been ordered to do something that no one should have to even consider. He was the one who had to stand up and walk away when it was done. She'd just...

Died.

Part of Maketh had assumed that would have been the end of it, despite Hope's assurances. Death was supposed to be lasting.

Not in this place, apparently.

Maketh dragged her eyes up to Henry's face when he stepped close. She was being rude, she'd been trained better than that. "You didn't--I didn't suffer. I gave you an order."

It felt important to say that, to make sure it was understood.

She took the glass, after a moment.

Henry's eyebrows drew in and he held Maketh's gaze as he considered her words.

"I understood that it was a kindness. An act of absolution," he said slowly.

He had not considered how their perspectives might differ.

Henry dropped his arm and walked over the living room seat a few paces away. He sat down, then set his burdens on top of the small, low table in front of him. He poured himself a matching glass of whiskey and propped his elbow on the arm of the sofa. He leant his cheek against his knuckles.

"But you cannot say that you suffered not. I set you alight."

It was not all that kind of him to remind her that she had burned before the end. But he would not sit here and pretend that she had not been hurt, even if it had been necessary.

Maketh watched him for what felt like a long time, the glass clasped tight in her hand. No ice, she noted. Not that it mattered. Who was she to think of appearances right now, when she could barely look Henry in the eye?

This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen. Not to her. The Empire had taught her better.

"It was--necessary..."

Maketh felt her hands shaking, and took a drink to stop them.

She'd woken up alone in Hope's temple. There had been a kind of pain in that.

Stop.. That line of thought was useless. Self-pitying. The Empire had no need for weakness. It would be stamped out in all due haste because that was right and good, and she wanted so desperately to be good. Even now.

Especially now.

Maketh downed the entire cup in a single go. Then she made a decision, clenched her fist, and sat down next to Henry on the couch. Something about this whole thing felt uneasy and false, like a nightmare. Maketh had the irrational feeling that her skin was going to break open and then - she didn't know what, exactly - something bad would happen.

"I did not think I would come back," she said, after a while.

Henry did not try to fill the silence that Maketh left; he merely nursed his own drink, watching her deliberate. The way that she downed the contents of her glass -- that was honest. He felt a trace of satisfaction when she joined him on the sofa. It meant there was hope of accomplishing something.

At her confession, Henry shot her a startled look then narrowed his eyes.

"Why then were you so quick to refuse risking Hope's temple? Do you not value your own existence?"

His words were too sharp, but his few friends back home would have recognised them for what they were: worry. It was care he should have taken back on that fateful day. There were enough signs that Maketh's judgement at the time was likely compromised. Her poise in the midst of her dreadful possession had been a testament to her self-control, not an assurance of sound mind.

I do not repeat my mistakes.

Of course, he had seen wisdom in killing her, else he would not have gone through with it. That was not the nature of his objection.

He shook his head, as if to dismiss the need for her to answer his forceful questions.

"Regardless, you have returned,” he spoke more evenly than moments ago. “There can be no hiding from our choices."

If she'd remained on Lothal, she'd be dead right now. There had been a sort of - symmetry, she supposed, in setting the same events into motion here. Everything come to a close.

That was a useless line of thought. Utterly pointless.

Maketh turned the glass over in her hands, eyes down. "It is an honor to die in service to the Empire."

That line had been drilled into her as a cadet. Until very recently, she'd believed it with all of her being.

Maketh set the glass aside, not yet able to meet Henry's eyes. "Did you know I betrayed my Emperor? I suppose not. I would have been executed by now. My life is - irrelevant. Unless I can use it to...serve. Do you understand?"

It was perhaps the last thing that Henry expected to hear, and he sat up straight, no longer leaning on his elbow.

"You? A traitor?" he echoed, taken aback.

He took a long swallow of whiskey, turning that over in his mind. The notion warred with his sense of honour, before he decided that there was more to it. He thought of Iamarl: her history, their time serving under the Black Prince together. He recalled how absolutely wrong his initial judgement of her had been.

Henry barked a short, humourless laugh, and tipped back his drink to counter the painful ache in his chest. For the briefest moment, that wounded part of him wished that the mercy killing had not seen Maketh's carefully preserved distance breached. But Percies did not retreat.

He was drawing comparisons, which meant he had decided that they could be allies and not just strangers.

"If, in his conduct of the Crown's business, the King is not guided by reason, his subjects are bound to guide him back to reason."

Henry recited, drawing circles in the air with he free hand to further emphasise that he was. He abruptly stilled the motion once it was said, and twisted to better fix her with a steady gaze.

"You strike me as an honourable woman, else I would see fit to revoke my aid. I... trust in your intent."

Trust had never been easy for him to give, even in small measures, and that difficulty could be heard in the catch in his voice.

"I took your life because I believed it to be a mercy. It seemed to me the only unfailing means of fulfilling your charge to ensure that you harmed not a single person. So answer me this, Maketh. Was your sacrifice was made for the right reasons alone? Did guilt play any part?"

"Maybe there was guilt," she hissed, not quite angry but something. Her allies had betrayed her, though even now she understood the reasons. It was understandable. It was, more importantly, the way of Imperials. She had faced down judgement and flinched before it. Therefore she'd proven herself weak, and weakness must be stamped out before it infects others.

The Empire was what it had always been. Maketh had simply projected her own code of honor onto it and seen things that had never been there to start with. The Empire hadn't betrayed her - it had remained as it had always been. It was her own goddamn weakness that had led to this.

There's no use in explaining any of that to Henry - it would take too long, and it's not the point anyway. She watched the motion of Henry's hand, wondering what she was even doing here.

"Maybe there was guilt," she said again, voice evening out. "Yes. Fine. It seemed--right. Failure must be punished, that is the only way--"

Her voice cracked then. She slapped a hand over her mouth, furious. Lack of control again, lack of discipline. The Empire had made her better than this.

"These people will live," she hissed through her fingers. "I will do--anything, so they live."

Her failures at Lothal seemed eternal. They would not be repeated here.

It was bitter knowledge to have been used, even partly, as a tool for her self-punishment. But since he had involved himself, Henry had a responsibility to see this through. He committed to his actions.

The same, he supposed, could be said of Maketh.

He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured himself more, then wordlessly held it out for her.

"Anything, you say. Can you bear the weight of your chosen burden?"

Maketh took the whiskey silently, then poured herself some. To her surprise, her hand only shook a little. Not enough to disgrace herself any further. So there was that. She set the bottle down. Best not to spill it. They didn't have enough supplies to waste this on clumsiness.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I have to."

That seemed inevitable now that she'd failed to die. She'd fight until she cannot. That seemed, perhaps, close enough to redemption. Maketh stared at her glass for a moment, then finally looked up to meet Henry's eyes. She was tired of this whole thing, afraid that she'd lost an ally yet again. "I won't--you don't..."

She coughed. Took a drink and started again. Her voice was a little steadier that time. "I will do my duty. On my word. You don't have to f-forgive me, but please--know that. I will be--better. Than this."

Henry was silent for a moment, his thoughts heavy. When Maketh first stepped into his apartment he would have dismissed any and all attempts to apologise. She had not chosen to be possessed; she had suffered a terrible affliction and a painful end; she had to live with the resulting memories. All were still true. It was simply harder now not to resent his own resulting unhappiness.

Yet he had wanted to expose the damage done in order to mend it.

Henry briefly dipped his head, closing his eyes momentarily. It steadied him to imagine the advice that Edward would have given him.

"I forgive you. Forsake not your promise."

There. The line was drawn.

Maketh took a shuddering breath, eyes wide. She hadn't -

Hadn't expected that. Not really. Deep down she'd been certain that she'd made another blunder, this one unforgivable, and lost a valuable ally. Even a friend.

It had been a long time since Maketh had know someone she might call a friend. That, perhaps, had hurt most of all.

And he'd forgive her. Despite the awful pain, the memories, her weakness. Everything.

Maketh bumped her forehead against Henry's arm, for lack of a better idea. She was crying as quietly as she could, hand shaking around her glass. It had been a long time since she'd touched anyone, but there was comfort in his solidness. Henry was steady - she could rely on him.

This evening had proven one full of surprises, and perhaps none more so than the press of Maketh's forehead, a touch through which he felt the tremble accompanying her tears. For all the situations he knew how to handle, a woman crying on his shoulder was not numbered amongst them. This, Henry understood, was the delicate part of her he had glimpsed their last fateful meeting.

"Ah..."

After a brief moment of awkwardly wondering what to do, Henry placed a hand on her shoulder, the gentle pressure of a touch one might use to soothe a spooked horse.

He carefully said, "My prince once told me thus: those who fight side by side must trust each other. The purpose of allies is to provide support. You have a choice. You need not cope entirely on your own."

He decided that it was probably best to just let her take what comfort she needed. He hardly faulted her for needing connection -- on the contrary, when he examined his life before and after Edward and Iamarl, he saw how much richer he was for their presence. Edward had awoken in him the ability to connect with others; these days he recognised that it had been a kingly gift.

Maketh just sagged against Henry, feeling boneless. Perhaps it was a weakness. The glass was in danger of slipping from her hand. She tightened her grip. Just in case. She thought: I will be better. It felt like a promise.

"I think...you are my...friend," she murmured.

And wasn't that a strange thing?

Henry shifted his hand to rest between her shoulder blades. His expression grew faintly perplexed at her murmur.

"What say you? Friend...?"

It was the first time that he sounded uncertain.

Friends.

Was it really that simple, when they came from such different worlds, without an unshakable shared loyalty or sense of belonging that bound them together?

Henry glanced down at Maketh as he wondered. Edward and Iamarl were special; he did not know if he was capable of feeling for others as he did for those two. But then, he had also begun to suspect that what the three of them shared had transcended their initial bond.

After the desolation of Iamarl's death, a friendship less enveloping sounded... pleasant, if he was honest with himself. He had grown out of his taste for solitude, and it was clear that Maketh needed freeing from her own.

"Perhaps... we could be," he finally answered, before he corrected himself, eliminating every last trace uncertainty. "No. Forthwith, we are friends."

Maketh almost laughed at the uncertainty in his voice, a mirror of her own. How strange to find herself in this place, away from everything she'd once known. Sitting next to a man from a world she could barely imagine.

Less than a month ago, she would have thought herself mad to even consider this possibility. Yet here she sat, forehead pressed against Henry's arm and his whiskey in her glass.

What strange times they lived in.

She sat up a little, smiling. "Then let's drink to it, friend. That makes it real."

Henry gave Maketh a resolute nod and found a smile of his own. It was not a bad way to seal their friendship, and a reason to celebrate -- even as small as this one -- felt long overdue. He knew how to seize opportunity.

"As you say."

He raised his glass in a wordless toast.

There was some comfort in the moment, in the gesture of raising a drink in salute. A routine that Maketh had followed many times before. That, at least, she had a script for.

She wiped her face, raised her glass, and drank the entire thing down.

Good whiskey. It reminded her of the places she'd gone with the other Academy cadets, smokey rooms with pulsing lights and a thousand strangers, which she had a feeling Henry would be properly scandalized by. "One day," she murmured, "you and I are going to do shots and make a night of it."

She paused, glass still raised. "Do you know what shots are?"

Henry took a long drink from his glass in turn, completing the gesture.

"...I do not," he replied after, left curious by her comment.

Missteps in their communication was a common enough occurence, but fortunately one easily rectified.

"You shall have to explain."

"I shall," she murmured, rubbing her thumb along the top of the glass. Why not? It felt almost like a game, the stakes less dire than what they'd been talking about earlier. No one died in a drinking game, or at least they weren't supposed to. "You need a special glass. Smaller than these. You pour about this much--" she tapped out the level "and then you drink as fast as possible."

Sometimes she missed doing shots with her academy friends. They had been her friends, Maketh was fairly certain. They'd just gone on different paths, was all.

She flicked at the lip of the glass, smiling. "You can make a game of it. Or you can do body shots, but that's not for polite company. And usually that's done with tequila."

Not something she particularly wanted to do with Henry, but part of Maketh got a thrill out of the possibility that she might make him blush. If he was capable of blushing. She wasn't certain. But finding out felt less--painful, in a way, than their previous conversation. Less opportunity for tears, at any rate. Maketh hated crying.

While Henry was not immune to embarrassment and obviously highborn in many ways, Maketh's implication failed to fluster him. He did, however, raise his eyebrows. Though accustomed to common soldiers, somehow it felt unexpected coming from a woman. Especially from one as fastidious as Maketh.

"Not so virtuous as one might expect," he remarked. "Do your surprises ever cease?"

He laughed, this time with mirth.

"I will have no part in the latter--" because it sounded beneath one of his station, "--but I am willing to discover why you recommend the former."

Maketh actually laughed at that. And though her eyes were shining, it wasn't from sadness. "I'm hardly virtuous. I just wear the uniform well."

Which was true in many ways. Maketh would never disgrace herself on duty or while in the presence of anyone whose respect she might eventually need. But she was an enthusiastic participant in some of the Empire's more crass traditions, a trait she'd picked up in the Academy. Nearly anything was acceptable so long as you appeared on time and in uniform for your shift the next morning, and did nothing to publicly embarrass the Empire or the uniform.

Her uniform was different now - one of her own choosing - but Maketh respected it just the same. The rules had only changed a little.

"You might be surprised," she continued, tapping her glass. "It's fun. A distraction if done right. Maybe I'll show you one day."

Maybe. Probably not. Everyone was so close here, it would be nearly impossible to find a stranger to do body shots and other such things with, and then forget in the morning.

"But," Maketh smiled. "Shots. Yes. Do you want to do them plain, or try one of the games? Nothing serious, I promise. It's--to forget. For a little while."

She thought he might understand that.

Some sentiments were universal; he understood.

Henry drunk down the remainder of his whiskey, placing them back on equal footing. He preferred his contests to be fair.

"Let it not be said that I shy from a challenge," he answered boldly. "Make it a game."

The knowledge that he had no idea what he was getting himself had never stopped him before.

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