It starts with a bar fight.
Ramora, drunk enough to ignore her Echo, and angry with her situation and the general way life - or the Gods, or Fate, or what-the-fuck ever - seemed to seemed to want to screw her over. What does she do? She does what she does best. She makes it worse because that's what she's good at.
She starts the fight.
Sometimes the biggest, angriest looking guy in the establishment is the most sensitive, and insulting him only makes him burst into tears with the "last bloody straw!"
Damn, was he having a bad day, too? Ramora just feels like an asshole until his friends jump to his defense and start swinging.
There's glass in her hair from where more than one angry patron tried to take her out with a bottle. It only made her smell like ale, and left her feeling just a tick more annoyed.
"I'm sorry I made you cry," Ramora says to the actually not so grumpy looking Roegadyn man, in between punching and kneeing his midlander buddies in the face and stomach respectively, and sending them stumbling into each other.
"I didn't mean any of the rude things I said," Ramora continues, tripping one mindlander when he gets back up and making him fall into the other. "I was just trying to make you angry enough to start a fight."
The Roegadyn's face crumples again with tears as he buries his face in his hands and bawls, "It's all right, I've just," sob, deep shuddering sigh, "had a rough couple of days!"
Ramora frowns, patting him gently on the shoulder and getting walloped in the face for her inattention. She can feel her nose crunch, wetness dripping over her lips. That'll hurt to fix later.
One tries to grab hold of her from behind, but Ramora flips him over her shoulder to land flat on his back on the tavern floor. The other straight on tackles her, going for her middle, but not getting far as Ramora digs her heels in and bends forward to grasp him by the waist, disrupting his grip and tossing him away. It was unfair to them, really, being that she was so much taller. Well, that, and a slayer of actual Gods.
"Do you wanna talk about your feelings?" The Roegadyn says with a tearful frown, "You seem real angry, lady. It might help to let it out?"
Ramora pauses. "I've got some heavy troubles, buddy. I think I prefer the violent method of venting."
The Roegadyn sighs, shrugging his shoulders and scrubbing away his tears on his sleeve. "Suit yourself."
Suddenly the other two get wise, ganging up in her instead of coming one at a time, and grasp her arms before she can send them stumbling away again.
Ramora grunts as the Roegadyn catches her by the collar, yanking her in as he raises his fist. He smiles sheepishly. "I know you already apologized, but mind if I hit you a few times anyways? This is the most stress relief I've had in a bloody fortnight."
Ramora shrugs even as she scrabbles at his hand fisted in her coat. "Sure, buddy, that's the idea!" It should be concerning that Ramora preferred being punched in the face over talking about her feelings, but here she was.
The Roegadyn beams and Ramora thinks she might've just made a new friend as he makes like he said and punches her across the face.
Ramora tongues her teeth in surprise, lip definitely split. "Nice punch," She says in mild praise.
The Roegadyn laughs, "Thanks," and raises his arm to do it again.
"Enough!" The Barkeep roars, shooting into the ceiling with a pistol.
They all freeze.
"You!" The Barkeep snaps, stabbing his finger in Ramora's direction. "I've had about enough o' you comin' in here to start fights! Yer disturbin' my clientele and wreckin' my establishment!"
Ramora grimaces. "Sorry? It won't happen again?"
The Barkeep's eye twitches, face flushing bright red with a vein bulging in his forehead. "That's what you say every bloody time! I'm done forgiving you! Get out, and take yer new friends with ya!"
"Can I get some ice for my face?" Ramora asks meekly.
If looks could kill. "Get!"
Ramora and her brawling partners scramble to comply.
- - -
Ramora sighs, sitting in a filthy alley just outside the bar, alone now. Her new friends having taken their leave after much apologies all around.
"Look at you," She grumbles to herself. "Can't even start a bar fight properly. Your life is going to Hell. Guess that's what you get for making a deal with an Ascian."
Ramora buries her face in her hands, the heavy pressure of tears building behind her eyelids.
A shadow falls over her, and Ramora does not look up.
"What a sad sight you are," A familiar voice drawls.
Ramora laughs wetly. "Go away, Elidibus."
There's a heavy pause.
"Have I been gone for so long that you've forgotten my name, woman?"
Ramora freezes, head jerking up in shock as hot tears stream down her bruised and bloodied face.
"...Zenos?"
An Elezen man stares down at her, his face hidden from view by the shadow of his hood. But the golden locks of hair spilling out of his coat were far too rich in shade to belong to any Elezen Ramora had ever met. And that voice, Gods, Ramora knew that voice. She dreamed of that voice.
The Elezen kneels down in front of her, pulling back his hood.
His face - Zenos's face - staring out at her from an Elezen body.
"You died," Ramora mutters thickly, holding herself taught, carefully apart, so as not to touch him, or heavens forfend, throw herself into his arms and bawl her eyes out.
He is your enemy, Ramora has to remind herself. He never cared about you. It had been naught but a manipulation on Elidibus's part.
Zenos smiles that same smile, languid and deliciously wicked. "I got better."
Ramora bites her lip, her eyes still hopelessly leaking. He must think her so weak, witnessing her in such a state."I can see that."
Zenos reaches out a hand, hardly pausing at Ramora's instinctual flinch, and grasps her wrist. Ramora blinks, very much confused, as Zenos drops a wrapped bundle of ice into her palm.
"For your face, my beast," Zenos says dryly. He does not comment on her tears.
"To think you let those unworthy fools strike you. Did it bring you relief? Forcing yourself so. Holding back so as not to kill those insignificant savages by accident? Did your blood sing as it did when we last fought?"
Ramora's more than certain his bout of questioning is rhetorical, so she says nothing.
His lip curls, the shake of his head sending golden hair spilling free from being tucked in his coat to swish around his face, "Nay, I should very much think not."
Ramora gapes at him, mouth dry and hand slowly beginning to burn from the chill of the ice in her palm. "...I felt nothing."
There was no release. No rush of blood as Zenos had claimed before. There had only been half-hearted violence, and ignoring her Echo so as to allow herself to be struck. To feel pain rather than feel nothing at all. Ramora did not wish to become numb again. Apathy was very hard to shake.
Zenos leans in, capturing her chin between his fingers. "Good. The right is mine, beast. I am your opponent. I am the only one who can give you such."
Ramora quirks a smile through the sting of her split lip. "Is that your way of telling me you want to go steady?"
Zenos grasps her by the collar and Ramora gives a soft, hissing gasp as he leans in, parts those perfect lips of his, and licks a stripe up from her chin over her lips with a velvety, warm tongue. Tasting the blood coating her skin.
What a weirdo. Yet Ramora would be lying if she said his particular brand of weirdness didn't make her hot.
There is a fire in her blood now as Zenos pulls back, seeming satisfied at the expression on her face. His voice a rumbly, satisfied growl liken to a coeurl's purr. "Your blood is mine, woman."
"Ramora," Is all Ramora can croak in response, a desperate sort of plea in the raspy quality of her voice.
Though his expression does not change, his eyes darken with heat. "Ramora," he says, obliging to her wordless plea, drawing the word out in that growling purr.
Ramora closes her eyes, swallowing thickly as she allows the sound to roll over her. To have Zenos - the real one - finally say her name was... Well, it was pretty damned good.
When she opens her eyes again, Zenos is gazing at her most peculiarly.
Peculiar only because this was Zenos. Actual Zenos, no matter what body he was in, and he was looking at her like...
Like he could devour her. Like Ramora was the most sumptuous feast he had ever laid eyes upon and he could not wait to sink his teeth in.
"What's with that look?" Ramora asks him, very much against her better judgement.
His hands circle her wrists, her ice falling to the wayside as Zenos yanks her close. "I finally caught up to you, my beast," he smiles smugly, gazing at her through the fan of his eyelashes, "Ramora. And now I'll not let you escape me again."
Ramora feels dazed by the heat of him, the heady feeling of him so close that she could touch, the scent of his skin and of his beautiful hair. Yet, "Uh, not to point fingers, but you were the one who tried - and succeeded in - killing yourself. I wasn't trying to escape. You did."
And now an Ascian - and not just any Ascian, the bloody Emissary! - was walking around in his body.
Zenos hisses a guttural sigh, his hands tightening about her wrists as he pulls her closer still. Any further and she'd be straddling his lap. "I was rash in mine decision," Zenos admits. "I made a mistake. Now I mean to fix it "
Ramora quirks a brow. Did he now.
"There's an Ascian wearing your face. Your whole body. Doing things you probably wouldn't do." Like me, Ramora doesn't say.
How would she broach that subject even?
Hey Zenos, good to see you hale and whole. I have disgustingly tender emotions for you and I've been fraternizing with the Ascian wearing your body while you've been gone. No hard feelings, right?
That would go over well.
Instead Ramora only reaches for the discarded bit of ice he had brought, brushing off the cloth before resting the cold lump against her aching face.
"What do we do now?" Ramora asks.
If Zenos is surprised by her use of "we", he gives no visible reaction of it.
Zenos only smiles, blue eyes gleaming with that particular monstrous quality she had missed from being around Elidibus in his body for so long.
"All in due time, my beast."
"Now," he leans in, smiling slow.
"Did you miss me?"