a blade turned inwards; pt. i
source: touchstarved
wc: ~1.6k
summary: mhin’s dream brings an old companion with a newer face.
contains: mhinxoc (uh, kind of) / [slaps hood] this fic can fit so much guilt into such a small wordcount / as my wife says ‘i love futile absolution’ / fellas you ever stress dream about your sins and make your loved ones degrade you as an expression of your own self hatred ? / haha what do you mean no / part one isn’t that explicit but additional parts may be /
author’s note: i like mhin i promise. unfortunately my love language appears to be psychological torment. uh, oops.
‘Silly Mhin. I never had to be real. With a monstrous guilt like yours? Teeming at the rim? Bursting at the seams? Look at you. You’re already doing so much of the work on your own. And you want to know what the funniest thing is?’
Sabri leans down. Leans close. Only an exhale of a whisper to be measured between their faces, her veil shifting with the movement to enshroud them both in gossamer secret. It’s not her. It isn’t. Just like the hatred in the eyes meeting theirs isn’t hers. Not truly.
But the awareness that should have helped does not.
‘You hope bearing it will absolve you.’
In a near perfect rendition of sculptured mourning, statuesque in sorrowful splendour—they find her, silentmost of lone sentinels, shrouded in full-body veil.
A centrepiece of absolute isolation.
So absolute, that it felt in itself an encroachment. The most unbearable of intrusions—to see the firmed lines of their towering form, to see their spine steeled in a resolute promise to never look their way again. To know they were no longer welcome, and to stay anyway.
‘You should come back inside,’ they attempt, voice a terribly pathetic warble. A boldness even still, but to Mhin, it surely doesn’t feel like one, even if they owed enough to her to try. ‘Don’t overdo it—’
‘Were you ever planning on telling me?’
Mhin’s breath hitches in sharp inhale, the rest of their sentence stopped dead in its tracks. Sabri hasn’t moved, but she might as well have plucked the dagger holstered at their waist to plunge it into yielding flesh herself—the effect would have been about the same.
Not that it wasn’t to be expected. Mhin was far too rational to have not foreseen this eventuality, to have not imagined it a thousand times. That, and they also cared too much to pretend otherwise—as if the executioner’s axe was to be anywhere but their own neck.
The cost of having a pragmatic heart. Both meant neither could be satisfied. Both meant there was nothing that could ever permanently ease the roiling, turbulent in between, the space between cages, that which was housed in skull and in ribs. Not too soft to do what needed to be done, but not too hard that they could be left without regrets. The worst of both worlds.
‘I…’ Remorse makes for a terrible blade to swallow. ‘I’m sorry.’
Harsh laughter barks out, one of pure derision. It’s new.
In blinding sheer contrast to what wasn’t, to unsettle even the most iron of stomachs—it’s new. ‘I must have seemed such an easy target to you. An unassuming Senobium nun to be your ticket into the exclusive Senobium? Key to a fucking lock. Why wouldn’t you? You would be stupid not to.’
In swift, deft turn, she faces Mhin. There’s a smile of absolute still waters—a serenity that promises the most impenetrable of calms—the face to be seen on them the most. Here, despite its usual soothing qualities, a quiet balm that reassured in presence alone—it’s wrong.
‘Did you have fun using me, Mhinnie?’
A tone of most cloying honey. It’s nothing unrecognisable, or rather, it’s entirely familiar, but the words make their usual tenderness into a sickly sweetness, a definite trap when there hadn’t ever been one. And their nickname, the one they’d always complained but never did anything about—brandished as twisting blade.
‘Making me look like a fool?’ Wide eyes meet a gentle gaze, and when Sabri steps forward, they’re only capable of answering in a retreat. Distance closed then widened with vestiges of conscious instinct, flight and only flight where there existed no fight left.
‘Pretending you cared? Fussing over me like I truly mattered to you? Was it hilarious? Would you leave me only to find your laughter left for company? With how very funny it all was? Tell me how funny it was, Mhinnie.’
Their breathing is laboured. Like a wounded beast, or perhaps something desperately trying not to be one. Panic to rise into the ringing in their skull, to sink into the taste of bile on their tongue.
Panic to threaten to claw the walls wide open—but a part of them lies in wait. That saw it coming (not necessarily like this, but in a scene remarkably not unlike it) but waited even still. That hoped for something they had no right to hope for—but did anyway.
Forgiveness? Not quite. Deliverance? More likely.
‘You won’t, though. You won’t. And you want to know why?’
After all, this wasn’t the first time they hurt someone. Nor were they naïve enough to believe it the last. It wasn’t. It wasn’t, but…
Storm grey meets itself in irises too mirrored, too real.
Say it. Say it.
‘Because you’re a pussy.’
Ah.
‘You’re a pussy, Mhin. You can’t even have the decency of using me without being such a fucking coward about it.’
The airiest of giggles. Soft and fluttering, a bird’s wing to brush against them in the lightest of caresses. They reacted like that a lot. When Mhin was being grumpy. When Mhin was being cute. When Mhin was being… Mhin.
‘Just like…’
Another step. Another, but when Mhin tries to distance themselves again—
Back to meet an unyielding wall, one to force a breathless grunt from parted lips. (Back to meet unyielding wall, but then again, there was one right in front of them. Back to meet unyielding wall, but since when had Mhin let themselves get so cornered?)
She always had the height advantage. A gap extended even more with ludicrously tall heels—ill-fitting for a supposed woman of the cloth, but it suited her well enough Mhin never questioned them. Sabri did, but never had it felt such a looming threat before now.
Her veil, one of sheer midnight to obscure the most divine of features, parts along the lines of a frontal slit. Mhin’s still looking rather doe-like, but it would have been remiss to assume it was out of pure fear, even if they weren’t going to acknowledge anything that would have been far too revealing.
‘You were never going to tell me you were in love with me.’
Mhin’s blood freezes solid.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’ Closer, she draws in. ‘Like you weren’t so terribly, embarrassingly obvious?’ Long lashes, a faint blush to warm palest of skintones. ‘I might have forgiven you if you’d told me. If you were only a tiny bit less pathetic. But you’re only good for doing things by halves, aren’t you?’
Supple leather slides beneath their chin, a smooth, frictionless cool. Cool, and yet—in literal juxtaposition—somehow still bordering on a warmth, especially in comparison to the tiny bites of ice nestled against the ridges of vulnerable throat.
The coldness of metal, undoubtedly. Most certainly, which might have been more foreboding, but Mhin knows them to be the tips of her gloves, gilded in a reflective gleam. A sight more customary than the hands beneath.
‘Always…’ There’s that biting cold again. It glides around their wrist this time, adamant gold to press gently but firmly against racing pulse. ‘…waiting…hoping… for someone else to come along and finish—’
Their hand is yanked forward.
‘—the—’
A gasp tears out, tears free.
‘—Job.’
Palm flat against, against—
They don’t quite realise it until their grip naturally squeezes in instinctual twitch. But then there’s resistance—softest of resistance, an outright plushness, even—
In scarlet flushing, a squirming heat is sent forth. North. South.
Because she’s made them touch her chest.
She has. Sabri has, but there’s at least something about the shock of it that hits in a wake-up call. Of a sort.
‘I’m dreaming.’
Deep inhale to re-centre oneself.
‘Sabri would never say any of these things to me,’ Mhin mutters, far steadier, and while it sounded a pleaful bargain to reassure themselves, to fight back against the warmth of blistering realness—they’re not wrong. They’re not wrong, and they’ve been here before.
‘Does she have to?’ It is her face. It is her voice. A cruelty of perfect imitation, even if it’s soiled by the hands that have moulded it.
‘You’re not real, Sabri.’ Still steady. Stern, even.
‘Aw,’ she coos, and the sound twists in a blade of familiarity. ‘Did that help?’
No bite. No bark. It’s answer enough.
‘Silly Mhin. I never had to be real. With a monstrous guilt like yours? Teeming at the rim? Bursting at the seams? Look at you. You’re already doing so much of the work on your own. And you want to know what the funniest thing is?’
Sabri leans down. Leans close. Only an exhale of a whisper to be measured between their faces, her veil shifting with the movement to enshroud them both in gossamer secret. It’s not her. It isn’t. Just like the hatred in the eyes meeting theirs isn’t hers. Not truly.
But the awareness that should have helped does not.
‘You hope bearing it will absolve you.’
Whatever laughter that had been audibly stifled in her previous words bursts forth in ridiculing titter, as if she could no longer bear the thought of holding it in. Even with their newfound cognizance, it’s still the loveliest bell chime. Primed, where comprehension of their situation has failed to protect them.
‘Talk about wishful thinking. Shouldn’t you be above such juvenile fantasies? Such childishness?’
‘I’m… not…’ they manage, barely. It feels a futility even still.
‘Not what? Not scared? Not a kid? Not so desperate with who you really are that you’d rather make a monster out of everyone you love than to trust them with the monster that you are instead?’
Her touch—
Changes. Or rather, she does.
From where Sabri’s fingers had a tantalising hold, it’s suddenly warmer. The kind that could only be one thing, and when Mhin dully looks to affirm what their body already knew, Sabri’s not wearing her gloves anymore.
But that’s not the only thing.
Feathers. Talons.
‘Well?’
When their gaze flits back to her face, there’s more plumage. Ashy grey—the same as their actual hair—dusts their cheek and jawline in the sort of avian beauty that makes Mhin ill from recognition.
Mhin wants to puke. Wishes they could, even.
Wants it even more for it to be as simple as disgust.
It looks soft.
They…
>>…TOUCH. >>…DON’T TOUCH.
