text; un: padlocks

[enblightened]

those capable of magic i need you

i need to better bind myself

enchant or curse or whatever you do hold me back just hold it back all of me

i need more bonds more locks more

oh i am not enough


[cw: mention of cannibalism in comments]

Comments

voice; private; un: brazier

[holyjudgmental]

Bigby. Do you hear me?

[Calm, soothing; the voice of the vestal, not the woman, the way she sounds when she bends herself over a wound.]

[enblightened]

I hear you, oh I hear you especially now.

[holyjudgmental]

Be still, then, and tell me where I may seek you out.

[enblightened]

No! No, you cannot, for how deeply I have failed us all! I am what you have always known me to be. Abomination! Monster!

[holyjudgmental]

Do not speak so. You trouble yourself further. I will come to bind you down, and this will pass, as it has always before.

[enblightened]

As always before! Always, and have I always partaken flesh of my comrades before? Drank their blood like a wine, feasted on their meat?!

Do not join them, Sister.

[holyjudgmental]

...I do not fear your teeth, or your hungers, whatever it has done.

[enblightened]

Why now, so suddenly, a change of heart?

[holyjudgmental]

Do not mistake a lack of cowardice for laxity. If you have sinned, I condemn it - but I will not cringe as some sister of the cloister and leave you to unfettered damnation.

[enblightened]

Then what. Shall you have me repent?

[holyjudgmental]

As if you have ever needed my goading for that. I shall have you prevented from further obscenities, if indeed these are not delusions.

[enblightened]

...The woman who was attacked. Who spoke on the network.

It was me, Sister. It was me.

[holyjudgmental]

[There is a short, sharp intake of breath, a pause.]

...tell me of what you have done, then. I will take your confession, if that is what you seek.

[enblightened]

I seek to be stopped. I was wrong to consider that perhaps I might find relief here! Joy!

You had met me after I shed once; a man I could've been, was almost, if things did not go wrong. I had shed again after... and became my worst self, indulging in my beastliness instead of repressing it. And I had the curse of the Crimson Court.

I lured two to me. A young girl, and a friend. Both deserving of better. I ate, and I remember too well -- the taste!

[holyjudgmental]

None are deserving of such horrors.

If you remember that man, you remember the church, and you remember his words, do you not?

[enblightened]

There some I regret far less. Not now.

...Of course I do.

[holyjudgmental]

Do you deny him, then? Would you ask that I build a pyre? That I hunt out these bloodied souls and condemn them to the cleansing Flame?

[enblightened]

No, never.

[holyjudgmental]

I am a pitiless sister of the scourge and the char. I have never once offered you mercy worthy of the name. And yet you, who know well my cruelty, ask for my hand to be stayed.

That, then, is the act of a beast lost to darkness?

[enblightened]

I-- [He sighs. Junia is so immensely stubborn.]

No. It is not.

[holyjudgmental]

...there is much that is difficult to bear. You have found such strength before. The Flame kindles anew.

[enblightened]

...I suppose that... we all have had our weaknesses. And we have always found our way back.

[holyjudgmental]

So it has been, so it will be, by the grace of the Light.

Will you rest? Much is easier in the dawn.

[enblightened]

I will certainly attempt, Sister.

[holyjudgmental]

...may you be veiled in holy Light.

[The blessing of sanctuary, never quite directed to him before.]

Go, then, before you succumb to further flagellation.