Let's Play!

Gabriel, however, could have helped her if he was fully functioning. The issue was, he was just as taken out as she was due to how things worked.... and the others were off watching over Zandra and Drandar. They couldn't have gone to help Kiaati if they had wanted to, due to the fact they group was separating.



Zandra would walk without too much care until they could all sleep safe and unbothered. She silently would take the first watch, letting the children fall to sleep as she watched the darkness about them.

Kiaati could have gotten up if she wanted to. The thing is that she didn't. The only thing she wanted was to be unmade. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to live. She truly and honestly wished that she had never been born.









Drandar came to sit with her after a while, unable to sleep.



"Why are you doing this?" he asked gently after a little while.

Zandra looked to Drandar.



" What do you mean?"



She asked curiously, not following his thought process as she motioned about.



" We are still in hostile territory until we sail the waters..."

Drandar shook his head, not looking away from the two small bodies curled up together.



"You had a chance to make a difference in her life... or at least to say goodbye."



His brow furrowed as he watched the children. How was it that he knew more about them than he had about Kiaati? She had been around so much longer, but somehow not even once had he managed even a single meaningful conversation. All that time was devoted to something that had been important to him, to her, even to Zandra, but now...



"And you're just giving up."



No goodbyes. No last ditch effort. Just... nothing. It felt to him like he was becoming nothing too. With all of her anger and how she treated him... was she about to walk away and pretend they never happened too?

" She's giving up too, I'm not going to fight alone."



She replied, eyes turning to the children he watched.



" Besides... don't we deserve a life?"



She asked him softly, reaching for his hand. No, Drandar, she hadn't forgotten about you.

Drandar's green eyes dragged over to her hand, but the seed of doubt was still there.



"I thought we did. I also thought it was the life we made, though, in the kind of world that we wanted to live in and wanted our loved ones to live in. I kind of thought that's what we were trying to do."



A sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul escaped his lips and his hand fell away.



"I don't know how I would feel about all of this if someone killed me."



It was all over just like this. And still someone could come along and strike him down. Was it even worth it? Drandar just couldn't swallow the whole thing. Not yet. He still had to work through it some.



"...But I know exactly how I would feel if you walked away from me."



It wasn't clear if he was thinking more about how she walked away from the thing that used to be Kiaati or about how she might do the same to him.

Zandra looked over Drandar, shaking her head.



" I will not leave you. I would rather die by your side. I love you."



She stated simply, fingers dancing on the chain about her neck....

Said the woman who had broken his arm with how badly she had wanted to get away from him. Drandar was silent for a while, uncharacteristically so.



"It doesn't feel right. How does is it okay with you?"

" It's not... she was probably the closest thing I ever had to a friend, Drandar.... but she's not that woman anymore.. it's just her body."



Careful, Drandar... she wasn't stable. If you hadn't figured that out by now....

"I don't know. When I looked at it, I saw emotion. Real ones, just like the ones you and I feel. It doesn't seem like a corpse would cry... not like that."



He stared at his hands, and there was a pause before his voice crept out at a quieter tone.



"I feel like we let her down."

" That wasn't one way."



How was the situation even fair? It's not like one of them died and demanded she come save them from the brink. It wouldn't even be practical. No, this chick gets herself almost killed, then they go on a mad man's hunt to figure stuff out... just for her to be crazy. To have given into insanity and given up on everything they'd fought for years to have.

((What did she say? @.@ Typo?))

(( Oh, that the letting down thing wasn't one way. Like They might have let Kiaati down, but that wasn't the only person let down out of the situation))

((OH! "One-way" not "singular way"! *got it*))



Drandar glanced over at the woman.



"I don't think she just woke up and decided to die."



Actually, he was fairly certain she hadn't slept at all, but that was beside the point.



"I feel like she would have just committed suicide if death was her decision."



He sighed and shook his head, eyes falling away.



"It's our fault for not helping her. I mean, we should have known she needed it right? I feel like we should have been able to keep it from happening in the first place..."



If only they had gone down there sooner. If only she hadn't been alone.



"Or we could have actually tried to follow through on the opportunity that that woman gave us afterwards. I don't imagine everyone gets that chance... but we didn't..."



Drandar's guilt was becoming more and more obvious as it wound its fingers more and more tightly around his throat.



"Or even now when she managed to do whatever it was to be able to speak to us... Maybe she had something to say. Maybe she just needed help. Maybe..."



He trailed off. It didn't really matter. They hadn't listened.

Zandra sighed.



" You can go back.. I would understand."



She'd be hurt and her ability to forgive right now was sketchy... but she'd not snap your neck or something for wanting to go to the human woman... instead of start life with her.

Drandar shook his head.



"Not without you."



But that didn't mean that he felt great about what they were doing.









Kiaati reached out slowly, touching her fingertips to her pendant where it had been hung around Gabriel's neck. That had been a lifetime ago. She sat up some as she heard footsteps. However, she just let herself fall back down as the unfamiliar face crawled up onto the deck.



"Man, you musta really pissed off your owner."



The demon nudged Kiaati with the toe of his boot, chuckling. The woman didn't even respond. What did she have to fear? Him killing her? He bent down and took her chin in his hand, turning it from one side to the other.



"Got any life left in you at all?"

Zandra glanced back the way they had come.



" I am not sure I see the reasons you do, to go back."



She offered him, watching her man closely.



" .... I do not know what to tell you... I want you to go where you wish to be."

"With you," he answered as he looked in that direction too.



"I just feel like... at the very least, we should put her in the ground."



If she was dead and gone, Drandar thought she should at least be buried. And it seemed like dead and gone would be the only reason that she would quit. And if he needed to kill a monster with her face... Maybe he could do it in order to preserve everything she had done.











When Kiaati didn't respond, the demon tossed her to the side and proceeded to look over Gabriel, beginning to rummage to see if the man was carrying any valuables. After a moment of watching, Kiaati got up. She had helped Gabriel in a situation or two, but he had helped her back a few times. And it kind of felt like... maybe if she returned the favor again... it felt like a fitting close to a past life. That was why she pushed herself a little straighter against the rail of the boat.



The demon paused, glancing over his shoulder.



"Oh, you do have a bit left in you, huh?" he asked with a wicked smirk as he walked over.



The man leaned over her so close that their noses nearly touched.



"You want to tell me where the good stuff on the ship still is."



It wasn't a question.



"I might even be able to help you out a bit."



When he reached to brush a strand of hair out of the yuck on her face, Kiaati reached out with all four of her damaged limbs and wrapped them around him. Together, they fell into the ocean. She held him as they sank until he stopped struggling. Only then did she let him go, watching as ribbons of gunk washed off of her. Everything hurt, but she couldn't say that it made that much of a difference with everything else.



Her death-hazed eyes watched as the tide pulled everything away, the blood and grime and quicksilver liquid right along with most of the scraps of her clothes. She saw dark spidery veins under too-pale skin, hair shocked white, broken nails and flaps of skin. She saw bone and blood and muscle where once had been body she would have been ashamed to show. She saw her death like a scar. She saw it all, and she didn't even care.



Floating like she now was... She could close her eyes and almost forget. She imagined this is what home would feel like. What a strange thing to think. Yet, the thought only lasted for a moment before she was struck with tremendous force from below, knocking her out of the water. Her body crashed into the sand at the edge of the water, and the demon fell upon her, furious. Kiaati wasn't surprised. They didn't die so easily. She didn't know why she didn't just assume he was playing dead.



"You little snipe! Clearly your master was too soft to even let you off with as little life as you had left!"



He drove his hand into the gouge in her chest, wrapping his fingers around her heart and squeezing without even a moment for her to react. Blood spurted across the both of them as he crushed what remained of the ruined organ. Kiaati tensed slightly, just from the increase in her pain, but otherwise she didn't even blink.



"What are you?!"



As the demon's eyes widened with shock, her arm lashed out without hesitation. This time, it was his blood that sprayed across them both as she slashed his throat with the broken seashell her fingers had plucked out of the sand. The woman just lay there as he collapsed on top of her, staring at the sky without even moving to push him off.

Zandra looked over the children



" In the morning. The children need a full night's rest."



Zandra settled on, leaning back against the tree.



" You need rest too, love."

Drandar shrugged.



"Maybe, but I can't sleep. You can go try."

Zandra would eventually rest since Drandar never went to sleep. Even as she came to she was a bit groggy, and most decidedly moody. The woman blinked at the first few beams of sunlight shining down right into her eyes. She kind of let loose a growl at the sun, as if to warn it before she would get to her feet.



Looking to Drandar she would sigh.



" Alright... we will see if we can help her... and if not help her, at least put her to rest properly."



She conceded, slipping Ariel onto her back so she didn't have to wait for this kiddo's little strides.

Ariel didn't say anything, though she clung on tightly. She clearly wasn't entirely over her previous trauma. She wanted to trust Zandra, but she had been scared pretty severely.



Drandar simply nodded solemnly, moving along with her. He frowned in confusion when they got there, seeing the deck of the ship empty except for Gabriel. It took him a minute to recognize the form in the sand a little ways down the shoreline, but to his credit, she was turned away from the ship and looked very different.



His face turned beet red and his eyes hit the floor.



"Do we have an extra cloak on board or something?"



Because, even from this far away with the foam burbling around her and the other corpse, Drandar could tell the woman was naked. He couldn't tell whether or not she was dead, the pallid flesh of her back and bone white hair nearly indistinguishable from the surf, but that didn't really matter. She ought to be covered up.



Kiaati just lay the same as before for the most part, turned up onto her side some by the tide. One of her hands was lifted slightly, being held by a spirit that she was studiously ignoring behind closed eyes.

Zandra sighed and would soon produce not only a burlap cloak, but a basic cotton tunic an loose tying skirt. She would place Ariel with Drandar and look over the trio.



" Be careful."



She warned softly as she moved to Kiaati by herself. She'd slowly pull out bandages and a small jar of foul smelling ointment. The demon didn't look at Kiaati directly, at least, not often. The woman was kind in her triage, stitching, wrapping, mending.



It would take the demon a better part of an hour just to clean and fix before she'd gingerly dress Kiaati. The silence would finally be broken when Zandra would pick Kiaati up.



" We came into this together, we will finish it together."



She promised the human now as she would walk back to Drandar and the children with the human.

The skin didn't bleed or anything, but it didn't show signs of mending either. Her body was dead, after all. She didn't say anything or fight Zandra. Here to torture the failure human? She didn't flip out or anything as Zandra picked her up, her frail limbs dangling over the woman's arms.



"You didn't want to bother. You hate me too much," she rasped bitterly.

" Disappointed. If I hated you, I would have let time and nature keep you."



Zandra replied simply, eyes wondering the human.







thing i almost talked mark into:

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"I didn't choose this."



There was a flash of pained anger.

The Halloween costume I want to do with #4:



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Zandra sighed.



" None of us did."

Something about that statement hurt. Kiaati curled her broken fingers into fists. Zandra wasn't here to help her.



"What do you want from me?"

" Just my friend."



She replied, looking over Drandar.

"I can't help you find them. I'm dying."



Well, she was actually being destroyed, but that was just semantics. Zandra had already expressed her regret at ever having considered Kiaati a friend. That was clearly over.

"I'd rather work with you."



She replied simply.

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She lifted her dead, hazed eyes to Zandra before just letting her head drop backwards. A couple tears fellfrom her lashes. Everything. Hurt. So. Much.



"What do you need?" she whispered.



Life had set her conditions. So had death.

" right now? you need rest. I don't have what all you need to be tended fully."

"How arewe supposed to get it?" Drandar whispered at her ear, looking over the woman in Zandras arms nervously.



"We don't know where to even start."







"Rest doesn't make a difference. Not how I am now."



Rest was impossible. A reward only for the deserving dead, which she apparently didn't qualify for. However, Zandra could do pretty much whatever she wanted. Kiaati wouldn't stop her.

Zandra sighed.



" one thing at a time, love."



She offered, kissing him before moving to properly wrap kiaati and head off.



" I can not repair souls, flesh I can manage, though."

"My flesh doesn't need mending."



And her soul had been too damaged to ever go back to how it had once been. She hated. She was disillusioned. She agonized and wanted to weep. Butinstead she let the ex-friend tote around her mangled body without fight.







"What's our current goal, then?"



They didn't have much time for anything.

" We will need safety and cover. Somewhere we can easily defend if need be."



Zandra explained, leading off into the woods. She didn't know what to do without kiaati. This human had lead their mission. Without the leader what became of the followers? Even more right this exact moment, what would this fallen leader do once her life was fully restored?



Settling into a small hide away she would lay. Kiaati down. Careful not to disturb the leaves about them she would remove her cloak to start pulling things from various pockets.



" Keep watch?"



She asked of drandar over her shoulder.

Drandar nodded slowly, casting an uncertain glance across the two of them before he eased back out to the mouth of the den.



Kiaati slowly began to move finally, rolling onto her side and pushing herself to sit with her shoulder against the earthen wall and her legs folded awkwardly beside her. She ducked her head down as her hair lashed against her face as the bitter spirit wind battered her back and shot through the clothing Zandra had draped over her emaciated frame. It was a constant reminder of how alone she was. Something that only reached her, and the only thing that really reached her as she was yet... apart... from their world.



"I came from the same place as her," she whispered coarsely and extended one bruised and broken forefinger in the direction of the little girl clinging to Zandra's side and staring at Kiaati with horror-filled eyes.



She figured that was probably what the demon wanted from her. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe it was only an excuse. Or a lie. It didn't really matter either way.

Zandra nodded.



" no point in traveling there."



Not yet. Instead she would start cleaning and treating kiaati. The body was tattered to a point the demon queen questioned how well it could heal. She would clean, stitch, pack, and salve every bit of this human.



When finished kiaati would carefully be dressed in clean, dry brown cotton shirt and pants. Nothing fancy but given kiaati's state, perhaps a welcome small comfort.



Slowly Zandra stood, going to drandar.



" I'll finish the night, go rest with the children and her."



She wasn't going to be able to sleep either way, so she might as well finish watch.