2019-05-05 - Sweet Temptation ~ Hush
| Title: Sweet Temptation ~ Hush | |
|---|---|
| Summary: "Where's Mikoto-chan?" Chie asks, box in her arms. "Isn't she evacuating with everyone else?" | |
| Who: Mikoto Minagi, the Obsidian Lord | |
| Where: Ohtori Academy - Obsidian Palace | |
| OOC - IC Date: 2019-05-05 - 2015-06-02 | |
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed. <SoundTracker> LulzA, Level 99 - Ghosts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjgWfQrUo0g
HER MIND IS IN 2013:
There's a full moon, dew and blood on the grass. Distant members of her cold family stand behind her, so far back, as if they fear to get too close. They should. Too close is her Grandfather - her beloved Grandfather - blood spilling onto the ground. It clouds out any other scent. Her hands cling to Miroku's hilt, as if she could keep the insides in with a strong enough grip. But the only thing her grasp can hold is a blade. She knows that now. It is his final lesson to her.
He labours for breath, and yet still manages to speak, his duty driving him as it does every Minagi. "I'm impressed... that you've managed to defeat me. This is how it should be. Because you must love no one but your Lord Brother, the Obsidian Lord..."
Her beloved Grandfather coughs, his life slipping from him without a single word of complaint. "... you have grown into a fine girl. Now you are a full-fledged HiME."
"Grandfather-!" Mikoto cries, leaning forward.
"You must leave," he insists. "Go now, with Miroku. Your Lord Brother is in the land of Fuuka..."
"My Lord Brother..." Mikoto's breath catches in her throat, as she takes the hand he struggles to lift. "... Lord Brother is there?!"
His hand slackens, and she holds it up, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. "Grandfather!" She feels like she can't breathe, but it's his chest which has ceased rising.
HER BODY IS IN 2015:
An anchor is not enough.
When Mikoto rises, grasping without glancing back for the strap of her sword-case, she is quiet. She mumbles, as if her lips have forgotten how to lift to pass the air through her throat: "... osaki ni..."
It is a complex phrase. In those two words she says so much: Excuse me, I am being rude by leaving work before you. Those two, specific words...
Maybe there's something in the way she bids farewell with words Mai Tokiha has given her.
But she can't stay. She can't hold the hand of a corpse again. Of a person she loved and killed.
She does not reflect on how cruel it is - leaving the alleyway with those numbed steps. Neither does she think much on the way the crowd shoves at her as she rejoins the street. She is swept up; she does not stagger as she moves between the people. It's too late at night for anyone to care too much about where a dazed girl is going.
She's going to...
... she's going to...
Her body moves to an unheard score, pendant at her neck glowing with comforting heat. She is a visitor in her flesh as her mind jumps forward another year - it's 2014.
She visited Eri.
Eri was so surprised to see her at her window, because she didn't have a balcony.
Eri found herself explaining something very, very basic, which Mikoto had so much trouble understanding, because Mikoto did not remember why she would struggle with it.
'Alright, well there's something beyond just liking someone. It's called love.'
No, Mikoto thinks, as the conversation echoes in her mind: I do not want to remember this.
(Her wishes are of little consequence.)
'I guess that one is a little harder to define, but it means you like someone a lot more than other people you like. And it's weird because, you want a lot of things from them like their time or attention but you also put them above you all the time too and give them those things without question. You feel like- you want to be around them as much as possible.'
Eri knew the measure of love this whole time, she thinks, as her mind twists the words she was given to its dark purposes.
'So, I'm not saying you definitely do, but maybe, to me it seems like you love Mai too if you feel very strongly about her.'
... and Eri saw where she had failed before anyone else.
'More than like...? ... I love only Lord Brother.'
... and if Mikoto had just been true to him, she wouldn't be hurting like this.
'Well of course you love your brother.'
... but even though she loved him so much, she forgot what it meant.
'Mai-- Mai has to live! Has to! Because-- this feeling is-- is love! I love Mai!'
'I love Eri.'
'I love Yumi.'
'I'll help Kasagami, because Kasagami is my friend, and I love Kasagami.'
'I love Lancelot too!'
''Cause I love Setsuna.'
'This is how it should be. Because you must love no one but your Lord Brother, the Obsidian Lord...'
The hand which killed Eri reaches to press that hot bead against her chest as her breath shallows, and she can feel her heart fluttering against its jagged edges, too too fast. She grasps death unflinching in hands black with sin, because she is designed to handle its impure presence.
Designed for one purpose, for one person.
Her beloved Grandfather - her beloved Eri. No one survives being hers, she realises, because she was not made for them.
The love everyone else shares, and the love she feels...
Hers is a serrated affection which only carves the people she loves to bits, she thinks. There's only ever been one person who she can really be close to. That's why she brought the rest to ruin - just by loving them. She didn't mean to. She's just... too sharp.
She was the one who loved them. She was the one who welcomed them into her black little heart. Now it hurts, and she has only herself to blame.
It hurts so much.
It hurts so SO much, in the way of putting aside an injury and forgetting it is damaged. She told Grandfather she loved him and she had to kill him. She forgot the rules. And then she cried and cried and she forgot again, even though he died to teach her. She disrespects him with her flagrancy, she knows, she knows. What kind of granddaughter is she, to push aside such a painful revelation?
... what kind of sister?
What kind of sister - to feel such sororal things about Eri, even knowing she wasn't family...
At some point she started crying, or perhaps she never stopped.
Certainly her body has not stopped moving, though she cares little to influence it. She stands on distant shore, and they do not notice because she does not run into them. She moves with the crowd. Moves to a train. Moves to the station closest Ohtori. Moves to the path. Moves to a tree, when a Student Council patrol passes by searching for students out too late.
At some point she realises she is off the path, midst new growth. (Eri helped make this, the thought lances through her like a ritual knife. Eri will never see to it again because Mikoto and Madoka have killed her.) She is dull as she turns her cheek, looks at the place she has brought herself. Her mind returns to 2015 in slow agony. The forest burned down. Her bridges did, too.
"What..." She murmurs, fumbling for understanding. It is no coincidence that the fumbling is matched by her hand, as she reaches for that obsidian bead to press its heat in against her beating heart.
'It will guide you to me if we ever lose each other.'
Her killer's hands cradle it against her, head bowed in supplication as new tears cut a trail down careworn cheeks. It's hot. It is a comfort to her, a reminder that there is one boy who loves her so, so much.
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed. <SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnFlx2Lnr9Q
There's a cat, keening in the haunted place that was once a forest. In pain? In heat?
Carefully tended shrubs and saplings or no, the ghosts of this place loom large.
Spectral branches part around a lost little girl's path. It isn't a cat, after all.
"When the mooooooooooooooooon hits your eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeye like a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig pizza piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie, thass nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyamore..."
One story up, Nagi swings gaily about the trunk of a missing tree, one arm wrapped around it like the shoulders of a friend, which he uses to rotate himself, and the other thrown out as broadly as it would be in a musical.
His voice dances downwards as he skips impossibly to another absent branch. Both song and boy have momentum.
"Whennnn theeeeee world seems to shine, like you've had to much wine, thass nyyyyyyamore..."
And, as he says, the Moon is high in the sky, gilding everything silver. Silver is death, silver is ash, silver is fluff that crowns his head.
Only two things aren't silver in this otherworldly lens of campus: the star above his brow, and the pendant beneath his feet.
Both burn perfectly, beautifully, identically in their matching red.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
There's a cat, and maybe that's why Mikoto turns in that direction. She has not been able to reach out to the cats, of late. It does not mean she cares nothing for them. Her first thought, on hearing a thing which might be pain, is to help.
Even if she's no help at all.
But there is no cat, and she pauses as the branches part, looking up at the noise.
It should be a tree. The human mind supplies these things, under duress. Mikoto has known it many times. She's fought many things which should be something else, after all.
But it isn't a tree, either, and Mikoto has gotten good at seeing when something isn't, for the exact same reason.
She takes a half-step back. It doesn't make sense. She's used to fighting things which don't make sense.
"Nagi..." It is Nagi, at least. She thinks she can be sure of that much. Mikoto has always met him with hostility. Once he told her as she sneered that her face would stick that way if she wasn't careful. Now she is not snarling, and her face is not stuck in any particular way at all. It is the vacancy of grief, dusted with uncertainty, the same way silver dusts the world.
All the world except --
Her eyes fall on the pendant beneath him and her breath catches in her chest. "-- Lord Brother!" The gasp chokes from a strangled throat, as her mind rushes through what might have happened to leave it here -- and him nowhere to be found.
She is not edging back any more; she is rushing forward.
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
The branch Nagi's standing on vibrates with whiplash as he explodes off of it and away, onto the next, and the next, and the next.
He keeps the song going, throughout their merry chase.
"Bells will ring, ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling, annnya'll sing 'Vita Smella'..."
It's true, too. The carillon in the Chairman's Tower -- specifically the largest, greatest bell, the clear patriarch of the bell family up there -- is tolling midnight.
The witching hour has begun.
"...hearts... will... play, tippy-tippy-tay, tippy-tippy-tay--"
Nagi's eyes gleam with wickedness as he glances back over his shoulder, almost as brightly as the pendant,
"--like a gayyyyyy taranyellaaaaaa!!"
The pendant. It's exactly the same distance from Mikoto as it was at the start of her sprint, but she can feel a force behind her, at the nape of her neck, urging her on, pulling her forward, faster, faster.
They've left the ghost forest behind, by now, for a colder place which even the memory of Ohtori's sun can't reach. Endless dark tunnels. Some marked, some unmarked, but at a blurred pace like this direction quickly loses all meaning.
The walls are close, all around. Small. Airless. Perfect for a nimble girl like the little sister of Lord Brother. Few others could ever traverse this particular path through the labyrinth. It goes up and over and down, mostly, usually, down, down.
It smells like water. And it's getting stronger.
The pendant dances in front of Mikoto's eyes like a will o'wisp. Further down, deeper in...
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed. <SoundTracker> t.A.T.u. - Running Blind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvJC0FUuKU
Midnight...
Mikoto doesn't have to worry about going home to Mai any more, because Mai would worry if she were out too late. Mai must not be worried any more because Mai doesn't want Mikoto to come home any more.
Mikoto doesn't have to worry about making sure Eri eats human food after they're done hunting, either, even though she was so convinced she didn't need it any more. Eri doesn't need to be taken care of because Mikoto took care of her and now she'll never need to eat anything ever again.
Really, with a bell like that, there's only one thing Mikoto has to worry about - isn't there?
Nagi makes noise - it is difficult to call it singing, that thing he's doing, like a cat yowling on the rooftop - and it is a strange backdrop to a strange situation. Because Mikoto darts forward but she makes no progress at all, except that she goes faster faster faster as if she is being pulled forward into a vortex of movement.
It's cold, she realises, distantly, as she rushes on. It's very, very cold. Cold and close and closed off, and there is heat at her chest and she does not stumble and she does not lose her way. In seven gates the rest of her warmth leaves her, stripped away in the wake of rain and abandonment.
She can't lose her way. She has to reach it. A hand pressing against a passage too narrow, pulling her into an empty tunnel, weaving around stalagmites like spires. She feels she can scarcely breathe for the strain of it, when she is left with one worry alone.
If she just pushes herself a little harder - if she just goes a little further...
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
Mikoto's seeing double.
Maybe she's pushed herself too hard, gone too far. She was poorly rested before a spontaneous parkour-sprint through the hidden guts of the Land of Fuuka, up and down its twisted veins and into its still-beating heart.
But it's true: the burning red eye of the pendant before her has split, in an unfocused way, as though each orb is partially eclipsing the other. Like a thumb slowly approaching the nose until it becomes two thumbs.
The pressure at the back of her neck ceases so abruptly as to threaten to send her sprawling, as she no longer has to compensate for it in her balance.
And then it's only one pendant.
Because she isn't chasing her own pendant anymore. Her own pendant, which Nagi had watched hover before its owner's eyes and YANK, cord and all, forwards, as though animated by invisible hands.
Ghostly hands.
There's water all around, now, and it casts strange shadows on the distant walls of this jarringly large chamber, this secret chasm in the middle of everything. Above are wires, wires and screens. Below is nothing but stone, black black stone, black like Miroku, black like Mikoto herself.
But there are no more ghosts now.
No evil spirits would be brave enough to enter this space.
This space.
His space.
Him.
It must be him.
The pendant -- THE pendant, singular -- glows warmly at his chest like a hearthfire, a heartfire. Like a flashlight around a campfire, when the ghost stories come out -- no ghosts, no ghosts, there are no ghosts here -- it illuminates his face at strange angles, calling forth more darkness than light.
But it's him.
Surely, it's him.
His hands -- not a ghost's at all, they're alive, alive, alive, he is alive -- look so big and strong and capable, there at the ends of his arms, which he's spread out wide, wide, wide, gaping open in welcome.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed. <SoundTracker> Nevermore - Sell My Heart For Stones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPR8u_kAtVw
No - no, please, just a little more, just a little more. Mikoto just needs to give a little more, bleed a little more, offer up a little more. She can't see right and she pleads with herself as she pushes forward, half-formed thoughts cut from winnowed desperation.
And then she isn't being pulled any more and now - now she stumbles, breath thin and quick on her lips, gasping for air. The movement lowers her gaze, and she sees it again, the pendant-guide-reminder, and those too-bright eyes raise to her face and she knows.
It's him.
It's him...
Her head cocks sharply as joy hollows out the fear on her face, new tears springing to her eyes as she dives forward to wrap herself about his midsection, burying her face against her chest as her hands clutch tightly to his cloth. A sound half-laugh and half-whimper escapes her, the sound of relief after a long and grueling trick. She breathes him in and she presses herself tightly to him and she remembers.
(Or perhaps the word is 'imprints.')
"Lord Brother," she gasps out, love on her lips, and she is exhausted and it doesn't matter because it's him, it's him, he's here. Love and devotion and relief: "my Lord Brother..."
All this time - she never thought to look below. Perhaps it was thinking which was the problem. She leans into him because he is strong, strong enough to grasp her. "It's been - so long, I --" and perhaps a girl from Tokyo would ask why he left her, demand answers. She is not from Tokyo. Her breath hitches as she rubs her cheek against him. "I missed you, Lord Brother! It's been - so hard, I tried to be strong but I can't do it alone. I can't! I need my Lord Brother! I-- I've always needed my Lord Brother." Desperation returns to her voice, torn open, and the words pour out despite herself. "Please don't leave me again, let me stay with you, I can be useful, I really can, please..." She meant what she said. Being alone is the worst thing in the world.
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
Lord Brother's arms close around Mikoto, and they embrace.
They are strong and warm and smell, ever so faintly, of some masculine musk that is uniquely his, uniquely him. A little sweet. A little spicy. And, even after all this time, a little bit like their shrine in the mountains, clean air and sharp pine and soothing incense. It is a part of him, inextricable, and that means she is too.
Lord Brother's arms snap shut around Mikoto, and they cuddle.
Where Mikoto rubs against him, he rubs right back, his nose in her hair. His fingers, behind her, run gently down her neck, her spine, leaving connection behind like trailing electricity. She is words and words and words right now, but they both know -- so intimately, they share the knowledge -- of how to speak without them.
He is larger than her, large enough to hold her to him with one arm while shifting the other between them, so that he can gently take her chin between thumb and forefinger and unpress her face from his chest. Lift it towards him, gently, so gently. Use his thumb to wipe away a tear.
He leans down and presses his lips to her forehead.
It is utterly chaste.
But 'chaste' does not mean 'distant'.
Lord Brother kisses Little Sister's crown as though he is bestowing a literal one. It is benediction, blessing, and welcome all in one. It is the kiss of a man for a woman who is more precious to him than any interloper could ever be -- any girlfriend, any mistress, any wife.
It's in his eyes, too, as they travel over his sibling's body, taking in her growth and her scars and then, casually going beneath the skin, her throbbing, throbbing pain.
He knows such terrible sorrow. Her sorrow is his, now.
"Mikoto," he murmurs, in a lower rumble than when they were just children, but it's still him, it's him, it's him.
And within the three syllables of her name on his lips she may come to know his sadness at her state -- his clear wish to salve her wounds, to see her strong and happy and well again -- and, at the same time, his gladness, golden as the sun on the patio, raw and simple and sweetly glad to reunited again, at last, at last, at last.
It is the voice of a man who will never allow them to be parted again.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
There is so much Mikoto has not been able to say to him, and perhaps it is evidence of her time in Tokyo that she has anything to say at all. She has learnt so many things here.
They are overshadowed by him.
She is, too, small in the most caring set of arms in the world. His hand trails her vulnerable neck, down her spine, and she shivers and sighs contentment and falls silent. Had she forgotten how soothing a simple touch could be? Simple connection between two people who cannot be closer?
He shifts her and she is pliant in his arms, lifting her gaze with the help of his hand. There have been so many, many tears rolling down her cheeks, unchecked. Gratitude and affection flood her eyes, her gentle and so-fragile smile, as one is finally cared for. As he takes care of her.
It's him, it's really him...
Her eyes lid as she feels the press of his lips and it is no pretend-game between girls any more, because he is her Lord Brother and they grew together in that shrine surrounded by pine trees. And she has grown since then and she has borne so many more scars, and some lay thin and pink along her skin and so many more are deeper than that, the emotional scarring of years of trying so, so hard.
They are all open to him, because she is open to him, with no corner to hide in.
He has grown, too, she thinks, as she hears her name like a gift. She looks into his eyes and she sees home.
She's home.
"I love you, Lord Brother," Mikoto sighs, truth and promise and relief and joy. "I love you..."
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
"Mikoto," Lord Brother says a second time, even more gently, and it sounds like it means I love you too.
He plays with one of her little braids, while the other hand keeps massaging the back of her neck.
"Mikoto," a third time for all.
They are bound.
He runs the back of his hand down her cheekbone as though blind and trying to see her, memorizing her face, her features, and the transformation that years have wrought upon them.
Of course, he uses his eyes, too. They bore straight into Mikoto's like drills; they caress her gaze like candlelight, drawing it more deeply into himself in turn. There is no privacy afforded her here, inside and out.
He knows.
He knows everything.
And -- diamonds in the darkness -- tears well up in the corners of his eyes, too.
He ignores them. Mikoto's are everything to him. He keeps smoothing, smoothing, smoothing them away. Like a river over stone he wears them down.
"The world has been so cruel to you... your Lord Brother can see that you've been forced to make so many difficult choices."
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Her name is gentle on his lips and Mikoto is gentled in his hands, and she hears love on his breath and there is love in her eyes. One braid is half-undone, the tie lost somewhere in her short exile - not the longer; the other has remained whole, remarkably, despite the trials she has undergone.
(They have grown a little longer, since last she saw him. She's neglected to trim them for a while. She has been otherwise occupied.)
She is utterly amenable under his touch, and as his hand runs down her cheek she leans into the motion, eyes half-closed in their contentment. They do not shut, because she is looking up at him, cannot look away. She feels she will lose herself; perhaps she even wants to. She loves him, she loves him, and it is a love which hollows her out until only he remains.
She is kept by that gaze and it sees all the secret things, and her brow arcs in concern as she sees the tears forming at their edges. He wipes at hers and he is winning - must be winning, because he is here and everything is all right now.
But even though it is so soothing to be here, with him, another pair of liquid drops can't help but fall as he names her sorrows. She nods, with a sad little noise. She has no secrets, not here. "I had to... do bad things," she says, hesitating a little on how to explain the horrors they had wrought. "'Cause, Eri was alone... but everyone hated it... and, Mai hated it," and they are all blades turned upon her and this is the cruelest, and it is there in her eyes. "Mai can't - deal with me..."
What could be more typical than telling a stronger and more capable older brother that someone has hurt you?
Her voice wobbles, teeth pressed lightly against her bottom lip. "And it don't even, matter no more, 'cause we had to, kill Eri," her fingers curl in against his clothes, grasping for support, for absolution. "Eri asked... Eri asked..." She does not say that it was not the first time. It is so plain she remembers, in her guilt and her pain.
A girl from Tokyo might ask why he would require such a thing of her. Might even say, how could he?
Mikoto is not from Tokyo.
"It's hard," she murmurs, helpless little words, and there are so many scars laid on her. "Making choices... it's hard... no matter what I do, I keep messing it up..." She was supposed to be able to operate on her own, but she was never able to do it right. It feels like everything she has tried to do has only led her further down the path to oblivion.
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
"Shh. Hush now. It's okay, Mikoto. It's okay."
Lord Brother tightens his embrace, again enfolding her fully, pressing her cheek against his chest. Tucking her under his chin.
"It's okay. I'm here."
He holds her, and he rocks her. They rock together. Back... and forth. Back... and forth. Heel... to toe. Heel... to toe.
Water drips around them -- and from them -- but otherwise his words are the only sound. Mikoto can feel them vibrating from his chest into hers. From his heart into hers.
"You don't have to keep making choices, Mikoto," he promises. He swears. He blinks back tears.
"I'm here now... I'll make all the tough decisions for us both."
And their pendants glow...
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed. <SoundTracker> Yuki Kajiura - Obsidian Lord ~ Sweet Temptation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtgdbO-1nrs
It's okay, he says, and it is, it must be, because Mikoto is enveloped and Mikoto is consumed. She leans into his arms, against his chest, and she is so easily manipulated into movement.
Now her eyes can close, feeling his warmth and his words, and she lets out a sigh as they shift back and forth, as if the blackness they dwell on is a boat in the water around them. Her heartrate slows, against him, as she breathes in the spice and the pine. He's here, he says, and it must matter so much more than the rest of them. Even if Mai does not want to be with her - even if Eri will never stand by her side again - even if she can't face Yumi - even if she couldn't reach out to Ye-jin - even if Homura did not care that she reached out --
-- he's here.
He's here, and it's okay, because he is here. It's okay that Mikoto couldn't find him. It's okay that Mikoto couldn't defeat them. It's okay that Mikoto didn't save them. It's okay that Mikoto killed them. It's okay, so she doesn't have to talk about how she feels any more. She must feel better. It's okay.
And she believes it. She believes it. Her world is his words and she feels them as much as she hears them, settling into her bones, seeping into the jagged edges of her heart, coiling around her soul. He soothes her and she is soothed, no matter the storm in her mind. Back... and forth... and back... and forth. A boat needs an anchor. She was never the anchor. The anchor was always part of her.
He was always part of her, flesh and blood and heart and soul.
He promises and perhaps she is losing herself, one last little whimpering murmur as lotus dreams of her own desires fall so far away from the truth. It is a sound of appreciation; it is a sound of gratitude; it is a sound of surrender. That is all it could ever be.
She is slack against him and she is his to position as he will, hands so loosely grasping at him. Perhaps she was long ago lost. His love hollows her and she is filled with relief at words so genuine and kind. Her happiness is terrible, palpable, as her breath fills her chest and exhales.
He'll make the decisions.
She is unburdened.
All she has to do is what he says, and it will be okay.
Because he's here. He's really here.
Their pendants glow hot, trapped against them. It is a comfort to her, a reminder that there is one man who loves her so, so much.
Her response is rote and no less grateful for it. She has learned to express herself in the words she is permitted to use. She can fit so much into a name. So much - into three simple little words.
Three words which define her, no matter the ones she tried to use before. Three words which must define her. Three words she cannot help but say. And she will tell herself she wanted it - she will tell the world she wanted it. She will tell anyone she wanted it, no matter her feelings, though he possesses her sorrow and there is nowhere to hide.
She is well-bred and finely-crafted, designed for one person. Of course she wants it. She could never want anything else.
"Yes, Lord Brother..."
