sacral | 𝚒𝚗𝚋𝚘𝚡 — 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚗𝚒𝚊.

I understand that it isn't. I can't imagine what it must actually feel like for you.

[ Even if the tether does lay some of it bare. And the knowledge from the dream before that, imperfect conduits for the multitudes of a heart. ]

So you'll have to keep telling me, if you want me to know.

Must it.

( But apple-crisp gritted teeth won't keep his condescension away. )

I could accept if your child cost me my life through malice. I refuse to lose it to his incompetence.

Your child shikigami master is spiritually and mentally compromised. He's hardly even purified after possession.

Fix your child, thirteenth head. Before I break covenant and do it for you.

It's not that I don't want to tell you. It's just...

[ Hard to find words, mostly. Everything he comes up with always feels like it falls short of what he really means. The tether is helpful, in that sense, but at the same time, letting it come through there feels...like too much. More of him than anyone else should have to put up with. ]

I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to call on them again and not think about it.

[ A — pause, a rift chiming, then a calm pulse for him to squeeze and shatter and deny, pouring dust. Now was that so difficult? ]

There are reasons for that. But because they've been preceded by an offense, I'd guess that makes no difference now.

[ Thirteenth, still. ]

Leave him to me.

It's fine. Matters like these can take time. ...matters like these can't always be left to simple convenience.

[ Because that's what these connections are: convenient. When the words just don't come out right. ]

What will your alternative be here, if you don't call on them?

( ...oh. Oh, but he is disappointed now. )

You knew.

Some of it.

( Give him a moment; another. The spumes of his fury, depleting. )

I don't know what I had anticipated. I think, not this.

We're finding ourselves with less and less time to anticipate. We're at the whim of impatience.

( Impatience, like oil slick, like a sheen. )

Or those of your bleeding heart. You know he can't go on like this. You do know.

[ And beyond it, a depth, a blood red bath thick on the edges of the Murmur. His heart; Megumi's soul. What difference is there? ]

I know. And he won't. But he had to make that choice.

( Give them their rope, and they will hang. Give them kindness grieving. )

As you like.

...what I've been doing, I guess. Straight shadow manipulation.

[ There's something binding them together in this space, something that's not the fragments of their convergence, murmuring in the dark. Subaru's senses flood with the clamor of everything racing to claim them — the nauseating outcry of One, Sleep's droning purr, her hounds, the sudden, incriminating hush of their hunting. And closer still, the radiant chill of Agent Choi's mouth at the pounding column of his neck. A shiver ripples his skin, attention immediately drawn to him and his touch.

Some other bond is overlaying the one they have, casting this new light around. But the longer it lingers, the more Subaru understands that it's a beacon. Whatever calm it's giving him, whatever instincts it's sating in Choi, it's coming at a cost. The metal around them rattles and warms as something breathes outside the door, an eerie humidity flowing through the seams.

Silently, his fingers flex back from the door, away from the spell and where Choi holds it shut. His other hand tightens into his shirt as a warning. In that shift, his intent unfurls:

He's going to retract the spell. He's going to try and sever this link in favor of their tether.

Then it'll just be Choi's strength and their own silence standing between them and whatever's outside. ]