characters: aech, maizen, reiner, taraas
"Maaaaay-zieeeeee. Mayzie. Maaaaay-"
Reiner clenched her fists, chest tight, and looked up from her papers. Maizen looked at her, paying no attention to the babbling child running in circles around his work.
"Do something about him," she hissed through bared fangs, "take the child outside. I can't stand the noise."
He stared. Blank faced.
Reiner looked back.
"No answer?"
And no such response; no raised hands, no fingerspelling.
She sneered and pointed towards her face, "all that for no reason, then?"
Maizen's eyes widened, hand reaching towards his face and stopping cold over his lips. He ghosted his fingers over the raised thread and careful stitches, frozen arm falling back to his side.
"Good. Take him to the court."
Aech continued talking to no one, premonitions blurring his vision; shattered realities and careful paths of choice revealing and fading before his very eyes. Maizen shifted to look down at the child- no, the ill-minded teen- and placed a hand on his head.
Aech recognized the touch immediately. He squealed, having found his guardian in the sea of pictures not mirroring his own, and patted his hand on top of the other's.
Maizen snorted, a soft breath of air. Aech's ears perked up and he grinned.
Reiner watched from afar as the two lead each other to the door and out. She hummed, chewing on the end of her pencil.
Their relationship was still an enigma. Maizen could speak through his hands and Aech could read through his own, picking up their own ways to adapt to their blindness and muteness, and yet they lacked in what could let them communicate to each other. Who could expect Aech to focus long enough to pick out Maizen's fingerspelling anyways? There was no way for their conversations to go both ways, and Aech still babbled on and on to Maizen, holding his hand for the comfort he was still there and sticking out his own to map the other's face with sporadic strokes.
She could rip at their seams, push down their bruises, and they'd still find a way to come out on top.
It was almost infuriating; mockingly, and still admittedly intriguing.
She placed down her pencil, fingers trailing over the imbedded bite marks, and refocused on her writing. Some document. Some statement, some claim. They all blurred when you stop thinking about them too much. Like a bad-
-and there it was.
Teal shackles and damp air. Sharp eyes.
The room slipped its way into her mind. Again. The things she had done.
Reiner lifted the paper, hand gripping the thin text like grass blades over a cliff. It fought back, twisting and writhing between her palms. Red dribbled down, staining on white, drip, drip, dripping onto the wood. A little scarlet dot, a stain to match the others on the desk.
Not again. You can't lack, knowing what you've done to earn this. Are you happy? Do you still believe what you did was right, do you still trust your unstable, teetering mind more than you did hers?
Is this what you wanted?
Suddenly the room was cold, lacking Aech's little tinkling voice. Lacking Maizen's silence, some to say. How odd. Do you think their imprints mean something, do you think it might be important? Do you think they mean more than their truths might say?
Shut up.
You think you know so much. So many futures and lives living on your choice, your sleight of hand, your bleeding mind. She might have done better. Could she have? It doesn't matter now, you'll never know. Never. Not ever. This is your imprint, the future is now. Dare you go back? There, that wretched place? Tail between your legs, oh, I'm so sorry, I've made a mistake. Just say it. You were right.
That's what I thought.
