once a sleepy sinner, once cast out

Rin remembers some of it. In fits and starts. He remembers that Nuriko had been working a late shift, and wouldn't be getting off for a few hours. That Yukio was off researching in the library of a Darrow church with a fairly extensive collection of records. That everybody else was busy with their own thing.

So he'd been alone, when curiosity had driven him to open the door at the knock.

Rin remembers a chain looped around his throat, burning and digging into his flesh, until the pain was bad enough that any struggle had quickly drained, and pain had dimmed his breaths to the smallest, harshest little things that tried too hard for too little. Then they'd rolled him up in fabric and tied a hood around his head. After that, Rin doesn't know.

He has no memory of what was between then and now; no sight, no sound, no scent. He could be anywhere. All he knows is the little room he's in now.

He doesn't need much light to see, but all that he can tell are that the walls are metal, that they look rusted and corroded, and covered in little snowflake patterns, like they might be frosty, but it's not cold enough where he is It's salt, probably. It doesn't bother him to handle it when he's cooking, but he wonders about the way it's used now.

It isn't random violence that's brought him here. He's here because he's who they were after. He finds himself unsurprised. It's a tired sort of unsurprise. Sort of a confirmation of what he's thought before. Of what he already knows. A tired feeling, like he sort of maybe deserves for this to have happened, in the end.

He struggles to stand, trying to balance himself as he presses himself off the ground with an elbow, pulling himself to his wobbling feet. There are manacles keeping his hands struck together at the wrists. Whatever they're made of, there's an intricate script imprinted into the metal. "Shit," he murmurs, trying to force his arms apart. It shouldn't be a problem for his strength, but something about the manacles is still draining the fight out of him. Like he can't even make himself want to resist enough to tear them off.

It's really disgusting.

A light flashes on above, yellow, bright and unforgiving, and Rin lifts his head with a low, startled growl as the dark pupils of his eyes quickly receed to thin upright slivers as they meet a woman. She looks like any other woman. Middle-aged, dressed in denim pants and a button-down shirt. Modest, medium-haired, wrinkle-faced, like she could be any old soccer mom. Maybe that's what hurts him the most. He narrows his eyes, bright cerulean. They aren't his happy eyes.

He's not happy to be here.

The woman laughs, almost sweetly, but unmoved. She crosses the room without worry, before snapping an arm out and threading fingers through Rin's thick black hair. She tugs mercilessly, shaking his head above his shoulders like he were an unwanted stray cat. Before he can complain, her free hand slams a silver hammer into his upper jaw, just to the side of his nose. When he gives a shout of frightened pain, she holds his mouth apart, thumbing one of his long eyeteeth before applying just enough pressure. After the damage of the weapon, it pops out easily, leaving a bleeding hole in his gums.

Another figure from behind her, just as ordinary, holds what looks like a simple silver goblet beneath his face as she holds him still above it, fightless and limp where he hangs from his hair. White light still springs and fades in his vision from the earlier blow.

"Good doggy," she says. "You don't have a lot of good qualities, but at least you bleed well."

As if to punctuate, a cough flies between Rin's chapped lips and he spits into the filling cup waiting below, his nose bleeding down the back of his throat. It's hot, and sticky, and his head is filled with the smell of it, just a shade darker and danker than purely human blood.

"What a bitch," he tells her, though his voice is meek and rough from maltreatment.

She laughs sweetly again. He's starting to truly hate the sound of that laugh.

A second later, he yowls, pain shooting up from his jaw to stab into his temple. Wincing away from the light again, he writhes in her grip, until she dumps him to the hard, gritty floor again. Rin only distantly realizes what's causing it - the tooth is growing back in. The wound isn't as fast to heal as it normally would be, nerves slowly growing to replace themselves as a long, sharp tooth slides back in to replace the lost one.

"I've got two of these now," the woman says, turning to leave the room with her partner. "We'll see if we can't get enough to remember you by. I'm sure they've got their uses. After all, it's not like we're ignorant to your importance. Even if you are pathetic. Well ... even if you are pathetic, you're still a little chip off of something special. Something worth respect. So thank you," she finishes, as she closes the door behind her quietly. The lights flicker off again in her wake. Rin curls around himself, ear digging into the bare, dirty ground.

"Thank you, kid, for doing one useful thing in your time crawling the earth."

and it burns like me for you

Rin had been there for Nuriko when she'd woken up. He doesn't regret it, though it had meant that Yukio had gone out on his own, at the end, to try to approach the spirit that had caused all of this. Maybe he should, but ... he really doesn't regret it. In the end, Rin knows that he would probably have been minimally helpful.

And in the end, he knows that Yukio was safe, mostly unhurt. That Koh, the spirit, was forced to release the faces he had stolen.

Rin refuses to leave Nuriko's side, even now that she's gotten back to her apartment. He thinks, after so long with only her own company, maybe she wouldn't want to be left alone. And in any case, he just ... can't imagine stepping away right now.

Even while she settles in and decides to take a shower to get the hospital off of her, Rin puts together a light meal that isn't hospital food (he'd been told by her doctor that her stomach would be touchy after being empty for as long as it had.) By the time he's done, Nuriko still isn't finished, and after a moment of pacing back and forth outside the bathroom trying and failing to think anything over and actually drag together his thoughts, the sound of the soft hiss of the shower water draws him into the bathroom.

Stepping inside to the billow of steam, he considers, maybe, just sitting on the toilet and talking to her. He can't get enough of her voice right now. She'd been without it for far too long But even that idea just doesn't seem close enough, won't give him as much of Nuriko as he wants.

So instead he unbuttons his shirt, slides it off and leaves it hung messily over the sink, before adding his jeans, his socks and underwear, all of his clothing there joined in a pile, before working up the nerve to step inside the shower without any real permission. Brushing past the curtain, he gives a soft intake of surprise at the heat of the water before it quickly plasters his dark hair to his forehead.

Reaching out, he pulls Nuriko's own dark hair together to settle it neatly down the length of her long, pale back. Finding a freckle on her shoulder, he leans forward to press his mouth against it.

"Couldn't wait any longer. Didn't know what else to do until you were done."