setting: pre-mass effect 2; miranda and leng had gone on a mission together, ending up in a compromise of their security. Miranda was captured and brutally maimed, but currently having her wounds treated by Kai Leng
warning: talk of abuse, gore.
Blood is simple, meaning pure and unadulterated behind the barest of forms and knits. It creates, it sustains, and it shows the full fledge existence of life, without it there would be no heartbeat, no warmth. Yet it's meant to stay inside of corded veins and tubing, not dashed about the floor or splattered in a pretty halo of hair. But as Leng sat before her, eyes glaring at the display of royal maroon set upon her form, he couldn't help but remark in thought of how pretty Lawson looked in red.
He touched her ankle first, fingers tracing along the shackle mark, steadily sneaking up the bruises that covered her knees, the scraps and scratches that caked over marred flesh. They lingered there, callused pads running about the shapes and malformations built from hostility, the abrasions leaking life under his nails as he listened to her suck in a breath.
The next touch was slower, a grip up her thigh, an inspection of cautious behavior, finding small rivulets of crimson snaking down the soft curve of her leg. With ease and gentleness unknown to even his subconscious, he brought a washcloth up to her leg, dabbing at her thigh noticing with rapt attention at the goose-prickled flesh under the caress, aiming to be careful, aiming to be something other than brutal – something other than what they both almost suffered.
He stretched his body, drawing the cloth up her hips, feeling the own ache and pulling his ribs, muscles shrieking under the tenderization of flesh and cracked bone but that would heal, easily in fact, laughably so. But a tendril of rage ripped through him at the sight of nail beds, dark red half-moons embedded in the silk flesh of her hips, not his own – a process he has stopped, a process that showered them, showered her, in something grotesque, a dress and scarf of liquid ruby.
The cloth lingered there, the cool soothing sensation causing her to shiver, he could tell, trying to wash away a mark that wasn't his, a mark that challenged him. He rose on his knees, kneeling before her for what seemed the first time, as she peered down at him with eyes so blue they could capture the ocean, open and regretful, scared but assured, an entire cacophony of sensations spiraling about his skull.
Natural grace urged him to bring a hand up, one still settled on her hip, while the other trailed with whispering touches on her arm, drawing over the slender curve of her shoulder before landing on her neck, thumb touching under her jaw to pull at the abrasion left there. Its trek not halted until brushed under bloodied lips, full and broken. He swore he could feel her pulse for just a second, before his own pulse stuttered and shook as she leaned forward.
Her lips pressed against the corner of his mouth in barest surprise, before taut arms wrapped about his neck. On cue, whether a thoughtful decision or not, he pulled himself around her, a hand in her hair and the other arm sliding around her back. It wasn't fair, none of it was fair, unspoken phrases and wants, the simple idea of what was once possessed could be so easily stolen from him. He enraged him, pulled a bestial side unfamiliar and dangerous across his spine. He hated it. Hated that his emotions got the better of him at the taunts of their captors, at the taunts against violating the woman in his arms – he couldn't let them, he didn't let them. But a mark still remained between the two of them, a simple brand to be tattooed in history and in trust, something never to be spoken about, nothing ever uttered from lips so sweet and so bruised.
She was trembling in his arms, and he wouldn't let go, not until she stopped, not until everything dripped out of her from the week's events. But not because it was comfort – it was only fear. Only fear that she wasn't the one trembling.