then ii
and you
and all of u2
fell down.
"We're going to die," he whispers, sitting against the wall, not looking at the woman who suddenly appeared. She nods. "Yes." He shakes his head and laughs ruefully, because there's nothing else he can do about it. Due to his ability (not a gift, never a gift) he's seen his companions' deaths over and over in painstaking detail when he succumbs to the ever-present voices. The Psiionic's been expecting the Handmaid. He looks up at her through bichromatic eyes. "You're a bit early, aren't you? Unless you've come to take me, which I think is just me being hopeful." The Handmaid shakes her head, adding an "I'm afraid not". She offers him a pat on the head- it is not often she makes physical contact in a comforting sense, but it is equally rare to find someone who welcomes her as a friend instead of a demon. She supposes it to be expected from someone who hears the dead whisper, that he would feel kinship with death's servant, but it's nice. "Your time will not come for a while, and I am sorry." She truly is, because she has seen the end of his life, and it is far-off and painful. He sighs. "I figured."
"Nothing is ever easy for children of death." The Handmaid says, before she disappears from the cell.
She will be back.
She will have never really left.
The Psiionic is reacquainted with death only a few hours after she left. The sun rose and the Signless- now the Sufferer- was hung to burn. To be made an example of.
And the yellowblood would not stand for it.
It was his mistake. His anger and desperation- no you can't be doiing thii2 ii won't let you the vii2iion2 aren't allowed to happen liike thii2- allowed a trickle of his psionics beyond the barriers imposed upon him.
It's difficult to keep the strongest psionic of the era under control.
And so, against the quiet pleas of the Dolorosa next to him, he breaks rank. He breaks rank and with a slight flicker of red and blue the cuffs laying on his wrists are broken as well and he's free for now but he doesn't realize this means he could escape because he's too focused on his friend whose wrists are burning and-
His transgression was noted and dispatched of.
Orders given that a subjuggulator was only too happy to comply with and after a shark crack to the back of his head, the Psiionic falls to the ground. The Condescension murmurs happily- what intrigue, trying to do that; she will enjoy breaking him in as her Helmsman- but no attention is paid because they can't kiill hiim no.
Only they can kill him, and the Handmaiden comes to herald as such. She steps gracefully through the crowd, which parts for her although they cannot see her. The demoness stops at the front edge of the crowd, next to a puddle of yellow blood and a struggle to stay awake. "Sleep," she says, bending over and placing her hand over the spot of yellow trickling down his neck.
"Please, let him-" His voice cracks, and she shakes her head.
"It hurts to care for people." She tells him instead, before dropping him into unconsciousness. She finds herself prone to kindness with this troll because she does, in a strange, human way, pity the Psiionic. He is, after all, utterly pitiable, but her job does not allow for pity. She stands and makes her way over the the Signless. He cannot see her. She holds the side of his face still with the hand that is blotched in yellow, and kisses the Sufferer. She breathes death into him, and then they are both gone.
Some cry.
Some laugh.
All the same, the Handmaid closes another chapter in history.
She repeats the task again much later, in a similarly hectic way.
This time, she stands in a starship.
There's noise, so much noise that drills inside her brain and lodges there. Alarms, screaming, shouts, the noises of other lowbloods on the ship approaching death. She will get the them later, but right now she will extend to the pilot the small kindness of him being the first to die. A flicker of rainbow magic to silence the inconvenience and sounds become muted, time slows to an ooze around her.
The engine room is no better than the outside, a flashing array of colours and screens and Her Imperial Condescension screaming something to no one.
The Handmaid has no patience for this. Time stops in the room, despite the Condesce's commands to hurry. The muted red and blue of the computer screens cast a sickly glow over the waters flooded into the room. She floats above the sea, feet leaving almost-ripples behind. She taps the brow of the suspended pilot, bringing him out of the frozen time and into her own continuum. "Helmsman."
He moves his head to look at her. She takes his goggles off.
"Do you remember me?"
He blinks the blood out of his eyes. "Not... really." His voice is hoarse from lack of use.
"I am the Handmaid of death." She's not surprised he forgot. Over a thousand sweeps as a ship's computer does not do much for the psyche.
"You're here to kill me?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." She quirks an eyebrow. "You thank me?" While the Psiionic may have welcomed her, she did not expect the same from the Helmsman.
"There was something to do with dying... I needed to find someone. I don't remember who." She nods.
"There are dream bubbles. You will find your friends."
"What about you?"
She shook her head. "I don't die for a long, long time. I have no friends to find."
The Helmsman coughs out a laugh, spattering blood down his shirt. "Well, you can always find me when you do."
The Handmaid smiles. "That I can."
She holds has face and kisses him as well, although this time it is not out of respect for what he has done. It is out of kindness for who he is.
The Helmsman dies, and she places the goggles back onto his body. No need to leave things disturbed. She floats out of the room, unfreezing time as she goes, because the Vast Glub has left her much more work to be done on this ship, and she has wasted enough time with emotion.
Notes: I don't even know I just want them to be friends except this turned out quite a bit shippier than expected. And then when I tried to write kinda shippy suffpsi it just turned out as bros okay then never mind me
yeah anyways Handmaid and Psiionic are bros and Handmaid likes kissing people or something I don't even know what I'm writing.