Belle
Belle found herself being lifted from the sea of numbers, the enormous hand of the wolf titan lifting her from her place of torment. But in the way of dreams, she suddenly wasn't helpless on her back, but kneeling. And then she wasn't just kneeling, but she was astride Lycaon's lower body and his single crimson eye was gazing at with intensity and her hands were working to unbutton the top button of his tunic.
"Belle. Belle!"
Her eyes blinked open. She was on her side in her own bed and Wise was gently shaking her shoulder and looked nervous. Belle winced her eyes closed, immediately wanting to return to the dream. What had been happening there?
"Belle. You need to get up. Lycaon's traps killed someone. PubSec will be here soon."
Her eyes shot open. She was too surprised to even offer a verbal question, but her face must have said it well enough. Wise simply nodded at her with a grimace and stood up away from her. Belle sat up in her bed and looked towards her open bedroom door. Just outside, Lycaon loomed stiffly, his head slightly inclined and averted from her direction. He seemed to be making himself visible to her but was intentionally not intruding into her room even with his eyesight, having sent her brother to her instead.
Belle looked back to Wise. "What happened?"
"Some guy with a gun tried to get up here and-" Wise grimaced and struggled for words. "He didn't make it."
Some guy with a gun. Belle's heart fluttered. Some guy with a gun for her. It had to be. Her idle hope that all of this business with Qingyi and Lycaon was simple paranoia… well… idle hope confirmed. To be wrong. Belle took a deep breath and noted an unpleasant scent in the air.
"All right," said Belle. "I'll get dressed."
Wise withdrew from her bedroom and closed the door behind him. Belle quickly dressed, trying to keep her heartbeat under control. A man dead to lethal booby traps inside Random Play? She'd read news stories of people dying in booby traps plenty of times- it happened uncommonly, but there were a great many rich people in New Eridu who used such devices and sometimes people died. There was disdain and general outcry when the victim was some innocent person, general acceptance and morbid satisfaction when it was a legitimate criminal, and rather macabre delight when it was the owner themselves who made a mistake with their own devices.
Now there was someone dead in her own home. How could this have happened? Was this new reality of hers all because she plugged into one old computer? It seemed entirely out of proportion to her crime, which in her mind, was no crime. Things in a Hollow were lost and so should be claimable by salvager's rights!
Belle opened her door to find only Lycaon on the landing. The bathroom door was shut, so Wise must have gone in there. She immediately heard the faint sound of Wise retching. Meanwhile, Lycaon's ear rotated to the sound of Belle's door and the rest of his body turned towards her like that ear had gently pulled his entire body after it.
"Lady Belle," said Lycaon gently, his eye looking somewhat down upon her from the formal incline of his head. "I do apologize for the need to wake you, but regrettably, we will soon be subjected to the scrutiny of PubSec."
Belle nodded, not really knowing what to say to that. Her eyes looked to the railing on the edge of the landing with trepidation. "Where is it?"
"Just at the first landing of the stairwell," said Lycaon. "You need not look, Lady Belle."
Belle took a deep breath and did not feel the need to respond to that statement. A man was dead in her home as an end result of her own choices and actions. She needed to look. She moved towards the railing and looked over.
Never having seen the corpse of a violent death before, Belle had few expectations for the experience. But the weird static nature of the scene is what struck her first. There was three motionless pieces of a human down there: the bottom third of a leg and foot lying alone, still oddly wrapped in the portion of pantleg that had continued it before it had separated from the main body. Then there was the main part, which was a man in slacks and light coat, but headless and missing a foot. And finally a head on its own, of which Belle could see ear, hair, and a profile of a rather surprised expression. All of it was lying in a massive pool of darkened red blood.
Belle closed her eyes and withdrew, but behind her eyelids, she continued to see it. She blinked open her eyes and felt a tightness in her throat. That man down there had once been in one piece and moving around like any other human being in the city. But now he was like… that. And he would never move again. Belle closed her eyes and saw the scene again, but this time it was Wise. Her heart thudded and she blinked away sudden wetness in her vision, she shook her head, trying to shake that vision from her mind with greater force. She closed her eyes again, and this time it was herself- lying in pieces like a slaughtered animal.
If that could happen to that random man, it could happen to someone she knew. If it could happen to someone she knew, it could happen to her. It was a nightmare, and she was already awake in it. But she wanted to wake up. She wanted it all to stop right here. This was far enough. Wake up from the dream now and go back to the way her life had been two days ago.
Instead, she continued to blink away tears and Lycaon looked at her with a morose sort of expression, the corners of his mouth slightly down-curved. Her bodyguard. Her bodyguard who had killed that man down there. For her. Didn't that make this her own fault? She'd relented and allowed Lycaon to install lethal devices, and now look at what happened!
Belle's mind rejected the idea. Rejected this moment. Rejected reality. This wasn't happening. No. It wasn't. No one was dead down there. It could never happen to Wise or to her. It was all a dream. All of it.
She sank into a crouch, her back against the half-wall of that part of the landing, curling her body into a kneeling ball. Belle's body wanted to cry. She could feel the sensation looming in her chest, burning behind her eyes, tugging at the corners of her mouth. But crying is what babies did. She would not cry. If she could control anything in her entire universe in this moment, it was whether or not she would cry and she would NOT. She raised both hands to the top of her head like she was trying to hold her emotions securely- whatever was telling her to cry, she would ignore it and keep it trapped.
Something touched her shoulder. Belle's eyes blinked open in surprise. Lycaon was kneeling next to her, his hand offering a silent supportive touch, drawing her somewhat out of the mind-pit into which she had just fallen. Lycaon's hand was also a bit fuzzy. Belle instinctively leaned her head towards it, and the warm, soft sensation of Lycaon's silky fur spread over her cheek and inadvertently wiped away the wet trail of a tear that had snuck out of her containment efforts. That pleasant, silky sensation so closely matched some ancient, imageless memory in Belle's psyche, some singular moment of comfort and warmth and safety- perhaps involving some long forgotten stuffed animal of her early childhood- that all of Belle's current emotional barriers she had just so hastily constructed within herself burst apart.
Belle clutched the back of Lycaon's hand against her cheek and shuddered with wracking sobs, all of it escaping from her at once. It was grief for the loss of her normal life, fear of her new present, and a frustration of powerlessness in it all- though Belle was lost in the emotional torrent, so her intellectual mind was too overcome by the maelstrom to make that cognitive realization herself. So far as she knew: she needed to cry, and now she was doing it, and so she buried her face into the back of Lycaon's hand.
Lycaon
This was not the first person Lycaon had indirectly killed with booby traps. Far from it. And Belle was not the first client who experienced an emotional reaction from the aftermath of the situation.
But something about watching Belle curl herself into a kneeling ball and struggle with herself, fighting to maintain mastery of her emotions, and seeing her pretty round face wrinkle up into an expression of agonized despair- Lycaon's emotional wall of professional stoicism cracked. He felt impelled to do something he never did: he reached out a hand in an instinctive offer of physical support, setting his palm gently on Belle's shoulder.
She seized upon his hand like a drowning woman, sending a jolt of surprise through Lycaon's body- his tail lifting slightly, his ears going backwards on his head for a moment. Then Belle buried her face in the fur on the back of his hand and sobbed, her body wracking with the effort, as if she were still trying to hold them back and failing, over and over.
Lycaon was at a loss for what to do. As a wolf thiren, one wisely avoided physical contact with humans- especially youngish and petite female humans. There was some inherent anti-predator instinct that kicked on in human minds when it came to thiren's with sharp teeth, and that could reveal itself unexpectedly in male humans. Especially when the situation involved bigger thirens with sharp teeth and smaller, prettier female humans. Few came bigger or toothier than Lycaon, and Belle was definitely on the smaller and prettier end of her own people's spectrum.
But Lycaon obeyed his instinct. As Belle clutched his right hand, he edged towards her on his own crouching ankles and wrapped her body lightly with his other arm, encircling Belle's twitching form with an awkwardly protective embrace. It seemed to be working, as Belle's body turned slightly towards his core in response, though her focus remained in the fur on the back of his hand.
They crouched there together like that for long moments, the world seemingly empty of anything but their supportive connection.
Eventually, Belle remastered herself. She withdrew from Lycaon's fur slightly, her eyes sparkling with flowing tears and her nostrils glistening slightly. She took in a shuddering breath.
"S- sorry Lycaon," said Belle. "Your fur is so nice and I-"
She self-consciously wiped at her eyes and nose with her hands.
Lycaon's tail wagged slightly without him realizing it. Belle thought his fur was 'so nice'! He spent a great deal of time and effort in keeping his fur pristine. And naturally as a butler, he could not be shedding all over everything he was trying to clean and cook. But no human had ever thought it was 'so nice'. Belle suddenly became a unique person in all of Lycaon's existence- the second such transformation of his view of her in as many days.
"Think nothing of it, Lady Belle," said Lycaon, his voice sounding slightly odd in his own ears.
Belle released his hand and withdrew slightly. Lycaon likewise withdrew his protective other arm, so now they simply crouched facing each other, their own arms bundled up with their own knees- Lycaon's everything almost twice the size of Belle's versions, however.
"What happens now?" said Belle.
Lycaon took in a breath, forcing his mind back to its usual professionalism. "PubSec will soon arrive to investigate the situation. Most likely there will be a responding officer of middle rank with a subordinate- and with them will be a junior forensics team. In my experience, PubSec uses these situations as live training for their forces."
"Training?!" said Belle, wiping away the last of the tear trails on her cheeks.
"Indeed," said Lycaon. "After they examine the scene and interview us, they will take the corpse and say they will be in touch. But in my experience, that is the end of it when the dead is a criminal of some sort, and I expect they will discover the man down there has some sort of record with PubSec already."
"Why is that?"
"Forgive my crudeness, but I think him nothing more than a common goon. He was likely hired anonymously and will have no useful connections to pursue."
"Connections?" said Belle, her analytical mind coming back on.
"Yes," said Lycaon seriously. "It is safe to assume this was merely a test of your defenses, Lady Belle. That man was sent by someone who fully expected him to die as he has. And I expect all we will learn of your true enemy is that they are plainly willing to use human life in such a frivolous way."
Belle took a deep breath and seemed to shiver.
