"And if she thought she wanted to be, would you stop her?"
The first strike was a pretense at a warning shot; one attack, not at him directly. Never say she's not benevolent every now and again.
This time she goes for the stomach and one thigh, slightly staggered, as one arm ripples; less an arm and more - she's unwound it, mostly. It's not that she's made something new from her arm, it's that she's pulled apart and repurposed the muscles, the nerves, realigned the bone. It's not as stylish as she likes to do it, but raw and ugly always has its own charm.
Armand's already moving, expecting something like that. It would be rude not to, after she'd been so kind as to take a warning shot. They both of their benevolent sides.
He aims to get closer. Of all the differences between them, the matter of reach is one that she can cross in ways he can't. But he has speed and awareness of how much physical damage he can handle.
"Is that what she wants?" Casual as if she hasn't gotten him in the thigh and he isn't aiming to grab hold.
"She doesn't have extensive experience with vampires. I'm just trying to do what's best for her." It's what Ash actually believes! She's just maybe leaving a few things out.
There's a very easy target for grabbing: her unwound arm, raised in front of her, blocking easy egress to her neck. It may not really be a limb anymore inasmuch as it's tightly-tensed tendrils, meat twisted into a new purpose & slicked with gore, serrated with pieces of bladed bone that were probably her ulna? But it's extremely holdable.
The tentacle she's got in his thigh she doesn't rip out. Armand's not mortal, as they both know full well; that'd just be making it easier for him. Instead she digs it further in and drags it down: there's a lot going on in that area & shoving anything in there too fast, too hard, causes problems easily. And Ash pulls her other tentacle back, outwards and forward in a loose curve, plenty of space between it and him for the second before it snaps forward towards his neck.
Love means protecting someone, even if what you're protecting them from themselves. However, there are people qualified for that and then there's Ashton. ...And most other people, really, but Ashton is the one in front of him. He just scoffs, which is the only response she deserves.
...Well, he can wait on rubbing in how little she can truly do to protect someone she cares about.
If you aren't willing to seize hold of twisted meat and gore, while recognizing the most likely former location of bone, what's the point of being a centuries old vampire? Not that he remembers ever struggling much with it. Death is part of life, complete with every gruesome detail.
He'd expected the tentacle to remain in his thigh. He had made his choice on what to avoid, and that meant sacrificing his leg for the moment. He pulls the unwound arm down with him, sinking his teeth in just for fun.
The great thing about having a fleshcrafter as your nemesis is that Armand has gotten to be very familiar with several of the more curious purposes any given part of a body can be put to! Like spines. Spines are such a great canvas. Ribs, too. And she's a big fan of tendons.
Most of the time she tries to go for -- not pretty, but she has an aesthetic, she has a lot of stylistic control over the changes she makes. This? The point of this is to work. Aesthetically pleasing is optional.
If Armand's willing to tear up his hands and put his mouth in inadvisable places, she has to admire the spirit. Not respect! But at least admire. He drops and she drops to her knees in echo, biting her lip, eyes so-slightly unfocused: her focus is elsewhere. Reweighting what used to be her arm, shifting tissue around to new positions, trying something uncommon --
Shoving tendrils of gore down a man's throat is a valid strategy for the purpose of 'being a freak' and has thematical similarities to absolutely nothing else. Invasive takes effort, after all. There's much easier strategies for probably about just as much of a return.
What one thing Armand might be willing to admit about Ashton depends on the moment, but if he centers it on what it gives him there is the chance to see the ways someone can repurpose parts of their body. In life, too - well, as much as they're alive - not just as an art exhibit. It allows for more variety.
If further forced to say something nice, he'd go so far as to say that it's far more aesthetically pleasing. Raw functionality can prove a point.
Armand does always consider there to be something sexual about violence, just as there's always a thread of violence to the sexual. Even if it's not visible to those who don't have the proper eyes to see. But there is such a thing as subtlety.
It's probably for the best that he's not capable of speaking to her mind to mind, as it saves them both from commentary on Ashton's feelings on her 'sister'. He currently can't say them out loud, for obvious reasons. There are vampires who can't get rid of an instinctive fear of choking even when they don't need to breathe (Armand has reasons to appreciate that), but he's not one of them. And blood is blood.
Ashton being this deep inside him is always dangerous, but that's an accepted danger. The slight lack of focus is far more important, and taking as much advantage as can be in terms of slashing.
The potential sexuality of it is nowhere near the forefront of her mind, or at least she's not letting it get anywhere near there. If she never consciously acknowledges she's into him, she never has to deal with any complications or reexaminations that would cause. Which means there's no subtlety for her to worry about! Isn't that great.
It doesn't work as well on someone who hasn't been breathing for centuries as it does someone who's been dead for less than two years, he doesn't reflexively thrash like a worm on the hook like she like fledglings did, but it does its job. Ash is paying enough attention to know she's been hurt -- how could she not -- but this is still her show, as far as she's concerned, even if the fact she's not trying to dodge means it's easy for him to shear through cloth and skin and fat and muscle.
That's just how the game works. He won't kill her. She's the one who gets to decide if any of the pain he manages to inflict is meaningful to her at all.
The good thing about a vampire's body is that the internals can take so much punishment before it has any meaningful consequence but pain. Ash is free to do as much damage as she likes, isn't she?
Armand has long done his best to prevent creating any connection between something he considers sexual and what that might mean for him in any way. He feels it's served him very well. For example, it lets him contemplate vampire pornography on worlds where they're abilities are more 'varied'.
It's hard to imagine it's not just still snuff films.
The combination of, on the one hand, the pain from the vestigial internal organs that vampires really don't need so deserve to be ignored and, on the other, that it's mixed with the rush of drinking her blood is... something.
He doesn't let that get in the way of doing his best to take her apart with only sharp claws, good will, and a knowledge of the body on his side!
Maybe if she's lucky, if enough of it gets into his system a blood bond might kick in -- if it'll even work on him, anyway, who knows how that works with non-kindred vampires. Not that it'd help her much, drinks need to be spread out over time to generate any real meaningful effect and she really doesn't need him to be obsessed with her any more than he already is, but a sort-of-advantage is (would be) a sort-of-advantage.
The free tentacle gives her the leverage to shift her balance forward, working to shove him on his back, without needing a free arm and without having to pay attention to the damage he's done to her core muscles. Or to her body in general. Walking would be impossible, so it's great she's not interested in doing that! The angle's bad, but the angle's always bad, because he's so bloody tall; she's used to that by now.
Then she moves to break his spine and stabs through his back. She is, of course, still genuinely pissed, and the more damage she does the longer he'll have to ruminate on it.
Armand does keep up with the latest science, so he won't experience the same sudden shock of yet another world completely gone as he had when he'd first left the catacombs in Paris. He also knows the works of the human body in the way a vampire can. Still, Ashton has given him a lot more practical experience. In terms of both their bodies, really.
Over the centuries, there have been a lot of people who have tried to give Armand the chance to think about what he's done and why it's made them mad via completely proportionate violence. For some reason, it doesn't always work as intended.
Perhaps Ashton can blame one of them for the fact that a broken spine and major damage to various parts of the body work to incapacitate him, but not to make him regret anything. The opposite might be more accurate.
"Do," Ashton says, as pleasantly as she possibly can, using her free arm to brace herself with his chest as she drags the ruins of her other arm out of his body, parts reshaping and twisting into place until his teeth are set in the perfectly normal skin of her perfectly normal forearm, "I make myself clear."
Her wounds are, pointedly, knitting back together already. She could wait! She won't.
Armand needs a few moments more before he's recovered enough to speak, and even then his voice is still rough from having the tentacle down his throat, though that's also the reason he doesn't need even longer to heal. "Clear there is nothing you can do? And yet so possessive."
This one rattles him enough that he can't speak. It's not great on his healing spine, either. Or his insides. But being hurt is just a condition of existence. Not being able to protect the people you care about can be a condition of existence, too.
Ash knows full well that this is not an acquiescing silence, but what else can she do? This is all the power she has here. Doing anything less would be unbearable, and there's nothing more she can do.
So this has to be enough. It has to be. She has to be able to do at least this one pathetic little thing, keeping someone she cares about safe, right.
(In theory, she could talk to Sam. In practice that was never in the running for even a single moment.)
"Stay away from her. Especially if she comes to you."
Ashton can physical prevent Armand from speaking, but that's as far as it goes and Armand is sure that both of them know it. Even if Ashton might want to believe something else. She can hurt him, but he'll heal. She could kill him, but he'll come back and then she wouldn't even get the chance to do this much.
They're powerless here, in any way that really matters.
What else is there? Trying to convince someone with words? If that worked, then you wouldn't constantly have to try to work around them to protect them.
He just looks at her, not bothering to waste energy speaking what doesn't have to be said.
For a long moment, she really does think about going for the eyes. He wouldn't be able to stop her.
But but but but. Concealment. Right. If his warden decides to pay a visit in the next few minutes, longer, that's a problem; he doesn't heal like she does, they'd be found out in an instant, and she's already pushed it further than maybe she should've.
This won't work. She knows that. If anything Ash just redoubled Armand's interest in Aerith, so — maybe this was a mistake, maybe this was — it's all she's fucking good for, just running in and fucking it up, she — she — she just —
She puts it away. She can't worry about that. She did what she could, didn't she?
Ashton rolls off him, briefly dissolves into a pool of blood after she does, and clumsily pushes herself to her feet as she transitions back into being flesh. That takes care of the blood, at least, though not the clothes, so she wanders off to get another shirt. Maybe new pants. She'll see.
It will take him longer to heal from this than from some of their... little encounters. He can't heal as Ashton does, but that disadvantage in one sort of fight can be an advantage in another. He can move his arm enough that he can start licking the blood off his hand. It's unlikely that anyone's going to knock at the door before he's healed enough to wave off any questions, but at the moment he can't cavalierly reattach limbs.
Ashton can regrow organs without a sign, and yet is still foolish enough to to care for people who she can't protect.
It's not surprising in the least, but a lack of surprise doesn't detract from his pleasant mood. Aerith will come to him again. And Ashton has shown how little she can do about it.
He's in a good enough mood to admit to himself that Ashton's trick with the pool of blood would save on having to get blood out of his hair.
She's halfway through grabbing a shirt, fingers twisted in the material, when she just sort of... slows to a stop. Takes one hand, runs her thumb over the skin between her clavicles -- not that there's anything there, not for Armand, anyway; you can't see it unless you know it's there, but it's the crystal of a pendant set into her skin, the chain of it running below the skin and invisible.
That crystal's been green since the day she got it, which means the protection it grants her is on. She's always let Armand make the first move since then, and that seems to have circumvented it, worked around it, never tripped that rule on what happens if she attacks first --
It's red. The protection is gone. And she can't get it reactivated unless John does it, which means she needs to figure out how to explain any of this.
This is an entirely different type of dawning horror than she was just going through. She'd -- in retrospect she'd felt it as soon as she'd speared through Armand's thigh, some sixth-sense click of knowledge, but she hadn't cared. She'd been so focused on hurting him to get the message across that she hadn't actually identified that feeling for what it was.
Fuck. Fuck. How the hell is she going to explain anything to John? Even if he doesn't know she still needs to -- find some way to justify, to tell a story of how she attacked someone and the Dancer wasn't there for it. How is she -- how is -- how did she fuck up this badly, she was just trying to help --
Basically, instead of putting a new shirt on, Ashton stands near the closet with a shirt in her hands and dissociates. Leans back against the wall and slides down to sitting, her body not held quite right, like she's too aware of it to actually enter a relaxed position.
Armand had generously granted that Ashton could probably realize that she'd fucked up her attempt at a 'warning' when he'd first noticed her... disengagement. It's a state of mind that can happen to the best of them. It's a reasonable way to deal with a problem so that you can move on.
But while Ashton had violently reinforced that she cares too much about Aerith, she had already made that clear by talking to him in the first place. He doesn't think it's so dramatic as to cause this much of a reaction. Not when he's still in the room, at least.
This looks suspiciously like another problem, and Armand doesn't think she's so distractable that it could be about something completely unrelated to their current circumstances. Which means it could be a problem for him. It would be just like her.
He doesn't stand directly looming over her, but he does pause rather than going to pull out a new shirt for himself.
"None of your business." Maybe, if she keeps looking at this shirt for long enough, an answer will miraculously reveal itself to her. Or maybe she'll get a message on her communicator and need to dig it out of where she keeps it, since these pants didn't have pockets even before they sustained tragic damage. Or a third option! Who can say. Not her.
He scoffs. He would like it to not be his business! If he decided he had a sudden interest in other people's problems - which he does not - that list would not include Ashton! Yet what he wants has never held off misfortune.
"It is if it could cause problems for me." If he could trust Ashton not to spread misfortune around he could just throw her out, unfortunately, she can't be trusted.
It's what she does! It's who she is. She's really very good at it, ruining and breaking things, for someone who supposedly isn't fundamentally designed for it.
Some days she believes that whole idea, that there's nothing inherently wrong with her, more than others.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:25 pm (UTC)The first strike was a pretense at a warning shot; one attack, not at him directly. Never say she's not benevolent every now and again.
This time she goes for the stomach and one thigh, slightly staggered, as one arm ripples; less an arm and more - she's unwound it, mostly. It's not that she's made something new from her arm, it's that she's pulled apart and repurposed the muscles, the nerves, realigned the bone. It's not as stylish as she likes to do it, but raw and ugly always has its own charm.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:37 pm (UTC)He aims to get closer. Of all the differences between them, the matter of reach is one that she can cross in ways he can't. But he has speed and awareness of how much physical damage he can handle.
"Is that what she wants?" Casual as if she hasn't gotten him in the thigh and he isn't aiming to grab hold.
general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 04:12 am (UTC)There's a very easy target for grabbing: her unwound arm, raised in front of her, blocking easy egress to her neck. It may not really be a limb anymore inasmuch as it's tightly-tensed tendrils, meat twisted into a new purpose & slicked with gore, serrated with pieces of bladed bone that were probably her ulna? But it's extremely holdable.
The tentacle she's got in his thigh she doesn't rip out. Armand's not mortal, as they both know full well; that'd just be making it easier for him. Instead she digs it further in and drags it down: there's a lot going on in that area & shoving anything in there too fast, too hard, causes problems easily. And Ash pulls her other tentacle back, outwards and forward in a loose curve, plenty of space between it and him for the second before it snaps forward towards his neck.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 04:32 am (UTC)...Well, he can wait on rubbing in how little she can truly do to protect someone she cares about.
If you aren't willing to seize hold of twisted meat and gore, while recognizing the most likely former location of bone, what's the point of being a centuries old vampire? Not that he remembers ever struggling much with it. Death is part of life, complete with every gruesome detail.
He'd expected the tentacle to remain in his thigh. He had made his choice on what to avoid, and that meant sacrificing his leg for the moment. He pulls the unwound arm down with him, sinking his teeth in just for fun.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 05:33 am (UTC)Most of the time she tries to go for -- not pretty, but she has an aesthetic, she has a lot of stylistic control over the changes she makes. This? The point of this is to work. Aesthetically pleasing is optional.
If Armand's willing to tear up his hands and put his mouth in inadvisable places, she has to admire the spirit. Not respect! But at least admire. He drops and she drops to her knees in echo, biting her lip, eyes so-slightly unfocused: her focus is elsewhere. Reweighting what used to be her arm, shifting tissue around to new positions, trying something uncommon --
Shoving tendrils of gore down a man's throat is a valid strategy for the purpose of 'being a freak' and has thematical similarities to absolutely nothing else. Invasive takes effort, after all. There's much easier strategies for probably about just as much of a return.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 05:59 am (UTC)If further forced to say something nice, he'd go so far as to say that it's far more aesthetically pleasing. Raw functionality can prove a point.
Armand does always consider there to be something sexual about violence, just as there's always a thread of violence to the sexual. Even if it's not visible to those who don't have the proper eyes to see. But there is such a thing as subtlety.
It's probably for the best that he's not capable of speaking to her mind to mind, as it saves them both from commentary on Ashton's feelings on her 'sister'. He currently can't say them out loud, for obvious reasons. There are vampires who can't get rid of an instinctive fear of choking even when they don't need to breathe (Armand has reasons to appreciate that), but he's not one of them. And blood is blood.
Ashton being this deep inside him is always dangerous, but that's an accepted danger. The slight lack of focus is far more important, and taking as much advantage as can be in terms of slashing.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 06:37 pm (UTC)It doesn't work as well on someone who hasn't been breathing for centuries as it does someone who's been dead for less than two years, he doesn't reflexively thrash like a worm on the hook
like shelike fledglings did, but it does its job. Ash is paying enough attention to know she's been hurt -- how could she not -- but this is still her show, as far as she's concerned, even if the fact she's not trying to dodge means it's easy for him to shear through cloth and skin and fat and muscle.That's just how the game works. He won't kill her. She's the one who gets to decide if any of the pain he manages to inflict is meaningful to her at all.
The good thing about a vampire's body is that the internals can take so much punishment before it has any meaningful consequence but pain. Ash is free to do as much damage as she likes, isn't she?
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 06:57 pm (UTC)It's hard to imagine it's not just still snuff films.
The combination of, on the one hand, the pain from the vestigial internal organs that vampires really don't need so deserve to be ignored and, on the other, that it's mixed with the rush of drinking her blood is... something.
He doesn't let that get in the way of doing his best to take her apart with only sharp claws, good will, and a knowledge of the body on his side!
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 07:53 pm (UTC)The free tentacle gives her the leverage to shift her balance forward, working to shove him on his back, without needing a free arm and without having to pay attention to the damage he's done to her core muscles. Or to her body in general. Walking would be impossible, so it's great she's not interested in doing that! The angle's bad, but the angle's always bad, because he's so bloody tall; she's used to that by now.
Then she moves to break his spine and stabs through his back. She is, of course, still genuinely pissed, and the more damage she does the longer he'll have to ruminate on it.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 08:11 pm (UTC)Over the centuries, there have been a lot of people who have tried to give Armand the chance to think about what he's done and why it's made them mad via completely proportionate violence. For some reason, it doesn't always work as intended.
Perhaps Ashton can blame one of them for the fact that a broken spine and major damage to various parts of the body work to incapacitate him, but not to make him regret anything. The opposite might be more accurate.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 10:34 pm (UTC)Her wounds are, pointedly, knitting back together already. She could wait! She won't.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 11:01 pm (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:02 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:07 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:19 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:21 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:38 am (UTC)So this has to be enough. It has to be. She has to be able to do at least this one pathetic little thing, keeping someone she cares about safe, right.
(In theory, she could talk to Sam. In practice that was never in the running for even a single moment.)
"Stay away from her. Especially if she comes to you."
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:46 am (UTC)They're powerless here, in any way that really matters.
What else is there? Trying to convince someone with words? If that worked, then you wouldn't constantly have to try to work around them to protect them.
He just looks at her, not bothering to waste energy speaking what doesn't have to be said.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 02:44 am (UTC)But but but but. Concealment. Right. If his warden decides to pay a visit in the next few minutes, longer, that's a problem; he doesn't heal like she does, they'd be found out in an instant, and she's already pushed it further than maybe she should've.
This won't work. She knows that. If anything Ash just redoubled Armand's interest in Aerith, so — maybe this was a mistake, maybe this was — it's all she's fucking good for, just running in and fucking it up, she — she — she just —
She puts it away. She can't worry about that. She did what she could, didn't she?
Ashton rolls off him, briefly dissolves into a pool of blood after she does, and clumsily pushes herself to her feet as she transitions back into being flesh. That takes care of the blood, at least, though not the clothes, so she wanders off to get another shirt. Maybe new pants. She'll see.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 03:02 am (UTC)Ashton can regrow organs without a sign, and yet is still foolish enough to to care for people who she can't protect.
It's not surprising in the least, but a lack of surprise doesn't detract from his pleasant mood. Aerith will come to him again. And Ashton has shown how little she can do about it.
He's in a good enough mood to admit to himself that Ashton's trick with the pool of blood would save on having to get blood out of his hair.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 05:23 am (UTC)That crystal's been green since the day she got it, which means the protection it grants her is on. She's always let Armand make the first move since then, and that seems to have circumvented it, worked around it, never tripped that rule on what happens if she attacks first --
It's red. The protection is gone. And she can't get it reactivated unless John does it, which means she needs to figure out how to explain any of this.
This is an entirely different type of dawning horror than she was just going through. She'd -- in retrospect she'd felt it as soon as she'd speared through Armand's thigh, some sixth-sense click of knowledge, but she hadn't cared. She'd been so focused on hurting him to get the message across that she hadn't actually identified that feeling for what it was.
Fuck. Fuck. How the hell is she going to explain anything to John? Even if he doesn't know she still needs to -- find some way to justify, to tell a story of how she attacked someone and the Dancer wasn't there for it. How is she -- how is -- how did she fuck up this badly, she was just trying to help --
Basically, instead of putting a new shirt on, Ashton stands near the closet with a shirt in her hands and dissociates. Leans back against the wall and slides down to sitting, her body not held quite right, like she's too aware of it to actually enter a relaxed position.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 05:41 am (UTC)But while Ashton had violently reinforced that she cares too much about Aerith, she had already made that clear by talking to him in the first place. He doesn't think it's so dramatic as to cause this much of a reaction. Not when he's still in the room, at least.
This looks suspiciously like another problem, and Armand doesn't think she's so distractable that it could be about something completely unrelated to their current circumstances. Which means it could be a problem for him. It would be just like her.
He doesn't stand directly looming over her, but he does pause rather than going to pull out a new shirt for himself.
"What is it now?"
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 06:02 am (UTC)"It is if it could cause problems for me." If he could trust Ashton not to spread misfortune around he could just throw her out, unfortunately, she can't be trusted.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 06:18 am (UTC)Some days she believes that whole idea, that there's nothing inherently wrong with her, more than others.
"None of your business."
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