#filthtouched

As much as Deirdre would love to simply hide in a corner and try and process the assault of memories she had believed were lost forever, she knows she is needed to heal the physical wounds of the others within the bunker. Perhaps fussing over the others will prove enough of a distraction from her own hurt. Manfroy...had Arvis known? He couldn't have known. He couldn't have.

She approaches Niles, cheeks stained with tears, dress stained with blood, but she forces as much of a smile as she can bear. It is her job as healer to provide support and she cannot do that if he knows just how deeply she hurts herself.

"Niles, do you need healing? I will do whatever I can to help you feel better. Please let me help you!

[tw: amputation and blood]

In the face of crisis, there was, on occasion, little time for proper politeness. From the first moment Maria arrived, the littlest princess of Macedon did not ask.

“Niles, let me look.” 

The touch was gentle but firm, and the voice gentler still, steadied by the sudden onset of focus as she reached for his arm without receiving an answer. It was, very clearly, bereft of a hand, blood spilling freely to the floor. Another glance thrown to their surroundings, swift and fleeting as an arrow. Nowhere nearby, although she did see the finger; perhaps it was behind the now-closed door, with Edelgard... No, no time for that right now. Focus on Niles, who is here and who needs you. 

She adjusted her hold on him, soft fingers curled over the front of his arm and thumbs cradling the sides. Slowly but surely, the light of white magic curled its wisping tendrils around her digits, a kind and formless glow that engulfed the exposed wound. The healing spells of Fódlan pulled not from magic stowed in staves; they were a mending of a different stitch, but the warmth felt the same. She understood how to kindle it, she did, but the magic reached desperately to connect to a piece that wasn’t there. It wouldn’t work without the actual hand back in their... hands. 

“You know--” There was a waver in her voice, one tucked away with a minute bracing breath and gone by the time more words followed. It was her hands that were still and sure, blood and war made familiar to her too long ago already. How could she falter? He needed her right now, after all. She would be here for all those who needed her. “They’ve reattached fingers and hands with magic before. Did you know that?” Rosy eyes flickered to meet his, warm even in the paling light. “So when we find your hand, you’ll be just fine.”

She smiled at him a moment, then closed her eyes, though the curve of her lips remained. The magic continued, and though the both of them were stained with blood, it no longer spilled as gruesomely as before. “It’s still going to bleed until we get it back, but I asked Lana to bring us bandages. I’ll wrap it up for you when she gets here, and then I’ll go look. I promise I’ll be back soon!” 

Her hand hovers over him – no magic there, no gift of sacrifice, just a hand, just a concerned touch. She shouldn’t have approached, really; she had realized that as soon as her hand had fell on his arm and that single eye opened to look upon her with such disdain. She certainly doesn’t have a good explanation other than that his dreams had been so loud, so painful that she had heard them even just upon entering the forest. She curls her hand against her chest and tries not to feel the after effects of that agony but she thinks if she does not looked burned, she must just look sorrowful.

“No, nothing needed,” Micaiah answers, backing up a bit so as to give him space. She thinks she might stand – it isn’t as if either her height or physique are impressive enough to be frightening, but even with the soft green of the forest around them she feels an echo of a cage for trees, of hot and crowded back alleys (those of Nevassa for her, but they are much the same anywhere) instead of endless fields of grass and so when she backs up she says seated.

“I don’t… sleep during the day usually. Or outside. Um, anymore. So thank you but no.”

[ from here @filthtouched ]

"Oh, if we're talking about things I'd let you do, I promise that simply tying me up won't be all." His smile shows a hint of teeth as he rises, still unable to instill a habit of dusting himself off.

The boy—Matthew; it's a name to remember—moves like very few at Garreg Mach do, if any else at all. Here, they've enjoyed (ha!) the presence of kings and queens, of princes and princesses; men and women of noble upbringing, all with some claim to power through a measure of divinity in their veins. Crests. Dragonblood. As if it'd make a difference at all when eventually their own hubris lays sweet kisses to their lips, again and again, until blues and purples fade into thick, poisoned black.

Matthew, however, is not one of them. It isn't in his speech or his clothes; he speaks as many others do, and dresses as the rest, in the pitch blacks and glimmering golds of the Academy uniform. It's in the way he moves, silent and deadly, the pivots he takes that only a choice few of their classmates can manage. It's in the way he watches, sharp-eyed and unforgiving, two steps ahead even when his smile promises he is three steps behind.

The lightness of his steps say thief. The way he'd bound Niles says something more.

He's not likely to pose any threat to Leo, but that isn't why Niles finds himself held captive by his intrigue. His singular eye dips lower, purposefully letting his gaze drag slowly down from Matthew's eyes to his mouth to his shoulders to his chest, meant to disquiet him even as Niles steals glances of his hands.

(Callused, but almost everyone's is. He can't tell what kind, though, or where. Sword calluses are different from axe calluses. Those are different from a spear's. A bow's. A dagger's.

Which do you use, little shadow?)

"I don't normally enjoy multiple rounds with the same people," he says, reaching out for the rope, "but I certainly wouldn't mind another one with you. How about it? I promise I won't be too rough once I've got you tied up and at my mercy..."

You’d have to be deaf not to’ve heard about Niles. People talk. Matthew listens like it’s his job - and that’s because it is. Before anything the Church demands of him, his duty is to Elibe and to Ostia. Not that schoolground drama tends to be of much interest, but hey, he didn’t get here without a healthy interest in mundane gossip.

Anyway. This sounds like Classic Niles Bait™. And not even the fancy kind, really. Maybe Niles thinks he’s easy, then. “S’that so?” He mirrors the other’s smile, just a hint of teeth. 

If there’s something to the way Matthew moves, then so, too, is there something about the way Niles carries himself. It’s not unusual, one supposes, for street rats to recognize one another. Maybe it’s that look in the eyes. Or the calculated weight of one’s steps... Matthew’s always liked to think that if he doesn’t want to be heard, well-

there’s a reason Lord Hector refers to him now and again as a 

wraith. 

Spots to Kiss || 3. A kiss on the forehead

“You’ll get it next time, kiddo.”

Niles’s gruff voice rings over Kana’s disappointed whines. The dragon stands, bow in hand, quiver empty, and not a single arrow embedded in the target some twenty feet away. The thief had promised a master class on archery, but it seemed Kana simply wasn’t a marksman. 

A hand alights in his hair and ruffles it fondly, before his lips soon follow. Niles presses an affectionate kiss to the dragon’s forehead, eliciting yet another pout and whine from Kana’s lips. 

“You said that last time, Niles.”

“Just try again, kiddo.”

self-indulgent meme | closed

The marble floor of her audience chamber was not built to be comfortable but for a moment Niles takes a knee there anyway. His breath is hot from laughter and spite when he places a kiss against her hand and Rhea looks down at him, face as impassive and immovable as it ever is in their time together.

And here is the funny thing about truth: this is as near to it as she can manage. He pokes and prods at her foundations looking for any weakness and just as quickly she covers them up, but that is simply how it has always been. Wrap a hand around the archbishop’s neck and you will find layers of alabaster that go as deep as the rings of the oldest trees in Fodlan. Surely, Niles will think, the woman must eventually break; and this is true, but not until Rhea outlasts even the earth itself.

   SELF - INDULGENT   PROMPTS     /    NOT  ACCEPTING.

             Whether it is his arrows that travel far or his name that travels farther, there can be no confidence to the answer: only that Niles is considered an ill-fabled man by most. With the devious glitter of his single eye beside another patched in black, his lips trail as silk up the tendons of Marth’s hand to finish at its ridges. Many would think it a devil’s kiss that lands across his knuckles.

               The thought, for one, does not cross the Hero-King’s mind.   “  —good afternoon to you, too, Niles,  “   he returns serenely without missing a beat.

                It would be difficult to argue Niles an angel. Easier to see him for what he is behind the thorns. A relatively harmless individual of greatly liberal attitude, that is, which in turn sparks his amusement. All the more because Niles of Nohr could not possibly know it.

               How the very knuckles he presses to his lips had once circulated the world, from one edge of the known map to the other. Offered to the bull and panther of Altea, the vestal Macedonian white-wings—solemnly kissed by the remnants of Coyote’s wolfguard and the Grustian sable order. Even the man and woman he would so fondly dub his blade and dagger.

               Perhaps his was less a hand, more a monolith to the many oaths pressed against a king’s skin in their loyal promises of forever; the tiny plane upon which seven nationalities of knights pledged to a single man. But to compare this slippery rogue with the shining paragons of knighthood under his employ is futile. To imagine the Nohrian decked in their steel and finery, nigh impossible. Marth laughs quietly—like a one-eyed wolf in the frills of a lapdog.

Panic seizes Deirdre. This is Belhalla? No, the monastery. She had been in a bunker but now she's here. She doesn't know how she got here. Oh gods, she doesn't know how she got here.

She shuts her eyes tight, trying to pull anything from memory that might explain what had happened. A hooded figure... Manfroy? No that's absurd. The bishop is in Jugdral. This is Fodlan.

Her head spins as she searches for a familiar face, someone who could help her. There is no Arvis watching over her this time. She's alone until...