#drabble // sasume

[futurefind]

Writober / Day 05

Claustrophobia

Bustle is best for business. Bigger crowds mean bigger population with bigger wallets and bigger chance of wanting a merc. There's no point in her sitting still when she could be working or lining up her next jobs, after all. She slinks her way towards the town square, trying to ignore as the streets go from 'lively' to 'congested'. Sasume starts making note of everyone who passes by, not as individuals but as bodies. A cluster at three o'clock, a straggler that she barely careens away from to her left. Her stomach churns, opening up into a gaping maw, and it's hard to think past the blood roaring in her ears. She can feel the eyes staring at her (they're not), judging her (they're not—), hating her (they're not—) Someone shouts at her. (—right?) She whirls, ducks away and into herself, as if the stone had already cracked against her head, even as her hand jumps to her sword and— The man just stares at her (judging her—), taking in her wild gaze and defensive posture (hating her—) and— "—awthorne lady, right?" Her brain is still cracking around the inside of her skull at the blow that hadn't come, and her hands are too slick with sweat to properly grasp her thoughts. Still— "Yeah?" Going through the motions is her lifesaver. "Ah, great! The Boss is waiting for you in th—" Right. Right. She'd still already'd had a big gig (relatively) lined up. Not just a backlog to look to build up. "...You're early." she barely hears herself. Her tongue tastes like glue and chalk. She clenches her fists and unclenches them. Repeats. Pries herself upright into a proper, proud lie of a posture. "—d'ya think it'd do ya good or bad if the Boss hears you nearly stabbed me?" He laughs as they walk. Her stomach drops like a stone. She isn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Maybe she'll do both, when she heads to the inn (she knows she'll do neither, she can't; she doesn't have the time, and never will). Still, she forces herself to breathe regularly. "You tell me. He's your boss." He laughs again, and it rakes against her ears like a death knell.

Sasume does not have claustrophobia... per say. Small spaces, by themselves, are something she's fine with. If not a source of comfort, akin to hiding in a closet or a cat loving small spaces. That is, in most cases.

Crowds, particularly dense ones? Particularly when she's alone? Make her break and spiral, at all eyes she can't help but think are on her. Because if she doesn't, well. How else is she going to be able to do anything if they try to hurt her? She doesn't want to hurt any of them in return, after all—

However, in the more traditional sense of the word? Sasume is terrified of being 'trapped', and more specifically 'imprisoned'. Dungeons or the equivalent are extremely stressful for her to so much as visit, and being actually put in one is a genuine trigger that will leave her shutting down and inconsolable for some time.

In general, though? No claustrophobia... technically.

[futurefind]

No Time for Cleaning

Or: A Hypothetical Master Sasume vs Camelot Singularity

There's blood on her hands.

On her skin, under her nails. Pouring out of her past the ice and the bandages and the stitches, and she can't tell where she ends and her losses begin.

It's too easy to imagine awake, and when she closes her eyes her skull sears with the crimson spilt and so she doesn't close them at all.

The Lion King's soldiers spill the blood of men and mothers and women and children hot against her face, and she thinks to finally get it off would require clawing her flesh off with it.

Rushd still smiles when he thanks her for water, whether it's the first or the tenth or the hundreth time and god knows how many hours spent absently filling wells.

Entire towns are eradicated by starlight that seers itself beneath her eyelids, the same as Stella as Arash breathes his last.

There's blood on her hands.

She doesn't know if it's hers, or where it's come from, but it doesn't matter. One clang of her sword erupts a shielding wall of ice, bisecting one of the knight's arms in the process. Another sends in speeding down in dagger-shards. She twists around one's sword, pinning them in place for her Servants with a frosted grip as she sends a flaming kick into another's helmet and sends them alight with a stench that makes her stomach roil and her shoulder itch.

She roars back, iron and ash alight in her dead mouth, and keeps moving through the fray.

Bedivere smiles away her concern— just as he smiles away her dismissals of being called 'Lady'— even as she offers him a knowing gaze. They talk around it more than they talk about it, because many things are better left unsaid, especially what's most familiar.

The Pharoah stares her dead in the eye with his throat cleaved in two, and she glares right back, almost wondering if he can see the crimson trail she leaves in her footsteps.

Da Vinci laughs like she always does, regardless of the tension. Laughs like she always does, even as she happily rushes off to her own death to leave her behind (she's always left behind, isn't she?).

There's blood on her hands.

There's blood on her hands and she's screaming. Ripped apart from the inside out 'til it's erupting from her throat in a numbing cacophony, pulsing in time with the pain in her heart.

Bedivere's dying.

Da Vinci, dying.

Arash, those she's never known the names off and those she's forgotten, all people she's sworn to protect—

Her mother, her—

Her everyone, it seems like.

She shoves her way out of the Coffin—and isn't that ironic, isn't that fitting?— and past the others, past Romani, numbly following her feet even as the world itself burns with too-much.

She's in the training hall, and she—

She cuts and slices and slams her sword so hard her teeth rattle, so fierce that before she knows it her palms are too raw and slick to hold a proper grip.

"I'M SICK—!

AND TIRED—!

OF LOSING PEOPLE—!"

She throws her mother's blade away from her with a shout, letting it clatter from wall to wall to floor as she tightens her gloves.

Punches and pivots and hits with her fists with just as little (none) relent until her knuckles bruise and her skin tears and she. Keeps. Going.

Resorts to kicks and knees when even her arms start to fail.

And she—

She screams. Screams and screams and screams, until she's deaf to the sound. Until the pain rips out of her ribcage with it, spreading her heart and gore and viscera splattering against the room as much as her voice.

She crumbles.

Stares at the ceiling (the wall?) until she's staring past it in its entirety. Maybe if she stares hard enough, stares-past enough, she can see those she's lost again if she tries hard enough.

She wonder's if she's laughing, or sobbing, or screaming, or if it's just her heart rattling in her ears as unsteadily as the world around her.

There's blood on her hands.

...She can worry about getting it off tomorrow.

[futurefind]

Writober / Day 10

Thoughts and actions at 3am

Her three am's are just as routine as her three pm's. Dead exhausted and wide awake, Shinrei keeping her blood alight as she trains — her physicality, her swordplay, her forms. Keeps moving when skin gives way to bruises gives way to blood, coats her wounds with ice and keeps moving.

And her thoughts—

On good days, they're placid. On her best days, she's not thinking at all. Just rote motions and habit. And on bad days? She's gritting her teeth, refusing to stop as if she'll be dragged straight to hell as soon as she loses momentum.

She hates herself, and hates how much it takes to not break down crying. Hates herself for wanting to. Hates how she's alone, and how she makes herself so.

Hates how rest isn't an option. Hates how it probably won't ever be.

After all, if she stops, she has no idea how she'll get back up again.

(And, some nights at least, no matter how rare, she finally gets to disappear into sleep.)

[futurefind]

Writober / Day 09

Skeletons in the closet

They hate her and they're everywhere.

Eyes red with blood, dull and lifeless, dead because of her.

They stare back at her from the mirror, no matter how much she tries to avoid them — her face, so much like her mother's, yet so much worse. In her eyes, like her father's. In her sister's face, and how she failed her.

They follow her in how she doesn't laugh anymore, is barely better at 'smiling'. Blame her for living, for not being happy when she's survived.

How dare she?

What right does she have to mourn, to grieve? To drown in self hate and agony when she still has breath in her lungs?

"I'm sorry."

There's blood on her hands. On her knees. Pouring down her arm.

"Please don't go. Please."

The world blurs with grief and pain. She can't stop crying. She shakes and shakes them, until she's elbow deep in blood. They're not moving. They're not moving and it's all her fault.

"Please don't leave me—"

She sobs. She sobs and she screams and it's not safe it's not safe and she has to leave and—

She doesn't want to.

Why can't she lie down and rot with them?

It's not fair.

She runs. She runs and she runs and she runs, brambles tearing at her skin as bloody mud clings to her boots. Lingers in the air, bony hands clogged with red grasping after her. Glowing, lifeless eyes piercing through the earth.

Waiting.

One of them catches her ankle and she goes down, hard. She doesn't know whose it is (yes, she does. it just changes all the time—), nor who else that keeps clawing at her. Cloth tears away for skin tears away for flesh tears away for blood and she can't tell where she stops and the dead begin and it hurts it hurts it hurts—

She tries to rip herself away, get free. Screams and sobs and for every hand she escapes two more yank her back down.

"I'm sorry."

She reaches out, straining, helpless and hopeless, the last of her that's free at all, praying—

Darkness.

"Don't leave me here alone—"

"I'M SORRY—"

She wakes with a scream choking her from the inside out, and she barely makes it to the bathroom in time to empty her stomach. It's acrid and vile and it still tastes sweeter than her.

She ignores the mirror as grief carves her out for the thousandth time, leaves her fingernails caked with blood that's long since gone. Her shoulder burns, and she wishes she could rip it off.

She sinks to the floor, choking on sobs, and slowly curls into a ball.

I don't want to be alone—

.

(Sasume has plenty of skeletons in her closet.

She just wishes they could let her rest.)

...I'm sorry.

[futurefind]

Writober / Day 06

Candles and light

The darkness is her friend. After all, the darkness means she can't be seen, can't be noticed. Is safe in the embrace of shadows usually reserved for a child's covers. It means working like she itches to work, a focus left ignored in daylight hours. She doesn't need anything else. (It means being invisible and ignored. Blood and sweat and tears shed where no one can witness them, where no one can hear her. Fighting off her demons and her ghosts by the skin of her teeth, abandoning herself to raw habit. It means being completely alone—)

She has no use for candles, nor (purportedly) light. Candles are for blackouts and storms and simple nights, when you won't or can't spare anything else.

Candles and light are concerns when one's at home, or with companions, and you need to keep sight of what you have, what you're looking forward to have more of once the sun breaks again.

And Sasume has none of these things.

Her nights are spent training outside and in the elements, gritting her teeth and getting through moment to moment, only caring for daybreak as a simple indicator of time.

(And god knows if she doesn't have far too much of that, has been given far too much of that.)

.

Candles are, simply put— whether for illumination or scent or joy— one of the many, many simple joys in life.

That she can't afford.

[futurefind]

//thinking abt how it's (broadly) sasume's traumaversary month. thinking abt how she's spent her whole life running away from home, running to home, but it's just a graveyard of horrors and trauma and isolation.

i should do a drabble for it :') maybe some smaller starters :'))) as you can imagine your girl is doing Absolutely Fucking AWFUL even by her own standards so its just. wheezes.

[futurefind]

//As a sort-of extension to a previous post, while yes Sasume's working alone can be accurately attributed to expected things like not needing allies or moral differences or even just trust...

But the actual, severe, primary reason is that she's horrific with attention.

Not in a 'oh time to get awkward' way or even stage fright way, but a lot of attention, from people she doesn't know very well, especially from groups? It triggers her flight or fight response, at best.

At worst, it festers and worsens, turning from nebulously worsened anxiety into paranoia and panic— makes her hyperaware of her every rough edge, of every half-flicker of Shinrei coming out with her rage. Of just how many people are seeing it, judging her for it, hating her for it, waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn on her and hunt her for sport. For fun. Just because they can.

The reason Sasume needs a deep trust before she'll work alongside others longterm is not because it's the barebones needed for such a relationship— it's because if she doesn't, sooner or later, she'll feel like a caged animal they're waiting to put down.

Also, see: the drabble on her issues with crowds.

[futurefind]

//Thinking abt Tomas and his important to Sasume and (as you could imagine) the supremely Fucked dynamic they have and :'))) idk maybe ill do a drabble/pseudo fic on his first few appearances in dgm verse to show him off...