[It’s a sobering truth, and one that he’d hoped would be far from the truth. Jin’s brows knit together as he too avoids her gaze, all those worlds apart suddenly meaningless— slavery of her kind, of any kind, isn’t something he can find it in himself to excuse.]
They’d mutilate your people…?
[And treat them as cattle. He avoids dwelling on the thought, lest his imagination carry him to the depths of those dark fates.
Finally, he raises his gaze to her. She deserves to be looked in the face, the regal figure that she is, towering even above his height—]
You don’t deserve that. No one does.
[Is anyone doing anything for the jinba? Would anyone seek to liberate them, and would Hayame even live to see that progress? If she went home, that is.]
[His sympathy is like a knife in her heart, or rather, like a twist in the knife that has always been there. Her expression grows darker, because he says "your people" and it only reminds her that once she had thought herself above them, different from them, better than them. She had been born from a broken, armless broodmare and sired by one of the stablemaster's most obedient stallions, raised to obey and to enforce the word of humans. She'd thought herself trusted, armed and privileged.
And she'd come too late to the truth, and to the taste of what true freedom might be like.]
Those that do not serve.
[Jinba were larger and more powerful than humans, but humans had numbers. If they would not be broken, would not be tamed... they were made into creatures who could not survive alone, who had to rely on humans for food, for clothing, for bathing- a pitiful existence with little dignity. She cannot deny her role in it now, the words that she knows may imply that she was no innocent victim.
(Maybe that is part of why she and her lord felt such a bond. They loathed themselves in equal measure, regretted the things they had done and what had become of it.)
She barely manages to return his gaze, struggling for how to reply to such a thing.]
... What we deserve has little to do with it.
[She knew what she deserved. But Ninurrta had begged her not to leave him, not to slit open her belly and atone for her sins... what else could she do but swallow her shame and live?]
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➽ PREPARE FOR TROUBLE; hayame
no subject
They’d mutilate your people…?
[And treat them as cattle. He avoids dwelling on the thought, lest his imagination carry him to the depths of those dark fates.
Finally, he raises his gaze to her. She deserves to be looked in the face, the regal figure that she is, towering even above his height—]
You don’t deserve that. No one does.
[Is anyone doing anything for the jinba? Would anyone seek to liberate them, and would Hayame even live to see that progress? If she went home, that is.]
I hope you know that much, Hayame.
no subject
And she'd come too late to the truth, and to the taste of what true freedom might be like.]
Those that do not serve.
[Jinba were larger and more powerful than humans, but humans had numbers. If they would not be broken, would not be tamed... they were made into creatures who could not survive alone, who had to rely on humans for food, for clothing, for bathing- a pitiful existence with little dignity. She cannot deny her role in it now, the words that she knows may imply that she was no innocent victim.
(Maybe that is part of why she and her lord felt such a bond. They loathed themselves in equal measure, regretted the things they had done and what had become of it.)
She barely manages to return his gaze, struggling for how to reply to such a thing.]
... What we deserve has little to do with it.
[She knew what she deserved. But Ninurrta had begged her not to leave him, not to slit open her belly and atone for her sins... what else could she do but swallow her shame and live?]