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tampered2007-06-17 06:23 pm
dark-butler.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-06-17 06:23 pm
Log: Complete
When: Sunday, June 17
Rating: PG-13 for some violence and some cursing
Characters: Walter Dornez![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dark_butler and Tayuya violentflutist
Summary: Judgment finds Tayuya in the form of an English vampire.
Log:
Tayuya scowled, felt wind whip through long red hair as she sprang from branch to branch, the light flow of chakra sticking her feet to the bark long enough to propel her route to the next tree, losing herself in the quick pace that kept her peripheral vision blurred in greens and brown.Orochimaru was somewhere. Somewhere, she didn’t care anymore. Sakon, also somewhere, never around. There was Kimimaro, that goddamned tight-ass, her superior, there was Suigetsu, tolerable, but a cocky bastard, and now Juugo, that crazy ass fucker.She was tired, tired of the City, of the curses, of being dead, goddamn it.The ninja cursed, stopped on a branch and balanced, crouched against the trunk of the tree and leaned her head back until her helmet hit it, eyes closing in a sigh.“Fuck this.”
Walter was still honing his skill, tasting and testing the new power that the Executioner had passed to him, although ultimately, it fed from the Red God. It was both beautiful and terrible, to feel people's minds, to weigh their sins and their souls and decide whether they merited judgment or not. As evidenced by his experience with Fai, the decision was not always an easy one, nor one with which all would agree. The sense that drew him now, though - such rage in her. He could taste the rage as she traveled through the forest, and he trailed, almost sniffing the air, more testing the anger and the flavor of the woman. This one.... Perhaps she would learn from her judgment. He closed the distance between them, moving through the trees when she took her moment to close her eyes and reached for her mind, searching for the locks that would open the gate in her mind and allow the judgment to proceed.
Her eyes snapped open, body tensing immediately as she felt a probing sensation in her mind, the feel of being fiddled with, the curse seal on the back of her neck burning, reddening from black and setting her spine on fire.She didn’t move yet, no, keeping a neutral expression on her face as her head moved leisurely, as if stretching, taking in the scenary, though hands used to deception, folding over her knees, had adeptly slipped into pouches and withdrawn sharp metal, kunai coming to rest between her calloused fingers, ready to be let fly at moment’s notice.Someone was watching her, trying something. Tayuya tried not to snarl. Great, just fucking great. But the movement caught her eye, caught because she was trained in stealth, in the art of hiding and discovering, the metal in her hands leaving them with the hum of weapons hurtling through the air and hurtling towards the one who approached even as the ninja dived over the side of the branch.
Walter's lips twisted in what could be amused contempt as a flash of silver intercepted the missiles, cutting them out of the air in shards. She was fast, but ultimately, human. He wasn't here to harm her body, though. The vampire followed his prey, almost feeling her emotions in his own veins while he fought to find the keys to open her to her guilt. He was no Red Pyramid to have a century's experience at this, and it took effort. He caught a name. "Come, Tayuya. Fighting will only make the pain worse."
“Screw that, fucker.” Tayuya shouted back, hands scrambling at her waist, the trip wire coiled about her fingers and looped cross a branch as she passed, chakra propelling her as she set the trap quickly as she was able before streaking off again, the wires dulled and not glinting at all in the shadow of trees, thin enough to cut through skin if caught.“The hell do you want?” She hadn’t been looking for a fight when she’d left the house today, damn it, damn all her luck as she pulled shuriken from the pouch on her thigh and threw those back behind her, whipped hair out of her face and glared.
Walter hadn't really expected any other response, but he'd had to offer. The shuriken were easy enough to deal with, he didn't even bother with the wires this time, simply not being where they went as he followed Tayuya's path. Trailing as quickly as he was, he didn't see the trap. The wire she'd set, ironic when used against a man for whom wire had been the weapon of a lifetime, cut through cloth and skin and ground up against bone. Walter paused and drew back with an irritated hiss while skin knit closed and cloth rewove soon after. "Judgment, Tayuya." He set off after her again, finding another lock in her mind and pushing his will at it. "You called me."
Her eyes widened, watched him regenerate with a curse as she felt the seal on the back of her neck release, let the black lines of her power race across her skin, her flute coming to hand and to lips.“I don’t take judgment, and like hell I called you.” Tayuya snapped, using the burst of power from her seal release to push his presence from her mind for a moment, could feel him probing and pushing just as she had been before, been probed and dissected by the man who owned her. She let her fingers dance across the instrument, the grating chill of her tune creeping out in a high-pitched blur or noise, switching straight to her most powerful illusion, one that delved into her opponent’s mind as she felt her own invaded, tried to push back by switching again to her full curse seal, the rush of it creeping over her and darkening her skin, lengthening her hair and turning nails to talons, teeth to fangs, and felt the horns burst from her skull in twisted ivory.
Interesting. Walter could feel what Tayuya was aiming for in her attack on him, but he had been unmade and remade by pain and horror that the ninja couldn't hope to touch with her offense. And behind the sound that pushed its way into his mind, he felt Tayuya's defenses breached by her own actions. He pushed into that breach with a merciless thrust of power, searching for the gate inside her mind, searching for the locks, searching for the handle, seeking these things through the opening she had given him. And behind that gate lay her judgment - her sins, her rage, her guilt, waiting to present themselves to her in all their blood and fallen glory.
She felt something snap, heard the tiny cry of a mind being invaded as her eyes turned gold by her curse seal began to dilate wildly, the dark depth of what had been white twisting and roiling in her eyes as her seal tried to fight her for control of her body and mind, Walter having to push through the unbridled rage her curse seal possessed, the crazed and psychotic murmurs not quite her own and yet still part of her. The ninja faltered, her fingers slipping and the sound from her flute dying in a shrill cut off tone as her eyes widened again. Genjutsu, this had to be genjutsu. Her hands moved, a burst of chakra to break the illusion, she could always break illusions, they were her specialty, and this-This wouldn’t break.Tayuya fought the urge to back away, watched herself in some sort of surreal hallucination. Where normally the other’s power would force her to relive, her own expertise with illusions and fears kept her from that extreme, but she still… how old was she there? Eight? Nine? She saw the splurt of blood, even felt it warm on her cheek as she watched herself slit a throat. Orochimaru-sama smiled, took her hand and showed her how to hold the kunai properly, guided her to the next man who begged for mercy, prostrate before her.She slit his throat correctly, just as she’d been taught.
Walter watched and allowed the power to keep him separate from what he observed with Tayuya. Later it would pain him - she had been a child, only a child. But he had been only a child as well, and he had been judged, both by the Executioner, and by himself. He approached her, weaving through trees and branches until he was close, maybe even close enough to touch, close enough to reach out to take the flute that had been the unexpected key into her mind. "How many deaths?" he murmured both aloud and in her mind. "How many children without their parents? How many parents burying their children? How much blood on your hands, Tayuya?"
Her hands were limp, unresisting as her weapon was taken, solid silver from her grip, eyes still dilating wildly as her seal, a power separate from her own tried to free her, bursts of chakra wild and chaotic, the horns from her skull writhing as they grew and shrank, claws sharpening and dulling and seal pulsing hot and red on her skin. “It’s not-” She started to protest, felt another spurt of blood on her face, another child her own age, training, it was, training beside the other members of the Sound Four as they slaughtered any other team “I’m not guilty of anything.” Tayuya spat, anger rising and struggling against the invasive voice in her mind, pushing. “I did my job, I finished the missions.” And she hadn’t had she? She hadn’t felt bad, because they were enemies, not people. They weren’t people until it was dark and she was alone, they weren’t worth anything until she found out about them, which is why she tried not to.They weren’t anything, were they?
Walter's eyes widened and smoke rose from his fingers before he - carefully - put the flute out of Tayuya's reach. The burns from the silver would take longer to heal than anything she'd done deliberately, but the pain was as fleeting as the cuts from her wire trap before. He paid it no attention, forcing the gate he'd opened within the ninja to stay open, forcing his will against hers, forcing the power that flowed from the Red God to make her see. "Enemies are people," came the precise words in her mind, crisp in Walter's upper class British enunciation. "You know that. You know that they fought to live just as you would have. At night, when you're alone and you think for yourself, you feel the guilt of their deaths. How many people did you kill without even learning their names because you were afraid that you might see them as real?"
She whimpered, muscles stiffening as she continued struggling, seal continuing to pulse and pulse and pulse until it burned so badly it registered as pain even under the adrenaline blocks that prevented her from being dulled or slowed by injuries under her seal release, the fighting mechanism perfected to make her into a better soldier.“Many.” The ninja finally admitted, voice a grit of teeth. “It- It didn’t matter, we all fought to live, we all fought to survive, and I just came out on top, it was survival, it was the job, I didn’t just-” Didn’t just kill for no reason? No, that was a lie. She had always had a temper, had sometimes killed just because she had been angered, insulted, always looked for fights even here to sate to use she felt, the use she was accustomed to performing, fighting and killing as a tool.
"It was just a job." Walter's words lashed through her mind this time with some of his own emotion carried with it. As a child of WWII, that phrase held weight for him - excuses in Nuremburg that turned "I was just following orders" into the purest example of abdicating personal responsibility as an excuse to do evil. "Many. And you didn't kill them all just because it was a job. You took people's lives for ego, for stress release, for no. reason. at. all." He sought another door, another gate - one behind which would be the epitome of that sin and her guilt. Let her face it. Let her own it.
Hands, claws, clenched until they drew blood in her palm, trying to anchor in the pain to struggle still, to try and fail again and again to break the illusion, break the images in front of her. Watching people die had never phased her before. Killing people had never phased her, she was a killer, as she was forged to be. But this? This was… this was so different, and it seemed too real even as it seemed false, “So what?” She tried to grit out, tried to force her gaze from the scene but was unable. “If they died they were weak, if they died they didn’t deserve-” Her own voice died in a small hitch of noise, not quite a sob but no harsh noise, remembering her own death, the breaking of her spine and lying helpless, unable to do anything but stare up at the sky as her own life had ebbed away. Worthless. Undeserving. Weak.“It didn’t matter.” Tayuya protested again, weaker, trying to veil her heart, her emotions, as she had always done, hidden in the touch outer shell she presented to the world, the price of becoming a ninja, the loss of heart and emotion.
"Your life mattered to you." The words were soft, almost gentle, but they carried with them other images - other faces as their features lost that spark of life and passed over to the glaze of death. Each one of them was a person who had died as she had. And back to her death, every last instant of it there for her to see and feel and remember - she had brought that same helplessness and unworthiness to countless others and in the end, it had changed nothing.
The feel on her cheeks, of tears, hot and course, was unfamiliar to her, reliving that moment, that long, long, moment as she’d stared blankly, unable to lift her hand, move her legs, feeling the loud snap and crack of bone against toppling trees and then felt nothing, nothing but but the blackness turning on her and all she had done, all the orders she had followed and all the people she had killed meaning nothing, able to do nothing, to prevent her body from going cold, her breath from ceasing, mind from working, and then the couriers from Sound to fetch her body, burn it all away to nothing so no one would ever be able to glean her final secrets, every trace of Tayuya of Sound wiped fro existence with no proof of her life left besides the ones she’d taken with her.“It did.” She murmured brokenly, felt no pulse in her chest, a sullen cold and clammy stillness. “It did.” She felt herself begin to cave, unable to stand against the pressing will of the other backed by the Red God, unwilling or unable to stop herself from crying, from feeling guilty, from feeling sorry.
Yes... Walter pressed on, forcing power at and into her. It wasn't enough that she was beginning to be sorry, not enough that she was starting to feel guilty. Let the guilt and remorse consume and wash her clean and his business would be done with Tayuya. He knew this agony intimately, it was the only way he could show it to her with such clarity. "Yes, Tayuya, your life mattered. Their lives mattered. The pain we give matters. Remember."
It took some time, but she began to crumble with her seal slowly having to retreat, back down. The blinding pulse slowly gave out, faded, as her skin lightened again as the black lines reformed and fell back to the seal, horns disappearing back into skull and claws and fangs gone, leaving her what she really was, a human girl, no monstrosity, a girl barely into teens though she had lived an adult, killed as an adult, drank, drugged, eaten, as an adult, felt the touch of an adult, for years and years.She fell, curled in on herself with a sob in the back of her throat, unable to admit that she was sorry, to say she was, because she hated it, hated the weakness and the views her fellows would have of her, what Kimimaro would say, Suigetsu, Orochimaru, to see her in this state, the power of the vampire and the Red God enough to batter down her pride and her will until she could only feel that remorse clawing at her cold, dear, heart.
Walter knelt then at Tayuya's side, and had she been able to see past the pain he'd shown her - her pain that he'd opened her eyes to - she would have seen empathy on his face. This was justice to his mind. Let her feel and regret and not only was she punished for her sins, she was given a chance to learn and grow from them. Casually, he flicked his fingers toward her flute and this time, gentle as a mother's touch, killing wire wrapped the instrument, bringing it to them with another flick of his fingers to deposit it unscratched by her side. Before he released his hold on the fallen ninja and closed the gate, one last thought drifted gently from his mind to hers. "What you have learned here is not for them, but for you. I will speak of it to no one." With that, he stood. He would watch over her from a distance until she was strong enough to leave the forest on her own or until she called someone to help her, but no other harm would be allowed to come to Tayuya now. She must have the space within herself to absorb what they had done together, not bury it in violence before the lesson could be learned.
A shaky breath, a sob, and her fingers, fingers used to throwing knives, slitting throats, throttling and killing closed around the cool metal, her weapon as far as she could remember, but not only a weapon but an instrument, capable of playing soothing melodies even along with the harsh illusionary tones she killed with. Her grip tightened, clutched the metal to her chest and cried, a harsh, almost animal noise as she rocked on the branch, eyes squeezed shut but not doing anything to stop the flow of tears.There were reasons ninja blocked off emotion, reasons they shut down their sympathy for life, their compassion. Because when it was all over, if they allowed themselves to feel, to feel sorry for killing and hurting, torturing, and beating, they would never be able to do their job. Tayuya sobbed.
Rating: PG-13 for some violence and some cursing
Characters: Walter Dornez
dark_butler and Tayuya violentflutist Summary: Judgment finds Tayuya in the form of an English vampire.
Log:
Tayuya scowled, felt wind whip through long red hair as she sprang from branch to branch, the light flow of chakra sticking her feet to the bark long enough to propel her route to the next tree, losing herself in the quick pace that kept her peripheral vision blurred in greens and brown.Orochimaru was somewhere. Somewhere, she didn’t care anymore. Sakon, also somewhere, never around. There was Kimimaro, that goddamned tight-ass, her superior, there was Suigetsu, tolerable, but a cocky bastard, and now Juugo, that crazy ass fucker.She was tired, tired of the City, of the curses, of being dead, goddamn it.The ninja cursed, stopped on a branch and balanced, crouched against the trunk of the tree and leaned her head back until her helmet hit it, eyes closing in a sigh.“Fuck this.”
Walter was still honing his skill, tasting and testing the new power that the Executioner had passed to him, although ultimately, it fed from the Red God. It was both beautiful and terrible, to feel people's minds, to weigh their sins and their souls and decide whether they merited judgment or not. As evidenced by his experience with Fai, the decision was not always an easy one, nor one with which all would agree. The sense that drew him now, though - such rage in her. He could taste the rage as she traveled through the forest, and he trailed, almost sniffing the air, more testing the anger and the flavor of the woman. This one.... Perhaps she would learn from her judgment. He closed the distance between them, moving through the trees when she took her moment to close her eyes and reached for her mind, searching for the locks that would open the gate in her mind and allow the judgment to proceed.
Her eyes snapped open, body tensing immediately as she felt a probing sensation in her mind, the feel of being fiddled with, the curse seal on the back of her neck burning, reddening from black and setting her spine on fire.She didn’t move yet, no, keeping a neutral expression on her face as her head moved leisurely, as if stretching, taking in the scenary, though hands used to deception, folding over her knees, had adeptly slipped into pouches and withdrawn sharp metal, kunai coming to rest between her calloused fingers, ready to be let fly at moment’s notice.Someone was watching her, trying something. Tayuya tried not to snarl. Great, just fucking great. But the movement caught her eye, caught because she was trained in stealth, in the art of hiding and discovering, the metal in her hands leaving them with the hum of weapons hurtling through the air and hurtling towards the one who approached even as the ninja dived over the side of the branch.
Walter's lips twisted in what could be amused contempt as a flash of silver intercepted the missiles, cutting them out of the air in shards. She was fast, but ultimately, human. He wasn't here to harm her body, though. The vampire followed his prey, almost feeling her emotions in his own veins while he fought to find the keys to open her to her guilt. He was no Red Pyramid to have a century's experience at this, and it took effort. He caught a name. "Come, Tayuya. Fighting will only make the pain worse."
“Screw that, fucker.” Tayuya shouted back, hands scrambling at her waist, the trip wire coiled about her fingers and looped cross a branch as she passed, chakra propelling her as she set the trap quickly as she was able before streaking off again, the wires dulled and not glinting at all in the shadow of trees, thin enough to cut through skin if caught.“The hell do you want?” She hadn’t been looking for a fight when she’d left the house today, damn it, damn all her luck as she pulled shuriken from the pouch on her thigh and threw those back behind her, whipped hair out of her face and glared.
Walter hadn't really expected any other response, but he'd had to offer. The shuriken were easy enough to deal with, he didn't even bother with the wires this time, simply not being where they went as he followed Tayuya's path. Trailing as quickly as he was, he didn't see the trap. The wire she'd set, ironic when used against a man for whom wire had been the weapon of a lifetime, cut through cloth and skin and ground up against bone. Walter paused and drew back with an irritated hiss while skin knit closed and cloth rewove soon after. "Judgment, Tayuya." He set off after her again, finding another lock in her mind and pushing his will at it. "You called me."
Her eyes widened, watched him regenerate with a curse as she felt the seal on the back of her neck release, let the black lines of her power race across her skin, her flute coming to hand and to lips.“I don’t take judgment, and like hell I called you.” Tayuya snapped, using the burst of power from her seal release to push his presence from her mind for a moment, could feel him probing and pushing just as she had been before, been probed and dissected by the man who owned her. She let her fingers dance across the instrument, the grating chill of her tune creeping out in a high-pitched blur or noise, switching straight to her most powerful illusion, one that delved into her opponent’s mind as she felt her own invaded, tried to push back by switching again to her full curse seal, the rush of it creeping over her and darkening her skin, lengthening her hair and turning nails to talons, teeth to fangs, and felt the horns burst from her skull in twisted ivory.
Interesting. Walter could feel what Tayuya was aiming for in her attack on him, but he had been unmade and remade by pain and horror that the ninja couldn't hope to touch with her offense. And behind the sound that pushed its way into his mind, he felt Tayuya's defenses breached by her own actions. He pushed into that breach with a merciless thrust of power, searching for the gate inside her mind, searching for the locks, searching for the handle, seeking these things through the opening she had given him. And behind that gate lay her judgment - her sins, her rage, her guilt, waiting to present themselves to her in all their blood and fallen glory.
She felt something snap, heard the tiny cry of a mind being invaded as her eyes turned gold by her curse seal began to dilate wildly, the dark depth of what had been white twisting and roiling in her eyes as her seal tried to fight her for control of her body and mind, Walter having to push through the unbridled rage her curse seal possessed, the crazed and psychotic murmurs not quite her own and yet still part of her. The ninja faltered, her fingers slipping and the sound from her flute dying in a shrill cut off tone as her eyes widened again. Genjutsu, this had to be genjutsu. Her hands moved, a burst of chakra to break the illusion, she could always break illusions, they were her specialty, and this-This wouldn’t break.Tayuya fought the urge to back away, watched herself in some sort of surreal hallucination. Where normally the other’s power would force her to relive, her own expertise with illusions and fears kept her from that extreme, but she still… how old was she there? Eight? Nine? She saw the splurt of blood, even felt it warm on her cheek as she watched herself slit a throat. Orochimaru-sama smiled, took her hand and showed her how to hold the kunai properly, guided her to the next man who begged for mercy, prostrate before her.She slit his throat correctly, just as she’d been taught.
Walter watched and allowed the power to keep him separate from what he observed with Tayuya. Later it would pain him - she had been a child, only a child. But he had been only a child as well, and he had been judged, both by the Executioner, and by himself. He approached her, weaving through trees and branches until he was close, maybe even close enough to touch, close enough to reach out to take the flute that had been the unexpected key into her mind. "How many deaths?" he murmured both aloud and in her mind. "How many children without their parents? How many parents burying their children? How much blood on your hands, Tayuya?"
Her hands were limp, unresisting as her weapon was taken, solid silver from her grip, eyes still dilating wildly as her seal, a power separate from her own tried to free her, bursts of chakra wild and chaotic, the horns from her skull writhing as they grew and shrank, claws sharpening and dulling and seal pulsing hot and red on her skin. “It’s not-” She started to protest, felt another spurt of blood on her face, another child her own age, training, it was, training beside the other members of the Sound Four as they slaughtered any other team “I’m not guilty of anything.” Tayuya spat, anger rising and struggling against the invasive voice in her mind, pushing. “I did my job, I finished the missions.” And she hadn’t had she? She hadn’t felt bad, because they were enemies, not people. They weren’t people until it was dark and she was alone, they weren’t worth anything until she found out about them, which is why she tried not to.They weren’t anything, were they?
Walter's eyes widened and smoke rose from his fingers before he - carefully - put the flute out of Tayuya's reach. The burns from the silver would take longer to heal than anything she'd done deliberately, but the pain was as fleeting as the cuts from her wire trap before. He paid it no attention, forcing the gate he'd opened within the ninja to stay open, forcing his will against hers, forcing the power that flowed from the Red God to make her see. "Enemies are people," came the precise words in her mind, crisp in Walter's upper class British enunciation. "You know that. You know that they fought to live just as you would have. At night, when you're alone and you think for yourself, you feel the guilt of their deaths. How many people did you kill without even learning their names because you were afraid that you might see them as real?"
She whimpered, muscles stiffening as she continued struggling, seal continuing to pulse and pulse and pulse until it burned so badly it registered as pain even under the adrenaline blocks that prevented her from being dulled or slowed by injuries under her seal release, the fighting mechanism perfected to make her into a better soldier.“Many.” The ninja finally admitted, voice a grit of teeth. “It- It didn’t matter, we all fought to live, we all fought to survive, and I just came out on top, it was survival, it was the job, I didn’t just-” Didn’t just kill for no reason? No, that was a lie. She had always had a temper, had sometimes killed just because she had been angered, insulted, always looked for fights even here to sate to use she felt, the use she was accustomed to performing, fighting and killing as a tool.
"It was just a job." Walter's words lashed through her mind this time with some of his own emotion carried with it. As a child of WWII, that phrase held weight for him - excuses in Nuremburg that turned "I was just following orders" into the purest example of abdicating personal responsibility as an excuse to do evil. "Many. And you didn't kill them all just because it was a job. You took people's lives for ego, for stress release, for no. reason. at. all." He sought another door, another gate - one behind which would be the epitome of that sin and her guilt. Let her face it. Let her own it.
Hands, claws, clenched until they drew blood in her palm, trying to anchor in the pain to struggle still, to try and fail again and again to break the illusion, break the images in front of her. Watching people die had never phased her before. Killing people had never phased her, she was a killer, as she was forged to be. But this? This was… this was so different, and it seemed too real even as it seemed false, “So what?” She tried to grit out, tried to force her gaze from the scene but was unable. “If they died they were weak, if they died they didn’t deserve-” Her own voice died in a small hitch of noise, not quite a sob but no harsh noise, remembering her own death, the breaking of her spine and lying helpless, unable to do anything but stare up at the sky as her own life had ebbed away. Worthless. Undeserving. Weak.“It didn’t matter.” Tayuya protested again, weaker, trying to veil her heart, her emotions, as she had always done, hidden in the touch outer shell she presented to the world, the price of becoming a ninja, the loss of heart and emotion.
"Your life mattered to you." The words were soft, almost gentle, but they carried with them other images - other faces as their features lost that spark of life and passed over to the glaze of death. Each one of them was a person who had died as she had. And back to her death, every last instant of it there for her to see and feel and remember - she had brought that same helplessness and unworthiness to countless others and in the end, it had changed nothing.
The feel on her cheeks, of tears, hot and course, was unfamiliar to her, reliving that moment, that long, long, moment as she’d stared blankly, unable to lift her hand, move her legs, feeling the loud snap and crack of bone against toppling trees and then felt nothing, nothing but but the blackness turning on her and all she had done, all the orders she had followed and all the people she had killed meaning nothing, able to do nothing, to prevent her body from going cold, her breath from ceasing, mind from working, and then the couriers from Sound to fetch her body, burn it all away to nothing so no one would ever be able to glean her final secrets, every trace of Tayuya of Sound wiped fro existence with no proof of her life left besides the ones she’d taken with her.“It did.” She murmured brokenly, felt no pulse in her chest, a sullen cold and clammy stillness. “It did.” She felt herself begin to cave, unable to stand against the pressing will of the other backed by the Red God, unwilling or unable to stop herself from crying, from feeling guilty, from feeling sorry.
Yes... Walter pressed on, forcing power at and into her. It wasn't enough that she was beginning to be sorry, not enough that she was starting to feel guilty. Let the guilt and remorse consume and wash her clean and his business would be done with Tayuya. He knew this agony intimately, it was the only way he could show it to her with such clarity. "Yes, Tayuya, your life mattered. Their lives mattered. The pain we give matters. Remember."
It took some time, but she began to crumble with her seal slowly having to retreat, back down. The blinding pulse slowly gave out, faded, as her skin lightened again as the black lines reformed and fell back to the seal, horns disappearing back into skull and claws and fangs gone, leaving her what she really was, a human girl, no monstrosity, a girl barely into teens though she had lived an adult, killed as an adult, drank, drugged, eaten, as an adult, felt the touch of an adult, for years and years.She fell, curled in on herself with a sob in the back of her throat, unable to admit that she was sorry, to say she was, because she hated it, hated the weakness and the views her fellows would have of her, what Kimimaro would say, Suigetsu, Orochimaru, to see her in this state, the power of the vampire and the Red God enough to batter down her pride and her will until she could only feel that remorse clawing at her cold, dear, heart.
Walter knelt then at Tayuya's side, and had she been able to see past the pain he'd shown her - her pain that he'd opened her eyes to - she would have seen empathy on his face. This was justice to his mind. Let her feel and regret and not only was she punished for her sins, she was given a chance to learn and grow from them. Casually, he flicked his fingers toward her flute and this time, gentle as a mother's touch, killing wire wrapped the instrument, bringing it to them with another flick of his fingers to deposit it unscratched by her side. Before he released his hold on the fallen ninja and closed the gate, one last thought drifted gently from his mind to hers. "What you have learned here is not for them, but for you. I will speak of it to no one." With that, he stood. He would watch over her from a distance until she was strong enough to leave the forest on her own or until she called someone to help her, but no other harm would be allowed to come to Tayuya now. She must have the space within herself to absorb what they had done together, not bury it in violence before the lesson could be learned.
A shaky breath, a sob, and her fingers, fingers used to throwing knives, slitting throats, throttling and killing closed around the cool metal, her weapon as far as she could remember, but not only a weapon but an instrument, capable of playing soothing melodies even along with the harsh illusionary tones she killed with. Her grip tightened, clutched the metal to her chest and cried, a harsh, almost animal noise as she rocked on the branch, eyes squeezed shut but not doing anything to stop the flow of tears.There were reasons ninja blocked off emotion, reasons they shut down their sympathy for life, their compassion. Because when it was all over, if they allowed themselves to feel, to feel sorry for killing and hurting, torturing, and beating, they would never be able to do their job. Tayuya sobbed.