Wash Away the Anguish

Her ears twitched, each step she took feeling like it might sink below her as she moved along the skirts of the Highlands where it was close to touching the Lowlands. Though, she was oblivious to where she was altogether and though she was said to be free, each step felt like her paws might bush into blood as if the earth was made of teeth. It was almost scarier being free, not knowing what to expect at all or who might pop up around the corner if she took one wrong step in any direction. Her heart felt close to bursting, her soul close to bursting as her gait became all the more hesitant as she ventured into each unknown nook. The one thing that brought her any solace was the scent she knew all too well as Melrose, a place that had been like her secondary home when she was growing up and it made her gain a little more vigor in her steps with enthusiasm to finally be back to a world she knew to some capacity.

Taking a few steps quicker, she would stumble in her movements, nervously looking back to make sure that Kenzo was still with her as she felt her breathing grow shallow and quick and her head spun from lack of steady oxygen. The form of equally dark and light would bring her breathing back to a more comfortable rhythm, but she knew she was growing tired. She had just wanted away from everything, but she needed rest even more. Her stomach growled impatiently for food and her eyes kept becoming heavy as sandbags with a threat of closing. Then there was the horrid smell that never seemed to leave her fur, even with the few flicks of her tongue she had offered it, she couldn’t stand the taste and retreated from the idea of cleaning herself earlier.

“I-I..” she started, her words winded and frail as she slowed down her pace once she got past the trees of what seemed like a maze of a forest. "I can smell the old college’s meadows on the wind, where…?” she said, glancing around with confusion and spinning in circles as all she saw was a different breed of trees and could hear water rushing somewhere in the distance. It couldn’t be just a stream either, there was clearly water crashing down. A waterfall? If they were in the Lowlands, she hadn’t been here before and that did nothing to calm the cadence of her panic.

Weak legs would buckle as she bumped into her husband, doing nothing to stop herself from falling into him as she defeatedly let out a frustrated and stressed whine like a puppy that lacked the words to express themselves. Between the pain, the discomfort of her dirty coat and the way her belly made walking awkward, she was simply miserable. She thought her depressive episode after their fight some time ago would be the worst she’d ever felt or thinking he had died. How wrong she was.

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TW: Mentions of SA, violence and gore. Kenzo was tired too. Torturing someone to death required more stamina than one would think. The taste of blood lingered on the back of his tongue and he could still smell the acrid scent of burnt hair and flesh. When he slept, he had no doubts that he would hear those screams bouncing off the cell walls, that he'd remember those curses until his last day. Combined with the fact that Kenzo hadn't properly slept in weeks, he was functioning on autopilot. But he couldn't let his wife know that. Not when she staggered alone beside him, barely capable of staying on her own two feet. Her fear was plain as day. It was etched into the lines of her face and it soured her perfume. Her thin body was coiled tight, like she was anticipating the worst at every turn. Somehow, everything he had done to that man, didn't seem like enough. Not when his once proud wife now cowered. The walk home was a long enough, made even longer by her slow pace. But they didn't do so alone. The hired guns that Kenzo had brought with him, lingered like lethal shadows. They remained entirely out of sight and they were deathly quiet, offering up the illusion that it was just Kenzo and Adeline in the lowlands. It gave Kenzo the freedom to focus more on Adeline, to keep her on her feet and moving forward. When she started to speak, he looked at her, watching the confusion and panic that reared its ugly head as she struggled to pinpoint where they were. "We are near the maidens braid." His tone was gentle, a far cry from the savagery that had consumed him only hours earlier. "Theres some hot springs you can bathe in." Adeline was always been a neat freak, their home and her body impeccably kept, he didn't have to guess that she might want a bath. He'd be lying if he denied that he also wanted her free of the stench of her prison and her warden. The sooner he never had to smell that man again, the better. Though he wasn't so naive as to believe a simple bath would fix everything. A point that Adeline would drive home when she collapsed against him, her whine a pitiful sound that begged for relief. But Kenzo didn't know how to touch her, how to comfort her. Desperately he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and hold her, to whisper in her ear that it would all be ok, that her tormentor had been sent straight to hell a few ounces lighter. Did she want to be touched? Could she ever again stomach his touch? He worked overtime to keep his jaws unclenched and his expression even, grasping as energy he didn't have. "We're almost there." He murmured, his head dropping at he started to reach for her, out of habit, to brush his nose against her cheek before he caught himself and stopped. "Just through those trees." The roar of the waterfall was up ahead, though he wasn't directing her towards the chilly pool at the base of the falls. Patiently, he waited. Waited for her to find her feet and the strength to continue. "If the accident will." "Kenzo Speech." "Adeline Speech"

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She wanted to believe comfort would come to her when she got home but there was a pointed doubt about that ever being true as she maneuvered along a few unkind roots and uneven earth as she followed. Drawing in a breath, she would glance up at Kenzo again as he spoke, her ears twitching like two radars trying to focus on where the sound was coming from. Maiden’s Braid? She heard of it before and with such a name it sounded like a romantic getaway for an affair not blessed by the minds of society. Perhaps it was the perfect place to take her. He could drown her there if he wanted to. Not that he would. Atleast, not fully. He had dunked her under water a couple times in the past but he had never genuinely tried to get rid of her fully. Not to her own perspective at least. Maybe she was wrong and she would learn that today if she followed him down into the waters, though she was caught off guard a little by the mention of a bath.

Stumbling a tad in her steps, she would come to a pause to gauge his expression before letting out a tch of a laugh, radars falling to the side in amnesty. “For once you’re the one finding me gross,” she forced a pained smile at the thought he was truly appalled by just looking at her. She couldn’t blame him, even if he was. She looked like a walking corpse and smelled just as bad as one too. Drawing in a sigh, that smile faded, but her gaze softened, shaking her head. “I’d like that, but it will unlikely wash everything away and purify me…” she trailed off, refraining from saying infidelity like what lingered on her tongue or the mention of children that had yet to come. Her gaze shifted back toward her belly uncomfortably as her thought became all the more jumbled in her thoughts.

His silence and lack of physical comfort seemed to speak the volumes his voice did not utter as she staggered away from him, feeling like she wasn’t as wanted. Her thoughts were too battered and bruised to notice the shift of him about to reach for her and he had still too quickly for her to catch sight of it when she turned her gaze partially toward him once more. “Very well,” she said meekly but with some bullheadedness, limping a little toward where he was pointing with his nose.

Her tongue flicked over her own nose as she put a touch of distance between them out of courtesy to him rather than herself, using all her strength in the moment to move as quickly as she could so not to waste anymore of his time and maybe get a chance to look like herself again. There was only a small bit of hope in her heart he really did love her still, that he wasn’t just being nice out of pity. He went out of his way to find her but now that he had her, seen her, knew unspoken truths, the idea that he’d continue to want her still hung far heavier over her head than that hope of still being his. It ate away at her till she finally turned around again, looking at him with tears in her eyes. "D-. Do you still love me?" she said with a shaky exhale then a shuddering breath back in.

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