2000+ I'm sorry for. . . The length? o-o;
#####It seemed as though he was relieved by what she had said, so for everything that had happened, she was glad she had taken to everything he said so well. Her apparent maturity had surprised even her, but she supposed it was because she didn't want him to leave yet. . . Princess didn't want him to feel like he had hurt her and that he needed to leave quickly. For whatever was forming between them, the girl wanted him to stay with her for a while longer. It was unclear to her whether was reasoning was because she was beginning to really like and trust him, or if it was simply because of the major step they had taken together, or if it was a combination of both. Obviously it was relative to what they had done, but she thought it to also be, and hoped for it as well, because of what was forming there. Otherwise, she would not have felt the bit of jealousy at what he had said about Si, and she also would not have felt smug about Si not having him anymore when she did, for the moment. It was a catty emotion, but it had been there, unspoken in the back of her mind.
#####Dipping one of the long strips of cloth into the bucket of water, Princess moved it around quickly until the cloth was saturated enough to drip continuously when it was lifted out of the tub. She repeated this process for more of the strips of material, occasionally finding that she needed to wring them out a bit before she could lay them over her thigh as she kenlt beside what she was working with. There were human things that could be used to heal wounds, she knew, and there were also plants that could do the same, but she had never been taught the uses of the various plants or human remedies. It was just as well, considering she had nothing at her disposal, but it seemed like a good enough substitute to use wet pieces of cloth to protect the wounds from any infection forming. At the very least, they would act as barriers against anything entering the wounds, so no bacteria would be able to sneak its way in and cause more pain than already was there from the actual wounds on his body. It was the wrong time to think of it, but Princess was distracted briefly by the very thought of his body, the way it had moved and looked that night.
#####When she had a sufficient amount of them gathered, as well as some dry ones too, just in case, Princess returned to Haven's side. For a very brief moment, she entertained the idea of seeing what was in the bottle of alcohol she had taken and hidden beneath her bed, because she knew that humans had once used something called rubbing alcohol to clean wounds, but it seemed unlikely that they were one in the same, so she quickly dismissed the idea of using it on Haven's many wounds. Whatever had happened between him and the one who gave him the wounds was all this Si's fault, so she knew that if she ever met her, Si would quickly realize just how much Princess knew about cruel treatment. Her mother had been a master at the unfortunate art, and though Princess hated her mother for some of the things she had done (despite the love that was still there for the older Chance woman), she knew that she had, in a way, learned from Tokyo's cruelty. If necessary, she could be the same way, and worse, if she ever saw the stupid girl that had hurt Haven so much. She'd make her regret what she had done, even though Princess was glad she was gone. It meant that she could call Haven. . . Not hers, really, but almost.
#####"If you tell anyone, I'll have to leave. . . Not just Crimson Dreams, but the area in general, forever," she warned, hoping that the idea would chase any idea of repeating what she would say to anyone right out of his mind. It was an extra warning, not meaning that she did not trust him to keep his promise, because she did. There had been too much said already about the situation; both Savina and Cercelee knew most of the story, as well as anyone her brother had told. Princess really did fear her mother, but she did not regret having told the story already, and one more time couldn't hurt any more than the others. Haven had been honest with her, and she wanted to be as honest as possible with him, as well. It would probably mean a lot to him if she could tell him everything, just as it had meant a great deal to her when he had come to tell her everything. "Ares isn't my only brother," she started, beginning to wrap Haven's wounds as she spoke. For her own sake, she was keeping her gaze on her own hands, knowing that she was bound to show some emotion that she would rather keep hidden away for her own personal torment later.
#####The statement was actually only half correct, so she continued, taking a deep breath before speaking because it would be a long story. "Well, he's my only living brother. . . I would have a sister or two, maybe. We had three siblings at birth, but I guess they could have all been boys or all girls, or any combination of them. My mom, Tokyo, she had a best friend, named Champ, but she got pregnant by someone named Raphael, and then Champ left her. . . She says he was in love with her and that he couldn't watch her have someone else's puppies. My dad left, and she insisted that he had forced her to do it. . . The day before I left Dahlia de Mai to come here - that's where my mom moved after we ran away, but I'll get to that after - she had tried to tell me that sex was a bad thing, and she said that nothing good ever came out of sex. . . Something she always told us," she added, wondering if he would question the timeline of events that had occurred. She had not been wanting to prove her mother wrong by having sex. It had just happened, plain and simple, but Princess hoped he wouldn't think that. What had happened between the two of them was not related to Tokyo Chance in any way.
#####"Anyway, there were five of us, but she didn't want us because we had driven her friend away, so she tried to kill us. Somehow, me and one of my brothers got away, far enough to hide until morning. . . We should have died with the others," she added, though she was still amazed that they had managed to get away at all. It had been a miracle. "The next morning, I guess she felt bad about it, so she came to find us. She named me Princess, because I looked like her mother, Ophelia. But my brother, he looked just like Raphael, so she named him. . . Remember what I yelled when he hit you? I accidentally called him by his birth name. My mother wasn't very mature, I guess, because she named him Buttface. He picked Ares on his own after we separated, and it's still kind of weird to call him that, you see." Hopefully, Ares would never find out that she was telling Haven this part of their story. It was understandable why he would choose to change his name, but the fact that his old name had slipped out so easily only helped to prove to her that it was strange to call him something different.
#####"Tokyo was really mean to him while we were growing up. . . Abuse and neglect. Any time I tried to be nice to him, like giving him some of the food she always gave me and not him, she would hurt him because of it." It hadn't been fair. Princess had only wanted to help her beloved brother, but he had been punished for her helping him in any way. "That's how it always was. I loved him, but he would get in trouble if I tried to be nice to him. . . She barely ever let him sleep with us. So when we were three or four months old, we ran away again, but this time, we did okay. We were both angry with her. . . Really, really mad. But just before we turned seven months old, I decided I wanted to confront her. . . I'm not sure why, really. But he wouldn't come with me, and I promised him that I'd be back soon, but I wasn't. I came here, and I found my mom. . . I'm a horrible girl. I fell right back into her trap, just because I so desperately wanted her to love me. I never went back tol him, until I found him here, about a month before I met you. He was angry, and we argued, but he'd been here for a while, too, and never found me. But then, we called Savina, and asked if I could come live here, with him."
#####Most of the important facts had already been told, as painful as they were in her memory. Still she hated herself for not going straight back to her brother after finding Tokyo, and she had never even actually confronted her mother. In a way, she was almost as bad as her mother, feeding the cycle of neglect throughout her life. "To come here, I had to come up with a plan. I couldn't just leave. . . I had to lie, and I asked Cercelee to lie for me, too. I don't know if she is mad or whatever, because she thinks I got kicked out, but I don't think. . . I don't think I'll ever really get away from her. I'm afraid that I'll end up being. . . Just like her," she admitted, feeling the slty pinpricks of tears forming in her golden eyes. She was thankful that she had chosen to not look at him the entire time she had spoken, but her hands betrayed her feelings, shaking as they were. Her shoulders shook violently, nulling her attempts to be okay throughout the entire explanation. Surely Haven would think her absurd for crying about something like that. It was in the past, and he seemed to have gone through a lot, too, and possibly still was. It was selfish of her for crying over something so likely trivial, in her eyes.
#####Using the back of her right hand to wipe at her eyes quickly and forcibly, Princess shook her head in hopes of stopping the well of emotion that was bubbling over. There were more important things to be done and said, she knew, as she wrapped the last of his visible wounds with the yellow cloth. Instead of standing, however, she stayed where she was, kneeling on the ground with her eyes on her own hjands, now folded in her lap. She would not continue to cry in front of him. Princess would not allow herself that liberty. She had not cried yet today, after everything that had happened and everything that had been said, so she certainly would not continue to cry over something she had been living with as her own demon for her entire life. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, trying to clear her throat quietly at the same time as speaking. "B-But, at least your wounds are all wrapped up. . . If you don't try to move around too much and do too much, they should heal fine, because they'll close up and probably won't even consider reopening if you don't stress them," she explained, though it was probably safe to assume that Haven knew how to take care of his own wounds. They had not been too bad when he had gotten here, so someone must have tended to them prior, and she was willing to guess it might have been him.
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