“Come here,” Kaena whispers. “Slow. Do everything slowly, and quiet, yes?”
Maen nods, softly.
Raika holds very still. She feels like she can’t breathe.
Maen takes a few steps forward, and taking a bit of initiative, “quiets” her Qi, shifting it into that quieter, less noticeable shape which has served her so well so far. Soon, only the slightest hint of citrus fills the room at her presence. She might have gotten better at it, if even to Raika’s senses it’s gone so quiet.
It’s not enough for peace, not by a long shot, but it’s just a smidge less overwhelming than the moment before. She’s endured far, far worse than this, but it’s still… uncomfortable, being like this. Hyper-aware of every part of her. The scent, muted but not gone, is… better.
Kaena, taking some invisible cue or maybe just recognizing the wisdom of Maen’s action, circulates their Qi in the air; while they seem unable to keep it from leaking out into a crowd around them, they do slowly push and pull it away until it’s mostly on the side of the room furthest from Raika and the bed. It’s… probably not as effective as they intended, Raika thinks, but it’s still better.
“Raika,” Kaena says softly, “is it ok for you to lay down? Or is it better for you to stay seated.?”
Raika takes a long, slow breath. The breathing helps. Sometimes it doesn’t, when the scent and sense of Qi get too close and she can taste them, but here, as the two visitors do their best to limit her exposure, it helps. She lays down, forcing the absolute avalanche of new and strange and myriad systems to shift until they’re mostly at rest.
She’s gotten used to the robes, and the sheets are soft enough that they only feel a little abrasive rather than the skin-peeling sensitivity they elicited earlier from her. It still takes a few calming breaths for her to slow down all the way and untense again. Kaena stands off the bed, standing off to the side to let Raika stretch out and give Maen a place to take their spot instead.
“We’re going to start basic,” they say, voice still soft but no longer as hesitant or as careful as before, expertise peeking through. “Maen, I want you to pick up Raika’s hand. Raika, I want you to stay perfectly still, and just let your hand get picked up. Do what you can not to move it.
Slowly, gently, Maen follows orders. Raika… struggles a bit. Physical touch hits, and its warm and full of vibration and movement and- mmh. It takes her a moment of cold focus to stop her hand from spasming a bit at the attention her brain is paying to it. It doesn’t help that her hand (or arm?) is heavy enough to surprise Maen with the weight, and that, coupled with the fact that she didn’t even have a left hand not too long ago, makes trying to keep from sending signals to it… difficult.
They manage.
“Maen,” Kaena whispers, “I want you to gently massage Raika’s hand. Feel out the muscle groups. See how the fingers move. Raika, I want you to keep as still as you can, and watch. We’re going to start matching how your hand feels to what parts of it feel new, and it should hopefully get you started on feeling comfortable with it. It’s ok not to be comfortable right now, there’s a gorgeous young woman, a cultivator even, massaging you, but we’ll get there, hmm?”
A bit of time passes like this. Fingers, then palm, then wrist, and all the while Raika does her best to just pay attention and see how it feels. She lets herself be inactive, and while it’s not yet very restful, considering how much effort it takes to keep still, it’s still… nice.
She thinks back, trying to distract herself and pay attention at the same time. The last person to give her actual, genuinely positive physical contact was… maybe Li Shu. It hadn’t ever felt particularly intimate, not really; Li Shu didn’t ever really seem to feel any awkwardness examining her, and she’d seen Raika at her absolute lowest more than once. Between that and what she’d looked like, she was pretty sure there had never been a chance in all the Hells it would work, and had nipped that thought in the bud. So… besides medical checks and the occasional hug from a friend, when was the last time someone had touched her and it hadn’t hurt?
Maybe JiaJia, back when she’d first started hurting herself.
She lets that thought go before it hurts too much. It’s ok. She’s here, and she will hurt. Her punishment isn’t stopped, just paused.
Before that, then.
Hisheng, probably. And Qi Rou before him, and Salas before her, and Jun Kai before them, and so on for a little ways back further.
Hisheng had been the first one in a long time where she had stayed. He’d been the one to help her learn to stay and cuddle after. He’d been the one who offered first, and it had been… enlightening. It’s why she had stayed so long. It hadn’t felt like it would last, not really, he was far too timid in the dangers he was willing to accept, much too traditional and “by the book” in terms of the rules of the sect… but he had been kind. And he had been gentle. And she hadn’t needed to ask for either of those things for him to give them. They might not have lasted forever, but… he was good for her.
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Two years. Two years without something as warm as someone holding her hand and rolling her wrist around to see if she was ok.
She takes long, slow, deep breaths and tries to focus on her wrist.
“Good,” she hears Kaena whisper. “Raika? Alright to move up?”
Raika nods.
They go slow. It takes time, and Kaena makes sure they both have plenty of it.
They work their way up to her shoulder, then down the other side, and finally down her legs, rolling her ankles, bending her knee one way and then the other.
Maen’s face heats up slowly the whole time, tan skin turning cherry in places. Raika is breathing more, trying to keep things simple, trying to hold down the feeling, make it into something simple. She is made of new muscle, new systems, new flesh, and they’re just exploring how it- nope, that’s sexual too.
And Maen’s smell keeps shifting. Not her Qi; she is a good girl, and keeps that nice and quiet, but the scent of her. Of flesh. Of the flush or hormones and heat and drops of sweat.
Raika breathes. Long. Slow. Quiet. Tries her best to ignore the churning in her stomach, the mix of shame and panic and plain heat. It’s not a mix she’s used to, and she tries to focus, and there’s a lot she’d rather not be thinking about, and it-
A wash of peach touches the room. Light, very light, but enough to distract her, and apparently it does something to Maen as well, as she shivers and pauses.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, ever so quiet. “I, uh-”
“Breathe, hun,” Kaena says, their voice soft, gentle. “Take your time.”
Maen blushes harder, and this time Raika can’t help but laugh a little, which makes the smaller woman flick her ears and cover her face for a bit. “Aaaaaah,” she lets out, low and quiet. “Sorry. Trying to help. You’re… distracting.”
Raika huffs. “Which part?” she asks. “You seem ever so distracted. I’d hate to make things difficult for you.”
“No, that’s-” Maen pauses, ears flicking wildly. “It’s… good difficult. Maybe. If you like. I don’t know.”
She still doesn’t feel comfortable, per se, but it’s… better. It’s enough that she can shift without needing to stop and do breathing exercises, so she does so. She sits up a bit, very aware of the fact that she’s wearing a big improvised robe and her skin and little else, and that if Maen hasn’t seen anything it’s more likely due to her politeness than luck and proper coverings.
“Which part distracts you?” she asks Maen.
“...Your eyes,” Maen says. “They… they glow a bit, I think. Maybe it’s just the light, but they’re red and gold and sort of shifting, and your pupils are…” she gulps. “They don’t look like anything I’ve seen before. And you keep… looking at me.”
A sniff of Qi floats by, and Raika makes sure she doesn’t laugh out loud at how Kaena is reacting to all this. For all their calm and composed exterior, the scent of ripened peaches and is enough to let her know just how much the androgynous sex symbol is raptly paying attention and more than a little interested.
“Well,” Raika says, “you are touching me an awful lot. It’s only natural I’d want to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Maen mumbles, aware that she’s being teased at last. Considering how her ears keep flicking and her heart beats in time to Raika’s words, she doesn’t seem to mind.
Raika pauses. She takes a deep breath, then sits up. She lets her mind focus where it will, feeling the flesh of her abdomen, the muscles there, the new and strange shapes she’s so constantly aware of. Slowly, she… splits her focus. She lets her body say and be what it will, letting herself feel it, focusing on the exercises Kaena and Maen have been using on her, and opens her eyes and focuses on Maen despite the sensations.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Raika whispers, like the words struggle to escape, like the wind might blow them away.
Maen opens her mouth as if to say something, and closes it again, and-
“You were so scared,” Raika says, just as soft, just as porcelain-delicate, as if afraid to give the words weight. “There were so many of them. When I felt that they wanted me, not you, I was so relieved.”
Maen pauses at that.
“Did you think I would be relieved at that?” She asks.
Raika blinks. “What do you-?”
“I was scared for you too, idiot,” Maen whispers, though there’s some heat to her now. “Acting like it’s all fine, so long as you were the only one getting hurt. Maybe this whole ‘escape’ thing has been a proper nightmare in a lot of ways, but we’re alive. Thanks to you, I’m not wasting away in some meaningless sect. You’ve basically just given off-hand comments and already my cultivation is growing by leaps and bounds and I'm learning to hide my Qi so well that Yun Ka says makes it hard for even her magics to find me.”
“I’m sure you’re terrified,” Maen says. “I am too. And I know you’re hurting, but… horrors and monsters are part and parcel of life. Especially the lives of cultivators. And that’s something you’ve offered me, which I hold. I owe you, and I want to help, and-”
“And she thinks you’re absolutely radiant,” Kaena interrupts as Maen hesitates for a beat, starts to stutter a bit. “Especially when you’re busy being violent, but like this works too, no?”
Maen blushes again.
Raika hesitates alongside her.
A week of hesitation meaning death, of training herself to grow past the limitations of doubt and just react, and she’s forced to think again.
And then Kaena’s Qi reaches out, softly, and… it’s hard to tell via scent, but it kinda nudges her.
Raika reaches a hand, recently stretched, feeling like it’s almost hers, and cups Maen’s chin. She brings the smaller woman close, making her crawl forward to keep pace with Raika’s touch, until their faces are almost touching.
She thinks about saying something. Something quippy, or witty, or perfectly on point, something to transmit emotion or make her feel something she’s already feeling, or-
Nah.
Raika pulls Maen to her and kisses her, a thrumming sort of purr escaping before she realizes she’s doing it as Maen melts into her arms.
“Finally,” Kaena says, a smile in their voice.