When Armen rose the stairs again, he held Mariette within his arms, cradling her from her shoulders and knees in either arm. She were asleep as he climbed the stairs, having cried so terribly unto the point she could no longer wake. Stepping into the now later morning, there were less audience for the debacle, but still some nosy lingerers hovered about, a gentle murmured gasp takes them as they see Mariette's battered face while Armen hoists her onto their old horse.
Armen, after ensuring that Mariette should not fall from her slumbering perch, pats the side of their steed, internally admiring the nobility of the single rouncey he met in life that would stay where he were last put to, even without tying up. Maybe out of efficient breaking, or perhaps to not walk anymore than cared for; though it mattered little, for he were here, exactly as needed of him. The people that still managed to stomach the sight until now had scurried away, allowing Armen a reprieve of them as he walks next to the steed on their march through town back to the tavern.
Upon nearing their temporary home, Armen caught sight of William, who swept the stoop of his door to the post. William, upon glancing up and adjusting his glasses, seeing the vaguely familiar shape approaching from the lane, jovially waves and hollers, "Knight! Your message has returned! Come, come!" And only after he shuffled near on his pudgy legs had he seen poor Mariette in the saddle. William recoils and his eyes flash wide as if he were at the receiving end of a club. "OH! Dear!" he cries as he comes ever closer, "W-What is... Who..." William kept stumbling upon new questions before he could even finish the previous, distraught by the sight of his new friend being so brutalized.
"William...please..." Armen interrupts gently, his heart too ached to explain the turmoil suffered of the night. "Thou shalt know in time, but now I take her to rest proper." He places a hand down and pats William's shoulder as he passes by, "Thank you, for you seem to be a great friend to her, and by extension, myself."
William only stammers in protest, "B-but... wait, I can.." intent on offering help, yet no words come to mind as he watches the duo walking away towards the tavern across the lane. He only wipes a tear from his welling eye and shuffles back into the post, closing the door as he watched through the narrowing gap of the threshold.
Armen, entering the tavern with Mariette in his arms, is met by only a few wary glances from those that have heard the latest gossip. The badger behind the bar, meets Armen's gaze and purses his lips together in a sorrowful compassion, brow furled in sympathy. Silence hung in the air like a miasma, the only sound being the occasional creaking floorboard and the many rickety stairs underneath Armen's boots.
Gently nudging the door open with his toe, he walks in and places Mariette upon the bed. He grabs a rag from the table and dips it into the washbasin, then, as gently as he might, dabs the rag onto her face. Trying so painstakingly to clean her as well as he could without roughing her further or startling her awake. So tender he attempts around her eyes and nose, he gently wipes blood from her fur, merely turning the stains pinkish. Lifting her chops, he inspects her teeth for anything broken or missing. Thankfully he found naught of great concern, though she would know better if anything were loose or gone. Too, her tongue, seemed intact and not bitten off or otherwise injured. To what little relief it presented, he took some solace in finding that her only physical injuries seemed more of flesh than bone or arterial.
He strokes an ear and she nuzzles her head into the sensory. As Mariette lay sleeping upon the bed, Armen kneeled at her side. Wrapping his palms with a thorny chain and bowing his head, he whispers his prayers next to her. "Lord Almighty. I beg of your forgiveness, for if I were replete in my faith and preparations of enacting my charge within these lands, I might not have brought one of your daughters into such depravity. Surely I hold the debt upon my shoulders, and I require atonement. Had I not allowed myself to become partial unto her, then maybe I would not have asked for her aid. She is here by MY hand, and mine alone. I cannot begin to hope that forgiveness is due to me, yet I hope still that your mercy and grace... That the mercy and grace of BOTH of you, might hold my soul from oblivion. May she forgive me, and may you forgive me. May my debt be reaped from my flesh, or even my soul, for this guilt I bear is a mountain upon my back... Lord, I ask that you save me. And if there is only allowance for one of our souls, I beseech you make it hers. For she deserves more than I. Amen..."
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Though he finished with his prayer, Armen still knelt at the bedside, vying to pay his assumed debt with blood; blood that weaved down his arms and began to drip upon the floor.
Armen, hands and arms now trailed with the small crimson rivers, attends the washbasin and cleanses his fouling. The water washing away the blood and swirling through the bowl like eels in a bucket. He retreats into his own corner and removes his helm, plunging his face into still-bleeding palms. Recalling the terror that were in his chest when he bore witness to Mariette being brutalized upon the floor, he weeps. Tightening his elbows into his belly and pressing his head into his hands, he cries silently; so as not to waken Mariette's well-deserved rest.
He shivers and his shoulders convulse as he chokes on any audible cries, stuffing them into his throat and swallowing them, palms pressed so tight into his eyes that stars begin to flash across his vision of black. In his mind he curses and laments, "What would I do if more had befallen her? What have I grown so attached to? Why can I not throw off this constant worry for her? Never before have I become so... enthralled with another. Nay, not once... Yet here, I suffer more than I would without her. Is the Lord giving me a trial further? Is my charge already not enough to sate? Why must I become as such???"
Armen hears her stir within her bed. Ceasing his internal deliberations, he plasters a face of stoicism and wipes his eyes before whipping his head to look upon her, hoping that she still slumbered. She did. He sighs quietly, shaking his head of his current thoughts, then looks again. Watching her rest, she shivered and in her unconscious state, begins grappling for covers that were not available: they were pinned underneath her. He rises from his kneel and comes to the bedside, glancing around for covers or sheets about the room that he might drape her in, and found naught.
A lone thought lingers from the shadows of his mind, crawling through and placing itself in the fore, tempting, beckoning. Perhaps...He could provide her the warmth she desired. He wanted not to wake her by moving her to pull the covers from underneath. Why shouldn't he? After all, it were only to help her rest more comfortable. Perhaps, just a moment. Not long. What harm could it be? As well, she would be nowhere safer than within his own arms.
He nears the bed and hovers over her, grappling with the choice. His mind screaming alarm and protest, warning against the slippery slope that pursuing would entail. Yet still, another part within the recess was telling him it was fine, commendable, even: for him to use his own body as a tool in which to comfort another so desperately in need of it. His eyes wander her body, drinking her form like a wine. So sweet on his thought, begging for a sip. Her slender waist that swelled into hips that matched her shoulders, with only a small pudgy fat surrounding her navel that rolled into her pelvis. Like a gentle wave of a calm, serene ocean... The arch that were her lower ribs immediately underneath her breasts like a gateway to divinity. So pure she looked, so grand.
Armen found his hand absent from himself as it hovered over her abdomen. "Just once. Just one touch. I must know the feeling of her..." his mind raced on and on. He could feel his ribs being slammed by his heartbeat, thumping so loud it was that he worried she might wake from the noise. "Just once..." his fingers splay out as the tips hover near enough he can feel her heat, he only needed to breathe out so that his shoulder would creep further enough to contact her. Finally he might behold her touch...
As his fingertips creep ever closer, he glances from her abdomen to her face, looking upon her swollen eyes and cheeks. A gripping guilt swirls around his heart upon seeing her battered as such. "NO!" finally a voice of reason crashes through his mind, and with only a hair's-width to spare, he rescinds his hand. Panting, he looks at his palm, replete with its scars and fresh lacerations, then upon Mariette. "How might I sully her like so? What wretchedness I am so nearly consumed by! To fantasize as she suffers her abuse. To think I might while she lays beaten and broken before me! This hand... this, PUTRID and VILE hand upon my wrist. A mind of its own, and a mind I might lop off..." With the fingers that had not dared so close to her, he grapples the guilty appendage and squeezes. With such might of judgment he nearly crushes his phalanges, the joints crack in repentance of their treason. Electing to not crush further so he might still keep his still-usable and very important appendage in good condition to work, he releases. A throbbing now fills his hand as the pressure is lifted from it.
He spins on his heel and cowers back into his corner, fearful of his punishment that would surely befall him for his debaucherous mind, but mostly disgusted within himself, more so than ever.
