2026-09-13: Be Strong For Her
- Log: Be Strong For Her
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Miho Ijuuin
- Where: Aoba - Penthouse
- OOC Date: 2026-09-13
- IC Date: Wed, Jan 09 2013
- Summary: Miho wakes, in the early hours of the morning to find Yua wriggling away... for an ill-thought-out bath in the middle of the night. She feels like she's dirty -- not just from her rape, but from her violence. This isn't the first time tonight that Miho has had to ground her, drawing on her own wellspring of strength to help her crumbling wife through the night. Perhaps, in some ways, she's authoritative, but it's all for Yua's safety...
- Content warning: Discussion of rape, depiction of coping strategies after rape, mild themes of self-injury, discussion of torture, reference to domestic violence.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua didn't settle for sleep for a long time. Even when she does, she's prone to waking -- the worst of which is during the Dark Hour, when her panicked cries are only sharpened by the sick green light outside.
It's at least some hours past the Dark Hour -- on a normal day, it would be closer to their wake-up time -- when Yua stirs again. "Bathroom," she mumbles, indistinct, though the first clue Miho has that something's awry is the way she skips their ensuite on the way to the main bathroom.
Ten minutes later, she's still not back...
... and if Miho steps into the hall, she'll hear a muffled, "scrub scrub, scrub scrub..."
... because Yua went to their big, fancy tub and filled it with water, distressed that the hot water tap only dispenses lukewarm water now. (Nothing's broken -- it's for Yua's safety, as hot baths could trigger her labour early.) It at least feels a lot hotter to Yua than it really is, and she at least has plenty of soap. The water is sudsy and blotted with it, obscuring her body beneath the water despite the fact she's tucked her massive waterfall of hair into a shower cap to keep it dry. "Scrub scrub, scrub scrub," she says, to herself, again, as she rubs her washcloth roughly against dark skin that's saturated and flush from having so many old layers scoured off with such focused intent.
She's repeating herself so she doesn't forget what she's doing... why she's exposing her ruined body to the air.
She still feels so dirty...
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho, thus, did not sleep much either. She has to watch over Yua...
But she can adapt. It'll be fine. ...She has slept some, by virtue of her medications, but...
Yua stirs, and Miho stirs. And then she waits. ...And waits.
Eventually, Miho stands, semi-dressing in her pajamas in order to be decent to walk around. She is the one who adjusted the hot water, with Yua's knowledge. ...And now, as it happens, Yua is scrubbing and scrubby and scrubbing...
"Yua," Miho says gently, from the doorway.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua didn't bother closing the door properly; Tyrrha's charging, Eiko's clocked out for the day, and Miho's asleep, so there's no reason why she should remind herself of being locked away.
She's still surprised, when Miho appears there. "Oh!" She exclaims, turning to face her. The jets aren't going, even though Yua loves the water jets; it's just... sad, lukewarm water with too much soap in it. "Mimi..."
Yua's gaze falls forward, again, a hand reaching up to grasp at the railing. (Of course Miho had railings installed. Safety first!!) "Did I take too long...?" ... which means she doesn't have much perception for the passage of time, right now.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho is there!
"No," Miho clarifies. "You didn't. But I noticed you were gone for a while, and I thought I'd come check on you. ...I hadn't been aware you'd opted for a bath at this hour."
Pause. "But that's fine."
Miho walks over, her steps silent on the tiles.
"...Do you want to talk?"
Her dark eyes are on Yua's face, now; her green hair is... a little messy. But her expression is concerned, if only slightly to look at her.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Dirty," Yua explains, as she tries to haul herself up. There, once hidden beneath the water -- more scoured skin, saturated with the blood that's risen closer to the surface. Particularly in some places... there's even the prickling of blood past the surface, where the skin's been rubbed raw. "I made Hiroki dirty, too..."
... she'll need steadying, even with the safety railings, but that's pretty normal for her by now. Yua hasn't been able to dance for a little while, now...
"I -- I just..." and here, a pause, and half of it is stepping out of the tub and half of it is the distress of addressing it. Luckily, Eiko makes sure to leave out nice, fluffy towels before she leaves for the night, and there's enough to wrap around her even after she's dried off. (All the better; she's shivering, a little.)
"She was gentle with me, she said, since I has a baby... but I was still bleeding. Not like my, um, my placenta preview," placenta previa, she means, "just because I didn't want it... I just remember thinking... I want her to bleed too! I want her to hurt, too! I just wish she'd woke up for it... and for weeks... and it never really stopped, did it?" The pain, she means, not the bleeding. "It's unclean... I thought she did it again somehow, so... so I had to... I'm dirty," she insists, again, and it's as much from the association with death as her present state.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Yua explains... but Miho sees it; she sees what Yua thinks, yes, but it worries her immediately. "..." Her instinct, of course, is to deny it--to tell Yua that she is wrong about that. But she doesn't; she instead moves to help Yua up, and help her out of the tub, and help her to the towels...
"She lied," Miho says. "If you bled, she was not gentle. ...she might've told herself that to further her idea of 'fixing', but what she said to me was her true feelings--that she thought she had 'taken' you from me."
"...She did not."
Miho's words are gentle but intent--intense.
"...You'll hurt yourself like this," she says. "I don't think..."
She sighs. "She can make you nothing else, now. She's gone. ...There is only dealing with what remains. That pain that hasn't gone away."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"She said..." Yua stops, face ashen in contrast to her body, with a little shake of her head.
It takes a few more moments -- where Miho will have to help her, because bending is a problem right now, too, revealing how short-sighted her bath plans really were -- before she's able to voice it: "... she was obsessed, Mimi. Saying I was hers, she loved me more... how I was more important to her, since I showed her the depths of human depravity, and... she was the only one who could fix me. She made me say I was hers, Mimi... that's... that's why I was so..."
It's not as if Yua hasn't been constructing her identity as Miho's Wife since she was a teenager, but there's been a definite uptick in her insisting she was Miho's alone, despite Miho's efforts to get Yua to engage with the entire matrix of her familial ties.
"... mm... it hurts? It all hurts right now, Mimi... I can't really tell... okay." Yua will just have to trust what Miho's seeing; nothing's right, in her head.
Of course, putting on her nightgown after it's been on the bathroom floor is a non-starter; Miho's having to be extra vigilant against infection, now Yua's in her third trimester, because it's one of the ways her health can be compromised. Luckily, they're rich, so there's more than enough fluffy towels to wrap her up on the way back to their room.
(Obviously, they can't talk here; there's water dripped on the floor. That's a falling hazard.)
"It hurts," she says, again, as they walk.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho keeps helping. And she listens. That obsession...
"...Despicable," Miho says. "Such a thing... The arrogance, the cruelty. I am glad she is dead."
But that's why. It makes sense.
"...Injure, then." Not hurt. "Trust me, for now."
Miho indeed is very careful about infection; there are fluffy towels, and there are miho's arms, and eventually, as they walk, they will reach their room.
"...It does," Miho agrees. "It does."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"I am, too... she said she'd done it to other women, Mimi... so I guess she wouldn't stop just because she got me. But... but even though I feel like that, I... uuu..."
For a few moments, Yua can't continue that thought. Instead she nods, to the idea that she's injured herself, though it takes her a moment to ask: "... does that mean I'm a bad mama...?"
She has to take care of herself, since it's not just herself, after all.
Yua will take Miho's help to get to their walk-in closet; to pull on another of her nightgowns, too. (The kind without sleeves beyond a few straps; they're easier to help her into.) She takes a seat, gingerly, at the edge of the bed, and Miho can help scoop her shins up to tuck her into bed, too.
"Fluffy..." She remarks, of the blanket, when Miho pulls it up for her. "... it's too nice for me..."
... it wouldn't be the first time Yua's mood has gotten so low, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear. "Really... really!" She insists, shaking her head. "I'm disgusting, Mimi... she called for help, and I went to her. Even if I disobeyed... it was only before I did what I was told! I even trapped everyone inside, just like I used to... before they made it more secure." The cognitive shielding they've employed may, in fact, be directly correlated with such a powerful Anti-Navigator shifting her operational focus. ... they still can't induce specific powers, outside of a few non-reproducible results like Yua's surgery, so the fact they had Yua to keep everyone in line was really more of a random blessing.
"They just... they rang the bells, Mimi... through the speakers... it hurt so bad. They hurt us... because people escaped, and... they said it was our fault, Mimi!" It's not just that, either -- her urging Remi to behave speaks to communal punishment even between Projects -- but the control they pushed on her was specific.
"But I couldn't clean that off, either..." And one of those particularly-scoured parts of her is, indeed -- the back of her right hand.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"Likely," Miho says. "She would have gone on. ...You stopped that."
But, Miho shakes her head at the next. "No. It does not."
Simple, authoritative; she doesn't present arguments, simply her own certainty.
The nightgown next, and the blanket... "It is not," Miho gently corrects. But...
It is hard to hear. And as Yua insists...
"It is complex," Miho says. "They tortured you--forced you. ...To rebel against one is not the same as to rebel against all; in time, we will make them all pay, but..."
She sighs, and her fingers curl into a fist. "I heard," she says. "I want to destroy those recordings, destroy every single one who uses them."
"...You cannot clean from the skin what is a problem in the heart," Miho says.
"...I'm sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Nn... Mimi and Recchi did the work... if it was just Yua-chan, I couldn't have done it," Yua shakes her head, sadly.
Miho's certainty is a steadying force, when everything in her head is a whirlwind; she nods, and hums, when Miho says it doesn't make her a bad mama. "'Kay..."
Miho says the blanket's nice enough for her, too. "Mm... you think so?" Yua asks, reaching for her, in the half-light after the bedside lamp's extinguished again. (They have a night light; Yua doesn't like the dark.)
"I can't fight back against that," Yua murmurs, then, to speak of her torture. "They talk about 'resisting torture' in stories and stuff... but it really hurts, Mimi. Every time they put a new bandage on, they were ringing that awful bell... so I just remember how it feels, and, and...!"
She chokes on her memories, tears welling in her eye again. "My heart's dirty," she sniffles, then. "Broken, ruined... desecrated! How can I give you such an ugly heart?! I let her hurt me... I let her do it! I'm the one who should say sorry...!"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"But you were part of it. You ended it." Miho believes that. "...What we achieve with help, we still achieve."
But... "I do think so."
"They do talk about it in stories. But even there, it is a specific skill, learned and trained--you were an ordinary young woman. ...You had no chance against the things they did to you. The cruel, and terrible things they did."
She pauses. "...I don't think so," Miho says. "I still want it. I still want you."
"...I do not accept the idea that you are at fault at all."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua sniffs, as she pulls herself in against Miho, to hide herself against her side; her legs curl around hers, steadying herself as she turns on her side. "I still did it...?" She wonders, there, a touch muffled by her flannel. "Mm... 'kay..."
... Yua's terribly suggestible, at a time like this, too.
"Maybe if they really put me in the military," Yua mumbles, "I could have did it... but I guess they're in on it, too..."
But Miho says she still wants her, and Yua unburies herself at least enough to lift her head and look to her, still all teary. "Even--even though I'm dirty?" Yua sniffles, delicately. "Even though I'm sick with kegare? Even though I said something awful? Even though I did something awful... too...?"
Perhaps it's more like looking towards Miho, with how tearstained her eye still is. "Is it still okay? Am I still okay? Mimi... when you say things, they make sense... but I'm so scared!"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Maybe it would be better for Miho not to insist so, but she is certain of the things she says as she holds onto Yua. She remains there, listening. "Yes."
"...Maybe," she says. "But we cannot know. It isn't something that's 'now'."
Miho looks down at Yua, too. "...These things you feel... I don't see them at all," Miho says. "They do not make you less. They do not make you someone I do not want."
"To me, you are more than okay. ...These things... I know you feel them. But you are still my Yua, too."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Now... now's real bad," Yua admits, all a-sniffle.
She looks up to Miho, laid on the bed beside her, hands tangled in her nightshirt as she listens to what Miho can see. So many times she has told Miho what she sees; she recognises the shape of it, here, plagued as she is.
Her expression shifts, the grief fixing it into such harsh alarm softening; she feels forgiven, except, of course, Miho said she didn't accept her being at fault, didn't she? But even if it's not like that, Yua thinks, she still feels... so warm.
"Mimi... mm... that's me! I'm your Yua! I always was! Even -- even when I had to lie! I don't like lying, but I had to, I had to keep her happy, Hiroki wouldn't have been safe if she wasn't happy... so I did those awful things... i-it was for Hiroki, right? So it's okay! If it's for Hiroki, it has to be okay!"
She gulps, pressing her head close to Miho's. "Mimi wants me... I'm still Mimi's... I'm still good. I'm still good..."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"...It is." Miho feels that ache, of seeing Yua this way. But Miho sees...
Maybe it would be kinder, to go along; to forgive by accepting that there was a wrong done by yua in the first place. ...But that's not Miho's way. It is not how she is doing it. It's...
"That's right," Miho agrees. "You protected Hiroki as best you could. ...I know you hate lies, but it was necessary."
"It's all right."
"I do. And you are. ...You're still good."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
As much as Yua feels she's done wrong, right now, she'd surely feel worse if Miho compromised her Miho-ness to assuage it. Miho is quintessentially Miho, and that's the Miho Yua loves.
"It was for Hiroki," Yua says, again, "and... and so I'd be safe, even when you couldn't protect me... mm. Mimi would feel bad if Yua-mama got hurt when you couldn't do anything, right...? So I gotta... I gotta do what I have to..."
She feels a pit, in her stomach, as she wonders how Kimitake will react... now his contact which is so easily won over with her body is dead.
She knows, equally, that she must tell him Miho killed her, when it comes time for it.
... even if she's been bad at keeping herself safe from him, she understands just how dangerous it is to let him know she was able to hurt her abuser, just how much further he might escalate if he realises he might really be in danger.
She shakes her head to shake that dread off, tucking herself under Miho's chin.
"So long as I'm Mimi's... I'll be okay," she decides, slowly. "Mm... that awful woman can't touch me again... just Mimi. Just Mimi..."
She's silent, for a moment, as she trails off, before her face shifts beneath Miho's chin. "... can you pet my hair?" She asks, shyly; it was freed from the shower cap back in the bathroom, after all, to pool around them in the bed as the ancestors intended.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"...Yes, I would," Miho answers. She does. The evidence is clear; but she doesn't know about Kimitake. She doesn't know the dance Yua needs to dance in order to stay safe from him, to perhaps one day turn the tables. ...And that's by design.
"You are," Miho says. "Good. ...She can't. So she won't."
She pauses. "...Yes," Miho says. "I can. I'd like to. I will."
Miho does so, gently, gathering a bit up and letting it splay from her fingers before she strokes along Yua's head, down.
"Yua..."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"I'll survive... as long as I can, okay? I want to sleep with Mimi lots more nights! Even though we haven't slept too much tonight... mouuuu... can we sleep in?" Yua asks, a touch piteous. "I'm gonna be so tired, Mimi..."
She nods, when Miho confirms that Natari won't be touching anything. "Mm, mm, that's right... Mimi burned her up and burned her up, 'til there wasn't any of her left. And Mimi stabbed her before she could touch me, too... Mimi kept her away from me... Mimi hurt her really bad... Mimi protected me... Mimi, Miimimi... even if I said thank you a thousand times, I wouldn't have said it enough..."
Yua sighs, head tilting into the pillows as she feels Miho's fingertips, as if they're grounding her to the earth. "I want that, too," she murmurs, soothed not just by her words and deeds but her hands. "I like it when Mimi touches me gently... I feel like it's all okay. Maybe... maybe I can sleep, if Mimi's stroking my hair...?"
She nuzzles her face in against her, experimentally humming, "mm..."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"Yes," MIho says, though she hears that 'as long as I can', and remembers that they still haven't found a solution. ...Still. "Sure," Miho says. "We can." She's tired, too, after all.
"That's right," Miho says. "...I want to protect you. So thanking me... is for something I want to do, too."
But Miho tries to ground Yua, anyway; her hands continue to touch gently. "Then let's do that," Miho says, her voice slow, deep. "...I will."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"'Kay," Yua murmurs, and finds her thousandth and one, "thanks."
... it's pretty weird for them to not wake up at five in the morning. Why, when Miho was readying for the Olympics, they got up at four!
Hearing what Miho wants makes Yua smile, nestled in beside her. "Mimi loves me so much... I'm happy," Yua murmurs, her own voice slowing. "I love you too, Mimi..."
... she doesn't need to hear the words to know it's true, feeling Miho's fingertips and the rumble in her chest as she assures her.