All five of the slaves now stood in Mae's bedroom, staring down at the dead man there.
As Renard and Isaac leaned down to start trying to closely scrutinize the man, the three women silently inched closer to one another. One of them was looking down at her own hands, another was watching the two male slaves with a pale face, and the third was looking off towards the vanity.
It was Vivian who was looking at her trembling hands so intently, and she was soon clenching her eyes shut, moving her hands up to run through her hair and cover her face. It was an effort to get herself to stop shaking, but it just didn't really seem to be working.
Raine had almost died this evening, and it was hitting her so much harder than she ever would've imagined.
She had hated almost every second of taking care of Raine when she was younger, because it had constantly reminded her of how unfit she herself was for the whole business of childbearing. Yet Vivian had spent so much time taking care of the girl, had seen numerous firsts of hers, had held her when she got hurt and fed her and played with her... It felt like Raine was as much her child as she was Mae's, and to have her almost die like that without being able to do a single thing to help! The thought sent a harsh tremble through her and she was truly thankful that Lady Dandridge was as strong and determined as she was. Even though Mae had gotten hurt in the struggle to the point that she lost a lot of blood and a fair amount of mobility in her arm, she hadn't crumbled; there was no swooning into a dead faint or just dying, she had summoned up the will to push through her pain and help her daughter. Vivian had no doubt that it was Mae's perseverance that had saved little Raine.
As thankful as she was that Raine was still alive, Vivian just couldn't help but feel so inadequate: there was nothing she could've done to help with the situation that Raine had found herself in. She just didn't have enough knowledge about poisons to be even remotely useful! Dessi had warned her many a time to never compare herself to the lady, yet Vivian just couldn't help but see how much of a good mother Mae was. The woman knew pretty much everything under the sun, and she had the power and the will to be able to protect those that were important to her. Vivian could never be that strong, she didn't think that she would ever even come close. Her mind was constantly competing with the other people in the house, pitting her up against friends and foes alike even though she so often wished that it didn't. She would be so much happier if it didn't. Vivian had her own positive points, but she never saw them when she was playing this comparing game in her mind. Perhaps it was why the depth of her own love for Raine had gone so unnoticed by her for so long: when she looked at Lady Dandridge, there was no way that her love was as pronounced as the Lady's.
But no... it was clear now that Vivian had quite a bit of love and fondness in her heart for that precious little girl.
Dessi and Kyrie were both as silent as Vivian was, though neither appeared to be going through as much emotional turmoil as Vivian. At least, not on the surface. Kyrie felt winded, like she'd just helped move a ton of goods from one place to another, and felt only barely able to keep standing. Everything that had happened tonight... It just felt so unreal and she was ready to curl up in bed and put this nightmare behind her! It's not that she believed that waking up tomorrow would have made this whole night not happen, but after a full night's sleep these sorts of things became a lot easier to handle and come to terms with. For now, Kyrie just watched as Isaac and Renard crouched down next to the dead man, sending a silent plea for them to finish up what they were doing sooner rather than later.
When Renard reached out a hand to touch the man Dessi's voice sparked up, startling Kyrie a bit since she hadn't been expecting it.
"Wait! If you want to handle him directly you should wear some gloves or something. He has poison on him somewhere, and we still don't know how he died."
The two men agreed that it would be better to be safe than sorry, though neither of them were too keen on leaving the women alone in the room to go and get gloves. Deciding to do some improvising, they wrapped spare pieces of the clean cloth that was brought up on their hands before tentatively beginning to strip the man. The face they revealed was unfamiliar to all of them, of course, and the two men had furrowed brows that seemed to say they weren't really gleaning much insight from this search. They spoke quietly to one another, commenting mostly on observations they made: the man was definitely from the Terra Kingdom, he had a ton of scars on his body mostly from battle it looked like, though there were some marks on his back that looked more like whip marks. He was fit, a little on the shorter side, he had nothing in his pockets, and there were two tiny holes on his wrist. That had to be what killed him since there were no other fresh marks, and Renard's face glanced towards the snake still on the vanity that was completely unmoving at the moment. The mouth on that one was much bigger than the marks on the dead man's wrist though... had the lady had a much smaller snake in the room with her at the time she was attacked?
Standing back up again, Renard told the group of them to be on the lookout for a smaller snake, and Kyrie's eyes immediately fixed on a little box at the lady's bedside. It wasn't fully closed, and Kyrie couldn't help but wonder if that's where it was. The lady had only one small snake that was deadly poisonous, and it loved being in dark places and keeping away from both other animals and other people. So long as they didn't particularly go snooping about the room then they should be fine.
As Kyrie pondered whether she should really say anything, her eyes widened as Dessi wandered over towards the lady's vanity.
"B-Be careful, Dessi. Undine is generally pretty calm, but if you make any sudden movements around her she'll posture a bit before striking."
At this Dessi's advance towards the vanity stopped, but her eyes trailed from the dagger on the counter up to the perfumes on the shelves. Kyrie had no idea what Dessi was thinking, but her eyes watched Dessi's in an effort to try and discern the other woman's mind. Dessi was looking at the lady's perfume vials, and now that they'd all just seen Mae make up an antidote with the very thing that she used to make perfume, Kyrie couldn't help but wonder if some of them weren't actually perfumes at all. Kyrie's eyes were soon turning away from Dessi when she found that the woman wasn't making anymore advances towards the vanity, and her eyes settled on the two men in the room again, but now she was silently wringing the fabric of her nightgown.
She wanted nothing more than to just get out of this awful room and curl up in Isaac's arms until her shivering finally stopped. It just didn't feel appropriate to leave quite yet though, so Kyrie tried her best to get herself to stop shivering on her own. When her eyes glanced over at Vivian, she was a little shocked to see the state that her friend was in. Kyrie had always thought that out of the two of them Vivian was the tougher one; it made sense since Vivian always made a show of facing any problems with her head held high and facing forward. Something about this evening had broken that facade though, and the sight of Vivian clearly ailing helped her focus on something that wasn't her own unease.
Not fighting against the impulse to comfort, Kyrie pulled her friend into a hug. At first Vivian flinched from the sudden and unexpected action (she still had her eyes covered, after all), but after this initial reaction she just sunk into her friend's embrace. In all honesty, Kyrie was actually thankful for this, because holding onto Vivian was helping her ignore the room and still her own anxiety over the whole situation. Expecting Vivian to just stay silent until something else happened, Kyrie was a little surprised when Vivian actually spoke.
"Raine almost died today."
This was mumbled to Kyrie in a tone that only she would be able to hear, and Kyrie paused for a moment to hear that's what was hitting Vivian the hardest. It wasn't the fact that Mae had been attacked (which would threaten their very livelihood), it was the fact that Raine had almost died. As Kyrie thought about this though, it made quite a bit of sense. Yes, the lady was arguably more important for the household, but Vivian had so much more emotional attachment to Raine.
Perhaps if there was one silver lining for this whole thing, it was in the fact that Vivian now understood just how much she cared for Raine. It had been latent in Raine's younger days, but Kyrie had seen it occasionally, in rare moments of peace between the two of them. As Raine had gotten older, and Vivian's mood had slowly climbed its way back out of the hole it had been dwelling in, her affection towards Raine had increased. The love that Vivian held for that girl could be felt in every little interaction that she had with her, and Kyrie had drawn those little bits of affection a number of times. Vivian had finally admitted her own love to herself and Kyrie was happy for her; it was just unfortunate that it had to take a near death experience for Raine before Vivian figured it out.
Kyrie wasn't really sure what to say to help Vivian feel better though, so she just tightened her hold on her friend and lightly leaned her head against Vivian's.
"She'll be alright now though."
"I know... I know that, but I just can't seem to stop thinking about it."
Vivian tried to let out a little laugh at that, but it just ended in a choke due to the fact that she felt like a sob would well up if she continued to try making light of the situation. Not really wanting to cry, she instead hid in Kyrie's hug. No further words were really needed past that, and the two women stayed that way until Isaac and Renard reconvened with them.
If this was any normal situation, Renard would've made some kind of joke about the two of them getting a little intimate in public, but as it was, his expression was not one of joviality.
"Well this man is a complete mystery to us. He appears to be battle-hardened, perhaps a former slave from the whip scars on his back, and his appearance puts him as being from the Kingdom, but beyond that there really isn't a whole lot."
Vivian and Kyrie slowly separated from each other, but they still stood fairly close to one another for comfort more than anything else. Both of their eyes were downcast at this news, but they couldn't exactly say that they'd really expected much different.
"So what now?"
It was Kyrie's voice who tentatively spoke these words: Vivian was too caught up in thinking about how she much preferred it when she never saw a thing or heard much about incidents like these. That way she'd always be able to believe that they went off without a hitch and she'd never have to worry about just how close a situation was. She'd only know that everything was fine and she'd be happy for it.
If only she could be so ignorant this time.
"Now we go to bed."
The four slaves looked at Dessi as she moved back over to join them, each with a slightly different expression on their face to hear this response to Kyrie's question.
"There's nothing else we can really do here. Lady Dandridge will call for us in the morning to help properly take care of this scene, and maybe she'll have more insight into who this man is than we do. For all we know she already knows who he is."
Once again that feeling of impotence began to seep into Renard's mind; sure he had done a bit to help the situation, but even now after it had happened there was nothing he could really do. There wasn't even a way that he could think of that would help prevent this from happening again!
"Is that really all we can do? But we hardly did anything!"
"Hardly did anything? Are you joking?! Without our quick action Raine would probably be dead right now, and without my knowledge of first aid Mae would have had to bring someone outside the house in to treat her wound which would've let the other houses know of her weakness! We are just as important to the lady's well being as she is to her own well-being, it's just that we're more reactionary instead of preparatory."
Renard really couldn't deny that they had helped, but it still didn't quite sit right with him. He wished he could do more than absolutely nothing before an attack happened and close to nothing after an attack. Clenching his fists at his side, he grit his teeth, biting back whatever retort he might've had. It just wasn't worth it to try and argue with Dessi because he knew it wouldn't be anything more than him venting his anger at her.
Vivian was too caught up in her own head to really think about trying to comfort Renard (and to be honest, she'd never actually been in a situation where she was comforting him before), but Kyrie was tempted to try. Wouldn't that look too weird if she just went to Renard on her own though? Was that something that a friend would do? Meeting Isaac's eyes as she went to look at him, her features relaxed a little to know that he was watching her now. He'd been so preoccupied with examining the man in the room that Kyrie had felt rather vulnerable, but she knew now that Isaac was still there with her; it felt good to know that fact. With one last comforting touch to Vivian's shoulder, Kyrie moved away from her and placed one of her hands in the hand that Isaac offered to her when he noticed her moving.
Now that she had Isaac as an anchor point, perhaps it'd be alright for her to try and give Renard a bit of consolation. Pressing up close to Isaac, she then looked at Renard with a bit of concern for a moment. It didn't take long before Kyrie reached out towards Renard, and when her hand lightly rested on Renard's shoulder, he flinched and practically glared at her for her trespass. Kyrie hesitated a little, and Isaac frowned at his friend something fierce, but Kyrie's hand remained where it was.
"We'll all get through this together."
Renard's expression softened a little at that, and his gaze went from Kyrie, to Isaac, to Dessi until he finally settled on Vivian. Vivian had turned to watch the three of them once Kyrie had moved away, and a part of her was kicking herself for not being the one to walk over to Renard herself. The sad and almost desperate look in Vivian's eyes was what ultimately helped Renard push down his own anger: how could he be giving in to his anger when Vivian so clearly needed help? Letting out a soft sigh, he moved forward and promptly engulfed Vivian in a hug. This seemed to be exactly what Vivian was looking for, because she let out an equal parts pained and happy sound as she buried her face into Renard's chest. The tears that she'd been holding back fell freely now that Renard was with her, and he gently stroked her head as she cried.
He needed to get her out of here...
With that thought, he was bending down to take Vivian's legs up off the ground so that he was carrying her in his arms. She didn't protest this action at all, instead she just tightened her grip on his neck and changed where her face was buried against him.
"I think we've about had enough for tonight. Be sure to come wake us though if something else happens."
Renard gave the rest of them his best attempt at a smile but before any of them could give much more than a nod he was striding out of the room with Vivian in his arms.
Now that Kyrie no longer had someone else that she was trying to comfort, she could feel the strength quickly draining from her own body. Her legs felt like they would collapse any second now, and her soft shaking began again as her eyes trailed back to the dead man on the ground. Before she could even really get much of a glance at him, Isaac's large hand was covering up her eyes and pulling her closer to him.
"I think that's enough of that for now."
Her free hand shook a little as she reached up to touch Isaac's hand. Instead of pulling it away though, she let her hand rest over his for a moment, closing her eyes and reveling in the comforting darkness. She'd seen enough horror this night to last her a lifetime.
Isaac slowly turned them away from the body and towards the door then, and he gave Kyrie a gentle kiss to her head as Kyrie pulled Isaac's hand down from her eyes to look over at Dessi.
"Will you be alright alone?"
Dessi gave the girl a fond smile at the inquiry.
"I'll be fine. I think I'd actually prefer being left alone with my thoughts."
Kyrie furrowed her brow a little at Dessi, not entirely sure whether what she said was true or not. Still, Dessi had no intentions of revising or changing that statement in the ensuing brief silence. As Kyrie seriously debated whether she wanted to push the issue more, Isaac understood that Dessi truly did want to be left to her own devices and stepped in.
"Well... Goodnight then, Dessi. We'll see you in the morning."
Now that Isaac had said this, Kyrie looked briefly up at him with a bit of a furrowed brow before she just leaned heavily against him in defeat: she was too tired to really give any more attention to anyone else. This was no problem for Isaac though, and he eagerly and happily took the role of her support by wrapping a hand around her waist and leading her out of the room.