[He's always known that Ayumu has a lot more to her than initially meets the eye, of course, and that she's been capable from the beginning of whatever was necessary for her work. It's somehow still hard to reconcile the image she always projected of herself back at the compound and the sheer harshness of her words now.]
[He wonders if there was something about what the men had done that reminded her, on some buried level, of what she was put through when she died. The mere thought of it still turns his stomach, somehow even more than it did at the time. It renders him almost dizzy with a sudden rush of vivid memories -- the grotesque details of the reports on her body's discovery, the awful pallor of her skin where the funeral cloth didn't cover it completely, the slow horror of always being aware of exactly how late she was to report in, the cold fury of knowing they'd taken their damned time about it, knowing they'd had their fucking fun with her, knowing they were going to pay for it if it was the last thing he did--]
[Hijikata takes a very deliberate breath, dragging himself back into the present and anchoring himself firmly to it. He takes a moment to calm any wildness that might have crept briefly into his eyes, to strip his voice of the sharpness that still comes to it too easily and won't help Ayumu now.]
[It still makes him this angry just to think about it. Is it any wonder Ayumu is short on mercy for men like that?]
I've... let my feelings affect my work like that before. There was a man we captured when I was human, someone who'd been in charge of the men who captured one of my agents. To tell you the truth, as much as I wanted to get my hands on the allies he was protecting, having him talk was just a convenient side effect of breaking him.
[There was definitely a part of him that just wanted to make the son of a bitch suffer.]
[It had felt like redemption for failing Ayumu, maybe.]
cw: god just like everything
[He's always known that Ayumu has a lot more to her than initially meets the eye, of course, and that she's been capable from the beginning of whatever was necessary for her work. It's somehow still hard to reconcile the image she always projected of herself back at the compound and the sheer harshness of her words now.]
[He wonders if there was something about what the men had done that reminded her, on some buried level, of what she was put through when she died. The mere thought of it still turns his stomach, somehow even more than it did at the time. It renders him almost dizzy with a sudden rush of vivid memories -- the grotesque details of the reports on her body's discovery, the awful pallor of her skin where the funeral cloth didn't cover it completely, the slow horror of always being aware of exactly how late she was to report in, the cold fury of knowing they'd taken their damned time about it, knowing they'd had their fucking fun with her, knowing they were going to pay for it if it was the last thing he did--]
[Hijikata takes a very deliberate breath, dragging himself back into the present and anchoring himself firmly to it. He takes a moment to calm any wildness that might have crept briefly into his eyes, to strip his voice of the sharpness that still comes to it too easily and won't help Ayumu now.]
[It still makes him this angry just to think about it. Is it any wonder Ayumu is short on mercy for men like that?]
I've... let my feelings affect my work like that before. There was a man we captured when I was human, someone who'd been in charge of the men who captured one of my agents. To tell you the truth, as much as I wanted to get my hands on the allies he was protecting, having him talk was just a convenient side effect of breaking him.
[There was definitely a part of him that just wanted to make the son of a bitch suffer.]
[It had felt like redemption for failing Ayumu, maybe.]