Face to Face With Your Demons

With Deimos in the state he currently found himself in and with his back to the mouth of the cave, he didn't immediately notice Ikigai's arrival. He was still looking at the ground between his paws, willing himself to get up to at least clean himself up a bit, but before he could manage it he saw a bucket of supplies be sat down beside him and then the retreating paws of the delicate woman he lived with. He glanced up with surprise, watching Ikigai as she went to gather a bowl of water before coming to where he was sitting to join him, sitting across from him with her mercury eyes watching him with understandable uncertainty and distrust. His one unhindered eye met with her gaze as his ears flicked back and guilt clawed at his gut. The words Alastor had said to him about what he had done still replayed in his mind regardless of the fact that he still couldn't clearly remember everything that had taken place. He didn't say anything right away, just searching her gaze for a moment as he tried to understand why she hadn't just turned and left him to suffer when she saw him like this.

Then his singular gaze drifted down to her cut and bruised lip which she had clearly tended to and mended, but it was still visible enough for him to pick out the mark. That seemed to make things start to click. The recognition was visible in his gaze as he slowly remembered pinning her down and shoving her down into the furs, realizing now what Alastor's retaliation had been about. "Ikigai..." he rumbled hoarsely, his large paw beginning to lift toward her cheek before he thought better of it and lowered it back to the ground. He turned his gaze down toward the ground again and struggled to meet her eyes. "Why are you here?" he questioned quietly, his attention fully pulled away from the sharp pain radiating from the deep slashes across the one side of his face and the blood that continued to fall from those wounds that made it impossible to open his eye. "Someone else can deal with this." He didn't want anyone else to see him in this state, but if his options were to force Ikigai to care for him after how he had lost control and destroyed the tentative relationship he had been building with her or to have Manea's woman or someone else tend to his wounds then he would rather take the latter.

"Deimos Medacium"