psl: hellscape

Noriko had her head bent over the sink in the small bathroom she and Kurt had in the odd-shaped attic room they shared, rinsing out dye. He'd explained it to her one time before: he didn't fit in a regular, rectangular room, so why should he force it? When she'd moved in with him she'd simply adopted herself into the space, the result being a mish-mash of his circus style and her more modern, minimalist one.

The result had been homey and comfortable until Belasco. A full year and change (sixteen months, the others had said, but it had felt to Nori like a decade or more) in Limbo had brought about changes to them both. Kurt had more scars, and his body had regressed to the whipcord tautness of his youth: the most notable change of either of them were the horns spiraling down from his forehead and around his elfin ears.

Noriko too had gained a few scars, though not as design-minded as Kurt's: hers were burns up her arms, even higher than before up her biceps to nearly her shoulders, looking like hellfire had engulfed her arms. (It wasn't wrong.) Her gauntlets were heavier now, because her left arm stopped abruptly just above the elbow joint: it was a cybernetic hookup, that forearm and hand, though it looked no different to the other one and functioned no differently either.

It still worked in unison with her right hand to work out the dye, a bright electrified blue from her scalp darkening to navy and midnight at the ends. Her hair she'd shorn off unceremoniously when they got back, unwilling to see it and feel it with the smell of sulfur and Belasco's home, where he'd kept them. It had only just grown out again, the longest tip of hair barely touching her chin. She was re-dyeing it as Kurt tried prying off the gold and silver rings clamped to his horns, dripping chains and jewels into his hair, beginning to curl again.

"Hey. Do you want some help?" she asked.