Pinkgothic played:

Azur, Leonard Spigots and Rapture

The broken body lay on deck at slightly awkward angles. The sound filling his ears was a mix of a soft breeze and the angry, frightened hiss of an Eastern dragoness on his shoulders, cowered and bunched into his shirt, half hiding from the perpetrator and half coiled to leap at him, undecided which emotion to follow. He wasn't paying much attention - neither to her nor the slumped Leonard with his indifferent, mildly petulant glare backed away a few metres from the scene of the crime as if hoping to melt into the shadows.

To Azur, the death of the Delpha queen had a neutral quality. He had hated her as a person, but he'd respected her conundrum, and her death brought with itself a peace he automatically adopted. He could not bring himself not to respect her in death, and now, hovering above her, there was something profound about the situation that he couldn't put a finger on but burrowed deeply into his psyche.

"Did she ask you to kill her?" he found himself asking, very little inflection in his voice, gaze dragging itself along the fresh corpse and the scatter of blood around it.

A slow not surfaced from Leonard, burning his stare across at Azur as if expecting him to enact some kind of vengeance, though he knew enough about the group dynamics to know that if any would come, it was not from Azur, nor from any of the sim inhabitants.

"And you complied," Azur observed, stating it calmly, voicing his obvious thoughts aloud for himself, gaze currently more through than at the victim of the crime. "Why?" he asked, glancing up and across at Leonard with a numb curiosity. The small paws against his back and shoulders scrunched into a tighter grip that caused the hint of a grimace to flit across his expression. "I mean," he caught himself, bringing his left hand up to touch an index finger to his forehead in absent-minded gesture as he bought himself a moment of time to sort the words in his head. "You took her life because she asked it," he narrated. "But you have a history with these people that does not cater to trust, so it seems strange that you would risk further alienation."

"I'm not one of them," Leonard pointed out bitterly, barely shifting, chin only lifting slightly. Months with his supposed saviours and treatment as a second-class citizen at best had worn him down to a calculating, cool uncaring about their particular thoughts.

The statement took Azur aback, the ecomancer considering the implications for a moment. Certainly, his companions had spoken of Leonard more like they might of an animal more than even a loathed one of their own kind, but he'd always assumed a cultural cause, even past some of the Puppet/Citizen 'explanations' he'd gotten.

"I would rather live by your rules than by theirs," the autonomous Puppet nudged his head up and to the side in abstract gesture at Mer as a whole at 'your'.

"The rules on THIS ship," Elizabeth hissed. "Include not killing people." If her eyes had the ability to glow, they no doubt would have, emotions willing them to flare up in a fiery, vibrant rage.

Azur ignored the livid reptile, largely to maintain the serenity he'd claimed for himself here now, his kneel just beside Malu, his gaze settled back on her, this time the face that refused to look peaceful - but as it is, consensually or not, her life had been taken with force. He felt himself conscious of his breathing, the sensation of air filling his lungs, its passage in and out of his body, a gift of nature. To the mythologically inclined, a gift of Kunda, the god of the central band between the heavens and the earth - the purifier, the protector. For a moment, he hesitated - it wasn't his religion, strictly speaking. He lived in a culture who's rituals were infused with the intricacies of it, however, and he didn't need to be superstituous to allow himself the luxury of an emotional rite of closure.

"It is done," Azur found himself saying to Elizabeth, only distantly aware of his own words as he wove his arms slowly against each other, palms open. "Whether you like it or not, he has done her a favour. There are worse crimes to commit even if you deem it such. This may be one thing you should forgive him for."

Falling silent, he closed his eyes - and, as her spiritual guardian, patiently waited for the wind to pick up.