Work Text:
Steel lay beneath the flesh and blood and warmth of Karasuma. Steel filled her, kept her standing, and whole, when all the feelings, all the memories that were not her own threatened to shape her into someone--something--not herself.
Karasuma's hands had been a subtle weapon, one used most often against herself. Karasuma's hands felt the shape, and weight, and texture of memories, and so she learned to keep her hands clasped behind her back, pinned. Karasuma had lived her life holding the shadows of other lives between her fingers, woven through her thoughts.
Her abilities had begun to fade.
In truth, she was glad.
(had never been so frightened).