There are better things to think about instead of the snow as it died on her skin that day.
Of course there are, but again and again in his mind all he sees are snowflakes (melting, as quickly as her opinion of him had). There are galaxies named for him. There are worlds upon worlds upon worlds that he owns, that he is king of, but here he is ensnared in the faltering opinion of one small, ruined woman. There are better things to think about instead of how the clouds of her breath had rolled out into the empty air alongside her even emptier threats, but he can’t remember them. There are better moments that he could choose to live for, but they all elude him in these ones.
Instead of leaving his eyes flit toward the empty spaces the child had been last; his child, it is likely enough — his. The imagery of taking her between the stars still burns in his mind, not because it was particularly remarkable lain out in comparison, but because of how raw, and dark, and animalistic he had felt. Like the sex was not about her at all. Like it had been about greed, about power — about taking what was owed to him (what he deserved). He didn’t like to leave them with children when he was finished (tiny tokens of his forgotten affections; things they didn’t deserve to keep of him), and so now he is wondering if he ought to take this one back.
If it would hurt her the way he wants her to hurt.
If it would make him feel big again.
“Go find one then,” she says, speaking of worlds with a placidity that he never expects.
She’s playing dead because she’s clever, more so than he will ever give her credit for. And she’s right. He should go find another world, another timeline that exists where he is perhaps not so coldly motivated (Maybe one exists where her eyes won’t look so dead when they meet his). He should, but can’t.
Won’t perhaps.
What is it about her then that drives him to stand so close to the edge of obsession? She isn’t beautiful, or at least not in the ways that he is accustomed to it; hers is not the face to launch a thousand ships, the one that men would burn cities for (if only though he knew). It isn’t because she’s clever, though she is admittedly the smartest creature he has come upon in some time. Perhaps it’s her own ability to not let ruin have her, even if it has every reason to. Perhaps he admires the way she keeps her head above water, even when he (and all that he is)cannot.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with her at all, only timing (and poor, where she is concerned).
“No,” comes the answer off his tongue, as firm as she had been, and when his eyes square up with her own at last she might think the. They don’t betray him, even as a nagging doubt, unavoidable and unshakeable, is rousing now in his mind. It tells him he is making the wrong choices, again and again and again. It worries that everything about these moments are wrong, all wrong, and a feeling quite foreign to Elektrum begins to take root nestled among his innards.
He should know already, but he hasn’t caught on to her little trick. So, agitated with his own internal conversations his ears fall back against his skull, lost in a mound of silver forelock. It will look to her like impatience, but in reality it is something far worse as he digs in his heels and his resolve becomes as strong as his will. For a moment he disappears; every particle of him removed from this plane of earth into the next.
Let her think she has fooled him.
Let her think he doesn’t know.
Let her have a moment to breathe.
Let her think that she has changed his mind.
And when he reassembles behind her, his breath will spill out hot against her right flank and the ends of his lips will curl up in a smile that will save her to not witness.
“You made me a promise. I’ve come to collect.”
@[Lepis]