we're alone, just like you said, aureus

[basilica]

basilica

Would it have hurt less if the heart were weaker?
Would it have hurt less if not for the heart’s tremendous capacity for pain?

She makes no attempt to stop herself from flinching, recoiling as if he has physically struck her. She makes no attempt to spare his feelings. Let him see how he has hurt her. Let him see the physical manifestation of the ruin he has wrought.

Her eyes burn with the threat of tears and her throat spasms with the threat of sobs but she swallows these down. Because this is difficult enough to navigate as it is, she thinks, she does not need to make it harder for herself. So she presses her mouth into a resolute line and exhales a shuddering breath.

It is not difficult to remember the children they had been. How delighted they had been by their similar magic, the new color their individual glows made when combined. How comforted their journey together had been, though neither of them had any particular destination in mind. It had been nice simply to walk in step with a friend.

How painful it is to learn now that they had never been friends. And she wonders why he had pretended they were. Why bother? What purpose could there have been for it?

She will leave. She knows that. She will not stay where she is not wanted. But there is something she must ask first.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, voice shaking. “What did I ever do to you?”

heaven's gate had
such eloquent graffiti

@[aureus]

[aureus]

Aureus

oh, these wings, they flicker and my feathers stir
'til I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world

He wants to break—wants to take it all back.

He wants to tell her that it was a lie. That they could be friends. That he would cherish her and protect her and do everything he had dreamt of doing when he was a young boy. But even now his hungry heart gnashes its teeth in his chest and he knows that it wouldn’t be enough. He would consume her if he could. He would hold onto her until she suffocated. He would swallow her whole just to keep her.

So he grinds his teeth and forces himself to watch the way that she flinches.

Forces himself to see the damage that he has done.

It tears at him, shreds him, but he stands resolute and, this, at least he is glad he can be brave enough to withstand. His purple eyes darken as some piece of him retreats, the gentle part of him that whimpers in the back of his mind, and he holds back the sob that would otherwise rise to his mouth.

“You didn’t do anything,” he says, his voice softer, and he fights the urge to push her hair back. To tell her that she’s perfect, that she deserves more than him. That she should be free and he would only trap her.

“I’m doing this for you,” an admission, even though he knows she would never understand.

He thinks about hour Hourglass had looked at him, when she had called out his flaws—his cowardice, his fear, his weakness—and how the worst part had been that she hadn’t even named all of them. That he had to sit there in the knowledge that there was so much worse about him underneath the surface.

So he doesn’t break.

He just says, softer even still, “Goodbye, Basilica.”

and I'm quick with the bullet when it comes undone
I got a head like a turret with a mouth for a gun

@[basilica]

[basilica]

Basilica

She could have been something stronger, Basilica. She could have been the sort of woman who fought for the things that she believed in. But her eyes are burning with tears and the heart twinges and spasms in the cavern of her chest and she is surprised how much it exhausts her. So, for a time, she merely stares at him and makes no effort to hide the hurt in her lilac eyes. The betrayal. The confusion. 

She had not known how friends could break your heart, too.
Or that healing was powerless against this kind of hurt.

There is a peculiar kind of quiver in her lips as she stares at him. As he tells her that he’s doing this for her and she doesn’t understand but she doesn’t ask either. Because he won’t tell her. Because they’re not friends. They don’t tell each other things. Or, at least, he doesn’t tell her things. She can’t help him, although she would have given anything to try if he would have let her.

He thinks that the problem is in him but she understands that the problem must be with her.

She swallows thickly, lashes fluttering, and finally nods numbly. 

She does not say goodbye. She cannot say goodbye. She just looks at him a beat longer. That same handsome face, anguished. Perhaps, someday, she will be able to remember the shy smile he’d shared with her when they were children. Back when he’d let her believe they were friends. 

For now she will remember him like this. Stoic. Rejecting her the same way her father had. 

She turns from him and she does not look back, not even as the darkness descends. 

HEAVEN’S GATES HAD SUCH ELOQUENT GRAFFITI

@[aureus]