What makes our love so hard to be
Is it you, or is that just you with me

And just like that, as he throws his rapidly shifting body against the iron bars, he is suddenly thrusted back into the world just as quickly as he had been taken. Rolling on sand, gnashing his teeth, clawing at the sky. It takes him a moment to realize that the world his lit up around him. That he is no longer trapped in darkness. His body stills, somewhere between bear and equine, as he blearily looks around him.

He felt… Different.

On the inside, where his heart should be thumping madly against his chest. Instead, he feels nothing. Vapid, airy, almost empty. There’s no frantic pumping of his wild tattered heart for Carnage had finally claimed it as his own, a trophy that he had failed to collect last time. Now a glass replica stood in it’s place. Of course he did not fully understand this, despite the words “Mine.” that were snarled at him before he was thrown from the cavern and the chaos.

He doesn’t understand anything anymore.

Where ever he looks, he sees ghosts. Things and people that should have been but never were. Stuck between two realities, broken in spirit by that he could not change. His mind a shattered mess of what was real and what wasn’t. But that compared little to the carnage inside his chest.

Could he still wrap around the weight of the heartbreak of Ellyse’s betrayal? He could feel the steady simmer of anger in his breast, fueled by humiliation and wounded pride. But could this intact glass heart comprehend such things as love? There’s a continuous ache beneath the X, a non stopping heaviness that competes with the vapid emptiness. Such a strange feeling. There are still the emotional ties there, wrapped within the delicate clear surface, but hard to reach. What he had felt for Ellyse was there, trapped beneath the surface but very much damaged. One would have to chip at the surface to release it. And even then, would that not damage him? Or worse, to experience such grief again… Would it shatter the glass and he would no longer exist?

All he knows is that Ellyse has broken this family. Has betrayed him and their children. It is unforgivable. How could he have ever loved her to begin with when she had been so careless with him from the start? All the nights he had wasted away, pining for her (confusion as he remembers the loving embrace of the girl of glass and the nights spent in her delicate warmth) when she had taken her time to come back to him. Had he ever really known her to begin with? Had she ever truly given her love to him as he had her?

His muzzle wrinkles, bitter with the distaste he feels for her. For them all. Except the twins, the last link of humanity he has. The one eye looks towards the dark ashy sky and the sullen volcano. Feeling the anger within him writhing much like the magma beneath the charcoal surface. He can see Raaquel there at it’s base, pity in her eyes. And with a blink of an eye, she is gone and he is reeling with grief. Perhaps he can still feel? The emotion is washed away quickly, leaving him cold as ice at his core.  

All he had ever wanted in this world was love and family. And now?

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

Ledger

What makes our love so hard to be
Is it you, or is that just you with me

The space where his beating heart once lay is silent, hard and yet vapid. He had given it freely to Ellyse, practically shoved it into her arms, only to let her shatter it to bits. To be stolen by a Dark God. Now he is empty. Now he has nothing but his madness, the tattered remnants of heartbreak, betrayal, and foggy reality. Despite the ghostly figures that dance around him (Adaline’s screams ringing in his ears), he still remembers one thing. One important piece of information. How his beautiful perfection (which he had fought for years to obtain) had slipped from his fingers. Dahmer. The thief, the snake, the scavenger.

His sharp canines are exposed as he snarls at the thought of the winged stallion. Of his claws twisting into his dark flesh and exposing him for the scum he was from inside out. Images dance about his head, red and dark and each one featuring his enemy. The one who had stolen his family from him. A soft voice makes him slowly turn his head, polar bear muzzle leading the single gold flecked eye as it falls on a familiar concerned face. Pieces of bone, glimmer of champagne. The place where his glass heart rests aches coldly with remembrance. The foal that lay between his beloved and the home wrecker. If Smoak (who he had once tried to love as his own) never existed… None of this would have happened.

Adaline would still be alive (for her death feels as real as the sand beneath his crumpled figure), Ellyse’s eye would never have wandered (and she will pay in time for such treachery), Dahmer would have no hold over his Warrioress. If only Smoak did not exist. A tinny whine of a voice alerts him, a dark god wheedling into his mind. Seeping into the blackness that threatens to submerge him. You can change that, you can ruin this foal as he has ruined you. Kill the bastard.

Slowly the half bear/half equine lurches forward on unsteady paws and hooves. Lunging towards the foal with a gleaming red rage in the heart of his pupil. No longer seeing Smoak but the one that sired him. The newest man to wreck havoc on his life. Spittle flies from curled lips as he snaps at the colt, his claws clumsily trying to reach for the boy and end his life. End it all.

Ledger

What makes our love so hard to be
Is it you, or is that just you with me

Destruction. He thought he had seen it all, had known it more intimately then anyone. Until he met her.  Seeing how she seemed to now be the root of this most recent explosion of his already miserable life, the core of chaos. There is a scream of rage, words of fury. The voice sends shock to his system despite the unusual tone of anger that dismantles it. It’s not enough to make him let up on his attack. His sight is blinded by a sudden flash of glittering diamond as it puts itself between him and the blight on his life. His claws seem to rake against her flesh with a bloodcurdling screech that makes anyone nearby cringe with the sound. Nails on chalkboard. Frustration floods his system, the confused and muddled bear growing angrier with this barrier between him and his prey.

The narrowed pupil sees through the red wall and finds her face as a claw swipes at the ravaged white feathers. They smell of brine and ash, they smell of the sweat that beads across her back as he grabs at her withers, a soft exhale of ecstasy.. The bear is finally able to complete it’s shift. Leaving the bloodstained stallion peddling back away from her, anger and disgust on his face. It’s the despair that lingers along the dark hollow of his eye and the curve of his cheek that’s most haunting of all.

”Your son. Only son. Your son of love”. The words spat out but he does not look at her. She who had ruined them all. Rambling, the crazed remaining eye roving back and forth between her, him, the ocean. Adaline. Raaquel. Magnus. All there, watching. Waiting. Except for them, the children. His.

”Twins.” He spits again in his agitation, trying to grasp at where they could be. If they could be. ”Never existed. Gone.” Unable to find them in the fog, to see them with the ghosts. ”Like your heart.” His accusing glare back to her, finally staring her down. His chest heaves and the curdling skin on the x stretches mockingly before her. ”Like mine.” Knowing it was gone, taken. Unable to understand the severity of it, at the cold weighty hollowed thing in it’s place. Her eye is missing, she is a mess of her former self but none of it registers. She is a demon now sent to plague him. Perhaps she had sent him back to the Dark God on purpose. Perhaps it had all been part of her master plan.

The fluttering sluggish feelings trapped within the visible heart peck at the glass. A slow sadness gripping at his mind. Remember. Remember. For the first time he seems almost clear headed. ”He told me. Your lies.” The anger returns, rushing through his blood and scattering his marbles once more. ”Rabbits caught together in the snare.” Sharp teeth protruding through his gumline as he snarls, heated, angry gold glinting at her. Calling her out. ”I know you now. I know where you’ve been” Hissing, the last word said with finality.

Magnus stands behind her with sorrow in his eyes. The sins of his father…. Taken out on the son. ”It wasn’t real.” Anguish in the fury. Back to the sea as his hooves sink into sand and surf climbs to his belly. ”It never was.”

Ledger

What makes our love so hard to be
Is it you, or is that just you with me

Ledger you have lost your mind. He is laughing, laughing with no trace of warmth or humor. It crackles like ice, becoming lost in the foam of saltwater that churns around his ankles. She claims the children exist but he can’t trust the words that fall from her lips. All she does is speak in lies. Like when she had claimed to love him. When he had made love to her. Had that even been real? Or was every sigh and every exclamation a forgery? Faked.

She lashes out at him with venom but it’s nothing compared to the anger of the bear inside him. Of the constant mounting layers of betrayal and loss. She is ravaged but still standing. He is broken and splintered before her. She doesn’t care. But how could she if she never had to begin with? ”So you admit it.” The laughter fading, his one eye looking to the endless expanse of ocean. Wondering if the bear could submit if he only sunk beneath it’s dark surface.

”You were with him. When you should have been with me. With us.” The fog lifted for those brief moments as he looks to her. The anguish churning in the fogged glass of his chest reflected in the mirror of his eye. ”I loved you Ellyse. I LOVED YOU WITH EVERYTHING I HAD!” Roaring words, unable to force the emotion of what she had taken from him. What she had done. As the sorrow expands in his breast, the glass heart cracks slightly at it’s bottom. He coils into himself with an exclamation of pain and surprise. It’s a piercing sharp stab that leaves him gasping for breath, that makes him fall to his knees into the froth. Seawater sprays against his chest, stinging the raw wounded skin. The pain is too much, shifting back to the other reality. The safer one where love was real, once upon a time. Not like this reality. Not like her.

There is so much left that’s unsaid. That she had been his world. That all he had ever wanted was her and their family. That he would give his life for her if she had wanted the same. But she hadn’t wanted that.. Had she? Or perhaps she had… But not with him.

”Scavenger.” Snarling into the wind, his body crumpled now into the water. Letting the stinging salt reach for him. ”He pecks and prods but he will never know you. He will never consume you. Did he save you? Can he save himself...” His words loud enough for her to hear as she coaxes the child away. As he rumbles to himself. ”I know you. I know you better than anyone. Don’t I Dad?” Magnus before him, still silent. Still filled with sorrow. It sounds like laughter when he starts again but there’s a distinct break in his voice, choking on silent tears that his glass heart refuses to release.

Ledger