She thinks of him, as she always does, but recently it has been different. Usually he is a thought constantly at the back of her mind, and she can find all sorts of ways to numb the sharpness of it. She has always been good at distractions, and of course she tries to find any way to not have to face an emotion she doesn’t even have a name for.

It was impossible, though, when she touched her daughter’s throat and is reminded of her own being torn on the mountain.
It was impossible when she meets a stranger in Tephra and hears a story of death and being brought back that could so closely mimic one of their own.

And so she is left with something that cannot be ignored, with a tension that once again tightens and coils inside of her and lodges itself inside the cavern of her chest. Her heart beats itself raw against it but the thing is unyielding, and for the first time in a long time, Hyaline begins to feel claustrophobic. And then, alongside that twisted, unnamed emotion, there is guilt that plants itself. It blooms at the thought of Atrox, and she hates herself for still being the same stupid girl with a heart that cannot be whole and content for hardly a moment.

She could be handed the entire world, she thinks, and still she would drop it the moment he called.

He is easy to find, not just because she is so accustomed to the darkness he leaves her in, but because that strange, magnetic pull is undeniable. It brings her to the meadow, with a pulse that already flutters impatiently, and she wonders why, after all this time, after all that has transpired, she does not hold the kind of fear for him that she should.

There is a whisper-like smile on the white of her lips, the light of her halo casting an amber glow against the two obsidian gemstones that rest where her eyes had once been. She had failed him the last time they were together, and she has not forgotten it. Even without such a punishment she would have remembered, so driven by that desperate need to please that she was. A need that was significantly amplified when it came to him. But the memory of it is what keeps her from reaching out to brazenly touch him the way she might have before, and instead she stands quiet, her delicate face nearly angled down when she says softly, “I didn’t know if you would actually be back.”

There is something that lives between them, something that halves itself between toxic and romantic; an intangible sort of thing that neither of them seems to directly acknowledge, but then again, there is hardly a need for it. There was nothing to call it – nothing that could begin to encompass all that it is –  but the proof of its existence lived in their willingness to keep coming back to each other.

He thinks of her blood on his tongue, and she thinks of the times he shot life back into her veins.
He feeds off her desperate need to please, and he leaves her with an ache in her chest that no one else can fill, and somehow their twisted addictions melt into something that is compatible. 

He touches her and it reminds her of the stars coming alive under her skin – that brief moment before they had started to burn and there was only the wonder of stardust in her veins, a marveling at how he could make such a thing possible. He is, to her, the ultimate embodiment of magic, and when he touches her cheek he sparks a wildfire of all the unnamable emotions that no one else can ignite. There is a relief, too, at the familiar feel of him – a sharp inhale followed by a slow exhale – and she cannot help the way that she leans into his touch, and how her lips find his shoulder in turn. 

She wants more – always wants more – but her heart twinges against her ribs when he says he had considered not returning. 

The desperation already begins to tighten inside of her chest, but she says nothing. She would have deserved it, of course. She is never surprised when someone chooses not to stay, least of all him. 

Inwardly, there is a hardened resolve to not disappoint him again, and she recognizes the opportunity at the mention of her eyes.

But she is wary of his offer, remembering how he had wanted her to kill Cthulhu, last time. She did not play the part of an angel very well – she was selfish and insatiable – but there were some things that not even she could bring herself to do (she wonders, though, if that had changed; if faced with the possibility of driving him away for good if she could find a way to succeed). She had been unable to kill the alien creature, but she had also shouldered her punishment in silence – the only thing that she could offer him when she is unable to do as he asks.

Her trust in him though is a bewildering thing, because she, perhaps foolishly, does not think he will ask her to fail at the same thing twice. It will be something new this time, and that thought brings with it another jump of her pulse, another distorted sense of anticipation. “What do I need to do?” she asks, quiet but careful to hide any hesitancy that she might feel. 

She is not afraid of what he will ask – not afraid of dying, of hurting, of needing to summon every ounce of darkness that was harbored away beneath this ethereal illusion – but she is afraid of failing, again.

He doesn’t answer her right away, but he touches her again, and she can’t help but wonder if he has figured out that is the secret to her. That his touch – his illusion of kindness – is what she clings to. That she will replay it in her head more than she replays the violence. It was something carved into her, something so fully embedded into the very marrow of her that she bleeds it back out every time she is cut; the driving force that tells her to seek the smallest reward and forget the punishments.

She will remember the way his lips feel across her neck and not the way his teeth feel tearing her apart, and that is how she survives this twisted world she has entangled herself in.

He transports them, then, and she can’t see it, but she can feel where he takes her back to.
The same coolness to the air, the barest hint of what could be seawater, though she could be imagining it. The way his voice seems to shiver across the walls, and though she thinks she hears something else, sounds that had not been here last time, she does not ask.

“You did,” she answers him with atypical calmness for such a subject, but he has now killed her twice, and the drowning and the aftermath was not nearly as violent as what took place on the mountain. The drowning had been an odd kind of thrill, a slow build that culminated with the illusion of the valley – another memory that she keeps locked away to remind herself that it isn’t always all bad.

When he says that it won’t happen until he can trust Gail not to keep her as she did before, her face flickers with bemusement, but she (stupidly) believes him. “I won’t give you a reason to want to do it,” she promises – though she breaks her own promises frequently, no matter how well-intended they were.

Like the promise she had made Atrox to be better, and yet, here she is.

“You would show me?” she asks with a small smile, and maybe in a way that was a touch too eager for a lamb about to be led into the wolf’s den. The very mention of the last time they were here is enough to quicken her pulse, and she touches her nose to his shoulder again as she shifts closer to him, still and patient.