DESPOINA

She is changed, but she cannot pinpoint exactly why.

Perhaps it is the quest, where she was forced to face demons that she did not overcome.

A quest where she did not come back changed. Did not come back better or stronger.

Perhaps it is the oily feeling of betrayal. Of having birthed two children who were not his own. Demonic children from a bond that she had maybe wanted as a youth but did not want any longer.

She doesn’t know how it happened, but she knows that it did, and the guilt brands her with it.

So perhaps that is why she avoids him, avoids their two children. Why she slips through the night as a hellhound, as if proving to herself that she is that and not the small puppy she had been forced to be. Why she hides away the treat because she is certain that no good will come of it. Why she abandons her other children. She does not hunt, although the idea of tempting. Instead she just runs.

She runs and she waits.

She watches the sun set and the darkness creep forward.

She sits quietly in that darkness, avoiding the parts that remind her of him.

Tonight, that happens near the river. She is resting on her haunches, crimson eyes staring unseeing out at the tide that churns, pushing up against the riverbank like some unspoken promise. Despoina has never been a strong swimmer, but she feels a distinct urge to go down and step into that current.

Would it pull her out to sea?

Would it simply pull her down?

She doesn’t know. Cannot possibly guess at the depths of the river. Cannot possibly know the yearnings of her broken, bastardized heart. Instead she just tilts her canine head to the side and considers.

Dreams quietly of the breaking.

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

Despoina wasn’t particularly skilled at anything, but she was talented at avoiding. At running. At burying her head in the sand. She was a champion at turning the other cheek, pretending that she was not constantly falling on the sword of her making. But despite this, she cannot avoid him. Finds that it is nearly impossible for her to do so. He finds her, a beacon in the light, and she shifts, angling toward him.

“I can try,” she murmurs and is surprised to find the her voice is nearly insolent, almost petulant. She had never considered her particularly moody before but he has always seen the worst of her and it is not a surprise to find that today it is no different, not when the guilt eats away at her. Feeling the corrosive nature of it, she sighs and would go to leave if she did not feel that constant tug of his own gravity.

She swallows hard and glances toward him, studying the canine shape of him. How natural that they would have found one another like this. How tragic. How perfectly fitting for her life.

“I don’t have the words,” she finally admits, and this at least is the truth. Something dredged up from the depths of her bastard heart. How could she explain to him what she didn’t understand? How could she tell him what had happened when it still doesn’t make sense to her? Once, once there may have been a time when this was all she wanted. Children with Draco. Draco who was strong and powerful and everything she was not. Draco who did not love her but at least looked at her—at least saw her.

But now?

Now the thought of it sickens her.

And she can’t change it.

Her eyes hunt for his and hold onto the red of them.

“Please don’t make me say it.”

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

Despoina has only ever known how to do things alone. She has only ever known how to let the world take bite after bite out of her—how to let the teeth sink into her skin and rip away until there is nothing left. She does not know how to extend that. Does not know how to let him in, lest he too bite or be bitten. But she tries. She does not flee even when her bones ache and her pulse thrashes. Instead she just bites down until she tastes copper on her tongue and wills her body to remain still, to remain rooted, to remain.

There is a noise of protest in her throat when he comes next to her, or perhaps it is a noise of submission, she can hardly tell anymore. All she knows is that he is the sun and she finds herself leaning toward him, subconsciously pulled into his orbit as always. There is a nod, the movement jerky, as she acknowledges what he says, but she doesn’t trust herself to respond right away, so she doesn’t. Instead she just feels how it is to sit near him and feel the heat of him and know that he is not repulsed by her. Not angry.

(No, she is the angry one now, she is the weak one, she is—)

Despoina cuts off her thoughts violently before bringing her red gaze up to him and searching his face. He knows, she thinks, and she cannot decide if that is relief or pain that lances through her. “Why don’t you leave,” she finally asks, and she is surprised by how steady her voice sounds, how it does not waiver.

“You have every reason to go.”

The agony writhes in her, that question that goes unanswered, and she feels it simmer beneath the surface. Would he take it from her? If she asked? She wishes he would. Wishes that he would end this. Consume every dark thought and pain-filled moment. But she remembers the self-loathing on his face and she cannot bring herself to ask.

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do

DESPOINA

Would he drown beneath the magnitude of her sorrow if he truly tried to drain it from her? Would it simply rise up and crash down around him? She is certain it would. Certain that even he, in all of his glory, would not be able to contain the ocean of her grief—the unending sea of it. She is made of it, carved from it, and she knows she contains entire galaxies of sorrow, of pain, of loss.

It used to frighten her, how endless it all seemed, but now it just feels inevitable.

It feels eternal.

So she wades further and further into its dark water, and it is only when he speaks that she is called back at all, her attention hooking and tethering her. Her eyes close at his admission and she leans into his touch and then collapses into the shadows of his chest. Home, she thinks, as she breathes in the spice of him, and she wonders how she has gone so long without ever having it—without ever knowing it.

At his dark promise, she smiles, softened by his violence, but she shakes her head against him. “A name will fix nothing,” she knows, and if she does it to protect Draco or expel him from her life, she is not sure. “It would just extend this,” part truth and part falsehood. She swallows hard and then rears back to look at him, to let her mouth touch his cheek gently before dipping beneath his chin and curling there.

“Just hold me,” she asks, her voice soft, and she wrestles her instincts to push him away, to run away and drown in her grief. “Hold me close,” she repeats with her eyes closing.

She could survive this, she thinks, shaking with unspilled tears.

She could survive so long as he is here.

I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do