"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
she fell for the idea of him and ideas were a dangerous thing to love
She can feel an uncharacteristic frustration begin to mount because she feels like she is talking in circles, that everything she says he is refusing to listen to and it’s going unheard. But she does her best to keep it hidden, to tuck it far away behind her veil of softness, and the only thing that escapes is a trembling sigh. “I don’t pity you. I just care about you,” she says before she fully registers that those are the words that are leaving her tongue. She diversts her gaze, then, a warmth crawling up her skin, because she hadn’t meant to admit aloud that she felt anything at all for him beyond a sexual attraction.
It wasn’t exactly a secret, of course. There was a reason she repeatedly went back to those that she does. Carnage, Ashhal, and Atrox – none of them are nothing to her. Sex wasn’t hard to come by; she could get that anywhere, from anyone. The knotted and tangled threads that kept her tethered to them went beyond that base desire – for her, at least. She was constantly reminded though that it was not reciprocated.
“Fourth best?” She repeats after him incredulously, and this time the heat on her face is from humiliation. He could have just been making a general statement, but she wasn’t entirely ignorant. “Bold of you to assume I have a choice between so many men.” As if she could just pick any one of them; as if she was not at the mercy of every single one of them, as if she was not just a cure for their boredom. There was no choice to be made when there was nothing on the table. The only one that had ever wanted her was gone.
Unexpectedly, she closes the space between them. He could lash out at her, and inwardly she braces for it. But she takes the risk, drawing alongside of him until her small body rests lightly against his, and her lips reach to touch his cheek where she whispers almost pleadingly, “Stop fighting with me, please. I’ve chosen you countless times, and you can’t deny it.” Because before Carnage, and before Atrox, there had been him – the one that for some reason she just couldn’t say no to, the one that lured her away from her perfect, everlasting love without actually trying and without promising her anything.
The sound of their daughter stirring pulls her attention away from him, and when she utters that stammering swear word in her sweet, childish voice, she can nothing but shake her head and laugh. “She looks and sounds like you,” she says as she returns to the pale filly, reaching down to lip lightly at her forelock. “I want to name her Noel,” she says without looking at him, knowing that he’s going to say that he doesn’t care, or snap something about how it doesn’t make a difference to him what she names her. She has already accepted that this was a losing battle, that he had locked himself behind a wall he would never let her breach, but she could hide behind a mask just as well as he could.
02-21-2020, 05:38 PM (This post was last modified: 02-21-2020, 05:53 PM by Ashhal.)
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He hears everything she says, but everything in him refuses to believe her. He’s never anyone’s fucking choice, he sure as hell wouldn’t be hers. At the thought, his lips lift into an unconscious sneer. He’s not sure why she’d all of sudden now decide to say she cares when she’d never gave any fucking indication before, but he is sure she won’t mean it tomorrow.
“I just told you I’m not a fucking idiot Ryatah,” he growls, his own insecurity translating to anger on his tongue. “You have a choice. You’ve always had a fucking choice. But you only choose the ones who make it easy to walk away.” Like him. Like whoever the fuck else she has on her goddamned string. He isn’t about to ask. Doesn’t want to know. It’s irrelevant, like the rest of it.
He might’ve said more, might’ve spat the awful things in his head that would be sure to drive her away, had she not chosen that moment to close the distance. His gaze narrows on her as she moves in, as though she might fucking use her not inconsiderable wiles to assuage his anger. Except, her touch is gentle, almost tentative. Offering only comfort. Gentle acceptance.
He stiffens abruptly, sucking in a swift breath. Goddamnitall to fucking hell. He doesn’t do gentle. Or fucking nice. Doesn’t even know what the hell to do with it. So alarmed by this sudden development is he that, for a moment, he forgets to breathe. Really, to do anything. Like a fucking deer in the headlights. At least, until his lungs begin to burn and he’s reminded how necessary breathing is.
Exhaling on a wheeze, he flinches. It takes a long moment for her words to register. When they do, before he can think better of it, he expels on a short breath. “Don’t fucking kid yourself. You were just bored to death of that green asshole. It was never me.”
He can’t even formulate a response to her assertion that Noel looks and sounds like him though. Even he can’t really deny something so fucking obvious. Instead, he glowers at the small, pale filly as she shuffles unsteadily over to her mother’s side, clearly hungry. All the while, he inches the opposite direction, not quite sure what the fuck he’s supposed to do with this.
she fell for the idea of him and ideas were a dangerous thing to love
She is used to biting tones and scathing remarks, and normally she can let them roll off her. Rarely do they ever land their mark, because the fortress she has built around herself is nearly impenetrable. She would not survive the company she chose to keep if she was any other way. She would not be able to withstand the cruelty and the cold indifference if she let herself wither beneath the weight of it all, and so she has learned to shut it all out.
She doesn’t know why he is managing to get to her. She doesn’t understand how everything he says is slipping through the cracks in the wall like a poison, and she has to fight to keep the shield in place when his words hit like arrows against it. She flinches on the inside but the only indicator on her dimly lit face is the nearly imperceptible hurt that flickers in her dark eyes. “Everyone lets me walk away,” and while there is no self-pity in her voice, there is a certain kind of injury. No one, not even Skellig, has ever fought for her to stay. She leaves, and they let her, and still she is willing and waiting for them to come back. “It’s not a surprise when it’s Carnage or Atrox, but you…” She stops herself short, refusing to finish the thought. Refusing to admit that she had ever dared to think there was something more between them than what appeared on the surface.
And she has always accepted that that is her mistake, and not anyone else's. She brings everything upon herself like the fool that she is, and she is surprised that this – this sudden downward spiral, this inability to no longer pretend she doesn’t care – hasn’t already happened before.
She doesn’t look at him now, but instead lowers her head to run her nose down Noel’s spine. Her jaw tightens at the insult he slings about Skellig, and she closes her eyes against the tears that sting at the back of them. There is a long moment that passes before she speaks again, and the ache in her voice is apparent even though she tries to keep it from trembling. “I wasn’t bored of Skellig. That was never it. But you’re being impossible and if you want to continue to live in denial, then fine. I’m sorry I said anything.” She looks up at him now, the emotion gone from her eyes, leaving just a flat blackness in its wake. “When we get out of here things can go back to the way they were, whatever that was.”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He tries really fucking hard not to even glance at the filly as she noses at her mother’s belly, clearly seeking her first meal. Whatever goddamned cruel twist of fate that had put them here must have a really shitty sense of humor to imagine he should be here for this.
He would’ve been so fucking happy to keep on pretending. To keep going like they had been forever. But her words, spoken so softly yet somehow striking with the force of bullets, are impossible to brush off. “No,’ he barks out, trying too damned hard to interrupt her. Too damned late, of course. “Not me.” His limbs itch to move. To run. “You’ve had fucking years to say this shit.” Were he in a saner frame of mind, he might have bit back the rest. But fuck it, he’s too pissed. “I might even have fucking believed you. Hell, I might even have wanted…”
For a moment, the rest gets stuck in his throat. Long enough for sense to prevail. Long enough for him to realize he’d been about to pour his fucking heart out to her.
As luck would have it though, at that exact moment, a low rumble vibrates the cave around them. Seconds later, the blockage disappears on a swirl of dust as a wash of blinding light floods the small cave. Ashhal’s wings, which had flared almost without thought to shelter the three of them abruptly retract.
“Fucking finally,” he growls as a slim, unnassuming roan mare peers in at them. Without a second thought, he bolts from the cave as though his goddamn tail were on fire, wings flapping a few times before leaping swiftly into the sky.
she fell for the idea of him and ideas were a dangerous thing to love
She should know better by now, but of course she doesn’t.
She should have learned to keep everything inside the same way she always has, should have known by now that nothing good ever comes of revealing anything sincere. He is barbed wire to anything soft she tries to show him, and he cuts her before she has the chance to retreat back inside of herself. She steps further back from him, as if putting space between them, no matter how minimal, might somehow be a balm to the fresh wounds he inflicts. “I had the same amount of years as you,” and she wishes, just for a moment, that she could sound sharp. Wishes that she could be ruthless, wishes that she could lay before him all the ways that he is wrong, too.
Because why – why would she ever think there was an open door. Why would she think that someone who so blatantly used her for sex – more so than anyone else ever has – would ever be someone that she should have been trying to create something more with. Yet, even with all her guards up and all her walls standing tall, she had still let a part of herself fall for him. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I have done exactly what you asked of me, which is the same thing everyone else asks of me.” There is a choking sound in her throat, a strange mix of a laugh and a knot of tears when she shakes her head and says, “Carnage puts more effort into sleeping with me than you ever have. So don’t act like everything should have been obvious to me.”
She looks away from him as his own sentence trails off, swallowing away whatever else she might say. Her body trembles with heat and adrenaline, because it was so unlike her to defend herself in any capacity. When the rocks that blocked them in began to crumble and quake she tucks her neck over top of Noel, pulling the filly close to her chest, until light floods the darkness and the dust settles. She isn’t surprised when Ashhal immediately leaves, but it does nothing to keep the blade from driving deeper between her ribs. With Noel at her side she steps out into the light, wiping the hurt from her face when she looks at Heartfire, forcing a smile as she says softly to her friend, “Thank you.”
