[private] let it all go, sochi

[messiah]

messiah

He sees it all.
From his station in the shadows, where he is most comfortable, he watches.

He drags in a thin breath, feels a tendril of something dark snake its way through him, and watches. He studies the dead thing through the dark. He can smell the blood even from here. But he makes no attempt to intervene. There is no flame that swells in the parched column of his throat as he studies her, the hunter.

He is no hunter, this Messiah.
He is no coward, this Messiah.

She discards her kill. And he moves forward out of the shadows. Though the halo likely would have given him away even before the sound of a branch snapping underfoot as he moves toward her. He folds the wings, big and heavy and leather, tightly against his sides and never shifts his focus from the hunter’s blood-slick face.

“Look at you,” he purrs, the voice smooth, thick like honey. Something more suited to the halo that casts that heavenly glow down across the ridge of his brow than to the monster that lives beneath it. The fire in his belly. The magic in him that can destroy on a molecular level. “Beautiful,” he murmurs and then he simpers. Because he knows. Knows that underneath all that feline flesh, she's just like him.

@[sochi]

[sochi]

sochi

She should have seen him sooner, she thinks, as he moves forward from the shadows—as the glow of his halo illuminates his face and the large wings pull in close to his sides. Her yellow eyes are curious, sharp, as she studies the angles of him. Something about the shadows beneath the surface feel almost like the ones that run like an electric undercurrent underneath her skin and she shifts then, suddenly, violently.

Within a breath, she is standing as herself, the thick coat of the tigress disappeared.

Her eyes peer out silver as her blaze shines in the night and the blood on her chin matches the vivid crimson of the slashes across her chest. “Look at me,” she repeats and her voice is low, throaty. There is nothing of the sharp hunger that she had just trembled with—the emotions that rage under it all. There is nothing but the taste of the copper on her tongue and the scent of the kill still hanging thickly around her.

“There are so many words that are not beautiful,” she nearly drawls, feeling that familiar edge of hunger beneath the surface that rises again that is always just out of reach, even when her belly is full. “I can show them to you, if you would like,” a bloody smile as she angles her head. “A lesson, perhaps.”

The recklessness explodes within her until all she can see are stars.

well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars
and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours

[messiah]

messiah

Will he ever tire of magic?
How divine to watch her shift from feline to horse.

Still, the mouth drips with blood. Still, he can see that she is a hunter. But he feels no glimmer of fear, no stirring of nerves as she speaks. There at the center of him, something even darker stirs. There is a low hum in the network of those gilded veins when she purrs like a challenge. It is a fish hook in his belly, claws sunk into the meat of him, and he takes a step toward her.

She smiles, feral, and he follows suit. It is a dragon’s smile, all teeth. It belies the monster beneath the angelic appearance. How he wants to touch her. To taste the blood that still drips from her chin. It is a hot and wild thing that surges through him as he drags in a steadying breath. Finally, the nerves bristle. But not with trepidation. With something else entirely. Something electric.

“Show me,” he coos and takes another step toward her. “Teach me a lesson, won’t you?”

Part of him hopes that she might sink those teeth into the place where his pulse is the strongest. Part of him hopes that he might venture too close and she might show him the hunter she really is.

[sochi]

sochi

She is blind with things that she cannot name.

Will this be the first time that she throws herself into the hurricane for the sake of it?

Will it be the last?

She has no way of knowing—no way of predicting the way that her life will go. Once upon a time, she was just a simple girl, no more than a pawn traded between kingdoms. Then a woman bent underneath the crushing fates of Carnage and the fairies. Now, a woman who stands on her own—who has carved out a place for herself in this new world and still stands to watch it all crumble away like smoke.

There is no right and wrong, she thinks.

Nothing lasts forever—not even her.

So she doesn’t fight against the gravity of him and the darkness that bruises his eyes. She doesn’t try to pretend she doesn’t wonder what she will look like if his teeth shred her apart. Will she find meaning in the pain then? Will she find some answer for it? Her lips pull back to reveal the feline teeth, a low growl in the base of her throat as she takes another step toward him—predatory and as graceful as smoke.

Her eyes shift to his throat, to the pulse she can practically see beneath the skin. Will his taste different? Will she be different when she spills it? There is so much of her that she does not know yet, so many pieces of herself still splintered beneath the surface and she surges forward, colliding with him. The white of her teeth flash as she reaches for his neck, purposefully aiming for the muscle and not the vein.

“Hungry,” she growls the word, the first lesson, between her teeth.

She does not bother to explain what she is hungry for. She’s not sure she could.

well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars
and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours

[messiah]

messiah

He is young, even still.
Young in a way that he does not understand.
Young in a way that has nothing to do with the years he has lived.
(Do years live in shadow count? When they are not lived but merely survived?)

Young in a way that should make him wary.
And yet, he does not have it in him. Because he is a predator, too. Because he does not know that dragons should fear tigers. He does not know that dragons should fear anything at all.

They are so close now that he can smell the deer’s blood on her breath. It chases a shudder down the length of his spine just to smell it on her. He is young in a way that stops him from understanding that the twisting in his gut, the primal scream at the center of him, has absolutely nothing to do with the stench of death and everything to do with their proximity.

Her focus shifts and he is suddenly acutely aware of every golden inch of himself. The throat where her gaze lingers most of all. He can feel his own pulse as it carries lifeblood through him. He wonders if she can smell it. If she can taste it without even having to take it on her tongue.

Teach me a lesson, he’d said, and she wastes no time in lunging for him. He recoils but only just so. He stifles his want to flee, to fling himself out of her reach. He lets her sink her teeth into the meat of his neck. Lets her spill his blood. Lets her paint him red. And isn’t he just a sight? An angel bathed in his own blood.

Hungry, she growls, and he grins that dragon’s grin and exhales a shaky breath. He knows what it means to be hungry, certainly. But he says nothing, just pulls back his own lips to expose his own predator’s teeth, dips his head to skim them across the surface of her shoulder.

“And?” he asks then, draws away from her and licks his lips, “what else?”

[sochi]

SOCHI

She remembers what it was like to be young—to be foolish.

(In some ways, she still is, will perhaps be forever.)

So maybe she recognizes that in his eyes. Understands the shadow of innocence that manifests in an inability to be afraid although, she knows, that it is not always naivety that breeds such boundless courage but something deeper and darker instead. She could be merciful here, she knows. She could stay her hand and choose to talk instead but there is something dark inside of her too—something that doesn’t understand her life once more and seeks outlets in places she shouldn’t. Release in the blood flow.

He leans into the touch and her teeth find that his flesh and muscle give as she had thought they might.

It feels so painfully good to feel the copper flood over her tongue and she moans slightly, her silver eyes fluttering shut as she just savors the moment—that beautiful release when the skin breaks. She barely even notices when he brushes against her shoulder although her skin flinches lightly underneath the touch, a breath of acknowledge of touch. He draws away and she withdraws, her mouth painted crimson.

“Bored,” she says with a glimmer of something unreadable in her eyes, something that constricts her heart in her chest. Something that causes her pulse to roar until her vision nearly goes blurry on the edges.

This time, she doesn’t act first, although she knows exactly how she would sate this boredom.

How she would sate the things she does not say—confused, frustrated, anchorless.

But she waits instead, curious of his reaction.

she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed