"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
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
It was for the best that he had removed himself from polite society.
For the best that he had let them all go. Those who he only managed to hurt. Those who he disappointed. Those he chased and then drove away. It was the one thing in life that he was truly, deeply good at—the only thing that he had ever succeeded at. He was as messed up as anyone had ever guessed about him and he was tired of proving them right—so very tired of always being the thing that they knew him to be.
He was as much a failure of a father as he had been a son.
As much a fuck up of a friend as he had been a brother.
So he leaves. He follows the wolves into the mountains and tries to overcome the terrors that come every night when their howls splinter across the evening sky. He doesn’t, of course. It’s a fool’s errand to think that he can expose himself to the terror long enough that it becomes something else entirely. But he is nothing if not a fool and so he spends the years waking in a cold sweat, eyes ringed with white.
He spends the years not sleeping at all, some nights.
Until the loneliness eats at him and his heart aches for something other than the yipping of the things that had once been guardians and then killers and now reminders of everything he cannot name.
Until he drives himself back down the mountain and out into the meadow.
His antlered head rises as the sun does and, for a moment, its light is caught between the proud prongs before he dips it down to the grass below. His belly is already full but it gives him something to do other than just sit here and wait for ghost to once again find him and claim him as its own.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
She is reminded over and over again why she is better off alone.
She is reminded over and over again that putting herself in the presence of others only spells out pain, for her and for everyone involved. And she tries to save them every single time, for a reason that she has not yet discerned. Has it ever worked in her favor? Has it ever done anything to lessen the weight in her chest, or cause the scales of good karma to tip in her favor?
She leaves every encounter more bitter than she had been before, her self-loathing a poison that she puts into her own bloodstream and lets it recirculate until she chokes on her own venom.
She sees him though, and she freezes.
She sees him and she is all at once caught in a riptide of fear and want—in hoping that his eyes might lift to hers, while simultaneously praying that he doesn’t see her and she could slip away unnoticed.
But in that moment where she wavers between what she is afraid of and what she hopes could come to be (because buried under all that fire and anger is a still stupidly hopeless girl) she makes a decision; a decision to chase any high that she can find, a decision to find any way to numb this pain that has made a home inside of her very bones.
He is a distraction, both welcome and unwelcome, and she walks towards him even though what little conscience she has left is screaming not to.
It shouldn’t be him. She is already warring with herself, pointing out all the reasons that she is going to regret this, because he is not someone that she wants to hurt, but there is a reason she chooses him—why it has to be him.
Because he can hurt her just as easily, if not worse, than she can hurt him.
“Brigade,” his name still tastes like sparks on her tongue, seeming to come alive in the red embers that flicker in her mane. She is different than when he last saw her, now made up of the living fire that has always lived in her veins. But her voice is the same, simmering and quiet, and through the flames there is a faint smile when she says, “It’s been a long time.”
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
Their encounter had been so brief, but he had never forgotten.
Perhaps because she more than any had seen the wretched boy that he was beneath it all. Because she had been able to slip that poisonous knife between his ribs and how he had hated it because he had known that it was exactly what he had deserved. He could have died falling on that sword and bled out and it would have been exactly the ending that he needed—exactly the way that it should have always gone.
Except he had walked away relatively unscathed and been forced to live with himself every day.
He had gone on to cause more pain, more damage (and brought children into the world for god's sake), and there is no small part of him that blames her for letting it happen. She should have killed him like he knows that she wanted to. She should have been the one to end it all. She’s the only one who saw.
The only one who really knew just how terrible he was.
But she hadn’t and it takes a second for him to recognize her now that she walks up to him now. Her body now a living, breathing reminder of that which she has always been—untouchable, unfathomable. His chest aches with it when she speaks and her name clicks into place, making its way out before he can stop it. “Brinly,” he breathes, throat tightening with emotions he can’t name, can’t contain.
“Long enough for you to set yourself on fire,” he notes, nodding toward the summer that coats her and brightens her eyes—a dangerous kind of beauty, he thinks, before he banishes the thought entirely.
“Have you finally come to give me the end I deserve?” his voice sounds rough with disuse, the words difficult to form and barely unpeeling from his swollen tongue. “Or are you just passing through?”
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
She exhales a short laugh at his comment, a wry sort of smile twisting through the flames on her lips. “I have always been on fire, you just couldn’t see it.” She had warned him, she was sure of it; had warned him not to touch her, but she wasn't sure if he had understood why. Her appearance back then had been plain and unassuming, just a simple bay girl with smoldering eyes and a tongue that was too sharp. Their encounter had been charged with so much anger at themselves as well as each other that it would not surprise her if he had taken the warning as an insult—that she was telling him that she did not want him, specifically, to touch her— rather than understanding she was only trying to protect him.
The possibility of a misunderstanding had haunted her in the days following their interaction, but in the end it had not mattered, because their paths did not seem destined to ever cross again. Which was for the best, she had told herself. Even if somewhere beneath the poison they tried so hard to sink into each other there was an echo of want, it was an impossible, unattainable thing—she would never be something that he, or anyone else, could hold onto, and it was easier to let herself pretend she preferred it that way.
“Just passing through, but depending on how this goes my plans could change,” the forced lightness to her tone only serves to strengthen the tightening in her chest, amplifying the feeling that something is trying to pry it open. She isn’t sure why she had thought she could coerce a facade of casual indifference in front of him, and she thinks if it weren’t for the glowing flames that flickered across her face he would be able to see right through. Perhaps he still can.
Her firelit eyes remain focused on his face, wishing that he didn’t look just as she remembered; wishing that maybe her memory had painted him in a better light, that seeing him again would show her he was not something she would have wanted anyway.
The bitterness that blooms across her tongue when she is forced to recognize that he is unchanged and still something she could never have is undeniable, and it shows in the tight set of her jaw and the way her dark eyes glint with a resolved hardness.
“How have you been?” the question should have been a casual one, but instead the words are sharp in a way that is almost accusatory, as if she is daring him to admit that he is fine. Daring him to offer her the knife to cut herself, to have to hear him say that his life is perfect while hers has done nothing but fall apart, and maybe then it will be easier to hate him.
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
Brigade was no stranger to tense encounters, but he had never been able to pinpoint exactly what had started the anger with the two of them. Were they simply two mirrors who couldn’t escape the truths that the other showed? Were they too eager to slip poison onto the other’s tongue? It was one of the mysteries that haunted him, chasing his every step, and it does not get easier now, standing before her like this.
He doesn’t hide the way that he appraises her, his stormy gaze cutting across her—taking note of the heat that blooms on her flesh. A muscle jumps in his jaw and he swallows, but doesn’t say anything else in regard to the way she looks. To the impossible beauty of a flame that could burn you down.
Would it be purifying?
Or simply pain?
Would he know the difference?
“How have I been?” he asks, incredulous, and he doesn’t bother to hide the pained amusement. How they are pretending that they are friends—that they were anything but knives angled toward one another’s throat. He laughs bitterly and shakes his head but doesn’t drive here away yet—doesn’t run. “I was dead for a while,” he says, dropping the bomb with little ceremony.
He wasn’t going to start pretending now that he had any kind of tact.
“But I’m obviously not now, so that’s always a plus.” His voice is dry, like kindling just waiting to set fire and he almost baits her—just wanting her to prove that he is just as as despicable as ever.
“What of you, Brinly? How have you been?”
His eyes crackle to life like a thunderstorm nestled deep in the clouds, and he waits.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
Her firelit eyes snap to his face when he says that he had been dead, and she is not sure which irritates her more: the casual way it is spoken, or the unsettled feeling that rises up in her chest at the idea that he could have been dead and she would have never known. “What do you mean you were dead?” Her face is mostly unreadable, much of her expression masked by the flicker of flames, but the mixed emotions in her voice cannot be mistaken—the way a note of concern rises above what she tries to pass off as an indifferent kind of confusion, as if what he is saying is boring but she is forcing herself to play nice and pretend to be interested.
But there is only so much that she can pretend, only so long that she can keep this apathetic shield in front of her.
For all the firefight exchanged between the two of them, she did not hate him—she had never hated him.
She buried herself under his skin because knew that was the closest she could ever get, but she did not hate him.
She hated the way she had looked at him the first time she met him and instantly was drawn to him in a way she could not name. She hated how in that first instant, before either of them spoke, her mind had churned through every possibility and every wrong outcome; how that cruel voice that lived in her head had reminded her there was nothing to be found here and to stop looking for things not meant for her.
She hated so many things about herself and about the world, but he is not one of them.
“I’m glad you’re not still dead,” she says, and though her tone is even and unwavering, her eyes catch and hold his for just a moment too long. She feels that familiar heat crawl up her neck and that same impossible feeling in her chest, and she clenches her teeth before purposely diverting her gaze to something indistinguishable in the distance. “I have been painfully alive this entire time,” she answers him, and she does nothing to hide the bitterness that poisons her tone. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
His existence has always incited the most interesting responses in others. Those who seem infuriated that he would die—whether because they cannot believe a world so stubborn it could kill even him or frustrated that they were not the one to shove the knife in him, he could never be sure—and those who are incredulous that he would be so bitter about it. Not sad. Not angry. Just bitter that it had happened. That it had not stuck. That death followed him and nipped at his heels and left him this broken, jagged thing.
He had not bravely fought death off; he had walked into it.
He had not bravely scarified himself; he had given up.
Brigade has to live with these shortcomings constantly, and he feels them now like burrs in his side as he stares at her. As her expression flickers and fades, unreadable and untouchable as she has always been. “I mean that I ceased to exist,” he deadpans and he feels skin flinch along his spine, a shudder that races down it—the only sign that he is uncomfortable with this conversation, even though he had brought it up.
“Even death did not want me for long though,” the bitterness is acute and his smile is tight, the muscles working in his jaw. He shakes his head, the tangled matts of his mane sticking to his thick neck and framing the face that could be handsome if it were not so stern, so angry. “I do not blame it.”
A shrug and a roll of his shoulder as he watches her from beneath his forelock.
“You are perhaps the only person to be happy for it,” he lies, because it’s easier to think that then focus on those who would potentially be relieved. His sister. His parents. Those he has pushed away over the years.
“I’m glad you have been alive though,” he admits, and he is surprised by the confession. Surprised by the way that his voice softens a little. He frowns without thinking, curious at what prompted him to say such a thing, and he does his best to cover up with a short laugh. “Painful as it might be.”
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
He speaks of his death so casually, and that in itself seems to further stoke whatever unrest is brewing inside of her.
Because she has to bite back the urge to argue against the bitterness she senses in his voice when he says not even death had wanted him; has to rein in the instinct to tell him that could not be—is not—true. She has nothing to hold her word against, after all, because what has she done that would lead him to ever believe that she thinks otherwise? She used him as the fuel to her fire, she coaxed that anger and self-loathing out of him because there was something cathartic in seeing what she despised about herself staring back at her, knowing that it lived in someone else and not just her.
Misery truly loved company and neither of them were lacking in that department, but something she has never been able to figure out is why he is so unhappy.
She finds herself staring at him, closer than she has before. She looks at him the same way she has seen others look at her, as if they are trying to peel back the layers and find the root of her anger like it is some great mystery when to her it always seemed so glaringly obvious and now, now that it lived on her skin it was. It was almost a relief to be made of fire; for them to see her for what she is and to no longer have to spell it out for them and to not have to feel guilty if they tread too close and get burned.
Maybe he is on fire, too, and she is too blinded by her own flames to see it.
“It would have certainly been a shame for either of us to miss this opportunity for another joyous conversation,” she quips, adding with a sardonic smile that edges on the verge of being genuinely amused, “clearly it’s the reason we are both still alive.” She follows this with a small laugh, flames sparking across her lips at the faint exhale of breath. “Fate has an odd sense of humor.”
She lets the silence settle between them, though it is hardly a relaxed one. Her eyes are still tracing the hard angles of his face, recognizing how long he had to have worn the stony expression in order to appear as though he is carved of granite itself. With a tilt of her head she finally asks him the question that has been burning on her tongue, knowing that it might ignite another fight between them but also accepting that perhaps that was simply the way of them—their own chaotic version of destiny. “Why are you so angry?” It is asked in such a matter of fact way that she does not think he will miss the true nature of her question. That it is not an accusation, or not even one of concern. She asks because she thinks it is obvious to him by now why she is angry, and she cannot help but to think it has put him at an unfair advantage in their imaginary playing field.
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
She asks the same questions that he has asked himself over the years. The same thing that he has stared into unmoving waters and questioned. Why is he so angry? Why is he so bitter? He has answers—he has been alive and there is no shortage of things to make him miserable—but were they truly so bad? Did he truly have a reason to be this furious at the world? He has no answer. Nothing sensical to answer. He was born happy (he thinks, he can hardly remember) but every inconvenience has been something to further prove to him that this world does not deserve his humor, his joy, his heart. He does not deserve it either.
Staring at her now only reminds him of that fact and he wonders if that is why his chest hurts. Why every breath feels like a struggle, a vice grip around his lungs. He snorts and clenches his teeth but does not leave her—does not step away. He just stands, carved from granite, and watches summer dance over her.
“Our interactions have always been so pleasant,” he replies, and if he were more skilled, perhaps he would have interjected it with enough levity to make it believable, but he cannot. So the words fall leaden off his tongue instead and he’s left standing, awkward and furious as always. Her next question though causes his eyes to snap up and the storms to crackle to life in his grey eyes. He feels it brewing in his chest, threatening to unleash in him, like a leather strap ready to break under the smallest pressure.
He stares at her hard and takes the smallest step forward, a shift in his posture so that he’s leaning into her heat as if trying to get burned. “Why do you always ask the more infuriating questions?” he snarls and his eyes are over bright, his mouth pulled too tight, his brow furrowed. “Maybe I’m just angry because you’re around,” he snaps, all decorum and hope for a pleasant interaction draining from him. He ignores the way his pulse thrashes and his mind snarls around itself—ignores how the question echoes in him.
(Why? Why? Why?)
Instead he focuses on the feeling in his chest that expands further and further, draining through him. He focuses on the way it expands like a storm building and he swallows it down.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
Though it wasn’t her intention, she cannot be surprised when he responds by lashing out at her. It, regrettably, seemed to be the norm for them, and while there is still a part of her that wants to rise to meet his storm with one of her own, for once, she does not.
“I am not the source of your anger,” she responds tersely to his accusation, surprised at how level she keeps her voice despite the way the tension is still brewing beneath her skin. Her dark eyes are unusually calm, though not in a way that suggests she is in any way serene or passive, though she is sure he knows that by now. “No more than you could be the source for mine.”
She had not been born irascible; she had once been quiet and composed, and easily concealed any ill feelings she might have had. Where now she seemed to always be a spark away from becoming a wildfire, there had been a time when someone like Brigade would never have managed to aggravate her.
She is surprised to find remnants of that young girl amongst the ash and embers she is now; how instead of succumbing to the flames and the anger she manages to meet him with a hardened and almost impassive stare. “I don’t hate you, you know,” she says, even though he hadn’t asked and likely didn’t care. “But if you hate me you can just say so,” and while a few minutes ago she might have said this as a challenge or a dare to see how far she could push him there is instead only a dull kind of indifference, as if she has already resigned herself to the truth. He doesn't have a reason to hate her, not a real one, but she couldn't blame him if he found one.
She cannot control the flames that flicker across her skin, but it is as if they have begun to extinguish themselves all the same as she closes herself off, shuttering herself out of reach of his sure to be scathing reply.
