"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 tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He’d done his goddamned best to forget everything that has happened. Some days he can almost imagine he’s succeeding. But he’d never been any damned good at lying, even to himself. It’s easy to say what fucking bullshit it is. What isn’t so bloody easy is pummeling the stupid, dumb, idiotic fucking tendril of hope that had kindled somewhere deep in his chest.
And so, what has he done, like the absolute stand-up guy he is? He’d made damned well sure to avoid anywhere she might be. Not that she probably wanted anything to do with him at this point. But hell, he didn’t need her planting any more idiotic ideas in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake.
It’s stupid to imagine there’s anywhere she wouldn’t actually go of course. Still, here he is, trying to do exactly that. At the very least, it’d be amusing to imagine her trying to pick her way through the wretched, putrid mud he’s currently surrounded with.
On a lark, he’d decided to take a swim in the brackish waters of the pond feeding this particularly fragrant mud pit. It’d been a shitty idea. But then, he’s apparently full of those lately. He has half a mind to find a clean stretch of river. The other half is somewhat masochistically enjoying the stench and godawful fucking picture he must make. Whatever parts of him that might once have been white are now coated in a drying layer of green scum even as mud cakes his limbs and drags at his tail. Stunning, no doubt.
It isn’t until he starts feeling a little unsteady on his feet that he belatedly remembers why it’s not a great idea to swim in green water. Fucking algae.
For a minute, his world spins. When it stops, he finds his limbs had folded beneath him where he’d dropped unceremoniously in the mud, suctioning him cozily into the thick, sticky mud. Tugging half-heartedly at one leg, he sighs irritably before giving up. “Shit.”
She had tried to forget about everything that had happened, but it had proven impossible.
Usually, it was easy to move on from any kind of hurt, because she certainly wasn’t a stranger to it. She has been shattered and rebuilt, broken and remade, more times than she cared to remember. She had learned that tears never solved anything, that acknowledging the yawning chasm in her chest never actually healed it, and that no one else would ever mend her broken heart except for herself.
But, she could pretend. She could paint a smile and steel her heart, she could break herself on her own terms and not theirs.
Which is why she rarely told anyone anything. She fell into whatever part she was supposed to be playing, she didn’t look for anyone when they were gone, and she didn’t tell anyone with the ability to hurt her that she cared about them. Everything that had transpired in the cave had further cemented that idea, and though she couldn’t forget it – because the marks across her heart still felt fresh, not yet scarred – she had chosen to stop acknowledging it.
Of course, she hadn’t thought she would find him out here.
Not in this dark, deserted section of the river. Not so far away from everyone and everything, out here where the trees grew tall and thick along the banks, the limbs stretching partially over the water like a canopy. The river branches off and gathers in dark, muddy pools, and along the solid edge of the bank of one is where she walks.
If it weren’t for his voice she doesn’t think she would have recognized him, covered in mud and grime, but his swearing gives him away. She stops, standing along the edge, amber and glowing in the shadows of the trees. She almost turns to go, before he can see her, but before she gets the chance he looks towards her, and her eyes find his. “What are you doing?” There is a forced normalcy to her voice, and any other time she would have found this situation amusing. Instead she just watches him, her sable eyes lacking so much of the emotion that they usually held, because she is afraid that if she lets it back in again, she will lose all control of it.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Of all the fucking places he thought she might be, this was damned well not one of them. Hell, at first he half wonders whether he’d fallen asleep and was dreaming when he hears her familiar voice. Not that he’s the dreaming sort, but who the fuck knows what kind of hallucinations toxic algae might give a guy.
Blinking to clear his blurry vision, he squints at her vague figure. He snorts at the angelic mirage she makes. If he weren’t sane enough to know there is no way in hell he’d end up in heaven, one might’ve forgiven him if he had wondered.
“Be’er queshtion, whatth’ hell’re you doin’ here?” he asks, not realizing how badly his words are being slurred. Not that he’d ever been the very articulate sort anyway.
He doesn’t especially expect an answer as he snorts irritably again, though it comes out as more of a comically lolling raspberry. Abruptly trying to stand, he manages to rise about halfway before stumbling as he’s cut short by the sucking mud. Rather than the sharp, aggressive movement he’d intended, he finds himself lurching forward, wings flailing wildly, before flopping ass over chest right back into the mud.
Graceful as shit, no doubt.
“Fer fu’ssake,” he growls. He doesn’t bother trying to right himself. His efforts had only served to bring him just a few feet from her, so instead he slumps over, flat in the mud. One dark eye glares up at her, lips pressed into a mulish line despite his spectacularly failed attempt to get up and leave.
She watches him in a heavy kind of silence from her place on the bank, and the subtle tilt of her head, accompanied by her warm glow, could almost fool a stranger into believing in the halo over her head and the angelic drape of her wings. There are no parts of her that are innocent, anymore, but in this dim light with those large, impossibly black eyes full of confusion and the echoes of a hurt that refused to leave, she almost feels like she is. She has been hurt more times than she could possibly remember, no matter how hard she tries to pretend she hasn’t.
And maybe the mistake she had made with Ashhal was never keeping her guard quite as steadfast with him as she did everyone else. She would never be foolish enough to trust Carnage with every part of her, even though her reckless heart wanted to. She was cautious with Atrox, because she would never be able to shake the feeling of being a placeholder for someone that was likely never coming back.
But Ashhal had never been like either one of them. There was never an undertone of violence to their relationship, there was never the possibility that he could spill her blood all across the ground they stood on. And so maybe beneath all the broken and scarred parts of her he had found the few remaining threads of naivety that she had left, and she had dared to think there was something more to them besides lust and sex.
Of course, she had learned she was wrong.
It was tempting to walk away, to leave him there as he had left her. But revenge has never been her way, and so it is with a soft sigh that she gingerly steps towards him, using the aid of intangibility to move through the mud rather actually into it. She ignores his slurred words and whatever protests he might make, and gently touches her nose to his neck. It doesn’t take long for the tendrils of healing to reach him, even if she isn’t sure what, exactly, she is curing him of. Eventually she pulls from him, drawing her delicate face towards her chest and away from him, commenting in a tone that still feels too hollow and detached to truly be her as she retreats back to the bank, “Maybe now I can understand you when you swear at me.”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
TEXHe had learned a really long time ago that whatever fate had in store for him, it was never meant to be nice. And boy had it really fucking lived up to those expectations. So why she still bothers to take pity on him, he’s not sure. But if there’s anything Ashhal had learned by now, it sure as hell wouldn’t end well.
Not that he expected her to understand of course. In the end, she’d get to walk away. Or die. Who the fuck knows. And in the end, he’d be left here, an eternity of knowing for sure he was never actually good enough. Because there’s a whole hell of a lot of difference between knowing and suspecting.
Gods, he’s so fucking pathetic.
It’d always been easier to fall back on the anger. The one goddamned thing he could trust. Except today apparently. When she gingerly touches his filth-ridden skin, he can feel the sickness drain from him. And he should be pissed. Should get up and fly the hell out of here.
But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t even try to (even though he’s at least 95% sure he could now). Instead he closes his eyes. Closes them because without the anger, who the fuck is he really? Someone had once told him he couldn’t build an identity out of it, but hell if he hadn’t proved them wrong.
“You should’ve fucking left me to die,” he finally grumbles without opening his eyes. Honestly, he’s not even positive that she’s still there. Hell, maybe he’s talking to nothing but the wind and his own farce of an existence.
She watches him in thoughtful silence, half expecting him to get up and leave the moment he had the chance. At the very least she had expected him to wrench away beneath her touch, but he didn’t do either of these things. He was unpredictable and perplexing in ways she wasn’t used to, especially considering she had thought that she knew him.
That was a mistake she rarely made, too. She never assumes she knows anyone.
Thinking you knew someone led to dropping your guard, and dropping your guard always led to being hurt in ways that not even she enjoyed.
Silence stretches between them, thick and nearly tangible, and she wishes just for once she could be stronger than she is. She wishes she could dig up her infatuation with the dark and twist it until it melded into something real, until it could shape her tongue to leave marks that lasted long after she was gone. She wishes, just for this moment, that she might haunt someone the way that they haunt her, that maybe she could break open their chest with no intention of filling it.
She wishes she could walk away, wishes she could ignore him when he speaks, but of course she can’t.
So much of her light has been corrupted, and yet she is still the furthest thing from cruel.
“I would never do that,” is her soft reply, and most of the warmth has returned to her voice as she steps back towards him. With her head lowered she presses her lips to the top of his neck, and she rests there for several heartbeats, until she asks him in a voice that threatens to tremble with the hurt that has been coiling like a knot in her chest ever since that day in Nerine, “What did I do, Ashhal? Why do you act like you can’t stand me anymore?”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He's such a goddamned idiot. He can't even pretend otherwise right now. Of course she'd never leave him to die. And isn't that the exact fucking problem? Anyone else would have. After everything he'd done, the asshole he'd been, anyone else would've left ages ago, and been entirely justified in doing it.
And that's the idea. So much fucking easier to push everyone away rather than risk getting attached. Because in the end, they'd leave anyway. Whether it was because they died or finally realized he didn't improve with age, they'd inevitably leave. And he'd be left with nothing but the miserable reality of a yawning, empty future, knowing he would never fucking die. Not really.
And so what the hell does he do when she asks? He laughs, like the miserable asshole he is.
He shouldn't answer her. Should let her believe he thought it all some hilarious joke. But goddammit if his mouth doesn't run away from him like usual. "You didn't do a goddamned thing," he bites out, opening his eye to glare at her. "And that's the problem, isn't it? You should've told me to fuck off a century ago."
Abruptly he lurches upright, pulling himself to his feet, mud suctioning from him as he does so. But goddammit, she couldn't touch him like that. Not and expect him to actually do the right fucking thing for once in his life. "I'm the only one who was fucking stupid enough to believe it'd be enough."
“A century?” She echoes his statement with the smallest of smiles, one that is still edged with sorrow because he is acting so strangely and she feels it must be her fault. “Is that how long it’s been since the first time you tried to flirt with me?” She teases gently, a useless attempt to bring him back around, but there is an underlying heaviness to what she says. A century and so many lifetimes ago, when she was fresh and new to Beqanna and the valley, when her life orbited around Dhumin and there was little anyone could do to pull her from him. He had left and taken her gravity with him, was still keeping it locked away in the afterlife or wherever he had gone once the gates opened, and it’s hardly any surprise that she drifts the way that she does.
She has split herself into too many pieces, has tried to take parts of everyone else to put herself back together, and when they move on or she stops looking for them she is left half-stitched and just as aimless as before.
She wonders, though, why Ashhal cannot seem to see that he is someone that at one point had more pull than anyone.
That for a century she has found him or let him find her, that she has never refused him and has tried to build something out of what seemed to be nothing.
She takes a step back when he stands, her eyes no longer impassive but now watching him with all the unspoken things she cannot fathom into words. The last of his words still seem to echo, and it’s not so much what he is saying but the tone of his voice and the almost tangible anger that has her so confused. She is quiet for a long moment, simply watching him, before she breaks the heavy silence with the softness of her voice, “I asked you to stay in Nerine because I didn’t want you to leave.” Her gaze lowers towards the ground, her face hidden behind a tangled mess of forelock and the glow of her halo. “All you had to do was stay, and things could have been entirely different.”
