"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
He thinks about how someone could be so beautiful while brimming with sorrow, so full it spills over the sides. He wonders if that is why he finds Despoina beautiful; why she is irresistible. He could try to drain her and never reach the bottom, he is sure of it, but what a sick, twisted thought that is to have. To be delighted at finding someone so endlessly broken, and instead of wanting to fix her, he is secretly hoping that it never happens.
It was why he tried to stay away. He sought others when seeking relief for all his urges – to sleep with, to feed off, to attack. He thinks of Breckin and the young girl in the forest, and if he allows himself, he feels guilty, but not the same as if he did those things to Despoina.
He didn’t want to use her. He didn’t want her to be someone he sought out only when he was hungry or tired of being alone.
And yet here he is, a shadow rolling through the trees, searching for her. Somewhere inside of him, a heart still beats, and that is the only thing that sets him apart from the shadows themselves. Because that heart of his still feels, it still feeds emotion and empathy into a mind that could easily be lost.
He finds her, and his heart squeezes, and at first, he just watches her, silent. He is undetectable like this, save for the glow of his eyes. He does not wait for her to turn around, and instead, the smoke of his voice unfurls, snaking until it reaches her, “Despoina.”
She thinks of him often. Constantly. He becomes the beat of her pulse until she cannot think around it. She wonders at the depthless look of his eyes. The shadows that consumed him. The way that it had nearly consumed her—even from so far away. It reaches greedy fingers for her even in the depths of her dreams and she wakes with hunger pangs, dying for something she had never even consumed before.
It makes no sense, but that does not stem the flow of the need.
The desperate, all-consuming need.
It is only by chance that she walked the forest today as herself and not the hound, and when she finally does hear his voice, she feels a flood of relief. She is not ready to share that piece of herself yet. Not ready to show him all the parts of her that she herself is not yet ready to confront. The shadows of her soul.
At first, she thinks it may be a figment of her imagination. Just a breath of chance that she conjures the sound of his voice, but when her eyes lift and she sees him, she knows that it’s not her imagination.
He is real.
For a second, she says nothing. Just stands there with the breeze winding its way around her delicate legs, pulling her dark mane up around the curve of her jaw. If she could see herself, she might think that she looked pretty—but that would be impossible. Her head drops. She could never look that way.
“Torryn,” she hates herself for how sweet his name sounds.
She hates herself for how quickly she folds into the need.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
She is beautiful, just as he remembered. Her black eyes, framed by her dark mane and the striking iridescent blue – it makes the shadowy beats of his heart skip in his chest.
And it makes the guilt he has been so desperately fighting rise up like the sea inside of him; drowning, consuming.
He wonders what she would think of him if she knew. If she knew that there were parts of him that he could not control, parts of him so enveloped in darkness that no amount of light could ever chase it away. Parts of him that might hurt her, though he liked to think he would be incapable.
He had also thought himself incapable of attacking a young, relatively defenseless girl, but the shadows had proved him wrong on that front already.
She says his name, and it draws him forward, like a siren's song.
He cannot help the way his bright, faintly glowing eyes flicker across her face searchingly, across every delicate angle, and the subtle curve of her lips. “How have you been?” The question sounds so trivial because he knows she is so much more than small talk and social niceties. But he is afraid to dive too deep; afraid of what might happen if he lets himself think he could ever deserve or even have someone like her.
His red eyes hook into her until she can barely breathe, but she doesn’t run. She doesn’t slip into the shadows and run until he is just a memory behind her. Instead she stands still—so very still—and lets the darkness trace lazy fingers up her sides. She lets the shadows of him call out to her until she feels her self listing as though they are waves washing up the shores of her heart, as though she is a boat set adrift.
“I’ve been okay,” her voice is quiet, always so quiet, as though she is scared of what might happen if it gets loud enough. Would she shatter? Would she simply fall apart? She doesn’t know. She isn’t brave enough to try and find out. “Just…around.” It’s pathetic and she drops her back gaze as soon as the words leave her lips because she is too ashamed to look at him. Too ashamed to see if know hers for what she is.
Broken.
Alone.
Unwanted.
A shrug of her shoulder as though none of this bothers her. As though she doesn’t mind being alone, as though this life is something that she has pursued her entire life and it wasn’t thrust upon her. “What about you?” It feels lame and does nothing to speak to the entire galaxies that spin in her chest when she looks at him. When she looks at the supernatural, ethereal beauty of him. The endless power of it.
Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.
She shuts it and looks down at her feet again.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
He will never get tired of the softness of her voice. His mind has become such a loud, chaotic place that he relished anything quiet, anything that did not add to the cacophony. She was the safest thing he has found, but he was afraid of what would happen to her if he drew her too close. Even just looking at her from the space he kept between them, she was like a salve, soothing all the bruised, aching parts of him, and he realizes that will have to be enough.
He is afraid of what happens to those that are around him for too long.
He is afraid of damaging a soul that already seemed so fragile, and so perfect, and while he knew he could never protect her from everything, he also did not want to be the one inflicting the injury. Not when he could prevent it by simply leaving her alone.
“That's good,” he answers her, quiet, his eyes searching her face. Not sure if he believes her, but also understanding that there is safety in lying. “I've been...okay, too, I guess," he lies to her. And he thinks about leaving it there, thinks about not saddling her with his worries and his anxieties. But when he looks at her, at her downcast gaze, at the forelock that floats in front of her eyes (and he fights the urge to brush it away), he feels a sudden surge of trust in her.
“I made a mistake, I think,” he begins slowly, the shadows masking the worry on his face. "There was a woman that I met at the river not long ago.” He thinks of Breckin, he thinks of how she was beautiful too, in a way entirely different than Despoina. She was not the mistake – he could never consider her a mistake. The mistake was himself; the mistake of letting him think he could be normal, the mistake of not considering the consequences of his actions. “I think I'm going to be a father,” he finally blurts out, the words rushed and tumbled even though they remain swathed in darkness, “and I think I'm going to be really bad at it.”
She’s not safe though, and part of her wishes he knew it. Wishes he knew everything that lies under the surface of her—those dangerous epiphanies that crash against the corners of her mind. Would he still want to be around her if he knew that she brought death with her? That she was a breath away from hell’s door step? Her own mother didn’t even want her. She can’t imagine that someone like him would.
So she buries it even deeper.
She presses all of these pieces of herself under the current and holds it still.
Despoina focuses on the way that his voice makes her insides shatter and then pull back together. How he feels so real and yet so far apart. How the sound of his breathing is enough to invite her further into the undertow. She can almost catch the edge of the lie in his voice, but she is too naive, too sheltered from the truth of socialization to truly understand it. So she lets the unsteady feeling it gives her settle.
It’s what comes next that truly sets her adrift.
Her blood runs cold at his confession, at the way he talks to her of his escapades like she is a sister. There is a flush of jealousy, of anger, and her body bristles with the hellhound. It’s just a breath of time. The canine races through her. Turns her coat into the shaggy fur, hackles rising. Her black eyes go red and glowing, not unlike his own. Her teeth sharpen. She inhales sharply and it disappears as quickly as it had appeared, the ugly emotions going under lock and key, leaving her standing there quiet and subdued.
If he was looking away, he wouldn’t have even seen the manifestation of her hurt.
She breathes for a few moments, waiting until she is sure that she will trust the shaking in her voice, in the quaking of her heart. “That’s not true,” she breathes, mind racing. “She’s so lucky.”
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
He is treading uncharted territory, and it takes him a moment to recognize his mistake. He is not used to caring about anyone else, and while she had quickly found a place in his shadowy heart, he had not expected to even be an afterthought in hers. But when he sees the look that flickers across her beautiful face, sees the way emotion ripples like water across it, he feels his own chest tighten.
He realizes, a little too late, that his words had caused the pain – the way he so carelessly spoke of his actions in his attempt to alleviate his own stress.
He had unintentionally hurt her, and he glances away for a moment, his eyes closing.
He looks back, and he swears, for a moment, her eyes had been red.
He blinks, and she is again as he had always remembered her, the same intriguing black eyes in a strikingly beautiful face. Only now there is a different sadness to her, and he does not think he can forgive himself for realizing he had caused it. “It isn't like that, Despoina,” he begins, haltingly, and he takes a single step towards her. If it was at all possible for such harshly colored eyes to soften, his do, as he stares at her with all of his regret reflecting so plainly in them. “I don't...I'm not with her. And I don't want to be.”
His jaw sets as he looks away from her, staring hard at the ground before adding low and quiet, “I shouldn't have said anything. Forgive me.”
The sadness is such a constant companion that she almost does not notice it is there.
Until she shifts suddenly and the weight of it spears straight through her. Then the pain of it is so acute, so strong, that she can barely breathe around it. She is left trying to figure out how to survive with the saltwater rushing into her lungs, the ground once again ripped out from underneath her.
And really - what right does she have to this pain?
What right does she have to him at all?
They are nothing but friends, if you can even call them that. They are acquaintances more than anything. She has no right to claim the man before her, he who would call himself a monster. She has no right to this pain, to this jealousy, that courses through her veins, clinging to every surface that it can hold onto.
She shakes her delicate head.
“Please do not apologize to me.” There is something pleading in her tone. Something desperate as she tries to fight for normalcy, realizing how she has ruined this chance at friendship before her. She feels something like shame race through her, battling with her jealousy. Her face crumbles, Despoina completely unable to keep her feelings hidden away, unable to hide her shame and panic.
She takes a small step forward.
“Please, Torryn,” she nearly chokes on his name. “Tell me about her.” She hates thinking about who this woman is who carries his child, but she has to know. She does. “Tell me about your child.”
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
It settles on his tongue, melts like snow, and he despises himself for how sweet he finds it. Something inside of him starts to growl, the monster that had previously been slumbering placidly in its cage suddenly roused awake by the meal being dangled before it.
He quiets it with an internal snarl of his own, his eyes almost darkening at his attempt to subdue the feral part of him clawing to get out.
He shakes his head, the shadows of his mane billowing, and he forces himself to look at her sadness, and not taste it.
And that brings with it something else entirely. The guilt that threatens to crush him. The shame that will haunt him long after he leaves. That look on her face that will follow him for eternity.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he says honestly, his voice quiet even though it has grown coarse at the edges. “Her name is Breckin.” He doesn’t tell her that he had found her beautiful; he doesn’t tell her that just for that night he had let himself be entirely captivated, to not think of anything or anyone else. He knows, somehow, that those details would do nothing but hurt her further. “And I’ve never….I’ve never met our child.” He pauses with a humorless laugh, shaking his shadowed head. “Truthfully, I’m afraid. I’m afraid he might be like me. And I’m afraid that maybe he’s entirely normal and my presence will do more harm than good.”
He turns his eyes back to her, his lips pressed into a line. “Look at you, Despoina,.” the shadows begin to crawl into his voice, spite for himself growing inside his chest the longer he looks at her broken, bruised eyes. “Can you honestly say that you are better having met me?”
The conversation so quickly turns on itself, that it leaves her head spinning. She has never known what it is like to have a normal friendship—to have a normal anything. She can barely understand what it is that she feels for him except this bastardly hunger that rages in her chest, gnashing its teeth at the thought of him touching anyone else. All she knows is the insistent, painful need to reach out to him. The need to know what lies beneath the billowing smoke and darkness, the red eyes that pull her under completely.
“Breckin,” she forces herself to say the name.
Forces herself to whisper it.
It is like a dagger to the heart and the sharpness at which it feels to have it buried in her is more than she finds she can bear. Her breath comes whistling out and she instantly feels the shame of revealing so much of her pain to him. Of laying it before him. “Your child should be so lucky to be like you,” she whispers in her silvery voice, looking down because she cannot trust herself to meet his gaze. “Be so lucky.”
She wonders what their child would look like.
Realizes too late how desperately she wants to find out.
When he looks back up, his voice sounds harsh, to her at least, and she trembles slightly as though being admonished. It is the only thing that she knows how to feel—the only emotion she can comprehend.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I am so sorry.”
Of course he wishes they hadn’t met, she thinks. Of course.
“I didn’t mean to bother you.”
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
