"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 want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
She had taken a step back, gratefully and yet, begrudgingly. Suddenly in the midst of everything, she had a new family, raising her child with the man who would become her best friend… but nothing more. He had saved her life, given her a child, and a new purpose. He had rescued her from the trees, and then…. Had chosen another. With a smile and sad eyes, he gave her a lingering kiss goodbye, and her heart, though it still thudded whenever he was near, had quieted to a dull roar while she watched him carry on with his life. And she with hers. They raised their daughter together. She had learned to be happy again. A quiet life for the formative years of her child’s life. Ceara. That wild thing that clung to her father like a ghost. She could barely keep a handle on the way the fiery girl ran through the islands, instead content to let Offspring have his influence over his child. Reagan was so used to being in charge of everything—controlling everything—that it was nice for her to take a step back and breathe. A vacation and a break that she has well deserved. But now it is time for her to resume her life, and to see what else it has in store for her. She has been through the ever growing list of changing kings. They are as fluid as the sea, the names clinging to the history of the world—a world she helped to build. She is at ease now, a peaceful look resting in her features as she turns calm eyes to the riotous volcano she has now learned to love. Her body lurches with expectation as she is made aware. She’d know him anywhere. Seeing nothing more than his shadow cast across the bluff, she sighs contentedly. “Hello, Stranger. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
You're looking at an absolute zero; I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.
As his dark and storming gaze searches the frothing tide, watching the waves hungrily pull at the rhyolite-laden shoreline, he is silent, contemplative – but there is no restlessness within his chest; no hesitance or apprehension. He is at ease, for the first time in a long time. No longer does he carry the burden of leading and caring for the many, and he is all the more rested for it – but still he cannot let the volcanic island go, and so he is often found in the heart of the island nearest to the plumes of billowing smoke, or along the steaming precipice overlooking the ravenous ocean. Lost to his own thought.
His immortality had escaped him – washed away with the tireless, ravenous tide, adrift at sea as the fervent and blistering inferno of the once flickering flame within him grew within the hearth of his chest. No longer could he cling to his youth – nearly two hundred years had come and gone, and at last, age had begun to set in, drawing subtle creases beneath the darkness of his crimson gaze, around the rim of his dark lips and along his jaw. He is no longer youthful and spry, and at last, his body matches his tired and weary soul.
His heart had been given to another once again, and yet – as always – it does not take long for him to doubt it; for him to doubt that anyone could truly love or know him. That anyone could see beyond the stoicism he feigned and the darkness that lay within his heart. Time had worn him down and stolen away any semblance of hope, and he began to wonder if he would ever find a way to chase away the shadow of his own doubt for an eternity and not simply for a day, for a week, for a couple of years. He is immersed deeply in his own thought when her voice rises above the churning sea below, crashing with ferocity against the jagged rock.
His scarlet gaze searches her own, as the corner of his mouth twitches with a faint smile.
”Away,” he murmurs thoughtfully, staring out yet again across the horizon, and not at the striking woman he had once coveted – at the woman he had shared the darkest part of himself with; the woman who bore him a daughter as reckless and as unruly and as beautiful as the roiling ocean that lay before him. ”though I think you already knew that. And where have you been keeping yourself?"
OFFSPRING
another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
“Away. Healing. It feels nice. To be whole again.”
She sighs, pulling closer to the body she knows so well. She rests against him contentedly, happily, breathing in his scent. There was something to be said for being in love with your best friend… To watch him with a daughter you both share. She was familiar with him in ways she had never before been familiar with anyone else. To be friends with someone that she had known in such an intimate way. It was freeing.
She looked out at the sea, not feeling a need to look into his eyes. Indeed, she had no need. She knew him by the beat of his heart. They both had a love of the waves, and it was a quiet moment that they both shared. Again, she was content. “I never imagined I could have been happy anywhere other than Taiga. But I have found my soul again. And I don’t think I have to tell you that you are largely responsible for that.”
Too much time has passed—too much water under the bridge. They were too old to be anything less than honest. And Reagan, in all her powerful glory, was aware that she tread in dangerous territory.
For once in her life, she did not care.
She wanted exactly one thing…. And it would not kill her if she never got it.
She would learn to be content with life just as it was.
Better to have him in her life as his friend and hurt… to not have him at all. At the end of the day, she still had her memories. They still had their daughter.
The summer months were always beautiful here in Tephra. The rich volcanic soil gave way to all manner of exotic plants, flowers, and fruits, and the air smelled intoxicating. It was a balm to her soul. It was the largest healing part of her that could put aside her past, and move on with who she was supposed to be.
The thing about immortality, is that she finds she is never finished. One day, she would like to find that her story comes to an end. But today is not that day.
“I just wanted to say…” She stumbles over her words, her eyes still looking out at the roiling ocean, their bodies pressed against each other in companionable quiet. “I just wanted to thank you for loving me. Even for that short while.”
You're looking at an absolute zero; I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.
”You deserve it,” he says quietly, as the deep rumbling baritone of his voice is lost to the sea. ”you deserve to heal, from all that has hurt you. Including me.”
He is all too aware of her anguish. He realized long ago that his heart was simply not meant for one – not because he was selfish, nor because he cared little for those he gave his heart to, but because his capacity for any depth of affection or devotion seemed shallow. Even as immortality slipped away from him, carving deep marks beneath his eyes and causing the tender marrow of his bones to dry and the cartilage of his joints to recede, he still feared loss. Every moment is stolen from the unforgiving grasp of time, and it would only be so long until time had grown tired of the constant back and forth of his pathetic, feeble heart, and end the misery.
He does not pull away when she presses closer to him. He should. (His mind wanders to Tantalize, to the love he shared with her, to the unborn son growing inside of her womb.) He still does not pull away. His heartbeat does not increase, nor does it pitter-patter in anticipation. Reagan had become more to him than sexual gratification; more to him than a brief tryst of passion beneath a setting sun. Her presence meant more to him, beyond any physical boundary. She had found her way into his heart, nestling into some small, fragmented corner. Her companionship meant much to him.
So much that he does not flinch. He does not move.
He does not want to hurt her, as he has done before –
He is tired of hurting the women who hold his heart.
None of them deserved the torment and suffering that came with it, and he did not deserve their affection – chaste or otherwise.
He can sense the quivering emotion in her voice, but still he does not move. His crimson eye roves across the roiling sea and over the dense, swaying grass to seek out her own gaze – emerald and glimmering (with unshed tears? He cannot tell in the waning light of day, despite the intensity of his vision – perhaps because he does not want to know).
”I will always love you,” he says softly, quietly. ”but you deserve more than what I can give to you, Reagan. I am old, and fading,”dying, he does not say. Is death not a constant plague? The moment a newborn colt inhales its first breath, it is dying – wasting away with each passing moment, with every coming year, until he is nothing but lifeless dust and bones, drifting away on a wayward breeze. ”and soon my time will come. My immortality is gone. Lost to the fire.”
A confession! A confession he has not shared with many. The darkness she had felt seared into her flesh that fateful night that their bodies had joined in fervent heat had taken his immortality from him, and instead, he is fire and nothing else. (He cannot help but to wonder if the darkness that had bled into that night, buried into the tight, hot canal of her womb had somehow created a darkness in the daughter conceived).
”The love that I have for you is different than any other. Beyond. I would only hurt you, as I have hurt all the rest. You cannot fix me,” he murmurs low to her, finally turning the broadness of his cheek to look her in the eye. ”no one can, and that is how it must be.”
OFFSPRING
another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.
12-07-2017, 02:01 AM (This post was last modified: 12-07-2017, 02:03 AM by Reagan.)
Reagan
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
He speaks to her in ways that she knows he does not speak to others. Open. Honest. Frank, and pragmatic.
Because with her he knew he had nothing to lose.
He speaks as though he forgets that she can read his mind. And yet he speaks anyway, because he has the respect for her to tell her to her face what he feels about her. What is on his mind. How many shadows had this man run from in his long time on the earth? How many shadows had he created?
She says nothing as he speaks to her, and one solitary tea drips down her cheek as she stares across the sea—she refuses to look at him, even as he pulls away his warm body from her side to try and look her in the eye. She had already known that he had given into the darkness... that his immortality had a price. She was losing him, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Even this was beyond her magic.
Finally, he quiets, his chest heaving as he finishes his confession—heavy words for what had started out as such an honest exchange of easy moments. Reagan turns her head to face him then, rotating her body behind her. The stain of her cheek is still there. She does not bother to try and wipe it away.
"I do not need to fix you," she says. Her voice is strong. There is no hesitation, no quavering. Clear as a silver bell, she speaks again. "And I do not need you to protect me. Least of all from yourself. You saved me once..." she sighs, her green eyes boring into his pupils. "But I am a strong woman. I have loved, and been loved before. But what we have..." Another sigh. "It's different. It's always been different. Don't you see? You can't hurt me, because I won't let you."
"Just give me the rest of the days you have left. No one deserves to die alone, or unloved. And I will love you for the rest of mine."
You're looking at an absolute zero; I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.
”I know that you are strong,” he says, with the ridge of his brow furrowed just so as the tear caresses the curve of her cheek, disappearing into the shadow of her jawline. ”stronger than most – but I have hurt you before, and inevitably, I will again.”
Time and again, he had been at the core of misery for so many, and for what?
He had pressed a thousand kisses into the flesh of many – always taking what was given to him, gripping skin with teeth and sowing his seed when the ache inside of his heart became too much; when he desired a distraction rooted in pheromones and raw, physical gratification. In another lifetime, he had a harem of his own – and though his heart always yearned for one, he could never resist temptation alone. It was never an issue of sexual necessity. It was created from a vast, untouchable void that had begun from his first breath and would only die with his last.
He would never be enough; he would never feel enough – for anyone.
He would never be content to simply be, because he – least of all!- deserved it.
His heart lurches inside of his chest, and he cannot suppress the angry knot stirring uncomfortable in the pit of his belly. She is pleading for him to give her some part of him, any part of him but she cannot see the devastation he could bring to her. She cannot see the emptiness inside of his gaze; the endless loneliness festering inside of a heart that cannot heal and will not heal. He cannot give her his heart – there is nothing to give. He could only draw her close, press heated kisses into the supple curves of her delicate skin and entice her to unravel beneath him, around him with each deep, sweeping thrust, but it would be empty, it would be meaningless.
The ache in his heart cannot meet with the longing in his groin; one drawing him closer to her and one pulling him away. He could covet her and take her for his own (she is practically begging him to, and he can sense it, and he is already intoxicated by it – lustful, pathetic creature that he is, he cannot deny the testosterone surging within his veins, despite his age).
He could, but he will not. It would not be filled with the soft, languishing kisses she deserved to have rained across the rounded curve of her hip. There would be no sweet words whispered; not even her name would cross his tongue – it would remain caught in his throat, unbidden, and she would be filled by him and yet emptier all the same.
”You cannot see what I can,” he utters finally, with finality. ”I deserve exactly that, and only that. I want you to find love, Reagan – find love,” he murmurs then, crimson meeting with startling emerald, with an intensity unmatched by any other. ”find a love that will nurture you and care for you and give you all that you deserve .. and let me go.”
OFFSPRING
another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.
12-07-2017, 02:22 PM (This post was last modified: 12-07-2017, 02:23 PM by Reagan.)
Reagan
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
It was then, for the first time, that Reagan found herself angry at Offspring. Salt air puffed away from her as she flared her nostrils and stepped even further away from him, trying to better look him in the eye. When that did not work, she used her magic to change herself. Make herself bigger, more imposing. She was old, but she still possessed the deep magic that made her a dangerous creature. She had never met her equal. Not really.
Not until she had met Offspring.
Offspring didn't give a fig about her powers. He knew she had them. Anyone who knew her—or knew of her—knew of the lady magician who once dwelled in the forests. Offspring looked at her as a woman, which she appreciated--it was one of the many reasons she had allowed herself to feel again after what had happened in Taiga. But it seemed to be, in that moment, that Offspring's distrust of himself, that he forgotten exactly WHAT Reagan was. Almost as if she was incomplete to him. A foolish child who did not know her own mind.
"How dare you..." her voice rumbled low, quavering with emotion as her eyes rolled like the waves that were thundering so close to where they were standing. "How dare you presume to tell me what you think I need, or what you think my emotions should be." She looks down, blinking. She sighs, and takes a step closer, slowly reverting back down to her natural form as she continues to speak. Her eyes soften, and once again, she is plain old Reagan. Rather unremarkable in her visage, but very much aware of her own being.
"I am no child. I have had passions of the flesh. It has burned me in ways that you cannot even imagine. You are not the only one who has hurts. I have buried children, and lovers. I am not some little girl in search of a passionate fling. I am far too old for that. Two Hundred years I have walked this earth. And I have only ever been sure of one thing."
You is the word she does not say.
"You can tell me what you think I need. And you can push me away. But nobody...." she stops here, stamping her hoof for emphasis of her next word, to make sure he is paying attention to her. "...nobody deserves to die alone. No matter what they've done in their lives."
I'm holding on; why is everything so heavy? Holding on; so much more than I can carry.
Unblinking, he watches as her anger rises, unimpressed by her physical show of strength - as if it meant anything at all. She could end him, he is all too aware – she is powerful, a force to be reckoned with, wielding a power he could never wholly fathom, but she is still the same soft and timid creature that had wept into the entanglement of his dread-locked mane. She is still the mother of his fiery, unwieldy daughter. She is still herself, even beneath the rage that has inevitably coiled within her chest, poured into a passionate display of height and prowess, and he cannot see anything but the gentle lover that had once carried his darkness with tenderness and care.
He is annoyed, scarlet-laced gaze boring into her own with a hardened stare – he is tired, frustrated, aching and worn; he does not have the patience to withstand her theatrics.
”Then do what you will! What do I care?” he utters sharply with a frigidity that is not at all characteristic of him – and his gaze is cast toward the roiling sea, where the unruly tide crashes into the jagged precipice with force. There is an anger of his own, an anger he cannot speak of, an anger that he does not understand, but beneath it there is raw emotion, though he dares not let it see the light of day. ”and for you to speak of being burned, as if I cannot imagine it – how dare you. You of all others know better.” He challenges, as a flicker of fire emerges along the deep slope of his spine, crawling along the ridged bone and into the entanglement of his unkempt tresses.
”I cannot give you what you seek. I am old, and one day, time will take me – as it has taken all the rest.” (and there is a part of him that desires it; a part of him that has always wanted Death – but there is a larger part of him that is uneasy with it, unsure of what would await him on the other side) ”You do not want me, Reagan – you want what I once was, and even that?” He breathes, the anger melting away as his shoulder is twisted away, while the broadness of his blackened, marred body is turned toward the heart of the island, as his legs carry him away from her. ”Even that, no one deserved.”
OFFSPRING
I keep dragging around what's bringing me down; If I just let go, I'd be set free.
Her heart was in her eyes as she watched him. She should have known that her theatrics should have no effect on him. At the end of the day, they were as they were. Everything was stripped away between them. He had never been a King. She had never been a Queen. They were just two creatures that had entangled up in each other. He had been a boy. And she had been a girl. They had known each other for a night--and it had created an exchange of souls that Reagan had never before encountered before.
She never had to be more than she was. A dumpy little grey mare, that was made beautiful by a pair of tired red eyes that wanted nothing more than the best for her. Eyes that wanted to see her happy, because he knew that his last days were coming. He was tired—and in pain. Oh, so much pain. It was a pain he did not want to share--a pain he did not want her to feel.
A pain he did not feel she deserved.
And so he took it all on his own. And in her selfishness, she had pushed him once too far. Her ears rotate as she becomes erect, her bright green eyes searching his face as he speaks to her in words that sounded to her like the thundrous crash of waves against a cliff. Her world was coming crashing down around her once more, and there was nothing more she wanted to do than to take him into her own, and hold him until she could make the hurt go away. But she knew that he would never allow that. He had never allowed her to feel hurt. It was not his way.
And so, as he steps away, the look of sadness, hurt, and anger crossing his face as he turns his shoulder to her—the first time he has ever done that too her--her world shatters into pieces at her feet. And her first real sobs at the realization that Offspring was dying hit her like a gigantic slap in the face. And she wished she could take it all back. She wished that she could undo the threads of time that had brought them all here. She would stop them. She would take it for him, fix him--make him whole.
But it was something she said she would never do.
Because she loved him as he was. And she always would.
And so, he carries himself away, amid echos of her sobbing, and in his mind, a quiet whisper of love is placed, and she hopes it would be something he thought about until they saw each other again.
I will want you long after you are gone. I will want you until the end of forever.
