"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
She is prepared to continue to fight him. With narrowed eyes and ears flattened to her skull, she readies every weapon her tongue might brandish, anything that might twist the embedded knife a little bit deeper. She does it, even though she feels no satisfaction in doing so. It is a brief and fleeting high, to realize that her barbed words are hitting their mark. She knows that later tonight, she will regret everything that she has said. She will regret the way this interaction went, and she will regret not knowing how to make herself softer and sweeter. If only she knew how not to be so bitter, and how to rid this poisonous contempt from her veins.
But she can feel the enraged flame begin to fade, dwindling back down to just an ember. “I can probably take a guess,” And even though there is still an edge to her voice, the hard lines around her eyes have softened almost imperceptibly. She looks away, hiding the remorse from her smoldering dark brown eyes. She had never meant to drag him down into the dirt, where she was. She was well-versed on low self-esteem, because it was all she has known ever since this curse befell her. She doesn’t know if her sharp tongue and toxic words succeed in hiding it, the way she wishes they did. Maybe he sees right through her, the way she sees through him.
A part of her hopes that he does.
She wants to step towards him again but she knows it is useless. What was the point? She can’t touch him, and he wouldn’t even want her to. As usual, she has effectively destroyed any chance at friendship, just as she always did. “No, it doesn’t matter.” Of course he would choose to be alone. Just as she did. Why wouldn’t he, when this was the way interactions went whenever you finally reached out?
She can feel her chest beginning to constrict, the guilt already settling in, and she clenches her jaw in an attempt to ward the regret and emotion from her voice when she says quietly, “I’m sorry. This is why I usually stay away.”
B R I N L Y burn until our lives become the embers
Maybe this entire interaction could have gone differently had they just approached it differently.
Maybe they would have found that middle ground and been amazed at the way they could understand each other so well. Maybe he would have found that the rhythm of her heart so perfectly matched his own and she would have traced the edges of his bruises until they mapped the borders of her own. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but it doesn’t matter because they were knives at the throat and poison on the tongue and whatever sweetness may have lived between them has long ago withered into nothing.
He turns his head slightly, the muscles in his jaw working just slightly.
When he looks back, he too has managed to control the blaze in his eye and he is more subdued. He has not completely lost the edge to his voice, but it is more internalized, his gaze no longer a weapon. “I try to stay away too,” he admits, even though that much is obvious. “I don’t think I ever learned how to just be normal,” and this confession is softer as his brow furrows, as he looks down to the ground.
He always loved that he had been raised by wolves.
But now—well, he couldn’t blame it on them, could he?
Brigade shakes the silken red of his mane out against his curved neck, his wings pressing heavily into his sides. “Maybe we can start over,” he offers, even though it feels like lead on his tongue, “or maybe it’s better if I just leave you alone and hope that the next soul you run into is a kinder one.”
There is something that flickers beneath his light grey eyes that looks like regret.
But before anyone could parse it out, it’s gone and his face is carved from stone again.
the world was on fire and no one could save me but you it's strange what desire will make foolish people do
The longer she stands there, staring at him with smoldering eyes, the more she begins to waver. Most of her anger has dissipated and turned into regret, and that feeling only became more deeply rooted when she saw that his own fury had subtly began to diminish. He had fed off of her coarse and curt nature, he had snapped back when she had lashed out first. If he had ran into someone quieter, someone easier to get along with, she is sure his interaction would have gone entirely different. She is so sure, now that she takes the time to study the handsome, unyielding lines of his face and the branching of antlers upon his brow, that a softer girl would have been able to coax a kinder part of him to the surface.
Instead, all she had done was pour gasoline on the fire.
“You seem normal to me,” she offers in a tone that has softened, in an attempt to not be so offensive. But the way she watches him with such uncertainty written so clearly across her auburn face, it is plain to see she thinks she has already burned whatever could have been there between them.
But when he offers her the chance to start over, she cannot hide the surprise that sparks across her face, or the hope that dares to glitter in her eyes. “I don’t want you to leave,” she says perhaps a bit too quickly when he suggests it, suddenly stepping forward as she says it. For a moment, she moves as if she is going to reach for him, and she comes within inches of nearly touching his neck before she suddenly recoils, remembering herself and the damage she would cause. She looks to the ground apologetically, her eyes closing for a moment as she steadies her racing thoughts. When she opens them, she finds his own light gray eyes, and most of her frigid guard is gone, and even though she is not completely soft, fragments of her brokenness become more evident. “I hate being alone. I just don’t feel like I have a choice, and it makes me act like...like this.” Cold and guarded, bitter and defensive, when the girl she had been born as had been nothing like this.
B R I N L Y burn until our lives become the embers
The fire that had so quickly flared between them quiets but he cannot help but feel that all they are left with is the ash of what could have been. It causes a sharp pain in his chest, a regret that slices clean through him, and he does his best to grit his teeth and set his jaw so that he does not need to focus on the way that it hurts and the ways that he doesn’t understand why it does. It makes no sense. It makes none—
He cuts his thoughts off, his features as stormy as his thoughts.
“Then you don’t know me,” he says with a bitter bite, turning his head to the side, taking in a deep breath. “Have you ever betrayed your family?” It is almost a relief to say the words out loud and he takes his time turning his gaze back to her. This time, the strain on his face is clear, the grief underneath it apparent as he fights against the churning waters. “Have you stood on the sidelines and watched as a war was waged on your home and did nothing to stop it? Did nothing to stand up to it?” He swallows the fury down.
“I am a coward,” he admits and suddenly all the venom he had poured on her earlier redirects to himself.
His eyes close and his wings by his side transform to the chestnut and ivory of his twin, the grief so palpable as he reminds himself that he still doesn’t know where his parents are—still doesn’t know if his sister is okay. Still doesn’t know and is too scared to find out. What if they are gone? What if they are—
Again, he cuts himself off, unwilling to entertain the possibility further.
The weight of it sits like a stone in his chest as he listens to her, watching as she reaches for him and doesn’t flinch. “I am not afraid of being burned,” he says suddenly and then instantly regrets it.
the world was on fire and no one could save me but you it's strange what desire will make foolish people do
She is foolish to even dare to hope that they could have been anything; even just friends. She was not made for friends, and by the way he fed so fiercely off her own anger, maybe he was not either. And maybe that is why they could have worked. Maybe they could have found comfort in their similar sharpness and hard angles, maybe there could have been an understanding between them that things would not always be soft and light, and in knowing that, they didn’t have to try to be anything other than what they are.
It was wishful thinking, for a girl that hadn’t allowed herself to wish or hope for anything in years, and she is reminded again why hope was for fools.
“You’re not a coward,” she says, all the while still resisting the urge to touch him. She can see the pain on his face now, she can see that all of his anger is born from hurt and self-loathing, just like hers. She can see the pain that she harbors in her chest so clearly in his eyes, can hear it in his voice, and the empathy that she feels is so strong it almost breaks her. But she can’t touch him. “The last thing that comes to my mind when I look at you, is that you’re a coward.” As if he would believe anything that she had to say; as if he would trust the opinion of the girl that had been fighting with him moment’s before.
She drops back a little more, watching as his wings change again. Everything about him was a mystery, and even though she wanted so desperately to uncover it all, she realizes it will never happen. Some girls are not meant to get the boy; not girls like her, not girls that are made of fire and anger and bitterness. He says that he is not afraid of being burned, and it makes her eyes flicker like flames and latch onto his, and makes her breath catch in her throat when she whispers, “You should be.”
B R I N L Y burn until our lives become the embers
Her own thoughts could have been an echo of his own.
How often had he stalked the woods of Beqanna, reminding himself that he was simply not designed to be part of a relationship. He was not meant to connect with others and he certainly wasn’t meant to be loved. It was better if he simply kept to himself. It was better if he guarded others from himself, even if they didn’t understand why. There was no reason for them to know about the depths of his selfish heart, for them to understand just how greedy he could be—how he would gladly destroy something he loved.
Better that they don’t see the cowardice beneath it all.
Better that they don’t unpack the hurt and the anger and the million negative things that make him him.
But she doesn’t leave when he knows that she should. She remains stubbornly rooted. The same mare who had just minutes before been cutting him down to size now defending him against himself. He finds that he prefers the caustic side of her tongue and shuts his grey eyes against the words. It was too difficult to see her try to soothe him, to try and walk back the horrible things that he has done and hasn’t done.
“You have no idea,” he manages, voice thick, throat tight. He presses his lips together before he finally opens his eyes again, trying desperately to pull back on his mask, trying to keep his face impassive. But it falters when her eyes catch his, when her breath catches, and he hates himself—loathes himself.
He wants to reach out and touch her.
Selfishly wants to keep her close.
But looking at her face, so beautiful underneath the bitterness, he realizes he can’t. He shouldn’t. It stings and he is still for a second, fighting against the urge to simply defy her warnings and let himself burn. His mind whirls, wondering at how she must hate herself, at how she would hate him. “You’re right,” he finally manages and he takes a step back, dragging open the space between them again, even though everything within him says that he should be closer and not further away. “What’s the point in trying?”
It’s cruel and mostly aimed at himself as he looks way, biting the inside of his cheek.
When he looks back, his face is carved from granite once more.
the world was on fire and no one could save me but you it's strange what desire will make foolish people do
“You’re right, I don’t,” she agrees with him, her voice hardly above a whisper. She had lost contact with her family long ago, and she is sure none of them care where she is, or even noticed that she was gone. But the way that he is so broken over his family, and how he feels like he has wronged them, she knows that it is not the same.
Just another difference wedged between them, just another odd stacked against them.
She watches him with those broken and confused eyes, trying to understand how he can infuriate her and still draw her in. She can see glimpses of him shining through the cracks of his facade, and she wonders what would have happened if she had not jumped to the defense so quickly. But she remembers, then, as she always does, that it would not have mattered. If she had been kind, if something had managed to spark between them, she still could not have touched him. She would never be able to touch him, or anyone. She wavers inwardly between shutting down again, wanting to build her guard back up and drive him away, but also still clinging to some foolish hope that something could be salvaged.
But he is withdrawing, widening the gap between them, and even though he is only minding what she had warned, there is a disappointment that echoes in her dark brown eyes. It was selfish of her, she knows; selfish to want him to still want her even though he can’t have her, selfish to just want someone to express any sort of interest in her at all even though she could never, ever offer them anything in return. “Brigade,” his name is an ache on her tongue, and she doesn’t understand why it hurts to say it; he is not even hers to miss or want, and she is nothing, nothing to him. She doesn’t follow him as he retreats, even though she wants to. She can feel her anger beginning to flare again, she can feel the bitterness towards herself beginning to spread back into flames, but the hurt does not leave her eyes when she looks at him and says quietly, “If I could change it about myself, I would. If I could choose to not have to isolate myself to keep from hurting anyone that might try and touch me, I would.” She shakes her head, her eyes dropping as her raven-black forelock cascades in front of her vision, defeat riding every syllable of her voice. “But I can’t.”
B R I N L Y burn until our lives become the embers
This is exactly why he should know better than to try and find companionship. He has ruined everything that this might have been, he realizes, studying her face, and instead of making her feel better, he has only found every reason why she should feel worse. Self-loathing erupts in his chest when he sees the regret and the defeat in her eyes and thick in her voice and he wants to correct her. He wants to tell her that it’s not her, that it’s him. That he somehow finds a way to poison every interaction, but the words don’t come.
Instead he is quiet, sullen, muscles drawing furrows on his jaw as he tries to think.
But it doesn’t matter because nothing comes.
No matter what he says or how he feels, it won’t change the fact that he has shattered this moment between them and he still wouldn’t be able to touch her—even if he hadn’t. There is a wall that lives between them that he would never be able to surmount; there is a distance that he could never bridge.
Wouldn’t it be better for them both if he never tried?
What good would it do if he forced it and nothing happened?
“There’s no point in wishing,” he says and there’s more grit in his voice than he would have imagined, more anger than he would have wanted. “It’s probably for the best,” he says and, even knowing that there were so many ways that it could be interpreted, he doesn’t try and clarify. Doesn’t try and tell her that it’s for the best because she shouldn’t want someone like him touching someone like her. She shouldn’t want to have someone like him near; she may burn, but he didn’t know how to do anything but destroy.
He takes a step back.
“This has been,” he starts and then his voice dies off. For a second, there is amusement that flashes across his handsome face, transforming his features, but it’s gone before he draws his next breath.
“Goodbye, Brinly.”
And then, without waiting, he turns and runs back into the shadows.
the world was on fire and no one could save me but you it's strange what desire will make foolish people do
