[private] you cannot quit me so quickly, brigade

[brigade]

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

He’s thought of her often—of the girl who seemed to hunger for death. It had infuriated him, mostly because it was easier to think of his own recklessness than it was to see it reflected back to him in the face of such an innocent, delicate face. It hadn’t made sense how she had so callously flung herself into danger at every moment’s notice. Whether it was stepping out onto the ice or into the storm.

So he thinks it is fitting that it was he, instead, who had been the one to meet his end.

He who, after all of his lecturing, had been the one with his throat ripped out.

He sighs when he sees her walking toward the river, her step nearly timid even though he can see the want that laces through her in the same movement—as though she could ever fully erase the desire to have the stones buried in her chest. Without thinking, he moves forward toward her, tucking his wings over his back and watching her with his stormy gaze, mouth pulled tight. “Still haven’t lost that horrible instinct of yours, I see,” his voice is dry, hoarse on the edges as he always went just too long without talking.

Rolling his eyes a little, he leans down to take a drink from the water that rises up to lap at them both, his throat cooling with it as he swallows. Without glancing back, he pulls his antlered head up and stares at the river—remembers what it was like to have it pull him under in the afterlife. “If you have to go, I can confidently say that drowning isn’t the way to do it,” a laugh with little humor follows.

“Although, I can’t say that I would have picked the wolves myself either.”

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

BRIGADE