[private] don't close the coffin yet; ryatah

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

Has he ever cared this much over one interaction?

Has it ever mattered to him at all, truly?

He thinks back to what he had with Twinge and it was real—he knows that it was. He would not have gone to drown by her side had it been anything less. But it was different than this. They had been two fighters who came together, neither becoming more vulnerable in the joining. They had remained guarded. He had remained promiscuous. When they died, he had not hesitated to come back without her.

So why does this feel different?

The weight of it is difficult to breathe around and he is reminded in each moment why he had always avoided this kind of weight in the first place. He had never been the kind to be romantic. He had never known how to soften for someone else, how to put themselves first, how to truly sacrifice.

And when she comes close, when she asks to come home, he nearly breaks down.

“Please,” he asks, his voice nearly hoarse. The word sounds foreign on his tongue and there is a chance that he nearly follows it up with some biting remark, but he feels stripped bare in this moment and nothing comes to him. Instead he takes a step forward and instead of sinking teeth into her flesh or tasting the coppery liquid as it falls down her shoulder, he just pulls her close to his empty, echoing chest.

There is silence for a moment as he holds her there, as he feels both the relief of having her against him and the alienness of the tender moment, before he whispers into her mane.

“It wasn’t home without you.”

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING