09-12-2021, 08:31 PM
“You can want it, but the decision is mine to make.” She tells him quietly. But the raggedness is not something she was expecting, not something she is sure she can withstand for any length of time when she knows there is little she would not do for this man. It is why when she reaches out to touch him, that she uses the ability she lost in the change. Healing, except that it is something different, something darker. She isn’t even sure if any of this raggedness in him is physical, but if it is she takes it for herself without even a word of warning. She is a hypocrite, of course, to make claims about things that are her choice to make and then take one from him in the very next moment. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing that the dark has always been a part of me.”
Whether it is to remind him or to give him privacy in his grieving, she draws on the shadows beneath her skin until there is a wall of darkness around them on every side and theirs are the only eyes that will see anything. It is as inexplicably reflexive to protect him now as it was in the first moments she had stumbled across his dying body.
She is quiet listening to his story, to these truths like constellations that make up the night of him. There are moments where she knows there is shared pain in her patchwork face, moments where she is too slow to school her face and hide the sudden flashes of fury that glint like the edge of a blade inside her eyes. She wonders how a father like that could have any part in the creation of a man like this, thinks instead that his mother must be someone incredible. That Nashua is more than he ever allows himself to believe. “It’s hard for me to blame you for trying to make things better.” She tells him, and her strange, beautiful face is a frown and scowl and thing of obvious frustration. “You tell me this story and I don’t blame you for trying, I blame them for not trying.”
A breath, another frown, a pair of mismatched eyes that flash and glint like swordsteel. “The fact that you are not like them would have made you a target even without you trying to mend things.” She does not know why she is so certain of this, but her conviction is like steel even as frustration surges beneath the clash of color of her skin. And then it dissipates at the name of her mothers home. “I have family there too.” It is irrelevant and she does not know why the words drift like snowflakes from lips suddenly too frozen to frown or smile. “I could go there and make sure he stays safe.” She does not mention that although she has family there, a mother she loves desperately, Hyaline has never been home to her.
But Nashua is not quite finished with his truths, and when he speaks again she looks nowhere but into those beautiful, stormy eyes. There is a seed that plants itself inside her chest, a thing that his words water until it finally blooms and she recognizes it for what it is. Fear. She can clearly remember the moment he had shifted his skin to look identical to her. It had made her heart ache a little to watch him be so kind, to see her worry and turn it into something beautiful. But now she cannot look back on that memory without wondering what his kindness had cost him. He’d never said anything about his father then - understandable since she had been nothing more than a stranger.
He turns his face to her, and he is so close that she can see in the periphery where their halos overlap. Close enough to touch, and so she does. Her lips find the soft skin at the corner of his mouth, lingering for a moment but never shaping into a kiss. “When we met, you saw how it hurt me to be so different, and so you changed yourself to look like me.” She whispers, and her mouth wanders higher to trace the line of a bone in his cheek before the ache inside her chest begs her to stop. “Do you worry that it's part of you too?” She hates to ask it, hates that this question might wound him. But it feels like something she needs to know, like a truth she needs to be able to look in the eyes.
They all go mad.
Whether it is to remind him or to give him privacy in his grieving, she draws on the shadows beneath her skin until there is a wall of darkness around them on every side and theirs are the only eyes that will see anything. It is as inexplicably reflexive to protect him now as it was in the first moments she had stumbled across his dying body.
She is quiet listening to his story, to these truths like constellations that make up the night of him. There are moments where she knows there is shared pain in her patchwork face, moments where she is too slow to school her face and hide the sudden flashes of fury that glint like the edge of a blade inside her eyes. She wonders how a father like that could have any part in the creation of a man like this, thinks instead that his mother must be someone incredible. That Nashua is more than he ever allows himself to believe. “It’s hard for me to blame you for trying to make things better.” She tells him, and her strange, beautiful face is a frown and scowl and thing of obvious frustration. “You tell me this story and I don’t blame you for trying, I blame them for not trying.”
A breath, another frown, a pair of mismatched eyes that flash and glint like swordsteel. “The fact that you are not like them would have made you a target even without you trying to mend things.” She does not know why she is so certain of this, but her conviction is like steel even as frustration surges beneath the clash of color of her skin. And then it dissipates at the name of her mothers home. “I have family there too.” It is irrelevant and she does not know why the words drift like snowflakes from lips suddenly too frozen to frown or smile. “I could go there and make sure he stays safe.” She does not mention that although she has family there, a mother she loves desperately, Hyaline has never been home to her.
But Nashua is not quite finished with his truths, and when he speaks again she looks nowhere but into those beautiful, stormy eyes. There is a seed that plants itself inside her chest, a thing that his words water until it finally blooms and she recognizes it for what it is. Fear. She can clearly remember the moment he had shifted his skin to look identical to her. It had made her heart ache a little to watch him be so kind, to see her worry and turn it into something beautiful. But now she cannot look back on that memory without wondering what his kindness had cost him. He’d never said anything about his father then - understandable since she had been nothing more than a stranger.
He turns his face to her, and he is so close that she can see in the periphery where their halos overlap. Close enough to touch, and so she does. Her lips find the soft skin at the corner of his mouth, lingering for a moment but never shaping into a kiss. “When we met, you saw how it hurt me to be so different, and so you changed yourself to look like me.” She whispers, and her mouth wanders higher to trace the line of a bone in his cheek before the ache inside her chest begs her to stop. “Do you worry that it's part of you too?” She hates to ask it, hates that this question might wound him. But it feels like something she needs to know, like a truth she needs to be able to look in the eyes.
They all go mad.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break