01-08-2023, 04:33 PM
feel around until you find where your heart went --
He’s angry, and where once the bitterness in his stare might have caused her to wilt, she finds herself instead staring back, unwavering. Maybe it’s the restlessness that she cannot shake—it wouldn't be the first time she had behaved somewhat recklessly simply because she was bored—or perhaps it is the darkness that surges all at once in her veins, but either way, she does not flinch at the venom in his voice. The strange shadows that are thrown across her face from the dark of the forest and the amber glow of her halo makes it difficult to read her expression, but she is sure that he would be able to read that, for once, she does not seem to react to his barbs.
She appraises him with a different eye now, studying him in an almost detached kind of way, and is surprised by the urge to use her empathy to wrest his emotions from him. She has never been able to decipher where the serrated edges of his words come from—does he truly hate her, or does he hate what might have been if their fates had been just slightly different? She had marveled at this, too, after all, that their lives were so intertwined, and yet they fell apart each time the wind shifted, unable to withstand the smallest of storms.
She used to think that he had to have loved her, at least in some capacity; she is accustomed to men that do not know how to handle their emotions, is used to violent displays meant to disguise something that they do not wish to acknowledge.
But it has been years now of interactions just like this, where he acts as though he’d rather see anyone else in the world other than her, and she is beginning to accept that she misread him.
It should sting to have him look at and speak to her this way, but the darkness that had burrowed itself inside of her in the void has begun its ascent towards the surface, seething beneath her skin, tired of being held captive. “Please try to contain your excitement, it’s overwhelming,” the shadow-wrapped words come before she can stop them, and though there is a flicker of surprise in her nearly black eyes at her own shortness it quickly melts away, replaced by the same eerie calm as before.
The temptation to peel back the layers until she finds the core of his anger sits like a stone on her tongue, weighted and metallic, making it difficult to ignore. But she has never been the kind to use any of her powers against someone else, and even with the darkness whispering sweetly in her ear, she pushes the desire aside. “Everywhere is flooded, there aren’t many places to go,” she says, her tone not as sharp as before, but instead almost exasperated. She can longer tell if it’s the darkness making her irritable, or the fact that she feels as though she has been defending her right to exist in the same space as him for years, but there is something wearing thin inside of her, ready to snap.
But the last of his words that he spits at her seems to break through the darkened veil that she felt trapped behind, and a frown softens her face. “I don’t remember us ever saying anything to each other. I don’t remember our last meeting at all.” She has never had her memory toyed with before—not that she knows of—and so she does not suspect him of this. The hollow place that she feels in her mind she attributes instead to being in the void. “But if it went anything like all of our other conversations, I suppose it wasn’t good.”
-- r y a t a h
@Ashhal