Feel the good cold stinging blood - Ajatar/Harmonia

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

“No.”
But he knows she could be – afraid, right now. If not of him, then of nothing. Fear for fear’s sake. Or of being alone; of being under her mother’s thumb forever; of becoming what she was destined to be – what she is afraid she is destined to be. His fear can be imprecise, or it can be pointed. He can find weak links and claw them loose, get to the meat underneath. Or, he can simply allow them free passage, unleashed and laying waste, letting the mind unwind itself. Her mind, it seems, is ripe.

In any other case, he’d be implored to unchain them in the face of such resistance; but there are a few special occasions in which he as found himself halted and compelled to hold back. She is the opposite of Sinew, when she was a little girl, Sinew had been bold (as unafraid of him as Ajatar is – they entice him, because they seem to mean it) but so had she been willing. He had let the fear feed on her, and she had fed on it, too. Excellent defenses. Now she is his… something. His yoke and his playground.

Ajatar is different. 
He cannot be certain he could peel that defiance back – Harmonia is a scarier thing, by far, than he is. He could try. He would love to try and change her mind, to make himself the boogeyman, because it is what he is good at. It is what he was made to be. But if he did, he could not be sure she would sup on it, as Sinew had. He could not be sure she would break, as many have. He could not be sure she would turn to him like an idol for worship, as dear Rapt had.

He could not be sure that she would not unleash a pox on him.
That is why he holds back, now. He does not fear her – truth be told, when one becomes so intimate with fear, it becomes hard to feel it as anything but a weapon or ally – but he feels his mortality close to his chest when near her.

“Of course you aren’t. Why would you be?” She speaks. Doubts herself, and it is beautiful and unfortunate all at once. “You are special, Ajatar. Your mother must have told you that, or…” he makes a soft tsking sounds, “you must have figured it out on your own by now. I would be surprised if you aren’t even stronger than you have revealed yourself to be.” He looks down on her with stern, dark eyes, “you are made to be feared, not to fear.” His voice is a mixture of encouragement, congratulations and a false sympathy he expects she will want to be consoled with.

“I am a monster. A crude one and I was not always as powerful as I am, now. But you?” He tries, tries so very hard to keep the bright fever from his lips, licking them again, “you are not monster, but divine. You could bring whole kingdoms to their knees. Ahh. The things you could do, to  those who have harmed you.” 
He never got to kill his mother. Time took her before he could.

(Come to me.)

POLLOCK
the gift giver