[private] can't you see my mind is a burning hell? || ledger [m]

[Ellyse]

Ellyse

I'm the only one who will walk across a fire for you.

it's only fear that makes you run, the demons that you're hiding from.

.  His anguish takes her mind to another time, another place – beneath the fading sunlight, with the hungry sea drawing her into its depths, pulsating around her with every rise and fall of the tide. The tumultuous ocean had so much meaning to her (Magnus, and some deep, dark piece of him that longed to drown to the very bottom of it, and Warrick, the one tethered to her – each an anchor to the other), and she can see him sliding beneath the salty brine of his own misery, as the anger slowly dissipates.

  In its place, heartbreak – a heartbreak she knew too well. Gently, her cheek touches his, feeling the warmth beneath the bare, scarred tissue – feeling him quiver beneath her touch. He was as fragile as she had been (and on the darkest, quietest nights, still was), wavering between ire and sorrow, as melancholy seeps through his pores and into the very marrow of his bones. His heartbreak is deeper, somehow – more raw. The heartbreak of a child longing for their father is much more powerful, and much more aching and tender than that of a love lost, and she is quiet, letting him seek comfort in her presence.

  Her mouth touches the jutting bone of his shoulder, observing the way it protrudes from his deep sienna skin – dehydrated, and wasting away. A shadow of what he had once been; what he was – buried deep within beneath all the pain. A soft whisper of a sigh traverses the length of his spine as her jawline rests along the ridge of his shoulder, nearly missing his forlorn murmur. It never passes.

  ”But it will,” she says quietly, a hum against his skin. His mouth is soon tucked within the crook of her neck, trailing along the muscled line of her chest, as her pale tresses drape over him – sheltering him from the falling, wayward sun. Her own heart has moved once more from its steady rhythm into a quickened tempo; she can feel him pressing against her (longing for contact – yearning for friction to remind him he is not alone; perhaps more) and she cannot bring herself to pull away from him.

  She is a broken thing, in her own way – aching to chase away the darkness in his eyes; a burning desire pooling somewhere in the pit of her belly. This is what I am, he mumbles, his words vibrating through her skin and jarring her already pounding heart.

  It will never change, he laments, defeat etched into every syllable, but she drapes her neck over his own, pulling him closer even as he tries to pull away from her. As the moon rises into the sky, bathing them in its celestial light, dancing across the gilded plane of their skin, she presses her mouth against the skin hidden beneath his flaxen tresses, tasting the salt of sun and sweat that lay across the fine hair there. ”It doesn’t have to be what you are,”  she mumbles softly. ”it can change, and it will pass. You have to want it to, and you don't have to face it alone.”

when all your promises are gone, I'm the only one.