Nestled in your hollow shoulder - Sinew

[Pollock]

He is a brutish creature. He is not stupid, but is navigated by a cruder thing that rationality. Instinct—base, grim, ghastly things; he is guided by paranoia and power, by violence and by sex.

He might one day excise Tarnished from his mind, bury him somewhere deeper than the sand and brine his bone no doubt live in now. It is a slow process, slow, deliberate and painful, an exorcism, really, of the ghost; and she will make it all the harder. On purpose and unwittingly. 
He shall pace and grunt and curse, thinking of ways to brand her beyond the whelps they creature. If Tarnished had scarred her, inside and out, Pollock would need to match that somehow.

Somehow.
Somehow.
Somehow, Sinew has him agitated.

He places it out of his mind, vows to cover her again soon; hips are surely where he  rests his weary mind.
(He’ll play one-upmanship with a dead man til the day he dies.)

He follows her words, down the long, knobbly legs to the split toes—those things he had fought for, and does not covet but gives now, freely. To Bruise, to Feast (to the eldest seed, a stranger, somewhere beyond the sea). They will do him good here, he knows well enough himself. He grunts, content (in his own way) to let them show themselves. 

(It is a relief, in fact, that they do not wield fear.
The more he makes, the more he digs his own grave.)

“You will not tell me,” he mutters, gravelly and calm.
She keeps cards to her breast, enjoys the secret she shares with her bairn. He understands that.

Feast and Famine. She has a sense of humor.

“I will allow them to prove themselves.” He’d give her that (that and more), “you two” he grunts, turning his eyes to Feast and then Famine, “stay out of everyone’s way.” They are (even the sick one) among the safest in this land, even if it seems nobody is safe with him;
Protection comes to him naturally, except, like everything else, it is a mutant of the sweet thing it could be. Possessive.
“I cannot watch you all the time and this world is scary.” His breath quickens, his head dropping to their level (though, they are getting on in height, themselves), “understand?” He exhales, locking eyes with the bigger boy, holds those similarly sable eyes. His lip twitches, a hydra rears in his gut—

They twitch and scream, pulling savagely against their shackles.
They do not like to be held back.

He sends them for her, gently tugging on the feral cord in her brain—Fear. He cannot always be sure what he elicits. Sometimes, it is clumsy and indiscriminate: Fear for fear’s sake. Sometimes it is the fear of death—often it is the fear of death; the fear of him; the fear or being alone. He can find those things and play with them.

He does not point it, now. He lets it be gentle, feeling it rebel in her mind, for her defenses are extraordinary.
Like a good mother, she takes the brunt of what he’d otherwise give to these boys.

“Leave,” he grunts at them.