"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
It is night, and he cannot sleep.
It is night and that sadness he was born with is tangled in his throat once more.
His breathing comes heavier than usual as he rises up onto his talons and forfeits his efforts at drifting off any time soon. Ghaul has always found it strange how something intangible can become such a weight on his ribs despite his growing strength. Each day he has been taller than before and yet his burden never seems to lighten or become any easier to carry. But luckily there is another who understands the shape of his worries.
He knows Draco’s outline well even when it is contorted by sleep but he wonders if his brother has managed to find rest either. The drake gently noses at his sibling’s shoulder and gives a soft huff to childishly demand his attention for a while. Ghaul steps back to give the elder boy some space and lifts his head to its normal posture. (Secretly, he finds some happiness in finally being taller than Draco, but he says nothing of it.)
“I cannot sleep. I keep thinking of Father again,” he mumbles somewhat shamefully. He knows that the other holds anger in his heart for their sudden abandonment but he has never not yet learned how to let his love turn bitter and sharp. Litotes remains a tender weakness in the recesses of his mind even when he thinks he’s come to accept that he’s gone.
“I keep thinking I’ve caught his scent, but when I track it he’s never there.”
Slowly, his wings unfurl and simply hang by his sides as he turns his head to search the blurs and outlines around them. There is only ever the same smears of red and white in a sea of greens and blues but he remains hopeful for whatever reason.
01-29-2020, 08:13 PM (This post was last modified: 01-29-2020, 08:16 PM by draco.)
draco
i've got a face of gold, i've got a heart of coal, but baby that's my cross to bear
To an omniscient with a bit of empathy, Draco and Ghaul might be the saddest pair of siblings. They, on occasion, exist in a limbo between when their father was and when their father wasn’t. Ghaul, having taken a liking to other adults, seems to adjust better; but Draco? Oh, Draco . . . how he harbors such bitterness so close to his heart. How he worships the skewed perspective it gifts him.
Still, even as Ghaul finds his own brand of adoration in Anaxarete, he finds an ache where his father once was. Draco sleeps but when his brother urges him awake, he senses something is different. This isn’t some late night mischief to be torn into or annoyed by, no—Ghaul is muted and distant. Draco blinks bleary eyes awake and lifts himself to peer at the large, mourning form of his brother.
He’s never there.
Draco lets that phrase spin around and around in his head. Litotes is never there, no matter how much the pair may long for him. It seems as if no amount of desire or magic will bring their shadowed father back. A frown curls Draco’s lips but a melancholic softness dims the typical cruel glow of his eyes.
It is an odd image, staring down a pair of ruthless and exhaustive men while they sit in their shame and sadness. Normally, Draco would spit at himself for being so weak, but sitting in this misery with family he considers an equal—the weight on his back lightens. They might not know what they carry—generations of mourning, anxiety, and indecisiveness—but they lean on each other to bear the weight nonetheless.
“I don’t think he’s coming back, Ghaul,” Draco murmurs, downturned eyes picking out dark pebbles in the Pangean clay. He gave up a long time ago, after one too many mistaken cremellos and lost scents. It was easier to grow bitter and mean. “But I look for him, too,” this more a whisper than the last, followed by turning his gaze up to Ghaul’s. “I wish he’d come back.” Draco rolls his shoulders in what he wants to be a noncommittal shrug, but looks more like a sign of defeat.
That gentility grows, just the tiniest bit, expanding his heart and lungs to enough to take a deep, peaceful breath. “We can look for him soon, or now, if you want. I haven’t really tried looking in Hyaline,” Draco offers, the ghost of a smile on his face. He turns his head to peer up at the moon, crimson eyes reflecting the blinding silver. “I don’t think he’s left Beqanna, I just . . . think he’s very good at hiding.”
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
Ghaul does not know how to be weak and vulnerable, most of the time, and it feels so foreign to show all those tender parts of himself. But he trusts Draco and he doesn’t mind it so much as he normally would. So it cuts him like a knife when his brother says that their father isn’t coming back. His pain shows in the way his brows furrow behind his glimmering horns, the frown that now dominates his lips as he hangs his head in defeat. He swallows hard. Some stubborn piece of him riots against the thought of every abandoning his hunt.
“Sometimes I think it’s my fault,” he admits in a quiet voice. He’s run through the facts a hundred times in his mind only to come up with the same answer: Litotes left because of him. He could not love the little monster and so he left rather than bearing the weight of that burden. Maybe it’s easier for him to breathe without Ghaul shadowing him and asking innumerous questions. Maybe existence is that much more enjoyable without your son piling little gifts of dead birds and rabbits at your feet.
“If he’s hiding, he doesn’t want us to find him. Where ever he is, it’s better to him than being here with us,” he thinks aloud, but his voice holds no embers of anger or bitterness. Instead his voice breaks and he begins the task of swallowing this jagged little pill. His father does not want him. In all the fever dreams he had while he was still cradled in Bible’s belly, he never foresaw any of this. Ghaul had no idea it would be this hard to walk the path of conquest. “If you ever go away, will you say goodbye first?”
And then, strangely enough, the stars along his horns begin to drip down his cheeks into little tears that fall from his jaw. They glitter until they hit the red clay dirt at their feet where they flicker, and die.
i've got a face of gold, i've got a heart of coal, but baby that's my cross to bear
A sore lump clogs up Draco’s throat. He is not sure he has ever felt the need to cry, even as a child. The demon has always leaned on his anger, choosing to lash out violently when he feels anything other than confidence and arrogance. Sometimes I think it’s my fault rings so loudly in his ears that his head begins to ache. Draco understands so completely that his back tightens with the weight of it.
It’s my fault, he thinks, though he would never say it.
It’s my fault because I couldn’t keep him around even when I understood more of what was going on. It’s my fault because I didn’t go after him immediately. It’s my fault because I allowed my resentment to push me into a bitter routine.
It’s my fucking fault.
But Draco doesn’t utter a single word, instead choosing to set dim crimson eyes on his draconic sibling. Dad would be pissed if he knew we were blaming ourselves, is his last thought before he pushes through the self-loathing to focus completely on Ghaul. Draco knows that logically this is their dad’s own fucked up solution to some small, fixable problem; but it does not soothe the ache. It does not soothe the burning question: Why was I not good enough for you to work through it?
It doesn’t matter, though. At least that is what the demon tells himself. It doesn’t matter and it never will, and Dad will probably be back around in a few years.
I’ll hate him more, then.
Draco chokes on his pain when he bursts, “Of course I would say goodbye, Ghaul, but I would never leave you or our home.” He knows to never say never. He knows Dad had said never plenty of times and still the pair ended up here. Broken. Violent. Clawing at some sense of relief and comfort that they can barely give each other.
“I love you, Ghaul,” Draco murmurs, saying every word carefully so as to not die on them. “You are blood of my blood. We will make Father regret missing us grow up. We’ll burn empires in his name.”
