i want to be the bullet that brings you to your knees; aela

[Skandar]

Like the prodigal son he is, Skandar finally returns.

He is not what he once had been. If anything, he is more. Perhaps he would be unrecognizable to most (as he so often is, with his constantly changing skin and the orphan that he so proudly claims to be), but there are a certain few that would find those burning eyes unmistakable.

The now-stallion is only shadow and blackened skin; he nearly seems without form, crawling atop the earth with heavy, downtrodden steps as if the earth of Pangea was attempting to pull him back into the crevice in which he belonged. But he has never belonged - not really - and so the earth does not give way but only groans as the appendages that could only be understood as hooves fall heavily upon the clay.

Darkness squirms around him, fidgeting and unruly. The black of night shrouds him further, making him appear a mere ghost across the barren landscape. He groans (it’s all he remembers, he thinks, for that is how they had spoken, how they had communicated) but no one responds. They are gone, burnt from the earth with the rising of the forbidden sun, vanquished by light and light alone. He, ever the outcast, remains, shriveling in the daylight and barely functioning beneath the silver light of the once barren moon.

In the midst of his black shape (an unrecognizable thing, shifting and attempting to become what the monsters were when he had been living amongst them), there are bold flashes of the galaxies that once beautifully adorned his navy flesh - oranges and blues pop and crack, trying to recreate what he truly is despite his attempt to remain the monster he had thought himself to be.

But those eyes - burning and searing red - are nearly unforgettable.

Skandar can feel the sunrise on the horizon. He clicks and groans, calling out to a family that is no longer there, finally hissing angrily as he slows his movement into a fissuring, shadowy stillness.

He pauses, breathless and sore and lost - forgotten.

Then, “Aela.”

skandar

@[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Aela - like Skandar - is not what she once was.

This statement could be true for most of Beqanna, since the sun had finally returned. There were some now terrified, some who barely slept through the night, and if Aela was quiet enough during her nocturnal strolls, sometimes the Echo of a nightmare would find her. Some still dreamed about having the monsters rip the flesh away from their bodies, or worse, rip apart those they loved while they stayed intact. Those dreams - some real, some distorted memories of the trauma left behind - always made her think of him.

Had he been ripped into nothing?

Had been torn apart so much that there was nothing left?

(No, she thinks. Not Skandar. Not the Dark God's son who had ichor flowing in his veins, that was marked for greatness by the glowing constellations on his ever-changing skin.)

She's never worried about another before. Her thoughts have often been about carefully crafted plans and schemes, goals for the future. These are things that she can aspire to. What can she do with the weighing thoughts of worry? The palomino has learned the bitter truth: nothing. It is something beyond her control and it does nothing but stir up her irritation. The only thing she could do was search for Skandar (not that she would ever admit that she had) and all those attempts looking for the skinwalker had turned up nothing about where he might be. Of if he was anywhere at all.

So a year had passed and then the start of another before the sun finally returned.

One dawn came and then another and then another, until finally one morning -

As Aela moved through the canyons towards a tucked-away cave near an Acacia grove, one morning revealed a shadow. The golden mare slowed her trek to watch as the shape swirled in a way that no regular shadow would. Pangea was home to the wild and fantastic and a horse never knew what they might find in the place that Carnage had crafted. (It was one of the reasons Aela was so fond of it.) But the way that the shadow creature moves brings back memories of things with too many teeth and too many eyes and too many legs. She had crossed a few of the monsters during the Eternal Darkness - as Aela has come across others such as Narcisus and Sabra - and the girl is prepared to fight when she stops.

But there is an (familiar) flash of something bright and bold. Orange and blue swirl around like galaxies against the shadow figure. There are memories there that it had once been something else. Something more. It has eyes that gleam brilliantly like a thousand suns and even if there is no discernible shape, Aela knows it. She presses a memory back toward him - the solid shape that Skandar often took. Her delicate ears flick back as she concentrates and brazenly steps towards the hazy thing, shaping a word into a name, forcing him out into the light.

"@[Skandar]."

[Skandar]

He knows he is no longer among them; no longer pressed into the darkness that once soiled each sacred part of Beqanna. He is alone - once again - but this time, it feels different. There is a rawness that aches, a confusion that fizzles across his burning skin as the realization of his withdrawal from the shadows become clear to him. The young stallion shudders, his body warping between solid and mere darkness, as if he could not decide the form in which he should take. That indiscernible sound - otherworldly, though strangely reminiscent of the creatures that once roamed freely - is loosed from his lips again (painful, frustrated, agonized) and Skandar is sure he is on the brink of collapse. He cannot bring himself into his natural form, especially when daylight sizzles against him and burns brightly against the dark violet of his eyelids.

He knows he must, lest he be lost amongst the shadow forever.

A low hiss comes from the strange shape that is Skandar, twisting and turning angrily in whatever form he can muster - some terrifying mix of muscle and sinew and uncanny darkness.

Like the breaking of a tidal wave, there is a sudden coolness that presses to him like a balm; a memory that he immediately recognizes. He clings to it, helpless and shapeless. Those familiar eyes burn more intensely, laying eerily to rest on a figure that it can finally see. He holds her gaze, hovering in this in-between, hesitating - unsure.

She speaks his name - calling him forth - and the life that once was now starts to resurface.

Shadow flutters and clicks (familiarly so, @[Aela] would notice), much like feathers against one another. The wisps of shadow shudder and then fall still, melting into deep cobalt strewn with brilliant orange and violet. The intensity of his eyes never change, never wavering from hers.

Though he is solid - Skandar through and through - there is a wildness about him that wasn’t there before. The stallion snorts sharply, navy lips rippling into a feral snarl as another guttural sound reverberates in his chest. No action accompanies the sound, however, though his eyes do nothing to hide the fact that they are roving each part of her matured body.

The sun burns, he realizes. He is uncomfortable beneath it’s blazing heat, unused to its intensity. “Not here.” comes the gravel of his voice, dry and unused. Breaking his stare, he turns from Aela to head to the canyons where the mouths of dark caves would shelter him far better.

skandar

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

She had thought @[Skandar] beautiful before. Aela had never told him, but there hadn't been the words back then. The palomino had refused to speak. Her stammer would have ruined the illusion. She had known that she was the perfect image; slight and lovely and curved. But that beauty had just been another fact, just another skill that Aela could sharpen and hone in their world that almost always had claws laying in wait somewhere.

It seemed pointless to comment on something that was fact.

But when he steps from the shadows - when he comes from the writhing mass of darkness - Aela realizes just how much she has forgotten. Even if the memory she used was strong enough to force him into one shape - even if she shared a picture with him now of how he looked before - it is nothing to what he is now. He has always been beautiful because Carnage - who made Pangea - could make nothing less than perfection, she thinks.

There is a ferocity to him that has never been there before. And it is that, that captures her immediate attention. And as she looks at him, Aela is struck by how his terror and beauty are much the same thing. One couldn't exist without the other. It was like winter without its bitter chill; an angry storm without lightning strikes. A predator without its teeth or claws. A night without the moon or the stars.

His fiery gaze burns right through her and she can't stand it.

So she doesn't.

Aela goes to move and Skandar takes the first step. Not here, he says and her delicate ears flatten into the fine silk of her pale mane. Did he know that she had been searching for him? That she had traveled as far the as Isle, for any sight or shape of him? She had scoured miles of Beqanna for a trace of him and when she finally finds him, he tells her not here?

Before she can say anything, he has turned towards the canyons. Is it the sunlight, she wonders? The striped mare has never been good at following others and in the past, it had been her who had taken the lead with Skandar. Who had shared with him her plans and her ideas, who had lead him here, to Pangea. And now he dared to tell her where to go?

Knowing that if she spoke now, her emotions would betray her. So when they eventually stop at the mouth of one the caves and they are away from the glaring sun, Aela lifts her head and fixes those blue eyes on him. There is a soft glow emanating from her striped legs but it is her fury - at having him so close? That he had finally returned? That he had decided to take them to the mouth of this cave? - that burns brighter from her mind, those thousand suns that have blazed from his eyes and the stars that refuse to dim on his galaxy skin are directed blindingly into his thoughts.

[Skandar]

Skandar sees her anger immediately. He feels it seep into his skin and press heavily into his bones and perhaps a year or two ago, it would have made him smile and then - of course - he would bend to her wishes, unable to see the sheer ferocity on such a beautiful face. Beautiful, he thinks mildly (though his thoughts torrent like the sea, waxing and waning), finding that it had been a long while since his eyes were able to rest on something he found beautiful. For a moment his eyes show this - not softening but deepening, fixated and terrible.

He doesn’t think about what she has done in his absence. She had been the one to order him into the darkened world and he obeyed; nothing else exists beyond that, only the atrocities he bore witness to and took part in himself.

Then, like clockwork, the stallion steps back into the world with little struggle. Her obvious displeasure does nothing to stop him from finding the shadows of the caverns. His steps are determined and fluid, the sound of his hooves on the clay somehow grounding him and bringing him back into his own body each step at a time. Inwardly, however, the young stallion’s mind is chaotic; darkness still splatters his thoughts, fading in and out, attempting to become what he had once been for so long. He swallows hard, listening fiercely to his own footsteps and the sound of Aela’s, focusing his attention on the things at are (and not the things that were, or will be). Perhaps Aela would even begin to notice the tremors within his galaxy-strewn muscles - a bizarre twist beneath the surface, unwarranted and ominous, as the monster-version of himself desperately tries to rip free.

The coolness of the cavern releases a weight from the stallion’s shoulders. He visibly relaxes, inhaling deeply of the cave’s dampness, nearly melting into its embrace. Skandar sighs audibly before turning to face Aela, those same burning eyes clicking thoughtlessly to the burning blue that has become so familiar. His gaze flickers downwards to the pulsing glow of the golden stripes; an act he has seen before and he briefly wonders if perhaps he should be worried far more than he currently is to be in her presence.

There is more beneath the surface of her glowing skin and piercing eyes - he feels it in the very thoughts she shares with him, those memories that sear into his mind and leave him feeling somewhat dizzy. A familiar feeling, but one that he had long forgotten.

“You said my name,” he manages to remind her (and himself) in a disgruntled murmur, his voice graveled and rough.

“I thought maybe you had forgotten me.”

A smirk - barely visible but there - finds his violet lips. Perhaps it forms to hide the truth behind his statement, that even in the darkest depths of his absence he had thought of her and was left to face the fact that he would be just a memory to her. Nothing more.

He wants to hear her say it again, but even he knows not to continue to prod at a spitting viper.

skandar

@[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

A year ago, Skandar hadn't been here.

And before that, things had certainly been different. Aela gave the orders and Skandar followed them. And now, everything is different. Skandar is here and he walks across the Pangean clay (proud, assured, arrogant) leading her. Aela stares a line of fire at his back, hoping that he feels the way her blue eyes bore into his skin, wishing that they could burn him the way that his had her. Her thoughts focus on other things: keeping the light around her slender legs from erupting (a sure sign of her imperious temper), making sure that she didn't immediately turn into a blaze to burn them both.

Not yet, anyway.

While she attempts to keep control of her volatile emotions (and to keep them from showing), it doesn't take long for her to notice the way that Skandar's skin dances. There are ripples of shadow, disrupting his star-marked hide and that takes the edge off her anger. What was happening? Was he trying to shift into something else? It was like something was beneath the surface of his skin, attempting to claw its way to freedom. As they move into one of Pangea's caverns, it becomes harder to see, and her momentary concern moves towards looking at the navy-eyed stallion.

His voice comes out rough and graveled, while hers comes as smooth as silk, the result of hours practicing, Aela's determination, and Straia's Magic. "I did," she replies, murmuring it but there is no competition between Aela and the soft sounds of the cave surrounding them. Her blazed head lifts and her blue eyes narrow slightly, staring down the skinwalker. She wants to be angry with him. It would be so much easier to be furious with him.

"Forget you, @[Skandar]?" Aela says with a slight scoff. Like him, there is no softening such a defined face. Not when it is full of ambition and foresight. But something in her expression changes at the small smile he gives and the palomino tilts her pretty head, feeling her own coy smile coming in reply. "I should think the same of you," she says and then takes another step towards him. Her mind is full of memories - an accusation and a reminder for Skandar - as she replays their first meeting, that delightful game they played as they both discovered exactly how terrifying he could become. Another memory of Straia attempting to change Pangea and being swallowed, a price of her ambition and a warning to all. That dark time next to the husk of a burnt tree, still daring to aspire anyway, as they spilled each other's blood.

Her blue eyes linger there, when she comes close enough, to the part of Skandar's throat that he had offered her that day.

Tentatively, she reaches for it, wondering what it might feel like not make him bleed but beg for something else. It's a heady thought, one that gives her pause and so she moves her gaze upward to meet his navy eyes. "I have news," she whispers instead.

[Skandar]

She is angry at his absence and angry at his presence.

He wonders if she knows he would let that anger burn him into nothingness if she decided that it would be so.

But he says nothing, does nothing. Even when she steps towards him, disbelief in her melodic voice (an unfamiliar sound in the humid air, luscious and flowing) as she heightens herself, gazing down at him with something like scrutiny.  Even then, he merely watches her, silent and listening; that has been what he’s done for years in the dark, how the monsters hunted. But in his silence, he is poised, ready, and waiting - as if they were the young children they used to be in the forest alighting the world on fire with their dastardly hopes and dismal dreams.

Only Aela would recognize that same fire simmering in his irises and even now, he sees the embers pulsing in hers.

Each memory she brings to him is bright and bold; forceful and relentless, solemn and purposeful reminders of where she has led them (led him) so far. He is aware of this, and how it is always she that puts everything into motion. He would not have returned to her if she had not. 

He snorts gruffly in response to the flash of memories, that same warped movement of his skin rippling across both shoulders and fluttering to his haunches. Her gaze lingers hungrily at his throat and he lets her, his own calculating stare sweeping over her studiously, noting each difference between the girl he had left behind and the woman that stands before him now. She reaches for him (a hesitant gesture, slow and methodical) and Skandar can feel his eyes instinctively glowing, the discernable sound of heat building in his irises now a humming threat. 

“You have made sure I cannot forget you,” comes the deep sound of his voice, low and sliding like a hiss through his teeth. A confession, maybe, but moreso a truth.

The violent glow of red in his eyes dies with Aela’s failure to move further, especially when her eyes drift from his jugular and rest sharply on his. He remains still as stone, save for the subtle twitch of his lips as the breath of her whisper just barely brushes the shimmering skin of his throat.

“Do I have to rip it from you?” Skandar growls, but remains unmoving. “Tell me.”

skandar

@[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

That is her dilemma when it comes to Skandar.

When he is this close, she can feel the fire simmering beneath his star-marked skin. She can feel all his rage and his violence; she is all-too-aware of the storms broiling within him and it always lights something in her. He has been in the Darkness and Aela can sense that, too.

Because when he comes this close, she is aware that part of her had gone dark with him. And now, now - suddenly @[Skandar] is here and he is bringing so much to light. He is making her aware of how much she had dimmed over their time apart - that he had been, perhaps, the very reason for it - and she resents him.

She resents him taking it away and she resents him for bringing it back.

It is an obvious, glaring truth go Aela. As obvious to her as the way that she tilts her head up to him, moving away from his throat and letting her blue eyes level with the skinwalker. This admission - coming from anybody else - would have pleased Aela and she would have found a way to twist and toy with it. For anyone that would have said that they could not forget Aela - whose every lovely curve is a trap meant to entice and ensnare - she might have smiled and continued to spin a web that she is trying weave across Beqanna.

Anybody else might have been a pawn; but this is not anybody else.

This is Skandar and she could no more forget him than he could forget her.

Her breath ghosts along his skin - haunts along constellations and galaxies - but she does not move any closer. It had always seemed like an unspoken rule between them - Skandar who knew that he was not to touch Aela - but now it feels like Aela who knows not to touch Skandar. Like some part of her knows that touch him would be too damn them both.

That to touch him would be the end of them before they even got started.

"Do you think you could?" she challenges the larger horse, turning her head ever so slightly so that she could look up at him. His skin shimmers as her pulse starts to race. Aela extends her lovely neck and offers Skandar a chance at what he had once offered her. "Go ahead," she murmurs as she looks ahead, "rip me apart."

[Skandar]

He finds it hard to focus, his burning gaze going in and out as he follows her gaze; he’s wary yet unyielding, which is so unlike his years spent in the darkness. The way he acts with her is muscle memory from their youth, a war-hungry soldier looking for some kind of outlet for all his rage (and his insignificance) when she met him with a purpose, giving him the opportunity for more than he could ever dream of. Things that he hadn’t wanted until she had come along, guided him and directed him, wielded him into the weapon he is now.

Skandar would never forget it.

Perhaps that is why he may never find the strength within him to kill her. It would be easy; he could have done it countless times before now - in the meadow by encasing her in lava, in Pangea where the burning tree would watch his own eyes incinerate the cavity in her chest. He could do it now, with a subtle blink of his eye, splice her in two or become those monsters that she had been so eager to sacrifice him to and quite literally rip her apart.

The stallion does none of those things, despite how rampantly and lusciously the thoughts run through his mind.

Instead, there is a twitch of his deep navy lips into a scowl and if he had been in any other shape, a growl would have loosed from his throat. Skandar feels tension stretch across his spine while heat simultaneously brews in his stomach. He thinks about answering her for only a breath, for when his mouth opens to speak, fangs have replaced the bluntness of his equine teeth, and (with something instinctual and terrifying) he snaps his mouth around the thickness of her exposed throat.

The fangs of the beasts he had lived with do well to quickly puncture the rich copper of her neck. The warmth of her blood (and her smell, and her utter closeness) brings the ultraviolet red glow to his eyes as he bites down further to increase the flow, unsure if he could find the strength to release her from his grip.

Almost immediately (perhaps she has just enough time to register what has happened), Skandar releases her with a toss of his head as if to throw her from him, skittering backward from her with glowing red eyes. Her blood drips from his mouth, bright red and watery, staining his chest. The light in his eyes begin to dim as he watches her wound, licking his lips.

“Why do you ask me questions you already know the answer to?” Of course he could rip her into shreds - but the real question to ask is this: would he? When Skandar finally replies, he realizes for the first moment how his ribcage is heaving.

He wants more of her and he is not sure in what way - beneath him, or torn apart? - and perhaps the adrenaline pulsing through his veins gives him the idea to foolishly step towards her again. 

skandar

@[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Why does his rapacious stare catch her off-guard?

Aela watches him - studies @[Skandar] as she always has done - and fights the rising emotions in her that tell her this is different. When they had been young, the contrast in their world had been clean and stark: Aela gave the orders and Skandar followed them. What she might imagine, Skandar would become.

But she fights it - Aela who had battled the monsters of the Eclipse - wrestles with the emotions stirring in her golden chest.

What she has started to feel for the constellation-marked male (Skandar, who has been marked by their God for greatness) is not something she could have ever imagined. It is not a shape that Skandar can simply become; Aela would have him simply as he is - divine and lethal, a maker of himself and an ender of others - and so she scowls as she bears her throat for him. Will he end her? The palomino stretches out her elegant neck further, gives him every opportunity to kill her here and now.

There is a flash - the brilliant white of his fangs - and then there is searing pain.

It is because of that, that her knees beg to buckle. It is the way that he grips her throat that sends lightning striking down her spine. His eyes glow read and the palomino doesn't move, doesn't shudder away from him. In the blaze igniting between them, there is no room for fear (though Aela has never been afraid of Skandar). She has seen prey struggle before, has glimpsed the dying moments of someone fighting to live. If Aela were to jerk her head or to move abruptly now, he could kill her.

She knows, though, that this is not her ending.
So confident and assured that she still has more to do, she lets Skandar bury his fangs into her gilded skin.

This is not how she dies.

(Skandar is a different type of ending, one she can feel settling into each corner of her soul.)

The golden mare looks up, up, up - anywhere but Skandar until he releases her. There is blood seeping down her neck, staining his indigo mouth and dripping down to his broad chest. The conflict brews between them like a storm: Skandar who wonders if he would rip her apart, Aela who watches him because she senses the fight within him and herself. There is an image of another way that they might come together and even imagining that kind of touch from him elicits a fevered feeling that dawns up her golden neck.

"Because I do nothing unless I wish to," she tells him, banishing the image. A shadow clouds her lovely features as she stares brazenly up at him. They are like planets and gravity pulls her towards him; he takes a step towards her (heaving sides and all) and Aela matches him, never questioning who might be the spark and who might be the flame.

They always seem to light each other on fire.

Her thoughts continue to race. Not for anyone, she thinks, not even for you.
Placing the Dark God's son on a pedestal all his own.

"The Pampas," Aela finally says, allowing Skandar this small detail. The land was filled with wildflowers and quiet but perhaps he would sense the opportunity as she had, her blue eyes still fixed on his.