"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
His grip tightens, that once delicate trace of her slender bones now becoming more forceful and strong. There is fear in her eyes (but not nearly enough) and with every second that passes he continues the trickle of water up her legs, encasing her. But even then, the fear in her eyes does not grow - instead, curiosity begins to blossom, sweet and gentle. He scoffs with a little shake of his head (disbelief, for such a fragile thing to be so bold in the heat of danger). “It’s as if you came into these woods for the purpose of dying.” It amuses him, despite the anger that had flushed across his face just moments before.
But it is back again in the briefest of breaths, hardening the planes of his face like a shadow. The intimacy she draws from his touch infuriates him, as if she were privy to such an exposed part of him. Maugrim’s face twists terribly as well as the darkest parts of his heart, confusion and bewilderment now blending with his rage. With a speed that is powered by his fury, the water encasing her right leg shoots upwards, splintering across her chest and racing to the curve of her throat, forcing her to look up at him. Meeting her gaze from beneath a furrowed brow, he holds her head tightly as his dark eyes stare furiously into hers. “You are a foolish girl,” he spits breathlessly.
He doesn’t answer her question and perhaps it is because speaking of it would only confirm her what she already had guessed. Yes, it is why he kills in the first place - forcing himself onto others who would never have touched him otherwise, gaining closeness and intimacy through the water in the only way he knew how. He instead shows this to her, all color and skin and blood draining from his form as he becomes completely liquified - an extension of the water itself.
Yet, even with all that rage, he still holds onto her.
And then she slips from him, shimmering into nothingness. He does not try to hide the surprise in his eyes as his pupils widen, darting back and forth as his liquid shape returns solid. The weight of the water that still imprisons her brings a silhouette for Maugrim to see, but all other shape is gone. Her invisibility slackens his force on her, but as she speaks again and attempts to move, the water snaps back into place, keeping her from touching it with her lips.
“It doesn’t matter, real or imaginary - you won’t escape me.” Maugrim tightens his grip around her throat, a morbid promise in his touch. “Do you really think there is a chance of you winning this game?”
He is too much like what she knows for her to be properly afraid of him. Too much like the dark of her own father, someone violent and corrosive, driven by emotion like this male is, even if neither of these men would ever admit it. Too much like the wild of her mother, unpredictable and untethered, ruled by the living storms inside her chest. There is something dark that drives him, something fueled by the fury she has unleashed inside him by simply being here, by wanting to know him. By staying when she should have left.
She knows she should be afraid, knows that this isn’t someone who bluffs. If he says he will kill her, then she can count on that.
Yet it is so hard, so impossibly hard not to feel drawn to the wild of what is familiar. The chaos she knows.
“Dying has no purpose.” She says, and there is nothing defiant in the gentleness of her starlight voice, nothing stubborn in the liquid warmth of those dark brown eyes. “And I very much don’t want to do it.” She isn’t sure why she tells him this, why this is a secret she shares with a man who would likely be more than happy to wield it against her, to weaponize the things that wound her. But it is too late to take it back, and when her dark eyes find his face again there is a new kind of wariness that shows just a hint of the brokenness she has learned to conceal so well behind gentle gazes and gentler smiles. If he were a man patient enough to study his prey, he would realize that she is the blue of sorrow, of bruises, of lonely ocean depths. He would know a glimpse of her heart, just a sliver of her soul.
But then he is a roil of anger, more wrathful than any ocean as he commands the water up her delicate body to seize her by the throat, by the chin and force her gaze to him. He needn’t do it though, needn’t force her when there was no where else she wanted to look but at the violence and fury of a face changed by the way she had reached for him through his water. Where his gaze is something that cleaves and simmers, hers is like the balm of cool starlight when she looks back up at him.
Then he dissolves, and finally, finally her heart is a symphony of racing fear that maybe he will disappear into the dark and she will never see him again, never know him.
“Wait,” she says, and her voice is a whisper that betrays this sudden ache inside her chest. But he hasn’t gone anywhere at all, and when she strains against the water to reach for him she finds that she is still locked firmly in place. Even stranger is the relief this brings her. She disappears, suddenly like the darkness that surrounds them, suddenly no more than a silhouette beneath his climbing water, and when she tries to reach out to touch the water again, she realizes why he holds her so tightly in place. “You don’t like it when I touch your water?” She asks, letting the camouflage fade from her skin again so that she is once more mottled blue and shining white. “Then I won’t do it again.” She promises, holding so impossibly still so that he’ll know she means it.
His grip tightens, and she cannot stop the gasp of fear startled out of her when it is suddenly harder to breath, harder to speak beneath the pressure of his fury. “I don’t want to win,” she says, and the words are rough and raw as she coughs on them, “and I’m not trying to escape you.” It’s too hard to breathe, too hard to speak, and so she lets her armor flare beneath the grip of his water until there is enough space to breathe again.
It is many long moments before her heartbeat has calmed enough to speak again, many long moments but her voice is still painfully raw and there are bruises of mistrust in the bottoms of her liquid eyes. “My name is Dark. Have I earned your name yet?”
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
He scoffs. “Perhaps no purpose for you,” he seethes through grinding teeth, the breath of his voice escaping through a thin veil. The lack of defiance in her statement brings his rage forth, tightening his grip on her with a terrible force (and a terrible need). “But it certainly brings joy to me.” Maugrim refuses to investigate further, refuses to search the depths of her sad blue eyes and to try to reveal the sorrow that has worn scars on her heart. He is unfeeling, cold, and selfish - and as uneasy as ever, shifting his weight from one side to the other, chuffing hurriedly.
Her cool eyes meet his and there is something like a hiss that leaves his parted lips, deliberate to elicit fear from her and only receiving a muted sadness, and acceptance of her fate and all that he may decide to do. She is like a lamb coming to the slaughter, passive and almost contrite, despite no wrongs. She is perfect, he thinks, to have labored at his side for so long; to accompany him so far into these depths and to remain unphased and unafraid. He snorts, those abysmal eyes sparking as another thought preens its way through his mind. Or she is far more than he can tell - something worthy of death and his will, something that begs for the end rather than to fight for her life.
The thought renders the Poseidon confused, trapped in some kind of stalemate that he cannot perceive. Unlike anything that he had come in contact with (neither a terrified victim nor a strong adversary), there is hesitancy in the way he stands before her, despite the darkness and rage that burns like fire in his gaze.
She calls to him as he filters into nothingness, becoming the very water that holds her close. He never disappeared - not really - and was closer than ever, gripped tight around her throat and her delicate ankles, always closer than she ever dreamed he could be. But even still she calls for him, her voice nearly whispering in the stagnant air of Sylva, desperate as it flutters to him. She clarifies and though he is not solid, the stallion grimaces. She is learning too much, discovering more of him than he ever intended and he needed it to stop. It is why he forces himself to press further onto her windpipe, to stop the words flowing from her mouth. It seems to be working as she sputters for her forgiveness and then the damned armor around her pushes him away just enough so that his strength is useless.
Not trying to escape him.
His water writhes, angry and fervent. Then she gives him her name as if knowing it would soften the anger in his heart and the rage that burns there. “And that is why you will die here with me, Dark.”
Without a thought (for if he were to think, he might hesitate), he liquifies himself once again and drops into the water with a sudden splash. The wall of water around her falls as well, but the tight pillar that holds her legs and throat only strengthens, tightening despite her armor’s space between them, and attempts to pull her into the water with him.
She has never considered what it would be like to die, never wondered what those final moments might feel like or how it would happen. If she had, she might’ve expected it to come at time’s hand. To have lived long and well, to die surrounded by family who loved her very much. It is likely both of her parents' faults. A mercenary for a father who wore violence not like armor as this poseidon does, but as a cleansing blade. If he knew she were here with a man like this one, Dovev would either kill him or be drowned beside his daughter. If Luster were here, then this poseidon would be the only one drowned.
But there is only Dark in this moment, only mottled blue and white, only sad eyes a shade of brown so light and warm they might be dyed with honey. And it is so hard to believe this violence in him, in the way the water writhes and churns, the way it wraps around her legs like fingers that threaten to pull her under. He is exactly the thing she was trying to find, exactly the wild and the ruin that her mother had allowed her to believe led to romance, led to love, led to this feeling of girlish hope fluttering wingless inside her chest.
“I don’t understand.” She admits, and that confusion on her delicate blue face is so gentle and so genuine, so unsure because he wants her to die and all she wants is to know him, to know his violence. To feel his teeth pressed against her throat and his lips over the white roaning patterns of her neck. “What good am I to you if I am dead?” Eyes dark like deep forests cast beneath the glow of starlight, wide and silent and aching.
He is gone then, from view at least, but she has the sense to realize he, much like the water that pulls at her now, is everywhere. She feels suddenly caught in a gravity she cannot explain, bound between the dullness of life and this thrill of death. But she is not ready to die, not ready to give up without knowing all there is for her in this world. “I can’t die yet.” She tells him, and her gentle voice is something made raw and aching by the way he clutches at her, by the way he crushes her into him.
Because that is what this is, isn’t it? If he is the water, then it is to him she is being pulled.
“I’ll go with you anywhere.” A promise, worlds bolder than the girl who speaks it, who whispers past a throat being crushed by someone who makes her feel, at once, alive. “But you’ll have to kill me later instead.” And then she does the thing she should not, makes the choice that would destroy both of her parents if only they knew, if only they were here to see what their ruined love had made her into.
She surrenders. With one last breath she releases her hold on the armor, letting the water crush against her skin and pull her under. Pull her closer to him.
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
Death is unbeknownst to him in the way that it grips her tight; he does not fathom the feeling of helplessness, the bitterness that hitches in the throat as you succumb. He only knows what it means coming from him, the Reaper and the Finisher. He knows the feeling of their last writhing movements in his watery grasp, can only imagine the emotion and trauma that rattles their mind in their final moments, screaming silently beneath the weight of him, their garbled voice falling on deaf ears.
He expects the same from her. Drowning her will make their conversation cease, end her relentless attempts to carve out more from him as if there was anything underneath the beast that only finds happiness in cold-blooded murder. It’s almost laughable, the way she relents into him without hesitancy, a little lamb, falling into place as another victim for him to watch unravel at the bottom of the dark and brooding Sylvan lake. She’ll follow him anywhere, even to Death, and though there is a delight in the struggle, Maugrim finds himself pleased with such a willful and perfect offering to him.
She doesn’t know how close he’s pulled her to him (or maybe she does, somehow understanding that he is the water surrounding her, burning her eyes and forcing itself into her nose and throat), but he is there - watching with fascination as the breath she holds slowly loses its ability to keep her alive, ready for the moment her pale mouth opens and gasps for air. She would only be met with the chill, unfriendly water to fill her lungs and only moments will pass before the spasms of her body attempting to remain alive would fall away into a beautiful nothingness.
He’d pull her down with him, to the darkest parts, and maybe he’d even build a pretty grave for one of his most beautiful prizes.
Her struggle is nearly completed and though he has no voice, he soothes the fright in her body with gentle waves as if to caress the fear from her. It won’t be long now, he seems to say.
The faceless stallion frowns. There is no pleasure in her final moments, despite the raw beauty in the way her mane and forelock float like a murky halo around her head, illuminated by the full moonlight that filters through the dark water. The idea of her face hollowing and becoming warped by hungry fish suddenly brings a sour taste to his mouth. He imagines the white of her bones in the silt, green with algae - beautiful, but sad. His frown deepens.
He’s looking into the brown of her eyes and he wonders if she looks for him in the darkness. He scowls, still and unmoving as her body begins to convulse.
There is a flurry of movement and the water now pushes instead of pulls. The moonlight is unfiltered and raw against her dripping, blue skin as he pushes her onto the muddy bank with the ease of an ocean’s tide. For a moment she is alone, on the brink of death (or quite possibly there already). The water ripples from where she had just breached the surface, settling into stillness.
The sound of trickling water is the only thing that signals his presence, confirmed only when he begins to solidify above her - a sinister shadow of green and pale purple, water constantly dripping from his body as if standing beneath a waterfall. His damp lips trace the unconscious slope of her shoulder, inhaling the musty smell of lake water that now intermingles with her own - the smell of stars and moonlight, he reckons - and follows the curve of her neck, pausing against the mottled blue of her cheek. Here is where he beckons the water from her, calling it from the places it didn’t belong. It trickles almost remorsefully from her nostrils and mouth, twisting through rivulets in the mud back into the lake.
Maugrim does not wait for her to stir. He lifts his head, snorting sharply, before deciding to leave her alone, disappearing into the forest.
If she truly would follow him anywhere, she will find him again.
