"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
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
There is a tension that clings to him, follows him wherever he goes. While things seem somewhat better with Ellyse, there is a heaviness in his heart. A fear that he does not have hers. Visions of her and Dahmer become his new nightmare, the new reason he avoids sleep. He can’t bare to see them together, the happy family. It makes him sick, makes his blood scream and beat fist’s against his veins. Jealousy rules him.
He tries so hard to keep back the envy, constantly biting his tongue. For how long can he do this? The bear grows restless inside him, it thinks him a fool. He’s not sure it’s wrong. The child is blameless, it didn’t ask to be born into such a triangle. If only Dahmer weren’t around, he could love the child as if it was his own. But there’s no room for him in this dynamic, it has a father. They share blood. A third wheel, he doesn’t belong.
Despite what seemed like a reunion, he continues to drift around Tephra alone. He rarely speaks to anyone, keeps close to the ocean and far away from the volcano. The heat is too much, he can’t stand it. He finds himself longing for the Gates, a place where he had always felt he had belonged. Now he’s not sure where he’s suppose to be. For her he stays. He waits. He wonders how much longer he can do this.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Usually content - happy, even - to remain volcano side, today. He passes by the cove where Ellyse had birthed their child, and then the sandier shoreline where the briny ocean laps at sand instead of rigid, rocky outcroppings. Tephra is diverse, always offering something new and intriguing for those who call it home, and the thoroughbred's blue eyes do their best to drink in everything that is offered to him.
Dahmer moves leisurely, his hooves rhythmic against the soft loam but the sound is lost beneath the whistling winds and the ebbing flow of ocean water. He keeps his feathered wings pressed gently to his sleek sides, though the wind catches his feathers and rustles them on occasion. He crests a particularly large outcropping and comes to rest on its shale plateau, icy blue eyes falling upon the one-eyed flaxen that he'd met only once before, tucked tightly against Ellyse's side.
Dahmer's neutral expression wavers for just a moment before flashing an obligatory and polite smile to Ledger, his dark head nodding to greet him. "Sorry, didn't mean to disturb you," the winged beast offers to Ellyse's friend-lover-whatever he was. His blue eyes watch the flaxen chestnut curiously, wondering if he should retreat from Ledger and continue this "let's pretend he doesn't exist" game they've been playing, but Dahmer had begun to smell the flaxen's scent more and more intermingling with Ellyse's, and if this other stallion is going to be around Smoak an increasing amount...
The black stallion sighs in exasperation before cocking a hip and settling his gaze upon Ledger's one eye. "If you make Ellyse happy, I am not here to stand in your way. But I ask that you don't take this situation out on Smoak."
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
The sound of someone approaching breaks his dark thoughts and he freezes with anticipation. Perhaps it is Ellyse and there is a glimmer of hope in the depth of his flecked eye. It is another cruel trick of fate that the figure rounding the corner is not her but him. Instantly his face falls, ears flattening and obscured by a thick mass of flaxen hair. Oh wonderful, just what he needs. To have Dahmer thrown in his face once more, salt rubbed into an already bleeding wound.
He notices the winged stallions expression, the uncertainty. It confirms what he had suspected, the reason the tension spread between them. He knows that something lingers between Ellyse and Dahmer, something more than friendship and a one night stand. He does not blame the child, the sins of the parents are never the fault of the child.
The dark stallion offers him a polite smile but he does not return it, his gaze colder than the icy blue iris’s of his competition. His lips are thin, pressed together, skeletal frame taunt with agitation. He waits for Dahmer to leave but he doesn’t. Instead he seems to settle before him, cocking a hip as if he means to stay before giving his exasperated request. At first he is stunned then confused. Why would he ever punish the child? Of course Dahmer is being an overprotective parent, it reminds him of Magnus. His thoughts naturally turn to his own father which naturally leads to that festering rage that prods the bear within him.
Without realizing it, sharp teeth protrude beneath his upper lip. His reddish fur paling until it turns an icy white. His skeletal figure enlarging. He does not turn completely into the bear but the two are becoming more merged every day, harder to separate. "I would never hurt a child.” He spits out but it sounds more like a snarl. Of course Dahmer has no idea what his own childhood had been like or the way it had haunted him every day of his meager life. He could never inflict any kind of pain on an innocent, not after what had been done to the colt he had once been.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Despite his original apprehension, a small part of Dahmer is pleased that he has happened upon Ledger today. He makes sure to keep his approach nonthreatening and even ignores the way the one-eyed stallion's ears immediately hide within his flaxen mane. He halts a comfortable distance away (he'd rather not pretend they are friends, nor even impartial acquaintances), though close enough that the tumultuous shoreline does not drown out their words entirely. The black thoroughbred doesn't expect Ledger to acknowledge his apology, nor does it really matter, but it gives the former councilman a segue into a real conversation with him.
At first, Dahmer is unsure whether or not Ledger has heard him. Or, decided to ignore him. But then, his brilliant blue eyes see the change in Ledger's muzzle, the way sharp teeth drop from beneath his lip. Dahmer's own ears flick so that they face backwards, but he keeps them at half-mast in an indication of disapproval. He has known a shifter or two, so the change is less fearsome than it is startling - it's the fangs that keep Dahmer on edge now, even as Ledger grows large and turns to an icy white.
"Don't mistake my request for an accusation," he spits back at the other stallion, his blue eyes hard as they glare at Ledger, "would you not ask the same?"
Dahmer falls silent and loosens his muscles, which had grown taut during his acquaintance's shift of appearance. His flared nostrils flutter at a sudden gust of wind that catches feathered wings and brushes his dark forelock across his face, but his icy gaze never falters.
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
Everything about Dahmer pricks at him, itches under his skin. It’s hard to distinguish if he’s actually irritated by the stallion or if it’s the bear that simply likes to stir the pot. There is a moment when he thinks of resisting the beast within him and then simply does not. The fangs remain, flaxen mane melting into the thick snowy fur until the stallion disappears and only the bear remains.
Almost comically he sits on his back end, front clawed paws tucked neatly in front of him. The missing patches of fur that make up his brand cruelly peeking from his side even as he tilts his head for the good eye to consider his rival. For that’s what he is, isn’t he?
”Perhaps.” Comes his rough voice through the bear’s snout. ”I’ve never fathered children nor have I had much of a father myself.” His expression unreadable despite the laced venom in his words. ”I suppose I wouldn’t assume.” He flatly finishes, his distaste now evident.
They continue to look at each other impassively before, with a frustrated sigh, he lumbers back to all four paws and takes two long steps forward. ”Let’s cut to the chase shall we? I don’t care what happened between you and Ellyse before. What I care about is now.” Fangs exposed slightly, that twisted anger Carnage had unleashed within him slowly simmering to the top. ”Do you have feelings for her?” Don’t lie to me…. Unsaid words that are simply reflected in the hard glint of the gold flecked eye.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Years have come and gone since Dahmer had been required to submit himself to a situation such as this one. He'd once met Amaterasu in Darkhaven and had pledged his allegiance to her father, Tabor, in order to acquire her for the Subway and its Army, and when one of his generals had grown fond of her, Dahmer had been at the brunt of his foul attitude over a simple lack of communication. Admittedly, this triangle between Ledger, Ellyse, and himself is more complicated (and more dangerous, with the addition of magical beings), but the anger that he has attempted to suppress up to this point still feels the same, hot and simmering.
Ledger grows more, his frame transforming into something unfamiliar, at least in respect to his coloration, but the bear's short snout and musky scent make Dahmer's fight-or-flight reaction kick into overdrive. His nostrils flare instinctively and he takes a stride backwards, his own dark wings unfurled as the bear sits back on its haunches, ready to turn and use the edge of their rocky plateau as his point of takeoff. Nevermind the fact that he's yet to use his feathered appendages.
With his ears still hidden in his dark tousled mane, the black beast glares into the hard golden eyes of bear-Ledger. He expects the question, and while the vast majority of him wants to tell the other stallion that the answer does not concern him, the black beast had made the decision to do what he could to move passed this hostile stalemate. "I do not love her," he offers grudgingly to the other, "But I cannot say that I do not have feelings for her. But what happened between Ellyse and I was a result of our mourning the end of different relationships, and nothing more."
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
The polar bear remains, unnaturally still as he waits for the winged stallion’s reply. He’s made Dahmer nervous and something within him is pleased as he watches those feathery wings unfurl apprehensively. Pleased that he could stir fear in anyone let alone someone that may be an enemy. It’s a power he’s never felt before, to be in control. To possibly be dangerous. After being the brunt of such evil and cruelty, to finally be on the other side was so much better.
Finally he confirms what he had expected all along. The grudging reply, the reluctant admittance that despite the lack of love…It had room to grow and fester. His one eye remains hard and unwavering on the dark man as he slowly begins to shrink and shift back into the reddish flesh he had been born to. Although the bear has retreated within him, despite his skeletal appearance, there’s still a fierceness in his gaze. In his stance. ”Good.”
A pause as he considers Dahmer for a moment, hesitating as the words play in his head. While he understood Ellyse had suffered heartbreak (at the hands of his father of all people), the thought of anyone else to please her, take away her pain, made him physically sick. No, as long as he was breathing he would be the only one to comfort her. To taste the sweetness of her skin against his tongue, to caress the feminine curve of her hip. A flash in the depths of gold and brown as his resolve hardens. ”Make sure it stays that way.”
Dahmer could take it anyway he liked, an uneasy truce or a threat. It didn’t matter, it was a promise he would follow through and the beast within him agrees. Nobody would ever walk all over the chestnut stallion again. He would stop at nothing if his happiness was threatened.
