Brigade would be so much happier if he was left alone, he thinks. He would be so much happier if he was able to truly find a place where it could just be him and the wild and no one else. Perhaps in this kind of world he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else. Perhaps he would be able to dull his edges until he could just find the core of himself; until he could run with the wolves and just be alone.
But he has never been able to find that place.
No matter how hard he tries, he keeps getting pulled back into the mud and the muck.
Her voice is so quiet that he nearly misses it and he wonders how anyone this delicate was left alone in the world. How anything this fragile would be left in a place where he could run into her. Where he could crash into her sides and leave her ruined in his wake. He curses himself. Wishes him anywhere else.
She asks if he likes it and he isn’t sure how to answer. For the most part, Sylva is just him and Starsin. It’s like living with a ravenous wolf except far more difficult to predict. He imagines that she holds a knife to his throat every night he sleeps; he imagines that one day they will be the death of each other.
She would enjoy that.
“It’s better than my previous home,” is all he says because he has little kind things to say about Loess. Little kind things to say about a place that made a bargain with a boy for his freedom and little kind things about himself for bending to their wishes. He could have gone elsewhere, he knows. He could have gone back on his word. But he still lives under their rule and perhaps that says everything you need to know.
“It could be worse,” he follows up.
“It’s no meadow though,” a faint smile that disappears before it fully settles on his lips.
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake