"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
12-27-2019, 09:55 PM (This post was last modified: 12-28-2019, 12:23 AM by brigade.)
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
Part of him is surprised by how easy it was to die.
How easy it was to remain dead.
There was very little of him that strained against it—that fought back. Very little of him that did not immediately give into the promise of the darkness, the shadows the crept forward as the wolves found his throat. He wanted it, he thought. He wanted that nothingness that lived on the other side. It was weak of him, he knew, but he had never thought of himself as anything but weak. He had never given himself or anyone else around him to expect anything different, let alone more. He was weak and a coward.
And, soon, he was dead.
But he was not even able to hold onto that peace. There was a roiling in his soul that brought him back to the surface, that dragged him back and spat him into the forest. He felt it like an atrophy in his muscles as the life breathed into him, leaving him stiff and resistant and furious for the life thrust upon him.
When he finally does open his eyes, it is night. He swallows the bitter air and flings his antlered head back as he throws his legs forward and then pulls himself upward. His body shakes with disuse and his throat feels like sandpaper as he tries to get his bearings, tries to deny that which is so obviously clear:
He is alive.
Brigade groans, shaking his head, and staring into the darkness. As if on cue, he hears the howl of a wolf in the distance and a tremor races up his spine as his throat closes in phantom pain.
There is only part of him that wishes to turn on his heel and run.
He does not care to think of the other part that wants to call the wolves down upon him once more.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
i'm a geyser, feel it bubbling from below hear it call, hear it call, hear it call to me, constantly
Brunhilde has always loved to play with fire—
She especially loves it for burning away the months she carried her firstborn. She knows he exists, that little Abyss in her heart, but her clever trauma brain has taken every precaution to keep her safe. Without him, without that heavy weight burdening her torrid relationship with Beelzebub, the little flame thrived.
(Or, so she has convinced herself with false memories of a man that does not exist.)
Her little Abyss, so dark and black in her chest—nothing more than a little brother conceived between her roguish mother and missing father.
The thought of her darling sibling curls her usually flattened lips. Brun thinks she will need to pay him a visit soon, when she is not so busy with Bub, but . . . A little shake of her head rids her of her worry. Her focus returns to the flicker and glow she casts on the surrounding trees, gemstone eyes quiet and misleading.
Timid, she thinks, that is what I need to look like.
Timid, until she hears the groan of the dead just returning to life. Gooseflesh rises in waves along her neck when she comes to a stop, head turning so, so slowly in the direction of the noise. It is not fear that locks her legs—no, she lost fear a long time ago—but a curiosity she tries desperately to swallow. The need is fantastic and cold as it washes down her throat (a gulp of air and she sees him, sees him for the dead man he always has been).
“You,” Brunhilde murmurs, voice as soft as an echo. “You!” This time she is louder, amused.
“Brigade,” she drags the name from a foggy memory that grows clearer with each passing second. “You look like shit.”
A smirk, a shrug of her shoulders, a flip of her hair accentuated by the glow in her mane.
and hear the harmony only when it's harming me it's not real, it's not real, it's not real enough
In this world, there is so much kindness, if you only look for it. And hadn’t he been so kind, giving her some time to recover from their first coupling? Hadn’t he been so generous to not devour their beautiful child? But Beelzebub thinks that he has so much more to give her. He will not be like Ophanim – an absent, careless father with no concern for the children outside his marriage. Of course the angel boy pretended to love the others but he could see the way their father looked at Malone and Lilt when they were born. No, he will be so much greater than that to Brunhilde and… whatever she named their child.
A trail of flowers and wild grasses mark the path he walks as he follows her for a while, just downwind and out of sight. His bright eyes trace the curve of her back once she stops as a hunger catches fire within him. Beelzebub exhales a shuddering breath before he notices Brigade, dragging himself up off the ground. Destroy. Rend. Slaughter. The words echo across his mind as his dull teeth turn to fangs.
And he nearly does, until Brunhilde speaks.
You look like shit, she says.
Still, he decides to leave the shadows and slinks forward from his hiding place. His handsome face dons a smile, charming as you please, as he places himself beside her. Beelzebub is sure to stand so close that their ribs are pressed tight to one another. It makes it that much easier to trace his lips along the side of her neck and the curve of her jaw. Perhaps if they were alone, he would grab her between his teeth and thrash her for speaking to Brigade, but he refrains for now.
“Little sunset. My life has been so dark without you,” he laughs against her skin as he breathes her in a moment longer. Finally, he lifts his head and turns to look at Brigade.
“And what ugly little plaything is this?” he asks, and his voice is fire in the harshest winters.
12-28-2019, 12:00 AM (This post was last modified: 12-28-2019, 12:23 AM by brigade.)
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
Death still clings to his bones, coats his throat, and he is interrupted by not one, but two.
His grey eyes flash as the mare approaches and he remembers the vitriol in her eyes well. Coughing, he shakes the dust from his coat—the ash—and finally brings his gaze up to her. “Me,” he rasps, not surprised at all that his throat feels rusted and worn, his voice difficult to find amongst the chaos of it.
He laughs at her insult and shrugs his shoulders. “You sound surprised,” the words coming easier now but still sticking to his tongue, unraveling slowly, peeling from his throat with only great effort. His wings shuffle by his sides and then settle over his back, red as wine and full, as though life still flowed in him.
When the other stallion approaches, he says nothing, his face growing more grim. There was something that ran like an undercurrent through the moment, and he watches with only mild interest as the male grabs at Brunhilde with such possessiveness that it makes his stomach curl. He has no great love for the spitfire mare but there is enough of his mother’s son in him to know something is off—something wrong.
Still, he makes no move, protective or otherwise.
Instead something like amusement strikes his sullen face as he turns his attention back to Brunhilde. He angles his antlered head. “Yes, little sunset,” his lips quirk at the charming term of endearment, the softening of her into something she clearly was not. “What ugly plaything am I exactly?”
No plaything, he knows, but he does not mind playing the part.
Does not mind pretending.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
i'm a geyser, feel it bubbling from below hear it call, hear it call, hear it call to me, constantly
Brun should not feel surprise when Bub snakes to her side; but when his ribs lock tightly with hers, the shock chokes her. She coughs loudly, abhorrent and inappropriate in the way it starkly interrupts the three. For a moment, one fleeting and painful, the panic rises bloody and frothing in her eyes. She is reduced to the crimson foam of a deer running too hard from its captor, the basest and most disgusting component of fear.
It runs wild and free across her face, that frightened deer.
Then she snaps out of it—
Back to deceivingly timid and meek.
She lifts herself to her dragon’s touch, her jugular jumping when his lips brush over it. She thinks he might rip it open once they are alone.
“Plaything, darling?” she purrs in an attempt to appease him.
The way Brigade parrotted Bub prickles painfully down her spine, but her focus remains tightly on her lover. She opens her mouth to insult Brigade, to keep the fury beside her quiet, but nothing comes out; instead, she turns back with a strained smile to the wine-stained stallion. The crunch of the soil Brun kicks fills the awkward silence that stretches between them.
Brigade reminds her of the wild thing she once was. It is not a memory, or even a coherent idea—but it is a powerful feeling, one that washes over her tongue and clears her mind.
“He is a friend.”
She’s lying, obvious to only her and Brigade, drunk on the absolution of not knowing what will happen next.
and hear the harmony only when it's harming me it's not real, it's not real, it's not real enough
Glassheart had always been gentle with him but she never showed him how to be the same way. Every movement is, for him, a micro aggression all building toward some inevitable end. Either he will die or she will. But he doesn’t like to guess which one will be able to walk away from their fairy tale – he likes surprises.
His eyes almost dance with delight as the freshly bloomed happiness wilts across Brigade’s face, replaced by a sort of gray indifference. Why does he choke the smile from his own lips? Beelzebub can’t help the little laugh that dribbles from his lungs when the plaything echoes his words. He thinks of setting those wings on fire and devouring the charred remains while the stranger wails in agony. With a blink, the fantasy is gone and his attention is drawn to Brunhilde.
Bub loves the way she almost flinches when he touches her throat and another laugh rasps from him at her question. She bends and warps herself around him until she loses her fire, until she is replaced with a fearful ember.
“A friend you never bothered to mention. He must mean so little,” he says, his voice lifting into restrained rage that plays at being humor. “Look him in the eyes and tell him he’s nothing, little sunset. It’s so important that we’re honest with our friends.”
And when he smiles, the expression is all teeth stretching the full width of his face. Beelzebub is too eager to hear her speak but he remains still as he watches her, bright eyes glimmering joyfully. Slowly, he turns his head to look at Brigade to gage his reaction. Does anger rise up in his throat or does he let his sorrow consume him? Does he show anything at all? Beelzebub’s tongue absent mindedly runs across the pointed edge of his teeth as he observes for a while longer.
“And what about you? Is the feeling mutual? Does Brunhilde mean anything to you at all, plaything?”
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
This is not exactly what he had imagined when he has first realized that he was waking up back in life, although he supposes this is what he deserves. He sighs, quietly, exhaling a breath that he had not even realizing that he had been holding. He doesn’t know why life continues to thrust him into these moments with Brunhilde when it is clear that she holds little love for him and he certainly doesn’t know why his first moment of coming back to life was stepping into the odd dynamic between the couple before him.
His lips quirk slightly when Brunhilde labels him a friend, but he doesn’t make a move to correct her. Instead he flicks his grey eyes to the dragon stallion, waiting to see if it was enough for him to drop the subject. He is not surprised to find that it’s not. Brigade is no stranger to cruelty and anger, although the kind that he harbors is so often directed inwardly that he has little experience with this man’s sadistic version of it. Still, it doesn’t reach below the surface or scrape at his insides; it illicit nothing at all.
“I mean nothing to pretty much everyone,” he says with a cold smile, “and they mean nothing to me.”
It was the only way that he was able to get through this world, the lying. The lying to others and, mostly, the lying to himself. The constant ways he tells himself that he has no impact and that others leave no impact on him. His face still carefully neutral, he sweeps his gaze over to Brunhilde, letting it linger for a second and wondering why he felt a strange sense of protectiveness and concern over a mare who would rather leave him to die than have a second of decent conversation with him.
He shrugs internally though and remains rooted to the spot, wondering if she could see through the lies, if she could see how it was safer for him to say she meant nothing even if that wasn’t entirely the truth.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
