Craft;

[Castile]

and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was

Craft is a viper, hissing with matched ferocity as Castile toys with her memories and replicates her murderer. It’s cruel of him, but with the subsiding of his aches and abrasions, there is a newfound determination. A sick lust for answers poisons his mind, clouding his better judgment. This is wrong, a part of him says, but an overlapping darkness masks across further hesitation as his eyes bore into the fallen queen. ”Tell me,” he whispers, his voiced strained through his clenched jaws. Why, she asks, and it gives him pause for a single heartbeat though the intensity of his present doesn’t falter.

Answers pound in his head, one after another, and he realizes how selfish they all are.

Why did he have eyes similar to mine?
Why did he make me hesitate?
Why did part of me want to take him instead of Craft?

There was a magnetic pull and unrelenting curiosity when he first saw the cloaked figure loom above the fallen queen in her final moments.

But she claims that no such thing happened, that her life never bled from her body. Craft denies having her bones bleached by the sun and the air ripped from her lungs.

Castile observes her now, quietly. Tension grips his muscles, steadying him as she snaps back with her greed for answers. He does not deny her of the information, reveling in who – and what – he is and the reality they find themselves in. This world is new to her, unfamiliar, but to him, it’s all he has ever known. ”Castile,” he growls, his voice a gravelly baritone. Still bristled, still agitated, he musters every ounce of strength to settle himself, but it’s still apparent in the terseness of his words. ”I saw you, both of you. I saw the hate in your eyes, and then I saw his…” he doesn’t ask outright because there is no way she would know, but it’s a thorn in his side. ”I almost took him… I almost left you to bleed.” to die, he doesn’t say as her stubborn denials ring deafeningly in his ears.  

A tilt of his head, and then a deep sigh, all while his eyes continue to pierce her. ”I watched him crush you.”

castile

@[craft]