"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
Winter has returned once more and he supposes it’s time to begin whatever sort of new life fate has in store for him. Every trace of who he used to be has withered and turned to dust between his fingers. When he sighs, the breath leaves him in a puff of white air – a ghost of his hopes and dreams.
His odd-colored eyes scan the meadow for a while before he finally leaves the shadows of the trees. The snow reaches a quarter of the way up his legs and he rather enjoys how heavy the snowdrifts are this year. The skies have cleared enough that the early morning sun reflects off the copper brindling along his ribs to emphasize the muscling beneath his ink black coat. He’s a handsome thing, but he seems entirely unaware in the way he carries himself. Risk doesn’t hold his head too high or take confident strides, but rather shambles along with those sad eyes.
Still, he tries to smile and enjoy himself. Kensa wouldn’t want him pouting about or wasting time feeling sorry for himself when the entire world was his to explore still. Her memory makes the grin more genuine as he curiously kicks at the snow with one hoof for a while. The different tracks he can make amuse him as he exchanges his hooves for wolf paws, hawk talons, or strange little raccoon feet. It distracts him enough that he forgets his troubles for a while. When he finally does lift his head from his bored antics, he spies a familiar face up ahead.
God, had she seen him fooling around?
He swallows nervously.
He resumes his normal legs in a hurry and trudges through the snowbank toward Sochi. The blue of her face makes her picturesque in the winter weather, he notices briefly before meeting her eyes. Risk offers a soft smile in greeting as he comes to stand before her.
“I hadn’t expected to see you again, Sochi. Taking a break from being revolting?” he asks with a teasing laugh that blooms easily within his lungs. Normally he’s more reserved with his jokes but he has quickly learned that her thick skin makes her a suitable target.
@[sochi] he's coming out of his cage and he's been doin' just fine.
She hadn’t expected to see him so quickly. He was something of an enigma, able to shed and change his skin at a moment’s notice, and yet she was able to quickly pick up when it was him that she was looking at. Perhaps it was that heavy cloak of darkness he wore; something about the sadness that seemed to settle into his very bones. Perhaps it was the way he had looked at her like she may attack and he would do nothing to stop it—like he would meet her in the middle. Like he would lock his very jaws on her throat.
Either way, her silver eyes snap onto his features quickly, her lip twitching lightly at his prodding.
“Unsure,” she growls lightly in the distinctive husk of her voice, her head tilting to the side. “Are you taking a break from being someone’s mid-day snack?” Her lips spread then into a toothy smile, the white of her teeth flashing against the ink of her lips; today at least, there is no blood to stain them. She knows that she is not the creature who took his life but she also knows it very well could have been her. She has had no qualms about finishing someone off before. She doubts she would have any of doing it again.
Still, there is a part of her that is pleased that she didn’t end his life.
At least not yet.
For a second, there is nothing but silence between them when she feels the beginning of snow start to fall down once more. She tips her head back to feel the cold of it wash against the angles of her face, brushing against the blue of her blaze and settling on the length of her lashes. When she drops her face once more, it is framed in this ice. “It will start picking up soon,” she notes, although there isn’t any concern in her voice.
“Have you ever considered the merits of freezing to death over being eaten alive, Risk?”
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
He isn’t sure why he makes himself to easy to spot for Sochi and yet he is always sure to leave his mismatched eyes the same as ever. There is so precious little that is familiar to him that her face is becoming a welcome sight, though his trust grows at a snail’s pace. There is always that looming darkness that picks and picks at him even on his best days. It serves as a reminder that anything he enjoys is this world is only momentary. Someday, maybe soon or maybe in the distant future, Sochi will fade from him as well.
And she bites back as expected, though her smile assures him that she has taken his joke as well as he hoped. He feigns a half-hearted glare at her response but he laughs all the same. “Oh I’m certainly searching for death once more. It may just become my favorite hobby,” he says in a voice that drips in oversaturated sarcasm. Perhaps he would not mind if she chose to eat him now that they’ve become better acquainted, he thinks. But what good would a meal be as a willing sacrifice, as opposed to a hunt that is earned?
He lifts his chin to watch as the snow picks up once more. A soft snort of disapproval escapes him before he returns his gaze to her silver eyes for a while. His first death had been quick and he learned that a practiced hunter is a blessing. The younger, clumsy predators will thrash their prey to death and draw out the process. The amateurs have not learned that this sours the meat. But dying slow in the freezing winter? His face wrinkles in disgust.
“I thought the cold might take me when I was first born. My birth mother left me in a den, surrounded by snow, and said it was better that way.” His voice is flat as he forces the emotion out of his voice. Still, he doesn’t know if she meant he would be better of dead or without her. Would it make a difference?
If she is surprised by the sudden turn in conversation, she doesn’t show it. If something within her twists in response, something feral and vicious, she gives no name to it—not at first. Instead, her hooded silver eyes remain on him, studying him with that same kind of calculated intensity that she has practiced for nearly her entire life. She nods, abruptly, sharply, before she turns her cheek to him, watching the snow fall around them with the same intensity that she had just seconds ago poured on him.
When several moments pass, the silence thick in her throat, she breaks it again.
“I abandoned my second child,” her voice is as flat as his, the emotion wrung out of it. She doesn’t let her syllables quake or the sentences grow faint at the end. “I almost killed her, but decided to take her to the adoption den at the last second.” It was a kindness, she thinks, although certainly wouldn’t be viewed the same by someone who had been on the receiving end of it. It was the first time in months that she had thought about that moment—about seeing that iridescent blue filly curled up on the ground. Of seeing herself there, but of seeing Sinner too. Of knowing she wasn’t strong enough to keep her with her.
Nearly defiant, she turns her gaze back to him, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin. She could explain more, she thinks. Explain why she had been driven to such an emotional response—of the trauma and the hatred that had boiled in her—but she had long ago learned that she did not owe the world anything. So she just faces him, gritting her teeth and waiting for whatever is to come.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
He hates the words the moment she speaks them and he visibly winces to hear them. Could he ever leave a child to fend for itself in that awful den? Risk doesn’t imagine that he could ever hate a child or find it so painful to be around them that he had no other choice. But Sochi has never been left in the den and he has never had a child of his own, so their perspectives will never align, he imagines. Are there parents who have put down their own young, he wonders? The thought makes him feel sick and he forces himself to find her eyes.
“It’s awful, being left there,” he begins, carefully picking each word as he continues. “But I don’t know her reasons. Maybe someone was after her. Or she just hated me.”
He swallows hard. Somewhere out there, Virgo cries each night for him while Caw searches endlessly, but he remains horribly unaware. His world is built on fragile little unanswered questions that grow more numerous each day. Sochi may find herself in much the same boat but he is afraid to pry into her life beyond the simple minutes they are together. The secrets come trickling slowly between them and eventually they may know each other well enough to call themselves friends.
“I know you don’t owe me anything, but would you stay a little longer this time?” he asks suddenly, a nervous laugh tumbling from his lips. Risk hates to admit how lonely he gets and so he dances around the confession instead. But if she bristles at the question and swipes her claws across his face, he wouldn’t mind that either. At least it would leave him with something to remember her by and a story to tell. And yet, some defiantly hopeful little shard of him holds its breath for her answer.
She catches the way that he winces, but she doesn’t falter. The stone in her chest doesn’t crack at the idea of it, doesn’t weaken to know that so much pain has been brought into his life but those that claim pieces of her identity. Predators. Ill-equipped mothers. She embodies so much of what has stripped him of his chance to lead something of a normal life—something clean and untouched by the horror he’s felt.
But she stopped apologizing for being what she was a long time ago.
And she feels no need to pick up the weight of it now.
Instead she takes the small daggers of his truth into her breast unflinchingly. “Some acts of cruelty are acts of kindness in their own right,” she says, her voice is cold. “You may be better off.” She shrugs, the light catching the silver of the scars on her shoulder, the crimson tattoo across her chest. “My daughter, wherever she is, is better off without being raised by someone who could never pretend to love her.”
She shuts the door on the conversation then, a frown crossing her stern features at the sudden request. She feels the snow drift down to rest along her back, the icy breath of it along her cheek. It’s not a request that she has received often; she’s never been the time to invoke feelings of warmth in others, to stir trust in their chest, or have them seek out her company. It’s an odd sensation to be asked to stay—to remain.
Her instinct is to deny it immediately, but she holds her tongue.
Instead she just nods, not bothering to hide her confusion at the question but not refusing it either.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
![[Image: sochi.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/rs3xFJR0/sochi.png)