resurrect the saint within the wretch
He is the opposite of her. He is a shattered soul, broken beyond repairing, rough at the edges with bitterness on his tongue and the cold dread in his chest replacing the warmth that should be there. This fact becomes uncannily true as his dark eyes watch her beautiful crystalline face try to interpret the firmness in his voice. Warden cannot help the way his ivory lids fall closed across his ocean eyes, a piece of him - somewhere deep inside the recesses of him - breaking as she asks him if he’s mad, because he cannot answer untruthfully but also cannot bear to tell her that he is always angry.
How silly of him to think that peace could find him; how even more childlike that he would think that the anger and turmoil inside his soul would remain there, unseen from the surface. She has pried him apart far quicker than anyone before and she hadn’t even been trying. He wants to be better for her but he doesn’t know how - he’s never tried - and it brings a hardness to his face that darkens him like an ocean-brewed storm.
All the while these chastises echo in his mind but they suddenly cease when the familiarity of her cold, crystal mouth presses against him, easing the tense lines and the rigidity that had settled there. Once again he finds himself drifting to that same hope once again - a light that spills like a beacon from her lips and her eyes and her voice, a craving that he didn’t know he had been longing for.
Flower’s anger (though nothing like his, the bitter and festering thing that weighs him down and strips him into nothing) and her quick retort is enough to rouse the horned stallion, lifting his face and his heavy brows with something like surprise. He watches her for a long moment - studying those brilliant and sparkling depths of her irises - before a softness finds his own and the crease of his mouth ticks upwards in a mild smile. It is then that she settles against him and the smile on his face only deepens, wondering just how it is such a delicate thing carries such determination.
She knows nothing of his true plight but even then, she decides to carry it with her. He hadn’t even asked her to, but she had taken it upon herself anyway. Though he isn’t sure he would ever willingly expose the details of his visions (or that she had been in one of them), he decides then and there that she is under his protection as much as he is under hers.
I can’t stay here forever, she says to him though she has curled up beside him as if settling in for a long while. Even with the gentleness of her light and airy voice, his heart sinks. But couldn’t she, though? Stay here with him, forever? Couldn’t it be that easy? Couldn’t just one perfect thing be that easy? His jaw tightens as that same uncertainty surrounds him, attempting to remain unshaken outwardly by her declaration. “Why not?” he replies unknowingly; the thought falls through his lips before he can stop it and when he realizes it, a single ear flicks towards her and he then glances downwards, his dark eyes meeting the boldness of hers. Give me a reason, his face demands, ready to convince her otherwise no matter what explanation she is bound to give him.
For a moment he watches her in silence, content with merely looking at her. He wonders if he could watch her all day, for now, that the sunlight refracts through and beneath her skin, he isn’t sure he will ever be able to look away.
“No,” Warden finally answers her question with a rather quiet admittance, his gentle stare never wavering. “No one could convince me to move from this very spot.” He pauses, a near glimmer of laughter in his eyes as he tilts his horned head with curiosity. “Except maybe you, perhaps. With your willpower and all.” He grins at her, then inhales deeply as he turns his head out towards the sea in the near distance.
Surely as the sun rises into midday, the luster of the night before will become dull, and the enticement to fix him will fade away. He cannot expect her - or anyone - to give him forever. Warden’s eyes furrow in thought once more before turning back to survey her inquisitively. It’s already felt like forever, to him. But it hasn’t - it’s only been a night - and there is no certainty that even though he may be free to lie on this beach forever, Flower may not.
“But forever is a long time,” he muses quietly, as if attempting to convince himself that they simply cannot lie here forever. Right?
@[flower]
