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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    [open]  you're alive when you ache
    #1
    He feels utterly lost.

    Disconnected.

    So tired that when he bends his joints, he thinks he can hear them ache.

    An old creaky house, that's what Thorn is. One that unruly teenagers find and trample through with all of their angst and love. A house, yes. A house. Dilapidated, groaning, full of faded memories and torn photographs. A family used to live there, vibrant and gleaming - hopeful. They might have made him smile, once; but now they are no more than ghosts left to slam doors in trespasser's face.

    Thorn has slammed plenty of doors, now. Right in his loved one's face. He knows he'll never return to the boy that found joy in a willow tree's branches against his face. He knows this little house that sits on a hill in his heart will never be home again.

    So he wanders. And wanders. And wanders until his head spins and his chest aches with the hurts of too many passersby. Truthfully, he doesn't know where he is anymore. He just knows it's cold and - it's night and - he's alone. The moon reflects bright silver and full of life in his eyes, just enough that those that don't look close won't be able to tell he is nothing more than a shell.

    A host for the pain of others.
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    #2
    A full moon hangs heavy and low in the sky above the trees, but Clegane wouldn't know. He weaves like a fawn through the darkest places of the Riverlands, large, pale wings he had never used before are held close to his sides. He is not a creature made for tight woodlands, but he had rarely left. His time in the meadow with its golden sunlight and clean air had been abruptly put to an end by Violence.

    Even though there is no wind tonight, Clegane catches the scents far off places he has never seen; little pieces of beautiful worlds falling from a stranger's coat the way frost falls from his. For someone who has only known damp copses of river-trees for so long, these scents send a thrum of longing trough his chest.

    The air is still and cold enough to make his nose bleed if he pulled it across that damaged tissue too quickly.  But Clegane tugs at the subtle currents in the air around them, finding one and redirecting it towards the other stallion in the clearing. The wind consolidates into a bundle of fine tendrils that runs its fingers gently across the others mane, plucking a dried flower from where it was tangled in a witchknot of silver hair.

    Catching the moonlight, the flower rides the wind back to its master and rises to the level of his grisly face.

    "Where is this from?" Clegane's voice is low and dreamy, as he lets the small, crumpled flower fill his mind with images of possibilities of other worlds. Places he had always said he would see, but never had the courage to go.
    cleganetransparent
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    #3
    Where the wind musses Thorn's hair is where his mother used to place doting, thoughtful kisses. He almost thinks that's what the wind is: Wonder, come to him in another hallucination, gently plucking at his tangled mane and worrying over his gaunt face.

    As far as reality goes, the glowing man is not particularly aware of it.

    His face hardly changes when he realizes that the tousles in his mane are not his own doing but another's, and even then he wonders if his pain-addled mind has created something else, some stranger to torture him. Glowing, lilac eyes lift to find the wind manipulator's face - twitching ears perk to catch his soft, lyrical voice. Thorn doesn't answer him, not at first; instead he watches the stray flower and wonders if he his still capable of recognizing the flowers of his homeland.

    "I have to come closer," Thorn answers slowly, voice cracking just the slightest in between syllables. He stretches his legs, one hoof after another, finally accepting Clegane is real as his pain makes the sabino's wound drip blood in heavier rivulets.

    The flower, though dried and worn, certainly belongs to the jungles of Tephra. Thorn lifts his eyes from the crumpled flower to find Clegane's face. His magic casts a dim, white light upon the stranger.

    "Tephra," Thorn states, voice quiet and tired. "It's from Tephra. My home." He offers a weak smile, one that does not even attempt to reach his eyes.

    In the blanketing winter silence, the sound of the blood falling from the sabino's chest is deafening.


    @[Clegane]
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    #4
    He hadn't noticed the wound. Enchanted by the soft glow and tokens of far-away places, Clegane had overlooked the smell of blood. But when those lilac eyes meet the silver-grey of his own, he realizes that something is wrong.

    "Oh," it is a soft admission in an exhale, a realization.

    The channels of black that flow down the other's legs are hard to ignore, harder to look away from now that he has seen them. But still, the stranger comes closer, the wind-caught flower the only thing between them in their pool of silver light.

    He gives a thoughtful response to Clegane's question and a weak smile that the pegasus never sees. Because suddenly, that same careful attention is turning up towards him, to see the extent of his face, garishly lit in ethereal light. It's too much, the light, the newness, the sudden realization that he doesn't want to see this stallion's reaction to his face - pity, disgust, or even worse, Violence's morbid curiosity.

    The flower falls and the wind rises as Cleganes mottled wings do the same. He stumbles a step back into the shadows and looks to his right as if something beyond the back wall of trees his attention. He realizes how strange he must seem. But his reaction had been too sudden to recover from gracefully, and he stands there holding his breath.

    Drip.
    Drip.
    Drip.

    As painful as this is, he doesn't want Thorn to leave. He doesn't want to be alone again just yet, and he blurts out the first question that comes to mind.

    "If you have a home, what are you doing here?" There is no judgment as his question reaches out into the silence, if any emotion was betrayed by his lowered voice it would be loneliness, longing. And he slowly turns to look back and see how much damage he has done.
    cleganetransparent
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    #5
    Thorn might have smiled if he had known Clegane didn't immediately notice his wound. It is rare that he isn't stared at in shock or horror or pity, and the stranger's distinct lack of those emotions timidly energizes him. His ears perk forward to pay more attention, eyes trained on Clegane's so he might know when this enchantment will be cut short by his curse.

    The rivulets of blood and fleshy scent do eventually find purchase in the scarred stallion's gaze. Thorn begins to feel the light wink out of his eyes when Clegane unknowingly tosses gasoline upon him. He comes to life, suddenly straight-backed and sharp, startled by the stranger's jump but mostly keen to know if that glimpse of pink is truly mottled flesh.

    The candles in his gaze crackle to life, now burning, groaning houses. Those too slow to escape their dying home cry from within, sing the songs of Clegane's suffering, the ache of their overused and smoke-coated cries in tune with the drip, drip, drip of Thorn's blood. "You're in so much pain," the sabino gasps out, lilac gaze settling hard on the now-shadowed man.

    "I can't be there because of pain like yours," Thorn states bitterly, voice filled with the kind of venom that doesn't take affect until hours later, when one thinks they are safe. His chest aches, loud and angry and swollen. Clegane has a special, quiet pain Thorn has rarely encountered. When it leaves, his open skin will remain large and irritated, soon festering like the remains of a vicious cat's bite.

    "Why are you in pain?"

    Thorn has never asked that before, not even to his family.

    But now he is angry and rueful. What needless suffering will he have a hand in tonight?


    @[Clegane]
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    #6
    "Because of pain like yours," the stallion replies, and the bitterness in his tone is a fresh wound. There is a violence there he had not expected, and he buckles, eyes falling. He was a beast who bowed before Violence, made weak by her.

    "So I have ruined it," Clegane states with a distinct lack of surprise. He doesn't understand how it has happened, but he doesn't doubt the truth of it.

    He stands, still and defeated, as the light grows brighter- reaching to expose him. But he has already lost this battle, and he does not turn away this time. His silver eyes watch the place where black blood hits the earth with uncharacteristic intensity, and he lets the other's eyes roam where they please. But this is not enough, and he takes a step back when the next question is hurled at him ruefully.

    "I don't know," he almost whimpers. The gruesome face which had been made for him would never allow him to forget his past, or others to know him without knowing of it. It would never let him forget the lost mother he never truly mourned and the terror that had choked him. But this was not all of it - he didn't know how to explain why it was he hid in the Riverlands when his heart longed to explore, or why the sight of a star-gazing stranger made him think it would be nice to no longer be alone. He didn't know what would make him happy, and he certainly didn't know how to fix it. But the ache was there, his nameless companion, and he can only shake his head.

    "I don't know what it's called."

    @[thorn]
    cleganetransparent
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    #7
    Ruined it? Thorn thinks indignantly, biting back a frustrated snort. His usually kind eyes wrinkle into irritation. An angrily crumpled bed, his gaze, haphazardly tangled in the furious rush of one who slept through their obligations, silky smooth and clean while still ugly in delivery.

    "You didn't -" the sabino begins to snap, though he soon snaps his teeth together in a successful attempt to hold his tongue. Every atom in his body vibrates with a foreign energy, skin shivering while rising and falling in little mountains and valleys. Thorn doesn't know what this - such anger, such rue - sensation is. He doesn't think to classify it as an emotion as it is one he hasn't felt in a long, long time.

    Thorn rebels violently against Clegane's pain, suddenly and viciously aware that he knows intimacy with strangers suffering that even they - the bearers of the pain he knows so well - don't know it like he does.

    The scarred man reveals his face but the cursed man is wrestling so determinedly in his mind that he hardly notices the flash of pink and red. Later, when the two part ways, Thorn will recall the slow reveal his glow gave the stranger. The puckered skin. The blood vessels.  The way the scar shines just enough to reflect light. He'll wish he had paid more attention.

    "I don't think anyone does," the sabino says, quickly following Clegane's admission. His tone doesn't give away the way he battles within.

    "What are you most ashamed of, then?" Thorn almost snaps, surprising even himself with such wicked boldness.


    @[Clegane]
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    #8
    He hasn't felt this worthless, not for a long time. He is playing the part asked of him, but this anger that he is somehow stoking only burns hotter. Clegane didn't need supernatural abilities to feel the way the air was full of it, to see the way Thorn is shaking with it. He is causing so much pain, and he doesn't know why, but he knows there is only one way to end it. 

    His one step back turns into two, then three, and again he is skittering backward, hs large, baroque frame almost collapsing on its haunches as a root tangles around his fetlock. But with a snap, his leg is loose, and he has the freedom to finds the comfort of the shadows.

    "What are you most ashamed of, then?" The question still finds him, even in the dark, and it slows his momentum for a moment. But it is a question the stallion is not equipped to answer, and he grapples with his turbulent thoughts in silence - looking for words he would never find.

    With an apologetic shake of his head, he begins to move again in an attempt to fix what he had broken the only way he could think of, and wishing he had never ruined such a beautiful moment. 

    "I'm sorry," he chokes, feeling relief as the darkness swallows him, feeling the need to be alone with the feelings that this bleeding stranger has awaken. "I have to go," he weakly covers, as if there was someone out there wondering where he was.
    cleganetransparent
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