"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
There is little comfort in the stars anymore. Agetta remembers too clearly what Plume looked like beneath them when she broke his heart. She stands beneath them now, the cool night air thick with the scent of the rain that had only just cleared. Two foals slumber nearby, a white colt and a black filly. Her heart is a constant fluctuation between sorrow and joy as she watches the sides of their young bodies rise and fall in slumber.
How long before they are destroyed by the world? How long before nightmares replace their dreams?
Agetta feels the weight of the winter on her body still - or, more accurately, the lack of weight. She’s been trying harder since the twins arrived but she’s still skinny. And though she does not like to think it’s on purpose, she avoids those she knows. Avoids the concern her haggard appearance might inspire. At least the spring rains have begun to wash away the last of the blood.
What’s one more thing on the list of what she is avoiding? Avoiding her daughters, pretend she’s the one avoiding Plume instead of the other way around. Avoiding the conversation she knows will be coming the next time she sees Garbage. Avoiding Hyaline - though she knows she is not far from the borders now. A brief flash of insanity had inspired her to insist on her newest children meet their father at least once - maybe even seek protection while the foals were young - but those thoughts were also washed away with the rain when the small family took shelter.
She watches the twins and tries to envision a future for herself. It has been difficult for her lately, the practice of looking ahead. Of seeing hope in a situation where she only feels grief. The hollowness of her nomad years was surely better than this - but that thought is always chased by the reminder that she deserves this pain and anything else coming her way. Everything that has happened could have been avoided if she had just been a little stronger, had a little more common sense.
Tonight, like every night since they were born, Agetta wonders if it would be kinder to leave them. She would only have to live with the guilt long enough to find some way to end this tormented life for good.
But the impulse to leave fades a little quicker each night that passes. Instead, she watches them dream and finds herself hoping she’ll manage to dream again one day too.
hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive
He’s thought of her, but it hasn’t been the thing of romance. Nothing between them has ever been of that. It has been mostly violence—hate, loathing. They have been the opposite side of the same coin. The counterweight to one another in more time than once. He’s felt the gravity of her in the way that one feels the gravity of the stone pulling you under. He knows the coppery taste of her. Knows what it sounds like when she screams, when her body splits open—and she knows the same of him.
It’s an odd intimacy.
Perhaps he should not be surprised it has led where it’s led.
There’s something of fury in him when he sees her, but he is surprised by how quickly it is dulled. How quickly he swallows the venom himself because if there is anyone to blame for the rift between himself and the angel of Hyaline, he knows it is himself. The panther stands on the border, considers slipping back into the shadows and turning from the trio, but there’s enough curiosity to pull him forward again.
He pads forth slowly until the twins come into more light. Curious, he angles his head at them before turning it toward Agetta. He notes the ragged appearance—the bones that appear far more prominent than the last time that they had met. Shifting, he shakes the dust from his coat. “You look awful.” There’s a gravel to his voice from lack of sleep, a huskiness that’s deeper, rougher than it usually is.
Still, a sardonic smile tilts the edges of his lips, dark humor planting there.
“I see you haven’t killed the one who looks like me yet. Your restrain is remarkable.”
ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes
Agetta feels it too, that flash of rage when she knows he is close. She does not expect him to approach and so her gaze remains on the sleeping twins. They help cool the fire, the sweet release of her hatred and the promise of a fight provides no comfort right now. When he does approach, as a panther, she is grateful that he does not come closer. Does not touch her. She’s not sure if she could bear it without being drunk on despair and there is something reassuring in the distance as well as his sardonic smile and dark humour that arrives before long.
A bizarre sense of normality in this strange path she is walking.
His comment on her appearance only earns a nod - of course she knew this and sees no point in arguing the fact - but the roughness of his voice catches her attention. “You sound worse.” Her own words are quiet, with only a hint of bite and humour. How annoying (and surprising) the mingling of curiosity and concern that touch at the back of her mind - wondering what he had been through this winter.
Wondering too how she had gotten to know him enough to recognize the difference in his voice.
His next words have her shaking her head and she almost laughs at the absurdity of the idea. Agetta’s children were always her weakness - and she cannot fathom the idea of killing one. “Her eyes are green, at least. Like our first son’s.” She chokes on the word ‘first’, eyes closing against the wave of sadness that hits her. Part of her still so unwilling to believe this is reality. She does not remember much about Abner (he is tied up too much in the memories of Anaxarete and so their history is wiped clean from her mind) but as one of her children, it is easy to assume she had failed him at one time or another.
Finally, she turns to look at him - dark eyes meeting yellow - regret driving her to do something else she could not have ever fathomed. She apologizes to Atrox and there is a sincerity to her words that makes them thick and difficult to get out. The fact that the foals slumber on gives her the freedom to be more honest than she would be if they could hear her. “I’m not sorry they exist, but for whatever it's worth I’m sorry about what happened. I wanted to die that day. That’s why I was there. I didn’t mean for…” but she trails off with a shake of her head. She’s been actively repressing the memories of that day but she reminds herself it was something they did together. It was not entirely her fault, even if it mostly was. She was the one that showed up, after all.
Why does she apologize? Why does she keep assuming there's still an echo of a soul inside of him? But whatever he thinks, however little it might have meant to him, she feels a little better for at least speaking the words.
Before he can bite out a sarcastic response, curiosity clears some of the fog of sadness around her head, easing the tension in her expression and body as she asks simply “Would you have killed me if I had asked?” She knows now that it might not have worked, but she wonders all the same. If she had just used her words, just finally been honest with someone in her life. Even if it was him and not for the best of reasons.
hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive
He does not linger on the idea of their first child much. It’s so deep in the past that he can hardly remember it as something that had ever happened. It was lifetimes ago, and he barely remembers his name. Barely remembers that it had been a he. Still, he nods. Actually looking closer to the children mingled together, legs and limbs all tangled together. “I am hardly ever sorry for children existing,” he says with a shrug, following it up lest she think it sentimental. “I hardly ever know they exist.”
It’s a thread of his typical dark humor, but they taste like poison when he thinks of Magnus.
How he doesn’t know he exists either.
It’s easier to focus on her instead, rather than all of these personal failures that turn around and stick like daggers in his chest. “You shouldn’t apologize though.” His hoarse voice is roughened on the edges, decades and centuries of callous building up as he shrugs. “I knew what I was doing.” It was one of the few things in his life he was good at—if it wasn’t fighting and ruining things that he shouldn’t care about.
There’s no surprise on his face though at his question, and he doesn’t answer right away. Instead he looks way, tail flicking behind him as he chews on the answer. Once, he would have done it even if she hadn’t asked. Especially if she hadn’t asked. He had imagined it so many times before. This time though, he isn’t so sure, and when he sees a certain face floating before him, he scowls and turns back to her.
“No,” he bites off. “I wouldn’t have.”
ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes
Her midnight eyes roll in a good-natured manner when he destroys any possibility she might have thought he was strangely sentimental about children (and she had been surprised, for a moment before he chased it away).
In an odd way his ambivalence about their encounter makes her feel better - relieves some of the guilt. She hopes this is the last time they ever talk about it, though, hopes she can just brush that memory aside.
As if she was any good at not overthinking her mistakes.
And then - she can’t help the short, strangled laugh at his response to her question and his scowl - as though he were just as disappointed with that truth as she was. So she had gone there for nothing.
“Well why not?” The words are a harsh whisper as they are spat out. It’s an odd thing, knowing someone you’ve considered an enemy for most of your life isn’t actually evil incarnate. Still a bastard, of course, but it had to mean something that he would not have killed her just because she asked. Could it have been to spite her, because she had wanted it, or had a heart regrown in his chest? Easier to believe the first. To believe she wasn’t even worth the effort of an easy kill.
Whatever the reason, she tastes the bitterness of the realization that she wouldn’t kill him either. Not now, certainly not in cold blood. Had that changed recently or had it always been true? Even when she had let those murderous intentions eat at her soul, convince herself she wasn't whole.
She thought she would leap at the chance if it ever arose but she can feel that certainty slipping away.
Surely it will come back with his next shrug, next careless remark.
![[Image: atrox.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/XBppy9VY/atrox.png)