[private] all my sins need holy water, ashhal

[Ryatah]

“I know when you go
down all your darkest roads
I would have followed all the way
to the graveyard.”

She is in the dark again, and she hates how easily she adapts to it.

He is again the last thing she saw, and she knows – hopes – that he will again be the first thing. He had touched her cheek before she left, with a promise of returning. He had to have known she would cling to that, and despite everything that tells her not to, she trusts him. She trusts him in the most obscure, intangible way possible – in a way that she couldn't describe if she wanted.

It is different this time, though. Different because the sockets do not have a chance to heal, different because somehow this dark seems infinitely darker. The skin that edges the rocks remain irritated, constantly burning, and throbbing. It did not help that the rocks occasionally morphed; to ruby or emerald, onyx and marble. With every change, it sent a sharp, shooting pain clear down her spine, the kind that made her grit her teeth. 

She used to heal it when the pain became too much until she realized without the pain of that, it left an opening for an entirely different kind of pain. That without the ache of her injuries all she could focus on was what had happened in Hyaline. She hated how every night it was Atrox's voice that haunted her; she hated that she could not stop replaying everything that had happened, that it made pretending to be okay sleeping next to Illum impossible.

She cannot recall the last time she was so entirely broken that not even reckless romance was enough to distract her.

After the birth of the twins she began to steal away for more and more moments of solitude. She always returned to Taiga, and was never gone for days at a time, but it was not uncommon for her to disappear for hours in the day. She was thankful that Illum was an attentive father; that she did not have to worry about their girls, though anyone that has ever met her would know that wouldn't stop her. 

She was too good at running away from things to stop now. Not once she finally had something to actually run from, even if every part of her wants to run back towards it, back to Hyaline, back to him.

The day is lingering into evening, and she only knows because she can feel the way the temperature drops. It had been an unusually warm spring day, and she is standing on a familiar knoll. She knows, without having to see, that the horizon would be beginning to pale. That the sun was low, that beginning of a sunset was promised in the sky. The cool air causes her to tremble, and she brings her pale wings closer to her sides.

It's the sound of footfalls nearby that causes her to turn her head (a habit that she never broke, not even the last time), the wind stirring the pristine white of her forelock to reveal a single piece of obsidian where an eye should have been. She does not say anything, but lets the silence hang between herself and the stranger, letting them decide if they will fill it.

ryatah

@[Ashhal]

[Ashhal]

I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite

He's used to being alone, but lately it had felt particularly hollow. It's easy to ignore, but only because he'd been doing it his entire damn life. And this was sure as hell one of those things he did not want to examine too closely. That's one can of worms that should never be opened.

Never mind the fact the lid had started to get quite rusty lately.

As with everything else in his life lately (or at least for the past century), today is spent in another pit of yawning aimlessness. Time has basically lost all fucking meaning, so what the hell is one more day in the grand scheme of things?

It might have gone down as simply another in an endless round had he not seen her as the sun began to sink over the western horizon. He might pretend otherwise, but he'd damned well recognize her anywhere. And had the sun not glinted off her lovely features just so, he might have disappeared again with her none the wiser (he has no doubt that he is the last horse she'd want to see, especially after she'd started playing house).

But the sun does glint, and something not quite right catches his eye. He hesitates for a moment before muttering an expletive under his breath. Hell, she already knew he had no compunction about being an ass anyway. So he closes the distance with his usual swagger.

He stops abruptly when he realizes why it is she'd seemed to look different in a way he hadn't been able to immediately pinpoint. "Fucking hell," he blurts out rather thoughtlessly. Eyes narrowing, he stares at her stone filled sockets for a long moment before adding, "What, not enough compliments on how your eyes shone like jewels, so you had to get real ones?"

[Ryatah]

── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──

She has so many ghosts, and she recognizes the voice of this one immediately. The familiar sound of it makes her want to withdraw further inside of herself, to some place where she does not remember being left in a seaside cave, where she had never been allowed to invent some imaginary future of what might have been. He had been the beginning of several reminders that she will not find love where it does not want to be found.

He was a ghost she had almost effectively buried, and with a new pain so bright and fresh within her chest it had been easy to think he was left in the past. Her thoughts were consumed by other things as of late, enough so that she is surprised by the very presence of him. Where had they left off? She felt like maybe he was angry at her, but her mind was an endless fog, the details lost somewhere within it.

He was another scar branded across her heart, but one that at least does not burn at the sudden appearance of him.

There is a part of her, though, that wonders what he wants. Wonders why he is here, wonders why no one seems to get tired of playing the same game with her over and over. There is a moment, so fleeting and brief, that she thinks she might finally witness a subdued version of him. That maybe that strange shift in their dynamic and the time apart would inspire a change in him, that he might offer a glimpse of what she had been asking for before.The moment is chased away by his coarse greeting, and she stifles the exasperated sigh she longs to exhale.

“Ashhal,” is all she says, her voice light, but nearly hollow sounding. “No one has ever complimented my eyes in any fashion, so I don’t expect that to change now.” There is a peculiar dullness to her voice, and something that could be called fatigue. She turns her head away from him, the wind pulling the silk strands of her hair like a gossamer curtain over the obsidian that glints in her sockets.

“Where did you go?” She asks him, plainly, this newfound numbness lending her an odd sort of strength and the ability to simply appear to not care what his answer was.

ryatah

@[Ashhal]

[Ashhal]

I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite

In their time apart, she seems to have lost something more than just her eyes. Something deeper and far more important. And for a moment, he almost gives in to the urge to ask. Which is really fucking dumb, isn’t it? Even if she wanted to share, there’s no way in hell she’d want to share it with him. Not after he’d so thoroughly burned whatever bridges had been left between them.

And it was better that he had. Wasn’t it?

Didn’t matter, because it was too damned late anyway. Always too damned late.

“Well that was stupid of them,” he replies gruffly, suddenly regretting his flippant comment. He’d expected something equally flippant in return, and the fact that she hadn’t given it tells him far more than he wanted to know. Fucking hell, he should have known better than to give in to the curiosity. Should’ve known better than to believe he could keep pretending he didn’t give a damn when faced with the obvious evidence of her pain.

He doesn’t reply immediately to her question. Mostly because he doesn’t fucking know how. Where had he gone? Even he’s not entirely certain. Away. Seeking something, anything, that might help him forget that, for a brief moment, he’d glimpsed something more than the yawning abyss of an endless life. To forget how tempting that was, even though he knew it couldn’t be real.

Instead he snorts and offers her a shrug, despite knowing she can’t see it. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

For a long moment, he simply stares at her. The unaffected blankness of her stone gaze needles something deep inside him. Something he shouldn’t touch. But we all know he can’t leave well enough alone. Or keep his damned mouth shut apparently.

“Why the hell do you care anyway?”

[Ryatah]

── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──

She is almost grateful that she cannot see him. That she does not have to stare at his impassive face, that she does not have to see how no matter what she does or says, he does not spare her a glimpse of anything below the surface.

He has always been like granite, locking her out, refusing even to let her seep through the cracks.

She is used to that, has come to expect it, and truthfully hardly knows what to do with anything else. She has never been and never would be the kind that sought grand gestures of emotion. She did not need to hear kind words, and she could last longer than she cared to without kindness.

But not forever.

She is a fool, but she tries not to be. She looks for love where it does not, or cannot exist, but even she eventually learns when to stop trying. He offered her nearly nothing; he discarded any attempt she made at creating anything beyond just meaningless sex.

He locked her out, but no matter how she numbs herself to it, she cannot simply undo the years and years of trying to love someone that did not want to be loved.

“Why wouldn’t I care?” There is almost something there, almost something that breaks through the numbness and brings color back to the monochrome of her voice. Her face is angled back to him now, and something inside of her chest starts to tremble. It’s a foreign emotion, but when it hits her tongue, it almost tastes like anger. “If one of us could ever be accused of not caring, I don’t think it would be me.”

She moves towards him because she cannot help herself. In the dark, the space between them feels like miles, though it is only steps. She doesn’t try to touch him, decides that she does not feel like swallowing that rejection right now, but she is close enough to hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. “I will always care,” she says quietly, knowing that he will likely toss that aside as quickly as everything else she has offered him.

ryatah