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  • Beqanna

    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


    [private]  don't close the coffin yet; ryatah
    #1

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    The anger has not left him, not yet.

    It curdles in his veins—leaving him frustrated and broody and irritable. He took little pleasure in watching his undead minions destroy that small corner of Hyaline, although it had been better than the alternate, but he had found little in the way of relief since then. It had just been the endless days and the endless nights stretching out before him—leaving him alone to face the echoing of his own demons.

    The fury is finally enough to drive him out of Hyaline that evening.

    Enough to take him to the common lands that he so despises.

    He stalks the borders as a panther, watching those that mill about with a lazy, near apathetic eye. They are lucky, he thinks, that he had hunted earlier—that he had filled his belly on the deer of the Hyaline mountains and that he did not crave anything further. Even so, there are a few that catch his attention for longer than they would have liked, had they known. Some where he imagined rending flesh from bone.

    It is only when he manages to catch the sight of her glow, that ethereal porcelain against the endless sea of dark that he pauses—for once, the prey caught in the spotlight. His yellow eyes widen just slightly before he arranges his face into the casual lines, wiping his expression clean of anything but neutrality.

    “Ryatah,” her name burns on his tongue and he nearly says something sarcastic, nearly says something that would surely drive her away again but nothing comes. He opens his mouth and then closes it, a frown etching its way between his eyebrows as he glances down at the ground between them.

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #2

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    The sorrow has not left her, but it has dulled.

    She has been broken a hundred times over, and she has learned that she cannot sit in her hurt. Her tears and her pleas have never earned her mercy before, and she doesn't expect it to start with him. She knew that he would not come after her. He would not seek her out; he would not look for her. She would be left alone to heal herself the only way that she knew how – with someone else.

    It was the part about herself that she hated most, but didn't try very hard to change.
    It wouldn't matter, she thinks.
    Everyone – including him – already had decided who she was, what she was like. She didn't have the energy to rebuild herself in that way.

    Illum made it hard, anyway. He was not like the rest. He did not give her reasons to leave; he did not make her cut herself on all her fractured pieces to prove her worth.

    And still – still she could not stay.
    Still, she could not stop wishing he was Atrox, that Taiga was Hyaline.
    It was a cruel thing for her to do, she knows, to keep going back. So tonight she lets her guilt take precedence over all else, and she comes to the forest, away from everyone and everything.

    And when his voice cuts through the dark like a blade, she does not flinch on the outside. It's just her heart that begins to tremble on the inside.

    She is quiet, letting the sound of her name on his tongue linger, afraid of chasing it away. But finally, her head turns, her pale forelock shifting just enough to reveal the smooth, pale blue sea-glass that rests in the hollow where her eyes should have been. “Atrox,” she says his name quietly, secretly grateful for the chance to say it out loud again instead of just thinking it over and over inside her head. “What are you doing out here?”

    Her heartbeat quickens, and she knows that if her heart had a choice it would flee her chest. Anything to avoid a repeat of what had happened when she left Hyaline.
    ryatah
    Reply
    #3

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    Atrox has never really given a second thought to the cruelty to his words before. He has never really been thoughtful like that. His words had always been daggers, callously and recklessly thrown at times, and he had never stopped to pick them back up again. Instead, he had left them buried to the hilt.

    But, with her, it had been him that had festered.

    He had felt the sting of them instead—nights upon nights in the dark. In the quiet. In the place that was only a home because she had been there beside him. Only because she had carved out a place in him.

    He feels that strange echoing in his chest when she looks at him, when the silence is broken and it’s his name on her lips. Something in him cracks, as though he can see with stark clarity all that he has lost before. The wars and raids usually enough to muddle his memory so that he doesn’t have to think about what it had felt like to watch Twinge going under the water as it swept through the jungle. He doesn’t have to think about watching Magnus from afar and then finally sacrificing his son’s memories of him.

    But looking at her now, he does remember.

    He swallows, hard, but doesn’t make a step toward her. Isn’t strong enough to cross that divide between them. Instead he just stands there, breathing heavily and feeling that clean autumn breeze wind its way through his mane and down his neck. Finally, when he is certain that if he doesn’t speak that she will leave again, he finally does, and he is surprised by the harshness of his voice, of the ragged quality.

    And, for the first time in his life, he utters four words he was certain he never would:

    “I made a mistake.”

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #4

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    The silence between them feels loud, feels like it is echoing against her ribs and shuddering inside the chambers of her heart. She wants to fill it, once to speak so that she might give him a reason to have to stay, only her mind has gone blank and her tongue feels numb.

    There is nothing that she could possibly say that would change his mind. If there were, she wouldn't have had to leave Hyaline to begin with.

    But she wonders if he can hear it – if he can hear the way her heart thunders, a beat so loud and erratic that it causes the blood to rush inside of her ears. She wonders if it tells him all of the things that she cannot say, if maybe that is the reason he does not leave even though she says nothing.

    Or maybe – and what she fears is more likely – he says nothing because he has nothing to say, and he does not intend to stay.

    He had told her, after all, that whatever existed between them was nothing special. And in the nights away from him that followed, she had almost convinced herself that he was right. She almost convinced herself she had fabricated it all, that her heart had played a cruel trick on her mind.

    Until now, with him so close.

    She waits in that tense moment right before he speaks, afraid of what he might say. Afraid of having to hear him push her away with the harshness of his words, afraid of the sharpness she is sure will be in his voice.

    But what he says makes her hard-beating heart stutter to a stop, makes all of the other sounds fall away, until it is all she hears.

    She is silent at first. Silent as she tries to process what he might mean by that, afraid of assuming he means what she hopes he means. But even despite that she cannot help but to step closer to him, away from the shadow of all her doubts and fears, to close the space between them until she could touch him if she wanted. She doesn't, though. She lingers here, with that small shred of doubt still separating them, with apprehension tense and simmering under her skin.

    “So did I,” she tells him, her voice quiet and mild even when placed against the edge of his, unable to fight again. “Because I should never have left.”

    She swallows against the bitter feeling rising in her throat again, the burning of tears that cannot be shed. “Can I come home?”
    ryatah
    Reply
    #5

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    Has he ever cared this much over one interaction?

    Has it ever mattered to him at all, truly?

    He thinks back to what he had with Twinge and it was real—he knows that it was. He would not have gone to drown by her side had it been anything less. But it was different than this. They had been two fighters who came together, neither becoming more vulnerable in the joining. They had remained guarded. He had remained promiscuous. When they died, he had not hesitated to come back without her.

    So why does this feel different?

    The weight of it is difficult to breathe around and he is reminded in each moment why he had always avoided this kind of weight in the first place. He had never been the kind to be romantic. He had never known how to soften for someone else, how to put themselves first, how to truly sacrifice.

    And when she comes close, when she asks to come home, he nearly breaks down.

    “Please,” he asks, his voice nearly hoarse. The word sounds foreign on his tongue and there is a chance that he nearly follows it up with some biting remark, but he feels stripped bare in this moment and nothing comes to him. Instead he takes a step forward and instead of sinking teeth into her flesh or tasting the coppery liquid as it falls down her shoulder, he just pulls her close to his empty, echoing chest.

    There is silence for a moment as he holds her there, as he feels both the relief of having her against him and the alienness of the tender moment, before he whispers into her mane.

    “It wasn’t home without you.”

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #6

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    She thinks that she might fall apart in the waiting. In that moment before he reacts and she is left standing there, her own voice the last thing in her ears.

    Another silence, another chance for regret and fear to rise in her chest.

    She remembers how she had tried to catch herself before she came to this point. She had tried to let logic drown out the way he made her heart race in a way that was different from just being afraid. She had tried to remind herself over and over that there was nothing tangible here. That it did not matter how she might wish something into being, she could not make love exist where it had no business being – with her.

    She is the graveyard where love goes to die, where even the flowers wilt and wither on the headstones.

    Please, he says, and she sucks in a sharp breath when he pulls her into his chest. Her mind had told her heart to be ready for him to push her away, again, to tell her that he didn’t care if she stayed or left. The relief that rushes through her rattles the air from her lungs, and she can do nothing but press against him, into him, to let her lips trail from his shoulder and down to the familiar scar. She breathes in everything that makes him him, and thinks she can hear the echo of her own heartbeat whispering back to her from his chest.

    “Do you remember what you said the day that I left?” She asks him around the ache in her throat, trying to quiet the memories from that day, but this one burned too deep to ignore. It is there, bright and burning across her heart, and she is afraid if she ignores it that it will consume her. “When you said that this wasn’t anything special?”

    She does not move from where she stands curled against him, afraid that she is pushing her boundaries and that he is going to rip himself away at any moment. She keeps herself flush against his skin like that might somehow keep him there, like it might make him actually listen. “Tell me you didn’t mean it,” her voice still an almost whisper, but the need that is there is something beyond a plea. “Tell me, and I promise I’ll never need to hear you say it again.”

    She has shifted back now, just enough so that her lips can caress up his throat, and along the sharp angles of his jawline.  “Because you are not nothing to me, Atrox. And I cannot replace you today or tomorrow, or with anyone else.”
    ryatah
    Reply
    #7

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    He surprises himself with how tightly he holds her, with the relief that rushes through him at the feel of her against him—against the need that nearly crushes his throat. She folds there as if she had never left and he wishes that she hadn’t. Wishes that he hadn’t done this to them. Wishes that he had not made so many mistakes with her, again and again. It is the first time that he has ever truly known regret.

    What she asks now makes him close his eyes, growling lightly in the back of his throat in response. Perhaps she would think the question angers him. Perhaps she would think the anger is pointed at her. But he knows—he knows—the truth. He knows that he deserves to have such things thrown back at him.

    “I lied,” he says, finally, into the white of her neck, into the satin of her skin. “I lied, Ryatah.” He pulls back so that she can touch his face and he lets it linger, lets her touch the scars of him like he has let no one else. “I was so angry at myself,” he continues, his voice dark and roughened on the edges.

    “I knew what had happened with Agetta was a mistake.”

    The biggest of all mistakes. The worst of them.

    “She came to Hyaline angry and we were fighting and—,” his voice trails off, unwilling to complete the thought aloud. He finally opens his yellow eyes to look at her. “I’m not used to thinking such things are mistakes. I have lifetimes of them meaning nothing at all.” He studies her with his sharp eyes, not flinching away from his transgressions this time—not trying to hide them or pretend they don’t exist.

    “But it mattered with you, and I didn’t know how to handle it.”

    An unsteady breath as he rolls his shoulders, an echo of his usually cavalier attitude.

    “It matters.”

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #8

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    She had asked, but she hadn’t expected much of an answer. After so many years of surrounding herself with lovers and friends alike that kept their emotions under lock and key, she had learned it was better to just never ask at all. But there was something about this – something about him – that lent her a peculiar kind of bravery. It all felt too much like a last chance.

    Their last chance, she likes to think, only she knows she isn’t fooling anyone.

    She knows, even before he starts to answer, that she is going back to Hyaline no matter what he says or doesn’t say. She knows that she is tired of the chasm split inside of her heart, she knows that she would be okay with pretending nothing had happened, if it meant not having to be without him again.

    She feels the growl in his throat just as much as she hears it, and she can feel the tension tighten inside of her chest again.

    Instead, he admits that he had lied, and she tries to hide her small smile, pressing it against his neck instead as she listens to him. She remains quiet, even when her heart flinches again when he mentions Agetta. She has never been the jealous type, mainly because no one had ever felt like they were hers. She doesn’t know what he has done to awaken that small part of her, and just when the embers of envy threaten to ignite again, he extinguishes them.

    “It’s okay,” she murmurs into the wild tangles of his mane when he has finished, “because I understand.” There is a short laugh against his skin before she pulls away just slightly, adding with a faint smile, “I think we might be too similar in that sense,” she says, referencing that alien feeling of recognizing something as a mistake. She knows of her reputation, even if she cannot remember how she got this way. She has her string of romances, men that she has no business being with, men that she would – has – ruined herself for.  She is stitched together with her mistakes and failures, a patchwork of shortcomings and regrets.

    “I ruin everything that could possibly be mine,” like Skellig and Illum, a short example of the men that have loved her or tried to love her, and she is always at her worst when she is chasing love away, “but I don’t want to ruin this.”
    ryatah
    Reply
    #9

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    The honesty is nearly more than he can bear.

    It is painful, to be this honest. To stare into the sun of his honesty and feel his very retinas burning into char. He can taste the ash on his tongue now, and he knows that he will never be the same again. That, somehow, someway, this world has once again twisted unto itself again and speared straight to the very core of him. That it has managed to find the very center of him that he had long since thought abandoned and lost to the shifting soil of the Chamber. That he once again has something to lose.

    The feeling is simply disconcerting at first, and then an echo of pain, and then a gritting of teeth.

    He wants to look away and yet he doesn’t.

    He looks at her instead and feels himself grip onto the thing that he is now so scared to lose. That feeling of hope that does not so much flutter poetically in his chest as it does thrash and burn. He swallows, hard, and does not move, his muscles paralyzed beneath the scarred map of his coat, yellow eyes unblinking.

    She understands, he thinks, and perhaps she is the only one who truly could.

    The only one who has seen him through the decades, at however far a distance. Who has suffered the losses. Played the same political games, from whichever side they were on. Who has watched the world dissolve and then remake itself. Who has cleaved themselves from who they had been to become who they were now. Who has remade themselves again and again. Each time a limb lost, a new one regrown.

    “There is no possibly,” he finally manages, and he wishes for the same apathy that usually coats his words. The lack of caring that makes all things possible now lost before her. Instead there is something more dangerous than even his wicked tongue. There is just him. The stallion who led armies. Who carved through kingdoms with nothing but claw and hoof. Who sacrificed himself and rose again.

    Brought to his knees before her.

    He presses a rough kiss to her cheek before he drags her near again, closing his eyes and surrendering.

    “I am yours.”

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #10
    choke this love ‘til the veins start to shiver,
    one last breath til the tears start to wither --


    She has never even dared to wish for something like this. She has let herself grow attached to him in silence, under the careful guise of understanding it was all a game. It was rarely anything more than that, she has come to learn, and in a last-ditch effort to protect the remaining shards of a bruised and broken heart, she did not often let herself think of it becoming anything else.

    But she had wanted it.

    No matter how much wiser she should become or how much more calloused she should be, she could not keep this particular desire at bay. It seeped through the cracks of her heart until it began to ache whenever he was gone and to twinge in a quiet jealousy when he was with someone else. She never spoke of it; she tried to not even so much as hint at it.

    Not until everything began to fall apart, and it felt too late to gather up the pieces.

    Even now, with the two of them tangled around each other, she waited for him to shut her out in some capacity. And she knew even if he did, that she would find a way to be okay with whatever of himself he has given her. She is not in the position to be greedy; she has never been. She takes what she can get, and she survives because she would rather have even a little bit of him than nothing at all.

    Heat races across her skin when he kisses her cheek, and her heart nearly stops at what he says when he pulls her close again. “Mine?” A whispered question, one that is breathed in a quiet kind of disbelief. She doesn’t move from where she rests against him, her heart now beating fiercely from the inside of the chest that is pressed against his. She has, as she said, destroyed anything that has ever been hers. Skellig springs to her mind now, and she can feel the panic again welling up inside of her. Skellig had been hers, and she had been his, and she had ruined everything that they were simply because she could.

    She runs her mouth against his shoulder, tries to imagine what it would be like to never touch him again, and decides that maybe for once in her life, she has learned from her mistakes.

    “And I am yours,” she murmurs, and there is something almost possessive now in the way her lips trace a heated path across his neck, shifting just enough to press a touch against his jawline. “If you want me, despite everything that I have done, then I promise that things will be different now.” She would stay away from them – from Illum and Ashhal, from Larva, from anyone that managed to make her heart beat a little too fast.

    She could be good, she swears she can, and she can stay away from all of them, except for one.

    -- ryatah.

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