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

[atrox]

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