"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
He is white still, shimmering and strange. It had been an odd urge, to shift so, but the color had reminded him of her, in its own strange way, though he plays poorly as an angel.
He had not forgotten their last meeting, nor the taste of blood on his tongue. Some might think him rash, for his reactions, and perhaps he was – but he rarely admits to shortcomings, and this is no different. She had disobeyed him, and he had rained down punishment for such disobedience. It was the way of things, and between them lay a myriad of punishments for the most mundane of sins.
But they returned, didn’t they? He to her, and her to him, some new cycle of whatever it was that had grown between them, romance in the most cancerous of forms.
He returns to the meadow. He thinks of the last time he – they – were here, the alien prone between them, the question, her disappointing answer. He’d known, maybe – he knows her so well, in a way he cannot articulate – but he had wondered, thought perhaps his presence, the want on his tongue when he asked her to end the thing’s life, might have pushed her to shred this final moral for him. No such luck, and the creature had left them unscathed, though the same could not be said for Ryatah and the stony sockets he had left her with.
He'd made a promise, or something like it. Perhaps one day I’ll take them back.
Perhaps.
He calls out to her, and he waits.
c a r n a g e
@[Ryatah] do you like being posted to with no warning because hey!!
She thinks of him, as she always does, but recently it has been different. Usually he is a thought constantly at the back of her mind, and she can find all sorts of ways to numb the sharpness of it. She has always been good at distractions, and of course she tries to find any way to not have to face an emotion she doesn’t even have a name for.
It was impossible, though, when she touched her daughter’s throat and is reminded of her own being torn on the mountain.
It was impossible when she meets a stranger in Tephra and hears a story of death and being brought back that could so closely mimic one of their own.
And so she is left with something that cannot be ignored, with a tension that once again tightens and coils inside of her and lodges itself inside the cavern of her chest. Her heart beats itself raw against it but the thing is unyielding, and for the first time in a long time, Hyaline begins to feel claustrophobic. And then, alongside that twisted, unnamed emotion, there is guilt that plants itself. It blooms at the thought of Atrox, and she hates herself for still being the same stupid girl with a heart that cannot be whole and content for hardly a moment.
She could be handed the entire world, she thinks, and still she would drop it the moment he called.
He is easy to find, not just because she is so accustomed to the darkness he leaves her in, but because that strange, magnetic pull is undeniable. It brings her to the meadow, with a pulse that already flutters impatiently, and she wonders why, after all this time, after all that has transpired, she does not hold the kind of fear for him that she should.
There is a whisper-like smile on the white of her lips, the light of her halo casting an amber glow against the two obsidian gemstones that rest where her eyes had once been. She had failed him the last time they were together, and she has not forgotten it. Even without such a punishment she would have remembered, so driven by that desperate need to please that she was. A need that was significantly amplified when it came to him. But the memory of it is what keeps her from reaching out to brazenly touch him the way she might have before, and instead she stands quiet, her delicate face nearly angled down when she says softly, “I didn’t know if you would actually be back.”
R y A t A h
and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
but you would still miss me in your bones
There is the same slow thrill at her arrival that has repeated itself each time. He is surprised, sometimes, that he comes back to her, at the unnamable thing between them, the space she has carved in his mind. He has not forgotten her previous disobedience, of course, but time has softened it, and she has lived with the penance he had placed upon her, even though he knows she could have undone it, had she wanted to.
He looks at the dark rocks where her eyes had once been and can once again imagine the taste of her blood on his tongue. He smiles at the memory, a curve of the lips that is wasted on her, but the dark god has wasted far more on creatures far less worthy than she.
He touches her, tender in this moment, glad to relive the feel of her pale skin. His lips move over her cheek, her crest, tracing her for a moment before he withdraws, her scent still filling him, and he responds.
“It did cross my mind,” he says – and it had, of course, because wouldn’t that be the ultimate punishment? He knows how she strives to please him, knows what his presence does to her, so of course its ultimate absence would inflict the most pain.
But what can he say? That she is not alone in depriving pleasure from these strange meetings, this mutation of romance, that leaving her would cause some faint part of him to ache? He is not a god that enjoys pain.
“But you’ve been good,” he says – he knows only faintly of what has transpired for her in the time since he last tore her eyes from her skull, but knows enough to know she kept this keepsake he left her with, “and so here I am. Perhaps we can even restore those eyes of yours.”
He thinks, briefly, of the last time that had happened. Not their first meeting – no, that had ended in blood, too – but the one that came decades later, when she showed a part of herself that intrigued him enough to restore the same eyes he’d torn out decades before. And now here they are again, this strange cycle, and once again he touches her, and wonders if this time, she will say yes.
There is something that lives between them, something that halves itself between toxic and romantic; an intangible sort of thing that neither of them seems to directly acknowledge, but then again, there is hardly a need for it. There was nothing to call it – nothing that could begin to encompass all that it is – but the proof of its existence lived in their willingness to keep coming back to each other.
He thinks of her blood on his tongue, and she thinks of the times he shot life back into her veins.
He feeds off her desperate need to please, and he leaves her with an ache in her chest that no one else can fill, and somehow their twisted addictions melt into something that is compatible.
He touches her and it reminds her of the stars coming alive under her skin – that brief moment before they had started to burn and there was only the wonder of stardust in her veins, a marveling at how he could make such a thing possible. He is, to her, the ultimate embodiment of magic, and when he touches her cheek he sparks a wildfire of all the unnamable emotions that no one else can ignite. There is a relief, too, at the familiar feel of him – a sharp inhale followed by a slow exhale – and she cannot help the way that she leans into his touch, and how her lips find his shoulder in turn.
She wants more – always wants more – but her heart twinges against her ribs when he says he had considered not returning.
The desperation already begins to tighten inside of her chest, but she says nothing. She would have deserved it, of course. She is never surprised when someone chooses not to stay, least of all him.
Inwardly, there is a hardened resolve to not disappoint him again, and she recognizes the opportunity at the mention of her eyes.
But she is wary of his offer, remembering how he had wanted her to kill Cthulhu, last time. She did not play the part of an angel very well – she was selfish and insatiable – but there were some things that not even she could bring herself to do (she wonders, though, if that had changed; if faced with the possibility of driving him away for good if she could find a way to succeed). She had been unable to kill the alien creature, but she had also shouldered her punishment in silence – the only thing that she could offer him when she is unable to do as he asks.
Her trust in him though is a bewildering thing, because she, perhaps foolishly, does not think he will ask her to fail at the same thing twice. It will be something new this time, and that thought brings with it another jump of her pulse, another distorted sense of anticipation. “What do I need to do?” she asks, quiet but careful to hide any hesitancy that she might feel.
She is not afraid of what he will ask – not afraid of dying, of hurting, of needing to summon every ounce of darkness that was harbored away beneath this ethereal illusion – but she is afraid of failing, again.
R y A t A h
and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
but you would still miss me in your bones
He has thought, of course, of rolling back the clock, repeating the same events of their last encounter. What would she do if presented the same opportunity, the alien prone at her feet, his encouragement sweet and heavy in her ear? He knows it’s a key part of her, this unwillingness to end lives, but he knows even the most fundamental parts of her could be broken, could be remade.
He has seen enough foundations crumble in his lifetime.
(But does he want that? He could change her, sure, but what would he think of the result?)
So he lets that particular test lie. No doubt he will ask her again, someday – should she keep his interest – but he will not, not this time.
He considers the question, though. She is so quiet, in her asking. He touches her again instead of answering, again finding pleasure in the architecture of her skin, and then, still wordless, he transports them.
It’s nowhere new, it’s back in his lair, his private sanctuary. He has not been here in some time, having been occupied with other things, but it is largely unchanged. The space they are in is barren, a blank canvas, but from the other rooms come distant noises.
“I think the first time you came here I killed you,” he says, recalling the water surrounding her. He had been curious, to watch her die, a scene that he has now borne witness to several times, one he still enjoys, though the last time was unsettling, as Gail had interfered and he had been, for a short time, powerless.
(It is a rare and awful feeling, and that memory is one he works to bury.)
“I won’t do so again,” he tells her, though it is a promise that could easily be broken, “until I feel Gail is in line.”
The room, in fact, stays unchanged, rock walls around them, the air damp and almost cold.
“Would you like a tour?” he asks, “I believe in your last visit here we were…distracted.”
c a r n a g e
@[Ryatah] sorry for taking a goddamn month to reply I didn't know where this was going!! i still don't!!
He doesn’t answer her right away, but he touches her again, and she can’t help but wonder if he has figured out that is the secret to her. That his touch – his illusion of kindness – is what she clings to. That she will replay it in her head more than she replays the violence. It was something carved into her, something so fully embedded into the very marrow of her that she bleeds it back out every time she is cut; the driving force that tells her to seek the smallest reward and forget the punishments.
She will remember the way his lips feel across her neck and not the way his teeth feel tearing her apart, and that is how she survives this twisted world she has entangled herself in.
He transports them, then, and she can’t see it, but she can feel where he takes her back to.
The same coolness to the air, the barest hint of what could be seawater, though she could be imagining it. The way his voice seems to shiver across the walls, and though she thinks she hears something else, sounds that had not been here last time, she does not ask.
“You did,” she answers him with atypical calmness for such a subject, but he has now killed her twice, and the drowning and the aftermath was not nearly as violent as what took place on the mountain. The drowning had been an odd kind of thrill, a slow build that culminated with the illusion of the valley – another memory that she keeps locked away to remind herself that it isn’t always all bad.
When he says that it won’t happen until he can trust Gail not to keep her as she did before, her face flickers with bemusement, but she (stupidly) believes him. “I won’t give you a reason to want to do it,” she promises – though she breaks her own promises frequently, no matter how well-intended they were.
Like the promise she had made Atrox to be better, and yet, here she is.
“You would show me?” she asks with a small smile, and maybe in a way that was a touch too eager for a lamb about to be led into the wolf’s den. The very mention of the last time they were here is enough to quicken her pulse, and she touches her nose to his shoulder again as she shifts closer to him, still and patient.
R y A t A h
and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
but you would still miss me in your bones
He watches her in his lair, her paleness gleaming against the dark rock. She is too lovely for such a place, of course, but this place has taken many lovely things and spat them back out, broken and no longer so lovely. He does not think the same will come of her, of course, because she does not break in the way so many do. She takes whatever he gives, bends like greenwood.
He laughs as her response, though it is barely a laugh, just a harsh exhale of breath in the stale air.
“Well,” he says, “you must know a part of me is always tempted.”
For isn’t that his basest nature? To hunt and kill, for before he ascended to a god it was the highest pleasure, ending their lives. He knows better, now, knows the pleasure of prolonging things, but in the end, of course he loves the blood and bone of it. But there is so much more to be done!
He smiles at her touch, and nods, though he knows she can’t see it. He supposes he should mend that, if he wants a proper tour, lest he waste his time describing things.
“Of course,” he says, “though I guess we could make things easier.”
His lips move up her neck, to her cheek, then to the middle of her forehead, where he whispers something guttural. There is a loud crack as her obsidian orbs hit the stone floor, and he brings her dark eyes back for the second time in their decades of knowing one another.
“There,” he says, “makes for an easier tour.”
He moves, then, choosing a tunnel that expands out into darkness. As they move further in, the place becomes dimly lit, though the source of the light is indiscernible. He pauses before a carved out room, empty, though the walls are stained and scarred with the memories of those who had once occupied it.
“This is where they stay,” he says, though he offers no explanation as to who the they are. It varies, after all, and there are many other such places in this lair, in other places. He has one occupant here now, but he has stored her elsewhere, at least for the time being.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She hadn’t dared to ask for her eyes back, even though last time he had all but made her. No matter how many times they danced this same dance, the taste of asking for a favor from him never sat well on her tongue. Not even something seemingly so simple as eyes—not even something he surely expected her to ask for. Instead, she stood in uncertain silence as his lips traced a path along her neck and her cheek, drifting just over the dark stones that rested where her eyes had once been.
Her heartbeat quickens in anticipation, and then nearly stops.
She inhales sharply when the stones are suddenly dislodged, a violent white flash of pain lighting through her as the new eyes emerge. There is no sound from her lips, though, nothing except her unsteady breathing as she wills the pain to subside. Her vision adjusts from the utter black of blindness to the only just nearly black of the lair, and somewhere in the thin shadows, there is his familiar face. Her own glow suddenly feels too bright, too harsh, and the golden light of her halo makes her want to retreat back into the dark. “Thank you,” she manages, the hush of her voice sounding strange and hollow against the stone walls.
A little cautiously she falls into step just beside him, remembering how when she was last here she had never really seen it stripped down like this. The beach had been first, and then the valley—separate memories that stir entirely separate feelings, but it always diverges into the same unnamable thing. She follows and watches, and she finds herself wondering who else he brings here—she remembers her conversation with Svedka, how he had said that Carnage had killed him and brought him back. The emotion that threatens to bloom is something adjacent to envy, but her voice is even when she asks him, “How do you decide who to bring here?”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
He's slow, as he moves past the cells. How many has he kept here? He doesn’t know the number, exactly, it’s more a blur of faces, those who stood out in some way, in their worship or their defiance. Still, their memories are etched in the stone – some literally, in the scuffs of the rock, or the dark stains, and he calls those memories forth for a moment. The rocks echo with the ghosts of them, their voices crying or screaming or laughing – some had laughed, in the end – in a gruesome chorus, no voice distinct. The sound swells, then fades, and his eyes close briefly in memory.
He has his places, his touchstones – this is one of them, perhaps. Not as much as the wasteland – that had been his first place, his formative place – but he plans to connect them, someday, knit himself a landscape of his predilections. It will be tiresome work, but he has time in handfuls, and would like to see what such a network would look like.
When the echoes are gone, he answers her, his voice thoughtful.
“Any number of reasons,” he says, “I want them. They did something to deserve it. As part of their test. Sometimes they ask to come.”
There are other reasons – sometimes they are part of something larger, sometimes it’s a bargain, the price they offer to pay.
“I’ve thought of keeping you here,” he says, “it might suit you, in a way. But something’s always kept me from it. Another of your mysteries.”
Because he keeps returning, doesn’t he? That is mystery enough, when boredom is rampant and quick-growing, yet again and again he finds her and he hurts or loves or kills her, or all three, and this is something he can’t explain, why she stays in his mind the way she does, and way she is with him, on the wrong side of the cage.
c a r n a g e
@[Ryatah] sorry for taking almost two months..............i dont know what "writing" is anymore
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
When the walls seem to come alive with memories it does not bother her perhaps the way that it should. It incites a prickling beneath her skin, a tingle that shivers up her spine, but mostly she just notices how she does not sound like any of them. She has begged him before, or at least her version of begging—so much softer than the way most would. She pleaded more like she was asking for a favor, a request that he please not drown her, even as the sea was already rushing into her lungs.
When he killed her on the mountain, she had said nothing at all.
Every star-burnt memory and failed test, every wrong word or wrong move that left her blinded could be played out on these walls and still, she is not like them. She becomes acutely aware of that when the echoes fade back into silence, and she wonders why she does not scream, why she does not panic, or fight. She accepts everything mostly quietly—like some amenable lamb that lays itself on the altar willingly, and while she calls it sacrifice she is sure anyone else would call it stupidity.
And yet he always brings her back, and he always comes back, and she is encouraged by the idea that maybe the other lambs are simply doing it wrong.
Her dark eyes turn back to him when he says he has considered keeping her here, and the placid way that she smiles and shakes her head betrays the way her heart had jumped in her chest. “You would get bored if I was here all the time,” she says softly, scanning the rock and stone they walk by—the walls that do not echo of her, or at least not in a tortured way, since somewhere in this place is where the illusion of the valley had been crafted, for her. “And you’d solve all the mysteries far too quickly,” she adds with a sideways glance and a coy tilt of her haloed head—as if they did not both know she would never resist if he were to try.
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
