"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
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He had felt something stir as the sun had slipped behind the moon, darkening the day to near night. An ugly premonition had risen, a knowledge that this was only the beginning. And he had been proven right moments later when his skin rippled before oily claws ripped through the pale skin of his shoulder.
He had known pain before, but this had proven to be something entirely new. As the creature had torn away in a spray of blood and flesh, his world had blackened. He had slipped into unconsciousness, woken only by the crashing wave of his memories, settling sharply back into place. Left behind as debris by the creatures that had stolen them in the first place.
He couldn’t say how much time had passed between then and now. Only that the tsunami of his life pouring back into his head, over a century long and so horribly burdened with darkness, death, and anger, had made it impossible to comprehend the time passing. When it had finally passed, he had found himself on the banks of the river, shaking with pain and exhaustion.
And he had slept, collapsing beneath the branches of a willow in blessed oblivion.
When he finally awakens, the darkness is still upon him as a foreboding presence washes across the land.
Fuck.
How long had it been? Days? Weeks? His memories are still jumbled and knotted inside his head, struggling to place themselves in any sort of linear pattern, but he recognizes the creatures. His damned fault then. What a fool he’d been.
As he moves to rise, searing pain rips across him, radiating from the gaping wound mangling his shoulder. Old blood coats his pale skin, flaking as he struggles to move. The involuntary shout of pain that had escaped him is quickly dampened, locked behind gritted teeth. The last thing he wished to do was alert anything nearby of his presence.
Not that it would probably matter anyway. His movement had caused the wound to stretch and crack. He can already smell the infection even as blood and pus begin to ooze. So if the creatures did not succeed in killing him first, his own body undoubtedly would.
01-24-2021, 02:40 AM (This post was last modified: 01-26-2021, 12:41 AM by Ryatah.)
Ryatah
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
It would be hardly a surprise to any that knew her to learn that the dark had stirred her awake. That instead of wanting to hide away she found herself venturing away from Hyaline more often than she had previously, in search of what, she isn’t sure. She just knows that this darkness is heavy—that it breathes and has a pulse, that sometimes she can hear the clicking of its teeth and feels the brush of something solid and unearthly against her.
It makes that wretched heart of hers beat faster, and against all of her better judgment (as if she had such a thing) she once again finds herself walking straight into the blackest parts of it.
She steps along the river, through a darkness so thick even the glow from her ethereal aura is nearly suffocated by it. It chases away most of the closest shadows, though, and she is a nearly unsettling contrast to the black world they have succumbed to—a stark white body surrounded by a halo of light.
When she hears his voice—strangled and muffled though it was—there is a moment where she freezes. Memories of their last meeting come rushing back, and she thinks of how no matter what she does or says she will never be able to mend the rift that existed between them. An uncrossable divide of their own doing that every interaction seemed to push them further apart.
But she, ever the hopeless fool, goes to him anyway, without hesitation. “Ashhal?” his name is murmured into the dark expanse between them even though she knows without a doubt that it is him—despite her wanton ways there were only a few seared so clearly onto that tattered heart of hers that she would know them anywhere, in any darkness. She goes to him even though she knows he is going to push her away, knows that he will snap at her with teeth and words both, and still she does not pause in her approach. The scent of dried blood and the ongoing infection is the only thing that makes her hesitate (he was always angrier when he was hurt), but it does not keep her from asking, “What happened to you?”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Her glow precedes her even as her soft voice forms the sound of his name. It cuts through him, clearing the jumble of memories inside his head for the briefest of moments. When the deluge returns, she is at the center. There is a strange sort of understanding that comes with it, his own stupidity at the forefront. But overshadowing it all is the very last thing she had said to him.
For a brief, crystalline moment, fury clears the pain and confusion. But in his current state, he is far too weak to act on it. Does she see that? Is that why she had chosen this moment to return? He had never imagined her so purposefully callous. But then, had he ever really known her at all? He had certainly never tried to.
The anger and agitation collide, and he tries to bring his feet beneath him once more. Unsuccessfully. Which serves only to stoke the fiery hole burning its way through his chest.
“Why the fuck do you care?” he spits out, venom in his voice. If he’d stop to consider his words, he might have realized just how much pain (and not just physical pain) was so clearly fueling his rancor. But he had never been particularly given to clarity even on his best days. “I would hate for you to waste any more of you precious fucking time on me.”
Under normal circumstances, his pain and anger would have been funneled so neatly into action. But with that avenue currently closed, they instead find release in words he would normally never give voice to. “You made it perfectly clear how you feel about me. So what now, you want to drive it home by telling me why?” His eyes burn feverishly inside his pale features, lips twisted into an unpleasant grimace. “If so, you can just fuck right off.”
He doesn’t take his eyes from her even as the poisonous words fall from his lips. Nor does he notice the way his fury blurs so closely into despair.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She does nothing to hide her confusion at the onslaught of arrowed words he directs at her. If she were made of weaker things they would have landed their marks, would have lodged immediately into the flesh of her ribs and broken through her breastbone. They would have left her bleeding on the ground, pleading for forgiveness from a sin she does not remember committing. But years upon years of strange abuses and twisted romances has left her hardened to certain things, and there were so few that could bring her to her knees (a dark god that she would do most anything to stay in the good graces of, and a yellow-eyed panther king that could end her with a cold word if he ever so wished).
And so she is confused but not hurt, because mostly she has learned to never be surprised by the harsh words that come from his mouth. She had learned that day in the cave of Nerine that even at her most vulnerable he would never expose himself; he was a fortress that not even she could breach the walls of, and with too many other castles willingly offered to her, she did not see a reason to keep trying. She is rooted here by the last shreds of her morality, gray and flimsy though they may be. She could never leave him bleeding and injured, no matter the venomous curses he spat at her.
There was still, after all, a piece of herself that would always be his. She had given it to him willingly—had born children that she loved mostly because they were theirs, pieces of himself that she managed to steal and hoard since he would never do it on his own. He has cast her aside time and time again, but never could she bring herself to do the same.
That small piece of herself that ached to see him like this, and it brings her forward.
“You have never been a waste of my time,” she tells him with a perplexed frown, trying to remember if ever there had been a time that she grew so bitter that she would say something like that to him. It didn’t sound like her, and she decides that perhaps he is confused by fever and pain. “Let me heal you,” she says imploringly, though she does not dare to take another step forward. She simply watches him from where she stands, her worry illuminated by the glow of her halo, her eyes tracing a path over the strange wound and biting back the urge to ask again what had caused it.
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Illuminated by that soft angelic glow, she appears so genuinely confused even as concern shadows it. He wishes like hell he hadn’t noticed. Wishes even more that he didn’t care. He’s not certain why now she would choose to withdraw her previous words when there is so clearly nothing to be gained by it. He tells himself it doesn’t matter. But underneath it all, he knows it does.
He had driven her away, just as he had all the rest who ever tried to get close to him. But this is the first time he has hated himself for it.
His jaw clenches tight as he glares at her, but the bright intensity of his rage fades quickly, waning along with the energy that had fueled it. He collapses back once more, only then realizing he had still been struggling to rise, and as the fury drains from him, so too do all vestiges of the fire that had filled the hollow he tried so hard to hide. Behind it lie only the wretchedness of a soul stretched too thin and the echoes of memories of a life worth living.
“Why do you still try?” he grunts, his voice curiously empty now. But he does not decline her aid. For whatever ungodly reason, he could never seem to bring himself to be truly horrible to her. To do the things that would ensure she would never again seek him out.
He might have found that galling not so very long ago. But now, he finally understands. She had given him something he has never truly had before: hope. And he had been loath to banish the one decent thing in his life even as the thought of knowing a world without it again terrified him. What a fool she must believe him.
“Or is it just that it pleases you to see me brought so low,” his voice grows cutting again, eyes deadening into a flat black, “knowing it was you who sent me here?”
Perhaps she had managed to avoid bitterness, but it seems he had been unable to.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
The emptiness in his voice is almost worse than when it is full of anger. It makes her heart sink, especially when accompanied by the way he suddenly goes still, no longer fighting to get away from her. It was what she had asked for, but maybe it is because she knows that were he healthy and whole he would not be standing here; he would have fled as soon as he decided he didn’t wish to speak with her.
He only stays when he has to, when he has no other option.
She doesn’t answer him at first. Closing the space between them she is silent, and she is careful to keep her eyes averted from his face. She cannot remember the last time she was this close to him, or the last time they had even touched. He has been pushing her away for so long it seemed impossible there had ever been a time he was someone she would walk up to and simply touch, and not be afraid of the way he would react.
He has rejected her more than anyone, and in ways that are so thorough that even she, the one with the heart so foolish it tried to love the most unlovable of things, had given up.
Her nose brushes along the familiar arc of his neck, the golden threads of healing gently wrapping their way around him. “Why would I not want to try?” she finally answers, her voice impossibly quiet from where her lips now rest on his shoulder, finishing up with the worst of the wounds. There are claw marks across his skin, but she notices the strangeness of the gaping hole—like something had dug its way out rather than burrowed in. Curiosity burns on her tongue, but his anger has returned, and with the healing complete she finds herself shying backward.
“Sent you here?” she asks, the bruise just as evident in her words as it is in the expression on her face. She can feel age-old frustration and desperation building inside of her; again wondering how one man could possibly be so stubborn and stupid. “I have never done anything to purposely hurt you, Ashhal. I tried to love you and you made it clear you weren’t interested.” She is trembling now, and she is surprised at the tears she has to fight to keep from filling in her eyes, though their presence is clear in the thickness of her throat. She had thought she was beyond this, thought this hurt had healed and been forgotten long ago. “I’m sorry if you thought I would chase you for the rest of my life.”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
As her healing creeps through him, he can feel the pain ebbing even as strength returns. The fever abates, clearing his head while doing nothing to touch the turmoil spilling so recklessly from him. She is the only creature he had ever run from, and even then it had not suited him well. He knows he would not run again, but he rather doubts she’d like it any better.
The moment he is able, he is on his feet, wings flaring aggressively before settling slowly against his sides. His dark eyes, clearer now than they’ve been in days, fix on her with a renewed ferocity. The edge that had returned as swiftly as it had disappeared seems to alarm her, but he can’t bring himself to care. She damned well should be alarmed.
She had only ever seen the less feral parts of him before. Her claims of loving him fall flat even as she holds herself away from him. Now, in the face of all the vile pieces that make up his entire identity, she trembles. Later he would undoubtedly hate himself for it. Now however, he is too agitated.
“You never loved me,” he grinds out as he steps closer, crowding her. “And you certainly never chased me.” He is so close now she must be able to feel his breath as it grows ragged. “You told me yourself, out of your own fucking mouth, just how much you preferred…” he couldn’t quite manage their names as they caught, dry and bitter, on his tongue, “your other fuckbuddies to me.”
He is being deliberately crude, but he can’t seem to stem the tide of fury and resentment. He would have known it was true even if she had never said it, but somehow hearing the words had made it real in a way it had never been before. In a way he couldn’t seem to ignore any longer. He smiles then, but it is an ugly thing. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you how much delight Carnage took in ripping me limb from fucking limb before sending me to be a vessel for his beasts?” He should’ve stopped talking long ago, but now that the words have found his lips, he can’t seem to stem the tide. “Or that he let me believe you and I could ever be happy before proving me so fucking wrong?” He presses impossibly closer, teeth bared only a whisper from her perfect white skin. “I’m sure you had a great laugh at my expense.” His entire body stills then, as though waiting. Whether it’s for her confirmation or denial, he’s not certain. “Are you laughing now?”
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She doesn’t flinch away from him as he pushes himself closer, but she finds it impossible to meet his gaze. Her eyes are on the ground, and then to the injury she had just healed, and across the familiar gray of his wings with feathers that stir faintly with his movements, but she does not meet his eyes again. There is a tension in her jaw, not out of anger, but because she is afraid if she were to open her mouth all of her emotions will spill out of her tongue, uncontrolled.
“Ashhal,” she finally manages, and she is almost afraid of saying his name, afraid that he thinks she no longer has the right to say it. It doesn’t even taste familiar anymore; it feels strange in her mouth, as if she has not said it a hundred times before. He feels like a stranger, and she wonders what point she would have to rewind to to fix it all. “I promise, I never said that to you. I would never say that to you.”
Her eyes finally flicker to his face at the crude word he chooses, and she can feel the shame that crawls up her neck and to her cheeks. It’s not because he said the word, but more so because she is not sure, exactly, who he is talking about. Her romantic trysts have never been a secret. She has not hidden that part of herself from anyone, she did not pretend to be pure or moral—she was a disaster, usually, and since she could not destroy the hearts of those she loved she always destroyed her own. But it did not make having it flung back at her hurt any less. “I’m not sure who you’re talking about,” she finally says dimly, her chin drawn toward her chest, and a long forelock shields her eyes until the tears that brimmed the edges like a ring of stars are forced away.
She does not look back at him until he says Carnage’s name, and the sound of it causes her heart to seize inside of her chest. The way her eyes suddenly snap to his face, the confusion but also the curiosity that reads like a map right across her face; she tries to wipe it away, but she cannot hide her suspicion when she asks, “What do you mean he made you think you and I could be happy?” She doesn’t think Ashhal is lying, and there are parts of it that sound like something Carnage would do, but it feels like there are pieces missing.
It didn’t seem likely that Carnage singled Ashhal out just to destroy their relationship, but she had learned a long time ago to not try to predict or rationalize the things that he does.
“I’m sorry,” she says at last, even though she isn’t sure what she is apologizing for. She is sorry he is so angry at her, sorry he is hurt, sorry that he somehow got caught in one of Carnage’s many twisted games. Sorry that she destroyed something without even trying.
There is a long pause, and a moment where she flinches as if she is going to leave it at that and walk away. Her wings cling to her sides, and the glow of her halo throws shadows across her face. But she does not go, because she has never been able to be the first to walk away. Instead she just shakes her head, looks to the ground between them and whispers, “You should know me better. You should know me well enough to know I would never do any of the things you’ve been accusing me of.”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Her promises fall on half-deafened ears, far from the placations she might have wished them to be. He wants so badly to spill the acid that has been boiling in his gut, to hurt her as much as he had been hurt. But despite everything, he can’t seem to bring himself to. The way she seems to curl in on herself - as though she could become small enough to avoid his wrath - reawakens his sense.
It would solve nothing in the end. He doubts it would even make him feel better. Not when the outcome would always be the same. Despite her protests and her declarations, she never would have chosen him anyway. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered. Where Ashhal had hoarded his affections like a miser, she had broken them into smaller and smaller pieces so she might keep giving them away.
It seems that life has a very grand fucking sense of irony when it made her the one creature that might have convinced him to care.
Not so long ago the realization might have sent him fleeing across half of Beqanna to escape it. Now he doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t move away, or give her space. Even if he can’t find it in him to unfairly lay the blame at her feet, his bitterness is not nearly so kind. Instead it catches in his throat, a lump he can’t quite seem to swallow down.
“Don’t you fucking dare apologize,” he growls hoarsely, ears flattening against the words from her lips. The last thing he wants is her pity. Empty words had never solved problems. It’s why he so seldom has things to say.
And it’s why he doesn’t answer her question. He doesn’t know how to explain happiness to her. Doesn’t even believe they have the same definition. Undoubtedly she imagined some perfect domestic bliss where all their flaws were erased. A wildly divergent paradise to the one he imagined. In any case, it had been a fool’s dream. A dream that had resulted only in torment.
Her final words sting however, finding their mark beneath the ever growing chinks in his armor. Guilt has never been an emotion he responded well to, and much like a feral mutt, his hackles begin to rise. “Should I?” His words are biting, heavily laden with growing sarcasm. “Because you’re so much better than I am?” He pulls back slightly, gaze dropping to her face. To the eyes she so studiously keeps on the ground at his feet. “So then tell me, Ryatah,“ his words practically drip with acrimony now, “if it wasn’t you, who the fuck was it?” His lips twist into an ugly sneer. “Unless you’re going to tell me I don’t recognize your fucking face when I see it.”
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She wants to reach out and touch him, because he is still close enough that she could. If he were not nearly vibrating with that electric anger that he hardly kept harnessed she might have been stupid enough to try. He has never physically hurt her—he might have been the only one that has not, when she really thinks about it. But there is still something that makes her hesitate, an unsettled feeling that keeps her face angled from his and her eyes downcast.
It isn’t him physically lashing at her that she is afraid of, though. She is afraid of him pulling away, of him leaving. She is afraid of him leaving her there empty and aching and wondering what she did wrong, like that day in Nerine.
This time, though, it is not nearly as much of a mystery.
Should she really be surprised that she had pushed him to the point of hating her? Should she really be surprised that finally she pushed someone off that ledge she insisted on keeping them balanced on?
He had told her once that she chooses her romances because she knows that they will not last. That they were safe in the sense that she could remain guarded because they were destined to fail.
And of course, he was right.
He had been the safest of them all, with so little emotion ever managing to slip through, yet that only meant it took greater effort on her part to tear it all apart.
She deserved all of his barbed words and glancing blows. She deserved the contempt in his stare and the venom in his voice. It’s why she finally lifts her gaze to lock it with his, and this time she keeps it there because while she was terrible at so many things and in so many aspects, the only thing she has ever known how to bear is punishment.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she says, her voice so hushed that it is nearly a whisper compared to his. “I only meant that you have known me for so long. Longer than anyone that is currently alive.” She frowns at that, letting that realization sink in. There is no one else that has known her longer. Not Skellig or Atrox, or even Carnage. Ashhal had been there when she had first come to the valley so many years and lifetimes ago, and it built an ache in her chest to know that.
She meets his eye readily, though her jaw clenches again at his tone of voice. Her throat throbs with the unshed tears that this time never meet her eyes, trying to piece together the puzzle she knows she should have the answer to. It wasn’t her; she knows it couldn’t have been, but she doesn’t know anyone that would care enough to pretend to be her.
Except for one, and while she had no reason to do it other than boredom, she wouldn’t put it past her.
“Desire,” her daughter’s name sounds hollow when she says it, thinking of her beautiful galaxy-spun girl with a sorrow she had not expected to feel. “She’s my daughter and she…” her voice trails off, trying to figure out the best way to say what she wants to. “She can make herself look like almost anyone. Anyone that you are attracted to or that you...love.” The last word sticks on her tongue, like she is hesitant to say it; like she is afraid the very idea that she is implying he loves her will send him away. “She practiced it a lot when she was younger. She would try to look like her father, or Skellig or Atrox.” She pauses again, and she cannot help the cautious smile that ghosts across her lips. “And you.”
But the smile disappears as quickly as it had come, and her eyes finally flit away from his. “I’m sorry she did that. But whatever she told you, it wasn’t true.”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
