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    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


    All I ever wanted was the world, babe // Ashhal
    #11
    Its a whirlwind of then and now, my past and present endlessly fleeing each other. Ignoring the future, because as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing there. Just an endless, empty expansion that will carry me along with it kicking and screaming. Or just silent, and empty. 

    There are so many cracks in my skin. Eventually there won't be enough of me left to recognize, simply a fading trail of blood splatters to remind anyone that I once was at all. 

    His next quip is enough to give me pause. Enough to change my mood entirely. My giddy, reckless air is replaced almost instantly with something far more sober, and I nod in agreeance. "I expect you're right," I say, and the sorrow that sits at my very core raises its head like an old friend.

    Isn't that all I am, when you pare away everything else? Beneath the rage and the antagonism and the spite; there is sadness that has been my only companion many sleepless nights. He has unwittingly sapped the fight from me, the need to be the loudest. The strangest. The maddest. What remains is the girl who has always wondered what secret she is missing out on, that is constantly getting her left behind. 

    It won't last. It never does. These moments of clarity are all too brief, and the space between them grows as the years go on. That's for the best, if we're being honest. Each time there is more violence for me to account for, and it gets harder and harder to face what I've become. What I've been all along. 

    Voice uncharacteristically rough and low, I shake my head violently. "No, no. Forgetting is the easiest part. No. It's holding on to things I'm no good at-" my voice breaks on the admition. The darkness squeezes so close that I think I could sink my teeth into it if I tried. I have tried, I realize. 

    @[Ashhal]
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    #12

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

    If he had been a nicer man, kinder or gentler perhaps, he might have been moved by the sudden shift in her demeanor. Might have felt a twinge of empathy at her admission. But he is none of those things. He had never been given to pitying the less fortunate, had never been moved by the plights of others, never felt sadness at their haggard faces.

    Perhaps it is because he is one of those less fortunate, the haggard face that should be pitied. Or perhaps it is because any ounce of compassion had been beaten from him by careless lifetimes. Either way, when his eyes fall on her features as the anger and madness drains from them, they are as hard and cold as they have ever been.

    Where he should feel some compassion for this woman who parallels him in too many uncomfortable ways, instead he frowns, annoyed by this new turn in the conversation. He had never handled emotion well. Not his, and certainly not others. He didn’t want to be the unlucky soul she broke in front of. And he most certainly didn’t want to be a fucking shoulder to cry on.

    After a moment of staring at her, eyes darkening as his scowl deepens, he finally clips out “Whatever you’re letting go of right now, I don’t fucking want it.”



    @[Sabra]
    Reply
    #13
    I don't know what I expected. Pity, maybe, but this cold indifference is less painful to bear. It's easier to navigate, to shore myself up against, when I know there's no compassion coming. Neglect twists into a strange kind of strength, when left long enough. My recipe for survival, in a nutshell. 

    My lapse begins to crystallize again at his rough words; Melting sugar left to dry again. My chest feels uncomfortably tight where it squeezes around the foreign object its grown around. Easily ignored, with practice. Instead I grunt and let my eyes prickle with unshed moisture, with every bit of rage and ruin that I've collected over the years forced back down. 

    "As if I do?" I ask dryly, mouth curling tight around the words as they escape me. It's reckless energy that infiltrates my blood now. Not the manic electricity that I burn with some days, but a low hum that says I have to act, or it will get worse. A threat made by my own existence. My joints creak as a shift from one leg to the other, a gentle rhythm that spends some of the energy. The rest I speak. 

    "So what's it to be: fighting? Fucking? A bit of both, maybe. That's why we're here, isn't it?" And my smile is fragmented and feral as it turns on him. "Searching and searching for that just-right combination that'll make forever worth seeing." I haven't found it yet. I doubt he has either. Eternity stretches on agonizingly slow when I know it's all I've got. The same sort of bored knowing reverberates in his sour tones, and I have little hope that we'll ever find what we're really looking for. Not before we're too far gone to recognize it. 

    Who knows, though. Forever is a long time, long enough for even the impossible to happen. 

    @[Ashhal]
    Reply
    #14

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

    If he had ever searched for an answer, he had stopped a very long time ago. Even in his first lifetime - when he had believed it his only life and tried to make something of himself - he had never tried to make himself whole. There had always been a piece of himself missing, a yawning chasm that only widened with each passing decade.

    He certainly doesn’t believe he would find it here with a girl even more fractured than he is. Nor would he be a punching bag - not when he so desperately needed to be the one punching something. He had always sought those that would bend beneath him. Her? He’s not entirely convinced she wouldn’t simply splinter into pieces.

    His dark gaze is pitiless as he stares at her. Even as he watches the thorns and brambles begin to rise around her once more. It’s a relief knowing that he would not have to deal with whatever messy fallout might have followed her vulnerability. Anger and bitterness he could understand.

    He doesn’t respond to her antagonizing questions. Not immediately, at least. He has never been a man of many words, and the ones he does speak have always been brutally direct. It’s curious though, the more she tries to get a rise from him, the more his anger settles into dormancy. As though seeing the reflection of his own ire in her face raises a mirror he’d never wanted to see. Is that how he fucking appears to others?

    His scowl deepens at the thought, and when he finally responds, his words are brusque and deprecating. “Are you asking or telling?”



    @[Sabra]
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    #15
    I am too much. Far too much. There's noise in my head constantly; so much so that I can hardly sleep most nights. And when I do sleep, it's riddled with nightmares and uneasy dreams, and I awake more tired than I was in the first place. 

    There is so much in my mind that sometimes the only way to shut it up is to give in. I give in a lot. To violence and rage and simple meaness, to anything that brings me a modicum of relief. Relief that he's not giving me. 

    We are perhaps too similar in this way. Unwilling to bend. We'd rather break first. As I'm not looking to break tonight, it looks like we're at a stalemate, and that's worse than bitter war. Being bored leaves too much room for other things to creep inside and nest in my brain. So I smile coldly, the temperature between us dropping from frigid to sub-Arctic. 

    "I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter," I say, brittle as thin ice cracked underhoof. "I rarely do this, but I think I need to admit I was wrong about something." I rock back on my heels, turning to go. "I was mistaken in thinking there was any shred of life in you. Whatever magician animated your corpse did a piss poor job of it. You really should go and have them redo it properly. Or just have them undo it all together, for all the good you're doing walking about." I tsk at a job mucked up, icy pity gleaming in the depths of my broken-mirror eyes. 

    My moment of self reflection has gone. I don't see the resemblance between us as anything to remark on. He's a grey stone among millions, and I'm a gem in a mine, just waiting for the right hammer blow to bring me to life and light. Oh well. 

    @[Ashhal]
    Reply
    #16

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

    Her mistake had been imagining there was something more to him from the beginning. He has always been brutally honest about what he is and what he wants. Had long ago stopped seeing the point in pretending otherwise. Like the stone she imagined him, he would go on being swept down the stream for eons, living a life he never asked for.

    Her words, brittle and serrated as they are, are words he recognizes as the truth. She had wanted a reaction from him, but he doubted it was laughter she’d been looking for. But that is all he has to give. Her accusations stir a long dormant humor, though the laugh that escapes his throat is harsh and cruel. It does not last long, but the words that follow are cloaked in bitter mirth. “Believe me, if I could find him and make him undo it, I fucking would.” He presses slightly closer, black eyes gleaming with an unholy light. “I’ve died a hundred goddamned times, and yet here I stand.”

    Then, as the amusement and ire fades from him, he falls back, eyes deadening. He had never pretended to be something he isn’t. He certainly wouldn’t start now. She wanted to know what he had to give? Then he’d damned well tell her.

    “You want to fight? Then stop squawking and fucking hit me.” His tone is hard and gravelly, unyielding in it’s brutal honesty. “You want to fuck? Shut your mouth and lift your tail.” There is no hint of seduction in his voice, but as far as he is concerned, either of those outcomes is just as good as the other. “If you want anything else, you’re barking up the wrong damned tree.” His pale features harden, the defined edges knife sharp with jaded understanding. “I told you the truth when I said you didn’t want to know me.”



    @[Sabra]
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