"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 one-track minded now.
He does not move aimlessly through the shadows now.
No, he moves with purpose.
He has not seen her since he accompanied her to the Mountain, trapped as she had been in that feline skin. He had made sure she made it there and then he had gone, confident that she was stronger than she knew. Their mother would not have made her weak.
He looks for her now because so much has changed. He moves through the crushing darkness shrouded in fog because the fog was the first thing that ever belonged to him and there had always been some comfort in the way the fog resembled his sister’s smoke.
His sister.
His beloved sister.
His strength in his time of tremendous weakness. His first companion. How important she had been to him in his youth, he thinks, how important she still is. There is some brutal aching in the cavern of his chest to think about how long it has been since he last saw her. There is no relief in the fact that he has been busy. Preoccupied.
He does not fear the things that move in the shadows because he is one of them. He does not think of them as monsters because he is no monster. He wonders what his sister thinks of them, if they remind her of him.
He can feel the fingers of his magic stretch out around him, reaching for her through the darkness, and he allows the magic to guide him. He surrenders to it, follows it wherever it takes him. Until he finds her.
“Liv,” he breathes, the same rattling sound it has always been despite all of the things that have changed. He reaches for her, his edges hardening so that he can bump his nose gently against her shoulder.
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
No, she is the daughter of shadow and smoke. She doesn’t fear the darkness and the monsters. The darkness is her home. The shadows her family. And the monsters that lurk? They do not strike fear into her unbeating heart. No. Instead it is a trill of anticipation that stirs somewhere deep within. A longing to see the predators that prowl in the dark. She’s long been restored to her own body, but some part of her mind remains claimed by the predator. It’s not a hinderance in her eyes, this bloodlust that sleeps within the marrow of her bones. It’s the flicker of life that she clings so desperately to.
She’s become a creature of two extremes.
Part of her consumed with want. (So much want.)
Want of affection. Of exhilaration. Of blood. Of risk. Of danger.
The other part entirely vacant. A void who cared little and wanted nothing at all. Hollow. Unfeeling.
She teetered between the two constantly, but in the darkness she had grown bolder. Had allowed herself to hunt. To crave. To want in ways she had never allowed herself to before.
Even though the open sands of Pangea will always be home, she has a special fondness for this forest. She finds herself longing for her feline vision, but has learned to navigate on her own in the darkness. She’s mastered her smoke - learning to become one with the smoke - instead of moving through the forest as flesh and bone. But today she travels as flesh, not as smoke, letting the tendrils curl around her ankles as she walks.
She finds herself longing for him. For her twin. Her other half. She had always known that Jamie was destined for great things - and that those things would take him from her side - but that never stoped her want.
So when the fog brushes against her skin, the flesh prickles with both cold and anticipation. She turns, immediately moving to curl into his touch.
“You’ve been busy, Jamie,” she says, with the smallest of smiles dancing across dark lips.
such is life, such is death.
@[jamie]
@[The Monsters] liv’s cryogenic preservation? (im sorry you made this too fun)
How he wishes he could have taken her along with him.
How he wishes the things that had changed in him could have been changed in her, too.
It seems only right that if nothing should be out of his reach that there should be nothing outside of her reach either. Are they not both children of the same shadow magician? Should they not both wield the same power?
She folds herself against him and does not pass right through him. How sweetly he receives her, kissing her head. It soothes him to know that he could protect her now, should he need to. Though there is nothing here that means them any harm. He knows what the shadow things are capable of, certainly, he had seen them in the Afterlife and they had torn him from limb to limb. Death had brought him such peace, such tremendous understanding.
They are not monsters and neither is he.
They serve a much greater purpose.
He leans against her.
“No busier than you, dear sister,” he rasps.
Is this true?
He knows that her quest had taken so much effort. He knows that it had not been easy for her to ask for his help. He knows, too, that it had been just as important as whatever business he had to attend to.
He shifts his weight and turns those freakish yellows into the pressing darkness.
“There will be children soon,” he tells her, though there is some small part of him that wonders if he should have let Beyza tell her. Beyza had once made it clear that her loyalty lay with Livinia, after all. “Mine and Beyza’s.” He wonders, too, if he should have made it sound more romantic. “Three daughters.”
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
It is funny how when she is away from others how the want and the jealousy festers. But the moment she is reunited with him - that jealousy evaporates. Jamie has never made her feel like anything less. Even now when he has climbed so high he is still her Jamie. And she loves him for this. She burns with pride at what he has accomplished - bending the world to his will.
She melts into him, relishing how the shadows brush against her skin. She’s only ever known the sweet embrace of darkness. Perhaps that is why she’s thrived as the world fell deeper into the dark. Shadows and darkness had never once caused her despair. The monsters, not that she regarded them as such, seemed to identify her as something similar enough to them to be left alone. Though that didn’t stop her from seeking them out of nothing more than her own burning curiosity to find the creatures that had sent so many scrambling for safety. Those who are already dead are not afraid of dying.
“I have not won the Alliance and plunged the world into darkness, brother,” she says, as a smirk creeps across her lips - exposing the hint of pointed teeth. The timing certainly had been convenient though she knew Jamie couldn’t claim full responsibility for the darkness though she imagined he might like to. Not that she thought her brother minded Beqanna’s current state. This iteration of the world suited him - them - just fine.
But light flickers in her crimson eyes at the mention of children. Livinia had never really considered the thought of children of her own, though she did assume it was possible. It plants an interesting seed in her mind - the idea of a legacy of blood - surely something for her to mull over at a later date. She was no fool - she knew there was some relationship between Jamie and Beyza. She hadn’t ever considered that that would mean children. Part of her wants to probe - to know the nature of the relationship between her twin and perhaps the only other person she loves. But instead, she steers the conversation carefully away - keeping her tone light.
“Nor have managed to produce a whole litter of progeny in one season,” she says, teasingly, “So I’d say you’ve quite outperformed me if we’re truly keeping score.”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
It is not pride he feels, not exactly.
The shadow thing had never had any use for such a useless emotion. (What had there ever been that was worth being proud of? He had been born weak. Crippled. It shows still in the way the breath wheezes and rattles. The power he has attained is not worth pride either, is it? No, it is only the natural progression of things.)
It is not pride, but it is something like it.
A glow that starts in the cavern of his chest and spreads steadily outward. A kind of warmth that only his beloved sister can inspire. The same feeling that had consumed him when she had stepped between him and the sun, protecting him without him having to ask.
It is not pride, but he flashes that ink-black, shark-tooth smile all the same.
He is not responsible for the darkness, not directly, but he thrives in it. The thrill of it hums electric in the network of his mottled veins. (He is still not convinced that he is made from flesh and blood and sinew, only that he had been made so in order to battle his way through the Alliance by some strange magic.)
“I cannot take responsibility for the darkness, can I?” he asks, still grinning, freakish yellow eyes glowing something brilliant in those terrible shadows. It had been Beyza that he had sought out in the immediate aftermath. Beyza who had told him of the sacrifice she had made, Beyza who had made good on her promise to bring his true home to Beqanna. “It was Beyza,” he says and sighs some great rasping sigh. The great white magician.
But he tilts his peculiar head at what she says next, a strange twinge in his chest. Are there secrets between them? He does not try to reach into his beloved sister’s mind. He would not betray her this way. Instead, he curls himself sweetly around her. Fog and smoke. It has always been them. Before anything else, it was just the two of them.
“There is no score between us, Livinia,” he murmurs, insistent regardless of whether or not she had been teasing. “There will never be any score between us.”
He drags in a long, wheezing breath and feeds her the memory of the three of them as children: the white magician glowing bright as a small sun, the shadow thing averting his weary gaze, and his beloved sister wedged between them. “But if there were, we would always be even.”
jamie
