en natt så kall och månen den var klar

He actually expected her to lash out, to strike the tender spots between his words—to call him out on his weakness, and the truth that just tasted like bullshit. It was, after all, what he would've done. Smacked the bruises to make them ache, to make them not see everything he carried within. Never mind that the ice lay across it all, locked it to the bottom of his heart, and that his eyes never showed the bloody reflections of what he'd seen, and done, and not done.

But she didn't. She didn't laugh, didn't tell him what a fucking weak pathetic moron he was. Just stared as if he'd slapped her, and maybe he had, because after all, since when had Mauja the Frostheart, the frozen bastard of the north, said something like this? Since when had he ever confessed that it had all been a fucking lie all along? Something he'd told himself as he kept his eyes closed? Passion had scoured his soul clean from everything that ate him up, but now that the fire had gone out, there was nowhere he could hide from the monsters. Bit by bit they ate him, gnawed at his soul, and still he kept denying it. Because still he had the moments when he didn't know what was up, or down, or what he actually wanted, or if the monsters were real or if he was just telling himself it was that way.. was this whole thing, this whole backwards quest for redemption and retribution, just some thing? Like his racism had been?

It had all been so fucking convenient. His upbringing, the witch-hunters, Psyche—he'd actually believed it, breathed it, lived it. And it's only when you open your eyes you realize you'd lived with them closed.

"Why are you telling me this? Am I not someone less worth than you? Am I not someone you can just lie to and hope for the best?" Well, he'd tried that, too—and look where it'd got him. One corner of his mouth gave a twitch. And she definitely had lost it, no matter what she'd tried to say earlier. There it was again, the laugh, and her head came up, breathing too rapid, words and confessions spilling out, voice fading to a whisper. Her horn fell down through the air, until its tip pointed straight for his chest. It was, he decided, quite un-charming. He didn't like anyone pointing their weapons at him. Least of all when he didn't know if they were going to use it.

"Please, help me."

"Delinne," he said softly. The brook murmured around his feet and slowly his head fell too, horn angling down. If she attacked, it'd be easier to block her that way. "Did I ever tell you, I killed you once?" And still his voice was gentle, but his heart was pounding. He actually couldn't recall if he'd told her—or anyone, for the matter. Almost telling Prometheus had probably put him off confessing it to anyone else. He didn't even know why he was telling her now. What was the point of it? Could it forestall whatever doom was waiting just around the corner? Because surely her heart was pounding like his, and surely she could taste the disaster lying in wait in the charged spring air, and what the hell were they doing, and saying, anyway?

He was dancing with a tiger.

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