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01-30-2015, 11:21 AM
i am the vanguard of your destruction
I don't know where to run anymore. His breath came out in frozen clouds again, heart thundering recklessly in its cage of ribs—but it was stuck, and no matter how it tried to flee it couldn't get away.
It was, after all, suspended there, somewhere beneath white bones and red muscles. And the darkness was fluid, liquid and cold, slipping through ice-crusted veins and whispering in the back of his mind, little tendrils of doubt and anger reaching out to grasp him. It held him when nothing else did, and within the structures of the blue violence he could collapse without falling apart completely, and—
“Come back to the Edge with me.”
—and she was anchoring him with her words, her voice, her eyes. She gripped his mind with careful hands, held his quivering attention with the lightest of touches. I hate you, he wanted to say, to spit the words out into the air between them and watch her crumble, feel her let go, drop him and let him spiral into the darkness.. the darkness, where there was nothing but the beast, and where things made sense in their simple, plain, and cruel logic. But the ice in his veins froze his heart and the words in his throat along with them. He couldn't bring himself to say it, to force her aside. The only thing he wanted, and desperately so, was to flee.
But there was one, small woman standing in his way, her sky-blue eyes the shield she wore, and he wondered idly if she even knew how brave she was.
He didn't want to be here anymore. He had thought he'd stopped running from things, but the truth of it was that even if he didn't physically flee, he never faced them down either. In his mind he ran in circles, dodged and danced, but always running.
She was in his path, and he didn't have the heart to run her down.
And so, he wanted to hate her for forcing him to face the darkness threatening to overwhelm him.
It hurt. His mind hurt, his thoughts too erratic, too wild, too hard to contain and hold down; they kept slipping, and no matter how much he tried they always escaped his grasp and wormed away, to the point where he wasn't sure what he'd been trying to think of in the first place. The Edge? The fickle concept of sanity? Kahlua? Psyche, Snö, Ophelia, and that stupid old goat? Death and destruction? Ice and fire?
He had gone north. He'd told them the truth. He'd told them what had happened that night so many years ago, when the cold, distant stars became witness to slaughter, and the winter failed to claim the life it should've taken. Mauja had lived. It was old, that wound, the scars covered with dust. Oh, maybe he—none of the unit, really—hadn't been ready for a mission of that magnitude. Maybe they should've kept in mind how young he was, despite his prowess. Maybe a thousand other reasons that didn't place the blame on him when all he wanted was for them to yell that it was all his fault.
Maybes, maybe nots, but just as bringing Gaucho his knees wouldn't bring Psyche back, that kind of wisdom couldn't make up for the fact that he had died under those stars.
Wet, red blood freezing in the disturbed snow. Cold and beautiful, and he had listened to the slow throb of his own heart, and the sound of death rattling out of empty lungs one by one.
“It wasn’t your fault,” but it was, and he felt himself give in. He had no defenses left. He raised his head and closed his eyes, hid behind the curtain veil of white as the tears he thought had frozen pooled beneath his lashes. Her words washed over him like water and light, soft and cool at the same time, but he could barely understand what she meant anymore. She spoke of blame and killers and some she Mauja had no idea who she meant, until the silence returned. His world was dark, but it was a different kind of darkness now—absolute, and almost comforting. “What can I do for you?”
He had no words to offer her—no salvation, no absolution, not a single thing. She didn't even have a horn to run through his chest.
So he said nothing, and saw nothing. He was a perfect statue, motionless and regal, head held to the sky—and if not for the small details, hair blowing in the wind and sides gently rising and falling, he would not have seemed alive at all. He had nothing left to defend himself with, and nothing left to give.
Slowly, one tear freed itself from his lashes, and tracked a glistening path down his cheek.
He had nothing left to give, except all the tears he had left unshed for too many years.
It was, after all, suspended there, somewhere beneath white bones and red muscles. And the darkness was fluid, liquid and cold, slipping through ice-crusted veins and whispering in the back of his mind, little tendrils of doubt and anger reaching out to grasp him. It held him when nothing else did, and within the structures of the blue violence he could collapse without falling apart completely, and—
“Come back to the Edge with me.”
—and she was anchoring him with her words, her voice, her eyes. She gripped his mind with careful hands, held his quivering attention with the lightest of touches. I hate you, he wanted to say, to spit the words out into the air between them and watch her crumble, feel her let go, drop him and let him spiral into the darkness.. the darkness, where there was nothing but the beast, and where things made sense in their simple, plain, and cruel logic. But the ice in his veins froze his heart and the words in his throat along with them. He couldn't bring himself to say it, to force her aside. The only thing he wanted, and desperately so, was to flee.
But there was one, small woman standing in his way, her sky-blue eyes the shield she wore, and he wondered idly if she even knew how brave she was.
He didn't want to be here anymore. He had thought he'd stopped running from things, but the truth of it was that even if he didn't physically flee, he never faced them down either. In his mind he ran in circles, dodged and danced, but always running.
She was in his path, and he didn't have the heart to run her down.
And so, he wanted to hate her for forcing him to face the darkness threatening to overwhelm him.
It hurt. His mind hurt, his thoughts too erratic, too wild, too hard to contain and hold down; they kept slipping, and no matter how much he tried they always escaped his grasp and wormed away, to the point where he wasn't sure what he'd been trying to think of in the first place. The Edge? The fickle concept of sanity? Kahlua? Psyche, Snö, Ophelia, and that stupid old goat? Death and destruction? Ice and fire?
He had gone north. He'd told them the truth. He'd told them what had happened that night so many years ago, when the cold, distant stars became witness to slaughter, and the winter failed to claim the life it should've taken. Mauja had lived. It was old, that wound, the scars covered with dust. Oh, maybe he—none of the unit, really—hadn't been ready for a mission of that magnitude. Maybe they should've kept in mind how young he was, despite his prowess. Maybe a thousand other reasons that didn't place the blame on him when all he wanted was for them to yell that it was all his fault.
Maybes, maybe nots, but just as bringing Gaucho his knees wouldn't bring Psyche back, that kind of wisdom couldn't make up for the fact that he had died under those stars.
Wet, red blood freezing in the disturbed snow. Cold and beautiful, and he had listened to the slow throb of his own heart, and the sound of death rattling out of empty lungs one by one.
“It wasn’t your fault,” but it was, and he felt himself give in. He had no defenses left. He raised his head and closed his eyes, hid behind the curtain veil of white as the tears he thought had frozen pooled beneath his lashes. Her words washed over him like water and light, soft and cool at the same time, but he could barely understand what she meant anymore. She spoke of blame and killers and some she Mauja had no idea who she meant, until the silence returned. His world was dark, but it was a different kind of darkness now—absolute, and almost comforting. “What can I do for you?”
He had no words to offer her—no salvation, no absolution, not a single thing. She didn't even have a horn to run through his chest.
So he said nothing, and saw nothing. He was a perfect statue, motionless and regal, head held to the sky—and if not for the small details, hair blowing in the wind and sides gently rising and falling, he would not have seemed alive at all. He had nothing left to defend himself with, and nothing left to give.
Slowly, one tear freed itself from his lashes, and tracked a glistening path down his cheek.
He had nothing left to give, except all the tears he had left unshed for too many years.
