lay it down, pull my heart to the ground
time's getting cold, now the leaves all turn hard and blue

It's just this—you can't explain it. It's just this thing sitting in your mind, in your lungs, in your—in your chest. And it sits there, like, it's trying to choke the life out of you, but in some way, beneath all that crap, it feels good, too. It's just so intense it's like someone strangling you, and it—it has nothing to do with.. with anything, with.. with bodies. It just. It just is.

And that's why I can't explain it.

So just forget about it.

Just.. forget it.

(This is what I suspect they've never understood about me.)

So.. there was a moment when everything stopped—the world, his heart, his breath, his vision. A moment when everything in the world went black, but not silent, a low-key roar starting in the back of his ears, there were only two things he could, physically, feel (because his heart had shut up, remember?): the warmth of her body, and the warmth trickling out between his lashes.

Then the world rocked back into motion.

And he could feel the panic clutching at him—shit shit shit shit—and how it reduced his mind to a beast, unable to think, unable to.. unable to do anything but just stand there and clutch at her and she's falling through my grasp—

(Why the fuck am I crying now?)

"No no no no no," he kept mumbling into her back, straining, large hooves planted in the soil as if he could somehow brace her—as if he could keep them both from falling, but horses weren't meant to stop one another from keeling over (like they aren't meant to drag three-quarter drowned ponies from the sea, either). It was an uphill struggle and a losing battle (just like everything else), but damn it, that wasn't—he fought anyway, because he had to, because the outcome didn't matter.. the reason did. Because in the white-out, in the blind panic strangling the life out of his veins, she had pointed out that he existed. That he was real.

That there was more to him than scars and snow.

That—that he cared and that was real and it had to mean something. It had to be sign of.. of something.

So that's why he clutched at her while she was tilting away from him, muttering the word over and over like a mindless prayer until—

—until the balance shifted too much.

She began to fall, and he—he fell with her, awkwardly tumbled to the ground like a tower finally pulled down. He sort of pitched over one shoulder, legs going out from under him as he fell, too hard, onto his side, a sickening lurch going through his heart like what if I fell on her but—but there was just the cold ground beneath him, and the stars above, and he couldn't see her but he could feel her close by, hear the sound of her breathing (the tick of her heart).

Who are you? he wanted to ask, but he didn't know what kind of answer to expect, so he didn't.

Just stared vacantly up, now that he'd stopped mumbling because it was too late and they had fallen and laid there, pitifully cast down onto browning grass in the shadows of the trees.

I guess I finally got to lay down.

The corner of his mouth curved up in a humorless and bitter smirk as he traced the patterns of the stars. This was too familiar. It was so familiar it stung, so for a moment he forgot about himself and her and the whole bloody war and just imagined the feeling of blood freezing on his skin and snow blowing up to cover him as the stars wheeled, deathly cold and quiet. And then the first light of dawn had come.. and with it, voices.

And life had begun again, but part of him had been left to die in the snow.

Frostheart.

"Do you still want to know why?" he asks, quietly.

[ @[Roskuld] ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .