Her tone cuts, deep into his heart where all his barriers crumble to her familiarity. For a moment he is frozen in time, in space, cradled in a zone where he feels no pain just before the strike cuts him down. At first, he's merely left breathless. Why? And he could rationalize it, could patiently weather her storm as he has everything in his god forsaken life. It is what he does. He is the rock, the Aurelight, guiding others out of their storms while weathering his own in crippled silence. A quiet part of him tells him to, because he cannot do this to her, not when she is already so burdened by grief. But what of my own? What of me? Where is her patience, god damn it? And he breathes out.

Everything goes fucked up after that. 

It's laughable that Isopia ever found even a molecule of kinship in him for his more worldly view, and he would laugh at himself too for how he breaks upon this one last stone. Too heavy a burden at last for him to carry. Years upon years of silence and servitude, caring for those who did nothing but lash out at him, and he finally breaks. Whirls upon the girl of flame and cinder for how she burns him - you fucking burn everything, this is all your fault - and he is a monster cradled unfairly in the flesh of the gentle man he used to be. Useless, broken, and he CAN'T FUCKING TAKE IT ANYMORE. 

"You know nothing of grief, you insolent child," he spat, and static begins to build in his feathers and on his skin. He's off the rails, completely unburdened by logic, resorting to nothing but primordial anger and disappointment. Wings raise up near his nape, bristling as he draws himself to his full height. A generally unused, happily comfortable pose that rises to tower in his fury. "You've lived barely a fraction the time I have, and you ask me what I know of grief?" His voice is like thunder, and clouds stir overhead as the static storm rises, pressuring humidity down upon them as it begins to crackle against his hide. A worn veteran pushed too far, valiant heart too weary to be gold any longer. Tarnished and rusted. 

"I held my sister while she suffered a slow end over countless seasons, I killed my own traitorous family without flinching because I was told to, because I was nothing more than a body, a vehicle of death." He forces himself to move away from her, if only because he's too terrified of what he'll do if he doesn't. What have you turned into? It echoes in his head only to be swallowed by the demon that has lived inside him all his life, dormant through force of will alone. You've finally become what you always lied to yourself about being. A monster. "I lost my best friend on a raid coming back from the Throat with your mother, who I also lost! I lost Mirage, I lost Lace, I lost SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER KNOW!" His pride, his heritage, his land, his people, his friends and family. 

His storm is violent but he keeps it, in some locked delirium, against his skin. Already causing enough damage? the voice inside him cackles. "I was here," he snarled, and he means that with his entire force both soul and body. Teeth are bared and face scrunched into something animalistic, so far from 'Kaj' that it shouldn't even be called by the same name. "I was here, you ungrateful brat," is hissed like poison, because he had devoted himself to her, had helped her through her stumbling steps as a child and as a Sultana. She had only ever needed to ask for him and he would be there, but he wasn't enough for her high standards. "Mourn over his cold corpse if you want!" And the sound of the lightning goes dead all at once. "That's all he is now, and apparently all I am to you as well." It's cold, but inside he feels no regret, if only because he is so far numbed to his own reactions that he can't quite formulate a proper response to his own downward spiral. 


I wish you'd had your mother's tongue, he thinks vilely inside his head, but even that is too cruel a blow to place even after all the devastation he is sure to have caused. 

He whirls to face Isopia, a behemoth with an ice of stone. Toil too close to stone and you become stone yourself, the voice cackles gleefully. "You did the right thing." Surely she would never look at him the same again, either. And then he turns and marches away, a receding storm, broken down into nothing by those who had always taken his love and patience and kindness for granted.

Where was that kindness now?