Isolate and Medicate

the Rift

[PRIVATE] Isolate and Medicate

Torleik the Bloodskald Posts: 354

Outcast atk: 4.5 | def: 8.0 | dam: 7.5

Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 11 HP: 66.5 | Buff: SWIFT

Irelyn :: Plain Griffin :: Molten Dagger RedGod

#17

01-17-2015, 07:59 PM

Torleik

As flawed as you may think you are, you're perfect to me

For the passionate warrior, facts and feelings were often the same. It was not an overtly rational way to live his life, but if you could not be fervent about the facts you clung to, what good were they? A cold, empty life of information was no way to spend your passage through the days, years, decades of living. Torleik’s heart was not worn on his sleeve by any means, but for as tough as the Bloodskald could be, his heart was a resilient but damaged beast; it beat fiercely, unwilling to give up despite all the hits taken, damage absorbed, and joy siphoned away.

To play at being anything other than that which he was…Torleik did not understand such games. His failure at politics came from this confusion and inability to participate in and successfully deliver a long con in that manner. Short deceptions, being reticent to divulge truths, not bothering to correct others’ assumptions of his nature – those things the warrior could handle. But to bury himself beneath a façade of icy indifference? To strangle his thwarted desires until they ceased to exist? Never. His blood burned too hot for that. Torleik was a man, and no man could live and not call himself a coward if he put his head down and hid from the storm of desires and needs that shaped him.

Just as this pale scion of wintry perfection couldn’t fathom why or how he so easily found value in her and her failings, the adumbral gladiator hadn’t the faintest of intimations why she drowned herself in a viscous abyss of pretermission.

The Bloodskald did value her; she was in the highest echelons of his esteem – slots almost exclusively reserved for family and those in Valhallr who had given their lives next to him in the cleansing crucible of battle. Ophelia was so very dead to self, so willing to put down her to pick up the other. It angered him and he could not stand by and allow her to continue her perpetual martyrdom without reward. Someone had to come beside her and stop her from plunging that knife inside over and over, spilling her blood out for everyone else and staining her alabaster grace like mud on the hem of a glamorous gown.

The White Queen finally spoke again, agreeing with his assertion that relationships were paramount in one’s life and Torleik noted the pause. Had she meant to say something else? Something she couldn’t let past her lips? “Your sister is a loyal ally. Family…family is love,” he murmured. And though her assessment of her brokenness may have been correct, if only she knew the man before her had already chosen to pace himself behind her so as to gather up whatever chips and pieces of her soul that got knocked off along the way…

Torleik didn’t see stupidity in her actions, he saw fear and uncertainty – and knowing that she had no innate fear of anything, to find such feelings inscribed on the tome of her face concerned him deeply. He cared, about her, for her, and fear was not something he wanted her to associate with her time spent in his presence. So he did what he could to reassure her, demonstrating with his own person the safety of the hot springs that seemed to unnerve her.

Each undulation of the colored ribbons in the sky reflected off the water, played off of Ophelia’s light coat, making it seem like he was seeing her in all of her colors for the first time. She was beautiful in every single one and that little crooked half-smile on her lips made his heart stumble in its steady rhythm. The Viking knew he’d do anything for that smile. Slipping under the surface, he beckoned her in with him, hoping her trust in his good intentions had taken deep enough root for a little sapling of hope to sprout.

Torleik gazed up at her, all the constancy in the world distilled into his form in this moment, waiting with shallow breath to see if she would follow his lead. Her heterochromatic eyes stared back and he hoped the flesh mask that was his face let his desire for her show through. One eternity, a whole eon of life and death, creation and fall felt like it passed him by before the one they called Forsaken broke the stillness and slowly took her place next to him in these healing waters.

The face with which she addressed him stirred his protective nature and he vowed to himself that should it kill him, he would defend her to his dying breath. Even if she rejected him, pushed him away, chose another – she was the kind of woman worth fighting and dying for. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” the Bloodskald inquired, the question layered with meaning. The hot springs themselves were pleasurable, of course, but didn’t it feel freeing to shed the shackles of fear and move forward? That was what she had given him by her presence during his anxiety attack over Irelyn’s fire; could he not return it? And did it not feel good to choose faith in another? Be close to another warm body that wanted you there?

No other words needed to be spoken now, he felt. They had shared fear and conquered it; taken refuge in each other’s strengths.

They were good for one another.

@[Ophelia]

OOC: Omg they are adorable.

"talk talk talk"

Credits: Image by Schwartze @ DA