Kaj & Kahlua

Enter, the broken queen. She had been avoiding the Edge because of the knowledge that the Lady Moon was there. Kahlua had loved her, worshipped her, did everything within her power to please her, and yet… all the while she had been deceived. The Lady Moon had been keeping secrets- a dark woman worthy of her dark magics. The queen had wanted to blame Gaucho for what had happened. He had done the deeds, after all, but Father Earth had convinced her otherwise at the scene of Hototo’s death. It was not Gaucho’s fault, but the goddess’. So… how could the queen live here, lead her herd here, when she knew what horrors the Lady Moon could cause. How could this gentle herd remain under her reign, when their ideals were so very different?

It was a philosophical question that was beyond Kahlua’s capacity to consider, especially right now. Her mind was elsewhere, as her widened belly swayed with each step. Father Earth had come to her, asked her of course, but then what choice had she really had to say no? She had tried to bargain for her herd, to help them- a favor for a favor- but she had been unable. And now… Now she had to carry this burden, and she had nothing to show for it.

She walked, but her legs felt heavy. Shackles around her hooves reminded her of the prison she had placed herself in. A foal- responsibility. And then there was the glass wall that stood before her, shattered remains of something that had once been vibrant and vivacious. It was her soul, broken and thrown on the ground. She was going to be a mother, and she didn’t even know how to be herself. Sighing softly, she forced her body to continue forward, her stomach swaying. She had stayed hidden for a few weeks, trying to come to terms with this on her own, but she had been unable. She needed help now, and she knew who it was that would help her.

Kaj had always been there for her, and she remembered the way he had looked when Parelia’s foal had been born… He would not forsake her now… right?

@[Kaj]- sorry for double tag

Kaj & Kahlua

Fury had pervaded the genial tone of his herd, and Kaj knew that he was one of the majority in that aspect, his anger regarding the Goddess strong and unyielding. Plans had begun to formulate in his mind, thick and cloying, supported by the dissent among his family and his own personal agony. It had led to him keeping close to the borders, echoing in contrast Kahlua's absence, though he was blissfully unaware of that particular parallel. As much as he despised the idea of the Goddess taking refuge in his lands, there was nothing he could immediately do. His own helplessness infuriated him, because for once there was nothing he could do to make things okay. What did his title matter, in the end, if he could do nothing to alleviate the worries and pains of his family? What power did he really, truly have, if he could only frown with sympathy and do nothing? It made him feel weak, useless. Did they look to him to try and change it? Or had they given up hope that they could avoid the oppressive hatred of their patron Goddess?

Kaj, however, was not one to give up easily. And so he slept little, staying up deep into the hours of the nights, contemplating all the ways he could pull his family free from the muck that surrounded the Goddess they'd unfairly been tied to. with it came no peace, but Kaj had resigned himself to that fate, aware that sacrifices had to be made on his end if he were ever to be any steps forward. If those sacrifices ended up costing him his health in ways he considered minimal, then those would be actions he would take upon himself. Kaj had been given mighty shoulders, and he would use them to hold up the weight of his family and all their sorrows, even if it meant the breaking of his bones and splaying of his marrow.

What little peace he had garnered for himself came from the cove of trees that all Edgers knew belonged to him. His kin slept in various spots, often revisiting and claiming those areas for their own. Kaj had long found his own niche, a copse of maples and evergreens that kept him warm and protected in all seasons, a view of beauty when the maples bled red and orange and yellow beneath the weight of autumn. Few sought him out in his little paradise, just as they avoided those claimed by the other herd members. There was little privacy in herd life, and Kaj's duties often had him interacting endlessly with his kin. It was a common awareness that he needed his time alone, when the need or desire struck him, and so the copse had remained in whole untouched by those aside from himself.

So, emerging from his little sanctuary, the king was surprised to nearly fall directly over Kahlua's tracks. Face to face with a thousand loose ends and hurt feelings, shattered remains of his own broken heart worn in the crevices of her irises. Stupidly, he halted, not sure why she was seeking him out. For surely that was what she had intended to do, appearing so close to his sleeping area as she did. "Kahlua?" It fell from his lips heedlessly, before he could even think to swallow down her name and spare himself the grief of each syllable.

Finally his gaze fell to her fully, taking in the whole of her body, in particular the swell of her sides. The swell of a foal.

His entire world crumbled there for her to see, glistening shards at her feet to take pride in.

Kaj had thought there was a limit, to the amount of pain an individual could feel, to the sharpness of each piece of a broken heart. He had been horrifyingly, devastatingly wrong. It lay in the proof of her betrayal, of her lies, that wrote itself into the flesh of her protruding sides. A horrible, strangled sound escaped him, and he backpedaled away from her on shaking limbs. He couldn't imagine what sort of face he was making, what amount of pain he was broadcasting in the initial shock of her countenance. It felt as if hellfire had come to consume him, burn him until his bones were charred and his heart left a throbbing, aching mess of red and ruin in the middle.

His wings came to catch him, for he surely would have fallen in his agony, in the shredding of his heart that seemed to perversely pulse throughout every inch and iota of his poor, wretched being. It finally came to him that he must speak, most detail to her the deep, despairingly intimate wound she had happily handed to him. His tongue was thick in his mouth, reluctant to move. Perhaps choking on it would have been better, a merciful death to keep him from suffering with the knowledge that Kahlua had wanted a foal with anyone but him. He, who had professed his undying, eternal love for her and all her flaws. He, who had stood behind her to catch her should she fall or falter, beside her as her honored equal, before her to lead her in times of darkness. He who had wanted nothing but the knowledge of her love returned, the ability to love her with all the intensity he could muster in his mortal form.

"You're...you're with foal," he choked out dumbly, knees inverted just to keep himself standing. He tried to remind himself to breathe, but every inhale was shaky with the desire to shed tears. Kaj could not allow even that relief, and he wondered if it was masochistic of him to do it in order to spare Kahlua the pain of the sight. He tried to quell the desire to scream, to thrust himself from the precipice of the cliff and either not bother to catch himself or fly off to some distant part of the wilds where he would never have to see her beautiful face again. And through all the questions that battered his mind, with all the possibilities that faced him in that moment, poised to slice his throat into a wicked grin of blood and sacrifice, only one was verbalized.

"Why?"

Why did you break my heart? Why wasn't I good enough? Why didn't you tell me that you were in love with someone else? Why can't I make you happy? What did I do wrong? Where did I lose you?

Why am I so incapable of being loved? Why must you show me, knowing that all I ever wanted was to make you happy?

Kaj & Kahlua

Kaj.

She had hardly been paying attention to where she was going, or how she was going to find him, but find him she had- and there he was. For a moment, all that was wrong in the world became right. He was there… She was home- that was one fact she knew with certainty, no matter where travels might take her. No matter where she went, or what troubles weighed upon her, being with Kaj was like coming home. Her heart, heavy with its burden, became light; her eyes, downcast and listless, grew brighter as they raised up to look at him; even her hooves, weighted down with lead restraints, seemed to break free of their chains.

Until he said her name. And she knew, in that moment, that nothing about this conversation was going to go right. He was looking at her, but then… then he was looking at everything else too. Her sides, her stomach, the widening there that was telltale of the parasite within her. She wanted to hide, to disappear, to shrink back into the shadows where she could be safe from that judgmental gaze. He gasped, shirked away from her, and the queen’s eyes began to fill with fluid. The scene was too similar- Res backing away, Kaj backing away.

No, she wanted to cry out. No, come back. But how could she ask him to? She knew what this looked like, she knew what thoughts must be going through his head. Liar, he would say. And oh, she wanted to tell him he was wrong. She wanted to cry out and scream, and tell him everything that had happened, but she stood there dumbly because she didn’t know what to do. Her rock, her anchor, the man that made the world disappear when he draped his wing over her back… He was leaving her, rushing away, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

And so when he finally spoke, his words were like a knife into her heart. Yes, she was with foal… Why??? WHY?? She wanted to scream. That was the question she wanted to ask- the question she had no answer to. Why had she been approached by a god? They knew her heart and soul. She spoke to them nightly, giving them all of her troubles and all of her sorrows. How many nights had she prayed to them for same guidance? Some idea on how to make a relationship with Kaj work, when he wanted a family and she wanted freedom. They knew. THEY KNEW! she wanted to scream suddenly, because it was so unfair. They knew and they approached her anyways.

And how was she supposed to say no?

How was she, a mere mortal, supposed to stand before the Father Earth and tell him no. No I won’t have your foal, no I won’t return balance to Helovia, no I won’t replace your STUPID DEAD SON HOTOTO. No was all she had to say, and no was the one word that she hadn’t been able to.

Around her, the soft song that nature made around her began to whip into a frenzy, reflecting her emotional turmoil. What had been a harmonious tune, though melancholy, began to twist into something darker… angrier. The calls of the birds became sharp instead of smooth, cutting through the wind that seemed to rattle and rustle the trees with more fervor than they had before. The gentle croak of the tree frogs became dissonant as their uneven notes laid over top of one another. But for all the noise, Kahlua heard nothing. She only heard Kaj’s voice- why- echoing in her mind.

Why was the only question she didn’t have an answer to.

“It was the Earth God,” she choked out as tears began to slip down her face. “After… After the Moon Goddess. Gods Kaj.” Her last two words bit through the air, disgust filling her voice. Her heart would never know how to handle this woman that brought death, but who had also raised the Sunshower up through too many dark nights. Was she really evil, or was there more to her? “Kaj, I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t say no,” she whispered then, tears drying as she looked at him, daring to see some change there. Would he care, or would the excruciating pain she had seen there still live upon his face for the world to see?

She wanted to say more- she had so many words that wanted to fall out of her mouth, to explain to him what was wrong and to try and make things better, but there was no use wasting breath on a soul that didn’t want to hear them. She lingered, waiting, hoping to see that wing extend for her. She needed him. He was the only thing in this world that could make her right.

Kaj & Kahlua

For a moment some deep, extraordinarily private part of the broken beast roared to see tears gathering in the gloss of Kahlua's eyes. How dare she cry, when it was his heart rendered irreparable? How dare she weep when she clearly felt no remorse for gleefully plucking chunks of his heart away week after week? It was preposterous. He felt as if every ligament, every layer of muscle, was methodically being stripped apart and torn into unrecognizable lumps of flesh and agony. She was like a surgeon, knowing every tweak and touch and pull that would shatter him until even the Gods could not piece him back together. Yet his heart was too thickly coated in gold, weak and malleable beneath the force of her tears, so no words came off the barbed tip of his tongue that soaked itself in poison and regret. A wounded lion, like all those years prior when he'd been but a mindless soldier with Ink his only accompanying friend. If only he could return to such a time, live only in that space he had created, free from the rending of his soul forcefully from the prison of his flesh as Kahlua so sought to do.

Her silence only damned her further, if not for withholding an answer, an explanation, then for her cowardice. She had sought him out, understood somewhere in her mind that such a thing could not be concealed with how closely they worked. It was into his part of the forest in which she traipsed. Was it to flaunt her new, budding body? Was she capable of such wickedness? Had he been fooled all along by her saccharine smiles and euphonious words? For it was his heart stabbed and bleeding upon the earth between them, her betrayal painted vividly before his eyes, and nothing could wish or word away the truth that was placed before him. He had been a complete, total, utter fool. For it was always beauty that killed the beast. Hadn't he known that all along?

A subtle song indiscernible previously to the beast's ears whipped into an infernal frenzy, harsh, discordant as it graced his listeners. Clearly another development he'd not been privy to. It clashed against his consciousness, ears twitching uncomfortably with the weird, pervasive sound. It blended with the sudden introduction of her voice, missing and silent for such long amounts of time. Kaj stared at her, dull and broken, heart still beating but the rest withering away until he couldn't fathom how he was still alive to hear her explanations. It was like a fairytale; interference of the gods, being the chosen mother to an offspring only partially mortal, a choice she supposedly could never have refused. Fanciful, a tale he once would never have believed. But that was before. Before the threshold, Tor, and Ink, Mirage and Destrier...

"We always have a choice," he spoke, as if from far away, like it was instinct to help her, to advise and chide her even when she had ruined everything he had built up concerning her. A mere whisper, half-hearted. The way his name slipped from her lips was like sin and sorrow, wrenching a rope wound round his heart until he shuddered like an automaton coming to life. Plans. A path for her to go along. And though he could not bear to look at her, the mere idea of a foal, of an innocent who had never asked for life nor had a choice in the matter when it came to their parents...perhaps Kaj could no longer stand to be near Kahlua, but the foal he would not let down. Not while it was within his power. For they would surely both suffer at the abandonment of the Sunshower, and Kaj knew well how Kahlua felt about foals.

"I will help you raise the child," he declared, firmly tying the noose round his own throat for the sake of a child who could always potentially despise him. A thankless job, one of thousands Kaj had taken upon his weary shoulders. "Seek Resplendence and Alysanne for any herbs, carry them with you in case you go into birth alone. You must eat heartier, be wary of too much exercise. That is all I can help you with, as of now." His words fell to a whisper at the end, the weight of the endeavor seeming to make his bones ache and skeletal frame creak. An impossible task, but one the father in him would not allow to die.

Kaj & Kahlua

If her betrayal had hurt him, if her actions had ruined him, then his inaction in this moment was equally as destructive. He did not step forward to embrace her, he did not extend a wing to hide her from the cruelties of the world. She watched him intently, blue eyes scrutinizing him for a twitch of a muscle or bending of a joint- anything to indicate that he intended to move, to be something less than a stone in these moments. She found nothing. He was stoic, silent, as icy cold as the Frostheart himself. This Stormbringer stood in front of her motionless, except for the twitch of his ears against the grating music that she could not control, and she could do nothing about it.

For a moment she considered giving in, and moving forward herself, stepping towards him unsolicited and forcing herself under his wing, pressing against his side and feeling that warmth again- the way that her skin tingled when it touched his was intoxicating and her heart beat faster just thinking about it. He was her drug, in many ways, standing just out of reach when she needed him most. So yes, she considered stepping up to him, forcing him to come into contact with her, demanding that he love her when she was the most scared. And yet… would forcing him to touch her make him want to touch her? Would forcing him to be closer to her make him want to be close to her? She could not force emotions into him, try though she might. So she returned his stoic stance, desire racing through her but her body remaining still. If he could be a statue… so could she.

Except that she wasn’t as strong as she wanted to be, and she couldn’t be a rock. He spoke, but the distant way he said those words made it seem like he wasn’t even there. We always have a choice. Her ears fell back, her tail twitching violently around her hooves, the discordant song of nature not calming or swaying. We always have a choice? Her nostrils flared in frustration and angst- anger, even. In some ways, she hardly heard him as he went on. He would help her? Seek Resplendence and Aly? Did any of that even matter? He ended his words as a whisper, and it made the sharp, disgruntled sound of her voice all the more piercing as she shot back at him with narrowed eyes. “We always have a choice!??!” She stomped her hoof in unison with her last word, shifting her bulbous body to redistribute her weight.

“Were you there Kaj? Were you there? I didn’t think so. Who do you think you are to tell me that I could have stood before FATHER EARTH and said no? Have you ever said no to a god? Have YOU?” She began shifting back and forth more rhythmically, too worked up to stay in one spot. “Were you there when HOTOTO was killed, and the Lady Moon revealed that she had tricking Gaucho into committing the murders, and when the other gods banished her to the EDGE?!?” By that time, her chest was all but heaving as she finished, the sudden silence between them as deep and endless as a starless night. When she spoke again, her word was a venomous whisper, challenging him to defy her.

“I didn’t think so, Kaj.” Were her words purposefully biting, trying to make him hurt? No, that was well beyond her capacity, but her soul was broken and weighed down heavily with too much stress. She couldn’t help but release it upon him. “So next time you think you want to tell me I had a choice, that I could say no if I wanted to, maybe you should think again.” Another stomp of her hoof indicated the finality of her words, her ears still pined and eyes still narrowed as she continued to sway and shift. In some ways, she wanted to turn and stomp off, to leave him standing there dumbfounded by the weight of the words she had thrown at him, but she didn’t have it in her to walk away. She waited. What would come?

Kaj & Kahlua

Of all the responses Kaj had seen in Kahlua through the years, anger had never been one of them. She was a teapot of clay and ivory, too malleable and weak for the intensity and darkness that anger required. Her frustrations were eddies in the face of his tempests. It was why her title was sunshower, contradicting his own, stormbringer. They were clashing types, contrasted individuals. She the light to his fury, he the rock to her fancies. It had never occurred to Kaj that the light she bore could go supernova.

The earth seemed to shake with her rage, but instead of cowering beneath her intensity, instead she fueled the tendrils of his own emotions still lingering beneath his attempts at suppression and ignorance. Her accusations pierced like broadhead arrows into his skin, shredding the body where it twisted and coiled on impact. His own storm leapt to meet hers, a thousand words prepared to shred her in fair ruination. Retribution, vengeance. A thousand stings for the million miles and mountains he'd taken upon himself in the name of love for her.

Wings flared like an angel sent down from the heavens to scorn her. Do not fear, they would speak, their beauty horrific and unthinkable. Razors in his feathers, the curve of a bow in the arch of his wings. A weapon to be utilized, a vessel of heaven, whose fire burned brighter and purer than any hellspawn could hope to imitate.

"No! Because I'm not special, Kahlua!" It is a roar as it slips from between his teeth, mighty and wounded beneath though it was. "No Gods have ever cared about me! I work and I work and I pray for them, and they reward me with silence! I have no faith, I have nothing, Kahlua!" Her name is like venom on his tongue, corrosive. He prays it will slip down his gullet and give him a merciful death. He advances a few steps, wings arched high, furious and vengeful. Hurt. He was so fucking tired of feeling hurt. Of being weak.

"I was here you selfish child!" it is spat, words he has never dared to say to her. Words he had been too gentle, to patient, to utter even when his frustrations got the best of him. But if he had already lost her, then there was no point in keeping them back any longer. "I was protecting our family here, I was promoting our members, patrolling our lands, so I'm really fucking sorry that I couldn't go running all over Helovia keeping up with all this!" Was his work and effort always to be undermined? Underappreciated?

Her last words had him lunging for her, a viper's strike. Merely a show of his fury, as her stomping was, for he would never truly move to harm her. But his ears had disappeared into the short crop of his mane, teeth bared and eyes wild like the electricity that burned and crackled anxiously in his veins. "I WOULD HAVE SAID NO!" Was the bellow that came from him, and he was horrified in a distant sort of way to feel tears crinkle in his lids. Threatening. Weak.

"I would have moved heaven and earth for you! I would have left the Edge to burn, I would have killed and maimed and slaughtered for you! I would have dragged the Gods down from their mantles with my teeth and made them mortal for your sake!" It is a riotous confession, exploding from him like a thousand sins no longer contained by the marred flesh of his existence. Out of control, spiraling. Supernova. And he is right there along with her.

"I would have spit in their faces and left them to my carcass, Kahlua, because I love you!" He would not let her run from it, from the emotion she so feared. Because his love was not wrong. He could not be told that what he felt for her was wrong. She would look him in his eyes and she would listen, she would consume, until she could no longer flinch to see the weight of his devotion to her. "I would lay at their feet and beg for my death, if only so I could die loyal to you!" And though confessions were supposed to lighten the heart, he could only feel as if he were decaying inside. Dripping, sulfurous and slow, into the caverns and chasms of his body. Ruined. Rotted.

"Death would have been a better choice than to have them take my love for you. I would suffer a thousand eternities at their spiteful hands, would go mad with any torture they could invent, if it meant I could love you freely." The tears were scalding against his cheeks, and he wondered if Archibald would find him worthless for those, too. His anger was like a quickly dying fire, wings deflating and moving slowly away from her on numb limbs that seemed disconnected from his body.

"You did not say yes because of fear, or duty. You owe them nothing, if you so decide. You have given seasons of service, of faithfulness. That is a debt settled, one they cannot draw on. One the Earth God has no business drawing on, for his realm is not here." Each syllable shook his chest, the deepest his voice had ever gone. It rattled in his ribs, as if seeking to break him apart by the foundations. Kaj fervently hoped it would.

"If I were in any position like you were," he panted, his anger a virile thing that drew from the energy of his body. "I would have never agreed. Because no God can taint my devotion. No God deserves my sacrifices, when they have given me one thing and abandoned me. How are they any better than us? What makes them so grand that you would quake before them? Do you fear them?" It is a demand, and yet he does not anticipate an answer. He is like a deflated balloon, his potential realized only to be extracted, ripped away once more.

"So do not patronize me, Kahlua." Eyes turned cold and hard, for she had driven a stake too deep into his heart for him to forgive her easily in that moment. "Do not mock me for my love. You made your choice. You have to live with it. So take my advice and help or not. But this is your burden to bear, this time." All he had ever asked from her was love. All he had ever received were scalding ashes and eyes that twinkled like things he could never attain.

Kaj & Kahlua

It was the frustrations of years between them boiling over as the two yelled back and forth at one another, feelings too hurt on both sides for either of their responses to be rational. She had come to him depressed and frightened, looking for a comforting wing and the gentle words that he always provided to her. She had come to him looking for a friend or a lover, somebody she could bare her heart to without worry that it would be smashed and mutilated. She had come too openly, too brazenly. She had not expected the Stormbringer to create destruction. They were like warriors, evenly matched in their ability to destroy the other, each dealing a deathly blow to the other at the same time. This battle would not have a winner, only two losers, both bleeding out on the ground until they withered and died. Was this what years of flirtation, cautious touches, shy gazes, had come to?

His wings, usually a source of comfort for her, flared from his side and she shied backwards, cautious of the destruction that she knew he could bring if he wanted to. He kept yelling, advancing, and she stumbled over a root as she backed away from him. Did she think he would dare strike out against her in anger? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to stand close enough to find out. Her tender heart was torn in two. One half wanted to rush forward anyways, cuddle against him, dare him to stay mad when she was so close. The other half, too hurt to be sensible, fueled her anger and made her feel like she was the one that was right and that he had no right to be yelling at her at all.

His voice escalated still, and before the queen knew it her eyes were filling and running over with tears- tears of anger that she could not stop this runaway train that was barreling out of her control and Kaj’s control, perhaps faster than they had ever meant it to.

For a moment, the queen even tries to see things from his point of view as he lists all the things that he would have done for her- moved the very heaven and earth themselves. She tries to imagine a world where she is bitter because of the gods, a world where she looks down on them for treating the mortals as pawns instead of as their children; however, try as she might, she cannot do it. She had been looking for order and sense in her life when she had stumbled into Helovia. The gods had given her that- they had given her faith and purpose and a reason to make herself better than she had been.

“Is that all you think of me as?” she spat back when he had finished. “A selfish child? Good to know Kaj. Glad you think so highly of me.” And she was hurt, because she had never thought a bad thing about him in all the time she had known him. He had been a friend first, but then something more, and then her king, and then the man that she loved; always, though, he had been good- her source of comfort, her feeling of home, her warmth, her rock, her champion. When she did not know what to do, Kaj could guide her. When she had been shirking responsibilities, Kaj had made her grow, and even though she resented doing more work, she had never blamed it on Kaj. Never.

“We were both doing our part. I was tracking down a killer, to keep everybody safe. I was keeping moral up and promoting inter-herd interactions, but I guess that doesn’t matter to you, because poor Kaj was stuck here in the Edge- where you always want to be anyways.” Huffing, she almost didn’t want to address his next accusations, as the tears continued to roll down her face.

“But I guess no matter what I was doing, I could never live up to the great morals you have. You would have said NO? Perfect. Then I guess it’s just one thing I did wrong- ADD IT TO THE LIST!” She began to shift again, swaying, legs itching to pace or move… to go anywhere but where she was. But, in this moment, perhaps she was too childish for her own good. She just wanted to hit him back. An eye for an eye- she wanted him to hurt. Evangeline’s words that she had heard so long ago were gone, disappeared into eternity. The lesson that she had learned that day (that she would leave the whole world blind) was all but forgotten.

“I DON’T WANT YOU TO SLAUGHTER FOR ME!” She yelled them, chest still heaving, eyes rimmed with what would have been white, if it wasn’t stained red. “I just wanted you to be happy. I love you too- but you can’t be happy with me! I can’t give you foals Kaj! I can’t be the happy, homebody you want me to be. SO I TRIED TO DO WHAT WAS RIGHT FOR YOU AND GIVE YOU YOUR SPACE. I tried to do something for you- Sorry that’s so childish of me.” She could have gone on yelling for all of eternity, but there was no more yelling to be had. She was exhausted. Her voice was barely a whisper as she finished.

“I owe the gods everything, Kaj. I was nothing before Helovia.” And though, or perhaps because, he has commanded her not to patronize him, she does so anyways. Slowly, taking every ounce of strength she possessed within her body, the queen began to extend one limb in front of her as her other knee collapsed beneath her. Gracefully, as she had learned so many years ago, she curled her nose around until her neck was shaped in a deep and elegant arch. The weight of her child pressed against her diaphragm, making it difficult to breath, but she stretched ever lower, holding the position as long as she dare.

When she finally rose, her tears had stopped but all of the light had gone out of her blue eyes. “Is there anything else you need me for, my king?

Kaj & Kahlua

For a moment, her irrational fear of him and his anger was a sick delight. Good! he thought viciously, resisting the temptation to arch them higher, demand her submission. As the cooldown of horrible waiting came about, he would eventually feel horror, disgust in himself. Even as he stumbled a part of him cried out, demanding he check whether she was truly injured, minuscule though it had been. She held his heart so wholly, and though he lashed out like a rabid dog, it was out of blind pain. There was no regard for the organ she held in a death grip, bloodied fingers piercing the layers of his love for her, his selfless regard and patience that he'd always exercised when she came about. They had their hands in the other's ribcage, squeezing harder if only because the other did. Neither cared for the self-destruction, for the bones they'd have to splint on their own in the silence of their loneliness. A cavern of despair that they'd carved out together, in the end.

"No!" he bellowed in frustration, wings snapping to his sides, wishing he could simply impale himself upon their follicles and be done with this life that hated him so lovingly in its attentiveness and loyalty to him. "You are not just one thing to me," he hissed, a cool sort of anger rather than the raging inferno that would shift at random during this all out war. "You are friend and sister, leader and follower. I think of you as someone beautiful, someone pure, with a joy for life that I envy as much as I find it beautiful." And oh, it hurts like a thousand needles pushing lava into his skin all at once to say those things when he was so impossibly angry with her. That he still believed them even in the heat of his fury. "But right now? You're acting like a selfish child. So yes!" If she could not see the difference between who one was and how one was currently acting, then she was merely shoving vile words into his mouth without his consent.

"You think I always want to be here?" It is incredulous, and he stares at her so dumbly that the anger nearly mutes itself in the background. Was that really what she thought? Was that her driving motivation behind always leaving him behind the borders, for if he left then no other lead would remain? And then like a whip coming back around for the snap of pain against his spine, the fury returned with a rush to his ears that nearly made him deaf with its intensity. "That's a lie," he hissed. "You think I don't have others I hold dear outside of the Edge? You think I want to stay her and slave every single day, that I like having no reprieve? No relaxation? No time to be something other than a position?" for he was all but a tool most of the time in the Edge. The King. Not Kaj.

"I may not be complicated in many ways, but I am not so simplistically minded that I would become a happy, mindless machine while you were out making friends," he growled, but the hurt was apparent in every sting of his words. If she could not read that, then she was even blinder than he had always originally believed her to be.

Like a crescendo they crest together, and Kaj wondered if he could roll his eyes so hard that they simply fell out. It was more frustration than true anger, on his side, but it seemed she took up the slack for the both of them. That only hurt all the more to know.

"I have never held your mistakes against you," was all he could grumble tightly, feeling as if he was shaking from a storm that brewed ever stronger in his chest. Begging to be released, even if Kaj had no idea what else he could possibly say that wouldn't be mindless screaming and insulting. If they would even hold any merit, or if he would merely be degrading her in ways he didn't really believe.

Her confession was as strained and furious as his had been, but it cut his anger off at the knees and he toppled. His wings drooped pitifully, shoulders slumped and head lowering. What were they doing? Why were they doing this?

"I would have been okay with that," he whispered, wondering if she cared enough for what he had to say to stop and listen to his words. "I would have taken anything you were willing to give me, no matter how little, don't you see? That's what love is. Compromise." Then again she had never seemed completely inclined towards love in the common sense. Did she even know that? Or was it yet another thing Kaj should have shared with her back then? "You shouldn't have made that decision for me," he agonized, his own tears finally budding and cresting, dripping slowly down his face. Yet his shoulders never quivered with sobs, he merely stood like a crying stone angel, the only way he'd ever learned how to cry.

"But...perhaps I would have done the same," Kaj confessed, shoulders shrugging limply. Except...no, he likely would have at least explained to her, asked her how she felt, what she wanted. Tried to figure out whether they could work together, as a couple, despite their differences in desires. He would have tried, wouldn't have taken away her independence, her choice and awareness in and of the situation.

"Then you love them more than you hold me in regard," he whispered back. "What I did for you, being here for you every day instead of once every few seasons? Was that nothing to you in comparison?" Whether that was a rhetorical question or not even Kaj did not know the answer to. Her mockery was answered only with another tear on his cheek, the strength to respond to her cruelty vanished long ago. "You are your own person. You owe me nothing, apparently. Do as you wish."