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.