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."