The world blurred as she blinked, the sadness caught on her lashes distorting the light. It wreathed him in a halo of illumination, as if he were an angel, but she knew better.

She wasn't any agent of heaven herself. She had led him into this state, purposefully ignoring things which she found distasteful about him in a delusional effort to make him as she needed him to be. At the time it was how she was able to confront the world, and she never could have guessed that he, they, would have gotten so close. She wasn't supposed to love him for gods' sake! Yet I do, she realized with a sinking horror, and yet equally she didn't, because she couldn't let it go - his crime. He had already made himself a monster once, and she had resisted him then, in the dark glow of the wraith haunted caves, but beauty had transformed the beast... at least until he mutated again. She could only look past so much, and this, this was her line in the sand.

He had her, but it hadn't been enough, and he pulled in one soul too many, shoving her's out. Whether Gaucho knew the breadth of that action or not didn't matter, because either way he had still made the conscious decision of who he wanted to be closest to. It wasn't the girl decked in blue, it was the pale snake and the fire chick. Loudly, she took her leave of his being, but not without this one last farewell.

Gaucho came for her, a violent attempt to conquer her back into his dominion, but it was as much her choice as his. She pulled away, stepping abruptly to the left, relying on the good portion of her haunch on the right side. It was enough to shove her out that little bit from his reach, but then the pain engulfed her as if Gaucho's touch had a ghostly extension, keeping her closer to him than she wanted. His right wing brushed past her side, harmlessly gliding beneath the massacre of burns her right shoulder sported. The sensation sent her skin to life again, like their stolen closeness. No! To stave him away, the electrical armor she bore was shoved away roughly, its blue sparks congealing together to create a lightning eagle that shot after Gaucho's right side in two wing strokes of chaos. Her knives had not done enough to satisfy her, so she yanked them back, re-sheathing them in their place by her wings.

Ampere faltered in the sand, distracted by him, her grace lost in the screaming aftermath of her cracked, bleeding skin as her shoulder was forced to stretch and open fissures in the fire blisters. She sagged her balance to her left, but the sore stifle protested and her head heavily hung down like a counter weight to keep her upright.

Stay back! she wanted to yell at him, blue eyes blazing with the vibrancy of their romance, it's light like a dying star, most brilliant in its last moments. Yet she did not continue, she did not leave either, she lingered. Ampere was hesitant to step into that new place where he couldn't be something she had and they didn't exist in that way any more. It had been so brief, after all this time of chasing, it should have been beautiful. He ruined it! she reminded herself petulantly, and with outrage she turned towards him, hysterical with the consuming need to love and hate him simultaneously.

"WHY DID YOU TAKE THAT EGG!" she sobbed, the words which were meant to be hard, instead were strangled by a deep ache that could have equally come from her inner being or her burnt body. She already knew his answer, and it fueled her with a rage that set her head thrashing, tears flicked free from her lashes and black mane adrift in the wind of her pursuit. Relying on her endurance Ampere forced herself through the limitations of her body, teeth clenching with a forceful clack against the rebellion of her muscles, her ruined skin, her shattered heart. She dove towards Gaucho's right flank, seamlessly following in the wake of his missed assault, needing to keep close to him, to feel him again. Her head lifted to open up her chest like a battering ram for his hips, fore-hooves raking out blindly for his hind legs, while her teeth pursued the feathers of his burning wings in an attempt to grab hold and yank them free.

If she couldn't have him any more, she wanted a part of him to keep forever, be it a scar she'd see every day, or a feather for her mane.

---

A: 3/3
D: 0/1
W: 800/800