into the sea, you and me
all these years, and no one heard
i love you, let's go

She feels like the north when winter is there, reminded of the freezing sensation of ice sinking into her somewhere deep, aching, burdened by something that she cannot completely put her finger on.
But she’s never known the fleeing of summer from winter up there, so Sikeax cannot say this how she feels. Volterra brings her a lukewarm cup of comfort that tastes like black coffee, bitter, melting ice cubes in it so that it will be useless soon enough by the use of his expression.
Hobgoblin is steadily losing his patience with the situation.
“Leave. No worth. No important.”
I promise you it’s important.
“Why?”
Harsh words shaping demands and accusations are becoming her downfall, the panic switch in the dark that just happens to be flipped when she needs it not to be. Hobgoblin knows her like he knows himself, possibly more than she knows herself.
The throat within her head that leads to a mouth that voices her thoughts closes up with a knot. Internally, nestled into their bond and the closeness they share, Hobgoblin’s weight moves into his shoulder blades as he leans forward, waiting for a response that she can’t dare to fathom.
And to his surprise, to anyone’s surprise, she is the one to cut him away from her.
The impact from him sends him spiraling, caught off guard and frantically looking for a grip on control as the darkness of the quiet from Sikeax settles in. It is not as if they have given up everything they have at the push of a button, the choice of a thought; Hobgoblin can still feel her: the shame of her actions, the submission she fears and the dominance she desires but fears leaping for, the worry of losing something that he can’t understand the importance in because what importance does Volterra have anymore? His resources have been used and wasted, and Sikeax no longer has a throne that requires a knight to guard(to which he notes that the stallion failed in, furthering the thought), and the fear of the future, but that is no stranger to either. It is more of that she feels dull when she is typically as vibrant as the Tallsun heat, that her thoughts sound blurred and feel as if their rhythm as changed.
Externally, he can only process it in a visible recoil, drawing his mass into itself as the suns in his eyes dulled in the wake of the storm.
When he collects enough of himself to pay any attention to his friend, the full weight of her shame becomes his own. It etches its way over him in the sinking of his body, pulling into himself as his head hangs low. A sudden shake of the head.
‘Not meant like that.’ He wishes to say, but has no way to get it out there.
Meanwhile, Sikeax cannot pull herself away from Volterra. He fills up in the vastness in her eyesight, takes away the pain of the desert, even if just for a short amount of time.
She almost feels like he’s in there when he sighs, softening, warming her up but nonetheless making her feel worse when she remembers that her intentions to him were to be hateful when possibly Volterra’s true intentions for her was to be her friend.
“Of course I’ve noticed.”
I wish we could stop this. The words stop at her lips.
All of her pain pours into her facial features like she’s held them for a thousand years, letting it go in a soft, summer rainfall that has no thunder or lightning, just the quiet, calming sound of rain touching everything that it can manage to find.
Nothing will keep her safe from reality. Hobgoblin rolls back into himself further, so far from Sikeax that all of this is like a movie that he can't do anything to stop from continuing, but can add his two pieces to the actors.
"Sorry," he offers, with no way to tell whether or not it is genuine or out of his own discomfort of having to witness this.
She swallows her emotions because for the time being, they don't mean anything.
"I gave up." The truth is harder to admit than it is to accept. It drains the life out of her in knowing that Volterra was willing to give up his freedom to help her, to be her friend, to be there for her when she needed someone most regardless of his own ambitions. Accepting that she did that to him nearly puts her heart in the grave, probably right beside their friendship.
"I couldn't do it. I couldn't be the queen you said you were there for, that you pledged your freedom for. People I considered my family for my entire life turned on me because I can't stop death, and then their God" Nothing is felt in how at any other time she might have claimed the Sun God as her God, but the Lord of Light has fallen from her graces, just as she imagines she has him. "made me take the place of the man they thought I killed. I can't change that. I don't think anyone can."
One long, desperate gasp for air as her chest heaves forward and she clutches her sadness in her tired, dirty hands.
"Volterra, they hated me. Right now I'm sure everyone here does, and I can't blame them."
Any eye contact held between the two of them is broken as she turns her head away from him, staring off into the distance so she won't have to see how his view of her changes. There's a lot of things that she can live with, but the idea of him hating her is the one that destroys her the most.
As far as she can see, he's the last one here worth trusting.
"The chance came to get out of there, and I took it, and I think I'm going to take it as far as it will let me take it. I don't feel like I failed them." But that doesn't stop me from feeling like I failed you. "I did what I thought was best for me, and for once, I feel like that was the right thing to do."

And there shouldn't be a thing wrong with that, shouldn't there?
Hobgoblin shuffles in her thoughts, unable to add his opinion in because Sikeax and him are such different beings that he can't begin to tell her that selfishness is the only true way to live, that she'd live better off if she just thought of herself, but that would also mean the risk of her sacrificing her cares for him, and well, he cannot simply begin to risk that.

OOC: i literally wrote this over two very different sessions so if it doesn't flow perfectly THAT'S WHY.