From strangers and nameless to damn you got dangerous

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

She finds herself back in the Grounds instead of headed home, because as poorly as her last visit here had gone, she'd come for a reason. Her respite in Stormbreak had been enough to curb the panic that resulted from that disastrous festival. Although it didn't provide her much in the way of answers, not the ones she'd been looking for anyway, it at least quieted the questions. That had been a sort of peace she hadn't known in some time, and from it she found enough breathing room to embrace the one, singular clarity that kept arising again and again. The one that first sent her here, and the one that remained stubbornly apparent even when she tried to sink into nothing.

Unfortunately, finding herself in dark and strange alleys with empty bottles for company and handwritten labels on 'medicine' isn't a cheap venture. Cost alone is all that kept her from tipping the last of the powder down the sink once she'd had her fill, and maybe if she'd more knack for it she could have resold it. As it is she's stashed it away in her small pack and cut out of the city once she got what she needed from it all.

That pack is currently braced between her and the trunk of a tree she's just climbed. She's aiming for the Inner Quarter again, figuring that's where she'd most likely find him, but just about now it's time for a rest from  dodging mud and tree roots, sorely missing her horses. As she settles into place, she notices her belt buckle is catching the canopy light and throwing it down in a bright shape. For amusements sake she undoes the large, gleaming buckle and angles it just so to catch the rays again. She sends it across the ground in the distance, racing over rock and shrub like a miniature spotlight. Around, the grove is alive with the chatter of wildlife, and she's certain someone will give chase.

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

Under the canopy’s green hush, Vesper moves through the glade like a shadow coaxed into muscle and sinew, the Tide Jaguar’s cooling presence wrapped around him instead of the human sharpness he usually carries. Without telepathy to anchor the corners of his awareness, the world feels strangely abstract.

His constellation-marked body threads between the trees, the shimmer along his flanks soft and intermittent in the dappled shade. It’s quieter in this shape—cleaner—and he lets that simplicity bleed through his movements until the tension in him begins to uncoil. He doesn’t need to dwell on the festival or the mess of sharp emotions and contorted loyalties that followed it. Here, he can just prowl, letting the world narrow to leaves brushing his sides and the sweet green hum of the Glade.

When the first flicker of light streaks over the forest floor, it arrests him completely.

A silver flash darts across moss and root in a quick, liquid sweep, sharp enough to seize something deep beneath deliberation. His head snaps toward it, pupils widening, breath catching. It glides again—too quick, too bright—and instinct swallows him whole. There’s no thought in it, no strategy, just the coil of pure feline certainty. He sinks low, shoulders rolling as his body drops into a fluid crouch, tail cutting a slow arc behind him. The light skitters across a patch of clover and he lunges without hesitation, silent and precise, paws striking the earth with soft thuds as he chases the darting glimmer. It jumps again—further, faster—and he twists after it, constellation freckles brightening faintly as his muscles bunch and release.

free of the colosseums

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

She jockeys the tree limb with a lazy ease, legs dangling around either side, back pressed against the padding of the pack that keeps the otherwise rough trunk at bay. Her once 'nice' jeans and boots have since been mud-flecked and travel-worn, so a bit of grip on the thighs from some bark isn't a bother any longer; they're joining the work pile now. All of her loose draping jolts abruptly though when her lure of light snares something. She'd been expecting a bird to go for it, maybe a squirrel, potentially even a rabbit—not a godsdamned tide jaguar.

She has to steady herself with a sudden grip of her legs and a brace with her free hand. The light in her other hand swings extra wild while she recovers from the surprise, but she does recover, because it's bounding merrily after the little game of chase. She probably ought to be more worried about a predator a touch too close for comfort, but with it acting no better than an oversized barn cat, and feeling overly safe on her tree limb, she's happy to play into it. Besides, it's occupied, and fiercely adorable with every pounce and leaping twist or bound.

Holding back her laughter to just a breathy exhale and a growing smile, she keeps the buckle's light shifting over the Glade terrain. Maybe if she knew more about the Grounds she'd realize tide jaguars aren't naturally from here, or pay more attention to the tug of familiarity she feels. It's definitely beginning to tug harder, although it moves so fast and brush keeps snatching her certainty away as glances shift rapidly. It's just, absurd that it could be, "Vesper?"

The game cuts out as her hand falls limp with the realization. She leans down on the bough with the effort of her scrutiny, mouth ajar with disbelief. "VESPER!" she calls out again, louder now, an anxious prickle rising up her nape.

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

For a moment he gives the light the same suspicious, narrow-eyed scrutiny he’d give any small, treacherous creature pretending to die beneath his paws. It flickers erratically across a patch of moss and he assumes—without much interest—that it’s some cheap trinket caught in a branch, shifting each time the wind snakes through the Glade. He lifts one heavy forepaw, testing whether the glimmer will dart again, tail curling lazily in a slow, considering sweep.

Then—

Vesper?

The sound slips through the leaves lighter than breath, but the jaguar’s ears flick sharply toward it. His whole body stills, one paw half-raised, head turning with the liquid precision of a predator interrupted mid-instinct. He blinks once, twice, blue eyes narrowing as the forest quiets around him. The whisper doesn’t repeat itself immediately, and he’s left parsing echoes and direction, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.

The second call hits with far more force. VESPER!

His head snaps upward, gaze cutting through brush and greenery until it locks onto the unmistakable shape perched in the crook of a tree. Colt; mud-flecked, travel-scarred, braced against the trunk as though she’d been comfortably settled a heartbeat before hollering his name into the Glade. A ripple of instinct surges under his skin, tightening muscle and readying his haunches; not for attack, but escape. He could vanish into the undergrowth in three strides, gone before she dragged another syllable into the air. He even measures the angle, the cover, the likely paths.

But no amount of convenient fiction is going to obscure the constellation-lit pelt he’s wrapped in. There’s only one jaguar in Caido whose flank reads like a star map; even a carnival escape story wouldn’t save him from the recognition burning in her eyes.

And it isn’t embarrassment that grips him—not the ridiculous sight of him pouncing after a dancing shard of light—he could live with her knowing that, uncharacteristic as it was. What sparks hot and unwelcome is the memory he’s been trying to claw out of his skull: Colt leaning in, Thalassa closing the distance, their mouths catching with the kind of unrestrained hunger that had no business tangling with his thoughts for this long.

He hadn’t wanted to see her. Not yet at least. So the tension winds itself tight in his shoulders, trapped between the urge to vanish and the iron certainty that it’s already too late. So he merely looks up at her, a massive, black-coated tide jaguar, constellation freckles faintly pulsing, frozen mid-prowl with a glint of stray light still caught beneath one paw. He blinks once, slow and deliberate, blue eyes bright and unmistakably Vesper despite the shape he’s wearing.

free of the colosseums

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

She doesn't really need confirmation, not with having seen him like this before, not with knowing the way stars always gather to him, but it comes with the sharp turn of his head and those brilliant eyes peering back up at her. The moment feels suspended, too impossible to just stumble upon him in the middle of a forest when she'd been actively looking for him at a gathering, but there he is. She reels into motion suddenly, walking back from her lean over the bough so hastily her belt buckle goes tumbling down to the ground, scarcely noticed. She soon tosses her pack down to join it, swinging a leg over the tree limb and shimmying down with a series of calculated handholds.

Why he hasn't moved or shifted doesn't much register for her at the moment. She's too overcome with excitement at finally seeing him for more than six seconds after so long, and it's all she can do not to fall out of the last part of the tree in her rush to descend it and close the distance. Her heartbeat feels like it's in her fingertips, making it harder to grip cleanly, and her stomach feels like it stayed up in the first branch. She manages to make it down on her feet instead of her back, only pausing long enough to get her balance back on the ground before she's running for him.

She has no real plan, never did, just a relentless, driving, need—for him. Thoughts and memories have only gotten her so far, and even that's been like chewing bark over winter just hoping the snow will melt soon. It's ridiculous, the way she's missed him, but she's given up pretending it's something she can just manage or ignore. If he had arms she'd jump into them right now, but she just settles for tackling him with an aggressive and breathless hug, one arm cocking back to punch his shoulder with more gusto than she actually means, but damnit she has been blue. "Fuck, Ves, I've been looking for you."

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

a cold shoulder at closin' time

The moment she drops from the branch, he follows her movements with the unblinking precision of a predator bracing for something he can’t quite predict. Without telepathy, her intent is a blur of motion; pack thudding to the ground, boots catching bark, breath breaking fast through the leaves. He shifts his weight, head lowering, ears angling forward as she stumbles into her landing and then bolts toward him. There’s no time to parse the shape of it. No distance to retreat into. The jaguar’s instincts spike in a fierce, involuntary rush that he quickly realizes he needs to dampen, so he shifts. 

The change coils through him in a silent snap of starlight, constellation-marked fur tightening into pale skin as he rises onto two feet. He stands at his full height just as she collides with him. The force of it makes his breath catch, not from pain but from the sheer momentum of her throwing herself into the space he’s barely reoccupied. Her fist connects squarely with his shoulder a heartbeat later. Even with her restraint, it lands solidly enough to jolt through muscle. Not that he flinches, but he doesn't return the embrace either. 

Instead, he just looks at her.

Stiff, controlled, blue eyes shuttered and distant in a way that feels at odds with the wild rush of the Glade around them. Her arms around him, her breath brushing his collarbone, and he gives her nothing but a raised brow and a cool, deliberate quiet. "You were lookin’ for me," he says, voice low, smooth, and scraped through with cool skepticism. "In the Glade?"

He lets the question hang only a moment, just enough to make clear he isn’t stepping into her momentum, no matter how tightly she’s wrapped herself around him. Then he draws in a slow breath; not sharp, not dramatic, just a deliberate settling of air as if bracing against the next unavoidable thing. His gaze hardens a shade, blue sharpening like a blade angled to catch light. "I saw you at the festival."

It isn't said as a casual observation nor a neutral statement. The way he says it drops all ambiguity, every vowel weighted and unmistakably pointed toward the image burned behind his eyes; her mouth on Thalassa’s, hands in places he has no fucking interest in remembering, the heat of it sparking through him in ways he hasn’t managed to shake.

you were beggin' me to stay 'til the sun rose

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

She expected about this much when he'd been a jaguar; she's hugged enough horses to know they mostly stand there and take it. As a man though, the absence of his returned hold is something solidly felt, leaving her feeling like she's hugging a post instead of a person. It doesn't sink in immediately, not when the rush of everything is still tumbling over her like a wave that can't keep from breaking. It's an ecstatic swell of finally, like she's been holding her breath until now, fighting her way to the surface since the last time they'd been together, and now he's here beneath her hands. Fuck it feels, it feels—wrong.

There's a chill to him she's never known, even when it'd been Deepfrost. It creeps into her on contact, slow but methodical, clinging to her even as she retreats a step at his voice. The distance lets her see him better, her easy joy that'd just been there faltering into something confused and cautious. "Yeah. Well, the Grounds. Was headed to the Inner Quarter from the Landing, figured you'd be there, somewhere." She doesn't know what the hell is up yet, but something's off, he's made that plain.

She doesn't have the time to dwell on what, not for long, because his next words fill the space. It's enough to consider if she somehow misread what she thought had been a mutual ache with the absence. It'd only been six seconds after all, not much time to really appraise everything, so did she just fill in way more than was actually there because that's what she wanted? She'd done something similar, the other last time with him... But, gods, it'd felt like something meaningful, she didn't just imagine that, did she?

The words he does say though, they cut through her thinking, sharp with implication he doesn't say outright. She doesn't need him to. "Yeah," she agrees, rougher than intended because that night still catches on her in a way she doesn't like. "That's when I first came up to find you." Her arms tuck in on each other across her chest, jaw rolling tight across the memory. "I guess I had one too many drinks, or something," she sighs, an elbow propping up on her still crossed arm as her hand pulls at her temple in mild distress. It's not true, she'd just started drinking, but saying I don't know why I did what I did feels worse than a lie, it seems evasive and fake and completely unbelievable. She doesn't know what else it could have been though. She's thought about the moment again and again and can't fathom what urged her to reach for Thalassa like that. "I didn't stay, once I realized that. The whole night was a mistake."

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

a cold shoulder at closin' time

Vesper doesn’t follow when she retreats that step. He doesn’t soften, doesn’t shift, doesn’t let anything in his posture suggest this is a misunderstanding waiting to be undone. He stands exactly where he is, tall and unmoved, constellation freckles barely catching what little light breaks through the Glade canopy.

When she says she’d been headed to the Inner Quarter, that she’d figured he’d be there somewhere, his gaze narrows by a margin so small it hardly disturbs the stillness of his face. "I’m not that hard to find," he answers, voice low, even, completely devoid of apology or warmth. "Not for you." 

The implication lands cleanly between them, laid out with the same precision his claws would use if he were still wearing fur. Before the air can settle again, his brow lifts in the lightest, sharpest arch, blue eyes fixed on her with cool patience. "If you’d really wanted to find me," he continues, a quiet accusation threaded neatly through the drawl, "you could’ve channeled me." He doesn't spell out the implication that apparently she only used her channelling when she needed to get off, and not to actually speak with him.

Or maybe she'd just found a mouth more interesting and suddenly putting in the effort of finding him that night hadn't seemed worth her while. Either way, he holds her gaze the whole time, calm, detached, giving her nowhere to hide in the space between them.

When she stumbles through her explanation, when she leans into the excuse of too many drinks, Vesper’s expression doesn’t shift. Not even a fractional softening, he just arches one brow higher, the skepticism cutting clean as Deepfrost air. A quiet, unimpressed hum slips from him. "Mm."

you were beggin' me to stay 'til the sun rose

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

It does take her a moment to pick up on what he means, because she'd like to argue that having tried to find him more than once now, he's not so easy as he seems to think. She is aware she could have sent a letter, but the decision to come up here had been rather spur of the moment after waffling on it all season, caught up in the I don't know of it all still until she finally had something she thought had been solid enough to count. Now, she's not so sure again. This is all so unlike any encounter with him has ever been that she's not even entirely convinced she ever made it out of Stormbreak now.

She's about putting it together when he states it plain for her though, leaving no room for her to misunderstand. That works up a disbelieving breath, some steel taking root amid the ice and the smoke. "Could've," she agrees with a narrowing of her gaze, not entirely sure when her abilities got put on trial here. "I've only got the one left, for now. Seemed a better use to put in some elbow grease than burn through the last ace up my sleeve." She's not claiming the first use of her channel had been smart, but she'd used it knowing she had one other on hand. "Would've, if it came to it." She shrugs though, because here he is.

Her head tilts faintly, wondering if this is about that first channel after all. He'd seemed willing enough in the moment. It's certainly one that's stuck with her night after night, serving her more than once. The quick, decisive way he'd met her exactly where she needed, descending upon her so completely she's felt near empty ever since. Then again, that's usually how it goes in the moments after he departs, so it's so strange to feel it now when he's standing right there.

She doesn't shrink from the stare he levels on her, not this one. It's all the blue she remembers, not amiss the way Frey's are, but it's got none of its usual invitation or sly edge that normally threatens to drown her. This look isn't one she risks losing herself in, it's one that she already feels pressed up sharp against her, and with the threat of that she doesn't flinch. "Is this about Thalassa?" She asks with her own edge creeping in, not fond of feeling like the ground she's standing on is shifting out from under her. "I don't know the extent of the bad blood between you two, but I sure as shit don't deserve that aimed at me, least of all for something that didn't mean a damn." If she'd actually meant to kiss her in a meaningful way, she might have argued that point with him, but since she can't muster any sound reasoning behind her action, a truth that still rattles her, she'll focus on the who behind it all. She at least knows Thal isn't fond of him, figures it's safe to assume it runs both ways.

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

a cold shoulder at closin' time

No response rises immediately, not because Colt's explanation lacks sense but because the memory she’s brushing up against sends Vesper's thoughts spiralling in a direction he has no interest in revisiting. The night she’d channelled him—used him, really, in the exact way she’d wanted, drawing him down around her until every nerve in her body had been tuned to his shadowed pulse—collides far too cleanly with the image of her mouth on Thalassa’s, her hands in the wrong goddamn places, her breath spilling hot against someone he wanted nothing to do with. The overlap is jagged, overlapping in ways that leave the details of her reasoning remarkably easy to slide past without comment, so he lets them pass untouched.

It’s her name that breaks him out of the quiet. Thalassa. She says it without hesitation, without the caution a wiser woman might have taken, and it pulls at something in him with a sharp, involuntary twitch of his upper lip. His chin lifts as though he might find a calmer answer in the shifting canopy overhead, a momentary tilt of his face toward leaves and light as he breathes through the spike of irritation. It lasts only as long as it takes for him to trust himself not to snap.

When he looks back down at her, the humour that escapes him is a single, low huff edged with disbelief and something meaner beneath it. "You know what?" he says, smooth as cut glass. "You’re right." The words hang with a weight that’s anything but agreement. His hands lift in a languid silly me gesture, palms open as though conceding the floor to her logic, even as his expression betrays not an ounce of conceding anything.

"Why would I be upset," he continues, voice gaining momentum, the sarcasm settling into every curve of the drawl, "that after I left and told you to come visit, you decided to channel me just to get yourself off, then showed up exactly where anyone with a shred of sense would assume I’d be, and shoved your tongue down the throat of the one person in Caido you knew I had history with." He doesn’t pause or soften. "Someone you also channelled me to attack, if you’re keepin’ track." His hands drop back to his sides as he shakes his head once, trying and very nearly failing to keep the frustration from visibly slicing through the composure he’s fighting to maintain.

you were beggin' me to stay 'til the sun rose

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

As his words hone into something sharper still, a smile fits into place on her face. Not the sort that delivers any kind of light, just one that has to send motion somewhere or something worse'll move, and humor has a lot of different sources. The amusement here is that at long last, she got what she wanted, and damn if she doesn't hate being right in the end. "There he is," she all but croons, the barrier of her hands against her chest slipping away to settle in her back pockets, one leg kicking out as she tilts into her hip. "Your ugly side, finally making itself known." Shame it hadn't come sooner, would have saved her all the time she spent falling for him. Every godsdamned restless night thinking about him, wondering how in the world he's so wonderful and sparkling, when everyone else is so full of shit.

To be fair, he'd warned her he wasn't. Hell, she'd warned herself he wasn't. Thalassa had warned her too, but she just wouldn't believe what she couldn't see for herself. Until now, he hadn't shown her much but the best of him, and while she knew that'd never last, she thought she'd at least be prepared for when it came. Thought she'd at least have done something actually awful to warrant this type of mistrust and twisted commentary. Maybe it just feels so much worse, because she'd been so ready to finally give into the idea of him instead of resisting it any more, was prepared to talk. She'd let every defense fall, and this is what she gets in return.

"First of all, I offered to visit," she reminds him, since he seems to be keeping such good score of everything. "All you told me was that you're leaving." Her smile has since faded, nothing but a stern line, the way a storm on the horizon is easily marked. "And you didn't have to do a thing you didn't want to when I channeled you, so stop twisting that around like I'm the only one who did something there." She holds the look of him in quiet challenge that he oppose that somehow. Her tongue runs behind her teeth, lips thin as she waits the breath to see.

She exhales through her nose, an attempt to steady herself, because in too short a span she's gone from pure elation to a stunned confusion, which has steadily sunken into an irritation that's roiling over into the threat of something stronger. "I didn't know that was her when I asked you to attack her—you knew that." Maybe more than anything, that's what's pissing her off. This calm, calculating man is finally coming undone with his clothes still on, and it's over picking a fight of all things. Not missing her, not feeling any one way about her, but purposefully blurring facts to make this hurt. Looks like he has no problem showing her exactly how he feels after all.

The kiss though, she rolls it between her teeth now, jaw tight with the effort to speak to it. "I don't—I just. In that moment, when she called out to me with a challenge, it was just suddenly in my head to kiss her. There was no plan, or intent, or anything beyond something short and impulsive and empty. I'm not even sure why it happened, and that's why I left." A touch of the fire that's building leaves her, because the admission isn't as clean cut as she'd like. It's honest, but there's too much...fuzz to it. She can't offer him clarity she also doesn't have.

The escape to Stormbreak unfortunately hadn't awarded her any better understanding, just the ability to cope with it. "I wasn't...happy about it either. It felt like, a compulsion, or something." It feels insane just saying it, and given how easily he's already trying to warp truth she doubts it'll stick, but it's all she's got. Every time she's retraced that moment wondering why, it's the same as before. Talking about fireworks with Nova and Thorn, her name shouted through the crowd, she saw Thalassa and then, just an urge stronger than taking a breath to lean in and kiss her. She'd never felt it any of the other few times she'd met the Ancient, and eventually she'd managed to pull back into her own control and wrestle herself free. It'd felt natural in the moment, but the aftermath of it is something that still leaves her with a hollow, sinking feeling whenever she drags it up again. She's never felt that out of control, ever.

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

a cold shoulder at closin' time

Colt's smile lands on him like a blade flipped to its sharpest edge, and for a heartbeat he lets a glare come through unfiltered, blue eyes darkening beneath the weight of it. The anger rises with startling ease, swift and clean as a blade pulled free of its sheath, but he forces it back down, sanding the expression flat until only a brittle calm remains.

"That’s the fuckin’ problem with you," he says, voice low and unmarred by the jagged edges tearing through his ribs. "I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I’m too nice, so I must be hidin’ something. I keep my emotions in check and suddenly it’s why’re you so calm, Vesper. Why're you so unbothered, Vesper. And now, I feel somethin’ about this, and that’s my ugly side." His lip curls despite his best effort to keep it smooth, a small, involuntary sneer he tries to bury by tipping his chin up and pulling in a long breath through his nose, as if the canopy overhead might offer somewhere to tuck his fury until it stops burning so cold in his stomach.

Her insistence that she offered to visit earns nothing but a hollow raise of his brow before he cuts in, the words coming sharper than he intends but far too honest to swallow back. "Oh? So you know what it’s like to be channelled, then?" The drawl threads through the accusation, but it doesn’t blunt it. "To be plucked out of a conversation with the compulsion to obey, to have all of six fucking seconds with you, where you get to fall asleep all satisfied and I'm dumped right back where I was, without even a fuckin' thank you letter to follow it up?" There’s no mistaking the bitterness humming beneath the smoothness of his voice. Not at having been channelled by her, but feeling so used and then discarded.

When she insists she didn’t know it was Thalassa he had attacked at the time, he gives the smallest nod, because fine, he does believe that part. He believed it the night it happened, too. But her explanation barely has time to breathe before he interrupts, calm and cutting. "You didn’t know," he agrees quietly. "But you sure as hell never asked me about it either." Which, unfair, because the timelines overlapped. A humourless smile ghosts across his mouth, cold and precise. "Clearly Thal’s side of the story was all you needed to hear." 

The truth of her compulsion should settle something inside him. It should soothe the jagged edges his mind keeps replaying; her leaning in, Thal’s hand in her hair, the ruin of it flashing behind his eyelids every time he closes them. His telepathy has always given him the advantage of understanding people past their excuses, past the lies they tell themselves, past the surfaces. But the knowledge doesn't fix the damage of the memory seared too vividly into his mind. So instead of easing anything, her honesty only drives the wound deeper, because knowing she didn’t even mean it doesn’t erase the sight burned into him. If anything, it makes it harder to tolerate, now that he realizes just how much hurt Colt could inflict on him without even trying.

you were beggin' me to stay 'til the sun rose

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I used to shine bright like gold
Now I'm all indigo
My colors are darker and cold

Her head snaps back marginally, but with noticeable motion as he throws out her problem. Her jaw works once, gaze flicking sharp and stern to the side of her vision, the woods swallowing the full depth of her scowl while he goes on. She's still listening, each word another coal set into the fire of this rising outrage in her chest. "No," she says forcefully, trying to keep the one word level, the risk of it wavering too possible around the chokehold of emotion welling inside her. Her eyes flick back to him. "Your ugly side isn't because you're showing some feeling, Vesper." Her teeth nearly clip the sentence shorter than she means.

"It's because you're turning it around on me, on purpose, over bullshit." The words leave in a force of breath, nothing more than a cold sting on a crisp morning now, curling past her ribs with just an echo of warmth and all the shakiness of a body searching for it. Gods, the look of him now, it's almost unrecognizable. The way he's holding her with such contempt, it's enough to hollow out her bones. How incredibly, fucking stupid she'd been to think this would end any different, that he could be different.

A frown is her only response to the facade of a question, clearly not knowing how it is to be channeled. The rest though, that rattles her with the slap of resentment she hears. She has to glance away from him again to keep the hot prickle in the corners of her eyes back. The next inhale trembles, traitorous as hell, and she hates it. The last thing she wants is to give him any satisfaction that this is working, that he's managing to wound her just like he wants. "A letter?" Her tone is far too small when she rouses it, blown over by the shock, but she doesn't let it happen again. She leans into the quiet rage she's working up about herself over all this and uses it. "Next time I'll save myself the trip and mail you a fucking gift basket, how's that?" She doesn't bother to point out there won't need to be a next time, clearly.

As for his idea of how grand it all was on her end, she flings every stupid truth at him just to let the burn of the shame she feels about it now ignite something for her. "Yeah, I fell asleep, after I wore myself out crying over you, Vesper! What a fucking waste. That was the least satisfying thing imaginable because I missed you so much that seeing you for just six seconds made it all worse," she snaps, color burning in her cheeks with the humiliation of caring now after all of this.

Glad to know she'd been right about something at least—that Thalassa is what first got under his skin—it does little to improve anything though.

A scoff leaves her, hot and furious on little more than a breath, the burn of the disbelief enough to leave ash on her tongue where it passes. "She didn't tell me shit," she spits out, lips pulled thin, every word shot like a snapped wire. "All she said was you weren't someone that could be depended on, and I said that didn't sound like you." The furious burn of her gaze is left to sear the space between them for just a moment before one of her arms comes sweeping out in dramatic gesture. "So am I supposed to come runnin', askin' you about every person you don't get along with Vesper? Should I give you a list of every tiff I've been in too so we're square and I get to tell you my side of every shitty story out there?"

The hand that's been talking thuds down on her leg with the finality of that absurd offer, inhaling strong and sudden through the ridiculous frustration. "You also could have just fucking told me the story, if you're so concerned," she points out, head tilting as her arms fold back in against her chest. If he's so fucking worried about Thalassa, he could have come to her about it instead of waiting to throw it back in her face like some gotcha, but seems he needed the ammunition. She shakes her head, the movement the only thing that tempers a sour laugh into submission. "You're fucking unbelievable right now."

I gave up a piece of my heart
Then I turned to run
My head's in the clouds
But I don't feel close to the sun

a cold shoulder at closin' time

Vesper's jaw tightens before anything else does, tongue pressing slow along the inside of his teeth in a gesture that’s as much bracing as it is derisive, a quiet cluck of disappointment slipping out beneath his breath. When he lifts his gaze back to her, the look he levels is cool enough to frost over the Glade’s warm air. "Good to know the way I feel counts as bullshit in your mind."

The words leave him in a smooth, unbroken current, not raised, not sharp, but carrying the heavy drag of something weighted and worn. Her scoff about the letter cuts through that current, and he inhales a hiss through his teeth, rolling his eyes toward the canopy with a short, bitter exhale before cutting cleanly across her words. "Or any godsdamn thing that wouldn't make it seem like you just used me, Colt," he snaps, the pace still controlled, still unbroken, even as the emotion sits raw beneath it. "Without a single fuckin’ thought for what it might do to me." 

She throws her shame at him like a lantern into oil, telling him she’d cried over him, slept with the ache of missing him, and he doesn’t let the blow land anywhere soft. His head shakes once, stiff and minimal, offering no comfort, no bridge, not even a quiet space to place her hurt. Whatever pain she’d shouldered after that connection had been her decision, and it had sliced through them both in ways he’s still fighting not to acknowledge especially since she clearly won't.

It might have been different if the timeline didn’t line up exactly the way it does in his mind, if he hadn’t left her farmhouse with the faintest spark of hope that she would come visit, if he hadn’t been yanked back into her world by the channeling she now tries to minimize, if she hadn’t vanished after that without so much as a breath of explanation or intention. And then the festival—bright lights, the roar of the crowd, the kiss he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from no matter how much he’d wanted to, the precise, deliberate slide of her mouth against Thal’s—all of it unfurling in a way that makes Thalassa's part in it impossible to ignore. 

So when she demands to know why she should come running to him with questions, why she should seek out his side of things as if every fight in the world requires a debrief, his jaw feathers with the strain of holding everything steady. As her frustration spikes, her disbelief flaring bright against the edges of his mind even without his telepathy, it hits him with the force of a tide against rock. His fingers rise to rake through his hair, not with flourish but with a restless, fraying need to find something resembling silence in the noise of her emotions crashing through his telepathy like a storm.

And then she laughs—sharp and sour and aimed straight at him—and whatever grip he had on composure slips just enough to break the last thread holding him there. He shakes his head, slow at first and then harder, a refusal that travels through his shoulders and down the set of his spine. The space between them seems to tighten before he pulls out of it entirely, turning away with a clean, final pivot that leaves the air cold where he’d been standing. "I ain’t doin’ this with you, Colt." It isn't an ultimatum nor a retreat meant to pull her after him. Just a line drawn with the same precision he uses for every cut that lands exactly where he means it to.

you were beggin' me to stay 'til the sun rose

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3