Keep my heart on a short leash

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

It feels like watching sunlight hit a bottle and scatter wrong across the wall. It's beautiful at first, but then the angle shifts, and suddenly all the brightness cuts harsh and strange, and shadows pour back through underneath it, the light refracted too far away. What should have been a snug layer of joy descending over her is instead pulled too taut too fast. It cracks where it's too thin, and the dread bubbles back up.

Her thoughts have run away with her again, like a nightmare she can't seem to tame. Where it tears across her mind, wrinkles edge up, just waiting to be pulled back to reveal the actual reality beneath this blanketed one. The fact that her home is no longer here, that it's deepfrost, that the flood of a man is close at hand this time. She doesn't notice them though, not when fear is like a too-bright shine to see through, every sensation amplified into something larger than it deserves. Although, Sunjata casts a nice shadow.

His words strike her with a muffled effect, distorted as if she's caught inside something and he's standing beyond it. Still, it turns her gaze up towards him, beckoned by the sounds. A flicker of relief registers when she sees him. His embrace lands a bit more sure, feeding some strength to her. There's an undercurrent of knowledge that she's survived this once before, and she could again. It's the only thing that keeps her from completely disassembling back into anger or anguish, because this time, she hasn't lost everything.

"It's burning," she murmurs into his jacket, tight and terrified. Fingers dig into his fabric as she tucks in tighter, trying to hide in his clothing like bedsheets keeping away monsters and bad dreams at night. Tears come quick and hot, weight sagging into him near completely. "I couldn't stop it again." Everything's loosened by the effects of what he gave her. Feelings have grown long and exaggerated. Thoughts have melted together and run off like a spilled drink on a table. Her body feels delayed in its response, as if heavy and light simultaneously.

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me

// i'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go, you've been the only thing that's right
in all i've done. and i can barely look at you, but every single time i do //

It’s vastly different from the last time this had happened – the way she looks up at him and it’s like all the heartbreak is there as it had been before, but she looks at him with relief rather than a target to focus her attacks on. She looks at him like he might be able to help by being there rather than the cause. It helps keep him close to her, a frown tugging on his face as his arm remains around her, keeping her against him before shifting into a hug like he might be able to blot out the bad imagery with sheer will.

“It’s okay.” He says again, trying to keep her relaxed and calm, feeling the heat of the tears soak into his clothes before he realizes that they might freeze there out in the cold and snow as they are. He works his jaw, his hand running up and down her back in smooth strokes that hopefully help as he tries to figure out what the fuck he should do.

Only one thing really comes to mind, though. “C’mon, let’s go back to the House of Midnight okay? I’ll fly us there.” He offers out, an option for her to not stand in the figurative ashes her inebriated mind is making up. “We’ll get you a nice room and warm you up.” Already, wings are starting to unfurl, tearing through the slits in the jacket he wears - feathered and warm where they hover just within reach of her but enough to hopefully keep her from seeing more of the imaginary wreck.

i know we'll make it anywhere away from here

SUNJATA

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

Will should never be discounted. It can be the difference between success and failure, even when the tipping point is life and death. It's not always enough, but sometimes it's everything. For the moment, however it's delivered, will or otherwise, it's the presence of him that does the most for her. Not strength she borrows as much as a weakness she can set down without concern. She holds so much together so often, even when she shouldn't, that having somewhere she can crumble once in a while means the world.

The quiet murmurs that slip from him tink gently against the opaque shell around her consciousness—it sounds like rain on a glass pane, asking to be let in. The patter of them starts to cut through a little louder, a little clearer, and gradually he starts to make sense. Every slide of his hand against her back sets more wrinkles into the moment, as if the reality is attached to her coat and every fold of fabric echoes behind her eyes. The truth is much simpler—her imagined terrors cannot fully withstand the steady current of comfort, and all the cold that's twisted up inside her slowly starts to unknot beneath the warm eddies of his reassurances.

Her grip loosens from its white-knuckle edge. "The House?" Her voice tries to rise but grows thin with the effort. "But the fire," she starts to protest, but the words die out as her breath sucks in sharp and audible. "It's already too late, again?" It's a question, but she thinks she already knows the answer if there's this much powder around them. If he's not even trying to douse it. He wouldn't be taking her there otherwise, and he'll find no true resistance from her.

She blinks against his forearm, the bleary heat of her vision tangling in her eyelashes. She only catches a glimpse before his wings blot it away, but she notices that the ash sparkles too much to make sense. Snow? Understanding tries to piece itself into the confusion, but the parts keep sliding, opening up new gaps even as others reassemble. Added to this, the smoke she keeps bringing in with every inhale fights her reason away almost as fast as it arrives.

Dimming her awareness mostly just to the shape of him, like blinders narrowing her world to something straighter, at least helps the focus shift elsewhere. "Your wings..." she gasps faintly, eyes widening, too bright with the wet shine. "They're soft again." There's an edge of awe to it, which immediately breaks into another sob. Where she'd started to lean away to see him better, she flops back into him, words rushed and breathy. "Youshouldbeangry. Itwasawful. Idon'tdeservethis." Shame prickles through the words in sharp heaves of her lungs as she fights for control of her sides, shaky with the regret of it all.

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me

// i'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go, you've been the only thing that's right
in all i've done. and i can barely look at you, but every single time i do //

He feels the way her grip loosens, slowly and easily as her voice tries to take root but still feels frail – like the faux promise of strength of a plant that’s just received water, pretending to perk up and become strong again so long as breeze doesn’t drop by. And here’s Sunjata, trying his best to be the stake to keep her upright as she figures out the words leaving her lips, the way she asks if it’s too late for the fire when he has to try and determine what the fuck he should say that doesn’t make it worse.

Which, as everyone knows, is not Sunjata’s strong suit. Words had never been something he had a sway with. “There’s no fire. It’s just snow.” He tries to explain, already mentally kicking himself as if he’s realized that answer probably wasn’t the best, but maybe he could get through the mental blockades she’s started shoving up around herself again.

He tries to blot it out, though, between his wings and himself, and as she says that his wings are soft again and she sobs, all Sunjata can do is hold her close, hearing the jumbled mumble of things she’s saying, the apologies that leaves her lips that do offer a small amount of relief despite the worry he feels in his gut. “I was angry.” He admits, deciding if he doesn’t have a heart he doesn’t have to lie to make other people feel better when they could at least have a conversation. “But I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere being mad at you for it.” He shifts a little, trying to capture her gaze. “So let me help you.” She was already helping him, at the end of the day. And Sunjata? He could hold grudges, but he could also forgive.

i know we'll make it anywhere away from here

SUNJATA

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

Fortunately for Sunjata, eloquence would be wasted on her in this moment. Whatever short, blunt, and familiar words he has is what's more certain to cleave through the cotton her mind has been swaddled in. The fibers make reality fuzzy, and they catch on every stray thought and feeling as if a web in disguise.

Snow he urges again. The weave shudders and relents, sense able to bore through the slight gap and deliver clarity. That's right—they've been standing in a snowy field this whole time. She nods, the motion slow and small, but a final acceptance of the reality that's been exposed beneath the curtain of something else. Before she can soften with that understanding though, the next snag has already come.

This one isn't so cleanly pulled away, not when it's him, not when it's her. She took the thread between them and hauled it taut, then wound what slack remained so tightly around her fist that her fingers have turned violet. It's what makes this comfort scrape so strangely against her. Not soothing at first, but almost painful in its softness, like taking the pressure of the cord off her knuckles has let the blood rush back in too hot and too fast, the sting of feeling returning somehow worse than the numbness had been.

She's shaking her head by the time he pulls away enough to look at her. The backs of her hands scrub clumsily at the slowing fall of tears, as if by erasing them she could manage to do the same to all her shame. "No," she says quietly, the sound splintering apart on its way out. The gaze that finally lifts to meet his is wet and red-rimmed and stubborn in a way that's unappealing. "No," she says again, clearer this time, though her jaw works so hard around the rest of it that it aches. The broken bits of an apology crowd there, swollen and miserable behind her teeth.

She tries to withdraw further from him. From the softness, from the forgiveness, from the evidence that he's patched himself up just fine without any offering from her when she can't seem to do the same. "You should be mad," she insists again, trying to pull farther back through the snow despite the miserable hitch in her breathing. "I wasn't fair to you."

The words come apart unevenly, tripping over breath and guilt alike. "Everything was gone and you were just—there—and I didn't know where else to put any of it." Her face twists hard as another surge of crying threatens. Her palms wipe harshly beneath each eye again, more frustrated and embarrassed now than tearful, but the roughness seems to keep the next wave back. "You offered to help and..." Her shoulders hitch helplessly. "I was so upset Sunjata and I just—I just..."

She shakes her head again immediately after, faster now, agitated by herself. "And now you're acting like, like—" she gestures towards him as if all of him is the clear meaning. "Like this. As if I'm the one who deserves comfort." She laughs once then, sharp and bitter and entirely without humor. Another retreating half-step carries her back, as though distance might finally make his kindness hurt less. "Why aren't you angry? Yell at me!" The apology comes apart faster the more she tries to hold onto it, thoughts sliding over each other slick and loose beneath the lingering haze of whiskey and snapdragon.

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me

// i'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go, you've been the only thing that's right
in all i've done. and i can barely look at you, but every single time i do //

The first no that reaches him feels like an accident at first. But that second one, with her gaze lifting up to meet his, all red rimmed and broken and clear in spite of the drugs and the liquor are more like the last nail in the coffin as she declines his easy acceptance. And maybe it is too easy for him to say that everything was fine, easier still to go through the motions of pretending like he hadn’t gone home to lick his wounds for an uncomfortable amount of time, even sought out his god for any idea of what to do because she’d gotten under his skin so much.

And yet, somehow, he doesn’t think that it’s what Colt wants to hear. But how often had the Heartless said what he thought everyone wanted to hear and still ended up in this spot at the end of the day?

Muscles feather in his jaw, short of chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I was mad.” He admits, repeating it in case she’d forgotten. But as she continues and trips over herself in the way she tries to get everything out in a way that he can understand, this picture of him that she’s painted and expecting him to be, word vomiting in a variety of ways to try and get him to react the way she thinks she deserves to be reacted to.

He’s struck with a sudden realization that it’s exactly what he does, too. When he’s pushed too far and he lashes out, however unfair it is. It’s no wonder he’s ended up in this position again and again if he tended to push people away by being the worst parts of himself.

“I’m not gonna yell at you, Colt.” He says with a resigned sigh, lifting a hand to run through his hair. “But if you want my honest thoughts? Fine.” Exhaling the sigh that slips past his lips, he looks away from her to the snowy landscape they find themselves in, realizing this was a conversation better suited to where they wouldn’t suffer from hypothermia, just the pain of the razor blade sentences between them.

He forces himself to look back at her – but not directly, because he still can’t bring himself to be open and vulnerable under scrutiny. “You were upset and I get that, I do, but then you implied that I don’t take care of my region and the people in it. Like I didn’t care, and that was probably the worst thing for me to hear. I’m not perfect, I know, but it… I thought we were closer than what we were. You were my friend and you just took all the shit I’m always sensitive about and tossed out at me like you didn’t care how long it’d hurt me.” He sucks in a sharp breath and swallows hard. “You fucked me up enough that I went to see Frey because I couldn’t manage it on my own.” She had the power to do that, and if she wants to know how much it hurt him, then the cards are all laid out. "And it feels shitty to say that when you literally lost your home and everything." Like he's trying to balance the traumas and can't equate them out the same, because he's so used to just stuffing it down until the light can't shine on it anymore with the apt easy sentence of shit happens.

i know we'll make it anywhere away from here

SUNJATA

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

Every rehearsed line and careful architecture of her apology has completely fallen apart by now. The snapdragon has made it so easy to be carried away by the torrents of her own consciousness, each stream of thought and feeling running over, the edges melting into one floodplain of fucked up. It's well and fully swept her under, and it seems the only thing left to do is sink or swim.

The demand dies on her lips almost as quickly as it leaves them. She does remember she'd told him she hadn't come here to yell, but her arms also didn't feel heavy enough to fall off and light enough to drift away at the same time back then either. As if suddenly aware of this disturbing sensation, she wraps them around her instead, clutch since having abandoned his coat.

He's quiet. Although noise has never needed to accompany wrath, in her experience the bluster of it is easier to sit with. She'd take a thunder storm crashing down compared to the slow and miserable drowning in mud and relentless rain any day. She's already experienced the latter once before.

The calm that he keeps is not mistaken for a lack of strain. It's there in the tightness of his jaw, the hard sound of his exhale, the sweep of fingers through hair. It's all controlled though, she can tell, because not even his accent dares spill through. It's terribly unfair that when they'd yelled before she'd wanted nothing more than to be held. Now that he'd held her, she finds herself wishing he'd just yell instead. Enough so that she stiffens further when he says he won't. Drying eyes tip away from him then, glancing out at the snow turned ash and back again as he starts to pull the truth apart in flakes.

It's not the brilliant show she thinks she wants, and maybe that's why each piece lands so cleanly, nothing else to muffle the honesty of what's been done. Certain portions sting sharper, making her flinch from them, and a few prove surprising, seen from an angle that her memories and perspective alone couldn't provide. Her gaze drags itself back up to his face, and when she opens her mouth to speak, her voice can't immediately be found. When it rouses, it's husky with the threat of taking on too much water.

"I fucked you up?" In truth, she did not realize what she'd said had rooted so deeply in him. She repeats it, for her sake rather than his. "I fucked you up enough enough that you went to Frey?" The words sound different the second time. The disbelief remains, but the private dawn of understanding has curdled into something closer to horror.

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me

// i'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go, you've been the only thing that's right
in all i've done. and i can barely look at you, but every single time i do //

She doesn’t argue back, she doesn’t start to infiltrate his words with misunderstandings and confusion. And honestly? It’s a breath of fresh air. How many times had he tried to have difficult conversations only for them to get twisted around until the end result wasn’t at all reminiscent of what he’d started with. It’s smoother, and for that the Heartless is quietly grateful, even as she repeats the main point that he’d kind of hoped she hadn’t hung onto.

But at the end of the day, it wasn’t entirely her fault. It was the terrible combination of his heart dying, the women he’d loved returning home to tell him that she’d died and came back and he hadn’t even been able to feel a thing about it because he’d been empty long before even he’d realized it.

She wraps her arms around herself and his fingers twitch at his side before he shoves them into his pockets, exhaling a slow sigh and a nod. “Well.. I guess it was a few things, but you were the last straw I had keeping me together.” A weak smile is aimed her way, one he knows won’t land the way he wants it to, so it falls just about as quickly as it’d arrived.

“Between you and Ru and finding out my heart was dead.. It was a lot. And I didn’t know where to go from there.” So, like usual, he’d chosen to go and see the one that accepted him regardless of what he did and where he fucked up, finding it all always so trivial when faced with the divinity of Frey, to bolster him before the tediousness of it began to creep back in.

i know we'll make it anywhere away from here

SUNJATA

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

He doesn't retreat from the reality of it, just offers an expanded view, calling out every landmark of his ruin as they stand here in the aftermath of it. It's an easier image for her to hold, because at least she isn't the sole source of his destruction, but the recognition of each point of interest is proof enough that she knew all the ways he'd been hurting and still found a way to do the same. She swallows hard.

"I see," she murmurs, the sound faint, although little proves to be for him. The weight of holding this is abruptly too much for legs quickly turning gelatinous to bear, and so Colt sags suddenly down, leaning back into a sit on the snow. The cold and the wet at once start to seep into her pants, although she doesn't feel it yet, won't until its soak has spread through well and deep, and even then it has to compete with the internal chill winding its way through her. She also didn't miss the fact he said they were friends. Perhaps she shouldn't have thought otherwise when their fight had been so ugly, and she'd run from here shortly after, but where she'd sat with the prickle of anger dimming itself out, he apparently severed what remained.

A bit stunned, like a bird that's struck a window, she just needs a moment to regain her ground. "I didn't realize, I—" the blame that accidentally loads itself there is swiftly cut off as she clicks her teeth back together, recognizing the shape of it before she delivers it. She didn't know she mattered so much, unable to find the proof of it in the ways she needed, aside from glimpses of it in the moments where they both needed something from each other. She hadn't realized the weight she left whenever she used him, and gods damnit if it doesn't prove the hole left in her chest as right.

"I'm sorry," she finally manages to wring out from the soup of so many other things waiting to spill from her mouth. "I'm sorry," she repeats, gaze boring a hole in the snow before her. "I'm no good at keeping anyone together. I should have warned you sooner." She can barely manage the pieces of herself, much less be afforded anyone else.

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me

// i'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go, you've been the only thing that's right
in all i've done. and i can barely look at you, but every single time i do //

He shrugs, crouching beside her in the snow as her legs stop hoisting her weight. He tries to radiate what heat he can, because he doesn’t want her to freeze to death out here, and at a moments notice he’s ready to pull his healing rain out in case she starts to get some kind of hypothermia. He doesn’t use it, yet, choosing to shake his head softly to her not realizing. “It’s okay. Really. I know it wasn’t you really. You were upset.” And while she had said all those things, he didn’t have to take them as honesty.

He lets her apologize, lets her get it off her chest and he hopes that it helps when he remains quiet and watchful. “I forgive you.” He offers out softly once she’s done letting the apology out, the explanation that she isn’t good at keeping anyone together and how she should have warned him. He can’t help the soft laugh that leaves him, the one that edges with a soft sigh. “Well, I’m full of jagged edges, so I should’ve warned you sooner too.” He shouldn’t be surprised when his edges were sharp enough that the only way she could really get through to him was to cut herself in the process and bark back when the pain hit.

He extends his lightning scarred hand toward her in a quiet offering. “Now that we’re sufficiently warned, I think we can be friends again.” He murmurs, though it ends in a kind of quiet question, as though he’s giving her the choice now. “And if so, I’d like to get out of the fuckin cold. You wanna stay at the House of Midnight tonight? Probably feels nicer than a Skyship.” Another little offering, the acceptance, and the fact he’s more than happy to help her up and take her there.

i know we'll make it anywhere away from here

SUNJATA

Tryin' to stay between the lines of who I am and who I used to be

"Gods," she gasps up at him, a hand reaching out to curl in his coat sleeve where he comes close enough, his crouch not allowing much else into her space beside him and the cold knocking on her ass. A fresh, wet shine dances in her gaze, lips twisting down with a severe drop and a pull at the edges as she works the shape of them around her words, the feeling thick and heavy. "You sound just like I used to." That stark realization feels like such a slap that her head hangs with it, gaze turned back to the ground.

How many times had she reassured her husband that she understood the different facets of him, that the angry him, the one that'd hurt her, that wasn't real. That was always some alternate version of the man she loved, because how else could she rectify the vast difference between the caring person she fell for and the one that would sling such atrocious accusations at her? How could they be the same person?

Has she spent so much time chasing his shadow away that she didn't realize it's begun to circle back around, that it's her darkness now?

She shivers abruptly, and while it has every right to be, it's not from the cold. She leans forward, pitiful and defeated and far too high to deal with the fucking revelation of being her own worst monster now. His forgiveness is as much a shelter as his arms are now, her forward tilt taking her into him, sagging into him with the full force of her weight, because for right now he is the only thing holding her up still. "Yeah." The sound comes out more like a croak, voice suddenly feeling like it hasn't been used in weeks. She clears it, tears abruptly dry as the chill thieves everything from her, feelings drying up into one, resounding horror. "A room at the House sounds nice." Sleeping, sounds nice, honestly.

Whatever rebuttals about his sharp edges compared to hers, his warnings compared to hers, they die out as she does her best instead to retake his friendship and hold it more carefully this time. "Anywhere but here," she decides with a whisper, arms looping around his neck and body folding against his chest to be carried away to somewhere warm again, although she won't truly feel it until the next morning, when this has all sunk in like a bad dream, despite knowing it's not. It's all that makes it a bit easier to carry come the next day, that and telling him never to give her this shit again, because some truths don't need to be stripped down into something so raw.

[FIN]

Colt

I been livin', I been losin', findin' out that I can't run from me