i'm a lost cause, do it the way I want
She says he’s a bastard, and Vesper laughs. It’s sharp, mirthless, dragged from the hollow where sympathy used to live. He straightens with a shrug, the firelight casting shadows across his face like warpaint. "Well," he says, voice curling like smoke around a blade, "you’re not wrong." No denial. No apology. Why would there be? He’s been called worse by people who meant less.
His cool blue start continues to watch her. As she rises. As she lies to herself with every clenched muscle and shaky breath. As that tear, no matter how quickly it’s scrubbed away, leaves its mark like a brand down her cheek. And he feels it; not the tear itself, but the way it drags through her thoughts, slicing across the glass-slick surface of her composure. The frantic shuffle of memory. The pain she keeps trying to bite back. The fear that if she breaks now, there’ll be nothing left to put together.
He doesn’t reach for her. He’d be a fool to, but one of his shadows does.
It slithers forward through the hedge-light, slow and careful, wrapping around her like it remembers her. The way it brushes her cheek isn’t rough or binding, not the way it once was, anyhow: Just a flicker of pressure, cool and not-quite-there. Familiar in the worst way as it highlights what she clearly doesn't want to be seen. Even so, she’s still beautiful, even with the rage, or maybe because of it. Eyes like stormlight rimmed in grief. Lips pulled taut over everything she doesn’t want to say. The fire makes her glow like a goddess fallen sideways. Like something dangerous and divine and unmade.
With a tilt of his head to correct her, he murmurs, "Your flames might make me step back..." A pause. A breath. A slow blink that drags the words out sharp and low. "...but you should know better than to think a little pain’s enough to keep me out."
His cool blue start continues to watch her. As she rises. As she lies to herself with every clenched muscle and shaky breath. As that tear, no matter how quickly it’s scrubbed away, leaves its mark like a brand down her cheek. And he feels it; not the tear itself, but the way it drags through her thoughts, slicing across the glass-slick surface of her composure. The frantic shuffle of memory. The pain she keeps trying to bite back. The fear that if she breaks now, there’ll be nothing left to put together.
He doesn’t reach for her. He’d be a fool to, but one of his shadows does.
It slithers forward through the hedge-light, slow and careful, wrapping around her like it remembers her. The way it brushes her cheek isn’t rough or binding, not the way it once was, anyhow: Just a flicker of pressure, cool and not-quite-there. Familiar in the worst way as it highlights what she clearly doesn't want to be seen. Even so, she’s still beautiful, even with the rage, or maybe because of it. Eyes like stormlight rimmed in grief. Lips pulled taut over everything she doesn’t want to say. The fire makes her glow like a goddess fallen sideways. Like something dangerous and divine and unmade.
With a tilt of his head to correct her, he murmurs, "Your flames might make me step back..." A pause. A breath. A slow blink that drags the words out sharp and low. "...but you should know better than to think a little pain’s enough to keep me out."
