COLT
I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue
The laugh lands like a slap. She flinches at it, the half-step she’d taken undoing itself as her body bids her to lean away. Her pockets empty, granting her chest the flimsy shield of her arms and the heat of them layering against her, each one a measure to stave off the stranger before her. It’s only her gaze that remains unwavering, critical in its search upon him for some trace of the man he’d once been, not so very long ago. She can’t find him though, and he appears the way Frey’s version of him always had, slightly off. Losing him like this is more familiar than she’d like to admit, because this is not the first time she’s mourned the living. Vesper’s become the sort of ghost that neither Ludo nor Mort have any claim over.
There’s no tug left on the end of the rope she’s holding. No storm breaking, just enough bad weather to hide the sun. She can’t fight what’s nothing more than a shadow, and that seems to be all he’s got left after carving away everything that they’d been. She still can’t reconcile the stark difference in him, how he’ll stand there acting like this was inevitable, like anything more had been some silly story she made up. All the times they’d tumbled into each other’s gravity and crashed, and it turned missing each other into missing pieces. Not promises, but something more than this.
”My mistake,” she says low and on the tail of a sigh. ”For thinking any of that meant something.” There’s no more point in yanking on him. She can bear the fact that she’d ruined them, but she didn’t do it alone. She’s gone over the memories enough times now to know she hadn’t imagined the things they’d started to build, but the fact he keeps trying to pass that off as true may as well make it so.
The recognition of that shifts uncomfortably behind her eyes, forcing her to blink faster for a moment. Her inhale comes in sharper than before, pressing on her chest like a threat instead of a need. She trails one last lingering look over him, figuring maybe this image of him, the one she barely recognizes, could replace the one she misses and make it all easier. Instead, her gaze catches on familiar slopes, and she can feel them phantom beneath her fingertips, never knowing it had once been the last. Her knuckles curl in tighter at her sides, applying pressure as if there are wounds still bleeding, or ones about to. ”Y’know,” she drawls out, forcing out voice now before she loses it. Her head tips down to her boots for a moment, scuffing the ground as she traces her departure. Slowly, her stare bounds back up to him, too glassy to risk her lashes. ”You’re many things Vesper, I just didn’t think coward was one of ‘em.” The world lets go of its breath, the suspended dust drifting freely again.
She starts to step back, to retreat to the levels above and the path that’ll lead out of these woods, one she plans to hit as soon as she can, inevitable nightfall be damned. She fumbles for the pack of cigarettes and matches in her pocket, drawing one free with a speed that betrays the sting of the nerves working themselves out fully. ”They said your book’s two levels up to the right, by the way,” she murmurs in farewell.
There’s no tug left on the end of the rope she’s holding. No storm breaking, just enough bad weather to hide the sun. She can’t fight what’s nothing more than a shadow, and that seems to be all he’s got left after carving away everything that they’d been. She still can’t reconcile the stark difference in him, how he’ll stand there acting like this was inevitable, like anything more had been some silly story she made up. All the times they’d tumbled into each other’s gravity and crashed, and it turned missing each other into missing pieces. Not promises, but something more than this.
”My mistake,” she says low and on the tail of a sigh. ”For thinking any of that meant something.” There’s no more point in yanking on him. She can bear the fact that she’d ruined them, but she didn’t do it alone. She’s gone over the memories enough times now to know she hadn’t imagined the things they’d started to build, but the fact he keeps trying to pass that off as true may as well make it so.
The recognition of that shifts uncomfortably behind her eyes, forcing her to blink faster for a moment. Her inhale comes in sharper than before, pressing on her chest like a threat instead of a need. She trails one last lingering look over him, figuring maybe this image of him, the one she barely recognizes, could replace the one she misses and make it all easier. Instead, her gaze catches on familiar slopes, and she can feel them phantom beneath her fingertips, never knowing it had once been the last. Her knuckles curl in tighter at her sides, applying pressure as if there are wounds still bleeding, or ones about to. ”Y’know,” she drawls out, forcing out voice now before she loses it. Her head tips down to her boots for a moment, scuffing the ground as she traces her departure. Slowly, her stare bounds back up to him, too glassy to risk her lashes. ”You’re many things Vesper, I just didn’t think coward was one of ‘em.” The world lets go of its breath, the suspended dust drifting freely again.
She starts to step back, to retreat to the levels above and the path that’ll lead out of these woods, one she plans to hit as soon as she can, inevitable nightfall be damned. She fumbles for the pack of cigarettes and matches in her pocket, drawing one free with a speed that betrays the sting of the nerves working themselves out fully. ”They said your book’s two levels up to the right, by the way,” she murmurs in farewell.
No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done
Received a Gilded Market wig from Remi that resembles her usual hair and is enchanted to stay on better than most wigs | has a reverse centaur tattoo on her left hand with the legs going down her pointer and middle fingers that looks like this.
