How do I keep myself from fallin' apart when I ain't never felt part of a whole?
The glow of lightning makes hope twist painfully in her heart, across a gulley that widens as her emotions grow quieter and quieter to his ears. The ensuing shake of his head and flex of his jaw is not unlike a knife in how it cleaves through her. She strives to keep her lips from trembling overmuch, or her brows from creasing and pinching down in agonized lines, but half-measures are only that when he has the key to every expression she’s capable of making.
Injustice bubbles like a defense mechanism, the sides of her mouth twisting in what becomes an aborted snarl as she turns her head sharply away instead. They’d promised honesty long ago, and even though she burns with the feeling that she has done nothing wrong, she can’t tell him he’s any less in the right either. Her hands fist and twitch uselessly at her sides as she tries to do anything more than keep breathing. At her throat, the dragon undulates slowly, rising from its stony, watchful state. The scrape of scales under Ru’s chin makes her flinch, but at least jostles words free.
“I didn’t do any of this on purpose, it was a normal day, a regular -” she breaks off with the closure of her throat, tears like daggers that she can’t see past but equally can’t let fall. “Did any of you ask Frey?” Spoke in a whisper that betrays a thread of doubt not unlike the kind that had plagued her after Frey had claimed the Family was no threat when Sunjata had asked. Ever the only man to make her, even as a demigod, question the deity that remade her very atoms. “They were there - they would’ve known, right? It wouldn’t have been like before.” When she was a nobody, a simple Abandoned unaccounted for during the sickness that had gripped Caido.
Ru lifts both hands to press the heels of her palms into her eyes to force the sting down with brute strength. “No, I’m - I’m not trying to say you didn’t do enough, that’s not what I meant. To me, it’s been a few days. And I know that doesn’t change that to you it was so much more, that it was awful, but…”
But what? He holds the cards here, and she has nothing but confusion, regret, and a dragon around her neck that she bitterly thinks wasn’t worth the exchange.
Injustice bubbles like a defense mechanism, the sides of her mouth twisting in what becomes an aborted snarl as she turns her head sharply away instead. They’d promised honesty long ago, and even though she burns with the feeling that she has done nothing wrong, she can’t tell him he’s any less in the right either. Her hands fist and twitch uselessly at her sides as she tries to do anything more than keep breathing. At her throat, the dragon undulates slowly, rising from its stony, watchful state. The scrape of scales under Ru’s chin makes her flinch, but at least jostles words free.
“I didn’t do any of this on purpose, it was a normal day, a regular -” she breaks off with the closure of her throat, tears like daggers that she can’t see past but equally can’t let fall. “Did any of you ask Frey?” Spoke in a whisper that betrays a thread of doubt not unlike the kind that had plagued her after Frey had claimed the Family was no threat when Sunjata had asked. Ever the only man to make her, even as a demigod, question the deity that remade her very atoms. “They were there - they would’ve known, right? It wouldn’t have been like before.” When she was a nobody, a simple Abandoned unaccounted for during the sickness that had gripped Caido.
Ru lifts both hands to press the heels of her palms into her eyes to force the sting down with brute strength. “No, I’m - I’m not trying to say you didn’t do enough, that’s not what I meant. To me, it’s been a few days. And I know that doesn’t change that to you it was so much more, that it was awful, but…”
But what? He holds the cards here, and she has nothing but confusion, regret, and a dragon around her neck that she bitterly thinks wasn’t worth the exchange.
HOTARU
