[se] between two lungs

Deimos

we are all b r o k e n
that's how the l i g h t gets in

It didn’t take more than a few words to lure him away; but he’d been beguiled already, before, days and weeks ago, when no one had been captured, when apprehension, fear, and a festering rage hadn’t knotted its way through his core. Amidst this space, scaling and recoiling on the in-betweens, where he’d growled and roared, when he’d manipulated for information, when he’d quietly seethed back into the hollowed beast, he didn’t know what to do. He was inaction after discord, oblivion, and reaction, stunned and spun into too many different, conflicting routes: relief in the first, ineptitude in the second, and curiosity in the third, with congruent, flickering sentiments roaming within, blending, blurring, so he was neither swayed nor indifferent, but touched by all of them. They scorched and burned, hazed and muddled, and the Reaper stood there amidst the unknown depths like a lost soul all over again, eyes searching for the light and struggling not to mire, mar, it once more.

Did she believe they were ridiculous, for having launched themselves into this reckless liberation for them? Had it been hopelessly naïve? Had it been stupid? Had it been effective at all – when she’d been freed and untarnished, sacrificed but not? What was he supposed to convey? How much he’d endeavored to rescue her and Kiada? How angry he’d been to hear of their abduction? How he’d retreated, straight back into the forlorn, destructive King, intending to gain back those he cherished and upheld one way or another? That he would have done anything to ensure they returned? It would’ve blood and bone, violence and vehemence, in one fluid disaster after another. Perhaps it was too soon for her to see, to witness, the bleaker, more tarnished attributes to his soul, where resolution turned to iniquity, where damnation spurned and incensed, kindled and set him aflame, no longer bright and incandescent, but an infernal bastion, a disastrous sword, intending to unleash hell and havoc. Maybe she already knew and understood it, and chose not to touch upon its fragments, its heartlessness, its cruelty.

He wanted to reach for her but didn’t know where or if he should – his gaze was narrowed, briefly scrutinizing, not wanton or covetous, but in the quieter fathoms of concern, intending to detect a hint of pain, a limp, a telltale sign that all was not well. When he couldn’t see anything, outwardly, his head tilted in its typical, inquisitive state, gaze holding, longing to display what words could not: Are you all right? at first, when reunions had scattered and burdens uplifted. There were a series of unsaid fires and embers resting in the lacquered blue – how he’d slay any monster to try and arrive at her side; a touch of menace in the minatory oblivion. He breathed, a vicious sigh, and let the rest of the void dissipate from his shoulders. “They did not hurt you?” The warrior’s voice grappled with too many things, a myriad of slates and paradoxes, the quandaries sizzling on his mind, scalding and clawing, wondering why that was the singular notion he could come up with; when Arduinna had promised it already. He wanted to hear it for himself though; about anything and everything, but her safety was paramount, foremost and prominent. The rest could come with time. She’d told him they had it – those minute moments, those rapacious, gleaming shards he grasped and held – and then she’d been gone.

Deimos bit down on a number of rancorous edges, and glanced to everything else: the sights, the sounds, the whale. It hovered along him, small but wondrous, glorifying in that something so small could be so potent and powerful, and much like Kiada’s luxere, he reached out, intending to softly touch along its skin – because he’d never had anything like a companion, a bond beyond those of kin and country. The smallest of chuckles pulsed through his chest and throat, the first in so many days, as it sang and didn’t seem to care that he was a behemoth, a monster, a molten, barbaric machine. “You are incredible,” he said to both of them, the pair, his heart aching in ways he couldn’t explain, eyes drifting from whale to lightbringer. Once, he’d been caught and snagged – but he hadn’t accepted it, made something out of nothing; he’d rattled his cage and threatened to beat the door down, resisted, resisted, resisted, until a maddening liberation was in sight and he botched that too, incapable of ever giving credence to anything except himself. Here, Amalia had been sacrificed and claimed something of her own all at once. He knew he wouldn’t have – it wasn’t in his soul to simply be and let the world show him. It was always upheaval and sedition. Rebellion out of habit. Revolution in his blood. Insurrection in his very core, his identity, his pattern, his ritual.

Except, for now – where he followed the light and the sun and the stars, pacing himself on the wayward path to the unknown, leading him onward towards a door nestled into the heart of a tree. He wasn’t bewildered – the Fae had already showcased their talents for woodwork and deception – but his curiosity heightened when Amalia slipped within its roots, when walls of books were scattered like the heavens amongst arcane earth. The Reaper eyed the low ceiling, because for a few seconds he thought he might have to crawl his way in, but he didn’t want to leave the haze of memories behind (libraries; tucked along broken down ruins, a mirror, a reflection, of his scattered, damned abyss – sun and onyx, temptation long before he could even name it, claim it). The whale held no such hesitation, starlight and warmth gliding into the array of curiosity and wonder, and he slid in after it, swallowing down the varnished collection of impressions ghosting across his skin.

He was a towering monolith above the old scriptures, head threatening to touch the wooden canopy, and wondered if he was out of place along its threshold. Maybe it didn’t matter, and they could simply make it theirs. The unknown closed over, surrounded, and for once, instead of growling and clenching his teeth at it (he could feel the sensation coiling behind his senses, wrapping around him, gnarled and ashen), he reached for her hands, squeezed them in his palms, breathed once more, easier, more vibrant, more steady, more present, instead of scattered along the trees and limbs. “Yes,” was all he gave in return, except for a small smile touching the corners of his lips.

keep the ones who
h e a r d y o u
when you never said a word