quiet like a fight

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts Somewhere in the midst of his rage, in that untamed, feral interlude where his machinations and calculations sometimes brooded into cinders, ash, and embers – too far gone, too far gone – he’d missed her layer of thinking. While he paced and brewed, while he cultivated and orchestrated the seething thoughts of strangling Zariah with his bare hands, or running a blade to and through her heart, no conscience, no release but the rancorous indulgence of a beast slain; Amalia rose, going, leaving. Stupefied, bewildered, incapable of understanding where the twists and turns had gone, he blinked, stepping back, pondering when and where and why this world had instigated him into being such a fool. He’d been rapacious and bloodthirsty the moment he’d read the monarch’s writing, had thought of naught but destruction and mayhem, menace for menace, depravity for depravity, a threat not empty; cast into the whirlwind of tempestuous, mercurial designs, instead of the coldblooded ruses and schemes he usually imparted, implored, and instigated. As he ran his hand along the pommel of his favored sword, as he ceased admiring the keen edges, the spun silver and steel, the way it’d been orchestrated to kill, his eyes drifted to her and his heart sunk. Because underneath all of the anger, all of the wrath, all of the contempt, was the absolute, primal fear that he was going to watch them all die, incapable, ineffectual, useless, worthless, the Reaper reaped, with nothing to show for it but more crypts, more burials, more sepulchers. He abandoned the weapon on the floor, moved, swiftly, quickly, a shadow, a touch, a taste of darkness, to impede her path to the door. There was no need to apologize to him. There was no need for any of this if others could simply find particular ways to rebel, if everything wasn’t placed across his shoulders, if he were better, stronger, mightier than he was now. “That is not what I meant,” he said at first, hands grasping softly, carefully, placed upon her shoulders, only so she stayed, here with him, out of danger for the moment. His features were stalwart, desperate things, struggling with actions and reactions, imploring, reaching for what haunted his heart, his lungs, his soul. “I do not know how to fix this.” But I want to. Other than death, other than demise, other than the Merciless gone; his merciless blade taking its plunge through ribcages. For the instant, it was all he could surmise – outlines and schemes forgotten in the wake of terror, of apprehension, for her. “What do you want to do?” His breath quaked and shuddered, his hands suddenly dulcet things, reaching for her face, cupping her cheeks, begging for her to look at him. He wasn’t sure if she could feel the trembling in his fingers, the wake of trepidation and discord shivering in his efforts to remain in control, composed, not bursting at the seams into some terrible, terrifying monster, or breaking, fraying apart, strands plucked away from their seams all over again. His next statement was quiet, but only for her – not the walls, not the wind, not the horrors waiting to pull the trigger. “I cannot bear to lose you.” the last of a line of lasts