resurrection tastes like iron

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

To him, she has never been a bomb needed to be handled with care. For him, she had needed the rough hand, the push, the pull, the tug. And it does not come as a surprise for him as she pushes back against his thumbs that would surely start to sport a bruise as he tells her he could not, would not, ever forget her. He directs his head toward Phoebe, speaking softly and light in comparison to the grating, immovable stone that greets Lusea.

And Phoebe tells him she will go, grabbing a blanket and leaving everything out for Lusea she might require. He spends a moment directing his attention back to Lusea, the strength of him rebuilding through necessity, through love for her. The tone and raise to his voice nothing he ever tried with Phoebe — because the first time he had, when he had been worried and stressed, frustrated, she had cried at first and he had regretted it. Had grown soft, and regretted the flood and the fire that had made him.

She tells Phoebe a quiet thanks for helping her, and Sunjata does nothing other then glance over to watch the midwife leave, eyes shifting back to Lusea once he hears the door click. And he lets her go, stepping back for that taut space between them, hands running up to brush through his hair, to brush his cheek as she crosses her arms over her chest and speaks in their tongue — their tongue.

He does the same, steel eyes reaching her before flitting away, finding if he stares too long she’ll never get the chance to move from the door he’s pinned her to. But she tells him to explain, and he doesn’t know where to start, but he imagines a good place is the day she died.

He grits his teeth, a muscle feathering in his jaw as he sucks in a deep breath. “Three years ago, you were dying, and I raged against the guards, I wanted to take the knife and stick it through the Arbiter, but your guards dropped you and surrounded him.” He begins, a frown deepening. He had stopped calling his father by his true name the day he went into the underground, long forsaken the man behind the Arbiter title. “I couldn’t let you die alone, and I held you for hours before they dragged me away from you. I was still coated in your blood when they dragged me back in, told me in the same breath that you had died and I was to be marrying some girl from Qhayi—” A woman of the house of the mystics. An advantage his father had wanted. “They punished Saartjie too, engaged her to Graasvoel.” The name leaves his tongue with venom, steel hardened eyes drifting back to her. A terrible man of whims and far too flirtatious for his own good, but he was the house of Arms, another advantage.

“I couldn’t let them do that to us, Luci. I knew your father was looking for me, I knew I would be painted the infiltrated spy for the underground, and I couldn’t. Let. Them.” Another muscle feathers. He had been the chosen one, one chosen for nothing but destruction. “I took Saartjie, caused a distraction—” She would know the term, distraction didn’t just mean what it meant for most people. It meant death. “And we fled to Dorobo.” He tells her, jaw clenched, tongue lashing out to wipe away the blood on his lip.

SUNJATA