after fury
what do you do
Drawing back into the quiet was easy, but balancing on the tension and the unknown was not. He thought about leaning against the door and waiting, waiting, waiting, until the anvils fell and the ax dropped, but the blight of apprehension clawed its way through his spine and he had to move, action before anything else. His eyes were drawn to the hearth, and he took his time placing kindling and logs within, granting and giving her space to form thoughts or let everything flicker away again. The uncertainty of those moments nearly made him feral with dread or tempestuous intonations; because he didn’t quite understand when or why they’d drifted into these bizarre conflictions and misguided approaches. Had it been his fault – the silent, reserved nature, the reticence, and she thought he wouldn’t care? The notion hurt, twisted around his ribs, and so he merely continued, sharpening breaths carving their way out of his lungs and bones and existence, the inevitable searing along thawed hearts and the notion to hide away again. His hands contorted flames, pieces newly sketched and outlined, wondering about the weight of secrets and how many they had between them, if they were just a part of the world, and he had to swallow, consume, and devour them all, or rest in their existence, in parts where he was excluded and shut out. The fire crackled, and when he turned, rising from his crouching, kneeling stance, she’d sunk along the bed, and for half a second the monolith didn’t know where to go or what to do, a little lost, a little confused, a little dismayed.Then there was an invitation, an extension of half-smiles and the hidden layers alongside them, and he took it, settling in upon the duvet with some restless proportions. Her voice came along on a sigh, an opening of chests and ramparts, and he listened, eyes on her, the precariousness causing him to simply meander in the murk and mire. He could’ve laid out the blemishes and defects too – had once heard her pleas for comfort as a call to movement and brutality instead of comfort and camaraderie. It was not a fluid, natural thing for him to do – to open up, to let the world in, to settle amongst others and individuals, to provide anything other than vehemence and violence for their sakes. It’d been how he’d openly showed his devotion, convictions, and promises, through bloodshed, through acrimony, and tracing over these foundations had been an entirely new learning curve. He was trying. Perhaps it was foreign for her too.
She wouldn’t have to worry about receiving furrowed brows or chastisement about darkness from him, a fettering glimpse into his soul would’ve found most of it marked by nefarious means; never insinuating that she would be anything less for it. They were flawed. They were imperfect. They were mortal. They were human. If she could look upon him and accept his damaged, conflicted, savage, contorted soul, then he’d be able to do the same for her without hesitation. Couldn’t she see that? Or had he not done enough to display his belief, his faith, his trust? If she gave him any of the weight brandished across her shoulders, he’d add it to his, no complaints, no objections. “Nor am I,” he shrugged, a little twist to a barely emergent smile. Most of the time he just bludgeoned on ahead or calculated the next maneuver, consequences and untamed, savage things left in the midst, the blunt, keen horrors felt thereafter, already blemished, already marked across his existence. Perhaps part of the trials and tribulations was that sometimes he couldn’t fix the issues, the problems, even when that was sometimes all he’d ever been equipped to do – action, action, action, rather than anything else. “What do you want? Or need?” If anything at all; if he could, if it was even up to him. The beast would rather hear or listen or do something other than be told second-hand something else was going on in her life, requiring ulterior means to remain calm, to ease away from the abyss. “I can listen.”
with the remains?
DEIMOS
