all i want

KiadA but god, i look at you and know, hell is just another place i'll go He didn’t turn to her, nor did he deign to speak. Her brows pulled together in an uncharacteristic hint of sadness before she noticed the way he continued to keep his head down, his eyes remaining on the ground. She moved in his path, and he had aimed to brush her aside yet Kiada dug her heels in – hoping and aiming for the strength to remain standing. But the hand didn’t come yet, instead he shouldered the rope as she continued to speak, a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening that this man would listen to her, would hear her name and have it register. As she spoke her name, she watched with a snappy sort of gaze as his hands froze and he seemed to stare – as if he could stare back into the abyss that was their previous life. Had she reminded him? Had her name leaving her lips in her voice not enough for him? Or had he experienced so many horrible things that there was a way that he couldn’t believe she was real? Her arms crossed her chest for a brief moment, squeezing hard until the pale skin under the leathers turned red and her icy gaze pinned him to the spot. Yet he couldn’t look at her still. His hand jutted out and before Kiada had a chance to respond he moved that hand toward her – shoving her aside as she lost her balance in the snow. Her knees hit the ground hard – flashing back to a time where it had been grass beneath her feet in a high off cliff. She, no, they, had been children then. Him with his stones, her with her fire. And how she had curled up beneath him and let her flames spark in the hopes they’d be enough energy to power his machines. She had hoped they had been real flame, back in a time, but they didn’t crackle or heat. They only painted her emotions for the whole world to see. They had been foxes for him. Butterflies once. And now they were gone aside from the resilience in her eyes. His gruff voice reached for her ears again and she listened as she pushed herself up from the ground. “Yer not.” He seemed inclined to believe, but she bit down on her lip hard and glared at the broad shouldered back of him, uncertain of how to get him to see through the haze and see her. She pushed up from the snow, not even wiping it down from her leathers before she ran at him and aimed to tackle him into the snow. “I am Kiada. My twin brother is – was – Kianzo. Your twin sister, Romina. I am the daughter of the elephant king and the thief of the Basin. When we were children you pushed me down in the Heavenly Fields. Your dad was there, he was the Seer for the Basin. Our twins hated that we spent time together. I thought Kianzo and Romina were going to try and kill us because of what we meant to each other, how we ruined their plans.” She shouted to him, her voice straining as if she could see through it. It had to be him, he remembered her name after all, even went so far to say that she wasn’t herself. She let a few moments pass, a few loud heartbeats as she calmed her voice and fought the tears lining those iceberg eyes. “You are Ru’in. And I watched as you died and yet here you stand and you can’t even look at me to see that it’s me? That it’s really, truly me?” Her heart pounded and she couldn’t catch her breath enough. But she hoped he looked, she prayed he looked. “I loved you so much and you followed your sister into Kisamoa’s destruction when I had to be thrown in that stupid portal, where I nearly died over and over again. Where Khairi…” Her voice broke on the word as she struggled to keep the sound from distorting. “Khairi almost died, and then I lost him somewhere in the worlds before falling here.” She finally said, that deep glacial fire burning in her eyes. “I lost everything over so many years.” Her voice was soft toward the end, her eyes trailing to the snow uncertain how it was even possible. “But yet you’re here.” to keep you warm. and with bloody knuckles, you'd follow me anywhere.

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