raised on the edge of the devil's backbone

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

There had been so much that happened, so much that had torn him apart and put him back together again, a shell of himself from the day or two before. He doesn’t know what day it is, disoriented by the events and LongNight’s ever growing stretch of darkness. He still hasn’t left the house, but the urge to say fuck it and fly the blackened skies on a broken but mostly healing wing as a dragon if only to ward off any enemies is so strongly settled in his head that he finds himself on the upper level of the house, on the balcony, stepped out into the cold with no shirt, wings flared to soak up as much of the chill outside as he can.

He hadn’t wanted to disturb Hotaru before he broke the news, before he broke down, so he’d left a note on the bed to meet him here. And here he had stayed, leaned against the edge of the balcony, arms in front of him, head in his hands, wings flared and drooping from where he stands lost in his head, lost in the nightmares, in Remi’s face and Ronin’s quiet betrayal.

He works at his split lip, enough that it nearly cracks open and draws blood again. So he needs to do something else with his hands, with his mouth, pulling his hands away to pull out a cigarette and lighting it swiftly, dropping the box of matches and the pack of cigarettes next to a worn notebook atop a small metal table.

SUNJATA