When it's good, it's too good to last

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

She didn't make it all the way home yet. Close, but night's fallen, and it no longer offers the comfort it once did. Travel worn as she is, she knows she won't be sleeping much tonight. Aside from barricading herself in her bathroom, a thought she did briefly consider, she has too many windows to pretend she can't see the fields of stars out there.

So she's trudged her way here instead, too numb to mind the rowdy roar of a business thriving in it's finest hours of the day. The noise feels like a wave she steps under the break of once she opens the doors, only warranting the most mild pause in her mud-flecked boot before she continues her stride inside. She lets it fold over her, almost grateful for the buzz that gets added to her own mind. As for the state she's in, to her credit, she goes through the motions well enough of trying to kick off the grime, a habit by now for everyone around here, but most of what clings to her is layered on from multiple bouts of drying. The boots and jeans are long since filthy, and her shirt hangs in haggard fashion off a shoulder, the other side seemingly only held up un the weight of a strap from the small pack she's toting along.

With no hat to keep her hair in check, it rides up on either side of her face, wild from being run through by nervous hands over and over, a twig and a leaf hiding near the top where their addition went unnoticed. After seeing so much rain and drying again it's got a frizzy kind of volume that moves too much with her, the faintest curls coming in on the ends. It slides around her as she sinks against the counter, head tipping down as her arms prop themselves up on the edge, palms immediately fisting under her jaw. "I need a room," she lets out with a stuffy, uneven voice. She clears her throat, trying to make it more even. "A magic one," she tacks on, louder now. Tears stream quietly from each red, puffy eye. The tracks that run lines in various strokes across her cheeks suggest it's been like the weather, on and off, to such an extent she's openly ignoring the plain show of it, too tired to bother with caring who sees any more.

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

For everyone else it’s just an average day at the House of Midnight. Business was bustling and they were able to clear enough mud and what not to get the workers back on track. Which means that it isn’t Sunjata that greets Colt immediately upon her entrance, but the usual reception that greets most of the visitors to the House of Midnight. The worker eyes her curiously as she seems to hide her face, a slight nudge offered to her coworker that zips away as if he hadn’t been there at all as she tells Colt to follow her.

The stairs are a familiar trek up to the second floor of the House of Midnight, the dark wood flooring worn but impeccably clean and the walls decked out in a deep navy paint with a floral kind of decal that changes for each and every room they walk past. It’s the furthest one down the hall on the left, and precisely the one that cracks open nice and empty, boring and plain and just waiting to be changed into whatever the rancher wished it to be.

But before she gets too close to it, a quiet call of “Colt?” is heard, accented and yet somehow both quiet and not as the tall figure of the Flood cuts down the hall, relieving the worker to the room so that Sunjata can guide her the rest of the way. He gives her a precursory glance and despite all the fun and games and bullshit of the past season or so, he does like to think he’s still her friend. That they said they could count on each other for the harder times and fuck it if this doesn’t seem like a hard time for her.

Between the tears and the puffy face and the twigs still in her hair that she hadn’t quite gotten rid of just yet. “Let me help.” He murmurs, though the accent makes it sound more like a request than a demand. He’d leave if she wanted him to, but he has to at least try, right?

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

Much as Colt frequents this locale, it's not usually for the primary service it provides. Not never, certainly, but uncommon enough that the hike up the stairs is more foreign than familiar. On an ordinary day she would have admired some of the designs, retracing a worthy memory or two in the threshold of a door, but this day is anything but ordinary. Instead, she shuffles along behind the attendant, no better than a prisoner headed to their cell, not quite yielding, but not completely willing either. No step is, it's just survival now. Instinct has been guiding her the past few hours, leading her to places that ought to hurt less, a subconscious tactic to endure when all the will to do so has fled the conscious parts of her.

It's a laughable attempt really, to try and find some modicum of relief in her surroundings when inside she's repeatedly gutting herself with every flicker of thought, seemingly hellbent on carving this scar into one too ugly for her to ever ignore again. Whenever a moment of peace settles, like a dry eye or an inhale that doesn't shake, she drags up another one of Vesper's greatest hits. It's on shuffle, so it could be one of the silver moments, shiny with hope and promise enough to choke on now, or it could be any number of his devastating departures. Her favorite's the haunting melody of his parting whistle; that's embedded in her mind like the worst earworm.

Each happy one's a taunting reminder of what won't be returning. They'd been little rungs she kept blindly climbing up, like she isn't scared of the heights that feelings make, like they weren't just leading her higher to make this come down brutal. Every bad one's the crash of it all over again, always jumping back to the most recent images of him. The cold, indifferent sneers, and the music of his retreat—so unbothered with the whole affair that left her too crippled to keep standing for long afterwards.

Swaddled in looping agony, her name doesn't register immediately. It's not until the motion of the exchange of bodies in front of her occurs does she seem to take note that there's something happening around her. Weary, she lifts her gaze from the floor up the tall figure before her, the sight of another pair of blue eyes enough to make her flinch. She pinches her eyes shut against them as she leans back on her heels, but she registers who it is in the next breath. "Sunjat—" her voice cracks with the use now, as if she'd managed to hold herself together (poorly) until something actually familiar and warm appeared. Her features crumple into a full blown sob as she abruptly surges into him. She buries her head into his arm, and her hands don't so much hug around him as seize onto him, fingers curling in with a grip that drags at his fabric as she sags into him completely. Despite their last run in, he's always been someone she's fond of, and right now she's so goddamn grateful for any crumb of comfort that just his presence, let alone his offer, undoes her.

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

He’s never once seen her like this. Staring at the floor, dejected and rejected, like she’d just heard the worst news of her life. And having absolutely zero context for what the fuck occurred, all he can do is offer his presence. And he really, truly, doesn’t expect it to hit home as much as it does when she surges into him.

She collides with him and it freezes him initially, surprise flaring through him in the glint of lightning through his scars, illuminating even under his shirt when he finally wraps his arms around her. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” He murmurs quietly, nodding to the assistant that had helped bring her here and then starts to pull her into the room.

He doesn’t know what she wants it to be, truthfully, but he uses his heel to kick back the door until he can hear it latch, forcing the room to take a new and unique shape she’s likely never seen. The room becomes the main room of a cabin, with fog and a sunrise on a landscape she’d never recognize even if she scoured each and every space Caido had to offer.

It’s Korofi, truth be told. The cabin his mother would take him and his sister to on occasion to escape their shitty father. And it’s perhaps one of the most comfortable places Sunjata knows these days that doesn’t harbor any bad memories. It’s of a time long before now, when he was decades younger — when he wasn’t a murderer and he still had hope glinting in his gaze.

He guides her to the rough and worn couch, the texture a variety of different canvases in varied colors of dark blue and green intermixed with random cream stripes. He sits down onto it with her, keeping her in his arms and allowing her the privacy to cry more if she needs to, or to give her a warm space to press into that wouldn’t judge or question it. His shirt is already damp but he doesn’t mind, he is the man with the moniker of water, after all. “How can I help?” He asks after a moment of making sure she’s settled, conjuring water in a glass set on the coffee table for her if she needs something else to swallow than the sorrow and her pride.

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

Sinking into the folds of him allows her to fully give up every last shred of composure she'd been valiantly clinging to. She'd already ugly cried plenty on her own before even leaving the Grounds, but she'd tried to doctor it up by the time she'd gotten back to the port and traveled here, and the containment of it all almost made it a more persistent pressure welling inside her, too fresh still for such simple bottling. She'd almost made it inside the room before letting go again, but she's well past the point of no return the moment she clutches onto him and the rest is just a teary blur as he helps her retreat into the privacy of the space.

His warmth and reassurances are an immediate balm to the frostbite she's been carrying with her from all of Vesper's ice. It thaws slowly, her full-body heaves of despair gradually quieting into just the snotty, stuffy breathing of someone who is empty and stunned at the removal of so much that had been previously carried. Eventually, she leans back off of him and into the couch more, groaning against the dull throb in her head as she palms away the last of the current bout of tears. There's more to come, surely, but it'll lessen each time and cure into something that's brittle at some angles and hard at others, all of it sharp. There will be time to forge it into anger, but for now, this day is meant for breaking. She means to do it thoroughly, until she has ground every fragment that remains of her heart into dust so that the next time some coy smile tugs at her she'll really have nothing left to offer them. Her fault for cradling what she had left, it gave Vesper all the nooks and crannies he needed to anchor himself in.

Eyes that feel too heavy, movements slow, slide around the room with the most surface-level curiosity. The scene is a pleasant one, much better than the storm she would have turned the room into, grief a gravitational thing that wants to yank every bit of happiness and light down into the same dark depths until everything is damp and miserable with it. She goes to speak, to finally answer him, but it feels like a bubble's caught in her throat. She sighs, a flimsy show of frustration before her eye catches on the glass of water and she drinks it down in a series of gulps, thoroughly dehydrated at this point.

"Just, stay," she asks him once the glass is empty and her voice works again. Her gaze flits towards him, an apologetic smile offered. "I think I need the company right now. I'll have plenty of time to be alone later." She didn't even mean to inflict this one, but that thought and the sharp realization of it hits her square in the chest and she exhales with a fresh spring of tears sparkling at the corners of her eyes. "All the time in the world to be alone. Not worth much more than a night here and there."

It's the best reason she could come up with, for why after a year of edging in closer to one another, dancing around moments that glimmered with potential, she wasn't even granted the decency of an honest farewell. He'd accused her of using him, but he only seemed bothered the time he didn't get off, and the moment he saw her kiss someone else she'd apparently become too ruined for him to ever consider touching again. He's asked for her time, but looks like it'd all run out now that he got everything he needed. Nothing worthwhile either, from what she can see, not if he could walk away singing like a bird.

She tilts her head back into the couch, going limp into it. "You ever consider asking the gods to take your heart away?"

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

He’s patient, listening as she goes to speak only for nothing to slip out. And while she takes a sip of water, he fills it again the second she sets it back down, turning his gaze back to her to take in the appearance – the fact that she seems like she’s too far gone to even care about anything anymore. And gods, if he can’t relate to that. He’d been a mess for many years since landing here in Caido, and even then the dark shadow of grief and pain continues to rear its head on the occasions he isn’t thinking about it much.

Her apologetic smile is met with one of his own, lopsided and small from the scar that sits on his cheek from the corner of his lip. “I’m here when and if you need me.” He offers easily, quieter as he sees the tell-tale glitter of tears sparking in her gaze. He looks away from her to give her the privacy he often required when it came to talking about emotions, shifting on the couch slightly so that his leg tucks up underneath him and he sinks back into the multicolored cough that smells faintly of expensive perfume and somehow simultaneously the scent of cookies and sweets.

She grows limp in the couch and asks him a question that he never really expected to hear, and he stares hard into the lines of the flooring – the knots in the hardwood, polished and clean but still quite worn as he figures out how to respond. “I did it once.” He offers after a moment, head tilting slightly, enough that the long dangling feathered earring in his ear brushes against his shoulder.

“I swore off love.” He admits, a rueful smile tugging on his face even if it is stubborn as he sinks back into the couch too. “Those I get close to either die or leave, so, I said I wouldn’t let myself do it again. And with Ru, it was different, because she was there before Nate died. It didn’t feel like I was giving up on my word.” His accent drops a little thicker when he huffs a humorless laugh. “But Ru's.. Gone now? She hasn't come back home yet. So, I dunno.” He figures a bit of honesty can’t hurt, might help her understand that she isn’t alone in this. “Sorry you caught it, too.”

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

The glass remains in her hand, held onto like a lifeboat that's discovered her lost out at sea treading water for hours. With it already refilled, she lifts it up for smaller sips now, using the movement to distract her focus into something other than the corners of her own thoughts for some blessed relief as she waits to hear the answer he's gathering. Although her gaze is strung across the room to the opposite wall, she doesn't see much beyond the unfocused haze of the cup in her hands, and the subtle motion of him turning to look at her.

Her eyes flicks over to him, head turning just enough to keep the view from hurting, and after a blink or two he even stops being blurry on the edges. Surprise lifts up some of the edges of her face when he confesses he has. She'd thrown the question out halfheartedly, not expecting much, but it's one of those things partially said like an impossible joke, and partially a secret and risky wonder. She tilts her glass back to her lips in patient expectation. He doesn't disappoint.

She's seen a tour of all his scars before, but there's plenty on the inside she doesn't get to lay her eyes on, the sort that are buried in mind and breath. Nate is one such mark she knows he carries, and though he's little more than a name for her, she can guess the weight of it for Sunjata, even after all this time. "Mm, surprising how hard it can be to keep your own word once your heart gets involved." Traitorous bitch that it is. It's part of why the idea of giving it up to a god sounds appealing about now. If she can't be trusted to keep it safe, for her own sake, maybe Frey could pull it out of her and put it somewhere else where it wouldn't just get handed over to a set of blue eyes and a dangerous smile again.

Then again...the gods own enough of her already. Every action and choice on display for them, so to willingly hand over something else seems like a bad deal. So does her current state though too. Luckily today is not a day for making decisions. Today is just for seeing through to tomorrow.

"She's gone?" Colt doesn't have the capacity to rouse the proper worry over this news, but it does flare bright and brief for a moment. She turns to look at him more fully, drink lowering into her lap, 'brow furrowing. "Sunjata, I'm...so sorry. That sounds, awful." Hotaru isn't someone she knows well, but all this time she's known his partner to be the kind to lose herself into big projects and ideas. It's the first time she's ever seen him seem worried though. "Let me know if I can help," she murmurs, hair fluffing around her head on the couch as she shifts her head back to a straight position, the view of the cabin laid out before her on the wall.

A sound that's not really a breath, just a sudden, forceful push of air cracks from her lips. Caught it, like it's a damn disease. "Yeah..." she agrees after a pause, frown scoring deeper. "Worst part is, I knew better. I knew, and it still happened. I don't know how to deal with that. Like I'm at war with myself and no matter what, I'm losing." She lifts her gaze to the ceiling briefly, as though offering a prayer, and if she is maybe it's for the return of some sanity. She shakes her head faintly, then takes one last sip before putting the glass back on the table and leaning in to sink against the side of him on the couch, hollow stare on the wall ahead.

"I barely survived the last time this happened to me. I still bang myself up on the memories of him...my husband from my twenties, Clyde." She sighs, a long and whistling sound through the still puffy sinuses irritated with tears. "I'm not sure how I can manage to make it through this again." She would, but right now it feels like such a monumental feat that she can't fathom as anything but impossible.

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

“Yeah, it is.” He murmurs, rolling a shoulder slightly as he huffs a quiet sigh. It made it harder when he was the demigod of Frey – the epitome of lust and seduction. It meant that people have often fallen for him only to find disappointment when Sunjata either couldn’t or wasn’t going to reciprocate. It often made for drama, but as of late with things going well between them, he can’t quite figure out what went wrong.

Better yet, where he went wrong. Whether or not it was his fault or wasn’t, to the man with attachment and abandonment issues, well… It spelled trouble. There’s a huff of a laugh that leaves him, though, when she apologizes and offers to help if she can – because she’s the one really going through it. It isn’t his place to shift the grief away from her own unless that’s what she wants to happen. The story hadn’t meant to steal away from her but to tell her how he could relate. “Yeah, I will. For right now, though, let’s focus on you, yeah? Besides, it’s not the first time.” The latter half drops down into a quiet mumble.

When it shifts to focus back on her, he loosens a long and slow breath. “You haven’t fully lost, though. You’re here, right?” Gesturing to the room – even if it was one of his own creation – she was still living and breathing and feeling her heartache and pain. She was alive with it. Physical and there, as much as is evident when she sinks against his side. His arm slips up, wrapping around her shoulders – two lumps of sorrow and stress, even if they try to hide it.

She mentions her husband from years ago – a name and story he doesn’t know but doesn’t press unless she wants to share it. He can offer his own side of it, though. “I’m probably not the best one to talk to about it.” He admits a little weakly, a humorless snort leaving him. “I’ve tried to off myself a few too many times, to be honest. I got talked off the edge after Nate died, but he was the second one that hit me and I think it was different because I couldn’t do anything about it.” He lifts the hand with the wedding ring still on it, spinning the crescent moon in his fingers like it’s an anxiety tick. “I couldn’t see Frey without a blindfold for like a year after, or some crazy amount of time. That whole time I spent here in King’s End in the Refuge after everyone left after the war, too drunk and depressed to function until I found something to focus on and it hurt a little less each day. It’s why I made this. Doing my part as Frey’s, but I can also use it to remind myself of better times.” His head tilts again, squinting at the cabin that surrounds them.

“My mom used to take me and my sister here back in Korofi when my father was being an exceptional piece of shit. Mostly so I could recover.” He tacks on, the explanation one he doesn’t like to share – but given that his father had made an appearance here in Caido and gave even more trauma to him despite the entire beginning of his life, well.. Maybe it made sense to allow other people to hear about it too, so they could understand why he was the way he was; like now, the reason he won’t – refuses – to look at her when he talks about things too close to his chest, too used to being told it was weak and too soft. That he needed to be a man made of steel, of something so strong that nothing could crack his exterior. It’s why he’s got all those masks, the ones he puts on for different shows.

But Colt gets the raw Sunjata right now, the one that looks somehow softer despite all the tattoos and scars that line his body. The one that looks like he’s still trying to figure everything out despite being as close to godliness as one could be. He’d been chosen, but he’s still broken. And that’s okay.

"But I think that even though it's never really going to go away, it's important to allow yourself to feel it when you do, y'know? Otherwise it gets all bottled up and even fuckin' worse." He glances over at her finally with that.

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

Other than briefly thinking Flora had come to tell her on behalf of Sunjata that she could keep her ass in Torchline instead of being welcome back in King's End—a ridiculous and guilt-ridden, liquor-fueled, anger-addled notion—Colt hasn't given too much thought to their tanning misunderstanding. She's been more mindful of his name, to be sure, and hasn't let herself slip into something teasing since, not that she's been much in the mood all season with anyone. That's all entirely too distant for her to spare a conscious thought to right now, unable to shoulder much more beyond keeping her breathing steady.

Out of habit she slips back into older comforts with him, needing them more than she'd admit right now, even just a shoulder. It's easy to do with him, always has been, but that's little surprise given his role. He's a professional charmer, and she knows it. That knowledge has never cheapened his comforts, if anything it’s made them easier to accept, never having to worry that anything'll linger. He's safe, and that's something she doesn't attribute lightly.

The faintest simper tugs at one corner of her lips when he redirects the focus on her. Sounds like the nicest way of telling her she's too much a fucking mess to be worrying about anyone else right now, and he's not wrong. "Mm," is all she murmurs back in response, half agreement, half consideration. The barely spoken reassurance that this isn't the first time does wash away the rest of the worry, because it sounds like he's got the situation more or less in hand, for now.

She can’t keep back the strangled laugh that escapes when he gestures around at the current state, as if this is anything less than losing. ”I hope your idea of winning is a lot more accurate,” she sighs with a weariness that doesn’t cut through the fondness for his attempt just the same. As if laughter, or the threat of something too close to happy jostled back the sorrow, a fresh trail of tears wells around her eyes. They spill down without fanfare, the quiet acceptance of being too broken right now to pretend otherwise, much less try and control any of it.

Although, as he continues, it sheds some light on what he really considers losing. Gods, no, she’d never consider handing over her will to live to anyone, least of all a man. ”Maybe I’ve never actually been in love then,” she wonders aloud, head shifting as she tries to glance up at him for some amount of confirmation. ”Because I’ve never felt like I can’t go on when I lose it.” Clyde’s had been an imitation, the recognition of that had been what allowed her to stop becoming smaller for him, even if it had once felt real and good and happy in the very beginning. Vesper’s…his hadn’t even been realized fully. Just the start of something, a feeling she could no longer deny, now cut short enough that the quick of it is aching. Both still have rattled her to her core, so if those hadn’t even been love, she definitely never wants to know it. Surviving this is enough.

Glancing towards the ring he still wears, she considers everything he offers, grateful for a different story to focus on and the perspective of his struggles. ”I can’t imagine that,” she admits softly to him, blinking through the tears that’ve slowed beneath the weight of his own tragedies. Not the depths of his horrors, or how he endured them. ”You’ve been through such hell,” and he never seems it, not outright, not to her. His scars certainly suggest it’s not been all roses, but ”you deserve to hate the world for all it’s offered you. But…you’re always still giving something to it. To others.” She’s only known him as someone dutiful and kind. Not to be mistaken with soft; there’s kindness even in a blade sometimes.

”It’s nice,” she says softer still, meaning as much the room he’s created and the meaning it carries, as much as how he’s managed to handle everything. She’s not sure she can be as graceful about it all. She wants to withdraw further, to nestle into her own depths and hide from the risks that remain. Whatever wildness Vesper saw in her from time to time hardly seems to fit. She's more likely to wander in circles like a pony that's spent too much time at the county fair; can't even rest without lapping her stall a time or two. Doesn't matter if the door's left wide open, the circle's familiar, like an old bruise she presses on because at least she knows how much it'll hurt. In the wide open world, who knows what worse pain waits. Better never to wander outside again.

His advice earns the faintest sigh. She isn’t prone to facing her hurt, has always found running to suit her best. Not that she won’t argue or rage or cry in the tub at night like all the best of them, but she’s nearly certain if she just let all her feelings come through all the time she’d kill herself with the force of them. Better to outpace them, she’s come to find. ”That seems like it’ll just hurt more.” She’s managed to avoid Clyde for the most part, just triggered by a few things here and there, but the lesson he taught her is one she carried through, until Vesper. His triggers remain all over, but she knows she’ll survive him too, bury him into memories she keeps distant enough that they only resurface sometimes. It’d take time, especially because the wound he left her isn’t the same, but she’d learn how to layer over it too eventually.

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

Her half agreement is considered a win, temporary though it might be. It’s like the last breath one takes before falling back into the water. It sucks, gods does it suck, but even despite the suffering you get to hang on for a little bit longer, even if your throat and lungs burn with the force of a million razors.

Her strangled laugh is quite similar to the feeling, he’s sure. Tears streak down her face again and Sunjata understands the way she barely blinks them away, the way she doesn’t try to hide them. He can understand, even if he can’t relate — he’s always hid his, kept away from letting people look at him when he’s vulnerable. Just another childhood trauma that can’t be erased despite the decades that have passed.

“Nah. I don’t win, Colt. I survive.” The smile he shoots her way is one bred from sorrow and self deprecating humor. It isn’t a lie, though, he’s got the scars to prove it (both physical and emotional). But then she’s considering that she may not have ever been in love before just because it hasn’t destroyed her as far as it’s destroyed him, and it’s Sunjata’s turn to offer a huff of a laugh, a shake of his head that sends his earrings dancing with the movement.

He looks back at her then as he shrugs the shoulder she isn’t leaning against. “You’re stronger than me.” He says it simply, like it’s the obvious answer. Sure, he’s got all of his demigod strength and his abilities and shifts, but emotionally? Sunjata has always been glass. The kind glued back together and wrapped with duct tape so many times that you can’t see through it very well anymore. “I uh,” he looks away, pinpointing at the bookshelf in the distance like it gives enough leeway that she won’t see the way the muscles of his face twitch beneath the stubble for the frown that sits there. Like he’s deciding how vulnerable he’s allowing himself to be. “I’m not good at being alone. I think I grew up wanting to be wanted so badly that when someone did want me, I made it a part of me so deep that when they were.. gone, it just cemented the fact I wasn’t good enough.” And if he wasn’t good enough, then why stick around?

He’d always thought he was cursed anyway. And even if the tragedies of his love life weren’t directly his fault (Nate’s, at least), he was still too good at manipulating and gaslighting himself to believe that it was. He hadn’t done enough to prevent Nate from going to war. He hadn’t been there when he’d died. He’d gotten the soldier’s call at his doorstep when Isla returned to tell him. He can’t even remember the last time he said he loved him.

Colt offers some light in the mix, though, the kind that’s a balm but not bright enough to break through the murky surface. “Who says I don’t?” Hate the world, that is. “Maybe I just don’t want other people to have it like I do.” It’s a slip up, one he thinks about correcting before giving up on it. Hotaru has vanished and he was once again left alone. Unsure what he did wrong at the end of the day.

Not enough to make it Frey’s problem until he asks around more, he supposes.

Nodding as she compliments the room, Sunjata takes it in again. The couch he’d slept on occasionally when his back was too torn up to lay in his bed. The box of toys in his room that he was allowed because his mother had snuck them in for him. The as close to home cooked meals as he could get. The quiet and dull roar of rain outside and the beach not far from here.

She says she thinks it’ll hurt more and he finally manages to rein his mask in enough to look over at her with a small smile, lopsided in nature from the scar. “Probably. I’m pretty sure I’m a masochist.”

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

The clarification he provides earns a much more honest laugh, though the sound still chokes out strangely through the tightening of her chest, the sorrow too thick in her throat. ”Fuck if that ain’t the truth,” she admits with a wry glance to meet his. ”Guess that’s the best to hope for,” she admits after a moment, lower lip curling under a tooth. The dark humor lands because of it’s honesty and the familiarity of it. All this time, she thought there could be something better than this, a way to rise above small moments of stitched-together happiness until finally she had made a quilt from it that she could wrap around herself and be immune to the worst of the world. Could still be the case and she’s just a shit seamstress. Seems more likely that there’s just no thread strong enough to keep memories and moments from unravelling.


She sighs faintly with the defeat of that idea, grip loosening around the dream of finding something better than all of this. Seems there’s just no easy way to avoid feeling like shit all the time. What she blames on loneliness just appears to be the way of the world, and even if she’s miserable for it, she’d be damned if she gives life the satisfaction of her calling it quits completely. She’ll get up again tomorrow damnit, and the next, and the one after that. She’ll be beat and broken and pissed, but she’ll get up regardless. ”Not stronger,” she reassures him with a voice that’s thinning again, words parting around sorrow as each fights to make themselves known. She doesn’t feel a lick of strength right now, but she’s got plenty of kindling just waiting to ignite the moment her tears dry up. ”Just more stubborn, maybe.” She smiles into his side, shifting even further into him as her feet tuck in and she curls up against the back of the couch and his warmth. Eventually, she sinks down into the cradle of his lap, gaze holding the ceiling more than him, though he’s a haze in her peripheral..

The swell of his chest is felt as he gathers breath and words, the subtle shift of his body pressed against her doing more than she realized, but it wreathes a steady comfort around her, a reassurance of his presence that hums like a pulse. She listens, fingers combing slow and small through the very ends of her hair, seeking every soothing trick she’s got, even subconsciously. ”Yeah,” she murmurs, the sound smaller than she means it to be around the weight of his admission. She feels that settle in her too. Not so pronounced as his, but a shape she recognizes. ”I get that. Nothing feels better than being wanted. Nothing.” Her lips twitch at the corners, the movement bitter. ”S’why it feels so awful when they don’t want you any more.”

A tremble rises from her chin up to her cheeks and one of her hands lifts to flop over her face, seeking a small shelter from the obvious display. It quells after a moment of breathing, though her voice cracks when she rouses it, piecing out small crumbs of explanation, tracing the edge of the wound so as not to rip it open further in trying to manage it now. ”I guess I fucked it up…somehow.” The channel, apparently, because by the end the kiss didn’t seem to matter so much as that. Or the speed of her visit, the lack of her reaching out soon enough, long enough. She hadn’t known there was a time limit. She hadn’t known he’d been waiting the way she was.

”Or, seems he never wanted me, and I read it all wrong.” A more likely answer, and he was no longer willing to put up with her shitty ability to understand properly. Probably already found someone better; always figured he would. ”Can’t blame him, really. Who wants someone already damaged?” She’d warned him as much, but some things you just have to learn. Here she is, sitting with her own lesson, again.

Her fingers spread and the wet chocolate of her gaze peers up at him through the cracks as she catches on the way he says do instead of did. ”Aren’t you happy?” she wonders with a confused wrinkle to her ‘brow. ”Always seems like you have it all. It’s why you deserved those eggs.” Her lips pucker with the edge of a real smile now, but it’s got too much grief to wade through to really show properly. There’s something more to what he says though, and she isn’t sure she’ll pull the answer from him, but she’s going to hold onto that confession. Not for her sake, but for his.

A short, shudder of a laugh races up her side at his tilted smile and offered label. ”In that case, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to ignore the hell out of that advice. Although, you’d think I’m a masochist too with the fact I’ve put myself right back in this spot all over again.” She sighs, rubbing the back of her hand over her forehead. Her gaze rises from a distant wall back to the blue of his eyes, holding him for a moment as she blinks through a breath that aches along her ribs. ”Well, whatever you are, I’m glad you’re here, and you’re you.”

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

Just more stubborn, maybe. Hits him and Sunjata can’t help but to let the soft laugh leave him, rolling his eyes a little as he lets it break some of the tension trying to build in his chest. “Don’t think you’ve known me long enough to know how stubborn I can be.” He touts to her, like it was a contest – trying to determine which one of them had gall and guts to be impossible.

But the tension returns, the honesty escaping Sunjata in ways that he feels that subconscious need to hide away and not admit these things – something he pushes through to prove to her that he can relate, but also because it did help to talk about it. And without Ru around right this moment, having not seen her since before LongNight? He thinks he’s had a pretty brave face about it. “And even worse when you can’t figure out what changed.” He sighs, his agreement with her notable in the heavier accent of his tone, sighing and noting when she covers her eyes, settled in his lap like they’re gossiping – even though the gossip was full of sorrow and uncertainty.

Turns out his previous comment is more relatable than even he expected, when she tells him that she fucked it up somehow. She doesn’t know how, just as he didn’t know how. He hadn’t gone and done what he’d done with Safrin. There was no rhyme or reason for the Valkyrie’s disappearance. She was just there, and then she wasn’t. And he’s not sure which is worse – having the closure or not.

Or whether he should spend the next however long panicking about finding her just as he’d found Lusea, destroyed and gone from the fight with the frost giant that had picked a fight with her. Another instance when he was nowhere around to help. “Lots of people want someone damaged.” Sunjata says matter-of-factly. “Y’know, ‘cause they think they can fix them. And when they can’t and the shards are still there, they wonder why they’re suddenly getting cut.” His nose wrinkles a little with the thought – because he knows from experience.

There had been those that wanted to fix him, to change him. There had also been those that had made him better and worse at times. At the end of the day, though, those ones understood. Sunjata, himself, had changed a lot over the years, but the razor sharp edges of the glass of his soul still drawing blood.

“Yeah, who wouldn’t be happy.” Sunjata says, a drawl full of sarcasm that he deliberately chooses not to be elaborating further on. But when that shudder of a laugh and the attempt at a genuine smile graces her face, he finds it reflecting a touch more fragile on his face. “Likewise, Pony.” Sunjata flashes her a wink with his own little short huff of a laugh – letting her words cement in him as much as they could.

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth

Heart is buried six feet in the ground, gonna need a shovel now

Wandering through the possibilities of what had gone so awry so fast is about as helpful as performing surgery on herself. She can feel each press of the knife as she slides it in, the process messy around the inevitable tremble that arises. Still, she hunts for what she can cut out, whether some flawed part of her she could do without, or just the sections he's grown into like a cancer she's finally become aware of. She still isn't certain about just that, what Sunjata mentioned, knowing exactly what changed. With the soggy mess of her emotions clarity only comes in glimpses, but mostly all of it just feels so terrible and wrong. He had told her something though. It's the thing that's most abrasive in her chest other than his name.

Quiet and cautious, like she's reaching into a rose bush, she lifts her voice from their shared woes into something more direct and wondering. "When you're channeled...do you have to listen to what's been asked of you?" She thought she understood how it works, but she'd never called on someone the way she had him. Never a demigod like him either; usually just spirits that seem made for the very thing she needs, although she rather thought he'd been made for her request too, but seems she'd been so very wrong about that. "Is it...like a leash on your willpower?" If it'd been anything like the taste of Thal's kiss had been for her, she's not sure she can fully blame his response. Doesn't change much about the tune he sauntered away with, or how thoroughly it tore her apart, but she'd take whatever amount of understanding she could get if it'd ease any of the pressure sitting inside her lungs.

She keeps her gaze firmly away from him now, fingers still in the roll of her hair, twisting it back and forth until the sides of skin it slides against go numb to the feeling. It hadn't been the summons alone, that'd been the point about the note. "Think it's still bad even when they tell you why," she admits softly, the response delayed after tossing it back and forth in her mind. Used him he'd accused. She's always known she's selfish, but she still bristles with disagreement at that reason. She'd almost prefer the wondering to that; part of why she keeps tracing other possibilities, jumping for something easier to swallow than the idea she had marred all of this with her own impatience.

She tries to choke it down, the effort spilling fresh tears in silent streams. She turns her head to the side, cheek shifting over his thigh as she stares out into the cabin he's wrapped them in, trying to find enough comfort there to keep the misery from crumbling into another sobbing fit. Through it, she half-heartedly acknowledges how being broken has its own appeal. She doesn't disagree with him, but in this case that's not the approach Vesper had taken. Maybe he'd been too confident he wouldn't get cut by the sharper parts of her, or she didn't realize the way the edges pushed out the more she tried to hold him in the shattered frame of her heart, but he never made her feel like she needed to be whole. He helped her feel that way, sometimes, but he'd been content to let her be, occasionally turning her gaze so she wouldn't miss the sunset for the shadows. The damaged parts took their toll though, and now she's earned even more of them.

Survival tells her not to linger over the shards or Vesper's parting words, so she glances back at Sunjata, grabbing onto the potential of his suffering like it's a force that could smother hers for a little bit. He only offers a peek of it though, smoke instead of substance. "Well shit, if you're not, I think it's hopeless for me." The faintest smile flirts over freshly dulled and dried features, feelings swinging like a pendulum from one range to the next, but there's a subtle lessening to each storm of grief as he gives her distractions and warmth. She'll likely just eventually wear herself out into a bad sleep, a weakness she can already feel settling into her bones now that she's turning into liquid gold across him, finally able to rest and release.

A flash of teeth actually emerges with this smile, her nickname like a light flickering on in the dark, however small and brief before it goes out. It's his professional charm working its magic, she knows, but she has never minded delighting in tricks even when she knows how they work. Still takes the skill to pull them off, and she can appreciate that. A hand rises to thwap his chest with the most mild rebuff possible. "Keep it up Sunjata, and I'll devise more ways to get back at you," she sighs, the sound small but stable, and her tooth catches her smile, keeping it firmly in place as her eyes pinch shut to keep this moment of peace as long as she can.

Colt

Maybe one day I'll get back the rhythm in my chest

now take what i offer, straight up the nose, down the throat

it's a bearable bruise on your conscious

Her question confuses him – the relation of it, but as an Accepted he supposes she wouldn’t know. He certainly didn’t when he’d arrived and had the ability to do it before he’d become attuned. It feels like a lifetime ago, but something that has him hesitating because he isn’t too sure if it’s so much of a compelling aspect. “I mean.. No?” He murmurs, trying to think of how to explain it with his own expectation. “It’s kind of jarring actually. You get pulled and you hear what the request is, and you only have a short amount of time to do it before you’re back where you were.” He takes the moment to glance down at her, as if he might be able to see the lines in her face that explain just why she’d asked that question.

Coming away empty handed, however, has Sunjata looking away again, taking in the minute shifts of the room – books he’d forgotten the name of that suddenly come to him the longer he sits here, materializing before their very eyes on the bookshelf across the way. The fireplace that’s warm and crackles its merry delight has a few more cracked bricks than it had before. “Well, yeah. But it’s a different kind of bad.” It’s closure, whether he liked it or not. An answer to the question that harbors in his soul.

More tears come, though, and he makes no comment on it as she hides her face away. He’s a hider, too, so unwilling to share his emotions even when he should because of the lessons his old man beat into his head. His father always had been a psychopath and unable to share his emotions unless it was anger. He was the man made of iron, at the end of the day. “Guess we get to be two people in misery, huh?” Sunjata says, looking down at her as he catches her looking up at him. A faint smile tugs on his face, too, lopsided with the scar that bunches against he muscle the wound had sliced through.

“Oh keep what up? I'm not doing anything.” He asks out of complete and undeserved innocence. He’s unfazed by her thwap against his chest and he huffs a soft laugh in response to it, settling for draping an arm across her side while the other rests against the side of the multicolored couch.

but don't it feel good? don't you feel calmer?

i am the way and the life in the best looking truth