I had a dream about a burnin' house

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

Not prone to idling away her time between pages, preferring to write her own story over reading the lived ones of others, Colt nonetheless curls through the Undercroft with a certain respect for the tomes gathered here. Her fingers skim spines in passing, trailing after the jump of her eyes as she scans the words and bindings for something in particular. She's on the hunt, in more ways than one, trying to find a particular book, All About Allogators.

She might have had better luck in the Hollowed Grounds' library, but she'd not wished to linger in that particular region for any longer than necessary. She'd contemplated passing by it entirely even, but had eventually sighed and grit her teeth through the trek, pointedly avoiding a prior path and even then, stood on the edge of the main city like walking any further might strip her of her senses once more. No longer trusting the realm of the Ancients is an understatement.

This library will surely have something though, so she continues on into the deeper levels, winding down the stairs with the faintest hum of a song in the back of her throat. Dressed for travel, not really here for anything other than their notice board and a chance to stretch the saddle out of her legs, Colt's wearing unremarkable boots and jeans. She's dustier than she realizes from all the heat-dried roads, and she'd kill for something breezier than this about now, but this isn't her first or last stop and she doesn't meant to linger long enough to justify a change. Her shirt is unbuttoned at the bottom and tied up above her naval, letting some heat escape where she can, and her hair is tied up in braided pigtails to keep the back of her neck free beneath the shelter of her hat.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

The Undercroft is cooler than the surface only by technicality, the kind of underground heat that clings instead of presses, and Vesper can feel it in the slow drag of air against skin as he leans one shoulder into the edge of the fae-built desk. Everything here is scaled wrong for him—too low, too narrow, shelves arranged for hands that do not have to mind their knuckles—and he folds himself into the space with practiced patience, long frame bent just enough to keep from looking like a bull loose in a study.

The chambray shirt is a concession to LongHeat and nothing else, pale and thin and unbuttoned far past propriety, the fabric sticking faintly between his shoulders where sweat has nowhere to go. He toys with one of the silver rings on his fingers while the fae librarian mutters to herself, riffling through a ledger that smells of damp paper and old ink, the sound of it a soft counterpoint to the distant drip of water deeper below where the library gives way to stone and algae-scripted memory.

The book he's after shouldn't matter as much as it does. It’s replaceable, but the weight of obligation presses anyway, sharpened by the memory of tea blooming dark and irretrievable across a desk that had not been his to ruin, and yet he had anyway. At the time, his feline senses hadn't been bothered, and it was only when Vesper had shifted to open a door that he'd caught the necromancer's thoughts and felt the frustration and disappointment the loss of the book had caused. So here he was, towering over nearly everyone in the Undercroft and waiting (im)patiently to see if the library had the book he'd inadvertently destroyed.

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

The next level opens up in pieces, a new one granted with each stair she takes. Her eyes drink in each new sliver of the space that's offered, but given that it's mostly just tree-rought building and books, fae flitting about, not much of it really registers. It's why, in part, she doesn't immediately clock him. The other part is the absurd way he's folded into a place clearly not meant for him, which has never seemed to be the case before, when instead he carried the tall confidence of being exactly where he ought to be, practically in ownership of the world so long as it's draped in shadow.

The stairs spend themselves out, only two having been left, and she takes one stride into the new area before the realization strikes true. The oddity of his tall figure is exactly what draws her attention back, and as it lands wholly on him, familiarity seeps in strong and sudden. Her low tune strangles out as breath snaps taut inside her chest, movement stuttering into a swaying halt with her next step clipped short. Ice blooms instantaneously through her, pinching in on her ribs with a sharp cold that presses in too tight to move around. Unlike the march of the goats, she hasn't prepared to see him, expected she might never again at this rate, so there's no fire stoked inside her.

Dozens of thoughts spill apart at once, the frost cracking open old seams effortlessly. There's a traitorous one that snags on the easy lines of his body, once so familiar to her she could still find certain dips or slopes without looking. There's a cruel one that suggests he's clearly doing far better than she is, reminding her that all the memorization of him had been for nothing. Then there's the strongest one, the one begging for survival, the one that's telling her to run. She's about to take a step back, but one of the librarians bustling by with an armful of books collides with her, shoving her forward with a scowl. "Move," they command, for she is still very much in the main entranceway.

Two of the books in the towering stack come free with the crash, thudding softly to the ground. The sound makes her blink hard, flinching, already poised to leap out of her skin, but it breaks some of the frost. The librarian sighs in exasperation, chastising her carelessness as she reaches to pick them up. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," Colt mutters, fumbling with apology and tries to reach down to assist.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

Vesper registers the disturbance a heartbeat before the sound finishes blooming, the ripple of attention through the room tugging at him whether he wants it to or not. Books strike stone, breath catches; a sharp, crystalline wash skims the edge of his awareness—cold, startled, threaded through with something bitter and bright—and there is no universe in which he does not know who that belongs to. To remain facing the desk would be suspicious, so Vesper exhales slowly and turns with the rest of them, already braced for what his eyes will confirm, though it still hits harder than expected.

The world narrows with brutal efficiency, all his careful composure collapsing down to the slope of Colt's hips as she bends, the clean line of muscle disappearing into denim, the familiar arch of her lower back written so deeply into memory that his body recognises it before his mind catches up. Heat surges, unwanted and sharp, dragging up everything he has been pressing down since the moment he walked away and refused to look back. For a fraction of a second it threatens to crest—desire tangled with regret, curiosity barbed with something like resentment—and his jaw tightens as he bites hard into the inside of his cheek, grounding himself in the sting until the flood breaks against restraint instead of spilling over.

He turns back to the desk with a speed that borders on abrupt, shadows drawing in close as if sharing the instinct to retreat. The fae librarian is still speaking, still tracing a finger down a cramped column of script, and Vesper reaches out with a long arm to take the slip of parchment the moment it’s offered, the movement smooth but final. "I’ll find it, he mutters, the words low and clipped, edged with a clear end to the exchange.

He does not check the directions or ask for clarification. The stairs he chooses are simply the nearest escape, winding downward into deeper damp and dim, and he takes them two at a time with no concern for whether they lead to necromantic theory or flooded stone so long as they lead him away. Behind him, the Undercroft settles back into its murmurs and rustling pages, while ahead the air grows heavier, cool with water and old magic, and Vesper lets the darkness close around him gladly, anything better than standing still long enough to feel the chill of Colt's thoughts brush his magic again.

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

For a half-second, the shadow of the librarian falls over the book she's reaching for, and she thinks it's Vesper. No, that's not quite right. She doesn't think, she does something far worse, she hopes it's him. Fuck, she wants it to be the extension of his darknesses, not even his hand, just some part of him reaching back out. She hesitates, blinking rapidly as her eyes threaten to blur when she recognizes the shifting light for what it is. She can't decide which is worse, erecting that false hope in the first place, or having it wither in the same instant.

She stays crouched for longer than needed, hands tightening around the book she reclaimed, strangling the pages until the binding creaks in complaint. It's only the hand of the librarian on her shoulder that breaks her from the distant stare burrowing into the ground, and she jumps beneath the feeling of the touch, almost falling forward before awkwardly rising into an unbalanced step. The librarian is saying something, likely not for the first time, Colt realizes, but she offers out a weak smile and the book. "Yeah, all good," she reassures, though the fae face that peers back at her is full of doubt.

She glances back towards the desk where she'd seen him, but he's gone. She should have left then. Could've gone back up the stairs with just her own foolish ideas and the silly image of him bending into a small space, left it at that, and this encounter would have been nothing more than a reminder that she needs to keep staying indoors at night. It's the absence of him that draws her in more though, like now she isn't certain she'd seen him at all, or can't believe that he'd be the one ready to chew his own leg off to get loose when he'd set the damn trap. Sensibility tells her that he'd just continued on with whatever he was doing, present but not fleeing. She wants to believe that, but as they say, trust but verify.

After asking about Vesper with the fae at the desk, she descends the same steps he had, sinking further into the murk. The confirmation that he'd been here is proof she hadn't imagined him, but the worker had griped about how Vesper had gone the wrong way, which brings her back to wondering why the fox is trying to run at all. Something stiffer than ice holds her upright now as she squints down into the lower library level, calling out low, but insistent. "Vesper." With the initial shock thawing, she bundles up the remainder of her soaked nerves and tries to do something better than choke on them. "Godsdamnit, Vesper!"

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

For a handful of seconds Colt's thoughts loosen their grip on him, the distance enough that the brittle cold and sharp-edged hope no longer scrape along his awareness. In that narrow pocket of quiet his shoulders sag, just slightly, the tension bleeding out in a shaky exhale that leaves him light and unsteady rather than relieved. Adrenaline lingers, bright and sour, threaded through with a catalogue of what-ifs he has been refusing to open, and his hand lifts to his mouth on instinct, teeth worrying the place he bit raw only moments ago.

The pressure returns before the sound does, familiar as a knife laid flat against his ribs—ice cracking, hope splintering, determination pulled tight enough to snap—and Vesper straightens in the same instant Colt's voice carries down through stone and water-dark air. He stills in the shadows, heart ticking faster than he would like, eyes flicking once along the shelves and rock walls as he weighs the exits. A cat’s body could slip away easily. A single step through shadow could remove him from the library altogether. Both options present themselves cleanly, temptingly, and he considers them with the cold efficiency of someone very good at leaving.

Avoidance would only defer the collision, he knows that as surely as he knows the shape of her mind when it reaches for him like this. If she is to have any closure at all—any chance of moving forward without ghosts snapping at her heels—then disappearing again would only prolong what surely is inevitable. So, Vesper exhales, slow and deliberate, forcing the breath to settle where his pulse refuses to, and steps out from the cover of shadow into the faint, reflected light. He lifts his gaze to where she stands above him on the stairs, head tilting a fraction to one side, blue eyes distant rather than hard, the angle of his posture guarded but not retreating. "What, Colt," he says flatly.

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

The moment he appears, rounding from shadow and corner with a boyish reluctance, as if the books themselves have berated him into view, everything hangs in place. Not frozen—her breath still comes, slow and tangled as it is in the back of her throat, and her pulse continues to hum with quiet warning just beneath her skin—but suddenly too thick to move as freely as it just had. Dust motes seem poised in shafts of meager light, adrift in nothing and turning over each other instead of falling down, and all sound drops away to just the pattern of his voice. He's framed in lowlight and bookshelves like something that ought not be disturbed, but she's drawn in regardless, such is the tragic gravity given to terribly beautiful things.

An ache that she's tried to bury eases perceptibly, edges of her softening, hackles finally lying flat again. It doesn't last, but it settles first, and that's something. She never thought she'd lose him, because he's like the stars, always there, even when you can't see them. Once, she believed that to be a good thing. Now she feels the cold burn of him out of the blue, when she's riding alone and her mind suddenly spills over the way he'd felt, the way he'd made her feel, and the obvious absence of all of that which she now carries. She's carefully cut out the worst of the reminders, to little avail, and to cope she's resorted to picking up bad habits again, as if he hasn't always been her worst one. Where she wants to hate him, where she wants to move on, is just the quiet void of something altogether there and not there, as catchable as any shadow.

She misses him. Even still, even when she shouldn't after how much she's felt like shit because of him, just like she never should have fallen for him but did. The fall had been hard and fast, just like the crash. She'd held back as best she could because she knows what rushing in is like—married in less than a year, put up with hell like it'd all been her fault, watched joy be stripped away with placation. She made damn sure she'd never do that again, so she'd thought and waited, and only when she really believed that they had something did she reach out in full. That he didn't seem to think they'd been worth anything—not to fight for, not to stay for, barely even to put up some words for—how could she get it so wrong?

That, is what's hit her most. More than losing him, more than ruining this in six seconds, it's her entire perception shifting and splintering. It feels like she's constantly trying to see the world through the reflection of a cracked mirror now, and no matter what angle she takes, she can't see anything but fragments and distortions.

Every prepared speech and carefully articulated argument has fled her as surely as sense. What? is a wonderful question. It's one she's been asking too, peering at the walls of the House of Midnight, wandering back over memories like there are answers buried in the seams that stitch ruined moments together. Weeks, wasted on doubt and wonder, punishment and excuses, grief and wrath. It all comes back to one breaking point for her.

The stiffness of her resolve keeps her spine rigid as she stands, features sharp as an arrow, targeting him cleanly. "Tell me that this meant nothing to you," she requests, low and steady. She takes a step forward, hands smoothing down her jeans, coming away with dust she doesn't see as she slips them into her back pockets. Her elbows jut out from her sides, meager wings for someone who'd been soaring with him before. "Tell me, that it never did." The amber of her gaze flashes with scrutiny as she pins him with it, each sentence consuming distance as her strides punctuate the space with a bravery born of frustration and disbelief.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

The silence stretches, taut and humming, and Vesper stands in it with his teeth clenched hard enough that his jaw feathers. Colt's mind is loud in a way that feels familiar now, grief and bitterness braided together with a stubborn, aching hope that scrapes against him every time it shifts. He feels the weight of her memories the way one feels pressure before a storm breaks; the way she has carried him, the way she has cursed him, the way she has named him her worst habit and still reached for the ghost of him in the dark. None of it is clean. None of it is quiet. It only reinforces the truth he has been trying to leave behind: that staying would have meant bleeding himself hollow, one thought at a time, until resentment curdled whatever care was left.

As she steps closer, he fixes his attention anywhere but her. Not the braids dampened at the nape of her neck, not the sweat-darkened strands escaping them, not the familiar slope of her body into denim, not the amber of her eyes sharpened into resolve. He gives all of that the same discipline he gives to a blade kept sheathed—acknowledged, controlled, untouched—because looking too closely would undo the fragile balance he is holding together by will alone.

Her request lands between them, steady and devastating in its simplicity, and his eyes narrow, blue sharpening not with anger but with restraint. He could give her the lie she wants, could say the words and let them do their damage quickly, efficiently, the way one cauterises a wound. But it would be a false mercy, and he refuses that as surely as he refuses to pretend he never cared. That had never been the problem. If anything, it was the reason this had ended at all.

His gaze lifts to her at last, measured and distant, and the pause before he speaks is long enough to ache. When he finally breaks it, his voice is low, edged, carrying the faint drawl that slips in when his temper is leashed too tightly to be trusted. "What part of me endin’ things made you think I was lookin’ to take follow-up requests from you?"

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

Waiting for his response is a test of composure that feels like keeping a candle lit in the wind. She gutters in the squall of his gaze, then rebounds with a fresh blaze of defiance. She braces for the expected turn of his breeze, trying to predict it, to shield and bend against it, but flickers with the strain of patience as silence stretches on like a long exhale. It’s a test she nearly fails, about to take silence as response enough. Not to leave with, but to step over and attempt to pick up something else.

He finally yields.

She thought she’d prepared herself for the answer, but the complete lack of one makes her stumble, steady breath sucking back in, retreating against the familiar shelter of her ribs. Each word grates against her, this version of him jarring, nothing like the man she thought she knew. That he’s still this way peppers holes in her theory that he’d also been affected by the festival, or the Grounds, or whatever it’d been that bent her will out from beneath her own hands. Hurt tries to balloon over everything else, but she’s able to race the rise of it, accustomed to its patterns after walking with it so freely as of late. Instead of letting it crowd her, she uses it to bolster her.

Shuffling forward a half-step further, she pushes past the flash of his teeth. ”You didn’t even try.” The accusation tumbles out from the tight corners of her lips, barely making space to let them loose. Any more room and she’s afraid what else might come spilling with it. She’d been taught to ride out storms, because they always break for better weather. To hang on, because letting go is a lesson you’ll just work to undo later, so heels better be planted firm when the tugging starts. She should have gone after him in the Glade. Shouldn’t have let surprise unseat her so thoroughly. Now she’s chasing rope burn like proof it wouldn’t have made a difference.

”What happened to crossing deserts and holding out for time?” Her volume climbs, as if anything less would be an excuse for him not to hear her. He’d once swept the ground out from beneath her just to make the skew of the world right for her, had crossed regions just to be with her, so what the fuck is this.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

She closes the distance again and he doesn’t give ground, but his chin lifts a fraction, the motion instinctive, as if a sliver of height might buy him the space he refuses to take with his feet. The air between them tightens anyway, her resolve pressing sharp and insistent, the echo of her hurt scraping along his nerves until restraint becomes something he has to actively maintain rather than simply inhabit.

As she accuses him of not trying, a laugh slips out before he can stop it, dry and brief and edged with a bitterness that surprises even him. It isn’t loud, isn’t cruel, but it carries anyway in the close, damp quiet of the Undercroft, and he bites down on it almost immediately, jaw tightening as the sound dies in the back of his throat. Blue eyes drop from her face, not in shame, but in a deliberate cooling, the warmth leeched out until what’s left is control.

He did try. Gods, he tried in ways she will never know, in ways he cannot explain without laying himself open in a manner that would only deepen the wound rather than close it. Every thought she throws at him now, every sharp-edged memory and half-buried hope, only confirms the truth he came to too late and paid for anyway. 

"Nothin’ happened to it," he says at last, voice low, steadying itself as he speaks. "We crossed the whole damn desert." The words sit there, heavy with implication he refuses to unpack. His jaw feathers again and his gaze drifts, not quite able to hold hers now, settling instead on some indistinct point over her shoulder, on rock veined with old writing and water-dark stone that does not ask anything of him.

"I didn’t promise you anythin’ more than that, Colt."

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

The laugh lands like a slap. She flinches at it, the half-step she’d taken undoing itself as her body bids her to lean away. Her pockets empty, granting her chest the flimsy shield of her arms and the heat of them layering against her, each one a measure to stave off the stranger before her. It’s only her gaze that remains unwavering, critical in its search upon him for some trace of the man he’d once been, not so very long ago. She can’t find him though, and he appears the way Frey’s version of him always had, slightly off. Losing him like this is more familiar than she’d like to admit, because this is not the first time she’s mourned the living. Vesper’s become the sort of ghost that neither Ludo nor Mort have any claim over.

There’s no tug left on the end of the rope she’s holding. No storm breaking, just enough bad weather to hide the sun. She can’t fight what’s nothing more than a shadow, and that seems to be all he’s got left after carving away everything that they’d been. She still can’t reconcile the stark difference in him, how he’ll stand there acting like this was inevitable, like anything more had been some silly story she made up. All the times they’d tumbled into each other’s gravity and crashed, and it turned missing each other into missing pieces. Not promises, but something more than this.

”My mistake,” she says low and on the tail of a sigh. ”For thinking any of that meant something.” There’s no more point in yanking on him. She can bear the fact that she’d ruined them, but she didn’t do it alone. She’s gone over the memories enough times now to know she hadn’t imagined the things they’d started to build, but the fact he keeps trying to pass that off as true may as well make it so.

The recognition of that shifts uncomfortably behind her eyes, forcing her to blink faster for a moment. Her inhale comes in sharper than before, pressing on her chest like a threat instead of a need. She trails one last lingering look over him, figuring maybe this image of him, the one she barely recognizes, could replace the one she misses and make it all easier. Instead, her gaze catches on familiar slopes, and she can feel them phantom beneath her fingertips, never knowing it had once been the last. Her knuckles curl in tighter at her sides, applying pressure as if there are wounds still bleeding, or ones about to. ”Y’know,” she drawls out, forcing out voice now before she loses it. Her head tips down to her boots for a moment, scuffing the ground as she traces her departure. Slowly, her stare bounds back up to him, too glassy to risk her lashes. ”You’re many things Vesper, I just didn’t think coward was one of ‘em.” The world lets go of its breath, the suspended dust drifting freely again.

She starts to step back, to retreat to the levels above and the path that’ll lead out of these woods, one she plans to hit as soon as she can, inevitable nightfall be damned. She fumbles for the pack of cigarettes and matches in her pocket, drawing one free with a speed that betrays the sting of the nerves working themselves out fully. ”They said your book’s two levels up to the right, by the way,” she murmurs in farewell.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

Colt's words land and he does not reach for them, even as they tear. Silence is a discipline he learned the hard way, and he holds to it now with teeth set and shoulders squared, jaw feathering as the accusation sinks in and finds purchase where it was always going to. Her thoughts are loud again, heartbreak ringing like struck glass, resolve cooling into something brittle and pale, and the shift makes him want to shiver despite the warmth clinging to skin and stone.

He lets the shadows betray him instead, the dark at his feet twitching and stretching as if impatient with his restraint, as if urging him to say something sharper, something truer, something that would at least make the pain make sense. He doesn’t, though. He stays where he is, half-caught between light and dark, because leaving now would be easier and therefore worse.

When she calls him a coward, he exhales, the sound low and tired rather than offended, a sigh scraped from somewhere older than this argument. "There’s plenty of things about me you don’t know," he says quietly, not defensive, not pleading, just stating a fact that has never done either of them any favours.

When her hand goes for cigarettes and matches, the intention clear enough, his shadows respond before he consciously decides to let them, pooling close around the matches in a mute, practical warning about fire in a fucking library.

As Colt offers him the location of the book, he lifts his chin in a distant nod, acknowledgement without gratitude, because the book has lost its urgency and its purpose along with everything else. Replacing Niki’s ruined copy feels suddenly trivial beside the way Colt’s resolve drains out of her thoughts, leaving a cold that settles into him and stays. Even as she begins to turn he does not follow, btu nor does he disappear. Vesper remains where he is, partly illuminated, partly swallowed by shadow, and waits for her to leave, even though vanishing would take no effort at all.

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

I wish words were like little toy guns
No sting, no hurting no one
Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue

It strikes and lights up—not the match—the parts of her that have always been flint and gunpowder. Colt stills as the extension of him reaches out, dampening the strike she tries to gather. Without the habit cradling her fraying nerves, they continue to come undone, something snapping loose. Her shoulders sag forward with the new give from the tension, the hard line of her lips slackening, the wet seal on her inner lip the only thing hanging onto the cigarette now as it droops from the corner of her frown. The matchbook pinches between two fingers as she curls them in, just before quickly reaching down, yanking off one of her boots, and whirling around to chuck it at him with as much force as she can muster.

"I know you're infuriating!" she flares, filter clinging on for dear life before she rips it out of her mouth and tosses it off to the side like a nuisance. She begins to stalk back towards him, her pace meant to consume ground, reaching to grab books off the shelves as she goes and flinging them at him too. They sail with a wild flutter, less aim than power. "I know you hide behind control because you're too fucking scared of something being real and gettin' messy. I know you think you know more than you do." There's no plan, only oxygen finally being dumped into something that's been choking on smoke. Truths she's picked at, especially since he left, looking for faultlines she could tear open and find some better way to feel in-between.

"I know you expect to be read when you won't open up." An all too familiar realization, and it makes her slow down, losing the grip on the rush of anger as sure as the book that's going limp in her hand. "I also know you care a helluva lot more than you let on," Not just for his family. Not just for her, once. He's a better man than he gives himself credit for, and she knows it because she's seen it more than once. "I know you shoulder more than you should have to, and that's less fair than life already is." Her features smooth away from harder edges, holding him steady in her sightline.

"And I know this? This ain't you." And maybe that's how he wants it, now, but it doesn't change what she knows.

No smoke, no bullets
No kick from the trigger when you pull it
No pain, no damage done

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions

Able to feel her intention before her boot leaves her foot, a starbright shield will flash in front of Vesper knocking it away as books scatter with soft, offended thumps against stone and shelf, without the demigod having to move. Despite his stillness he feels everything anyway; the flint-spark of her anger, the raw snap of nerves stripped of habit and ritual, the truths she has been worrying at since he left now flung wide open and bleeding into the air between them. It hits him all at once through that sense he cannot ever turn off, her thoughts and emotions pressing in hard and hot, crowding his chest, though his blue eyes never leave hers.

Some of what she says lands cleanly, finds places already sore and tender from his own private autopsies of this ending, and the muscle along his jaw ticks once, twice, betraying the effort it takes to keep himself contained. Other accusations glance off, not because they are cruel but because they are incomplete, built on angles she cannot see from where she stands. He lets them all pass without interruption, absorbing the rhythm of her voice as it shifts from fury to something quieter and more dangerous, something that knows him well enough to hurt without meaning to, which has ever been the problem. 

When she says that this is not him, something in his expression almost gives. Almost. The shadows at his feet still, drawn close as if listening, and he shakes his head just a fraction, a restrained motion that carries more weight than refusal alone. "If you know so much," he says quietly, voice even and low, the faint drawl softening rather than sharpening the words, "then you’ll know some things just ain’t ever gonna work."

He holds her gaze as he says it, carefully neutral despite the way his chest tightens, despite the flicker of sadness that bleeds through anyway in the slight downturn of his mouth, in the tired steadiness of his posture. "This is one of those things."

free of the colosseums

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3