a heart don't forget

walk me home in the dead of night

Flora, of course did watch Jack as he departed, and where he could likely pick out her thoughts even with his shields up, she wasn't so lucky. So it was that as Flora turned back to Asta with a small smile, her stomach felt tangled in knots as if she was doing something wrong. Choosing something wrong by walking back to Inner Quarter with the butcher instead of following the captain.

Clearing her throat, Flora didn't try and hide the fact that things felt ridiculously awkward all of a sudden, and though her smile felt sheepish and out of place, she tried to keep it on her lips as long as she could. Rubbing one of her hands up the side of her arm to ward off a chill that she felt in her bones rather than on her skin, she glanced up at the butcher out of the corner of her eye as she let him pick their path back toward town. "You did really good back there, with...y'know, everything."

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

Astaroth doesn’t watch as Jack departs, nor is he aware enough to see what kind of mixture of thoughts Flora is having. If he weren’t on the verge of letting his panic overcome him, he might actually have paid more attention to understand their particular interactions better. As it stands, he simply continues his mantra over and over again, his internal monologue nothing but leash after leash to try and keep himself tethered.

Until he’s starting to pick the path back, silent and not paying attention enough to feel the awkward atmosphere. It isn’t until her voice reaches him that he pauses, tail twitching as it continues its sweeping motion like it’s lagging out before he lets his dark gaze look back toward her. Gone is anything honey and sweet, instead replaced by an inky blackness that seems like it might swallow everything whole. “You did too.” He says – because she always does. But at least this time she didn’t have to physically save him or fill his bones with starlight – not that he’d expect her to after.. well, everything.

“You didn’t… have to help me, but you did. So thanks for that.” Still, the typically soft and gentle, suave tones are gone for that grittiness, that sharp edge that has his too sharp teeth clicking over the consonants, even as he tears his attention back toward the path picked, stepping over a tree root that would likely be a tripping hazard if he hadn’t been staring between the path and the ground in the past few seconds.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

Rolling her eyes a touch self-consciously, Flora can only shrug and murmur a soft thanks. All things considered, the boggart had only gotten in one good hit and had Asta not kept the second one away for as long as he did, things likely would have ended up much worse.

"Right, because Danta would have absolutely believed me if he found out that someone from Torchline just so happened to need help hunting a boggart and then I showed up right at the same time a flock of crows tried to take you out." The queen's words were laced with sarcasm, but only in an effort to hide the fact that despite all of it, how everything had happened, she still did care about the butcher.

Stepping over the log, the overgrown pathway provided a welcome distraction. Looking where she was going kept the queen's eyes from fixating on the scars she could see on the upper portion of Asta's arms, scars she'd previously only felt but never had the occasion to see.

Recalling what he'd told her about Maea and the last time he'd needed to properly cool off, Flora thought maybe it was best to give him one more out. Just in case he'd been trying to be polite in front of Jack. "If you do need to go, though, for any reason...I can make it back. I have my compass."

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

The sarcasm, for what it is, has the butcher silent – picking it apart for far longer than he otherwise should be. And as it stands, he isn’t sure what Danta would believe. All he knows is that the second that he shows up to the Dusklight, his appearance would solve enough questions for one evening. Long enough to hopefully give him a semblance of thought back. “Don’t think it’d be that weird. He’s got a fuckin crow shift and a crow companion.” If anyone would understand, it’s probably the Maverick.

It’s nightmare after nightmare for him regarding the shift and the companion, but Danta had tried and done such a good fucking job at keeping him from feeling like this all the time. It’s a feeling he hates as much as anything else, the sensation that he couldn’t do anything about it burning intensely in his gut with the churning nausea that’s thankfully mostly at bay. And without Jack’s blood to drown out his senses, he feels a bit less on edge.

Nodding as they pick their path through and his tall frame brushes past a too long fern (holding it at bay whether intentionally or not for Flora to pass by), he continues to keep his focus ahead. “I do think I’m okay right now. I’m not… Stuck, or anything. Feels like I did after she beat the fuck out of me. Y'know, after she followed me when I did run.” He doesn’t remember what he told her about the encounter with Maea, but one thing Flora will learn very quickly about panic-minded Asta is that history and words drip from his lips without any thought whatsoever, letting truth spill here and there as if he’s overflowed for too long with them and in order to fit the trauma of the crows, other nightmares need to spill.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

"I mean it would seem like it was a setup." Flora says with a sigh, resisting the urge to scrub her palm against the side of her face and instead opting to tug at the end of one of her curls instead. "You did handle it really well, though. Better than...well, than I thought you would." She doesn't know quite how to say it so that it doesn't sound as if she's trying to insult him at the same time, but at the risk of saying too much, of mentioning things that she'd once been told during a confidence that they no longer shared, Flora adds: "Just...because of how bad things were for you."

Following at least a tail's length behind the butcher save for the times that a bush ("—thanks—") or a branch gave her reason to hasten her steps, Flora listened thoughtfully as he explained. "What a bitch." It's all she can think to say, ugly and too broad though it was. Scowling and shaking her head, the queen tried to do her best to keep her thoughts from spiraling selfishly. Thoughts of Maea turned into thoughts of Frey's Breath, of when the pair had found the ancient lurking inside the entrance, of all the things that happened after.

Shaking her head to snap herself out of it—Asta was clearly in no mood or condition to talk about how things had transpired between them much as various ways of segueing into such a conversation might have burned on Flora's lips—the queen glanced up where Spice was flying high over head, trilling down at her every now and again.

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

Somehow, the thought of Flora staging a set up to traumatize him is a spark of humor in an otherwise incredibly dark mood – and a deep husky chuckle passes by the butcher’s lips ending on a sigh to hear her continue. He doesn’t look at her – can’t, while the topic of handling the gore crows had gone for him. He by no means is better at it, but it helped having someone there that wasn’t trying to trap him, wasn’t trying to prove a point. It helped having someone that cared enough to help him ground himself.

It's a thought that has him pausing his steps briefly, as if he’s tripped when in reality he’s simply trying to catalogue his thoughts. “Would’ve been worse if you hadn’t helped.” Comes the easy admission, one that segues well into Maea’s bullshit and ferns that fling back with a loud swish! as Flora passes by them again and again and Astaroth seems to care little for the scratchy leaves as they touch his deadened nerve endings over the scar tissue on his chest.

“Yeah.” He agrees with an annoyed huff, content to utilize his distaste for the pale Ancient to take his thoughts away from iridescent wings and the scent of blood and pain. “She had the fuckin’ audacity to tell me that she thought the way I punished people was wrong? And-and that she wanted to do to them the same punishment that I went through. Because it was… supposed to be humane? Or something?” He becomes animated, his voice dripping with that sharp grit, hands gesturing in front of him until he pauses and lets his blackened gaze look back at her with a wild look like can you fucking believe that?

In reality, Maea hadn't really understood the specifics (like the majority of people that Asta has told about how he'd received the scars) and likely hadn't meant to draw those parallels. But they were there, and Astaroth was nothing if not a grudge holder.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

She's glad that Asta isn't looking, glad that he isn't a telepath either, because the sound of his laughter has a smile spreading so quickly across Flora's lips that for a moment she feels only joy before the hurt settles in.

"I couldn't let you do it alone, not knowing what I know." She says softly. Or feeling how I feel. "Being mad at you, I'd...I'd still not want you to go through that alone." Even more softly said, the Doubletake just shrugs to herself as her eyes fall from the ancient's shoulders back down to the pathway lest she trip over a root or his tail.

"But...she wasn't even there?" Maea, despite being an ancient, was one of them. Someone from this slice of Caido's history. Though the bits Flora had gathered from hearing Danta and Asta talk about their previous lives sounded absolutely wild at times, it wasn't as though she had any right to judge it. "Wait, what?" Did it surprise Flora to know that contradictory was one of the things Maea was? Absolutely not. Did it make her clench her teeth together just the same, to think of someone—anyone—telling the butcher that what had been done to him was fine?

Was humane?

Surprised to find his eyes meeting hers, Flora gives her head a small but curt shake, the muscles of her cheeks still feathering vehemently.

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

Nodding his horned head – because he gets it, he understands what that’s like – he’d felt the same thing when Danta had gone through the absolute bottomless pit of his bloodlust, his attention drifts down momentarily as more honestly drips from his lips. Whether or not it helps, he doesn’t know nor does he care too much. “It means a lot to me… Considering how fucked up the shit I did was. I’m sorry.” He apologizes again, forced by the need to get it out and off his chest, taking the distractions for what they were rather than delving into the dark patterned thoughts of torture and crows.

Letting the deluge of information regarding Maea and his fight fall from his lips – he focuses back on Flora with an eager nod as she agrees and seems just as horrified as he had been to hear it. “And then, get this, after she cornered me and I fought her to get the fuck out of there and away – which I couldn’t do, mind you, she fuckin’ told me that she… she ‘judged me and took it out on me so much because it was easy???'” Hands still gesturing, they fall briefly to wind his hands around his wrists where scars no longer sat, but a slightly darker patch of his bronzed skin were, like a silent smooth reminder of the time he’d become Ancient that could be mistaken for a tan line.

The panic thrumming within him breaks into another deep huff of a laugh, this one a touch more humorless. “It’s so… It’s so fucked up?” No one, except for Danta and Maea, perhaps, has gotten this version of Astaroth – a version long since buried when he’s in control of himself.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

Rather than hiccupping out her surprise, Flora bites down on it, trying to swallow it back if only so that he won't turn around and see the flush that spreads across her cheeks. "I'm sorry too." She says after a moment, when her tongue doesn't feel like it's going to betray her entirely. "I just...really liked you, and I think I felt more stupid than anything to realize how wrong I'd gotten it all." The admission, rather than feeling weighty and embarrassing, has her feeling relief. She'd never admitted to anyone, much less to herself, that a big part of what had fueled the youthful fury she'd felt for the butcher, had been nothing more than a bruised ego.

The conversational path they walk on shifts, but gods if it doesn't feel easier to find themselves on the same footing about something. "Because it was...easy?" Blinking, Flora watches the movements of the ancient's elbows and fingers as if the invisible hieroglyphics he was carving out into the air might make it make sense. "In what world is it easy to take that out on you?" Having to keep her voice from raising, the queen huffs as if that might replacement the satisfaction of yelling. She'd had to write and re-write her responses to the few letters she'd exchanged with Asta precisely because it wasn't easy to yell at someone like him, or judge him for the things that he did, much as she'd wanted to.

Not minding at all this vaguely unhinged version of the butcher, Flora can only bark out her own humorless laugh. "Have you ever thought about pelting her with a few dozen snowballs and putting her in a stony time-out for a while?" From what the queen had heard, stasis wasn't supposed to be painful for the ancients, so she hoped she wasn't suggesting anything too out of turn, but then again, given that Maea had thought being starved, tortured, and left to rot out in the sun had been humane, maybe she wasn't thinking broadly enough.

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

Hearing her own apology has him wanting to shake his head – this version of himself wanting to take all the blame and pain and bottle it up in a bucket of reasons why no one should love him or get close to him. Reasons why he hadn’t allowed himself to do it in the first place. But it’s her next sentence that has his brows pinching, a few loose locks of hair falling into his face as he does shake his head softly, reaching up to try to brush it back behind the smooth obsidian of his pronged horns, before it falls out again. “You’re not stupid.” He says immediately. “You’re brilliant and strong and wonderful. I’m just a king of false advertising.” He plays the part in order to get what he wants out of things. It’s how he’s always done it. The Gentleman Butcher that had replaced the Butcher of Whitebrim.

At the end of the day, he was still dubbed the same butcher title. It extends to relationships, too, as he’s learned over and over again.

Luckily, Maea’s so much easier to be angry at, and as he takes a turn toward getting them out of the treeline and out into the open fields where the sun can beat down and bring out the vibrant orange, red, and green iridescents of his horns, he nods with just as much vigor as his half-crazed mind allows him. “She was worried she was gonna be a monster like me. So she thought she could change.. Me? Or something?? Like… Like she’s capable of getting as low as I have t'make her make the choices I made?” It’s strange to let the mixture of self deprication and ego meld together like this, but he does it with surprising ease as the grasses pass by his calves and he glances back toward her to offer out his arm for her to take over a branch that’s particularly tall coming up upon their path.

His laugh continues again with the idea of a stony slumber – something that in his mind would be too kind of a thing to do, and it’s with those too sharp teeth in the curve of a dark grin that he shakes his head. “No. Told her I’d kill her, though. I think that’s probably why she was so panicked when we saw her at Frey’s Breath.” She probably thought he’d act on it then and there.

But something about the promise and letting it wait seemed more satisfying for the butcher than immediately giving in.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

As they both turn in on themselves trying to assuage the other of guilt or blame, Flora heart suddenly clenches before lodging in the back of her throat. "Hey—" Without thinking, she stretches out a hand to try and stop him. Likely the butcher is too far ahead of her for her fingers to do anything more than brush against the space he'd just occupied, but gods the queen suddenly regrets everything she spitefully said to him over the past few hours and in the few letters they'd sent. "I saw what I wanted to see." She says, nibbling at the inside of her cheek. "You were...different than everyone else. Better, and I just...I wanted you to think of me the same way." That he hadn't wasn't his fault. Maybe one day she'd even come to understand that it wasn't hers either, but both then and now, it had felt like a monumental failing on Flora's part.

As the trees begin to thin and the fields open up, Flora tries to slip as unobtrusively as she can by his side. Much as his shadow offered a slight reprieve from the heat, it had been strange enough to stare at the dark satin of his waistcoat for the majority of the walk thus far. "Well, you aren't a monster." The queen points out. Even after all they'd been through and the snippets of the butcher's history she'd learned and gleaned from his comments now and then, she still didn't think he was. Accepting his arm with only a moment's hesitation, Flora sneers up at the sun. "The more I learn about her, the more it's clear that she's the only monster around. She's careless with the lives of others, as self-centred and willingly ignorant as they come, and...and gods if I didn't know she was an Ancient, I'd say she had some magical ability for knowing exactly where to press to make her words and actions hurt the most."

The whisper of the grasses against her legs has the queen shivering somewhat and picking her path more carefully that the flat blades wouldn't cut her skin. "Maybe you should have." She huffs, glancing up at him with a smirk that has her eyes darkening. "Everything would have turned out a lot different if you had." She adds with a self-deprecating roll of her eyes.

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

Astaroth was used to taking the blame – whether or not he wanted to or not. Whether it was right to or not. And to hear her hey behind him in the state that he’s in, it half registers after he’s stepping out of her reach, until her voice continues and he hesitates, allowing her a chance to catch up beside him and his dark gaze glances toward her as honesties pour out. “I do think of you better than me. You’re the opposite of me, Flora.” She was light where he was shadow, she was royalty where he was an exiled clan of cannibals, she was power when he was playing at it ever since coming back from stone.

Fields begin to brush against his dark pants and he pays it no heed in the face of Maea’s complaints and everything that had gone on not more than a season ago. He focuses ahead, letting another deep chuckle escape him as he cocks his head this way and that, as if she had points he could argue with her point – specific ones that he had not told her to keep her from thinking him as low as he is.

But she does make wonderful points about Maea that has his tail from lashing awkwardly and zigzagging into more of a calm – like the chat they’re having is keeping him from delving into the worst parts of his mind, even if it seems like a very tight rope they’re walking. “You’re right about that.” He admits with a heavy sigh instead, before he notices the way she picks the path through the grasses differently, to keep the blades from touching her skin. So he pauses, because focusing on her and loosening his chaotic tendencies a bit at a time meant a lesser breakdown later, he reaches for her elbow to get her to still and stand beside him as he takes a step forward and blasts out a stream of fire to burn away the grass and flatten it to make her path easier to walk.

As it smokes and starts to cool down, he looks back at her with a small shrug – very much not at all like the man she’d known. “Would’ve ruined the date in other ways, I guess.” He admits – fully aware that it had been ruined to begin with, but killing Maea would have really been a curve ball. “I kind of like the idea of her stewing over it and panicking whenever I show up. Reminds me of the stories that were written about me.” He flashes her small sharp smirk that almost has a touch of mania before it soothes out like the ash from the grasses being taken away on the wind.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////

walk me home in the dead of night

"You know what I mean." Flora says softly, shaking her head. It felt all too easy to slide back into the melancholy pools that welcomed her with open arms, brewing insidiously at the back of her mind. Sure, Asta thought she was briLLIaNt and StROng and WonDeRfuL, just not enough to be with. She might have been bETtEr, but not enough to want to kiss and hold and have. Were she in a better state of mind Flora might have been able to understand that so long as the butcher was in love with someone else, it wouldn't have mattered what she did or didn't do. His affections were always going to be out of reach. Alas, too young and too desperate for approval, the Doubletake could still only understand Asta's actions as being the result of some utter failing on her part.

Raising her eyebrows as she feels his hand against her arm, Flora stutters to an uncertain stop before fire roars out ahead of them. Gasping in a surprised breath, she leans somewhat behind the butcher to try and use his body to shield her from the heat. Grinning up at him once it became clear that he'd flattened the ground for her (rather than just have a mini menty b), Flora steps forward onto the smouldering ground with a trill of approval. "Thanks." She hums appreciatively.

Glancing over her shoulder up at him, not for the first time the Doubletake is surprised to see a completely different man at her side than the one she'd come to know. With his bare arms, his waistcoat partially unbuttoned, his hair framing his face at raw angles rather than meticulously pushed back..even the casual shrug of the butcher's shoulders was so unlike the careful way she was used to seeing him move. "Well, maybe we can write some new stories about you." Flora suggests. "Maybe if Maea had read them, she'd have thought twice before fucking with you." And, maybe Flora would have too.

Or not.

"I take it she's been leaving you alone?"

reaching for a book of matches
strike a light and then you'll see the real mess that i am

He does know what she means, even if he doesn’t entirely agree with it from the standpoint he’s currently at. She was everything he wasn’t, and she didn’t need to dilute her brightness with the oil slick mess he was — even if he put on a good show.

Speaking of shows, the fire erupts and burns away the grasses that had been causing her trouble as they walk, burnt down enough to finally reach a dirt road that harbors grooves of carts from passing by numerous times. And it’s about this time that Flora gets a good look at part of the man under the carefully crafted mask. “Maybe.” He doesn’t think they’ll be as intimidating nor utilized the way they had been centuries ago, which makes it a little less fun.

And Maea, having known about some of the stories, some of the reservations she harbored toward him were founded in truth. But her actions over what he did were mortifying rather than gratifying, even to those that wished to do the pale Ancient harm. And that is what the butcher can’t quite understand.

“I haven’t seen her since the Climb. Have you?” He asks, glancing over at her with his still too dark eyes despite the sun beaming merrily overhead.

Astaroth

i swear it's nothing personal - i swear it's nothing personal //////