the replays run for you

Deimos the Reaper You can't take back the cards you've dealt on this long and lonely road to hell the throne must be such a sad and lonely place The uncertainty and restlessness came full circle: heavy like an anvil, crushing against the back of his shoulders, stabbing like a stiletto rhythm down the column of his spine. She’d written out treachery, treason, and duplicity as if it were a novel – scribing her latest works for the Reaper to see, to understand, to comprehend the blackened holes in his memories, the visions he’d lost at night, the dreams that spun and whirled and curled in the seething, malicious embers of his brain. The beast of the past likely would’ve either screamed at her or renounced her entirely; believing her perfidious nature shouldn’t have sullied, shouldn’t have ruined, shouldn’t have come against him. Maybe that was where the King had errored: too trusting in his subjects, prospering loyalty and honor when it was wasn’t given in return, promising them the world if they did just as he described, and becoming surprised when the world, the wounds, the knife, the dagger twisted right back into his flesh. If he was meant to learn from history, caustic, embittered mistakes, this was likely one of many blinding, blistering spots: to turn her away, to chase her out of his sight, to belittle and defy her apologies, her admissions and amends, or to bow his head against the confessions and explanations, the way her heart had been swayed by more dashing sovereigns and the fruit of her favors. He nearly asked her what made her alter, what made her stare at the other world’s beckoning claws instead of the one she knew, the one she served, but it didn’t matter now. The ferocity of his gaze landed back upon her as she stared at the abyss, as she rattled out every chord and sin, as she painted a picture he’d known all along, but couldn’t justify or measure. The darkness had been the mark of his death – empty, shoved downward on a Stygian slope, crossing over the river Styx with no one at his side, alone, alone, alone; no rain, no comfort, the hell home for a beast who’d been destined for its threshold from the moment annihilation crossed his breath. So in this interval, in this opportunity, in this chance upon chances, what was he supposed to do? Cut her loose? Start a chain of revenge, shame her, cast her aside for all the unraveling motions, for the mendacity? Or let it go – float off into the shades and veils of current existence, let the world start anew? Had she suffered enough? Had she seen the error of her ways? Had it even been a mistake, for her to run into the arms of woodlands and clifftops, to mist and fortune? Was she damned and doomed to repeat the same rituals here, in another world, in another time, in another place? Was he just as consigned, reigning over the void, brooding with an iron fist, steely determination and fortuitous vengeance? A part of him ground against those concepts, because he was fortitude and perseverance, because he was brazen and incensed, because he’d been taught long before to always persist and forget those aiming to whittle away at one’s path – he forged it himself, with steel will and irreverent, fervent derision. His silence was foreboding – crushing, sitting on a knife’s edge, rolling along the walls of the bar well before she’d finished. Everything appeared to be out in the open, stark and cold, desolate and haunted, and he wondered if there would ever be moments where they weren’t covered in rue and regrets, in spite and ghosts, in phantoms and specters. He downed the rest of his drink, then settled the glass back down on the surface, maneuvering it back and forth as he thought, as he mulled over what to say, how to feel, why the orchestrations of the past threatened to consume the present. “We never have it all figured out,” he spoke, finally, into the midst; his gaze focused on a hole in the wall, before shifting back to her. “But if you are looking for forgiveness…” he paused, gaze narrowed, and all the cold reticence behind his eyes must’ve burned, because there’d been days where he’d been warm and bright, instead of callous, aloof, and bestial; the wraith’s edge of a smile curling across his lips. “You have not wronged me here.”

_{Photo and Table by Time
Photo taken at Hero's Square in Budapest, Hungary}