DEIMOS
He didn’t want to make sandwiches. He wanted to rip something apart with his bare hands and blister, sear, and scorch the earth. He wanted the world to know exactly what it felt like, in these hollowed, carved, empty moments, to harpoon and savage, ravage and pillage, plunder every ounce of his seething predilections with cold, brutal precision. He wanted an echo of the pain Kiada felt in his flesh because he couldn’t do anything but bear the brunt of everyone else’s weight, trying to hold it together when he longed to sink; couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t because there were too many barely floating above the current. He wanted to peel marrow and tissue from bone and sculpt out lacerations until the trumpets, the war drums, sent him home in either a damned grave or in the fog, the mist, the death knells, carrying, carrying, carrying, multitudes of mayhem composed into things he couldn’t understand until they were too late. The beast craved war and all they received was pestilence; not the favored apocalypse, not the one he could solve, not the one he could mutilate and bend and topple to the ground. They’d tried, they’d followed him down into that damned Spire and it hadn’t mattered at all – because Ronin was sick and Kiada was sick and the burden of silence stretching over him ensured the soldier that he was as damned useless as he’d ever been. How could anyone claim to cherish and accept him, when he was so brutally ineffective and inept, incapable of doing anything that mattered?
The monolith yielded, for there was naught else he could do (though there were a few seconds where he deftly considered removing himself from the scene entirely and creating punching bags or targets to brutalize).
They were all scarred and broken and it was so ridiculous that the world just kept barbing them with more.
He maneuvered into the kitchen, hunting for plates like one would seek prey, striving to keep his mind off of blights and the sinking pitfall in the abyss of his failures, not chancing a glance at Amalia, jaw locked and tight, movements rigid and carnivore-craven, eyes pinpointed and narrowed, hands searching in cabinets. The beast opened cabinets and eventually found a stack, grabbing hold of them without bashing them into the floor (like he longed) or launching them into a wall (like he wished). He lowered them to the counter, taking his time to ensure some form of occupation that didn’t, couldn’t, afford violence, when Kiada’s quiet murmur threaded its way towards him.
His head snapped, riveted straight to her – and for a breathless interval he cannot fathom how or why these people, these wonderful, ridiculous people, have come to him and proffered their devotion and ardor. He didn’t deserve it. But he’d take it – greedy and avaricious for things he’d never had or held, extending a hand to ruffle her hair as she followed Amalia, almost out of his reach (like everything else that mattered; brushing across calloused palms and reminding him what it was like to burn). “Love you too, kid,” was a hushed whisper, words he’d rarely spoken to anyone or anything now uttered as if they were so simple (and they weren’t, they weren’t, not to this man, not to this beast, who clutched them as precious beacons and hoarded them like treasure).
And as if he couldn’t bear to linger in the threshold of what ifs and bygones and hazardous, treacherous disasters, he hollered over to them, purposefully, tactfully, taunting fire and vitriol. “Your mother is getting married again.” He waited for it, some modicum of bitterness or flame to erupt, the smallest of ruffian, impish smirks wiling its way to his mouth. “To Bastien.” The last notes were on a shrug, small, because the Ascended was not the Elephant King or any other nasty individual Rexanna had managed to pick up through her sojourns. “She asked me to give her away.” Then a head tilt, gaze flickering over to gauge her reaction – the you will be going not hastened yet, but heavily implied.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
