you spin my head right round

LUSEA

i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell

i would know him blind,

I love you. Those three words he used to use so sparingly, now tossed around so easily they don't have any meaning. I love you, but does he really? And if he does, is it even enough? It love enough when everything else is broken to pieces, spat upon and shattered like the debris after a fire? A fire I didn't start, for once.

I always thought I could withstand the deluge of him, the ferocity of his flood. And I thought that he was strong enough to keep from getting burnt by me- that he liked that I'm a fighter, liked that I blazed, liked the way I pushed him, honed him, refused to take his shit. It's why I waited for so long before agreeing to give him a shot, because I'd seen boys fall apart before. Weak boys, childish boys, boys who thought of women as nothing more than things to play with, to throw away the moment they realized we cannot be controlled.

I thought that he was better than them, that he was a man, but no. He's just a little boy.

He wants to play games? Fine. I'll play. "It's okay, Sunny," I croon a little, lifting my free hand to stroke his cheek. "I know you're sorry. It's been a long time, and you're different now. Of course you are. You have different needs."

Then I wrap my fingers in his hair and try to pull him so his ear is at my lips, hard, sharp, almost enough to caress his skin, my voice a cruel and saccharine snarl. "Maybe I'm different, too. Maybe I need something different. Or someone..." And I swear, I can hear the sound of it: my voice and a man's, the action obvious, low rumbling moans and aching need rippling in the space behind him. The things I would usually do to him, but on someone else, with someone else-

And then I let go, as fast as I grabbed him, and fall back on the ground, defeated and tired. Because the truth is I don't want to punish him, I hate the idea, I hate the sound. I only want to know that the one sure thing in my life is still certain. I only want to feel safe.

i would know him in death,

at the end of the world

SUNJATA

i am the man we both couldn't stand, i can't wash the dirt from my hands

what was it like to feel in love?

He’s always been a broken man, only in Korofi it was easier to hide it, easier to deal with it, when the only things you had to worry about were the hidden rebels and fighting back against the system. Here? He had hardly anything to focus on, hardly anything worth keeping his mind from racing back to the dark places he’s fought so long to keep it from. And when Lusea had left? When she had died? A piece of him went with her.

And even though she’s back, he’s not the same. He doesn’t have that piece of him back. He might never have that piece back again.

Could they still fit together, even if the puzzle pieces were warped and bent? He hoped so. It was all he could hope for. And he releases a shuddering breath when her hand reaches for his cheek, the crooning voice. He had expected more fire, had expected more than just the one punch gods knew he deserved it. But when she speaks further, his brows furrow slightly, the blood continuing to drip from his lip in smaller amounts as it begins to clot.

And she wraps her hands into his hair, pulling him sharply close, head shifting to where her lips are at his ear, and he listens for her – no protest. But her voice grows sharp, piercing, daggerish, and he clenches his teeth, another ragged breath of an inhale settling in his lungs. And what she says is the thing he fears the most, immediately trying to figure out what the fuck he’ll do without her – he had managed before, but it had been different. She had died and they were in love –

Maybe it had changed her too, and these puzzle pieces don’t fit as well as they used to.

There’s a sound, then, that he can hear. Muffled at first, quiet, and for a moment he tries to ignore it until her lips remain at his ear and he can hear one of his deepest fears. His eyes shudder, hands grabbing a fistful of the blanket beneath her as he hovers above her, jaw clenched until it hurts and throbs. Those sounds, he knows those sounds, so intimately. But the other – they’re not his. Someone else, giving her what he had always given her. And he tries to shake his head, but he can’t as she keeps her hands in his hair, keeping him there, pinned just as he pins her. “Stop.” He manages through clenched teeth, ragged and shaking. His arms, aside from his hands, certainly do begin to tremble more.

Plenty of realizations have been made today, but this one is probably the hardest one. In his moment of weakness, ironically one of his biggest fears – she too had those fears. And he hadn’t cared, hadn’t dared to think about what it would be like for her. But to have experienced it, to have heard it – he feels nauseous.

She lets him go and he looks to her first, silver eyes sharp and narrow, piercing and hollow – shadowed and just as much defeat as her own, just to ensure that she’s there before him and not fucking someone else, before he pushes away from her – leaving her there. She doesn’t want to punish him, but he wants her to do literally anything else but that. How had she even done it in the first place? “Fuck.” He manages, his breath heavy as he sits up away from her, hands reaching for his face to rub at his temples and cheekbones, the large scar from the night she’d died on full view for her from this angle. “What the fuck was that.” It’s flat, exhausted; he can’t say anything about it, because it was exactly what he actually did, but how did she do it?

He can’t even look at her, his mind too jumbled, confused, frustrated, scared deep down to be certain of what he’ll do if he does look at her.

i can't scrub the black from my lungs

SUNJATA

LUSEA

i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell

i would know him blind,

Lying beneath him, I can feel the exhaustion setting in, anger and sorrow stinging in my eyes. Eyes that I close, so I can't see his face, can't see the things that are inside it, can't see the source of my fury and pain. It hurts so much, hurts more than anything, hurts to my core and under my soul. Maybe that's why I imagined the voices, my own humming pleasure with another man. Or maybe I'm just having hallucinations now, which on top of everything is just-

What the fuck was that?

Okay, so it was real. I wish I could answer, but honestly? I have no idea. I don't know what the fuck it was, I don't know how the fuck it happened, and I don't know what the fuck to do about it, except that it makes me feel powerful, and I love it and hate it and want to rub his face in it. "It was what you did to me," I whisper, eyes still closed, a small, pained smile on my lips.

My fingers curl into the snow, clinging to the cold as a way to feel alive. It reminds me that the world is still here, because honestly, right now it feels like it's all slipping away again, spiraling down into hell. Maybe this is hell. Maybe I've been dead all this time. "It was what I guess I'm free to do now. Now that we're seeing other people. Or whatever happens next."

i would know him in death,

at the end of the world

SUNJATA

i am the man we both couldn't stand, i can't wash the dirt from my hands

what was it like to feel in love?

He shakes, trembles, arms braced against his face as if he rubs at it hard enough, the sounds will leave his mind – will leave him all together. And it’s almost like she realizes it, that she can do that, and he so desperately wants to ask if she has magic. A laughable thing in Korofi, but here – here anything is possible, and unfortunately for him it was one of the worst ways to find out about it. So all he can do is grit his teeth until his jaw aches, while she remains where he’s left her – a whisper of sound reaching him from her accented voice, thicker than his own accent.

And he runs a hand through his hair, brushing by the blood on his cheek, drawing his knees up to his chest. It feels almost like they had been on the rooftops after one of their more successful storming of an ammunitions warehouse. Exhausted, covered in smoke and blood, but they had been together then – in love, shaking and trembling from adrenaline, broken by those they had lost, and glued back together with the promise of something better.

Where was his promise now?

The sounds still echo in his mind, and he inhales a sharp, cold, shattering breath as he finally forces himself to swallow down the blight, looking sidelong at her. She grips her hands into the snow, and he wonders how much he had broken her when he claimed he didn’t care. And how much he does care about it, how stupid he had been, blighted and drunk, or not. But her claim next, ignites that flame within him, and he knows he has no bargaining power, but gods he doesn’t know what he’d do.

“You are mine.” He tells her, the blight winning in the end. His voice, rough and sharp, like home. Only there, he hadn’t dared to let his gaze linger too long in a direction without her in it. He’d never felt the need to. “And it’s over, with her and I.” He adds for good measure, hoping somewhere within him he can keep the promise. He manages to pull his hands from his face long enough to feel the tremble in his hands from the blight as it weighs over his mind, clouding the rationality of the demands and statements he’s making, the loose lips.

“She wants me to choose her, but I chose you. As I always should have.” His voice is rough, exhausted, emotional. It hasn’t been this emotional since the night he murdered those boys in the pit they had thrown him in, nearly a decade ago. He wonders if she notices. “I will fix this.” A silent, quiet vow. He doesn’t know how, but he will. “And if I don’t then you can kill me, how’s that? Move on with your second life?” His lips form a tight line, opening the cut on his lip again and letting the inky blood flow free again, though he doesn’t pretend to mind. “Go and do what I’ve done to you.” Because in a way, he had been the one to kill her, too, in the end.

"And maybe, I'll come back too, seconds after but years for you, and see how much you've changed." A clatter of his teeth with this, but honestly? Fuck the blight. Fuck all of this. He has her back, and he's quite possibly been the most reckless he's ever been.

i can't scrub the black from my lungs

SUNJATA

LUSEA

i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell

i would know him blind,

"I am mine." A snarl, a sudden flash of fury- how dare he call me his, when he whores himself away? "And I won't give myself to someone who thinks I'm just a toy he can play with when he's bored." It's the same argument I used years ago, when I thought he was just an entitled little rich boy looking for his next conquest. How long had I refused him, resisted the allure of those gunmetal eyes?

Not long enough, it seems.

Pulling myself into a sitting position, I tuck my legs beneath myself with a tired, frustrated sigh. Gods, I want to believe him when he says that it's over. When he says he chooses me, as though he didn't just prove that there's a lie in that pretty declaration. Running a hand through my hair, I manage a dry chuckle as he declares I can kill him if he fucks up again. "I'll do a lot worse than that, Sunny, don't you worry."

Like cut off his dick and leave him a eunuch forever. That'll teach him to put his cock in places it doesn't belong.

Lifting my head to look at him at last, I exhale deeply, my expression a hard stare. "Fine. You want another chance? You want me to say I'll take you back? Here's what you can do, princeling." Another throwback, an old retort. Dream on, Princeling. This is one fight you're not gonna win.

He had won in the end, though, hadn't he? So maybe he can again.

"If you want me to believe it's me- prove it. Earn it. Be the man I know you can be. But don't expect me to wait around if you fuck it up again. I've got a life to live, you know." Literally. I did it without him once- I can do it again. But I'd really rather not.

i would know him in death,

at the end of the world

SUNJATA

i am the man we both couldn't stand, i can't wash the dirt from my hands

what was it like to feel in love?

How many times can he think about how shit the blight is before it’s over? The answer?

Too many to count.

A hiss of air leaves between his clenched teeth as she brings up an old argument, old enough to bring him back to the smell whiskey and cigarette smoke in an underground fighting rink, the iron rings of blood in the air. It’s almost the same, minus the whiskey, minus the way Caido and the Glade smells. It’s certainly no Korofi bar.

“You’re not a toy, Lusea.” His voice is rough, honest, deep in his frustration at himself. “You never have been.” No, the one that had alluded him for reasons much like this, uncertain how a fucked up noble boy could handle a girl from the slums in her entirety, in their priorities, it had taken months to win her over. And he’s certain he’s ruined it all in a night full of regret and frustration, of sickness and alcohol.

He breaks his gaze from her to rub his hand along his cheekbones as she sits up, knees still drawn to his chest, he doesn’t know what he can possibly do or say that could make any of it okay. Because it isn’t okay, it never would be. But his heart still races with the sounds she made him hear, and he knows deep down where his insecurities lay, beneath the hardened exterior of a man that pretends to know exactly what he wants in life.

He can tell that she looks at him, but a part of him breaks as his head turns, the hand rubbing by the scar that’s near his main artery of his neck, but just far enough to ensure that he lived when she didn’t. And he visibly winces when she calls him princeling. She’s reaching for the insults deep in his memories, and he can’t find it in him to blame her, but it still fucking sucks.

“Alright.” He concedes, hands dropping from his neck to the blanket they sit upon. “I will.” A quiet vow, a promise, willing to do everything it would take to keep her there. And he figures a few steps is ensuring he returns to how he once had been — the storm, the floods to her flame. Not the man who had first joined the resistance, uncertain and broken hiding behind pretty smiles and suave words.

i can't scrub the black from my lungs

SUNJATA