not heroes any longer - we are tragedies of firelight and flesh
unholy sacraments of blood and broken bodies
They walked through lines of fire for everyone and everything. Sometimes others noticed. Sometimes they didn’t bother to lift their heads. Sometimes they carried the weight of barbarians’ armor and callous disregard for anyone else in their shambles, in their rebellious convictions. Sometimes they burned and seared and fettered beneath skin, flesh, and sinew, under all those scars and blemishes, under all those defects and flaws, under all the stories, outlines, and details of their dreams, their heartache, their ire. She’d done it again here, and he wanted to tell her it’d be fine, wanted to insinuate there were more opportunities to come, but he also wasn’t going to lie to her. He refused to pin pretenses into the fold, to segment hope where it might not belong; he was not the authority, he was not the omniscient void, he was not the keeper of souls, or the monster clutching the bronze boy. Ru’in; as if Hotaru had already known when she brought him onto these earths.
What had that kid ever done to deserve these measures over and over again?
So Deimos strived to render her whole here, even when it was impossible; enduring, enduring, enduring, ready and eager to take the mantles, the aches, the pains, store them within his own, keep the cracks company amongst the other trials, tribulations, and agonies. An anarchical pulse and pervading essence of all the unholy things they’d gathered into their lives, somehow, someway, segmented back into the rotation and revolution. You will not break he almost said, even when he could feel the cracks forming in his grasp, strong hands binding her together as best he could (not enough, not enough; told and told again). You will succeed he yearned to proffer, as if he had any say. It hurt his heart to say anything, embellish anything else. So he didn’t; a listening ear as she described the taunting, the monsters, the demons, Jigano’s failure, her ill attempts, only putting a ceasefire on her the endless reels and motions on the finality of her statements. “You have never been useless.” Strong and enduring, asserting her predilections and persistence into the corners of the world; he refused to believe she was anything less.
Then there was another indication of something smothered below the fault lines and barbaric fire, and while Zuriel marched and inclined towards the girl’s side, a gentle touch of her horn along wounds, attempting to be a far more assuaging, soothing ache, his eyes narrowed “What kind of bargain?” Because he’d heard of her exploits after he’d died, when the world had churned and burned into darker, dimmer outreaches, when false gods portrayed paradise and betrayed everyone, when she’d found herself enamored by chaos’ thrall. He was careful not to segment any dread or apprehension into the question, carefully neutral, curious, inquiring amongst and amidst the despair.
What had that kid ever done to deserve these measures over and over again?
So Deimos strived to render her whole here, even when it was impossible; enduring, enduring, enduring, ready and eager to take the mantles, the aches, the pains, store them within his own, keep the cracks company amongst the other trials, tribulations, and agonies. An anarchical pulse and pervading essence of all the unholy things they’d gathered into their lives, somehow, someway, segmented back into the rotation and revolution. You will not break he almost said, even when he could feel the cracks forming in his grasp, strong hands binding her together as best he could (not enough, not enough; told and told again). You will succeed he yearned to proffer, as if he had any say. It hurt his heart to say anything, embellish anything else. So he didn’t; a listening ear as she described the taunting, the monsters, the demons, Jigano’s failure, her ill attempts, only putting a ceasefire on her the endless reels and motions on the finality of her statements. “You have never been useless.” Strong and enduring, asserting her predilections and persistence into the corners of the world; he refused to believe she was anything less.
Then there was another indication of something smothered below the fault lines and barbaric fire, and while Zuriel marched and inclined towards the girl’s side, a gentle touch of her horn along wounds, attempting to be a far more assuaging, soothing ache, his eyes narrowed “What kind of bargain?” Because he’d heard of her exploits after he’d died, when the world had churned and burned into darker, dimmer outreaches, when false gods portrayed paradise and betrayed everyone, when she’d found herself enamored by chaos’ thrall. He was careful not to segment any dread or apprehension into the question, carefully neutral, curious, inquiring amongst and amidst the despair.
what use have we for feeble hymns of wasted faith;
for sordid songs of glory?
DEIMOS
