DEIMOS
we've all got blood on our hands
something somewhere had to die
so we could stay alive
Despite his gaze on the floor, Deimos saw none of the hardened, wooden grains, the lines drawn, the possible blemishes and stains of paint, of life in the cracks and folds. Instead they were haunted and torn apart by wraith-like memories, things he’d pushed down, down, down, even from the moment everything had occurred, the despair tracing its way back over his heart and lungs, clenching at muscles, sinew, flesh, and bone. Rexanna: damaged almost beyond repair, impaled, impaired, eyes gone and riddled, plucked away, barely clinging on – and the images just kept shattering, just kept their taut, tight grip on his senses, things he thought he’d processed, things he thought he could handle. Before, before, before had been days where anything threatening them were mangled in his touch, were decimated, were destroyed, were ravaged and savaged, sometimes no one the wiser, sometimes returning to the ice and snow with blood and gaping wounds; better his than theirs. He couldn’t do that here. They raced off in their own directions, and his protective stance didn’t quite matter as much, didn’t hold the same breadth, the same threshold, the same guarding, shielding ferocity. He could only do so much. He could only drag a beam out of her chest. Zuriel could only heal some broken, barbed tensions and marrow. He wasn’t certain what bothered him more – the fact that his weaknesses kept crawling, kept provoking, or that they all continued to spiral through their same patterns, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He didn’t want them hurt. He didn’t want them unraveled. He didn’t want to see them scorched and beaten and distorted again. He didn’t want them close to death.
He’d been there. He knew its touch from the enchantments laden in his soul. He knew its efforts from the way demise had courted his own figure, pulled at his soul, and took his final breaths, his final beats. Was his purpose now to watch them all fade in the exact same way? “It already happened to you before. I do not understand why you would want that again.” The Sword grumbled and growled, not the Reaper, who’d never shown them much more of feeling or sentiment than the lift of a brow or the slightest indentation of a callous smirk; and he wanted to hide then too, tuck himself away in the cloaked shadows, where no one bothered, where no one chased, where he could wallow in his misery and despair and no one would give a damn.
The monolith heard her coming, but didn’t move away, uncertain of where else to go and stow himself, and then concerned she might trip and fall on her way over – not expecting her hands to go around him, the apprehension coiling off of him in waves. Very rarely was he ever comforted; most left him to his own devices besides Amalia, because he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know what to feel, and he didn’t have anything to batter against in someone else’s hold, in Rexanna’s embrace. She peeled his hands away from his features, and he thought about fighting against it, every instinct unraveling to tell him to defy, to curl back, to unleash something other than sentiments. But she was there and he had no escape, no evasion, remaining in his stupefied, bewildered expression that she couldn’t see, but likely sensed. “There will be other ways,” he rasped in her grasp, other means, other measures, than continually placing herself in danger.
