[Training] [se] need no light when i have you

it is both a blessing and a curse, to feel everything so very deeply

Come on, she pleads, coaxes, cajoles, shoving Deimos toward the bakery. We both need a break.

Gods, does she need it. The arrival of the Spark Bird was fortuitous and wonderful, but still not enough to distract her from the trauma she'd endured, the darkness in her soul. Nor him, still broken and devastated by the loss of Rexanna, trapped in the dark with a body for that longest night.

So she'd dragged him out, forced them both into the cool Deepfrost air. She'd said it would be for exercise and training but truly she just wants to play, to pretend the world isn't horrible for even one stolen minute. Once they reach the garden the leopardess turns around, dark eyes glittering with playfulness and desperation, the tragic pleading of someone currently stuck together with tape.

Okay. The rules are every time you land a hit you have to change forms. Ready? She doesn't give him time to reply but lithely bounces forward, hoping to surprise him into action as she leaps toward his side.

DEIMOS

the resurrected sword

He didn’t want to.

Didn’t deserve the traces of light made by the Spark Bird’s wings, didn’t deserve to do anything but crawl amidst the darkness, be left in its suffocating wake, hover uselessly by while the world moved on and he had no ability to keep the things he cherished safe.

He was tempted to stay within the Temple until day finally broke and he could unwind his agony elsewhere, to hang his head low and dissolve, to pierce and puncture and lacerate his bones into the soil.

But there he was, for her, because all they ever seemed to do was endure trauma after trauma, in the familiar wings and whims of the bakery’s garden. At any other time, the notions, the mere slip of the words exercise and training would motivate him – except now it barely scraped as he shifted into his tiger form, as his eyes searched hers, as he felt every seam unraveling.

Every movement that followed her leaps and bounds was habitual, attuned in the constant repetition of muscle memory – maneuvering to the right, dodging out of her range, and swiping a massive paw towards her ribs.

still standing

not because you can

but because you have to

it is both a blessing and a curse, to feel everything so very deeply

There isn't enthusiasm, but there is reaction, and that is something at least. A small thing, the slightest blessing in a sea of curses, but she'll take all she can get. And if perhaps she is overzealous in her need for this distraction, well, can you really blame her?

At this point being overzealous is all she can to to keep from falling apart.

Good news for Amalia: she totally evades the swipe of the paw - not surprising, how halfhearted it is. Bad news, she manages to send herself sprawling, tumbling head over heels and she stumbles on the landing. Bouncing back up onto her feet, the leopardess shakes the snow from her coat. Have to try harder, she teases with false brightness, turning around to throw herself at him again, aiming to claim a mouthful of tail.

DEIMOS

the resurrected sword

While they needed distractions, while they needed to unburden the wakes tossed along their shoulders, broadening over backs, his still choked, still defied, still rattled against his entity. His half-hearted attempt missed, and he felt nothing – no shame, no humiliation, no chagrin, a callous numbness coiling down his limbs. If anything, he maneuvered his frame in the slightest worry (because maybe that all he was going to do now was mire himself in between trepidation and anarchy) as she tumbled, stumbling.

And bounced back up.

Because that was what they did too – except the Sword was going to take far longer. No mask, no pretenses, no brightness, no stars.

He swung and pivoted his hips, and therefore his tail, away from her mouth; the first billowing of a snort stirring at the ridiculousness, before he smothered them down in his lungs. From there, he propelled and burst forward, intending to collide directly into her side, via chest, muscles, and broad expanse.

still standing

not because you can

but because you have to

it is both a blessing and a curse, to feel everything so very deeply

Again she fails to capture him, to strike or land a blow- but at least she gets him to work harder, to maneuver his body and his mind. A snort is a balm to her troubled soul, all the encouragement she needs to continue; grinning toothily she bounds away from him, trying to avoid the next onslaught.

And she doesn't, and it's fine, because he's upon her, rolling her playfully onto her back. The leopardess grins up at the tiger, swatting her tail against the snow. Sticking her tongue out at her lover, she reaches with a paw to boop his nose. You have to shift now, she reminds him - then moves her own body, maneuvering, shrinking down into the otter in attempt to escape his grasp.

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

These were the moments he wished he could return to so easily – as if nothing had transpired in that damned Temple, as if friends hadn’t been lost, as if worlds didn’t press down between shoulder blades, make him ache, make him fracture, make him break. His eyes went to her as she grinned, and a laugh nearly buoyed and brimmed over the surface of his convictions, smothered down too, lost and forlorn in the perils of all their stupefying plights.

The boop on his nose caused his eyes to widen, expecting something entirely different.

Silence again as he reared back, maneuvering, shifting, changing in accordance to their rules of the newfounded game – something he’d wanted to show her ages before, but the chances had been whittling, few, infrequent in between all the other burdens. This time he was the massive dog, the undulating form of darkness and sedition, hound unleashed from the gates of hell –

And dove to snag at the otter’s tail with his teeth, minimal grasping at best.

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts

meet me where the falling stars live

He rears and she takes the opportunity to scuttle out of his reach, sliding slickly over the snow and wriggling out of reach. She stands uncertainly on small feet - this form is good for sliding but ungainly on the land - and turns back to regard the tiger, to see what changes he has made.

The massive dog is an unexpected but utterly delightful shift, Amalia having seen little of her husband's newest form so far. Comically dramatic and over-sized in comparison to the otter, he towers and bellows in bursts of fire, a hellhound with the heart of her love.

The girl chitters, scrambling away from the gnashing of fiery teeth - not fast enough, because they gently close upon her tail, pulling at the hair. With a squeal of indignation she flips and twits around, trying to grab his nose in retaliation and perhaps climb onto his large head like a strange, small hunter claiming dominion overmuch larger prey.

i will wait for you all day and night

Coding base by Sky!

We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be

With her caught in his clutches, normally he’d howl and laugh, call out in some other amusements. But his heart was burdened, heavy, and cracked, so he simply stood as the much smaller otter grabbed hold of his hound muzzle, clambering and climbing along his cranium. He could easily shake, shudder, undulate, and ripple his body until she flickered, scrambled, or fell –

But gods, he was tired of everyone falling around him.

So instead, the Sword ignored the rules, making his own in the throngs of the dark garden, in the pathways of Spark Bird light – a restless sedition twisting and turning over his bones. He rampaged and ran instead, his own assault (if she couldn’t cling enough, if she couldn’t find some purchase in all the Stygian fur) of lightened proportions – semblances of liberation, of freedom, of deliverance across the grounds, racing, racing, racing into the midnight paradigms, where embers and cinders reached and monsters couldn’t destroy them. Wild, untethered, free in the pretenses of small, minuscule moments, before returning to haunted wings, before the world was wide and open again, and they’d have to remember, recall, the disasters awaiting.

Is this enough? rumbled through their connection, the first words he’d uttered since their arrival, for he wanted something to be, even for an instant.

DEIMOS

Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts

it is both a blessing and a curse, to feel everything so very deeply

He breaks the rules, and she cannot blame him, clinging with dexterous fingers to the locks of thick, dark hair. He runs and she feels like she's flying, the pair of the cutting through the darkness and leaving streaks of hellfire light. And though it strains her arms, though her fingers protest, the Shield does not let go.

She will cling to him, run with him, through any light and shadow. She will be a beacon in his darkness, as he has been in hers.

When he stops she is still there, small and coiled in his fur, draped across his form. She disengages slowly, carefully, never quite releasing for fear he'll flee again. Taking back her feline form the girl drapes across him, her limbs spread out across his back, a purr rising like thunder from her breast.

Yes, she affirms fervently, adoringly. Yes. It is enough.

{fin}