remember that you can't save everyone
remember that you have to try
Time, and promises to keep. Oaths to follow. Vows to stitch and seam back together. Assurances to prosper, a bridge of laden commitments and pledges he could abide and apply as best he could. To go to the ends of the earth, or to bend and break before – the latter an acute possibility, given every other circumstance. Except his feet felt slightly stable now, and there were too many multitudes of angles and directions to pursue – the monolith had no applicable instances where he could be lost in those biding, tying perils, in the anchors, in the harpoons, of his own miserable making. A head raised, and not bowed; not to his grief, not to his despair, not to his misgivings. But how and when was the uncertainty, and it would scrape and gnash against his sides, his bones, until finality eventually struck, until catalysts were snagged, until some contortions to the world were righted. To rest seemed unfair, and then strange, because those he chased weren’t going anywhere – he just didn’t want them to have to wait any longer. The Sword nodded again at her insinuation, piercing eyes gliding back over to the fire, over memories, over harsh plains, over haunting decrees, over the way LongNight scorched and seared. “She was trying to free a soul of someone she loved.” Ru’in; as if saying his name brought back too many other times; of lives lived in worlds far beyond, where Deimos was caught and trapped between two realms, two distinct individuals, bound and quantified into the solid form of his figure now. “I thought I might attempt it, and then she would not be alone.” Perhaps Kiada wasn’t on her own in the midst of whatever lain before them in the clutches of death – Adam was there, amongst an assortment of others. But not her mother (a quest for a different day). And not Ru’in. And not any of her other family. Not yet.
It was bizarre to think of Peter as a Spymaster for the former sovereign of the mountains; Deimos had only ever known him as the quiet and unassuming partner of Adam; but not a being to be underestimated in the slightest. Neither of them had been. “Yes. Adam and Peter. There was an incident with a dragon…” and a consecration of foolishness, stupidity, and trial after trial, haunting measures that sometimes loomed in the back of his mind. Of what more he could’ve done, if he’d been stronger. If he’d been better.
Lighter still were other figments, and he prospered back into those aspects as best he could – fingers beginning to drum against the sides of his glass again, perhaps intentionally obnoxious in the way they played upon the resin. “Or maybe sleep.” Slumber had come in bits and pieces, and not all of it restful – not with delirium patching pieces of machinations together and gaining ferocity, velocity, in lunacy. He could only offer a shrug in the contortions applied to Elena; the name unfamiliar. “I have not heard of her.” Maybe she hadn’t suffered any particular fate but a quiet disappearance, as some had before (Jigano and Rory, drifting off into the ethers for their own brand of adventure).
As for Loren, Deimos uttered a rumble in his chest, a short bark of a laugh, a snort to follow through. “Not surprising. Foolish. Had I been in your place, I would not have given him another chance.” A pause, considering, features rendered into a carefully neutral stance, no brows furrowed, no snicker or smirk embedded. “I think he often means well, but cannot get out of his own way.” Incapable of thinking things completely through, of conforming to a broader scope and picture. Sometimes more of a hindrance than a help.
out for vengeance
DEIMOS
