a line at the edge

Ashe the woods are lovely, dark, and deep but i have promises to keep    Breath rattled through her shaking lips as she squeezed Remi's hand tighter, and she let the tears fall. She let the pain happen, no matter how tempting the unfeeling darkness of her mind beckoned. To feel nothing at all.. it would be easier than this. It would be so easy to just slip into the nothingness that waited in the trauma-survival centers of her brain, to go far away and flee from this monsterous pain in her chest as she looked at Ronin.    But she wouldn't. The man who had become her brother,  he deserved better than for the people who loved him not to feel this. Live. He had told her to live, and fuck if this wasn't a part of that. Living.. without him.    A laugh that sounded more like a sob cracked open from her chest, and she raked her free hand into her hair as she went over the details of the painting, every brush stroke so lovingly paid attention to. "He'd probably complain I didn't paint him charming enough too," she said through the tears.    Ashe glanced up at Remi before her eyes turned back to Ronin, and quietly she stepped closer to the other hybrid. She didn't know if he would step away, push her away, but this wolf was a creature of touch and love beneath the harsh brutality, and she had deprived herself of it for a very long time. She tucked herself under Remi's arm, seeking to lean her head against him, to feel some kind of contact with the only brother she had left. That's what they had become, hadn't they? Siblings of a sort.    She sniffed and moved her eyes over Ronin's smile, the ache turning sharp and demanding in her chest, demanding that he move, that he be there to smile at them. She'd had to paint him smiling, she couldn't bring herself to paint some traditional portrait of a stoic warrior to greet monster hunters that entered here. Ronin was warm, and he was bright, and his smile needed to be here.    "I want him back," she whispered uselessly. and miles to go before i sleep.