where the shadow ends

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

The sun continues to rampage above but luckily the drink and food so far have been enough to keep him from delving into the shadows of his mind. But he’d spied Melita shortly after arriving, debated with himself on what — if anything — he could say to her after so long.

He fully intends to end the conversation with a knife in his stomach, if he’s being honest. But he has to try anyway, instead of this constant tiptoeing around he’s been doing. But he bides his time, tries to wait until the party has kicked off before he makes his quiet little escape, letting Isla know he wasn’t going to go far.

And he ends up approaching Melita quietly, perhaps a bit brazenly, putting nothing out into the air until he gets within regular speaking distance to his niece. “Hey, can we talk?” His accent drawls lightly, his steel gaze focusing on her face in the hopes that he doesn’t entirely ruin her party.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Something very dark and foul pressed into her lungs, ribcage, and scowl as Sunjata departed from the crowd, started wandering towards her. An innermost compulsion triggered into her fingers, and she was inclined into a variety of directions – leaving entirely, making a scene, or casting her grasp on any of her weaponry laden across her person. For the Flood’s luck and mercy, her fingers still clasped a drink, though she knocked it back very quickly, settling the glass back down on the barrel it had once occupied.

A bitter tone occupied the space the moment he opened his mouth, and she could feel the bite between her teeth. “About what?” The Honeybee couldn’t be certain what he’d possibly have to say to her after years of not speaking to one another – she imagined he’d been held up in his refuge, living out his days and life while the rest of them toiled along skirmishes and struggles – but gods only knew with the branches of her family.

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

And the hope of not ruining her party is dashed immediately with the bitter tone that leaves her. The question aired between them amongst the sounds of the wildlife, and Sunjata can’t help but to duck his head a little, shoulders slumping ever so slightly. “About everything since the war ended.” He offers, before pulling the words out of the dark crevices of his mind. “Mostly regarding Nate.” He pauses, knowing that the Lone Ranger had been her favorite part of having relatives.

And how he wasn’t entirely welcome in being a part of her life. It wasn’t something he dwelled on, though, long past the point of self misery in trying to understand despite the things he’s done, what he had to atone for her for. So there’s no self pity, just honesty, in the words he has for her. And maybe, just maybe the mention of her favorite uncle will grant him the option to tell her what it was that might soothe the frustration for her.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

The world might’ve wished Melita had ice in her veins, but the youth was pure fire – impulsive, combustive, easily incited, stoked, and kindled with so very few words or phrases. Her jaw tightened, and a long exhale filtered through her mouth, something like a blaze beginning to curl and coil. “It’s been two fucking years,” she hissed, because some part of her held that gods damned wound for that long, and she’d just been patching it over with restlessness, violence, and pretending that it was fine that the only family she had left was the one standing before her. Ones that barely spoke and existed and had once been close until it all ended up falling apart again and again.

What was he even going to say? How the man had died? How battles were waged and fought and won and he’d seen none of it in his little refuge? How she’d been so fucking proud of herself for ensuring Torchline was safe while Nate probably bombarded his way through mountains and none of it scarcely mattered? “Just say it,” before her hands found something else besides a glass.

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

The intensity of the hiss hits him harder than he expects. He expects it to glance off of him with all the strength and might he’d tried to embody these last two years. But like a dagger it shreds through him and he visibly twitches ever so slightly, right before the exhale of “I know.” As if he didn’t go every single day wishing it was a terrible nightmare. That maybe he’d wake up one day and Nate would walk through the doors and everything would fall back into place.

Every day he wakes up and it never happens.

She tells him to just say it and Sunjata nods, taking a seat beside her as if it might give him all the opportunity to put his thoughts together. “I have some things of his that I want you to have.” And some things of his own that he no longer wants, that would suit her capable hands far better than his. “Things that he would want you to have, too.” Because somehow he’d known, that last day before he left and Sunjata had departed to the refuge. Somehow they’d both known they wouldn’t make it out the other side.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

She fed on his twitch and tremors, permitted it to kindle and incite and fuel whatever age-old, primordial anger still existed in her chest. A thunderous boom in her heart – she could just lunge at him, and it’d be over. Her fingers still held the glass firmly, tightly, but it could so easily turn into a weapon of its own. The way he said Nate’s name, of things, caused such a ripple of emotion, hurt under all the wrath, the contempt, the rage, that it came sputtering and spewing outwards. “His things? And it took you this long?” Perhaps she should’ve been more sensitive about it – because he must’ve been grieving, all tied and held up in his little fucking shelter that Nate couldn’t even stay within.

But gods, she’d lost him too. So had everyone else that remained tethered to those lines of hurt and injustice.

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

Somehow, he doesn’t expect the length of his hold on Nate’s items to be a problem. Yes, of course he’d held onto them for that long. He hadn’t wanted to part with them. But Frey had tried to get him to understand that he didn’t have to hoard every little thing, especially when it only reminded him of the pain. His face scrunches slightly and he takes a steadying breath, at this point uncaring if she used the glass in her hand as a shiv.

“Yes. It took me a while. I’ve had a hard time even thinking about parting with them.” His voice drops slightly, as if trying to refrain from divulging all of his thoughts on her. He doesn’t think she’ll care about how he’d spent the year after, how he wore regret on his shoulders, holed up, only eating when his shifts told him to.

He knows how she’d be able to twist his words, though, and he smartly clamps his thoughts down. “You can have them if you want them.” He finally decides to say after the muscles tick in his jaw.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Some part of her wanted to shout and scream. You weren’t the only one who lost him from the top of bestial howls and hills, but she figured no matter how much she raged amidst her tempestuous storm, it wouldn’t much matter. Sunjata had always committed to actions on his terms and rarely anyone else’s, to the point where she’d become a forgotten fixture, if it took two gods damned years to even pry the objects out of his depths, to think about reaching out.

Did she even want him to? The mercurial aspect of her capriciously stoked outlets collided back and forth, until she didn’t know where to yield, and frankly, didn’t give a fuck. His muscles could tick in his jaw all he wanted. Her jaw lifted, high and mighty despite the severe height advantage he had over her, completely indifferent to its aspects, and defiant all the same. “Yeah. I want them.” Placing the glass down, as if expectant, her hands folded over her chest. He still wasn’t out of danger yet. “Where are they?”

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

He wasn’t the only one that had lost him, and he knows that intimately well. But he had lost so much that he often had a hard time looking past it all to see what could come after. And when Nate hadn’t come back from the war, when Isla had told him, his world stopped. It had taken a long time to get back into any semblance of regular life.

He bitterly doesn’t expect her to understand it, though. “The refuge.” He offers, head turning to look back out over the grown crowd, before he returns his steel gaze back to her. “There’s something of mine there, too, I want you to have.” He pauses, as if debating his next set of words carefully, just in case he fumbled trying to say it the way he wanted.

“Maybe you could come by in the next couple of days for it? We could have dinner.” We can try to start over.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Considering the amount of losses she’d managed over the course of her young lifetime, perhaps she would’ve understood it, had she been given half a chance. Instead, he’d retreated, and she’d had absolutely nothing but an empty house and a loathsome heart. Maybe not much had changed since then, given her antics of meandering until some action caught her impulsive notions, and she was off again.

The latter of which kept her stuck right there, chin still seditious, ready to conquer and beat the world down over nothing and everything. The infernal proportions of her blood didn’t want to give in and craved some vehemence, some violence, some gods damned atonement, and her eyes narrowed dangerously, another hiss sliding from her mouth. “The fucking refuge,” if she heard about that place one more time she was going to scream.

A snarl threatened over her lips, as if she wanted to have anything of his, and she wasn’t going to be dragged into some forsaken sanctuary. “Dinner,” she said flatly, brain attempting to circulate and surmise what was going on. A redo? A do-over? When she’d tried before? When they just snarled and snapped at one another? When selfishness caught and snagged and all they had left was their anguish, despair, and loathing? “What’s going to make this any different than all the other times?”

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

He doesn’t know how else to explain it. It was the refuge, it was a place he’d made to keep so many safe even after the Voice had denied Nate’s own arrival. So he swallows down against her biting tone of the refuge, refraining from mentioning anything else about it, because where else would it be? It isn’t like he has a home anywhere else anymore. And the home he’d shared with Nate in King’s End was still painful to be in even after the years that have passed.

So he tries to start over, tries to offer dinner, and he watches as her posture churns and changes into something like a snake coiling up with the potential to bite. And he’s tired — so fucking tired of being everyone’s enemy all the time.

She asks what will make it different and he levels her with an easy gaze, without the malice and bite that her own body seems to hold in. “Because I’m going to be better from here on out.” He doesn’t have the war or potential focus on keeping Nate alive these days. He’s got nothing but what’s right now, and right now that means trying to fix the relationships he did have when he knows he’s been the root of the problem for so long.

And he knows it certainly won’t be easy. “I want to start over, Mel. I can’t undo the shitty things I did back then but I can do better now. And I want to be better.”

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Are you though? came across her mind so quickly and swiftly that it nearly bristled and echoed along her tongue. He’d had plenty of opportunities throughout the years of living amidst Caido, and somehow always managed to choose in the wrong. Perhaps an innate, inborn talent, or simply guided by the hands of selfish hours or other avaricious endeavors, folding into desperation well before thought. And she’d understand the latter thoroughly, but had never subjected lives to it – not unless she had to.

Minor injuries and stabbings aside.

The embers on her tongues didn’t fade though, nor did her defiant, irreverent stance. Wouldn’t it be nice to just redo everything – as if nothing had ever happened – like a little button pressed and the whole world could efface the marks and blemishes of how they’d all gotten here.

“Start over how? People don’t forget.” A pause, a narrowing of her gilded gaze. “What’re you gonna do that’s better?” Were these statements or just mere thoughts, meant to be tossed out to appease her so she didn’t swipe a shiv between his ribs?

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

temporary fleeting thrills, keep me bruised and make me ill
my skin has lavender tones

This is the first step that Sunjata can take to try and prove it to her – and while before, he’d always let his emotions get the better of him, he refrains in this instance even as her words glance off of him in ways that fracture along the already sharp edges. Her gaze narrows at him and Sunjata clears his throat, meeting her gaze with a collected one of his own. “I know they don’t forget.” He starts, before he pauses to gather his thoughts, needing to because of how often he simply said or agreed to things without thinking them through, getting trapped in a ridiculous amount of things out of his inability to explain what he means or his stubbornness.

Like a certain marriage, once upon a time.

“I want to be there for you, if you’ll let me. Let me be your shitty uncle again.” He pauses, unable to refrain from the slight snort at his own expense before he shakes his head. “I regret that I was so blindsided by everything else going on that I didn’t pay attention to those around me that are still here. I should have been there. I should have done something. I could have done more. And I’m so sorry that I didn’t, Melita.” He keeps his gaze on her, as if testing the waters to try and decide whether or not he even had a chance to change how things were with her.

He'd also understand if there was no coming back from it. But he has to at least try.

the flood

tell me i'm a loaded gun, tie me up and come undone
i can cover it up, i can cover it up

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Perhaps he did know and understand; why he kept himself tethered and tied away, sunken into the refuge. She half wondered if people simply told him to fuck off, if banishments reigned supreme, if lands and kingdoms sent him on his way anytime there was an attempt made. Like Stormbreak, with people fallen years before and relics soon thereafter. Like Torchline, compliant to Safrin, whom he’d betrayed. She made no comment about all of them, biting and hiding them behind her teeth; little daggers ready to strike, given another chance, notion, or need.

His next statement stunned her, enough for her to wrinkle her nose, pilfer the defiant, seditious spread of her features into bafflement, bewilderment, before they settled again into primordial mutiny. Why now? Why after all these years? Guilt? Stupidity? Misguided sentiments again? ”Really?” How many times had she tried to make him listen, make him understand? How many times had it been a wasted effort, because he got pissed off, because she held nothing back, because she was so fucking tired of trying to make sense out of situations where everything was muddled and confounded? So they’d gone their separate ways, and she’d had an empty house and her last bit of familial blood sunken into the ground. "You've had a lot of time to be my shitty uncle." Couldn't be much shittier, honestly. "But you tossed me aside because I didn't play your stupid games, and I didn't want anything to do with your nonsense." Something tightened in her ribcage, a gnarled edge. “Gonna take more than just your fucking words. We know most of those don’t hold much water.”

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life