[SE] sky full of song

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame Perhaps he asked for too much – he had always been an avaricious, mercenary, covetous being, summoned by the bastions of vengeance and violence, onward to glory, to triumph, even when it was so firmly out of his grasp, his reach. He waited for some form of rebuttal, for her to refuse, he’d driven himself in where he wasn’t wanted, asked to turn right back around from where he’d come from, watching, waiting, eyes narrowing briefly, then looking away, uncertain what he should’ve been doing in those tremulous, tumultuous seconds. He might’ve given her the chance to escape too, because if anyone had ever asked him to share, to pick a sprig from the past that wasn’t riddled or mired or disastrous, the man would’ve balked too, spun around, hissed and snarled, detached, insouciant again. But he’d offered to give her a piece of himself, sharing, a tether, a line, one of those crumbling shards not marked and sparked by some evil, belligerent design, not thwarted, not blighted, not haunted by ghosts and catacombs, the graves he’d dug for his own iniquitous soul. In the span of those extended seconds, he parted his lips, had the release on his tongue – And then she began. The rapt, eager listener was back, but while she swayed and paced and fought nervously against the bounty of words aligning the backbone of her existence, his hands aimed to lead her away from the crowd, from the stirring music. He aimed for the ramparts of quiet, the grass beneath her bare feet, the comfort of hushed platitudes and his curious silence. The Reaper’s head tilted, hushed and riveted, stare watching as she glanced at the heavens, where she might’ve been descended from while he shuffled his way through the immoral coils of hell. How to stop being alone indeed, and there was a moment where the edges of his mouth lifted into the faintest smile, where his glance shifted entirely on her with shifting, upward brows and truth pervading from his lips. “She must have learned at some point.” Maybe she didn’t realize it, how surrounded she was by friends, how often he’d seen her, bright and cheery on the banks of battlefields, encompassed, enclosed, and encircled by those who cherished her. He’d never seen them hesitate to go towards her. He’d never seen them evade or avoid her presence. She’d been the sun and they orbited her, extending the warmth back and forth, no light fading, extinguished, or wasted. Can you not see it? he almost asked, the intonations held back because he’d always been the heathen, the fiend, stripping away any thought, any notion, of companions. Once, Deimos made the choice to be alone, tucked back into desolation and nonchalance because it was easier to die amidst the doldrums, the throngs, of phantoms and specters, memories and foundations of the quaking, quivering world, than have to face one more onslaught of loss and anguish. It was torment in another form, self-imposed and inflicted, drawn across his figure with the weight of the realms pushing back, so that the more he drifted, the more he waned, the more he withered, cracked, and decayed, the more he needed others, the further he was, eternally adrift on a sea of his own creation. He hadn’t always been that way. He hadn’t always been miserable and asinine, drowned and broken, too afraid, too frightened, by the foreboding apprehension, the seething, killer claws of cycles, of patterns, to reach out and savor another. It was simpler to wash it all away and die on the vine, from unseeing eyes, brooding, grieving, disintegrating, mighty king’s crown tossed aside for another life where he wielded nothing but bloodied swords and rusted barricades. The shields and armor were the same. The reasons were different. But ultimately, it was always his loneliness that did him in. The warrior didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know what else to do. His hands had tucked hers against his palms at some point, squeezing lightly, trying to comfort two parts of the same whole, alike and altered in similar aspects – except she seemed to always want to head into the light of others, and he shied from it, blinded by the radiance, undeserving of its warmth. Was there more to her tale? He wanted more – the bestial, ravenous, voracious glutton of his figure incensed and kindled by the intrigue, by the interest – or they could trade in parts. He could give. She could give. They could both take. But he didn’t know where to start, didn’t know how much to grant or implore, struggling to pinpoint the beginning and the end, swallowing down the scales, nettles, and barbs. “Once there was a boy born in the depths of winter, to parents who beheld fire and water.” The Reaper’s eyes lingered downward now, on the ground, head bent, feeling small and insignificant despite his massive, monolithic size. “He thought he would be like his father, flames and infernos. He thought he would be like his mother, calm and wise.” Perhaps he ended up a combination, or a disappointment; he couldn’t ask them now. “Then they discovered he was gifted with death.” His jaw clenched, something clicked in the back of his mind, a whirl, a blade, a war where the consecration was uttered ten times over, the splitting of bones and ribs and hearts. “For a time, the boy avoided that aspect, was naturally curious, learned to read, to write, to brandish mischief with his friends. But then glory called, and he turned to blades, rapiers, and cutlasses, to training himself with victory on his mind, the world in his grasp.” He thought about stopping there; his throat was baffled, his tongue was marred, by how long he’d discussed, by how long he’d talked, by how far he’d gone without fettering and unfurling, unraveling and disjointing, puncturing his soul and slinking back into the night. “Then he went to war, and death was his only friend.” For it took everything, a constant companion. “And he chose to be alone.” master of nothing place; of recoil and grace