and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
Her games had a way of catching up with her. Or rather, they had a way of twisting and morphing until she wasn’t sure where her game ended and her reality began.
Lie had tangled himself into her reality without her even realizing it. She had never intended for him to be anything other than another piece on the playing board. She isn’t sure when it happened; isn’t sure when she started to care, when he became an actual friend. She remembers the first time she had felt that fierce flare of protectiveness when the east continued to wrong him, but then they dared to keep coming to Loess just to tell him why they thought he was wrong. She remembers how if she could have, if she had wielded such powers at that time, she thinks she would have leveled the entire east to ash and dust. Her mistrust for them never really faded, even though he stood now in his rightful place as their king.
She supposes, though, this makes her a hypocrite.
She has wronged him in ways that the east never could. A knife in the back from her, she is sure, was far worse than a cut from someone you already expected to betray you.
It has been months since she felt any sort of real peace. Ophanim was gone, because of her she is certain, and everything with Lie had felt so strange and uneasy since the twins had been conceived. Her conversation with Brigade had left her simmering, but she had swallowed that fury away. She would deal with Kensa later, but there was a large part of her that felt like she was being engulfed by her guilt. Guilt because Lie never knew about that day with Kensa at the river, guilt because she had situated herself right in between Brigade and Kensa, and guilt because she hadn’t told Lie what she knew.
But nothing compared to the shift that had taken place recently. They had been civil before, at least, and not avoiding each other when they traded their time with the twins. But in the last several weeks, she has not caught so much of a glimpse of him. She wasn’t entirely stupid. He knew where to find her, if he wanted to; she was always either in Loess or Sylva. And since Draco and Dove moved so fluidly between them, he would have to try to not see her. The thought caused her to flash between anger and hurt, and there was no telling what she was feeling at any given moment. The emotions were often one in the same for her, regardless.
The day that he finally comes face to face with her, it is anger that greets her first.
It flares up in her veins, like an ember catching just enough wind to fuel itself into a flame, and it glows in the darkness of her blue eyes. She can feel her tongue begin to grow sharp, and she is ready to lash at him, until she actually looks at him. Until she listens to his thoughts, and she falters.
The fire dies, leaving only regret and shame in its wake. Her jaw clenches, but only in some halfway effort to keep the emotion from reflecting on her face. “I’m sorry,” her voice doesn’t sound as soft as she wishes it did. There is a clip to it, because she isn’t ready to break in front of him yet, but even though her face is set into hard lines, she never has been able to shield everything from him. Her eyes have already lost their spark, and only the guilt was visible there now. “I don’t have an explanation, and I won’t give you any excuses.” She knows too well that the excuses mean nothing. They don't erase what happened, they don't ease the hurt. If anything, they dig the wound deeper.
She looks at him, at the shadows of hurt that still linger there, and she wonders, not for the first time, when she will stop hurting anyone that ever bothered to care about her. “I don’t know how to do things right, Lie. Not friendship, not love. I fuck everything up that I touch, and I’m sorry that I did it to you, too.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
