we're alone, just like you said, aureus

[aureus]

Aureus

oh, these wings, they flicker and my feathers stir
'til I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world

He wants to break—wants to take it all back.

He wants to tell her that it was a lie. That they could be friends. That he would cherish her and protect her and do everything he had dreamt of doing when he was a young boy. But even now his hungry heart gnashes its teeth in his chest and he knows that it wouldn’t be enough. He would consume her if he could. He would hold onto her until she suffocated. He would swallow her whole just to keep her.

So he grinds his teeth and forces himself to watch the way that she flinches.

Forces himself to see the damage that he has done.

It tears at him, shreds him, but he stands resolute and, this, at least he is glad he can be brave enough to withstand. His purple eyes darken as some piece of him retreats, the gentle part of him that whimpers in the back of his mind, and he holds back the sob that would otherwise rise to his mouth.

“You didn’t do anything,” he says, his voice softer, and he fights the urge to push her hair back. To tell her that she’s perfect, that she deserves more than him. That she should be free and he would only trap her.

“I’m doing this for you,” an admission, even though he knows she would never understand.

He thinks about hour Hourglass had looked at him, when she had called out his flaws—his cowardice, his fear, his weakness—and how the worst part had been that she hadn’t even named all of them. That he had to sit there in the knowledge that there was so much worse about him underneath the surface.

So he doesn’t break.

He just says, softer even still, “Goodbye, Basilica.”

and I'm quick with the bullet when it comes undone
I got a head like a turret with a mouth for a gun

@[basilica]