Brinly
She is reminded over and over again why she is better off alone.
She is reminded over and over again that putting herself in the presence of others only spells out pain, for her and for everyone involved. And she tries to save them every single time, for a reason that she has not yet discerned. Has it ever worked in her favor? Has it ever done anything to lessen the weight in her chest, or cause the scales of good karma to tip in her favor?
She leaves every encounter more bitter than she had been before, her self-loathing a poison that she puts into her own bloodstream and lets it recirculate until she chokes on her own venom.
She sees him though, and she freezes.
She sees him and she is all at once caught in a riptide of fear and want—in hoping that his eyes might lift to hers, while simultaneously praying that he doesn’t see her and she could slip away unnoticed.
But in that moment where she wavers between what she is afraid of and what she hopes could come to be (because buried under all that fire and anger is a still stupidly hopeless girl) she makes a decision; a decision to chase any high that she can find, a decision to find any way to numb this pain that has made a home inside of her very bones.
He is a distraction, both welcome and unwelcome, and she walks towards him even though what little conscience she has left is screaming not to.
It shouldn’t be him. She is already warring with herself, pointing out all the reasons that she is going to regret this, because he is not someone that she wants to hurt, but there is a reason she chooses him—why it has to be him.
Because he can hurt her just as easily, if not worse, than she can hurt him.
“Brigade,” his name still tastes like sparks on her tongue, seeming to come alive in the red embers that flicker in her mane. She is different than when he last saw her, now made up of the living fire that has always lived in her veins. But her voice is the same, simmering and quiet, and through the flames there is a faint smile when she says, “It’s been a long time.”
— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —
@brigade