[private] no other sadness in the world would do, atrox

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

Unlike his son, Atrox does not try to move on.

He’s not sure that he knows how to anymore.

His long life has been an exercise in gain and loss, in trying to piece together what has been ripped from him, and he is tired of sacrifice. He is tired of remaking himself. He is tired of moving on. So he lives in his grief instead. He grows crueler and angrier. He hunts without purpose, slaughtering the animals that he finds. He picks fights with strangers. It is only when he is around their children, her children, that he softens at all. That he becomes the man that she had remembered, that she had left behind.

The man that she had made.

But her children are not here today. It is only him and it is only his pain. Today it takes the shape of two souls he had ripped from the underworld to stand guard by his side. Large, imposing figures, glowing that eerie blue, and he snarls when they get too close as he walks through Hyaline—through their home.

He is not gaunt, but he is sharper than she left him. For all of his hunting, he eats little of it, and he can feel it beginning to whittle away at him. He can feel it carving out the strength and livelihood from his very bones. His face is tighter than before, eyes more piercing against the sharp angles, and his scarred mouth pulled tight—but he does not care. Let death try and take him, he thinks. It would be a relief.

It is only when he catches that phantom scent of her that he pauses.

It is not the first time that he has thought he smelled her, but he never tires of the illusions his brain composes for him, and he sighs at the cruelty and kindness of it. It will hurt when it fades, he knows. It always does. But for the moment that he thinks he can smell her, it is joy, and he smiles softly as he closes his eyes and angles his head into the breeze, letting it wrap around him, letting it penetrate.

He takes a deep breath, feeling the sweet sting of it, and freezes when he hears her voice.

Disbelief rages through him, followed by the hope that this is perhaps the truth end. Perhaps his mind has finally fractured beneath the weight of his grief and given him this final gift. Perhaps she is here to usher him into the next life; this time, he would stay, he promises—so long as she was  tearswith him.

His eyes open and he swears his missing heart clenches in his chest at the sight of her.

Real or not. Angel or not.

It doesn’t matter.

Atrox says nothing. There are only the tears that fall down his cheeks.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING

@Ryatah