06-19-2017, 07:43 PM
Ellyse
I'm the only one who will walk across a fire for you.
it's only fear that makes you run, the demons that you're hiding from.
The air is thick and heavy with tension, and she, once so self-assured and unwavering, felt like a dry and brittle leaf, fluttering feebly and clutching precariously to a dead and dying branch – and as the tumultuous, tempestuous storm stirs and wages war on his heart and on his mind, she is powerless. Her own heart is pounding, aching – its steady thrumming echoing in her own mind, and she can hardly hear herself think. She had never meant for any of it to happen; she had never anticipated her once carefully guarded heart to break so easily. She had never expected to fall so deeply for someone so unattainable, for someone so absent – there was no doubt in her mind that it had been an unrequited love (he loved her, but not in the way that she had loved him), but she had been such a fool to think that she had known him at all – that she had loved anything more than the fragmented, broken man she ached to soothe, that she longed to mend the wounds of. It was a fatal flaw of her own: an innate, undeniable desire to make what is broken whole again. Unattainable. Unobtainable.
Still, the thought of her son, of her daughters is more than enough to remind her of why she had loved him so – he had been a wonderful father. A doting, steady presence. A pillar of strength, a symbol of time and of endurance. A companion, a friend - her first, her only. He had been (would always be) so much to her, but it was of her own doing that she had permitted her heart to fall for a war-torn, broken thing like him – she had been foolish – not in loving him, but in thinking she knew anything about him at all.
It had taken time. Time to see that she had no one to blame but herself for the pieces her broken heart had been left in.
Time to see that life did not simply cease to be because of heartbreak. Time to understand, to know that love was not weakness – love was anything but weakness.
But time had cost her, and as the warmth of her breath brushes across his terse, tense cheek of indigo and rust, and as he murmurs her voice, pleading and letting the façade of indifference and understanding fall away, his bright, cerulean gaze meets with her own – and she is reminded of the price.
When he reaches to her, she does not shy away, elongating her own neck to cover the distance – it still felt like a thousand miles lay between them, but his touch is warm, comforting, and the irrational ache lingering in her chest is soothed, if only for a moment. He had not been angry with her, she can see that now – she was nothing if not impulsive; he deserved to be listened to. I won’t, he promises, and her gaze is cast downward to the dry, dust-laden ground beneath. When his reaches for her cheek, warm and gentle, there is a single, solitary tear staining the golden sheen of her skin, salty and wet.
Quietly, the gold-flecked hazel of her eyes search the broad plane of his handsome features, of the subtle fading from indigo to rust (it reminds her of the glowing, molten rock pouring into the tumultuous, churning sea – it reminds her of home), of the gentle slope of his forehead and the tousled tresses that lay across one eye. I cannot give that to you, he murmurs, and her heart clenches – but somewhere, deep within, she already knew that.
I am not him, he breathes, and then –
I am not Magnus.
The ridge of her brow is furrowed then, uncertainty flickering in her gaze, and breathlessly, she presses her cheek against his own, before pushing closer to him, her ear pressed tightly against the crook of his neck where his pulse thrums rhythmically with every beat of his heart. Quietly, with her cheeks darkened to a deep, burnt sienna from the fallen tears, her eyes seek out his own, with nothing but the warmth of their breath lingering between them.
”I know you aren’t him, Warrick,” she murmurs softly, unwilling to shy away from his gaze now, following wherever they may go, as the soft starlight and rising moon bathes them in its splendor. ”I know you aren't Magnus. That is why I left – I did not want to tether whatever emotion I was feeling with his absence to you. I am not asking for you to love me,” her voice is nothing more than a whisper now. She could never ask him to love her. She would never ask it of anyone; she was certain now that no one could.
”I am asking for you to be my friend. I want –“ a sharp intake of breath; the confession is difficult and she is vulnerable – moreso than she had ever been. ”I need you in my life. I need your friendship. That is all I ask.”
when all your promises are gone, I'm the only one.
@[Warrick]