and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She had been understandably furious when Sylva succeeded in stealing Ophanim and Sochi. Sinner played a dangerous game, deciding to toy with the kingdom that had recently torched Tephra, but the blow for her in this case was personal. While a large part of her wanted to instantly demand that Ophanim be returned, she also knew it made far more sense for Loess to bide their time. Her and Castile alone could reduce the eternally-autumn forest to ash and dust, and combining the efforts of the other Loessians, it was a poor match.
She knew he would be fine; she knew that he was fully healed, and he could handle himself. She also knew that even though she had grown so accustomed to sleeping alongside him every night, that there had been a point in her life when she had chosen to sleep alone. She had survived, and she would do so again. And maybe, with Alita, Malone, Meraxes, and Midnight, it would keep the loneliness at bay.
She hadn’t counted on his absence being the reason her self-doubt begins to stir. She hadn’t counted on how wildly her imagination would run, especially at night when there was nothing else to occupy her mind. She catches herself staring at Alita and Meraxes as they sleep, and she hates herself for the anger that again begins to simmer in her gut, when she again wonders who their mothers are. There were other children, too, but she clenched her jaw and ignored them, though she is certain Ophanim must feel the way her usually cool blue eyes suddenly smolder when she stares at him whenever they are nearby.
She can only imagine what he’s doing with his spare time away from her, and her nightmare-spinning mind tells her it’s exactly what he did when he was suppose to be with her.
Revenge hadn’t worked out well for her last time, but that didn’t stop her from going to Pangea. She isn’t even sure if she can call Litotes revenge; the word didn’t quite fit. All she knew was there was only so many times she could feel the cuts of betrayal before she finally snapped, and the only way she knew how to dress the wounds was to let herself have someone she had been denying for the sake of one-sided loyalty.
When she finally comes to Sylva again, she is uncharacteristically quiet. There is something lax in her muscles as she walks, and something entirely too impassive about the blankness in her stare. If the guilt was already beginning to eat away at her, she doesn’t show it, but she is sure when she finally comes before him that he can see it. He would smell someone else on her — all over her — and when her cobalt-blue eyes find his she can almost swear that he can read her mind.
It’s tempting to reach out and touch him. It has been so long since she felt like she couldn’t — like she shouldn’t — that she almost does, but just as her lips might almost find that familiar curve of his cheek, she catches herself, and she withdraws. Suddenly before him, she realizes that she has no idea what to say, and then, that there is nothing that she can say. She has never been able to fully mask herself to him, and she knows without saying a word that she is bare-skinned and naked, with her own act of betrayal laid out as plainly as the constellations that glow on her sides.
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
@[Ophanim]
