this reckless wandering love was never ours; risk

[sochi]

SOCHI

These are the questions that she has asked herself more times than she could count.

Mostly in her youth, when she was a girl trying to navigate the complexities of being both prey and predator. A girl tossed about on the whims of Beqannian politics—forced to reconcile herself with the truth that she was a pawn in the game. Later, when she was trying to wrestle with the weight and the gravity of the quests she had been drawn into and later joined willingly. Was she the villain she had wondered? Was this what had made her into what she was? Was there some deeply cruel core of her?

Later, she had made the decision to not question it.

To never think on it.

To never wonder or feel guilt for that which was not easily changed.

But she understands the question he asks more than she cares to admit and shrugs again, the motion only slightly stilted, the muscles in her jaw aching from the way that they clench. “You would do what?” she asks and is not surprised to find that her tone is sharper than anticipated, cruel in the way that it leaves her mouth. “There’s nothing that those like us can do to change what we are—to make us any different.”

She draws in a sudden breath, her tail snapping behind her.

“So you accept that you are not to be loved and you grab the things life does have to offer you.”

For her, that was her strength—her nature, her instincts.

She straightens and looks at him, as if forcing him to look at her in return.

“You take what is owed to you,” she growls. “So take it.”

she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed