[mature] tell that devil to take you back; ryatah

[atrox]

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

It has been a long time since Atrox has felt much of anything.

After his last death, he was convinced he would never feel it again. So perhaps that is why he is surprised that it matters to him at all that she returned—that he has someone to share this godforsaken piece of land with as a home. Why he is surprised that he is interested to hear her stories of when she was gone, to know of the adventures she had taken or the people she had met or the mistakes that she had made.

Regardless, he is quiet, listening with that same sarcastic smile still  barely curling the edges of his feline lips, laughter hiding behind his sharp yellow eyes. “I can try, but it would take me quite a long while to rank so many things,” he yawns, rolling his shoulders. “Almost as long as it would take you to rank mine. After all, you haven’t willingly had your heart ripped out of your chest or stayed when you knew you would drown.” His mistakes pile up in the back of his mind but he chooses to ignore the rest.

There is only so much of his own failures that he can possibly confront in one day.

Instead he falls into the silence again with her, watching with vague interest at the water that laps up onto the beach in front of them. He gets lost in the rhythmic motion of it so much that he almost doesn’t hear her confession. For a second, it falls on deaf ears and then on disbelieving ones. He swings his gaze upward and it’s a mixture of shock, of confusion, of anger. Of not knowing what to think about having someone do something so selfless for him. He’s not certain he can remember the last time someone did.

“You did what?”

It hurts, to feel like this again.

It hurts to have it bury in his gut.

To have it remind him that he is not quite as soulless as he would like to believe.

For a second, he considers just walking away from the white mare and leaving her. Of disappearing back into the shadows and fog—where he was alone but it was at least simple. Instead, he gives into the other instinct that swells so painfully in his throat, that twists his tongue until when he does speak again, it is gruff and full of gravel, rolling around like storm clouds as thunderous as the look in his eye.

“Come here, Ryatah.”

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING