[private] don't close the coffin yet; ryatah

[atrox]

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

His own knowledge of his unfairness does nothing to dull his reactions. It does not bring a softness to his eyes or a sense that he should perhaps back off. Instead it drives him further into the darkness. It lights a fire that he has long ago ignored, a cruelty that time has not dulled but at least let him ignore. He was never meant to be kind, he thinks, not from the first. He was bred into this world. Carved from his anger that sits like a cold stone in his chest. He should never have let her soften him into this domestic thing.

This was her fault, he thinks.

“So now I need to beg you to stay,” he snarls, lips peeling back from his teeth. “How little you must think of me.” The fact that there is part of him that wants her to stay wars with the pieces of him that are glad for her freedom—glad to give her a place to rest while not holding in place—and all of it wars with the deep-seated guilt that flares in him. He doesn’t peel away from her though.

Doesn’t break the closeness.

He can feel her breath, he thinks.

Yellow eyes glance down to her sides and his chest tightens again. “You don’t need to stay. I certainly don’t.” He throws this out, finally unleashing the emotions that coil in him. “In fact, Agetta will likely be bringing our new child here soon.” He rolls his shoulders, feeling all the sharpest pieces of him rise to the surface. “If you’re going to leave, you may want to stay long enough to say hello to our friend.”

The sentence tastes like a self-inflicted bullet wound, and he wonders how quickly he’ll bleed out from it.

Perhaps she will leave for good this time, he thinks—

ignoring the way the thought makes everything in him howl with anguish.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING