[open] hangman hooded, softly swinging

[atrox]

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

Hours pass and he doesn’t move—isn’t certain that he will ever move again. Ever move from this place where she had taken her last breath. Said her last words. Felt that last wicked beat of her heart. And he hadn’t been there—he hadn’t been there. She had died and she had died alone and every ugly thought that he has ever had himself boils to the surface. Threatens to pull him under and drown him with it.

He doesn’t even hear her when she first approaches.

Doesn’t react at all until she asks the second question.

It is unfair that rage rises to the surface. Unfair that he can only turn into anger because everything else was too unfathomable. How could he break down in front of a stranger? How could he show her everything that is breaking apart in him? The constellations being swallowed whole by his grief.

“Go. Away.” he croaks and he does his best to rein in the fury that he would unleash on her. How much he wants to slaughter anything near him for the hope of some relief. She would forgive him, he knows. Ryatah had seen the worst parts of him and not turned away, but he doesn’t want to stain her memory with his unending rage. He doesn’t want to do anything but sit here in the mud and hold onto the last pieces of her, as painful as they are, as hard as it is to imagine a world where she is not there waiting for him.

He swallows and finally looks up, each movement a Herculean effort. He doesn’t recognize her and doesn’t see any of himself in her—has never been able to pick out which of the children are his or the children of his and so on and so forth. It never mattered. “You don’t want to be here,” he manages, his face wiping clean of the grief and going frighteningly neutral, a mask that is nearly a comfort to bear.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING