She watches him in a heavy kind of silence from her place on the bank, and the subtle tilt of her head, accompanied by her warm glow, could almost fool a stranger into believing in the halo over her head and the angelic drape of her wings. There are no parts of her that are innocent, anymore, but in this dim light with those large, impossibly black eyes full of confusion and the echoes of a hurt that refused to leave, she almost feels like she is. She has been hurt more times than she could possibly remember, no matter how hard she tries to pretend she hasn’t.
And maybe the mistake she had made with Ashhal was never keeping her guard quite as steadfast with him as she did everyone else. She would never be foolish enough to trust Carnage with every part of her, even though her reckless heart wanted to. She was cautious with Atrox, because she would never be able to shake the feeling of being a placeholder for someone that was likely never coming back.
But Ashhal had never been like either one of them. There was never an undertone of violence to their relationship, there was never the possibility that he could spill her blood all across the ground they stood on. And so maybe beneath all the broken and scarred parts of her he had found the few remaining threads of naivety that she had left, and she had dared to think there was something more to them besides lust and sex.
Of course, she had learned she was wrong.
It was tempting to walk away, to leave him there as he had left her. But revenge has never been her way, and so it is with a soft sigh that she gingerly steps towards him, using the aid of intangibility to move through the mud rather actually into it. She ignores his slurred words and whatever protests he might make, and gently touches her nose to his neck. It doesn’t take long for the tendrils of healing to reach him, even if she isn’t sure what, exactly, she is curing him of. Eventually she pulls from him, drawing her delicate face towards her chest and away from him, commenting in a tone that still feels too hollow and detached to truly be her as she retreats back to the bank, “Maybe now I can understand you when you swear at me.”
