jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
It is a dangerous game they play.
If it can be called a game at all.
But she touches him with soft edges and they turn each other murky. Light and dark at war in their soft edges. And there is nothing left of his disappointment. He is delighted in his own peculiar way. But it makes him greedy. He wants more. He wants to move to the very center of her, let her swallow him whole. Or, perhaps, the other way around.
He can feel it, too. The warmth that charges through him when she speaks into all that vapor. It does not eradicate his pain completely, but lessens it just enough to notice. He breathes without the aching in his ribcage. The knees do not tremble with all of the effort it takes to keep him upright.
He takes one step forward, deeper, until he is shoulder-deep in her. This is perhaps the closest he will ever come to feeling. Mist and shadow. Neither of them tangible, but he can almost breathe her in. He does not come away empty. It fills him up. There is nothing here that he is missing, nothing to ache for.
And then she is drawing away. He feels neither cold nor heat without skin to absorb it. But she draws away and he feels quite suddenly doused in ice water. Even despite what she says, that they can try, that he does not have to let the pain define him.
He meets her gaze steady while the tremor returns to his knees, the rattling to his lungs.
He exhales a tempered sigh and looks away. He studies the terrain to offer himself a brief reprieve before he shackles his focus to her face again.
“I’m afraid,” he admits, wheezes. Subtly shakes his head. “I’m afraid of what I might be capable of without it.”
He drags in a shuddering breath. “I fear that it is the only thing that keeps me safe.”
you need a villain, give me a name
