I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Her promises fall on half-deafened ears, far from the placations she might have wished them to be. He wants so badly to spill the acid that has been boiling in his gut, to hurt her as much as he had been hurt. But despite everything, he can’t seem to bring himself to. The way she seems to curl in on herself - as though she could become small enough to avoid his wrath - reawakens his sense.
It would solve nothing in the end. He doubts it would even make him feel better. Not when the outcome would always be the same. Despite her protests and her declarations, she never would have chosen him anyway. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered. Where Ashhal had hoarded his affections like a miser, she had broken them into smaller and smaller pieces so she might keep giving them away.
It seems that life has a very grand fucking sense of irony when it made her the one creature that might have convinced him to care.
Not so long ago the realization might have sent him fleeing across half of Beqanna to escape it. Now he doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t move away, or give her space. Even if he can’t find it in him to unfairly lay the blame at her feet, his bitterness is not nearly so kind. Instead it catches in his throat, a lump he can’t quite seem to swallow down.
“Don’t you fucking dare apologize,” he growls hoarsely, ears flattening against the words from her lips. The last thing he wants is her pity. Empty words had never solved problems. It’s why he so seldom has things to say.
And it’s why he doesn’t answer her question. He doesn’t know how to explain happiness to her. Doesn’t even believe they have the same definition. Undoubtedly she imagined some perfect domestic bliss where all their flaws were erased. A wildly divergent paradise to the one he imagined. In any case, it had been a fool’s dream. A dream that had resulted only in torment.
Her final words sting however, finding their mark beneath the ever growing chinks in his armor. Guilt has never been an emotion he responded well to, and much like a feral mutt, his hackles begin to rise. “Should I?” His words are biting, heavily laden with growing sarcasm. “Because you’re so much better than I am?” He pulls back slightly, gaze dropping to her face. To the eyes she so studiously keeps on the ground at his feet. “So then tell me, Ryatah,“ his words practically drip with acrimony now, “if it wasn’t you, who the fuck was it?” His lips twist into an ugly sneer. “Unless you’re going to tell me I don’t recognize your fucking face when I see it.”
@[Ryatah]