"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
02-02-2021, 07:58 PM (This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 07:58 PM by Illum.)
all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed
He wakes to the sound of subdued thunder, to the splash of rain in the trees overhead just seconds before the drops slip through and land on his skin. The rain is cold, but isn’t colder than the frost that covers his body, so when the raindrops land they leave tear-like smudges of shadow carved out of the gauzy silver. There is no emotion in his eyes as he watches the frost disappear, nothing even when lightning flashes and the world is oddly aglow for a moment, once-familiar silhouettes capturing his attention. It is the anatomy of a world recently forgotten in so many days of dark - tall trees dressed in pine needles, long empty of the birds that left to find safer places to live. Places, he assumes, where the monsters cannot go.
Illum eases forward through the trees, and though he would never admit it, he is curious to see these flashes of home while the storm battles the dark. Even the beasts seem to shelter from the violence, and though he would have expected them to be drawn to it, he can only guess that it is the sudden slashes of burning bright light that forces them into darker places. Still, it is reflex now to draw his shadows up along his skin, hardening them across his body like armor as he steps out into the evernight beneath the thickest trees.
He feels suddenly restless, suddenly as agitated as the sky - and the shadows that leap across his path (shadows he cannot murder because they belong to the trees and to himself, thrown there by lightning) are nothing he can take this sleeping fury out on. His piebald wings unfurl, and he snaps them hard to set loose the water beading along the feathers though the gesture is more out of frustration than anything else. Except in doing so he is rewarded by a sharp ache of pain in one of the larger wing joints, an injury he had let Ryatah believe had been healed completely. He lied of course, he is a liar, but it was out of a nauseating fear that she would reduce herself to nothing in her attempts to rebuild him.
He would much rather keep the pain.
Keep the reminder of her, too.
But her name is like a burr sitting on his tongue now, stuck and struck, and he can neither swallow away the thought of her nor spit it back out.
Ryatah.
That is all it takes to set him back into motion, carving a path through the dark from the forests of Taiga to the low mountains of Hyaline. But he is impatient, and he is furious, he is come undone like the sky in her rapid flashes of stormlight. So he launches himself from a craggy peak, flying low enough that he can hear the harried whispering of the leaves in the treetops beneath him. Hyaline is entirely unfamiliar to him though, and it is no less confusing in these flashes of light and the sudden, crashing dark that follows, but he flies until by some miracle he spots a soft, familiar glow beneath him. Her healing magic inside him, maybe, recognizing home.
He pulls the dark in around him more tightly, disappearing entirely as another flash illuminates a place for him to land - and even when all four hooves are in the grass again, he does not send the dark away. She is just there through the trees, white and haloed, glowing faintly like a beacon in all this dark misery. The gold of his eyes shift from dark to molten, and tendrils of shadow wind like vines over the ground until they are close enough to climb her legs. He is close now too, and he cannot tell if she has heard him yet or if the storm has masked the sound of him.
“Angel,” he says, and though the words themselves might sound vaguely threatening, there is no malice in those golden eyes should she turn to search them, “shouldn’t you know better? There are all kinds of things hiding in the dark now.” He, of course, being the worst. The distance between them evaporates as he steps closer, the vines of shadow climbing gently up her legs, up her neck to brush against the soft place at her throat where he can remember how her pulse had shuddered in different times. But she isn’t his, and this is not why he’s come. He exhales and there is a ripple of motion along his jaw when he clenches his teeth to keep from reaching out to breath in the scent of wisteria he knows clings to her hair from too much time under these trees. “You’re like a beacon to the dark, angel.”
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She is not often away from Atrox, but this night that refused to see morning has left her restless, tense. With each passing day Este grew weaker, no matter the things that they tried. At this rate she is afraid that the girl will not make it another year—not without sunlight. Ryatah didn’t have a solution, and while she knew she would not find it hiding anywhere in Hyaline, simply walking worked to ease some of the tension.
When the rain first began to fall she did not mind. With her angelic wings folded over her back most of the water ran off of her in glistening rivulets, tracing paths down the delicate angles of her face and gathering in beads along the strands of her glowing mane. It was only once the sky began to rumble with thunder that she paused to look over her shoulder, glancing backward at the path she had come from. She was going to turn back, to return to where she had left Atrox and the twins when the sky was suddenly alight with a jagged streak of lightning.
It was strange to see any kind of light after so long in the dark.
And then she laughs because it was strange for her to think the darkness was strange.
She moves towards a thick grove of trees, shaking the rain from her hair and her wings once she is under the safety of their limbs. She almost does not notice the shadows crawling toward her, for they blend in with the dark around them. But the feel of them as they twine up her legs is unmistakable, and even before she turns to find those familiar golden eyes his name is springing to her tongue. “Illum?” Even though she had known there is still a flash of pleasant surprise at the sight of him, and when her skin trembles at the familiar feel of his shadows on her skin it is not out of fear.
The space that he had left between them evaporates because she has never known how to keep distance between the things that are not hers, the things that she could wound with her careless, wicked heart. She reaches a softly glowing nose to his, breathing in the familiar scent of him, and for a moment she is lost beneath a wave of nostalgia. He had, after all, been hers, even if it was only for a short while. They had written their stories onto each other, shared moments that could never be stolen by anyone—moments that were theirs alone. And while she is not his, and he is not hers, it does not keep her from pressing the light of her into the dark of him, just as she had all those nights in Taiga.
From her mouth spills a laugh, light and silvery in comparison to the storm that rages around them. “I’m not afraid of the dark,” she tells him, even though she knows that he knows. With a tilt of her head she takes in the dark around them, and to the shadows that he had called back to him. “It never occurred to me until now that perhaps this endless night is your doing.” There is a knowingness to her smile, a coyness to the way she suggests teasingly, “Was I too difficult to find in the light?”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
Illum pauses at the sound of his name on her quiet lips, at the way her pale skin trembles beneath the touch of his shadows, and he is glad for the way she cannot hear him wondering at whether or not he could take her from here. There is a part of him that is certain he would be willing to try, certain that she would be willing to let him, at least for a while. But then he drifts closer to brush his lips along the curve of her neck and he can smell the lingering scent of her family there. His jaw clenches, and a dark violence burns through him, his gold eyes darkening to almost bronze until he closes them and turns away to look up into the flashing sky.
He had known the price of for now, and though he would have accepted anything for the reward of knowing her, he is still ill-prepared for the way it makes him ache inside his chest to stand so close to her and yet know she is so far out of reach.
It is worse when she reaches for him and he is filled with remembering and wanting and old reflexes he had thought he’d buried in graves when she stopped coming back. He had not blamed her, of course, there are very few things worth having forever, and he has never let himself believe he is one of them. It is hard to do anything but watch her face and wonder how this closeness affects her, if it affects her at all, and for as long as he can bear it he is still. But then he steps closer again and his mouth tracks quietly up her cheek and over the curve of her jaw so he can breathe in the smell of her again. In this crook at the side of her throat and just beneath her mane, there is only the smell of her and no one else.
Something unexpected eases in his chest once he is pressed so close, and the wanting is muted by a contentment that has him reaching to draw her in closer and shield her from the rain beneath wings she had healed. “That’s because you have no sense at all.” He observes, but his voice is lighter now, and the edge has gone from him as his eyes shine a soft new gold as pale as the lost sunshine. “I would’ve never had a chance if you did.” And the smile in his voice, the one he hides from his mouth, is enough to tell her how much that pleases him.
But the sound of her laughter unravels all of his efforts, and the corners of his mouth lift as he turns from the storming sky to look at her again. He is surprised that even like this, things do not feel terribly different. She is not his, but she also hadn’t cast him away. It feels like some kind of middleground he had not expected to find between them. “I had to make sure you would always be thinking of me.” He admits, a lazy shrug to his shoulders that makes the rain roll off in little streams. He is awkward though, not so practiced in whatever this is, whatever comes so easily to her as nearly everything does. And then, more seriously. “No, Angel. I can find you anywhere.” But it reignites a heat in him, revives the dark he had thought crushed down inside him, so he tenses, inhales slowly, and asks, “How is your family, Ryatah.”
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She adored Illum in a way that she had not expected. He had drawn her in with shadows, as if he had known the soul of her from the very beginning. As if he had known that for all the light she radiated that she would not be able to resist the temptation of being swallowed by darkness. He had felt like everything she had thought she wanted; the way he could coil shadows around her throat and then press cold, frosted lips to her skin, how his eyes changed from molten gold to warm amber in a flash. After everything with Atrox had fallen apart he had served as the salve to her wounded heart—the only thing that held her together.
She had told him that she was not going to stay forever, but she had loved him as if she didn’t believe her own words.
There is the faintest of aches somewhere behind her breastbone when he trails his nose across her cheek and to beneath her mane, undoubtedly searching for a part of her that is not drenched in the scent of Atrox. She wonders how she would feel if the roles were reversed; wonders how she will react when one day they cross paths and it is him that is covered in another scent with another family, and she is nothing but a memory. The very idea is enough to encourage the first embers of jealousy, but is a jealousy she has no right to. She belongs to someone else, and it is unfair for her to try and keep Illum to herself when she would never be his.
Still, she does not resist when he pulls her close and she steps easily beneath his wing, the warmth of her body melting the frost on his side away. She had forgotten what that felt like, the way his cold skin felt like a shock at first, sending a shiver down her back. “I like to think that I have some sense,” she counters back in her own lightly teasing tone, her teeth pulling at the black strands of his mane just for an excuse to touch him again. “I could have done worse than you,” there is still a small smile on her lips, but her voice softens and her almost black eyes turn more somber when she adds, “and you will do much better than me.”
Much better than the fool-hearted woman that changed her mind faster than the weather, who loved and kept things that should never be hers.
Her jaw tightens and her throat constricts at having to admit it out loud; to hear herself say, to accept, that one day he will do better than her. That they will not be able to curl around each other in this world of make believe they crafted for themselves, because she knows, without a doubt, that once Illum gives someone his heart it will be so far out of reach that not even she can touch it.
That is her excuse, then, to stretch this moment on for as long as she can. To drink in his scent and his touch as if it is the last time, because she knows someday it will be.
Her shoulder leans into him, her neck curved to gently run her nose over his wing that is draped across her back. She finds the places that she had healed from the fire in Taiga, mindlessly running her lips over the satin-feel of the feathers, before answering his question. “Everyone is fine,” is her vague answer, afraid of going into too much detail. She does not want to tell him about Astin and Maea, or Este and Selaphiel. She does not want to tell him that Hyaline and Atrox had turned into home, that her heart was more content than it has ever been. Instead she removes her nose from his wing, turning her delicate head back to his to look at the soft gold of his eyes. “But how are you? You seem to have survived despite my mediocre healing job.”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
It is because light does not exist without dark, because shadow disappears in the absence of day, because he cannot exist in the absence of her. And there had been a small moment in the vastness of time when their togetherness had been exactly right, when each became a balm the other needed. But she is better at healing, better at finding her feet and finding herself, and he is only the worst parts of himself without any promise of evolution.
He is stagnance, he always has been, and now it is easier than ever to leave himself in the past.
Their past.
He is glad when she allows him this gift of pulling her close, glad that she does not recoil from him even when they both know there will be nothing more than whatever this moment is. Even so, he does not immediately drape his wing around her in case she changes her mind - and when her body brushes the ice along his dark skin and a shiver steals up her spine, he is certain she will. But she stays and so he lets his wing settle over her, shielding her from the rain and the night and the cold, though they both know it is for his sake more than hers.
“But you didn’t.” He says, and he wonders if she will know how hard it was not to remind her that nothing is worse than him. Her dark eyes turn somber, her voice softening, and he reaches out despite his better judgment to trace quiet lips along the soft of her forelock. “If there is anything better than you,” he says, her forelock moving beneath the warmth of his breath, his whispered words which he does not try to conceal the sound of his doubt from, “it is certainly not for me.”
Her silence is what breaks him, and he takes more than he should, touching her neck and her jaw and that soft place just beneath her ear, ignoring that the scent of her is so infused with someone else. It isn’t romantic, and these aren’t kisses, but they are intimate in a way he knows he has to unlearn with her.
She leans into his shoulder to explore the curve of one giant piebald wing, and the motion pulls her from his lips in a natural way. Except this is no kind of distance at all, and the sensation of her lips over the most sensitive parts of his wings is enough to drive him to a groaning madness he only just barely crushes back down. “Angel,” he says, and the words are a sharp kind of warning he’s never used with her, but he is only just barely hanging onto this feeling of sanity and she is going to unleash him if she doesn’t stop that, “please.”
He can’t, not yet.
This love inside his chest is a flame not quite snuffed out and she is the purest kind of oxygen.
He breathes in raggedly, and new lines of tension race like lightning beneath his skin, coiling in his jaw and his shoulders. When she turns to him he does not immediately move to meet her eyes again, choosing to focus instead on the storm now starting to retreat. “Amazing that you’ve all escaped the end of the world unscathed.” He says finally, quietly, fighting for composure another moment before turning those deep golden eyes on her. He is hurt by the way she doesn’t elaborate, and even though he tries to hide the emotion he is sure it still surfaces in odd glimpses. Everything is so close to the surface now.
He breathes again and this time it is more steady, the gold of his eyes fading to something softer, more contained. “In a world of dark? I can do nothing but thrive.” He says, but there is a new weariness in his face because he is a liar. You cannot leave shadow like him in a world of dark and not expect it to disappear entirely, to be consumed. He starts to reach for her again but stills halfway to her brow and pulls back again. “You are the only reason I lived.” He says, and his eyes find somewhere else to look, his voice hard and edged in a strange kind of self loathing. “Do you regret that yet?”
She knows, because it is impossible not to know, that the things that existed between them—the spark and the flame, the heat and the want—were not things that could just go away. The sun had disappeared from the sky faster than love would ever disappear once rooted in her heart; even if she kept it where light may not ever reach it, it could never die entirely.
The feel of his breath on her face when he speaks in the quiet gravel of his voice creates a tight, aching feeling of longing inside of her chest, coupled with sorrow and all the other things she tried so hard not to feel. The way that it spreads and grows feels like something is physically about to break her ribcage apart, like the love is trying to crawl its way out of the grave she attempted to bury it in, unable to resist the gentle touches and kisses that he caresses her with. Instead of withdrawing away she pushes closer, pressing her forehead against his neck as she tries to speak around the knot in her throat, forcing a light tone of teasing despite the anguish that lives there. “You say that now, because you haven’t met her yet.”
It is only at the unusual sharp way that he calls her angel that she withdraws, drawing her nose towards her chest in the passive way that she is so accustomed to doing when she feels she has done something wrong—when Atrox’s tone becomes edged because she pried into something he had not want her looking at, or when Carnage was clearly displeased with a task she did or did not do. The obedience and the apologies are ingrained into her, carved into her bones so deeply that she does not even notice that she does it, does not even notice the way she breathes out a soft, “I’m sorry,” with her eyes on the ground, though her lips still tingle with the the feeling of his satin-soft feathers.
When she steals a look upwards he is no longer looking at her, staring instead to the horizon, and in the dim light between them she can see the tight muscles of his jaw, and the hard gold of his eyes. She wants to reach for him again, not just because she is selfish (wanting things that are no longer hers), but because it has always been the way of her, to want the things that try to push her away. But his words somehow feel like a reprimand and so she doesn’t, her own expression still subdued and her tone cautious when she says, “I have a daughter that isn’t doing well in the dark. I just….I didn’t think you would want to hear about that. About her.” Her wings shift and resettle, the way that they do when she is agitated in a quiet, subtle way that only she can be—a tension that only surfaces in the dark of her eyes but otherwise does not shadow her face. How did she explain to him that she did not want to pain him with all the details of her family—her family that was not him, her children that were not Illuminae and Radiance; the things that she had essentially left him for.
But the way that he suddenly softens, the way that he looks at her with eyes that are both intense and warm all in one, is enough to make her momentarily forget Este, or the fact that they are even in Hyaline. He reaches for her, and though he stops, she does not. In an instant she is closing the small space between them, reaching to run her nose beneath the thick strands of his mane to the soft skin beneath, an unusual kind of intensity to her voice when she tells him, “I will never regret saving you, and I would save you a thousand more times.” She does not give him the chance to avoid her eyes, fixing his gaze with her own as her heart beats erratically inside of her chest, the love and the pain burning and bright within her veins and reflecting in the near-black of her eyes. “No matter what happens between us, Illum, I would rather watch you belong to someone else than for you to be somewhere that I could never follow.”
EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES
just posting my super old reply from our google doc so this can be ~canon~
With her forehead pressed to his neck and her words so soft against the frost of his cold, frozen skin, he feels momentarily at peace. You say that now, because you haven’t met her yet. He blinks once almost as though he’s been struck, but then his eyes are forced blank again, a quiet gold that looks almost bronze in this new evernight as he struggles with the urge to turn to her and laugh. In the end the urge wins over and he surrenders to it almost tiredly as he half-turns to study her face again with something like exhausted amusement burning in his darkening gaze. “Haven’t I though?” As if there could be anyone but her, anyone but Ryatah. As if she doesn’t already know this.
But there remains in him a vein of sharpness even as that hollow amusement simmers in his gaze, and it is only when she bows her delicate head close enough to touch her own chest that he remembers to be softer for her, to be more than his own nature would have him be. “Be sorry for nothing, Angel.” It is still a reprimand, and his eyes still burn at her with a strange stoniness that doesn’t fade immediately, but there is something gentle in the way her frowns and reaches for her again, tracing his mouth along the curves of her impossibly pale neck. “Leave that to me.” And though he shouldn’t, though he knows it is only one more thing for him to be sorry for, his mouth finds that familiar hollow of her throat in a row of three quiet kisses as though the tremble of her pulse is something he is starving for.
Isn’t it, though?
She speaks again and his dark gaze is drawn to the movement of her wings, a gentle kind of restlessness that makes him wonder. But though her wings are beautiful, they do not hold his attention for long. “I won’t ask about the things I do not want to know.” He tells her, and his eyes burn for a moment like dark suns. “I am not so naive as to assume you haven’t had children since Radiance and Illuminae.” But his words don’t match the tension that twists his expression, the pain that flashes in his eyes or the way they burn will all the frustration of wanting the rest of her children to have been his. It is a possessiveness that tastes like metal on his tongue even while he is glad that she found something better than him, something more and worthwhile.
He closes his eyes as his pulse pounds in his ears, once, twice, and then when he opens them again they are calm and quiet in a way that only forced distance can convey. “I am not so fragile.” He says finally, though he is quite certain this is at least some kind of a lie. “It would be worse to know only half truths, half of you.” That at least feels true.
When he looks at her again and she is suddenly closing distances he could not, there is something that both breaks and hardens within the cage of his chest. “There is nothing you cannot share with me. It would be worse to know you felt like you couldn’t.” It is not a lie, and yet somehow he knows it is not entirely true either. There are much worse things she could tell him, he is sure. But this piece of who he was fights to be someone worth knowing, fights to be more than the dark that lives inside his chest and the desire that eats away at his gut. He can want her without having her, love her at a distance. But this is no distance at all, and when he reaches for her again it is with the parts of him that she was right to leave behind.
“I will make you regret it.” He says, and it is a promise he leaves in a low whisper beside her ear, a vow he presses like a kiss as he breathes the words against the pale of her damp, glowing skin. He knows he should stop there, but she is so close and so warm and so right, and so his mouth wanders on across the curve of her neck, his teeth grazing the hollow of her delicate shoulder. It is impossible to be still now, impossible to think, to be anything good, and his feet carry him further to her wings where he winds shadow through the gossamer feathers until each one is etched with the dark of him. “Angel.” He says, and his voice is a low, desperate growl, his eyes too dark to be molten as he closes them and presses his nose to the curve of her hip to breathe her in. “Tell me you’re sure.” It must be some kind of self-torture, just another way that he is so broken, because he is sure it’ll kill him to hear her say that she is sure she does not want him.
But she must, she needs to blind him with this pain because the dark inside him is roiling for her light, for her love.
what are you talking about, i wrote this in five minutes
He makes her want to be more selfish than she already is, makes her skin hum where he presses his lips into her throat and causes her pulse to leap eagerly to meet his touch. The rush of heat that travels down her neck brings with it a flood of memories from Taiga, and she thinks how easy it would be to lose herself to him again. Here, with just the two of them, and if this had been any other time, any other version of herself, she would be his right now. There is nothing stopping her, and if her history was any indicator it should not matter that her heart has anchored itself to someone else.
She has always been so good at belonging to someone just for a moment, a night, a month—however long they might want her, and Illum would have wanted her forever.
But her heart was a thing that she could not control, and she never has been able to figure it out. Even though it beats with a want for him in her chest it sings too with a quiet guilt, a reminder that she has already walked this path and nearly destroyed her and Atrox in the process. She does not have any special kind of faith in herself to think that she will not eventually ruin them, and it was so unlike her to try. She still does not know what has set Atrox apart from Skellig; why she is trying her hardest for him, and Skellig she did nothing but burn him to the ground and leave him in the ashes.
Whatever the reason, it is the thing that keeps her tethered to reality. The thing that reminds her that this moment does not exist in a wonderland of only her and Illum, but that Atrox is just on the other side of the lake, that before nightfall she will be back with him. It is a reminder to keep that emotional distance between herself and Illum, even though the tension in his voice and the way his eyes keep flashing from a molten fierceness to a cold indifference is making it impossible. “Then I won’t keep anything from you,” she tells him gently, and for a moment she forgets her earlier resolve and lets her nose again trace the muscled lines of his shoulder. “Only full answers and whole truths from now on.”
And oh, how quickly she regrets saying that.
He is suddenly pressed against her, with that shift in his voice that makes her skin tremble in a way that is both in fear and anticipation. Her breath catches in her throat but she makes no effort to move away, not even when his teeth drag down her neck and side. “Illum,” there is an almost gasping strain to her voice, and his name tastes like sorrow and regret as she presses into him for a weighted moment, before gritting her teeth and shifting her hip away. “Stop,” it should have been a command but it is too weak coming from her mouth, with his shadows laced across her wings and his touch still burning against her skin.
She had promised him full answers and whole truths, and though she knows she owes him that much, the words still sting her tongue.
“I can’t be with you,” while it is spoken in a voice that is so impossibly soft there is a finality to it, forcing herself to meet his gaze when she finishes with, “I love Atrox.” And she does—she knows this beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knows this with a certainty unlike any she has ever experienced. That wretched heart of hers that tried too hard to love everything not meant for her was scattered into all the corners of the earth but she had pulled together what was left and promised it to him.
But still she is trembling with having to say this aloud to him, still wrapped in his darkness and so close to the storm that he is keeping captive inside of himself. She does not reach for him now, tentative and unsure in the way that she stands so still alongside him, adding quietly, “But that does not mean that I wouldn’t do anything for you.”
EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES
oh yeah, so did I. LOL look at me, I'm LaUrA and SaM and JaSsAl
06-01-2021, 05:12 PM (This post was last modified: 06-01-2021, 05:13 PM by Illum.)
ILLUM
Stop.
It is just a word, just one single word, but he bends to it like shadow around the edges of light. It doesn’t matter that he can still feel the tremble of that porcelain pale skin beneath his cool touch, or that the sound of that small gasp catching in her throat still echoes in his ears. She had said his name, and it had not been in a way filled with affection or willingness. It had been in a way that made him wonder if she finally understood the depths of his wretchedness, if she finally understood that she should fear the dark that lived inside his chest. That she should fear him.
Stop.
She moves away from him and he is little more than a stone-faced statue, void of any hint of the pain and loss that burns through him with the intensity of a sun gone supernova. He is time come undone, he is erosion in fast forward, there will be nothing left of him when he leaves her this time and he finds that it is hard to care. The shadows fall away from her wings, dropping like shadow-silk carved away in great swaths. It pools in the darkness at their feet and is gone in an instant.
When she speaks again he is nothing but the living night. Blackness creeps over his skin until it swallows him in shadow, making all his edges blurry and indistinct like every part of who he is might disappear into the surrounding dark. He does not notice the changes though,not even the way the hair of his mane moves against his neck like he is underwater, like it is black fog against his skin. He does not feel changed. He does not feel anything at all except this vast hollowness that settles inside his chest as a ring of silver creeps like ice just around the edge of his pupils. He doesn’t blink when she looks him in the eyes, doesn’t beg when she wounds him with truths he had all but demanded from her.
He is empty.
He is vast.
He is the cold dark of the space between stars, the night that brings you deepest fears to watch you while you sleep.
“You will do nothing for me.” He says, and his strange eyes drift to the way her delicate body trembles at the effort of - of what? Of being this near to him? Had he frightened her with his closeness, with the way he would have taken anything she was willing to give him. Stop. He tries to recall if there had been fear in her voice, if those dark, beautiful eyes had watched him with a new kind of wariness after that gritted request. “You will forget that you ever knew me. Return me to the dark, Ryatah. It is the only place I belong.” He doesn’t call her Angel this time, but she is, she always is and it burns something inside his chest to call her anything else.
He takes a step back, and then another, and he can feel that darkness rise inside him with a fury that nearly blinds him. It begs him to erase the distance between them, to press his mouth to her neck and taste with wandering lips the way her skin trembles beneath them. Would she ask him to stop a second time? He blinks, and something savage ruins the beautiful dark of his face and he turns from her entirely, fighting for a control he no longer has.
Except -
He freezes, his face turning back to watch her with all of that agony slipping through the cracks of his careful stone mask. “I love you.” It is not a confession, not a secret, not a plea to make her change what it is inside her heart. He is glad she has the sense to love someone better than him. “If you ever need me,” a pause, because the wording feels like a kind of goodbye he hadn’t meant it to, and yet maybe it has to be, maybe it is the only good part of him left to give her, “there is a feather beneath your right wing where it meets your shoulder. Pull it free and I will find you, no matter what.” He carves it from his own dark - not this false night that surrounds them, but from the shadows that live inside his soul. It is the same size as the feathers that surround it, same shape, identical in everything but color. He tucks it in with his magics where it will remain hidden until she needs it, if she ever needs it. “And if it is not something you want to keep, let the light in you burn it away. It is only shadow.” Like him.
She feels the shift in him.
Feels the way that single word does more than simply stall his touch, and all her years of being obedient and willing are at once at war with her own version of resistance. She almost bends to it, almost lets herself collapse beneath what she perceives to be his anger or disappointment. She has never told anyone to stop before—she has never done anything other than try to be exactly what she thought they wanted her to be, even if it felt wrong. Her instincts—everything so thoroughly engraved into the very makings of her that nothing could ever change it—struggle to find the surface, to break past her skin, and force her to whisper an apology and take it all back.
But her heart, usually so wretched and immoral, cannot bring itself to betray Atrox.
Though it writhes in her chest, unfamiliar with being so steadfast, she does not cave, not even when the darkness seems to swallow him whole.
He melts into the dark until he is nearly nothing, and though she is used to his shadows and the way he can craft and shift them, this is something else entirely. She cannot see the familiar angles of him anymore, cannot find the edges she was used to tracing or fitting herself against.
He changes, and she feels something break inside of her because she knows it is her fault.
It is not just the dark, but also the look in his eye now rimmed with silver, the way his face has changed when he looks at her, the way his mouth says her name and not angel. She does nothing to try to take it back, though, does nothing to try to stop this avalanche of their destruction, because what purpose would that serve? He could find someone else, could be loved by someone else, but not with her still attached to him.
She outwardly flinches when he says that he loves her, the words seeming to singe against her skin and her nerves. She was not used to hearing them—of all the men that she has loved and all the turbulent romances she has found herself in, only Skellig and Atrox have ever told her they loved her. Illum says it so clearly, so plainly, as if he is telling her this as a fact and not a thing he is professing—as if she would not be able to hear the undercurrent of pain when he speaks. She does not respond, does not tell him that she had loved him at one time, too, and instead lets her silence build a divide between them that she could have never have put there on her own.
He mentions the feather and she feels her skin flush hot, though she does not look for it. If he says it is there, she knows it is. Her tongue is restless because she wants to tell him she is not sure if it’s a good idea, to keep any kind of tether between the two of them, but she has already given up so much—given him up—that she cannot bring herself to actually say it. She will keep it, this one last thing that binds them together; she will be selfish, in this one last way.
“Nothing is ever only shadow,” she manages quietly in response, but she does not expect that he heard her. He is already disappearing into the endless dark, and she does try to stop him. Her light is not the light that is meant to save him, and she understands that now.
