"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
She pulls away and he fights the urge to pull her right back. But Reave is hardly one to spoil such games. No, he finds himself rather enjoying the tension that has begun to build between them, coiling tighter and tighter until it feels as though it might snap altogether. He is greatly looking forward to the moment it does.
Her reply only causes the grin on his lips to grow and the gleam in his eyes to deepen. He rather enjoys surprises.
When she recalls a memory of their youth, the vision of them fluttering between them, he peers at it curiously. He remembers the moments, the wildness they had shared. He had been filled with grief he did not understand and she with rage that the world did not understand her. Together they had been flint and tinder.
He doesn’t answer her question immediately, instead expanding the vision, wrapping the trappings of the meadow around them. As their gazes meet, Reave’s lips quirk in faint recognition. “There are not very many that do understand,” he replies, stepping closer, replacing the vision of their youthful counterparts with the present. “Even now.”
He moves even closer, eliminating the distance she had put between them. There is a gleam in his eye that could be either dangerous or alluring, depending on how one cares to look at it. “But I would much rather look to the future,” he continues, mouth now inches from her cheek. “Wouldn’t you?”
The heart in Galadriel's chest races with a wildly youthful spirit: both fury and newly discovered lust paired with confusion and nauseating embarrassment. She watches the vision she created change, watches Reave wield his magic more masterfully than she has learned. Rel closes her eyes and slowly breathes out, feeling all of her mingling emotions ringing loudly in her ears.
Reave reaches forward, toward her face. Galadriel feels her heart stop, drop directly into the pit of her stomach where it shrivels up and dies. This a game, yes? It's always a game - that's what the vision wielder has done her entire life: played herself and others like simple moving parts. In response to that dying of her heart, Rel's stomach clenches and her mind takes control:
She loves games; and Reave, the delightful young labyrinth, is the perfect one.
Ivory bone glimmers in the corner of Rel's eyes when Reave's mouth finally stops close to her cheek. She surprises herself by turning closer, lifting her lips to where his jaw meets his neck. She laughs, low and mostly to herself, wondering how her life has changed so drastically in just a few minutes.
"Can you see the future, then?" she whispers, fluttering her lashes so close to the man's skin that they might brush him. "And are you a part of mine?"
There is a delight in watching the emotions play as memories surrounding her. Of knowing that this moment is wrapping itself around those particular sensations until every time she feels them, this memory would be carried along with them. Does it make him terrible, this desire to stir such things? This bone-deep longing to know he will always be remembered in at least one small way?
He doesn’t have the answers to that question, and he doubts she would either.
Reave is close enough to feel the heat of her. To see the fire in her eyes as she responds in kind. But then, in the space of a single heartbeat, it feels as though everything changes. Her brilliant violet eyes shutter as the wildness in her is banked abruptly. There is something more crafty about her now, something colder, more purposeful.
As she moves close, mouth against his skin, he can feel the shift in her soft whisper, in the flutter of her lashes against his nose. He doesn’t know quite what had caused this sudden change (a pity he could not read minds too), but her question brings him abruptly back to reality.
Withdrawing, he pulls back to peer at her, blue gaze sharp and fixed. He has never been quite so tempted by a woman before, but he understands now why it is that so many like to blame the heat of the moment. Unfortunately Reave is not nearly so skilled at reigning in his own emotions, so against the allure she had carefully crafted, his eyes burn with an intensity that would carve holes right through her if they could. In his anger, he finds that he does not care to be toyed with.
He doesn’t smile when he answers her questions, the words bitten off as they cross his tongue. “I can.” For a moment he simply stares at her. When he closes the distance he had put between them again, there is a dangerous sort of tension in his movements. A stark contrast to the heated teasing of only moments earlier. “There are many paths that bring us back together,” he affirms in a low drawl, his voice curiously hollow as he speaks. “Is that what you want?” He pauses, mouth so close to the hollow just above her mouth she could no doubt feel his exhale. “Or would you rather take one in which we don’t?”
Galadriel likes her games just as much as Reave likes his; but she is horribly surprised when he does not respond well to her change in nature. She blinks, drawing in a slow breath and wondering if this it: do their intertwined futures disconnect here? Did everything she saw for herself that was so much better suddenly evaporate with her abrasiveness? Rel isn't certain, and that lack of certainty is painfully clear on her face. She feels ashamed that she can't hide these emotions in front of him. Ashamed that he brings out the best and the worst in her and offers absolutely no praise in between. That's what settles it:
A sour frown spreads slowly across her face.
Rel feels her body more than her mind respond to the darkness Reave portrays. She holds the breath she drew in and peers up at him with wide, nearly innocent indigo eyes. The betraying heart in her chest pounds with the stress and want (the want to what she does not know, not quite yet, but time will tell). Rel blinks again, allowing the smallest of smirks to curl her lips.
"Of course that's what I want," she breaths out on that held air, and it's apparent that she's been holding her lungs in the way her whisper is so reverent. Rel closes her eyes now, overwhelmed, certain that he'll have her now that she's conceded but still feeling so terribly uncertain. "Take me wherever you go, then," she adds, opening her eyes that burn with a molten desire for more. For him, for power, for knowledge. She's certain he's the key to it. To everything she's ever wanted and more.
"I don't even know your name," Galadriel finally exhales, suddenly tired. She leans forward, wondering if he'll offer her his weight.
It is her uncertainty that tugs at him first. He wants to ignore it, but he can’t. Not when he is so attuned to every shift in her now that he could nearly feel it vibrating between them. Reave has never been given to the emotion, never been given to second-guessing himself, so he is forced to wonder why she does now. It doesn’t occur to him she had only been trying to match him, to match the wickedness to which he so easily gives in while protecting herself from it at the same time.
He could have told her that would never work though. He has always given himself over to it so completely, allowing it to rage through him and wreak what havoc it would. There is no shielding oneself from these things. It is what had fueled his visceral response, the anger that she would not give herself over as wholly as he had.
But her uncertainty gentles him, even if he does not want it to. Or perhaps it is the way she breathes her response, telling him so plainly that she wants their paths to twine together. It settles the savage that lingers perpetually beneath the surface, poorly hidden beneath a fearsome mask of bone.
He does not respond immediately, but the corners of his lips twitch. He is pleased, even if he does not say it. He had not wanted her to choose the path in which they parted forever, even if he wouldn’t have said so. Reave, for all his feral emotions, is not so free as that. He knows that she could become someone who could hurt him, if he let her. And the bone-clad stallion is not a masochist.
But when she leans forward, he settles against her. The edges of his armor protrude sharply. They must be uncomfortable to lean on, but isn’t that who he is, both inside and out? He would never be a soft or comfortable companion. When he finally does speak, it is to offer her his name. “It’s Reave,” he replies softly. Thief. He had been born one and remains one to this day. After a moment, he touches her cheek. “Come home with me then. I want to show you something.”
