[private] there's nowhere to run from the fire she breathes

[Mazikeen]

The first thing she sees in the darkness is gold that is surprisingly close and she knows she should put walls up, have some kind of defense in place, but she is dragged immediately under by the weight of the last year and a half. Both the golden light and the shadows remain but they are fainter, finding no room amongst everything that has returned to her. The seed he had planted took root and turned into a forest. The torrent of her emotions consumes her and any chance she might have of holding herself together begins to slip away further and further with each breath that she takes. It is looming over her, over them, waiting to crash and it’s only a matter of time now.

“Firion.” She croaks out, confusion causing a frown in those bright orange eyes as she sees the streaks of tears on his cheeks illuminated by the gentle glow of her horns.

She reaches for them, as though touching them might help her understand what could have caused them, but she hesitates before she can brush his skin. The need to shield herself from him has been so strong, such a constant, that she doesn’t know what to do without it. So she pulls back so she can look in his eyes, aware each moment that any cruelty from him will shatter the thin wall keeping her from crumbling and yet expecting it all the same.

The memories are coming faster, with greater weight, and her eyes widen slightly in her alarm. Because she knows what’s coming - knows that there will be tears and it will be ugly and this is a weak side of her she never would have imagined letting him see.

So for now she can hold herself together until she knows which Firion it is lying with her. The signs are all there, of course, but she’s blind to them and questioning their last interaction and what he had said to her. Thinking it must be easy to make promises to someone so unwilling to believe them. There had been no danger, no chance at reciprocation.

She wants to ask if he had meant them, to give him a chance to take it all back. Maybe he is crying because he hadn’t gotten the chance to kill her before she took care of it herself (though this thought feels unrealistic just as soon as she thinks it). Mazikeen wants to find out immediately if she needs to try to run from him again before she falls apart. Even though just shifting her body so her legs are beneath her drains more of her energy and she isn’t sure she could move if she wanted to. But he could. He can take this opportunity to leave her and then she wouldn't have the face the fact that she hopes he stays and she doesn't have it in her to pretend otherwise right now.

The weight of it all, of everything she’s done, presses closer and closer and the scrap of her resolve keeping her together continues to fray. There is no physical pain but the heartbreak and the guilt after so much emptiness incapacitates her.

And all she can manage is two quiet words. “You came.”

mazikeen