Brinly
Her firelit eyes snap to his face when he says that he had been dead, and she is not sure which irritates her more: the casual way it is spoken, or the unsettled feeling that rises up in her chest at the idea that he could have been dead and she would have never known. “What do you mean you were dead?” Her face is mostly unreadable, much of her expression masked by the flicker of flames, but the mixed emotions in her voice cannot be mistaken—the way a note of concern rises above what she tries to pass off as an indifferent kind of confusion, as if what he is saying is boring but she is forcing herself to play nice and pretend to be interested.
But there is only so much that she can pretend, only so long that she can keep this apathetic shield in front of her.
For all the firefight exchanged between the two of them, she did not hate him—she had never hated him.
She buried herself under his skin because knew that was the closest she could ever get, but she did not hate him.
She hated the way she had looked at him the first time she met him and instantly was drawn to him in a way she could not name. She hated how in that first instant, before either of them spoke, her mind had churned through every possibility and every wrong outcome; how that cruel voice that lived in her head had reminded her there was nothing to be found here and to stop looking for things not meant for her.
She hated so many things about herself and about the world, but he is not one of them.
“I’m glad you’re not still dead,” she says, and though her tone is even and unwavering, her eyes catch and hold his for just a moment too long. She feels that familiar heat crawl up her neck and that same impossible feeling in her chest, and she clenches her teeth before purposely diverting her gaze to something indistinguishable in the distance. “I have been painfully alive this entire time,” she answers him, and she does nothing to hide the bitterness that poisons her tone. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —
@brigade