REICHENBACH'S BAE
They stand so close, but the space between them is one she cannot breach. Oh they are so far apart! Stars and moons, galaxies and universes stretch and expand between them. They continue to grow, pushing her back, back, back. The silver of his eyes is there, glimmering in the stars between them. Her own amethyst glows in the million-sun dust of swirling galaxies. They were one, Reichenbach and she, born of stars and dust. It was forever dusk yielding to night and night forever chasing.
But it was no longer her dusk he sought…
I don’t know.
Her eyes close. Lashes, tangled with snowflakes, touch her cheek. She does not open them soon. She is protected here in the dark of herself, here where the vision of a gypsy boy cannot reach her. He is wild curls and wilder smiles. He is the silver of starlight falling to earth with the chime of coins. His breath is the rhythm of dance and Florentine has felt them all. Her slender neck arches - brave, brave flower-girl. She inhales his hurricane, she weathers the storm he brings. Aislinn’s tenacity, Aislinn’s strength, lines Flora’s muscles and weaves lightning around her heart. He has hurt them both with his wayward heart and now Florentine finds strength within the storm: Aislinn’s strength.
He did not say no to loving Isorath.
The dusk-girl can take no comfort in his words. Night has become a barren and hostile thing – when did it ever feel like this? Her petals, pulled loose from her hair, are a sad, lingering caress, sighing across his tanned skin. They were shy of him once, but now they know the Night King and miss him already.
She does not open her eyes, not when her mind has so suddenly become full, too full, of memories. Between star-strewn nights, there are curtseys and flowers, nervous breath and soft caresses. She once laid a flower in his hair, and then another. The boy was too wild to keep them both.
Her eyes open too look. It is vain hope that wishes to see her flower nestled within his hair. There is none; her wild boy has become water between her fingers.
Eyes, bright and bruised, and oh so somber, gaze at him. “Are you no longer in love with me?” She asks and regrets the moment those small words escape her. She regrets the way they struggle through snow and wind to reach his shadows. They are as fragile as her and carry her every tremulous truth.
Florentine had always been open to this boy, but now she is exposed in every way that hurts. With those words, dignity has fallen from her like cloth, leaving her exposed beneath the biting wind and the laughter of her festival.
But she finds a new dignity and her golden chin lifts. Her eyes meet his flashing teeth, her throat exposed beneath them. Those teeth slash like claws at the tendrils tying her heart together. She lets her heart fall apart, its threads cut by his searching claws. His anger settles in its ruins.
She looks up to him and there are tears behind her eyes. Tears she cannot let fall, but they do anyway. “So it is my fault?” The flower girl says softly, smoothly. She is silk, but silk upon steel. ‘When one dusk hour does not return to you fast enough, you look for another so readily?”
The Night King has moved on, stepping towards her, aggressive and wild. His snarled question, Who is he? is the wind and she a flower it threatens to pull apart.
Florentine breaches the space he leaves between them, the one of infinite stars and galaxies. Ever brave, and unafraid of pain, the girl steps into the embrace of this savage, furious boy. She feels the finality of it, that she might never be here again. Her body knows what it is to be here, drowning in stars and jasmine, shrouded by Calligo’s shadows. Her cheek presses to his neck. Oh brave, brave girl; her heart is still unwound, still in tatters all around.
“I was going to leave Dusk and come to Night.” She says softly to him. “I could not bear to be away from you. But then, the very next day, Rannveig made me queen.” Those broken pieces of her heart steal the breath from her lungs and she gasps for air but gets only jasmine. They are too close, too, too close. “I was not made to be a queen, Reich. I had hoped you would come too, but you never did. As a new queen, I could not so readily run away from my court into the arms of another. But I loved you then, and still do now.”
She rests a moment there, closes her eyes in his warmth, feels the heat of the kiss she lays against his neck. Then Florentine steps back. Back through his shadow, back, away from the lure of his Jasmine. She steps away from him and feels the ruins of her heart bleed anew. History lies between them and this is their end.
Only now does she answer the question he snarled: who is he. “Does it matter, Reich? You have already rejected me for not coming to you.” The breath she takes is slow and full of razors. “He is a friend from childhood, that is all.”
And only her soul with its lover, fate, know it as a lie.
@Reichenbach aaaaaaarghh
This styling is also nice for some non-obtrusive OOC credits, wordcount or banter. Don't forget that divider up there.
