and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Poachers. Crime. Investigation. It's all starting to feel like a dream, or a nightmare, one day running into the next into the next into the next with no definitive beginning or end. Though they turn the dirt it has surfaced nothing but more, bones, more bodies, more bullets to add to his growing list of things to do and people to tolerate. He has stopped counting days without sleep. It doesn't seem to matter, anymore.

('Go home,' someone had said, 'get some god damn sleep. You'll be no use at all if you die of exhaustion.'

Andras had sneered, 'Then let it be a swift death,' crackling with bolts of blue light. There was a pregnant pause, before Andras conceded (a word which, used here, means felt so tired, all the way down to his marrow, that he could not even conjure the strength to fight), brushing out of the room in a flurry of black feathers and an electric hum.)

The library is bustling, much to his chagrin, in the quiet way that libraries do - the tick of hooves on the worn wood floor coming and going, the voices that, though numerous, never rise to more than a quiet murmur in the background, and always, always the birds and the wind. It is the song of peace, the gentle chime of patience, and for a moment he can hear it and only it, over his electric hum, over the murmur in the halls, over his pounding heart singing hunt in the back of his head. Hunt. Fight. Bleed. He does not know why.

Andras floats past the crowd, gathered to read stories of war and strife and adventure, into a quieter hall that branches toward dark, even more silent study rooms where Andras will fall into his bed of pillows amid his cluttered paper and spilled pens and be asleep before he hits the ground.

Or, would, if there were not the moment where he passes a stranger, dressed in a fine, clean linen, hung here and there with elegant gold jewelry, and meets his eyes in passing, but the stranger does not look away. A static arc crashes down his back, popping like fireworks. He turns to the boy, expression ineffable behind the glare of his glasses.

He says, through clenched teeth, "What."
It does not sound so much like a question.

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Of course--the snakes.

Now that he sees them, round scales glinting coldly in the lamplight, or the cold winter sun, it is all he sees--their bodies swimming from sleep, curling lazily about the stranger's cheeks, glancing off the sharp curve of his jaw. Andras draws half a breath, watching them with pursed lips, wide, wide eyes and a body as stiff as a corpse.

The man says, Nothing. Why?

For a moment the hiss of the snakes meets the hiss of his magic and Andras has to swallow hard to keep it from pouring from him, faster and faster. He could fill this whole library with his magic, bring it down brick by brick, root by root, shelf by sturdy shelf. He thinks, now he is dangerous, enough to blow this man's wicked smile from his beautiful face, but not in the way that lions or gods are dangerous--like the queen of Denocte and her black hatred--but the way caged animals are dangerous, all claws and teeth and rage.

Teeth. Teeth that close tighter, but never tight enough. Claws. Hooves that root him to the wood floor that reflects his own ugly anger back up at him and his magic is banging, banging, banging at his doors like a rabid dog, all foaming jaws and bloody fangs. Rage. Rage that discharges in waves, pulsing down his spine, a pirouette from shoulder to shoulder, rib to rib to rib, hip to hip.

(Someone on the other side of the room gasps. There is a hurried sound, the bustle of several bodies fleeing at once. Those that don't are likely Deluminian, peering boredly over their books at their Warden, accosting another tourist in another dark corner of the library. Andras neither hears nor cares.)

Nothing. Why? Andras bites down on his tongue and snarls, "Perfect." This close--so close he can practically smell the white linen, the exotic spice of a wealthy Solterran household-- the light of his magic is reflected back at a thousand different angles from each scale on each bobbing snake and also the scales on the man's brow. The light in them shifts, a thin crescent rolling from one side to the other as the head tilts, the muscles stretch, and Andras' eyes slide up, up, until they are met with another pair, like molten gold, pupils like black holes.

He stares a little too long. Just a little. The hall casts long shadows over his dark back.
Andras asks, barely audible over the hum of his skin: "Why were you staring at me?"

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Andras is not selfish. He is not in pain. He does not stare at himself in the mirror and think, why? He is not prideful. Andras is exactly who he wants to be--and maybe that, after all, is the problem.

His magic is up to the ceiling of his heart, now, clawing at the underside of his mouth, the back of his teeth, digging at Andras' tight-lipped frown with fingers like batteries. It rises like bile, searing his throat, burning his tongue--and then, when its fists hit the ceiling and its howling rage is so bright and so hot even it cannot see its dirty hands, suddenly there is nowhere left to go. He is surprised when he doesn't combust, far more surprised when he steps forward and the rest of it discharges, and the quiet that fills the room is bone-chilling.

Pilate shruggs. It is silent, and dismissive, and muscles of his neck tighten and contract in a way that makes one last wave of static roll down his own. He wonders why he notices.

He thinks back to Isra in the yellow glow of the lanterns, surrounded by spice and bent metal and sharp edges. He remembers the look in her eyes that said yes the same way his does, the same way Andras prays for swinging fists and spitting blood on the ground. Her magic had risen like a sword and she had swallowed it down. He cannot see his as a tool, cannot see himself as a vessel, or a prisoner, or whatever he is.

His magic is just a thing that happens. He, himself, is just a thing that it happens to.
Someday Andras will realize, what it means to be powerful, and deadly. Someday he will putt his grubby little hands on the wheel and pull. For now the thought doesn't even cross his mind.

Their eyes meet again, molten gold like the heart of a volcano and some color that is not quite steel but is not quite a thunderhead, something like the dark rock in the hearts of mountains. And then, as if they had never met at all, the Solterran turns his down to a new book, and Andras is standing as the crossroads, naked, angry and, in a word, stunned. A road diverged in a yellow wood, and so on, and so on. This feels like a game Andras doesn't want to play, one where there are just two pieces and no winning moves. One that Andras isn't any good at. The only reason he sees the eyes roll back to him and stroll toward his own at a pace that makes him dizzy, is because he is looking, himself, with this dour, long-suffering expression on his dark, dark face. It only gets darker.

Why does anyone? He wonders, narrowing his eyes. Thought you were worth a stare, Pilate says, and Andras' frown only deepens until it is more of a grimace of disbelief than anything else. He had expected--something? Anything? Fists? Teeth? Literally anything but the unholy hush of the library when he makes a quiet, frustrated noise and turns his head away with a huff.

Why does he want it?
"Convincing." he says, eyes fixed on a wall of shelves stuffed top to bottom with identical, leather-bound books. "Who are you?" 

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

The last dregs of electricity slough off his skin in lazy sparks, bouncing along at his heels until they, too, are inevitably snuffed out. Andras remembers now he is tired, marrow-deep fatigue that, now that he is not propped up by his anger or his magic, leaves him cold and spent, like so many rags on the ground. The shelf of books is a dreamy blur, much too far for Andras to see even with his glasses, but he reads them as best as he can, looking at something--anything--that is not this man with his heavy orange eyes and a smile like his snakes. Enticing. Dangerous. Andras wonders why he thinks words like enticing and why it is not then but when he thinks dangerous that whatever shoddy scaffolding is holding him up starts to creak under his weight.

There is nothing in particular that screams 'dangerous' about Pilate, no defining feature that Andras can point to and say 'eureka,' not the incalculable patience or the gold of his eyes or the white winter light on his scales. When there is movement out of the corner of his eye, either as small as a blink or as large as an inclination of the head--to watch Andras now that Andras is not, in turn, watching Pilate--he does not think that he is of any particular danger.

Danger, his heart says, lying. Maybe he wishes it wasn't. Maybe it isn't. He cannot find it in him to care.

The man unfolds his legs and rolls to a stand, the bones of his lurching shoulders peeking over the fabric that falls to the side, floating momentarily on the cold winter air. He stretches--languid, catlike--with each dark leg straightened like a prayer, or a sin, or some entirely other entity altogether, a god he doesn't know with a name he can't say. 

He doesn't realize he is staring--not so much like a lech as a person reading a particularly intetresting book or drinking a particularly tasty wine--until it is far, far too late, and even though Andras knits his brow and looks away he cannot deny that it happened.

Pilate, he says, with one side of his mouth curling into a wicked sickle. It sounds like the dry desert sun, like courtyards and servants and the ungodly fire of his eyes. He is coming closer now, so slowly that Andras stiffens when he takes the first step, smiling the way dogs smile, unkindly and full of teeth. A challenge? A threat? He cannot tell.

"Sweet?" he says, slowly. He has lost track of his eyes. Are they staring? Does he care? "I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic."  The laugh that comes out of Andras is unexpected and tense, the way children laugh in a purportedly haunted house. He has never felt more like a haunted house in his life, with every ghost singing yes in unison, but instead of the drum of his rage he can hear only his heart. Pounding. Pounding. On its own walls, its own door, everywhere.

Andras thinks, fuck.

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Pilate grins, when he laughs, like it is a precious thing, one to be held carefully, and close, and Andras has never felt longing so great or so terrible in his life, an ache straight down to his marrow that is not asking to touch him so much as it is begging, like a sinner at God's feet. At first it confuses him, the intensity with which it hits him, as if he were standing in the tide with the waves all around him and he is struck in the chest, the shoulders, the stomach, until he is lost in the undertow. He swallows again, an attempt to untie the knot in his stomach, but it sticks in his throat and comes out as some strangled, helpless noise that is too quiet to hear across the room.

Oh fuck, he thinks again, oh no, as if he does not drop his own voice down to little more than a murmur, heavy with the weight of whatever it is with its hands around his throat. "Do you think so?" he asks, lingering a little too long on the legs that draw Pilate closer, inch by painfully slow inch. Andras tries to will his muscle to uncoil, tries to think warm thoughts, calm thoughts, tired thoughts, but finds that all that is there is eyes like a snake's hot and bright, and a heat that pools in the dark of his black, black pit.

There will still be poachers when he wakes from this stupor. There will still be their powderkeg council and their king with his ghosts. There will be murder and strife in Delumine and it will all still be singing his name as if Andras is a warden worth his title and not a miserable little rat with a bad attitude. It will hunt him until either he finds it first or he is so tired that he can no longer see the path he treads. It is not going anywhere. It will not wait for Andras, standing on the opposite side of a long walk with his eyes trained on Pilate's throat, savage as he has ever been. 

Sleep can wait a little longer. One more minute. One more hour. One more day.
Time can have it all, he doesn't care.

Andras steps forward now, one slow motion at a time, graceless in a way that only the truly feral can be, until he has halved the distance and can see whatever it is in Pilate's face that spurs him on. When Andras grins it is not like the sun, it is like caves and dark holes and wicked things. He huffs. "Prove it."