[AW] that old illusion that it's safe;

[Marisol]

i opened my mouth and the night poured in-

Marisol has to wonder, in this moment, if Asterion ever gets tired of picking up other people’s messes.

In just a few moments, he’s swept away her self-pity and dredged up something like pride with that harder to impress comment - she’s seen him calm the storm-raging anger of their people and lead at Florentine’s right hand - she’s seen him stifle his own heart, as she stifles hers, in the name of duty - all these mortal messes seem beneath him and his moon-dark eyes, and yet he is adamant and stubborn, noble, even, in his constant efforts to clean them up. 

For all Marisol’s love of duty, the patriotism engrained in her bones as deeply as marrow, she knows she has never been, will never be, half as good a person as he is. (It hurts her, though she’d never admit it.) She simply doesn’t have the capacity for it. Her own heart is wild enough, feral enough, teeth-and blood enough to make life difficult even without the responsibility of someone else’s love and life. Her cadets make their own mistakes and fight their own battles - never in her life has she bothered to clean up after them, and she’s not sure she could manage it even if she tried.

Yet it comes so naturally to him. The goodness, and the love of goodness. She envies him with a kind of greenness too bright for real words. Goodness, easy? In Marisol’s mouth, her chest, her stumbling heart, it is only a kind of growing pain.

But all this - and even the soft blackness in her heart - falls away as she watches his smile.

Mari answers, half-grinning back, Vespera only knows, hm?

She nods at Cirrus, brow raised with a knowing kind of humor. Beyond them, the whole world lays open and effortless, glowing, verdant, beautiful: it is as unknowable as it is exciting, and the breeze that ruffles Mari's short hair matches the thrill of adrenaline in her chest exactly. 

Marisol arces easily toward it with nothing more than a beckoning brow-raise tossed over her shoulder at Asterion.

@asterion