[AW] almost forgotten

[Jahin]

Sorrow does not avenge the dead... No, he agrees sadly, it does not. But what does the act of revenge accomplish but cause more death, and sorrow, and avenging? It is a vicious, endless cycle, one that Avodtya will pursue no matter what. And of course they will follow her, because that is the way of the Davke. Live, fight, and if you are lucky, die a warrior's death. Makeda. She may as well have stabbed him through the heart with the spear she carries strapped to her back. Of course, the matriarch's youngest daughter is always there, a shadow, a mirage, a ghost. But he has found she fades every day...it has been so long since he last saw her, last heard her voice, that the details of her image are deteriorating. And the way she always finds new and creative ways to lure him in, and then cast him aside like an old plaything... He is weak. When will he find the strength to let go? Would you do the same? He bristles and something dark simmers in his blood, but he takes the suggested accusation of abandoning his people gracefully enough. It is true he has been gone, but has she forgotten his service in his past, his utter devotion to not only Makeda, but to their people? "I gave all I had to give to our people, to you, to Makeda. My life has never been my own. It belongs to the Davke, to those who remain..." She is close enough that the stench of rot and decay lingers, spreads...it devours him until all he sees is red and the corpses of those he once knew and loved sinking into the sand of the desert, the soldiers laughing as they desecrate the bodies. He sees the blood pooling, and hears the screams of his people slaughtered, or worse, as he is dragged away in chains. He recalls the stench of his own body from sleeping in his own piss and shit and the way the rats nibbled at his skin as he lingered between sleep and awake, wondering if he would ever see the sun again. Most of all, he recalls the shame of not dying with his people. "I should have died along with them that day but I didn't," he says, utterly defeated. "I did not know of any who lived, save you, until the attack on the capitol." There were no pyres for the lost souls decaying in the desert, no embers blazing in the sky like stars. He wonders if their ghosts wander the desert still, or if they have all found a way to haunt him; he one of the few who lived. "I am here now," he says, at last, meeting the fire in her eyes unflinchingly. "I have come home. Will you have me or not?" these scars long have yearned for your tender caress to bind our fortunes, damn what the stars own ---

@Avdotya