[P] the violence in the pouring rain

[Marisol]

YOUR SOB HAS A NAME

This would be easier—so much easier—if either of them knew something that wasn’t blood-teeth-bone, fight-and-bruise. Mari was not raised to use kind words, and she has no doubt that Theo wasn’t either. It has always been foreign, to speak her feelings instead of fight them out, and she wishes this is the kind of problem that could be solved without words but the need for blood is what got her into this thing in the first place. What plagues her now, hungry and stubborn as a dog snapping at her heels. So there is nothing to say. Nothing to be done about it except suffer and seethe.

Theodosia cannot help, nor Atreus, nor Asterion: Marisol will be a monster for the rest of her miserable existence, and her heart will eventually break, she knows, when it is torn for the last time between instinct and duty. She feels it building in her chest, a bitter, tumultuous waves, and it soars like a crescendo, a threatening height of music and volume, builds pressure in the back of her head and she feels salt threatening to pour from her eyes and a sob forming in her throat—

But the cadet steps closer.

As if Marisol is still the same commander. As if Theodosia is not afraid, even looking at the knife-sharp rows of Mari’s teeth under her dark, curled lips. The look in her eyes is—well, it’s something, but it’s not quite fear, and that is a hundred times better than she could’ve ever expected. Her heart is pounding in her chest. She feels it strong as a drumbeat between her ears, pulsing so loud it almost threatens to break against the inside of her skull. Thank you, she wants to say, or I love you, or I need you, but says nothing. Just carefully, carefully closes her mouth.

(She is not quite used to this yet, and her teeth are always breaking open the soft skin inside her lips. But somehow this blood stings less than the rest.)

The distance between them is negligible now; if Marisol leaned over slightly, it would be enough to close the gap. I’m here. She wants to laugh. Or scoff. Let out at least a snort of derision. What will Theodosia being here possibly do to return Mari to her rightful state, or to settle her rabid, too-quick mind? (All of her is terribly, woefully bitter. It is the only thing that fuels her, now—the imagination of what Amaroq’s blood will look like when it spills into the water, the venom in her begging please, please let me out.)

“I don’t know what to say either,” Marisol mutters. The words taste like vinegar on her dry tongue. They taste like an admission of defeat. “Or what to do. I can’t—live like this.” She drinks in a horrible, shuddering breath; it is bright-cold in her lungs, too cold, to the point that it almost knocks her over. Over the edge of the cliffs the sea is churning, and Marisol has to focus with every muscle not to go careening toward it. “I don’t know what to do.”

It is the first time the Commander has ever said something so weak, and she wants to kill herself for letting it happen.

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@Theodosia <3

aimless | kokovi