[P] the violence in the pouring rain

[Marisol]

YOUR SOB HAS A NAME

You might be asking the wrong person, says Theodosia, and Marisol laughs. A real, bright laugh. It bubbles up from her throat unbidden, a giggle at first, like a girl’s, and then builds and builds until it is shaking in her chest—a real, deep howl of laughter. It feels so good, and so strange—an electric current that dips all the way to her feet as she realizes the absurdity of the situation, the absurdity of an entire life being lived. “Like there’s any right person to ask,” she responds, as wry as it is true, and her tone is still ringing with laughter when she speaks. She tries to shake it out of her head a moment later.

Even as the laughter leaves her, the feeling (something she both can’t and won’t put a name to) lingers. It pulls at each frayed nerve, tingles under her skin, and starts a fire that rumbles in the pit of her stomach. For all Marisol’s pain, and for all her self-inflicted suffering, she is still alive. Like it or not. Want it or not. It is a gift she is morally, ethically, physically obligated to keep.

The sky rumbles. Marisol is not sure if it is natural or if it is Theodosia’s doing, and on top of that not sure that it matters. The storm that is gathering inside the Commander is bigger than her, bigger, even, than both of them. Bigger than the black that threatens the blue overhead. Bigger than the part of her that has learned to stay quiet. It is bigger than her heart or her genes or the steel inside her bones, and it is an animal-storm that knows only the sick desire for blood.

(Is it blood? Is it violence? Even simpler than that—a soul-crunching want to be understood?)

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Her voice is rough, but it is sure; there is not a part of her that trembles, even against the cold. Their eyes are still locked. It has been a long, long time since Marisol has let herself  really look at Theodosia: the clean, dished lines of her face; the bright-white waves of her hair; how her eyes are so perfectly, ethereally purple, like a gemstone never discovered in Terrastella before. She is beautiful. This is known. Mari has been purposefully trying to ignore it since the very moment they met in the fields. They are close, so close, and Marisol can feel something in her chest.

Gnawing. Biting. Electricity.

She wants to lean forward. 

But—God, what if the want in her stomach is not what she thinks it is—what if she goes in for a kiss and the thing inside her gnashes for a bite, instead? What if it’s blood? What if it’s not? What if she can’t take it back?

Marisol sucks in a breath so deep it hurts. “I…appreciate you,” she says, "Theo," and tries not to wince at how foreign it sounds coming out of her mouth. Tries to ignore the bitterness that floods her tongue. Tries to ignore how her teeth still scratch—

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@Theodosia <3

aimless | kokovi