What if I'm tryin', but then I close my eyes And then I'm right back, lost in that last goodbye? And what if time doesn't do what it's supposed to do? What if I never get over you?
Perhaps she is a fallen star, a piece of the sun having found itself into the soul of a girl who feels all too much and all too little, letting the world splinter her, shatter her light. It does not matter when the crater blooms, all that matters is the cool, night-touched caress of Tenebrae as he holds her, as he catches her and does not let her fall. Golden, glowing eyes flutter open, finding him in the chaos of her world, the mess that she's created, and clinging like a newborn fawn next to its mother. Her phantom hands grasp at his shoulders, tangle in his wild hair, and pulls herself closer with every sob that rakes through her.
Weary by the time she quiets, fatigue heavier than the heavens themselves, she lets herself stare at him, lets him stare at her. Silence is their only language. It is a tongue more ancient than time itself, or perhaps the two were born together. She is a newborn god, she is an angel cast down, but more than that, she is completely and utterly at the monk's mercy. The monk who she, moments ago, tried to blast off the mountainside, tried to drown with her light. He matched her step for step, his shadows cooling the rage of her light, and she is grateful that a crater is the only thing left to show her fury. Much worse could have come if it were anyone but he who found her. She is grateful when, at last, he breaks the silence and talks.
Coming down from her power-high, from her shattered light that does not sputter into existence again, worn out from her display, recouping somewhere in her bones, in the fragments of her heart, she struggles to piece together the words at first. Syllables that are not spoken as magic against her skin are foreign, strange. The curl of his lips, the curve of his tongue, it is difficult to know its meaning. Frowning, the phoenix takes a breath. Another. Again.
There.
For a minute she catches his words and holds them in her chest. They are scrawled in the starscape above, written in the dust beneath them, in the pained lines of the crater she created. Together, they balance on its lip, just a breath away from falling, just a breath away from flying.
Moira should have known Caligo's son would not have let her fall.
Despite that, she did doubt. Her trust broken time and again, ice daggers plunged into her heart every time she realized that she was wrong, that maybe she should not have grown so close to another, maybe she should have stayed as she was Before. Oh, but how could she when the ocean's song is sweeter than any cinnamon roll she's tasted? That softness she was drawn to is not like the savagery that Ten displays, a scythe taking his smile, the moon kissing his browned cheeks. The Tonnerre girl does not shy away from it, would no more run from this side of him than she would her own shards of light or his shadows. Of everything she has run from in her life, this man is not one of them. Perhaps it is because her magic feels that his is kin, his is the same and it is different; they wear different faces, but at their core they are one.
Twins, twins, twins. The word hums, ricochets, a riotous curl of water against her mind, her thoughts. Twins. Like the twin to her soul - Estelle - his magic is the twin to her own. Light cannot be without Darkness, and what is Darkness but the absence of Light?
Humming at his words like a swarm of bees, at last the woman's head tilts to the side, at last some semblance of a response from someone who is alive is offered to the man. Not just any man, this man who saved her. From...what?
Myself, she thinks. He saved me from myself.
It is a realization like the first man may have felt when he saw his first sunrise. Full of awe and fear, but not so much to be driven away. She knows she would come back for his honesty time and again, for the comfort he gives her as his phantom hands brush over her brow, bury in her curled hair just as she had clung to him mere moments before. Or maybe it was hours. Time has lost its meaning, it is just another river on which she rows.
"You harness yours so easily. I have swallowed the sun and let it consume me. I have been ash and bared my skin to its acrid touch. I have watched my newborn flesh rise from that filth of what was. I know its pains and I hate them." Hers is a confession just as his words were, words that she could not answer. Moira knows so well what it is to leave another, but to leave your history, to leave your past? While it is true that she left the Estate, she knows that the Ancestors still watch her move, still judge, still guide her. No matter how far she falls away from them, they will always take care of their own. It is the way of the Tonnerre in life and death.
What messes she makes, another will find to clean up and correct. They leave no stains on the world they are not ready to pay for. Moira is not a mistake they would let loose. She knows, as she knows many things, in time others would come, their courage wet by her own boldness. Not the first Tonnerre to leave the family, but she would not be the last, either.
His lips are a fire upon her sweaty brow, and with them she whispers up to him "It would be so much easier to live in your shadows." To be overlooked, to never have to worry about pain. Ancestors help her, what a life would it be to live unassuming, unseen? Moira was a ghost before, she remembers. She Knows what it is to be a living dead girl, and yet that, somehow, was almost easier than this...rending of herself.
He offers her a home, a refuge, and she is too tired, too hungry to deny it. Grabbing on with both hands, the woman rises to her feet, shaking off dust that covers her, dampens her glow, and implores "Can't I just disappear there for a short while? I would very much like to be...away. I need to be away." Away from the noise, the crowds, the memories. Away from Denocte so that she could heal, so that time would take the sting from her wounds, her heart, her life. Maybe, she thinks, it will never leave her. Like Caine's crane that rests on a shelf in her room, waiting for the day a man with four wings should return to her again, fulfill his promise to teach her to fly. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
So she would wait for her heart to stop aching even if it would not stop beating.
"I won't impose on the Order too long, I won't get in the way of your training or rituals or guarding of the Temple. Just let me stay," let me stay she asks with her eyes as much as her cracking voice. They are the final words offered as her footsteps fall into line with his, her shoulder and wing brushing against the monk, cloaked by the shadows he's brought back to cover the two of them. Obediently, the Tonnerre follows the Disciple into another world of secrets and darkness.
finished <3 what a beautiful start, middle and end. thank you ! BFF thread is coming to a novus near you soon!
