i will not be another flower
Together they paint a world at sunset and dusk, a world that could have been, that could still be. But oh, how she knows it will not, cannot exist. His is a heart that is swollen and heavy with the past, and hers is one shattered on the bones of reality in the present. Moira has touched him and his fire, felt its wrath curl upon her bones and blacken them, arcing from her muscles and making her very life spasm out of control. She knows what it is to love him and fall and fall and fall. She lets him burn her with his hope. Lets it fester as another sore upon her soul. This will not be the last wound he inflicts, and she knows it is not even Asterion’s fault that he wears that hope so openly, so easily. She knows that this is her doing, these emotions he feels and lets take him so wholly as a current at sea. Moira will not be caught in the crossfire of the war tonight. She’d tried to talk gently, to invite him nearer and let them crumble together in perfect harmony even as they fractured as a goblet upon the stone.
He refused that soft denial of their tumultuous emotions. So she finds another route instead, looking at Asterion with all the light of a dying star. As Moira moves nearer, her skin brushing against his while she passes, she wonders if he notices the way her faerie lights blink out one by one, one last goodbye, one sad farewell. When he cannot see her face, she feels her lips tremble as she holds in the sob that she knows is rising in her chest. It claws to get out, scratching her throat until it is not a challenge but a war to hold it down. He cannot know her sorrow. He cannot know her pain. Her resolve would weaken if he knew anything of her emotions, and then she would tumble back into his life again and let them both be torn asunder.
No.
No.
No…
The phoenix does not look back at him for seconds that could be hours. Thundering heart beats fiercely, painfully, cruelly within her chest as she gathers herself, rallies for their last moments as...this...whatever this is. Twisting in her gut is ignored just as butterflies those first few times were ignored. Everything that the once-king of Terrastella and still-king of her heart (how Michael would weep to hear another man’s name written so deeply within her) ignites within the phoenix is another reason for her to walk away.
As a daughter of the House Tonnerre, she knows she should not be so good at running, but instead harness the art of cunning and intrigue and deception to use as she wishes, yet she cannot bring herself to lie to the both of them. He is her weakness and ancestors forgive her, but she is weak for him. Putty. Splattered as paint upon the floor.
Slowly, warmth brushes her sides again and Moira almost breaks. The shiver that passes over her skin is not from the cold alone, not even close. Golden eyes pass to the angles of Asterion’s cheeks. She knows them so well, has painted them a million times, carved them into canvas and hide until they are immortalized in her little chamber so she might never forget. And how could she ever forget Asterion? When he is beside her she smiles again, it is softer, quieter. Perhaps that is a hint, the only she’d give away, at what is to come, what she would do.
Their steps are slow, steady, and Moira tells him of the first time she saw him. He was (still is, oh he still is) so handsome and mesmerizing and entirely unreal on the Prastaglia Cliffs when he’d found her. Then, she’d been both more and less of a dreamer.
Moira tells him of her dreams of them. How she’d wished he hadn’t left. How she’d thought of him so often and how she thought it would have been better to throw herself from the cliffs and let the sea take her wherever he is because it had to be better than being wherever he wasn’t. Her voice is soft when she tells him that she loved him so fiercely and dearly and closely that she lost herself and did not know where she was sometimes or who she should be when he was not there. Asterion made her soft. He made her more human than she’d ever been at the Estate. There, when they pause, her lips are soft against his collarbone when she thanks him.
The duo is somewhere near the kitchens, she’s taken them through the passages that she could walk blindly without even Neerja to guide her. The tigress has stayed behind, unwilling to watch as Moira rips her heart out and sends it afloat down a river that may not have an end, or it may end up in the very bottom of the sea that once held Michael and drowned him and rose him and held him as she wishes so desperately to do on too many occasions that it scares her to think of them all. When Asterion pulls her nearer, presses closer with that sweet smile of his, it is easy to forget the gold of the other man. It would be so easy to forget the world if it meant she could live forever in those sad brown eyes.
That’s exactly why she pulls them through the kitchen doors and grabs a cinnamon roll from the counters. The cook has long since stopped putting all of the sweets away, knowing Moira would, every once in a great while between her terrible fits of sorrow and sulking, eventually, find her way to the counters and swipe something from them to devour.
She pulls apart the folds of the roll, smearing the frosting on Asterion’s lips with a laugh that sounds like honey and starlight. There is still innocence even in the worst of times, it is a shining star in the heart of a flaming girl.
Satisfied that the cream cheese frosting upon his nose and lips is there well enough, she offers him at last part of her precious dessert. When he takes it from her, looking at the destruction that Moira’s left, she takes that moment to reach forward and kiss the frosting from his cheek, from his nose. Only his lips are left untouched, unsullied by the girl before she says goodbye. If there is silver in the gold of her eyes, she cannot hide it well enough. So, she does the only thing she can think of and eats the rest of the roll so that he could not retaliate so quickly without fetching another from the counter.
By that time she’s set a cutting pace over the floor, swinging through another door that would lead toward the front of the Keep. Bursting through it as a conflagration would the forests, Moira does not wait for him this time, she cannot when her breathing is shallow and she is ready to topple over and beg forgiveness. How dare she? Who does she think she is flirting so carelessly when she knows what is to come?
A monster.
Heartless.
She must be more Tonnerre than she originally thought to allow herself to follow through with such despicable actions.
Disgusted, disgruntled, Moira is huffing by the time she gets to the antechamber and strides through it. Behind her, Asterion’s narrowing the gap and at last is beside her when she’s found her way into the hallway leading to the foyer. He’s caught up and he’s so close and he smells so divine and feels like heaven and she can’t help the tear that falls now, not when she’s told him everything - the terrible moments, the hopes, the thoughts of a family that could have been and would never be.
Before him, she is bare. He knows of everything except Michael. Plunging into a scalding pool would be less painful than this, looking him in the eye and seeing the complete devastation written in every line of his face.
Moira… Oh Moira Tonnerre lets herself open the doors then, pushes them without any help and with only her own awful thoughts. As she turns, it is slow and she knows what she will find - her first love, maybe her last love, broken before her. And still she looks. Forcing those golden eyes up, the phoenix does not dishonor him by looking away and daring to break his heart in any way that is less than personal. She licks her lips and clears her throat, and when she pulls him near one last time it is not hard to tell that she is crying. It is as she pulls away that Moira dashes away the tears and smiles so angelically she could be sent from Tempus himself to bless Asterion. But this is no blessing being bestowed.
"Asterion,” she whispers at last. Hoarse from all those screams she tries desperately to hold back at least for now. "I know what we want to hear, what I would and should say any other time, and we both know that I cannot go back to being who I was before I was broken…” Moira takes another step back, another step away. "To see you hurting is pain like I’ve never known… But I think you should go. I...I can’t have you stay and walk away.”
Now there’s a crack in her shell, now her voice breaks. "Please go and let us meet as just...friends...when we do meet again.”
picked for my beauty and left to die
