[P] the violence in the pouring rain

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the
fire in our hearts tonight

They were made for the pounding of a war drum, for the taste of iron on their teeth and the sting of salt-in-wounds. Perhaps, if she had been born under different circumstances, she would have been softer -- perhaps more of her dam might have rubbed off on her, had she not seen the way he had been treated for his kindness, had that spark of righteous indignation in her chest been allowed not to spark and strike tinder: but it had, and she has known from youth that above all else, she would be a fighter, because it was the only way to survive in a world with sharp teeth.

She has never had the knack for soft words that her dam had, hadn’t inherited the silver tongue her siblings wielded so easily. She is all bloody knuckles and bloodier daggers, scraped knees and bruises beneath her pale eyes, and she thinks Marisol might be the only other person who understands how it feels to be a weapon before you were a person.

“You might be asking the wrong person.” And there is something sharply bitter in the words, even as her lips curl into the approximation of a smile, even as she makes all the motions of an attempt of a joke -- her failures are burning in her veins, a slow ache from her head to her hooves, every single one of them beating in tune to the rhythm of her heart. This is another failure to add to her list, that she hadn’t somehow prevented this, that it hadn’t been her on the cliff instead of Marisol, that she is shaking apart between the titles of Champion and Cadet and she does not know if she is just Theodosia anymore.

She thinks that she will never be ‘just’ Theodosia again -- she gave that up when she swore herself to Vespera, to Terrastella, when she took the vial from the shrine and drank it down without a second thought, when she lost her heart in a smoky bar to the last person she should have. She doesn’t think she regrets any of it, doesn’t think she can regret it. Not when this is the first place she had felt comfortable enough to call home, not when she has found her purpose beneath the Halcyon banner, not when she has found her calling in the title of Champion.

“I suppose there’s only really one thing to do,” Her gaze doesn’t waiver from the Commander, and she knows that she is wearing her heart on her sleeve, in every beat of her pulse in her throat, and she has never known how to do anything else when it came to Marisol. “We come up with a plan and figure this out, together.” Above them, the sky rumbles, called by the magic swirling in her veins, and small sparks of lightning begin to roll from the tips of her wings, burning out harmlessly in the air around her. “Then we hunt down the bastard who did this, and gut him like the coward he is.”

credits
@Marisol