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Private  - the violence in the pouring rain

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Played by Offline bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13
Signos: 1,000
Inactive Character
#1


let our eyes show the
fire in our hearts tonight
When she goes looking, she finds Marisol on the cliffs, and she can’t say that she is surprised. For a moment, she says nothing as they stand there beneath the fading streaks of light, and she considers the Commander with pale eyes as she turns over the events of the meeting in her mind.

“The ocean swallowed you, and you fought it.” It isn’t a question -- she had seen Marisol come exploding out of the waves like a cannonball, had seen the salt crusted along her wings -- and she knows that the ocean is a ravenous creature, that it would swallow down any foolish enough to test their own limits, and that it would come back for more if it could.

Sometimes she has thought about throwing herself to the crashing waves, when the weight of the world has crushed her down flat, when it feels as though her shoulders are too narrow for all the troubles that she has carried. She had thought there would be glory in the title of Champion -- but instead she finds only duty, only disappointment, only the constant pressing thought of failure and the fear that bites at her heels whenever she stops moving long enough to breathe.

“Why?” Perhaps she is asking why Marisol had fallen into the waves in the first place -- perhaps she is asking how the commander had found a reason to resist instead, how the weight of duty hadn’t dragged her down to become bones on the ocean floor.

Even she isn’t sure which, exactly, she is asking, and she turns her gaze away from the commander, towards the hungry sea.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t think that Marisol will answer her honestly, and the thought makes her stomach twist, a sour taste in the back of her mouth.

credits

@Marisol





she wasn't looking for a knight,
she was looking for a sword.





Played by Offline RB [PM] Posts: 277 — Threads: 28
Signos: 180
Inactive Character
#2






YOUR SOB HAS A NAME 

As the sunlight fades and day turns to dusk, the air grows chilly. It grows teeth. Little, nagging and needle-sharp, they chew their way through Marisol’s skin until she wants to shudder, but stops herself, irritated that her self-control is waning by the minute. Her heart burns an awful, loud tattoo inside her chest. The cotton-white clouds have started to wane. Over the steep drop of the cliff, where it falls away just a few feet ahead of her, the ocean howls salt and cold high into the air. 

Oh, she hates it.

Rage fills her with every sound of a new wave. The smell of salt in her nostrils burns just as much as it heals. She hates it and hates it and cannot live without it — it is a part of her now, ripe and dark and dangerous. So now matter how much it hurts, she cannot move away from it. It is the only thing that keeps her pulse going, under the thin silk of her skin. She knows that if she strays too far it will call her back, and it will not be any kinder the second time she comes knocking.

Her heels dig into the ground. Marisol braces herself against the biting wind and blinks back her tears furiously. They burn in her eyes, spill onto her cheeks; she cannot remember when was the last time she really cried, and the fact that she has succumbed to it now, when the world is ending, when Erd is gone, when Terrastella needs her more than ever, makes her sick to her stomach with disgust.

When she hears Theodosia’s footsteps behind her, she pulls her head to her shoulder and closes her eyes until the threat starts to subside. Which is more than a few moments.

Are you okay? And Marisol makes a noise that is half giggle, half sob, wet and terrible in the back of her throat, and all of her efforts cannot keep the tears from brimming in her eyes once more. No,” she says emphatically, and barks out an awful laugh that rattles her chest way down to the bone. “No, not at all —“ she falls silent for a moment, too long of a moment, until it becomes a minute, then longer. Her gaze is fixed, blank and glassy, on the middle distance of the far away horizon.

“Why what?” She turns to Theodosia, and her eyes are blazing with — with — righteous fury, desperation, fanaticism, something so raw and feral it can hardly be given a name. “Why did I fall, or live? Fell because I was dragged. Lived for sheer luck. Why did Vespera fucking pick me to do this to I don’t fucking know — “

She unhinges her jaw. Slow and sultry, like a snake preparing to swallow something whole. And with each centimeter of her mouth revealed comes a new row of tiny, razor-sharp teeth, the teeth of a demon, of something that both needs and wants for blood.

The teeth of a monster.

@Theodosia <3
aimless | kokovi





[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]





Played by Offline bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13
Signos: 1,000
Inactive Character
#3


let our eyes show the
fire in our hearts tonight
Above them, the sky is painted in the colors of dusk, of the same colors that had swirled within the vial she had dared to drink, and she is still amazed that she is walking. It had not been poison, had not been Vespera’s way of smiting her for her insolence -- and yet she is not sure that she is any different, besides a craving for the sweet mountain grasses that grew amongst the peaks. The smell of salt and sea has surrounded them, digging into the tender spots, aching in the back of her throat where it has rasped sore from questioning those who had been in the markets the day that Erd had disappeared.

Out of respect, she waits until Marisol has taken her head from beneath her wing, pretends not to see the tear tracks that still linger on her dark face, and it burns, just a little, not to be able to reach out and wipe away the tears, to erase the cause of Marisol’s distress. She is made to fix, to fight, to defend: but this is not something that she can mend so easily, nor would a brawl solve anything at this point in time.

She is too late to call herself anything but a failure.

The honesty is unexpected, and it burns at something in her, holds back her tongue even as her chest tightens. She dares to take a step closer, to extend her wing just the smallest bit -- an offer of comfort, should Marisol take it, one that could easily be ignored as just the shifting of positions should the Commander’s pride (or her sense of duty) not allow it.

“Both, I suppose,” she answers, unable to be anything but honest when gifted with the same, and her next glance towards the sea is a miasma of emotions. She is beginning to learn that she has a problem with emotions, however, and so settles for picking apart Marisol’s words until she lands on something that might be suitable for a course of action: Fell because I was dragged.

“Who--” She begins to ask, and is cut off, silent and horrified, as Marisol gapes open her jaw, as rows of needle-sharp teeth are revealed, as she realizes just how not-okay the Commander is; her heart beats in her ears, a heavy thud-thud-thud, a rush of blood in her veins.

She has to fight the urge to bare her tender throat to those teeth, and she has no reason for why she would do so at all -- a test of Marisol’s self-control? To see what sort of monster the commander has become? To see if she might avoid the commander’s wrath, a selfish desire to see if Marisol would fight to avoid biting her?

Instead, she clears her throat and takes yet another step closer, until there are mere inches between them, because she has never known how to run away from danger. “I don’t know what to say,” she confesses, voice low and still quietly shocked, but her gaze doesn’t waver from Marisol’s eyes, doesn’t dart down to catch glimpses at those sharp, deadly, startling teeth. “But I’m -- here, for whatever you might want to say.”

She wishes her dam were here -- Anzhelo had always had a knack for comforting others, for knowing what to say and when to say it, and she’s never entirely sure if she’s said the right thing or not.

credits

@Marisol





she wasn't looking for a knight,
she was looking for a sword.





Played by Offline RB [PM] Posts: 277 — Threads: 28
Signos: 180
Inactive Character
#4






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.

@Theodosia <3
aimless | kokovi





[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]





Played by Offline bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13
Signos: 1,000
Inactive Character
#5


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





she wasn't looking for a knight,
she was looking for a sword.





Played by Offline RB [PM] Posts: 277 — Threads: 28
Signos: 180
Inactive Character
#6






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—


@Theodosia <3
aimless | kokovi





[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]





Played by Offline bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13
Signos: 1,000
Inactive Character
#7


let our eyes show the
fire in our hearts tonight
She thinks it might be the first time she’s ever heard Marisol laugh.

It catches her off-guard enough that for a moment, she forgets to hide the brief wonder that flashes across her face at the sound, forgets to mask the way all of her atoms seem to yearn towards the Commander whenever they are together; she leans towards the sound with her ears perked forwards as though it were a symphony and she were the audience, unwilling to miss a second of beauty.

She doesn’t remember the last time she laughed, but it is infectious; her lips curl upwards around a soft, girlish giggle that turns into a storm of them, her sides shaking with the force of their combined laughter, and even as they subside she feels… lighter, somehow. She is still furious, and ready to wage war against every kelpie in the ocean if that is what it takes to exact justice. She is still buckling beneath the weight of her combined titles, unsure of what her future will hold as Terrastella moves forward. She is an aching heart exhausted beyond measure, and yet.

And yet, for the moment, everything feels manageable.

For the moment, she can remember how to just breathe.

Above them, the storm clouds are blocking out the sky. Above them is rolling thunder and black clouds, but she doesn’t think that it matters at the moment, not when the magic in her veins is howling to be released, held back only by sheer force of will. Above them, the setting sun has been hidden, but then -- hasn’t she always been Icarus, and Marisol the sun she strains towards?

No.

Marisol is something more than a distant, hungry star, something closer and present even when everything is going to hell in a handbasket around them. She has never been particularly bloodthirsty, but for the commander, she thinks she might turn the entire ocean crimson, if that is what it takes. Her bones howl for justice, or perhaps for vengeance; the line is blurred between them and she is unwilling to determine exactly how far from her morals she will stray in search of them.

“Thank you, Comm-- Mari.” Her own voice shakes, her tongue stumbling briefly over the words. She is playing with fire. She is waving her fingers over the flame, low enough to burn. How badly had she been scorched the last time she had played this game? They need to talk about what this thing is between them before it consumes them, but neither of them have ever been good with words; they have been dancing around this ever since they had met, that day on the Cliffs.

Her heart is pounding in her ears, and she can’t bear to look away. I think I love you loops around her mind, on the tip of her tongue, but it feels like the wrong time for such a weighty confession, like every time will always be the wrong time. She still wants to bare her tender throat to Marisol’s sharp teeth, because it feels less vulnerable than placing her heart on her sleeve where it can shredded apart by rejection.

She is tired of feeling like a coward when it comes to her own heart, of feeling selfish for wanting instead of fighting. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as though it might steady her nerves, but she’s all-too-aware of how close Marisol is, of how easy it would be to reach out and touch her, and her nerves frazzle further apart at the knowledge. “Mari,” Her voice shakes. How could it not? She is terrified, deep in her core, of what this will do to them. There will never be a right time for this.

“Love will make a fool of me yet,” It is as close to a confession as she dares to make, breathed out into the mere inches between them, and her eyes open slowly to meet Marisol’s gaze once more. They are so close. She is tired of chasing -- let this be her last stand, that she will lean forward enough that they are nearly touching, but not quite, a few millimeters of distance between them now that could so easily be bridged. Please don’t push me away again, her heart begs so loudly that she thinks it must show in her eyes.

“Please,” She asks instead, and she is no longer entirely certain what she is asking for.

credits

@Marisol





she wasn't looking for a knight,
she was looking for a sword.





Played by Offline RB [PM] Posts: 277 — Threads: 28
Signos: 180
Inactive Character
#8






YOUR SOB HAS A NAME



The main difference between who she was and who she is now, Marisol thinks, is the obsession.

Since childhood she’d kept a leash on her heart like it was a dog, and without much trouble. What makes a good soldier? She’d had the stories beaten into her, she’d researched for hours. The only common thread she could find between the most successful Halcyon past was restraint. Augustine, Olivian, Vespir—in the books they were all remarked upon for their composure, the ability to remain calm in the face of disaster. Not for their battle prowess nor their taste for blood.

And she had followed in their footsteps, for a long, long time. Marisol the cold, the dispassionate, the self-possessed. She had been all these even when war threatened her home, even when love grabbed her by the hair and yanked. She had struggled, sure, but not enough to matter. Not ever enough to fail. 

But now—

Something has changed. Her grasp on her emotions is flimsy and getting weaker by the second. When she feels things now, they are stronger and more violent than she ever thought possible. The ocean inside her crashes and roars ceaselessly, making it impossible for her to think before doing, impossible to calculate any decisions: the difference is that Marisol has lost her grip on the deep-buried part of her that dares to lust, and now it overwhelms her, the desire for love, for blood, for… respect.

(She had almost said power, in her head.)

Mari.

A month ago she would have snarled at it. Would have felt it like a slap, a stinging dismissal of her title. (She had been nothing but Commander, and now…) Now she shudders. A carnal thing that rides all the way down her spine. Heat curls in her gut, flares up, a stoked fire reaching all the way into her chest and booming there in coal-black drumbeats. Her eyes are wide and dark and they are simmering, in waves, with something like hunger: she watches the curve of Theodosia’s lips and her whole body shakes, tenses, goes black with fire and hunger and want.

Love will make a fool of me yet. Love. 

Love? Marisol wants to laugh. What do they know about love, two girl-warriors with their hearts practically sewn closed? But she can’t laugh, wouldn’t dare, and feels guilty for even thinking about it when she sees the sheer seriousness in Theodosia’s eyes. They are too close together for Mari to even think about leaning away: she feels the space between them is rife with electricity, sparking and rolling from Theodosia’s skin, and anyway her heart is starting to feel out of her control, like a child that won’t listen, like a wolf that’s remembered its instincts, and then Theodosia says please in a voice like falling, or syrup—

And it’s all over.

A visceral shudder passes from Marisol’s shoulders to her hips. Each nerve is alight. Her body goes blindingly, bitingly cold, then boiling hot. Her pupils blow to huge black moons, almost overtaking the usual slate gray of her iris, and her breathing changes, tightens, until it’s rasping in her throat and against her chest as if she’s struggling to breathe without salt in the air: 

“Please what.” 

It is as much a tease as it is an order, the voice she uses as Commander multiplied by tens. There is no part of her left to hold back, all of her restraint has fallen to ribbons, she has to scrabble even to keep the phantom taste of blood from pouring to fill her mouth, and as she speaks she presses her lips to Theodosia’s neck. (Her chest is heaving. She can smell the iron. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it—)

The words are pouring out of her. Marisol does not recognize herself anymore, twisted and warped by a lust she has let grow far beyond healthiness. Her whole body is shaking with white fire—she gently, gently laces her teeth into Theodosia’s hair and tugs—“Please tell you that I want you still?” The whole world looks and feels red. Marisol can’t quite see, can only smell, taste Theodosia’s skin against her tongue, feel the Herculean effort in not letting her jaws close. “Please tell you no one else can have you?”

She moves her lips to just under the cadet's jaw. “Use your words, Theodosia.”


@Theodosia <3
aimless | kokovi





[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]





Played by Offline bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13
Signos: 1,000
Inactive Character
#9


let our eyes show the
fire in our hearts tonight
When she had been a child, Anzhelo had told her stories about love, but he had never mentioned how all-consuming it would be; like her body is a storm she cannot control, that her magic has no dominion over. Perhaps it was because he was inexperienced with this kind of love, that he turned to stories -- even the sort of love between a mother and child, he’d never truly known himself, and her heart aches whenever she imagines her dam teaching himself how to love her.

(She thinks, of all the people she’s met, her dam might be the strongest person she knows, for all his kindness. Or perhaps it was his kindness that made him strong.)

Either way, she had not been prepared for this.

The command in Marisol’s voice nearly brings her to her knees. She is shaking, dissipating lightning around her body as though that would ward away the way her stomach twists around a deepening warmth, the way she so easily crumbles beneath Marisol’s touch with a noise she would describe as embarrassing if she weren’t so focused on keeping her footing against her sudden weakness.

“--yes,” It’s a confession she cannot bite back in time. She thinks maybe that she doesn’t want to hold it back, that she is tired of biting her tongue until it bleeds, and her self-control is shredded further with every second of the touch of lips against her skin, with every poorly-kept secret desire that the commander drags into the light with her words. Perhaps it even makes her bold, bold enough that her own teeth tease gently at the bristled crop of Marisol’s hair, tugging lightly at the spot just behind her ears.

“I want you to want me, the way that I want you.” This will be her undoing. She can feel it in the very marrow of her bones, and she is powerless to stop it. “Not just for tonight, not just something that we’ll pretend never happened in the morning.” She has never believed in fairytales, but she wants the commander in her bed and in her future, wants to believe that there is some truth to the stories her dam had told her about love existing and thriving.

She is plunging off a cliff and her wings will not be able to save her this time, and oh, she knows that if she crashes, she will not survive it. Her heart is tender enough as it is, and she is offering it up to Marisol on a silver platter, in the only way that she knows how.

credits

@Marisol





she wasn't looking for a knight,
she was looking for a sword.





Played by Offline RB [PM] Posts: 277 — Threads: 28
Signos: 180
Inactive Character
#10






YOUR SOB HAS A NAME



Marisol feels like a demon, or a fallen angel—her wings useless now, plastered to her sides, and all the ichor in her turned to filthy mortal blood. Oh it boils, and it wants, and the kelpie in her has its teeth out in a perfect snarl: all it does is take and take, this thing inside of her, and for the moment she feels utterly powerless against it, like it is a weight she simply cannot bear.

The weight of love, the weight of lust. Of holding someone’s hear close enough to touch. Marisol knows responsibility, but not… not like this. (And if she were responsible she wouldn’t be here, she reminds herself bitterly, not doing this, but—she cannot pull herself away, and, more relevant, doesn’t even want to.)

Yes.

She smiles. A sharp, satisfied thing that does nothing to soften the pure darkness of her eyes or the unyielding grip of her teeth against Theodosia’s neck. I could kill you, she thinks, almost satisfied by it, but I won’t. Isn’t that love?

There is a tug at the back of her head, and she almost, almost panics. The sea comes rushing to find her. She smells the salt in the air, feels the water in her lungs, feels Amaroq’s phantom teeth pulling at the close crop of her hair and her breath stops in her chest, like she’s drowning all over again, so painful it almost goes numb—but when Theodosia speaks her soul slams into her body again, and the world is still. 

Marisol shudders, from poll to spine. How much longer can she stand this, the alternating elation and depression, the burning and freezing? It hurts in a way she cannot describe, a way that reaches all the way down to squeeze her thrashing heart in a tight fist. She is struggling to breathe now. All she can see are Theodosia’s bright eyes, and all she can feel is the lightning-warmth between them. It’s worse than a spar in the brutal way it knocks the wind from her lungs.

But she has eons of practice in combat, especially in recovery, and she rights herself with little more than a forced inhale. Marisol’s head pounds like a drum. Her pupils are still blown wide, her chest heaving, blood throbbing loud against the inside of her temples: it’s over, she thinks, and it’s just beginning, and both are as true as the light of the moon shining down from overhead.

The Commander’s pulse clenches in her jaw. “That’s cute. How badly.” Those needle-sharp teeth come just a little closer to breaking skin. Her breaths are coming in sharp pants now, heavy with effort, heavy with ripe-dark want. “How badly do you want that, darling? 

Her own voice is an alien, too deep and too dark. She doesn't hear the words, even— only feels them as they reverberate through her chest and then her lips, like a drumbeat or a tightly plucked string. Who is this? Why does she want so much? And why does it hurt? Who is this person in her body forgoing duty in the face of something as futile and pathetic as love?

She draws her velvet-soft nose in a lazy line from Theodosia’s jaw to her hip, pauses there, exhales hot-and-heavy on her pale skin. Everything in her is warring—kill or kiss, fight or flee—and it keeps her stubbornly in place, unwilling or unable to move away from the girl who asks her to stay, please stay. And she cannot find a reason not to.


@Theodosia <3
aimless | kokovi





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