red,black soul; e+a [day 3]

The taste of blood calls out to you, it tells you that you're alive.

The burden of a bloody battle weighs down both of your battered bodies, had you been a frailer man you might've stumbled with each staggered step you took. Had you been a weaker man, the sight of Euley Sarasin's body on the ground might've sent your heart into a panicked frenzy, but you're none of those things. Instead, you fight through the dull agony radiating through your cheek for the simple pleasure of smiling at her bitter retort, that's the Euley you want to gut when the time comes. Battered, breaking but still vicious.

Still beautiful.

Spear in hand, you tower over her tired form. You count three wounds across her skin, whatever tried to stop her wheel turning wanted to tear her down. That pleasure is reserved for you; no one touches Euley but you.

Your deaths belong to each other.

You could bring that case into play right now, a simple thrust through her chest and into her still beating heart while she's down. Her weapons sit discarded and Violet and Isaac are nowhere in sight. It's not to be unexpected of you, you've broken legs before shattering skulls; you don't get as many broken souls beneath your boot as you have without playing dirty. You're not a knight clad in honor, you're a murderer clad in blood lust. A galaxy of broken souls call to be fed from the underworld, your sanity spirals and your cloak of humanity withers -- what the fuck are you waiting for?

You let the ski pole hit the snow.

(you'll kill her on your own terms)

You stand over her and listen. Detailing her clash with Pillar Fray, a dead girl, similar to yours. All you remember of her is that she set that red headed boy on fire. You laughed. You need to be that creative.

(you were planning on setting Jacob on fire when you found him)

You stop.

"Were you afraid, Aeson?" Gentle, sincere in fact. An internal confusion floods your systems but you respond by sighing and setting yourself down next to her, you're tired of towering over a cracking soul. "When your cheek got sliced open, like my stomach? Did you feel anything at all?"

You screamed and cursed when Ingran's pole tore your face open. "I fought Ingran Ansgot, from three years ago."

"I was. Fear's a strange emotion."

You almost snap at her for telling you that, don't be fucking stupid. She shouldn't have told you that she feels, she shouldn't have told you just how human she was.

You wanted to believe she wasn't.

You shrug your shoulders. "I felt pain and fury," It seems fury is the only emotion that strikes a chord that runs deeper than hollow in this empty chamber you call your heart. "I thought I would die, because no matter how many times I cut him he wouldn't bleed and he wouldn't feel. I thought I'd die to something that wasn't even human," you lean backwards. Putting your weight on the palm of your hands before sighing. "But I wasn't afraid, because I don't feel either."

("Just sayin' people in this business don't tend to live long,"

"Yeah, and?"

"Ain't you got a problem with that?")

"Besides, people like me don't live long anyway. If I was afraid of death I wouldn't enjoy living at all." You don't speak in a way that conveys that you feel sorry for yourself, because this is the life you choose when your tore those yellowed pages filled with scripture cover from cover and swore your allegiance to violence. People like you don't live long, hence why the amount of suffering you inflict on the world is impressive. It's done on borrowed and gambled time. "But I didn't want to die to that thing, because then I give the ones I leave behind the satisfaction of knowing I've been dragged to hell by something not even living."

You look to her and reach over with your hand, your fingers make their way to her eyes.

"Besides, if I died I would've left you. Meaning I would've missed this."

You wipe the dried tears from her cheeks with your thumb and smile because Euley Sarasin is a lot more human than you thought.

It was worth living a bit longer just to see that.

"No one's taking you from me, Aeson."

A breeze kisses your skin.

(I'm not yours to lose)

You gave yourself to your mother and father and instead of feeding you, they fed you to scripture and dead gods. You were theirs to lose, but rather than holding you and Aeryn close, they gave you away. When devotion became a suicide pact drenched in fire, you couldn't bring yourself to feel; you didn't know how. They weren't yours to lose.

You always knew were you stood back home, you were anointed with a crown of brimstone and blood by all the souls you'd carried from this life and you waited to wither and find that kingdom in hell waiting for you. You were anointed, but you were still expendable; just another cog grinding against the gears that ran their crime ring. You weren't even a true Kight, just a fucked up kid Ava brought home because she couldn't carry on the bloodline herself, you were an overcompensation for a failure on her part, not to be groomed for glory. You were just another numbered cog, sent to collect debts and souls, if you died they would simply crown someone else with the responsibility. You killed for them because you enjoyed it; you became theirs in the dark and became Shadow Svenin's in his own twisted way come daylight. You're a broken cog, grinding against the gears that run a machine to fill the gutters of Six with blood.

You won't give yourself to Euley Sarasin because all you are is another expendable cog with an unnatural taste for violence. You won't be another expendable footnote in Euley Sarasin's story, just as you're another expendable footnote in the Kight's legacy.

You can't give yourself to Euley Sarasin, even if you had the desire, you wouldn't even know how. You don't want to, no one in this fucking earth is worth you, you decided that a long time ago. It's much easier to pledge yourself to violence than to Euley.

(so you tell that thought to die)

She suddenly moves, lifting her arms and rotating her torso so she's facing you. You expect daggers, an aura of rotten intentions and a silver flash in her fangs. But she approaches you with no weapons in her hands.

You let her embrace you.

"Just hold me."

You just do.

You forget that Euley Sarasin is far more human than you could ever be, it disappoints you. Her forehead sits in your shoulder and you don't know what to say, silence seems to be the better way to mourn the destruction of a soulless queen. "I don't want to be a stone tonight. A cruel, dangerous thing. I just want to be a girl for once." And that's something you've never understood. The fragility of human nature, the desire to tear themselves down and reveal the scars beneath the shells they carve. You and Shadow could never understand; isn't that what makes us weak? But you let her, you let her shed her shell and reveal the final pieces of her humanity clinging to her skin. She looks at you with something in her eyes you just can't see. "Just a girl. Not the wolf-tamer. Not the murderer."

Euley strips herself of all her finery and you see her naked, every notch of humanity against her skin is a scar. An imperfection but you can't bring yourself to count them. "Does that make you think less of me?"

You shrug your shoulders because you don't know, imperfections can be beautiful too.

"Do you still want to kill me?"

But if there's one thing that will never change, it's that you want to be the one who ends Euley Sarasin when the time comes. Not the sadistic, surface level methods. Not smashing someone's head against concrete or watching them freeze to death after shattering their skeletons. You want to watch her fade; is that not the whole point of beauty? You'd be fulfilling the natural order of destruction, the world simply withers beauty. Ingran Ansgot is evidence enough of that, the galaxy of broken souls beneath your boot is evidence enough of that.

You have to watch Euley Sarasin fade because you can't give yourself,

(don't lose yourself)

this is who you are. You don't feel.

Until she hums.

(you remember starving, writhing beneath the weight of a god.)

You count your ribs.

("I'm so hungry,"

"Then recite the passage, food is a reward, son,"

"But I--"

"Do not be a glutton,")

You want to, you want to, you have to.

Your eye twitches, a soft spasm of muscle passing across your body and there's a flicker of recognition in your eyes. Your finger falls to her lips. Apathy carries your voice towards her, weak and desperate to crack but so full of void. For a man so hollow, you lack the desire to fill yourself with anything thought to be real.

"It doesn't matter what we want, Euley."

It never mattered what you want; be it food, recognition or silence.

(No one ever cared)