angels & devils { tristen }

He spends the afternoon patching up his best friend's face, dabbing at cuts with alcohol-soaked rags and making jokes for her to laugh at to replace the grimaces of pain that vibrated through her skull. Cursing the one that put them there and applauding Aine's stories of small victories and the looks on their enemies faces, a lingering fury began to nestle in the pit of his stomach. Aine doesn't need a hero. She's her own saviour and lets everyone know it. But there's a love forged from late night adventures and tobacco smoke and the burden of being unwanted between them, a family compromised of two souls born from the ashes of cigarettes and sand. A sister she is and a sister she will always be, side-by-side against the world until his last dying breath.

"Ow!" Aine protests from underneath his hands as his anger unleashed a litle too quickly against her already bruised skin. "Shit, sorry" Brently hisses back, retracting his hand. A warrior in all of her wind-swept hair and worn-down boots, Aine smiles back to break the tension. "So," she asks, "how do I look?"

She has a fire beneath her eyes and her soul is forged from thunder and the stormy seas. Purple blotches stain her face like water-colour art as if she had painted them there herself, sand-coloured skin tarnished with blue and black and violet. Traces of smoke linger in the stitches of her jacket and specks of blood lie far and wide across her head. She is beautiful, but not in the way everyone else wants her to be. Everyone else but Brently Gray.

"Never better" he mutters to her amusement. "Get the cameras out everyone, District Four's Next Top Model is here and ready to be photographed!"

As Aine throws her head back and bursts into fits of giggles the fury in his body reaches his chest. He smiles, a mask made for himself more than Aine. Pain shrouded in joy is a disguise he knows all too well and can taste it in her laughter, and by the time his best friend leaves he's already made up his mind. He'll make her pay. He'll make that nasty little bitch wish she had never laid eyes on the two of them. Her and her bitch-ass little whiny no-good ass-kissing tattle-tale rat pack.

He doesn't know what he's doing as he saunters up to the Leto household and hammers on the door, barking "Calypso! CALYPSO!" with every few knocks. Blonde hair shines in the afternoon light and his skin burns from the sun and the anger boiling beneath the surface. "CALYPSO!" he yells again, to no avail. "CALYPSO YOU LITTLE BITCH!"

For a tattletale, she's quick to put her tail between her legs and run for cover. Or she's not home - but there's the faint trace of footsteps lingering behind the door and he'll be damned if he leaves without revenge on Calyspo Leto, Peacekeeper Father or not. His knuckles are raw and stinging against the wooden barricade but it's nothing compared to the state this girl and her gang of followers have left on the body of the one person on earth he still cares for.

"CALYPS-"

The door opens mid-pound and Brentley's heart skips a beat, greeted by a stranger with sad, sad eyes.

"-Oh."