comfort in the arms of the devil [rosaris]

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

Civil blood and a masochist’s lie- he called himself innocent. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He wasn’t.

Was he?

She knew the routine, girl with civil hands, innocent hands. Her sisters had drilled it into her head time and time again: pretty boys with their daddy’s money, or someone who wasn’t well endowed. Their reasons weren’t ever worth what they did to others, to women, to innocents like Rosemary.

She had always thought she was strong enough to stomach it, but when her sisters started, it became more real than she could have ever imagined.

“Rosemary?”

Tears clouded her vision- she hated crying. Hated how wrong she had been. Mostly, she hted how right her sisters were in saying that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She looked down at those civil hands of hers made bloody in the night. She held them up for him to see, hair in her face and heart beat, beat, beating within her chest.

“Blood,” she choked, a child’s sob slipping out of her mouth without her permission, “There was so much... blood.”

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

“I don’t-” deep breath in, stuttered on the way out. Her eyes were bloodshot, salt skin aching in the night wind’s howl and she yearned for a warmth she’d lost a long time ago, an innocence that had gone missing sometime while she slept. It was a frightening loss, and one she hadn’t noticed until it was much too late to save.

She pushed past Polaris, North Star guiding her to a home she hadn’t known she had, found his bathroom sink and began to scrub her hands under the weak-pressure of luke warm water. She sniffed, purposefully not looking at her reflection in the mirror. She could feel Polaris standing behind her, a million questions hanging in an empty air between them-

“It just... happened.”

She looked at him for the first time, her throat tightening. She hated this, hated that she had come to him, that there were secrets hanging on her tongue and she was never, ever supposed to speak of. Now or never. If she didn’t say it tonight, she never would. And he deserved to know, right?

Three, two, one.

“I saw my sisters kill a man tonight.”

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

He had questione. Of course he did. It was only fair, and there was some relief within her, a weight on her shoulder she hadn’t realized was there lifted and gone. She had no explanation, or nothing short. There were so many words to be said and she didn’t know if he was ready to hear them.

For the first time, Rosemary worried Polaris could not handle this. Or that he wouldn’t try. She was worried he would escort her to the door, open it and push her back out, lock the door behind her.

Her hands wrapped themselves around his waist and she pulled him close to her, face buried into his chest. Deep inhale, he smelled like pine smoke and familiarity.

“Will you still love me if I tell you?” she whispered.

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

A fractured soul tried its hardest to perry the words Polaris had spoken, but it was the ones he hadn’t said that had laid her to rest. She felt a pain burn into her chest, heart aching for a moment of desperately lost thoughts. She swallowed it down, refused to let that be the thing to break her for good.

“They kill bad men. Men who hurt women.”

It was an abject horror and an honesty both, and her tongue flicked against the back of her teeth. There was so much more, yet nothing to say all at once, and she was so terrified of cruel reality that she had ran into a stranger’s house and told him a secret. North stars lead home, so they say, but she felt more and more lost with each passing second in his arms. She looked up at him, a deeply rooted hope for his forgiveness planting itself into Rosemary’s chest.

“And tonight they,” she paused, “we,” what? What could she say to him that wouldn’t have him running? She remembered the day she first saw him, how she thought boys like him were made for disappearing into the night. She hoped she was wrong.

“I haven’t ever seen it before.”

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

She hated herself for how relieved she was. She hated how easily he made her feel, how a couple words of comfort were all it took for her to start feeling better. It wasn’t enough to take away what had happened, and she was beginning to think only time could. But she had Polaris, and he had not pushed her away when she needed him to pull her close. In that moment, she felt safe. And that was something she needed to feel at that given moment.

She allowed him to hold her for a long while, tears soaking into his shirt, his heat calming her shivering skin. Finally, she looked up at him with an apologetic expression, fingers dipping themselves into Polaris’s.

“I’m sorry,” she started, gesturing toward her face and forcing a laugh, “Guess I’m not so mysterious and enigmatic anymore, huh?”

I got this old crow on my shoulder
the evil idol is a curious fight
even angels can get caught in the end
with their halos 'round their ankles

His lips pushed against hers and her first instinct was to push him away. She didn’t need him. She didn’t love him.

Right?

But grief had a way of changing a person, and intimacy seemed like something she absolutely needed now that his hands were on her waist and she could taste him. She broke away for just a moment, only to notice a hunger tightening her throat and begging to be fed. She hesitated for only a second, before closing the distance between them again, this time with more passion that she believed she had ever felt.

Dangerous boy. The kind who ran with wolves and wore leather jackets. He wasn’t supposed to be someone safety harness, he was meant to be a hole in the net, a danger and a threat. He was supposed to do bad things to good people, but he didn’t.

Her hands reached to pull off his shirt.