we could forever | rose x roan

You shudder at the heat of morning dawn against your cheeks

(because nothing feels like it belongs anymore)

you're founded on faces, defined by few places; a blunted spear doesn't belong in your hands because you are no fighter. Your skin is not armor, your flesh is not steel -- it's porcelain. The same grey cage you find yourself locked in, the same shade as the shackles your bruise your skin against as you rattle the chains. You know Jane would call it purple, Rose would call it another form of black and blue but you cannot bring yourself to call it anything but ashen.

Confined to an ashen cage, you've given up searching for the key after seventeen years.

A blunted spear doesn't belong in your hand, an extension of yourself that destroys and takes but never learned how to create and give. A helmet does not cover your dark curls and your body does not yearn for the embrace of chainmail -- the name Roan Hailsham does not belong in the same breath as a war cry. But that doesn't stop your autocratic joints clicking with each autocratic movement, doesn't stop a blunted spear that doesn't belong becoming an extension of your hand.

An adrenaline rush fuels your movements and you paint a mosaic of violence, a sculpture of conquests and scarlet galaxies. You know this is only a mockery, so you allow aggression to become your second skin. You allow yourself to mouth her name between the spear thrusts -Rose- and the beautiful syllabary rolls off the tongue but never sounds in the space between you. That privilege is reserved for the harsh grunt that are sounded from your lungs, the song of spear against sword. Steel has always been a faithful lover to itself. You want to sound the name (r o s e) but your own heartbeat silences you. An adrenaline rush grips your tongue and tells you to be silent.

You tell yourself to be brave; you can do this.

Tunnel vision and focus, you blur the lines between friendship and competitor with each shallow spear stroke. In the moment, the irony is lost on you. You treat bodies that aren't yours as canvases, brandishing blunted weapons as paintbrushes and moving to leave grey lines (it's supposed to be scarlet) weeping from each other's skin. But you have no desire to scar Rose's precious skin, no desire to knock her to the ground and see her hair fall across her eyes.

Because even when you dare to strip away the basis of brightness, you still see more than a shade of grey. More than a shape to distinguish -- she traces an outline of hope against your skin with just a smile.

You can't scar a smile like that.

Roan Hailsham, you are too indecisive to be a warrior. This picture of failure is illustrated to you when a glance of her eyes (grey eyes she told you were blue, grey eyes that were always a shade brighter than everyone else's) trigger a plethora of second thoughts. So many ts uncrossed, so many things left unsaid because things are better that way, cross your mind and there's a moment of hesitation. A spasm of muscle and a slowing of your spear thrusts that you know is brought on by more than the simple weight of exertion.

You unintentionally give your skin and bone, leave yourself open and exposed, and she swings her short sword at your brief moment of weakness. The second when your aggression goes slack.

You're falling.

You find the harshness of a hard ground. The wind knocked from your sails as your spear clatters to the ground, the only mark it manages to make a scratch across the floor. You dare to allow yourself a glance towards the torn flesh along your bicep, the angry crack against your porcelain skin weeping a dark shade of grey, staining a white canvas with what Jane told you was called scarlet between empty stares and needless touches. A danger taught to you by a compass.

The sight of a tear at loose skin drowns the sound of your name in the air between you into background noise. You watch the world blur and meld at your fingertips; Jane becomes Rose, a lighter shade of hair loses itself to a darker shade and you've lost yourself to a solar flare.

You look up, and she's already binding your arm with a piece of her clothing. "Rose," the name just rolls off the tongue. You look up, a shape you distinguish against a background, and just listen. Just let it.

“Thought you were faster than that though,” you are, you were. You gaze at the dark patch spreading across the binding. “You had the upper hand the entire time.”

"Yeah I just," you trail off when you look up and catch the sight of a monochrome solar flare. You find her gaze. Her hands against your arm, against your skin, you ignore the way it feels like it belongs. You manage a weak smile. "I just got distracted."

Because how could you not?