tw: slavic

Your hands are sweating, knuckles aching. Every blow sends a wave of exhaustion up your arms, the dull thuds of impact growing quieter as your energy drains away. You’ve been here for hours, now, and your knuckles are bruised, your hand wraps soaked through. The punching bag barely moves as you hit it, the muscles of your arms strung out and aching. You clench your teeth, and pull back your fist once more.

Something moves in the corner of your eye, a shadow blocking the light momentarily, and you startle, shaking fists raise, only to let out a long breath as Rhaxa slips silently into the room. They barely acknowledge you beyond a brief glance, settling down on their haunches and tucking their wings around themself. Your scowl goes unnoticed - or ignored. You can never tell.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for you.”

“It’s after midnight.”

Rhaxa tilts their head, tail twitching. When the silence stretches, when it becomes obvious they don’t intend to answer, you shrug, turn back to the punching bag. Even with the brief rest, your back and shoulders are screaming in protest, and you have to grit your teeth as you try to focus on the movements, the steady ache in your fists. Rhaxa’s eyes burn into you, a dark, gleaming shadow in the corner of your eye, and eventually you groan, wipe the sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand.

“Go back to bed.”

“No.”

Whether they’re trying to frustrate you on purpose, you can’t tell; you’ve got better at reading them, but they’re still- well, alien. They stare implacably back as you glare at them.

“I’m not coming back to bed yet.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you here?”

They shrug, a movement they’ve picked up from you - it’s more impressive when it’s done with four limbs and those hooked wings, all that serpentine grace brought to bear in a gesture of truly breathtaking apathy. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”

“So?” You’re being belligerent - you know it, can practically hear Nash telling you, but you do it anyway, pushing back your hair and glaring at Rhaxa.

“So I came to find you.”

You’re reminded, not for the first time, of the ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail, every conversation going round and round and delivering you exactly nowhere, leaving you with an increasing sense of frustration in their obtuseness. They’re doing it deliberately, you’re certain of it. “Great. You found me. Go away.”

“No.”

“Fuck’s sake.” Clenching your teeth, you turn back to the punching bag, force yourself to raise your aching arms. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“Then stop talking.”

There’s a hiss in their voice now. They’re laughing at you. Your next punch comes with more force than you’d thought yourself capable of, muscles clenched, ragged and shaking. It works: you do stop talking, clamp your mouth shut and focus on the ache, the movements, the rhythmic slap of your knuckles against the bag. You can’t ignore Rhaxa’s presence, though: never could, probably never will. It’s just too much, all that muscle and sinew and predatory attention like claws against your skin.

They don’t even blink, don’t give you a moment’s respite.

Finally, you turn to them, take an aggressive step forwards. Your voice almost cracks, a hitch in the words that you put down to exhaustion and not the tangle of razors in your chest, the bile that’s been crawling up your throat since you woke sweating from another nightmare. “What are you looking at?”

Rhaxa tilts their head. Straightens, and you should be scared as they tower over, as they prowl towards you sleek and dangerous, sweat and metal in the air and your breath tearing harsh from your chest. You should be running, says the part of your brain that still misses IVI, the deepest, most primitive part of your consciousness.

You should be apologising, says another part of your brain, small and ashamed of your anger, your pettiness. Your everything, the way all your broken pieces fit together wrong like a pane of glass, shattered and taped back together.

You press your lips together, and realise your jaw is shaking.