LAVENDER BLOOD. / AP.

they find each other in the quiet spaces between ; the moments of almost calm in the midst of this ongoing and never ending storm. less a pull and more a natural coming together of themselves, drawing nearer and nearer / a conscious choice.

how unexpected they are / this relationship that they’ve forged and this bond that winds so calmly around them. the determination that they had / of vastly differing origins and motivations but determination nonetheless : to see each other again and again and / again. the regression of fear and the growing of ( … ) something. something?

she finds him by virtue of knowing him ———— and how strange it is, to be known because she had wanted to know him and had wanted to see him and for no other reason and with no other cause / the purity ( not wholly accurate but there’s no other word that fits, in truth ) of that wonderment that transformed the fear that once resided in her ———— which is to say : she had experienced finding him here, before. sitting atop the thatched partial roof of the training grounds, beneath the sky beginning to turn from navy to grey.

( imagine, if you would, the oddity of the scene. wintertide up high and sitting beneath the perishing of the night sky ———— only for HER to find him / woman dipped in lavender / woman made of ivory bones / patchwork woman. the sun just about to rise and bring along with it the dawning of a new day and there is something like peace and there is something like serenity until there is a scream behind him, the likes of which he has grown steadily accustomed to, what with the familiarity of her and her presence and her everything.

and how she shouted !! how worried she sounded and how flabbergasted as he turned and looked at her with an arched brow and an almost bemused set to his mouth as she shouted up at him, her arms flailing, asking what he was doing and why he was up there and how did he get up there, anyways? and he had ————

he had smiled at her ridiculousness and her shouting and her everything. had smiled and then showed her the way / up and up and / to him.. )

felix had made his way up here hours upon hours ago, in the dead of night where sleep eluded him and drew further and further away from him until it was a far off concept that had no place in this realm of reality. fatigue is just beginning to pull at his joints and at his form but he breathes through it and works through it and found himself on the training grounds and then here, scaling part way and climbing part way and settling in this place / that can’t be called a private place / but is a place of his own carving, in a way.

her presence alongside him was neither expected nor unexpected. she moves quietly and when she appeared in the training grounds, her gaze casting to and fro as he watched her ponder and then wander and then take the same half-drawn path that he had shown her months ago. he shifts and extends a hand and she utters his name, a whisper of syllables lost in the demise of the night, before she takes it. his fingers curl around her wrist and he pulls her up and she settles. begins working on something or other ———— a sewing project, of sorts, needle and thread and fabric pulled out of a small satchel.

they find each other in the quiet spaces between ; they exist in mutual silences that curl between them so quietly and comfortably. they exist in brief moments shared with a cat as a third party. they exist when she pulls at his sleeve and leads him somewhere / anywhere / everywhere. they exist when he watches her train during a lull in his own, this glory of survival. they exist here, with their elbows brushing and the waning moon sighing above them as it descends / burning all the brighter only to fade and fade and unbecome in the coming light of the sun.

there’s a shift and a quiet noise before bernadetta’s head rests gently against his shoulder, one hand resting in the space between their hips and sewing deposited in her lap and he doesn’t start nor stiffen nor shift to refute her. instead he breathes and imagines ( accurately, of course, because while she has familiarized herself with him he has done the same, unerringly and without a moment of hesitation ) the blush that has overtaken her face from her neck to her ears. instead he allows his pinkie to settle over hers / the smallest of gestures / the most silent of allowances.

this  is  late  as  heck  but  tomorrow  until  monday  i  will  be  going  to  disney  ( orlando bbyyy )  to celebrate my b-day  so  i  will  be  lurking  on  mobile and in case you've  been  wondering  where  been  the  last  few  days ….  lets  just  say  my  manager  made  me  work  every  day  before  going  on  my  little  trip  and  so  yeah  ive  been  workin  my  ass  off  and  now  i  got  a  sweet  ass  vacay ! 

          it was strange that they should have met here — at garreg mach, and had fought nearly an entire war since — this girl that he was once poised to marry. daughter of the minister of religious affairs, the girl who once, supposedly, constructed dolls for the sake of tormenting her enemies. ferdinand had known by now that that wasn’t true. that wasn’t who bernadetta was. and he was infinitely grateful to have gotten the chance to get to know her like this.

          though, perhaps, he is a bit too forward as he approaches her and loops a casual arm around her shoulders. his smile is one characteristically warm & loving as he tilts his head down in her general direction. and then she speaks.

          ❛ you put your arm around me, and i literally felt my knees buckle. this is so pathetic. ❜ this only makes him drop his arm to her waist and pull her closer. he chuckles at the reddening of her face & the squeak that was soon to follow. ❛ i’m sorry, if that was the reaction i’d gotten from simply putting an arm around your shoulders, i was curious to see what would happen if i tried something else. was that … too crass ? ❜

          he’d never known a lady quite like bernadetta. he was not oblivious to his own charms, for sure, and he’d seen how it’d affected the other women of the court, but bernadetta certainly was something else. he constantly worried if he was pushing her boundaries too much.

when the moon dies ———— it goes quietly / so quietly / fading from the night sky only to be reborn steadily and slowly in the coming days and oh. how the night sky seems to yearn hopelessly for the borrowed light of the moon : the stars too distant and the sun gone / gone far away : to find the moon once more. or so they say, that is, THOSE LEGENDS OF THE SKY told and retold again and again and again and when he was younger he had gone wide eyed and awed at the mere thought of it all.

                  ‘you look like you’ve swallowed the moon.’                  ‘what’s that supposed to mean?’                   ‘that your mouth is wide enough to swallow it !!’                   ‘glenn.’ pouting and pouting and pouting and                               brother dear was laughing and laughing and laughing.

———— the sky yearns and yawns and wallows in its darkened misery and he strides beneath it and shrugs off the conceptualization of memories long gone and this is a sleepless night / how many sleepless nights have there been, truly? so many. too many. nightmares plague him still and his bones creak beneath the weight of them as he fights / to stop himself from peeling away a layer of his skin. and another. and another. until there’s nothing at all left to hold these nightmares anymore and they simply : fall. scatter. into nothingness / the idea of nothingness.

he sits beneath the wailing, lonely sky and breathes. steadily. deeply. legs folded and eyes closed and struggling to find a center of gravity / off kilter and neither here nor there nor much of ANYWHERE and perhaps he is the one scattered. the one fallen. his skin peeled back and rather than the nightmares fleeing / he has fled / and he is here. and not here. and breathing : MEDITATING BENEATH THE SCREAMING EMPTY MOONLESS SKY.

and her touch on his shoulder slams him back into his body / full force and shuddering and he’s twisting before he realizes and there’s a hand on his sword hilt before he considers it and he’s grabbing for her before his eyes fully open and alert and wary and nerves screaming and nerves alight and her scream registers in his mind / well before she does / well before his eyes open and he SEES HER PROPERLY. her scream. her scream : which reeks of familiarity, something that he has heard time and time again and has remembered well and truly and wholly. the cadence of it and the CRESCENDO OF IT and her wrist is in his hand and he stops himself from throwing her bodily in an act of useless self defense.

foolish. to have fallen asleep here where anyone could have attacked him / killed him / slaughtered him where he sat and that it’s HER WHO FOUND HIM cannot begin to dull the frenetic writhing of his nerves and how he has careened so neatly from false peace into the loud thrumming of his heart. echoing. echoing. echoing.

BERNADETTA IS SCREAMING STILL because : of course she is. his eyes open as his arm is pulled as she / falls / sprawling over the ground beside him and there is no feasible end to her screaming in the here and now. merely her eyes wide and terrified and staring into his and his expression ———— frigidly thunderous, he supposes. he assumes. he can only begin to imagine.

❝ stop. screaming. ❞ his head POUNDS, a steady throb at his temples and his skin crawls, still. even as he holds onto her wrist and even as her scream begins to taper and even as her fingers twitch in his periphery before settling once more and even as they simply stare at each other for a moment. and then another. and then another. silence reigns / broken only by her gasping breaths. ❝ you idiot ———— i could have killed you. ❞

you could have killed me. you could have killed me. you could have killed me.

❝ u—um, i’m sorry !! i’m s—sorry you were just ———— sitting there and i w—wanted you to ———— i—i just wanted to ———— i shouldn’t have !! stupid bernie i ———— ❞

( would you like to know something? something revealing and considering and substantial? would you like to know that WINTERTIDE, so very cold and distant, awakens at even the slightest of noises? the softest of sounds? just beyond his door. sleep is an ill fitting activity for him and for his mind and for the rushing scatter of his thoughts and his deep set paranoia which sinks its teeth so firmly into him ———— there are few who do not awaken him. few whose footsteps he has become so well accustomed to that they are a NON CONCERN to him / footprints settled deep into the snow that covers the whole of him. few who grow so close to him that they begin to tread their paths and just —— begin —— to crack that ice.

would you like to know something ? ———— ah. you’ve figured it out already, haven’t you? )

❝ shut up, ❞ demand a falling knife and she quiets immediately and stares at him / wide eyed and there is : something that settles in his chest. heavy and weighted and weighing and / brushed by light? by ———— something. something. something. something that carries within it an enormity yet an antithetical gentility, filling the whole of his chest / fit to burst.

maybe he had swallowed the moon, after all. ( or is that lo —— ? )

❝ ———— thank you, ❞ the words are ice / turned to snow / grounded but softer by far for all that they remain to be cold, melting on his tongue and the fear in her eyes and the tenseness in her form settles. gentles, too. he looks at her. he looks at her. ❝ for waking me. i shouldn’t have fallen asleep out in the open. ❞

❝ y… you’re welcome, ❞ quiet and petal soft and this solidity in his chest sighs, poised to crack. he holds onto her wrist / until he doesn’t.

( the sun searches for the moon ——— who searches for the sun ——— who is a star, indeed. )

/‘hir,āeth/