#conflictededge

a darker shade of magic.

          ( accepting – mutuals. // @conflictededge )

          she’s past being terrified (not that animal in a cage anymore, pacing the length of it, body wound tight and small and eyes flickering, hesitant) – —- now, she’s simply furious.

          she hates adrian luca with everything she has. hates him for what he’s done to her and what he’s done to elliot and what he’s done to the others around her, terrorizing them for as long as he has. hates that he’s ripped away her sense of safety and left her paranoid and frightened and on-edge instead, constantly balancing on the edge of a knife’s blade. hates that he’s the one who’s haunted her nightmares for longer than he ever should’ve; that when she closes her eyes, it’s his face she sees. hates that he’s left her to question everything and left her with this awful, ugly reminder of the things she’s done and the things people are capable of and how, at the end of the day, he will always, always be so much worse.

          he likes to think her the only monster, but it’s a practice in denial; if he looked closely enough, he’d see that they aren’t so different after all, she and him. cut from the same ugly, brutal cloth. 

          (filth teaches filth, after all.)

          and now, locked away in another cell in a place that wants to bury her, he thinks he’s going to be the one to break her. he thinks he’s going to be the one who walks out of this victorious, who rids the world of ruin, but he’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong. (he can keep her locked in here with marcus, he can strip her of her powers, he can smash her face against the concrete and laugh when she hits the ground and struggles to get up and he can lead her from one cell to another and watch as they light her up with wires and needles and machines and take and take and take from her but she’s not going to give him the satisfaction of an easy death. she’s looked it in the face too many times and refused and now is no different. she won’t let it be different.)

          if she dies here, she’s going to die fighting.

          her smile is an ugly, brutal thing, all wolf teeth.

     Do you have a reason for       snooping around here? 

[ mouth runs dry and hate bubbles up at the back of her throat like bile but still she stares at the image, the narrow line of his hips and their proportion to his strange broad shoulders, the natural plane of his stomach that lends itself all the way

d

  o

   w

     n

and she groans, clenching her eyes shut and biting her lower lip in hopes that if she punishes herself enough, when she opens her eyes she won’t find him attractive anymore, won’t feel that pull to him, that undeniable draw that whispers to her 

 you are a monster, too

because how else could she find so much beauty in a beast full of hate?

                  (no such luck, though.                         Blue eyes open and she still wants to leave her mark                             on his hipbone and his neck and his shoulders                                    angry and red) ]

The fight had been a bloody one; all tooth and nail and raw, feral power, like wolves at each other’s throats.

Adrian’s materialized blades—all different shapes and sizes, but all dark as night and shimmering like bloodied obsidian shards—the ones that had made contact, are still embedded in her skin as she lies, crumpled unnaturally with limbs askew, where she’d fallen.

Clutching an arm around his chest, overlaying the handprint she’d left months ago with his own hand, Adrian forces air in and out of his lungs, ignoring his protesting broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, and newly singed flesh not because he has to stay on guard, but because he’s finally won.

An era has ended. Gone are the days of Ruin. Gone are the countless nights spent using every ounce of skill he has poring over maps and contact lists; over photographs and audio files; over lab results and statistics.

It’s over.

So relief should be what he’s feeling now; surely will be what he feels when he can breathe again, when his head isn’t spinning, and his ears stop ringing. And he imagines it as rainwater. Just a drizzle, enough to cool and cleanse his mind, his soul; imagines it as an ocean breeze back in California, with the warm sun on his back and the salt air caressing his skin.

But relief doesn’t come.

Even as he’s forcing himself to his feet, groaning against the pains he’s starting to take stock of, his eyes never leave Josephine.

It’s over.

He tells himself he’s won, over and over, like he’s on a loop, but still he feels no better than he had. He still feels angry and fearful and, perhaps worst of all, he is disgusted that he’s won. Or rather, how he’d earned his victory.

Limping, he carefully steps over to her, and with more gentleness than he’d ever shown her while she’d been alive, he pulls one of the shallower shards from her arm.

He is no better than she. And he knows now that the hunter will soon become the prey.

SEND “REVERSE!” TO SEE ME ATTEMPT TO WRITE YOUR CHARACTER

He lets the Gucci aviators slip down his nose, the better to show how easily and genuinely he smiles, a perfectly fashionable young man in perfectly fashionable suit and accessories. An appearance of being put-together, like he has his shit under control, and doesn’t he?(forcing it has to count for something, pretending has to have some value, as if Adrian is a painting, a representation of what a normal human being should be, ideally, without having to worry about the mess of mutant, without being awake to the nature of the monsters that walk around them, pretending just like him-- )

There’s blood under his nails but the girl smiling at him doesn’t seem to notice it- she hardly seems to notice anything at all, a happy, vapid thing easily distracted from the growing crowd outside of the small alcove they both huddle under, taking shelter from the rain that had broken free from the sky without warning. One minute, bright, clean sunThe next--              An unending torrent of rain, splashing down on the earth and soaking                  through Adrian’s coat, ruining the silk lining.

(The Mutant Rights activists still carry on with their activities, selfish beasts who demand freedom despite their crimes, commited in the past and future, and ignorant, bleeding heart humans wasting their lives on creatures who would toss them to hell in a second for a taste of freedom                           Adrian thinks he might have seen a familiar head of brunette                                    curls--)

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧ | Sexual Attraction
 ✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧ | Romantic Attraction
 ✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧ | Crushing
 ✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧| Squishing
 ✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧| Sensual Attraction
 ✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦ | Aesthetic Attraction

[blood boils in her face as she yanks her gaze away from him and the cut of his suit, tailored expertly to his lithe frame

How could she have been so stupid, so off guard to think he wouldn't realize what it was she was doing?

Time away from him had dulled her senses, had made her think him something less sharp and dangerous]