#curaidh

She’d meant to sneak out earlier, as it so often happened. But the exhaustion of the day had kept Zoya under longer than anticipated. When she awoke, she was not greeted with the quiet sounds of the night or Cullen’s sleeping face beside her    instead, she was pulled abruptly from her slumber, with ragged breaths ringing in her ears and shuddering arms wrapped tightly around her.

Any sign of drowsiness was gone in an instant, with Zoya already going on high alert. “Cullen.” His room was the only place she’d save his name for, usually favoring his title as a general rule. But the circumstances differed greatly now, with Zoya’s tone worried rather than lustful.

Grimalkin and Ariella blinked. Ariella had gotten so unimpressed that she had sat down on an overturned tree just watching the back and forth. The cat was sitting on her lap, sitting tall, tail lashing – but it was obvious that the Cait Sith and the Seer were both not impressed. They had been here for ten minutes now, watching the back and forth bickering between the Prince and the Great Trickster.

“Why, if this is what we’re going to be doing then I will find better use of my time.” The cat yawned before cleaning himself, rubbing an idle paw over his ear.

Ariella stifled a snort. 

&. 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬.

In her eyes. In HER eyes, Ash found GRAVITY? Was that, seriously, what he said? Why did he – why would he – why would he say something like that when she was… when he was… he was with someone else. He was in love with someone else. Why would he say something like that?

How… how could he?

Was it because Meghan wasn’t around?

Was it because Ariella herself had fucked with his emotions because she wasn’t dead? Would it have been better off after all this time if she had died when that wyvern’s poisoned barb impaled her in its nest? It wasn’t her fault. She knew that. She knew that she had no choice. She had to hide herself away and not contact him. She knew that if she had then she would have caused the END for their world. His destiny was Meghan, it wasn’t her. This was her destiny, her destiny was to lead Ash to Meghan and for them to save the faery kingdom from demise. The very eyes that Ash said that he found gravity in, those star-riddled turquoise hues, began to water. Ariella couldn’t face the Prince. She couldn’t. She LOVED him no matter what, she had never stopped. She had spent literal centuries living without him – trying and failing to force herself to forget him. He couldn’t do this. This wasn’t their mission. Their mission was to get him a soul so that he could reunite with Meghan. He couldn’t talk about how she kept him grounded.

‘- That’s not fair.’ Ariella Tularyn sniffed. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She was an Unseelie Fey. Unseelie Fey were not supposed to show emotions – they were known to be emotionless and cold like the magic that they used. Yet, locked away from society Ariella had grown up to be more emotion-filled and empathic than any of her kind – and THATwas what pulled Ash towards her in the first place. A gloved hand moved up and wiped away tears she couldn’t conceal. Ariella looked towards Ash, hiding the smile with lips pressed into as thin a line as she could muster. She didn’t want him to think that she was affected by his emotions.

"All done on this side.” Melanie walked over to him, trash bag in one hand and broom and dustpan in the other. Normally, she didn’t like closing up at the theater, but thankfully it had been a slow night; no kids staying there late causing trouble or being rude to her just to look cool in front of their friends. Besides... It was nice to work a shift with Jakob, she had to admit. The distance present when they first met no longer persisted     perhaps they didn’t have the closest relationship, but Melanie believed they got on fairly well in the end.

She promised herself she had left the vigilante life for good, that with her new, steady job, she wouldn’t put herself in reckless situations anymore. But Aiko could never turn a blind eye to someone in need. A robbery on her street the night before caught her attention on the way home; if not for the knife involved, she could’ve intervened as herself     but with danger looming, she had to act fast, as the hero she was once.

Determination, however, didn’t equal skills. Aiko was rusty, and though she’d managed to capture the perpretator with the help of her trusty chem-bombs ( she always kept some in her bag, just in case ), she’d gotten into a little brush with the his knife. It had only grazed her leg, nothing serious, but it was enough to leave her limping the next morning.

She couldn’t call in sick to work when Trunks had such a busy day ahead; he needed her there.

“Oh!” She didn’t hear Trunks approach, but then again that wasn’t unusual; his steps were surprisingly quiet. Aiko looked down at her leg; she’d only just gotten into work and he noticed her limp already... as well as the thin line of blood that had started running down from where she’d been cut. Crap. She should’ve worn flats.