#lunheld

“ It’s not fine.  ” she argues, taking a single step towards him. He should know better than to expect her to believe such a blatant lie, that she’d argue with him on anything she considered incorrect. How could he expect her to ignore the exhaustion written on his features, or the bruises?  not likely.     “  You look like a wreck. ”

      She hesitates for a moment, taking it one step at a time as she moves closer.   “ What happened to you?  ”

He’d known Rayla wouldn’t take that answer. He knew, and yet he’d offered it anyway, as if it was some feeble cover-all shield to keep him from having to acknowledge the blatantly obvious. Was all logic to escape him simply because he was in pain, then? Letting his eyelids fall closed and his head back, all but ghostly fingers digging into transparent biceps mirrored the repose of his posture before.

“No, it isn’t,” Runaan finally sighed. “But I don’t think I’ve got the strength right now to speak much of it.”

something red inside runs away with you, runs down the corridors of the palace in your imagination. it takes on the shape of a bird and arcs across the sky above you, leaving a blood-dark trail behind it. you remember :  she said she had come for two targets, your brother and the king, but although the band marking your brother’s survival still adorned one wrist, the other wrist remained bare. 

you want to know without having to ask, without having to know, without having to offer up to the air all this grief that sits beneath your ribs where your mother is not breathing, where there is a locked door and a dozen guards between yourself with your empty palms and harrow.

now you head once again toward xadia. now you jog up to match pace with rayla. hoping your voice holds up, hoping you can say it before your throat closes up, you say,  “ hey, rayla, i need to talk to you. somewhere ------ somewhere quiet. like, now. ”  you cant your head toward your brother, a few yards behind you, holding bait in the air. azymondias trots at his side, more assured of his ability to walk than even three days ago. your brother catches your eye and although it hurts, with the soil you are about to turn over, you grin back at him and give a thumbs-up.

    Well, there those walls SHOT right back up again, like the temporary lapse into, say, not being an assassin--killing machine, was it? Was that what she was SUPPOSED to present herself as?--hadn’t even occurred in the first place. How dare she have a fleeting moment of human weakness; that was THEIR job, after all. Silly of him to think--

korra starters. 

“For what you have done to me?”

What an odd situation. Harrow found himself shaking his head at the girl, a strange, quiet chuckle falling from his mouth. His expression turned into something soft, something pained, as he levelled his gaze to hers. Tried to make himself less intimidating.

“If anything, it should be me apologizing to you. If it weren’t for my actions, we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we?”