--

A veritable ocean of violet, for lack of a better term, pooling across the floor at the end of a grueling battle. Broken horns. Broken bones.

Broken hearts.

You watch through a spectator’s view as one ancient curling horn harder than iron is pounded into the stone beneath a body you would have to be truly blind not to recognize. Beneath a heart beating blood out of veins torn wide as rivers.

You only wish it was half that poetic, to wake up screaming.

--

Hours ago, but not many, Barron had left the company of the assembled warriors to go and take on the largest of them all deep within the heart of his own dwelling... and you knew he would not return. Your eye remained on the horizon even long after the shape of him had faded from sight and it was only at Karkat’s insistence that you returned to the group to try and organize. There was still a war to fight, after all, and the loss of both leaders would not be the end of it.

But all plans discussed may as well have been in a language you didn’t understand. You didn’t focus on the words around you, and you didn’t respond to inquiries about the state of you - everyone assumed, correctly, that you were distressed over the martyrdom of your matesprit. They still had hope for his return, though, and you wouldn’t take that from them. You couldn’t. You smiled when they said he would come back triumphant, but it never quite reached your eye.

--

When the ambush began, it was less of an ambush, more catching a speeding bullet in your bare hand and throwing it back at twice the speed. The company had been prepared. The second the first body hit the dirt -- courtesy of the defected laughsassin lurking the edges of the group -- the tension snapped like a wire and all hell broke loose.