#pyresided

lulled by the almost rhythmic sounds of shin cleaning his guns, of the cold wind blowing through the derelict, of the sound of the charged filament pages of the book in her hands as she turned the pages with a simple long blink, it took a moment for orin to miss the absence of shin’s breathing. when she looks up, he’s left. not truly—his body is still sitting in front of her, long fingers half curled around his tools, but he’s gone somewhere in the deep recesses of time and memory. she watches carefully, dutifully, her own body still as stone. ( no, not stone, never again stone— )

and then he rises and flees, those steady hands now trembling, his brow slick with fear-sweat.

for a moment she sits frozen, staring at the phantom shape of him left in the doorway. wait. he might come back. he might not want you to follow. wait.

orin trails her index finger along the spine of the book in her hands, barely hearing the whisper of filament pages pressing closed against each other as the little volume on the tidal forces of europa sprang shut. she leaves it on the workbench and goes out into the cold after him, after her shining sun.

she finds him in an all too familiar position, a mirroring of pain and fear and fury and collapse, and her heart hammers to see it. long legs fold swiftly ; settles on her knees across from him.   “ solnyshko, ”   she murmurs, her light flooding out of her like a balm against the flares slipping off of him, and their mingling is intense enough to form a visible corona around their bodies. they shine eerily in the cool dark of this ice-filled hall. around them the ice drips, and she reaches her small calloused hands out to his and speaks in the tongue he seems to love best to her knowledge. she speaks of the oceans beneath europa’s icy surface, and then of the seas of the distributary, how she wonders at her own memories and whether they are merely figment given shape by her explorations with namqi and the firebreak order. she whispers secrets to him, little fears and white lies told centuries ago to friends whose names she still can’t remember. and all the while she watches him, those eyes fading between ocean blue and gold and back again, the sweat still beading his brow and slipping down the sharp angles of his cheekbones. with absolute tenderness she sweeps his sweat-soaked hair from his face, cups his cheek, reminds him sharply of their breathing exercises. they flow through them together until she can feel his light folding in upon itself again, like a snake coiling to rest.

“ come, solnyshko, ”   she says in a voice that is both soft and strong, lifting him to his feet. when he leans against her heavily she only huffs a little, wraps her arm around his waist, guides him back to the cot in their crowded little quarters. more words spoken, a song sung not in russian but in the speech that only awoken know as she strips him of boots and shirt and pulls several blankets over his scarred body. she sits on the edge of the cot, presses a soft kiss to his temple when he rolls onto his side, and guards him while he sleeps until she feels that familiar presence standing in the doorway again.

she doesn’t look at him—not even when he comes to stand beside her—her eyes fixated on shin’s face now restful and quiet, says   “ just some demons come to play, love. i took care of him as best i could. ”

no longer accepting! @pyresided

She’s never much liked Shin’s ghost, the handful of times she’s spoken with her. Too cold. Too removed. Dogmatic she thinks, and the word thrills prophecy over her fingertips that she ignores.

Now she thinks she hates her.

“You’re better than this,” Celia says, hovering almost still as stone over her bleeding charge. He’s got his arms ‘round his knees, eyes glazed and staring off into the middle distance. Blood drips thick and dark from a cut in his forehead, from another across the bridge of his nose. Orin’s own wounds had been healed when Gol had rezzed her, but she knows better than to expect Shin’s ghost to do the same for the Renegade. At least not right away.

It sickens her.

“Leave.”

Celia barely twitches at the sound of Orin’s voice, the geometry of her shell twisting ever so slightly.

“He nearly got us all killed.”

Her voice is cool, detached. Not for the first time Orin wonders at the crux of their relationship, the inner instinct to mediate buzzing like a hive. But it’s washed away in cleansing rage, and another instinct: there is no fixing what is broken here for it is not broken; it is as Celia wishes it.

“He tore apart three dredgens, without my help after I went down. I made the mistake—“

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be working with you.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone who hasn’t been able to guide him to harness his Light safely.”

And now Celia turns, shell spinning with tightly controlled irritation. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe so. But it doesn’t take a genius to see he deserves better than you. Piss off.”

For a moment she thinks Celia will argue more. Will drop some of the cold remove from her voice. Will speak with hated depth. Instead she simply decompiles.

Orin strides to the Renegade, crouches down, light on the balls of her feet. Beneath a sheen of tears that haven’t fallen his eyes are a burning gold.

“Shin.” Soft, her voice is so soft. When he looks at her it’s like a knife at her throat. She presses herself against it, fearless. Her hands come to rest against the sides of his face, palms prickled by stubble, and she suffuses them with her own light, warm, gentle. She traces her fingertips over his temples, the sharp profiles of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, and her Light is like a soft humming, its resonance tugging at the maelstrom of the Renegade, wildfire she soothes patiently. Lovingly.

Eventually the clear blue of his eyes returns. She swipes the pads of her thumbs against the spill of tears cutting tracks through his blood spattered face, the ash beneath it all.

“Sunshine,” she murmurs in Russian, and names him thus for the first time. When he surges forward she thinks for just a moment he means to do something terrible; she stays loose, still baring her neck to the knife.

He kisses her instead. The crush of his lips against hers is clumsy for a moment, until she tips her head just right and kisses him in return. All heat, all fire, his like the forest burning, hers strong enough to pull it inward, tempering.

When they pull away to catch a breath he keeps his forehead pressed to hers.

@pyresided​ / s.c.

@pyresided​ said:

‘ get out. ’

   Yor’s taken to this newfound freedom with open arms. Temporary as it may be he does not need to worry about that fire coming to burn him from the inside out, within reason, and he is being reasonable this time around. 

   Standing within the depths of the Annex and talking to the Drifter it seems as if his welcome is overstayed. Mid-conversation the Dredgen only half turns to address the voice interrupting, and any anger that might’ve been is lacking where Shin is concerned. Instead, Yor is brought to a silent pause, brief, before turning around to see the renegade there in all his simmering anger. 

   “Have you forgotten already what happened the last time you tried to make me do something?”

   Not a fight he can win this time around but the threat is there all the same, and very much a promise to be made if Malphur wants to travel down that road again. 

   He doesn’t need to look to know that the Drifter behind him is tense in anticipation, probably has a hand on his gun and waiting to use it. Yor wonders if the rogue knows that bullets alone won’t cut it. 

   “I have what I need, talking over and done. I was already on my way.” 

@pyresided​ said:

squints at him, angrily

@pyresided​ said:

punches him

i know this move, she thinks distantly as he barrels into her legs. and if she weren’t filled with the hot taste of ash and fire she might have laughed. instead she rolls when she lands—a graceless move that has her shoulder aching where it strikes the ground hard—and slides across the floor on one knee. she’s quick to spin around though she stays low and crouched. golden eyes dart up before latching on their mark ; she can feel the solar heat filling every muscle fiber of her powerful legs. 

( and doesn’t it feel good to feel? the act of it alone has her soul singing inside, a deep sharp cantlcle from the depths of despair to the height of triumph. do they know what they’ve given me? she wonders, lips parting, the points of her eyeteeth gleaming deadly— )

her legs shiver from the slow wave heat threading through them, a beautiful ache that she could hold for another handful of seconds only shin is whipquick, so she surges forward in her strike, body blinking through the air. flaming shoulder connects with his, though it’s a glancing blow—he’d nearly gotten out of her way. 

it’s still enough contact to get him slammed against the ice slick wall, her momentum carrying her into him. the wall shudders, sheets of ice and packed snow cracking free to shatter around them. and now she laughs, a breathless belly deep sound.

“ used to hate when he’d pull that move on me, ”   she says when she’s done laughing, untangling herself from his long limbs and cloak, frowning at where her armor had snagged with his.   “ mostly because it would come out of nowhere after he’d spend the first half of the fight avoiding my brash moves. ”