#rimesided

her body feels wrong without the light. dim. as if she were a shade that could be seen through. an empty vessel to be filled up again. the thought sets her heart thudding in her chest at a rabbit rhythm. until he settles his hand on her shin, makes it slow a little. pale eyes shift over his profile in the soft glow of the lamp. he can’t look at me. the realization puts her stomach in knots. she swallows past whatever it is lodged in her throat. fear ; she knows it’s fear and she hates it, and hates herself for feeling it. 

“ yes, ”   she says, barely managing to keep the streak of pain out of her voice. her hands curl to fists, nails digging into her palms ; the smaller pain steadies her. be brave, you fool.   “ but not if you don’t want to. ”

@rimesided​ ; ‘ yer shakin'. ‘

          shin malphur never felt the cold. not really, not in the same way everyone else does. he knows now that it was always the protection he somehow garnered from the traveler and its light. knows now that he never did anything to deserve that protection over all the other people around him. he didn’t deserve it more than his pa or luka. still, it didn’t change the fact he didn’t feel the cold. 

          that is, until he met true cold. like the kind drifter speaks about when he’s feeling particularly open or talkative. the kind that cuts straight through the light that entwines itself with every inch of his body. the light that makes up more of him than human flesh. until he set foot in the snow and felt the air slice through the weak parts of his armour effortlessly. until he felt the cold mixed in with darkness more potent that he’d ever felt on yor or lingering around the shadows. this is everything he always feared and more. this is everything shin has never understood and everything that weighs on him in those quiet hours of the early morning when silence hangs heavy like a blanket. 

          he needs to be here for him. he needs to stay here for drifter. needs to ignore the way the cold drills against his skull and pulls his chest taut. the way it plays in the corners of his vision and moves the shadows at the edges of the room. even this campsite, sheltered from the winds and heated on the inside doesn’t stop it. doesn’t quiet the racing of his mind or make his breath come any easier. it’s everywhere. surrounding him and drowning him out. light only burns bright for so long--

          “yer shakin’.”

           shin has long since lost track of if this is just his mind playing tricks on him or if it’s the darkness choosing him as something to torment because it can feel his fear, his hesitation. though, he doesn’t think it matters anymore. it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know because he’s still here. he’s still here despite it all and he needs to be here because drifter is here and he belongs where drifter is--

          “shin.”

          blue hues blink and find the figure sat beside him. shin watches marred features for a long moment, expression blank as he notes the pallid skin. as he’s sure dark hues glint pale, harsh blue for a split second and the gunslinger is looking away again. too much. it’s messing with him. that’s it. that’s all there is to it. he is shaking, now he thinks about it. now he notices the way hands shake where he hugs himself against the suffocating ice that closes in further by the second. shin feels this cold. shin wonders if this cold will never leave him. if he deserves this cold for making it this far. for the mistakes that he’s made and the path he’s taken himself down. shin feels drifter’s hand on his knee and he can’t bring himself to look at the rogue. he ignores the ache in his chest for that familiar warmth, for hours spent warm beneath blankets entwined with light and heat. skin on skin. 

         “’m fine,” arms pull tighter around himself, a futile attempt to slow the shivering that races through slowing frame. he can’t leave. he doesn’t trust the dark. not with drifter. shin won’t watch as everything falls apart around him again. won’t stand back helpless to do anything about it. not even as he glances up to drifter with bleary eyes and dull skin. he won’t go anywhere. he can’t. not now. not now that he’s here. the darkness can show him as many images of the rogue or luka or yor as it wants, can twist the world around him and work the cold into his bones or freeze the light from him - he won’t go anywhere. not again. “’m fine--s’ fine--” 

@rimesided​ ; hand smooths over the old cloak on his workbench. drifter's only meant to take measurements for the prime armor but he pauses to gaze over the stitching. it looks as kitbashed as anything drifter has ever made. head raises when he hears the quiet shuffle of shin's footsteps enter the room. " thing's a mess, " rogue says without looking at him. " gotta be a story behind it, yeah? "

         shin doesn’t count himself as a hunter. figures that the reason he always ended up with a cloak was just the fact that it threw off his silhouette at a distance or that it was good for staying warm in a pinch. (not that he needed that anymore. supposes that old habits always die hard) or, maybe it just meant that the weight of all that it was made up of would always be on his shoulders. a reminder. a story kept in the folds of fabric and stitching redone countless times until he figured out how to make it stay. 

          wasn’t heavy. not anymore, anyway. scraps of fabric - of blankets and flags and tent canvas stitched together with whatever he could find. kept on the remains of his mentor’s cloak. doesn’t know why. maybe shin thought that it meant he could take them with him. all of them. his ma and da, his father, jaren. the rest of palamon lost in the dirt and ash now long since grown over and eroded to nothing as they returned to the earth like his father always said. himself. the kid that died there with them all. the one that didn’t make it to the edge of town to see the figure that would become his very own living nightmare. the one that would hunt him for years to come. he took shin with him all these years, while he swerved further and further from his name and his face and his voice. he at least made sure the renegade carried that weight, too. 

          still, a hunter’s cloak is as personal to them as someone’s handwriting or fingerprint or  their journal of their private thoughts and dreams. shin felt that, even now, when he handed over the handmade thing to drifter. found it hard to let go of even when he’s letting it fall into hands that he trusts just as much - if not more - as his own. he watches drifter with his hands on it and finds that... he doesn’t mind it. doesn’t mind him touching shin’s story. his life and his past. doesn’t mind the way rogue’s hands look dancing over the stitching he remembers crying over time and time again with bleeding fingers and nothing but a ghost’s cold voice above him. too much pressure for a child. too much blood and purpose for a boy not much older than the ones running the streets of the last city with their friends. 

          “’s mine,” my story. my legend. the one everyone should know. not the one they spread from hunter to hunter, whispered in the dark like a tale to scare off anyone not ready for this life. they tell of the renegade to scare children into staying away from the dark and shin doesn’t know when it went from wanting to avenge his home and his people to deciding that more and more and more people should taste the same flame that he did. “needs mendin’.” he doesn’t look at drifter when he crosses the room, doesn’t think he has to. he’d see the shine in blue hues anyway. instead, fingertips brush the scrap of fabric that would sit between his shoulder blades. an old blanket, made of a flag for something even older than the town itself. deep red, almost brown. a flash of yellow at the edge. ironic, he thinks. knows that the design was a sun. remembers tracing the lines of it with his fingertips before real flame and ash took the rest away from him. 

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. ”

putting this under readmore not only cause spoilers but cause i’m embarrassing

@rimesided​ ; he feels him outside the engine room door like how one would feel the sun's heat through closed curtains. come to try and talk again, probably. maybe try and look at him, be near him. drifter knows it won't work. it probably won't ever work. he's glad shin can't see how sadly he smiles. "saw yer games today. people're callin' y' the silver bullet cause'a the gun." the gun he made him. "golden gun. silver bullet. if only they knew, huh?"

          i know you got hate in you. most do. trick is to use it, 'stead of it usin' you.

          shin malphur is known throughout the system for his hate. unbridled and seething, hotter than the sun and twice as fast. a gun on a feather trigger ready to pull back if given even half a reason to. the renegade was nothing but hatred spilling over and sorching everything he touched, anything that dared get too close to the dark. too close to him. he’s not the renegade anymore, not for a long time. but that doesn’t mean shin can’t hate. now, he supposes he just hates different things. more things. more than just the sole focus of his rage. the way drifter’s eyes go dark when he’s planning his escape from some scheme gone wrong. or the way the tower has a chokehold on the rogue. maybe even the way guardians seek him out for lessons he doesn’t plan to give. 

          now, though? shin hates this. he hates himself for not being able to touch the one person who matters anymore. hates the dark and the way it leeches at his light and soaks into his skin. he hates the way he can hear the sad smile on drifter’s marred features. the way he can feel warm skin beneath the pads of his fingertips when he knows it’s nothing but the cold metal of the engine room door. 

          ocean hues close as the gunslinger leans his forehead against the door and concentrates. slow it all down. small pieces at a time. don’t be afraid of it. you can’t be afraid of it. you can’t let that fear control you anymore, shin. it’s different to the dark he’s felt before. it’s more controlled. less wild and rabid and trying to eat away at everything that makes up shin malphur. but in the same breath, it’s worse. shin can feel it pushing against drifter. feel it reaching out even through the iron grip the rogue has on it. or maybe that’s just him. maybe that’s his mind playing tricks on him? funny what fear can do to the mind. 

         “silver’s better,” it’s closer to you. voice is small, just enough to make it through the door but not much further than that. he doesn’t want this. he doesn’t want drifter shut up in the engine room and only coming out when shin is tucked away in the shipping container they call a bedroom. he doesn’t want any of this. doesn’t want the darkness or the light or the war coming down around them anymore. shin’s tired of fighting. of fighting for the light. of fighting himself just to be able to stand here listening to the silence on the other side of the door. he doesn’t like the silence. not on drifter. not on them. “’s a. better gun.”

         blue hue opens just enough to watch his own hand shift to hover over the door handle. he can feel the cold radiating from it. can feel the way his light shrinks away and muscles pull taut. the way his hand shakes where it hangs there an inch away from seeing drifter again. an inch away from seeing dark hues with that glint of mischief that always made shin feel alive. that voice that made him feel real and those hands that taught him what safety felt like. how can they still feel safe when they’re dripping in ice? how can shin feel him again with the same thing that coated yor and palamon and jaren’s body now encroaching on the light shin promised he’d protect and keep here with them? 

         shin watches his hand for a long moment. he watches himself rest against the handle and press down. watches himself hesitate before pushing the door open with slow movements. he feels his gaze drag from his own hand to the room ahead of him. ocean hues find drifter stood there. alive and bright still. still grey. still brighter than anything shin has seen before. still drifter. just like he said. it’s still him. it’s still them. tired eyes watch drifter. watch him blink and watch his face shift in that moment. he can’t read the expression. doesn’t know if he wants to, really. shin stands there until he feels the darkness inching towards him, until he has his hand outstretched and feels the cold left in the wake of his light, the way it shrinks away and feeds into that fear. the pit in his chest is deepening by the second, is visible in his face when the gunslinger takes a step backwards. “i--i--” when he shakes his head and tears start to fall. when he’s rubbing at now dull blue hues with the back of a fist. no. he can’t. he can’t do it. 

         slow it all down. small pieces at a time. don’t be afraid of it. you can’t be afraid of it-- shin doesn’t listen to his own script as he turns on his heel and disappears further into the derelict, away from the engine room and away from his world. shin doesn’t listen as he slams the door of drifter’s star chart room behind him and slides down the metal to the ground. he doesn’t listen as he holds his face in his hands and cries. not as he shakes with it and gasps for air where he can’t find any. not as his world crumbles around him and all he can hear is drifter’s voice in his mind, above the sobbing and crying. 

@rimesided​ ; ‘ yer so beautiful. '

          he’s heard people call fire beautiful. call destruction beautiful. the rendering of life to nothing but dust and rubble. shin’s never understood that. he’s been that destruction. seen it first hand and been the reason it’s bought about. he doesn’t understand how it can be beautiful. doesn’t understand how someone can want to see it again and again and again. shin’s flame, his light, it’s nothing but a hunger for destruction. a hunger to burn and burn until nothing remains. heard hunters in the tower revel in it and titans pray for it. 

          but then, drifter isn’t talking about shin’s light - is he? 

          the rogue sees past that. is the one person who sees past it and can watch the person who lay beneath. the blue eyes and soft smile of a man who never got to live in the real world. he thinks that person is beautiful. shin doesn’t have to check if he’s telling the truth. he trusts drifter. he knows that he wouldn’t lie. not now. not while shin is sat in his lap with the rogue’s hands trailing lines of heat against his ribcage. not while the renegade is reduced to naught but his underwear with flushed features and eyes blown wide. it’s so easy with drifter. to be himself. to not be scared for once and settle into that which they’ve found in each other. 

          hands wind ‘round the back of drifter’s neck, anchoring the larger man in as shin splays his fingers and touches as much of him as he can. as he drowns everything else around them out. there’s no darkness. no palamon or dredgens. no dead parents or a hole where jaren should be. there’s no tower politics or ice planet or emissary. there’s just the two of them. just them and the air around them that fills with light and heated breath. shin thinks that he could get used to this. that is is used to it. drifter is everything all at once. a chance to live. a chance to be more than just the renegade or shin malphur. drifter says he’s beautiful and shin believes him. and it’s not for his light or his speed. it’s for him. for the way skin bends around bone and scars wind around his lithe figure. for the way ocean hues shine when lips press against his jugular. he believes drifter when he says it. would say it back, too. and know that it’s honest truth. that is, if it wasn’t for the way he finds the rogue’s lips with his own.