it was a nice moment - pleasant, almost, despite the bite in her teeth. a step away from the bloodstained battlefield he’d found her on and towards something that might have resembled a sense of normality for two people, no matter how abnormal they may be in reality ; the curse of lightning that sparks and rushes against the white of his bones, heats the air in every breath he takes, and the curse of magic that stains the tips of her fingers, rattles against kneeling knees, that marks them as something else. power made flesh that turns to stone in time, not people to make choices, but potential monsters to be tied down lest they run amuck amongst the normal people.
and in the same instant it disappeared does it come crashing back into him.
she makes gratitude sound almost miserable, painful in the way that it flips from stubborn defiance and growing comfort, to frightened compliance. it’s a twisted thing stained in too many fearful attempts to placate him to be entirely welcomed, as if she has chosen him as merely a lesser evil. that he may hurt her, but it will be bearable compared to what she might have endured under the lock and key of the bandits from before. it cracks the edges of his smile, though he’s careful not to let his mouth curve too far downwards.
❛ sir? seems like a bit much, don't you think? next you'll be calling my my lord, ❜ he takes a drag from the cigarette between his lips, deeper than he might have under normal circumstances, and exhales through his nose. keeps his voice even, kind as he can manage under the weight of the disappointment over how this conversation had gone after starting with such promise. ❛ i told you my name before. i'm sure you remember it - cidolfus telamon. just cid will do, if you like. ❜
his mother used to scold him as a child for his silver tongue. too clever, she would say, warning him that it would get him into no end of trouble, ( she was right, of course, countless times over, but he always took his lessons hard whether it was swordsmanship, magic, or learning exactly where the limit was in condescendingly speaking to men that thought themselves better than him. ) but truth be told he’d never been more grateful for it all than he is sitting across from her. she leans forward and pulls back all in the same breaths, leaving him balanced on the balls of his feet as he attempts to match her in a careful game of back and forth.
if he pushes too hard, she’ll flee. if he doesn’t push hard enough, she’ll sit in that shell forever. he may not have intended to bring her along so he could figure out the puzzle that’s taken up the space beneath her ribs, clues etched on the inside of her teeth, scribbled in the palms of her hands, and carefully hidden away from his view, but she’s there now and it seems a waste to not at least try.
another drag, smoke from his nose. ❛ maybe you would be better off that way, but i have no plans to dump you anywhere, benedikta. i didn't kill those men so i could drag you around with my whims instead. ❜ let’s go home, he’d told her, taking her hand in his and pulling her to her feet. he hadn’t known where home is, what it might look like to her, especially not now when she’s lost enough to think getting saddled with him is her best option despite not trusting the words he says to her, but it was the first thing he'd thought when he stood over her smaller frame, eyes cast down to the dirt. he wants to take her home. ( he hopes and hopes she will at least one to trust those words someday, that he’ll take her home. if it's the last thing he does. )
❛ you find a village or town you want to stay as we go, then stay. you want to keep following the storm clouds, do that. i don't need - don't want - what little you have left that hasn't already been taken from you, so keep it. it's yours now. just worry about figuring out what you want to do. ❜
maybe it’s merely wishful thinking for a dominant to promise an almost slave that there’s hope in freedom when they’re both shackled by the decisions of their ancestors, but it’s all they have. freedom is the point. freedom says they are not tools to be used and thrown out when convenient, but people that have dreams and families, that love and feel sorrow, and he’ll be damned if a moment passes where he bears this weight and doesn’t make the world confront that reality.
