Break The Sky [Sophia]

[Victor Lark]

Victor swallowed the lump of anger that had suddenly grown in his throat. He had seen a flame rise in those golden eyes; she had almost won, and he liked to think he would have let her. But she snuffed it out as easily as she had let it rise. She was nothing but the flicker of fire in the wind, the toil of flint and steel and stiff fingers followed by a short burst of unforgiving air. As he stepped carefully backward and peeled his fingers from and to the sweat-slippery hilt of his dagger, he understood:

She would never be more.

She advanced, snarling. He knew too well that peculiar, ugly noise as it was pushed from a woman’s maw. It disgusted him. And to realize, without a doubt, that these sixty days of haphazard companionship would come to nothing, made him feel used and empty. He could not watch her thrash around like that. He resented her for what she was, what she could never change, no matter how much he tried to help her. She did not deserve what he had tried to give her.

His arm already threatened the blade out between them, shaking with his hatred. Even in red delirium, she managed to briefly avoid its promise of pain, but then her harmless keratin weapons grazed the fat of his forearm. All at once, reflex spasmed through his body and she stepped sideward. The blade tripped against the strength of her ribs but then it found the yielding softness between and, for the first time, if only for a moment, they were one. Victor did not have the energy to grant even the falsest attempt at sympathy as he pushed the blood-warm iron further into her, his petty frustrations manifest. The steel in his eyes pored similarly into dirty yellow of her fading life, searching... for what, he did not know. Then, with the harsh shudder of his elbow, he removed his dagger from that creature which he never knew to call bondmate.

[Sophia]

The red rage vanished in an instant.The pain was so blinding that for a moment, Sophia thought she was sleeping. She was no longer the furious creature that resided in the forest. She was the little girl, the one who had run away from her parents who had done nothing but cared for her. She was the little girl that was captured by strange men before she became the animal. Her eyes shone moist.

Sophia opened her mouth and tried to speak. Nothing came out but a gurgling red torrent of warm liquid. When he retracted the blade, a rush of air escaped her in a grunt and her body shook horridly. Her strength left her, and she collapsed to her knees.

Her eyes never left Victor's. In those pallid, almost black pools she finally saw what she had never allowed herself to see before. She saw nothing. There was nothing in that husk of a man; no, not a man. More like a parasite. Some disgusting creature that fed off of her, and when she was no longer useful, discarded her with a distinctive lack of emotion. Suddenly she was afraid. Afraid and angry at the man she had loved, the man she had thought had come to save her and only eventually offered her death. She whimpered pitifully.

Once more, futilely, she attempted to change into the mountain lion. In that form she knew none of this fear. That form still had its chest intact. Even though she clearly could not change, Sophia stopped all at once. She would not give him the cat. He drank in the fear she felt right now, his dark eyes were starving for it. She could not stop him from taking her emotion, but he would not have the cat. That part of her would forever wander through this forest.

With the last ounce of willpower she had left she tore her eyes from that cold man's. She looked up at the clear blue sky, the tips of the reaching branches of the trees. Around her, things grew quiet save for the wind softly rustling the leaves and the birds singing, singing at her and singing at Victor. Her fear left her, the anger faded, and this poor girl's last thought was how much Victor seemed like the birds in the trees.

[Victor Lark]

That look in her eyes... it was not sadness and it was not panic. As hot blood poured over her pained expression, he recognized it for what it really was.

Fear.

Victor’s breath caught in his throat. His own eyes suddenly hurt; needled tears carved into them and turned his vision into a circle of shards. But he did not dare close his eyes, for the chance that he might lose what he witnessed. Even though she turned her own eyes towards the sky, he did not look away from them. He could almost feel her golden terror pouring that foreign sensation into his gut, tying it in knots and leaving him with a fluttering hollowness in the pit of his abdomen. His shoulders began to shake. He could not find the strength to breathe. The stained and dripping dagger in his fist did not yield to the grip that turned his knuckles white, offering instead the consolation of useless exertion. He fell to his knees. He could have smiled.

But then it was escaping her. That little look, that beautiful fear, was steaming out of her brow and leaking out with her blood. He thought he could see it fade like he had never seen before, the way people always described it, intuitively and yet with remarkable tangibility. “No,” he demanded, gasping. “No. No, no, no... no, stop. Sophie, this is it. I can— I can— You can’t—” He crawled to her, leaving his weapon somewhere in the dirt. His hands found her and stupidly tried to cover her wounds, smearing her life’s blood over her paling body worn old dress. “No. Gods... fuck—” He found her face and clutched her cheeks harshly. He shook her, but her open eyes did not blink. The emotion was lost, and with it any hope Victor might have had to feel it, too. “Fuck.”

There was a moment of suspended desperation, and then his lungs filled again. With a shiver, the last of his fear left him. Victor recognized well the old familiar emptiness that replaced it, that which he could so easily fill with pretense and charades. But he did not want to. He wanted to know intimately what she had so effortlessly felt in her last moments. He wanted to be afraid.

Instead, a shallow corner of his mind stuck him with resentment. He dropped her limp head against the root beneath it. He did not regret his mistake or mourn the end of her existence; he was not concerned with her life, only the moment of empathy that she had somehow given him, and then just as easily taken. Glaring at her death, Victor scooped up his dagger and stood. He turned away, pressing the tears from his eyes and wiping the flat ends of his dagger against his pants. He trudged to where his trunk waited patiently for him and picked it up stiffly. Then he continued South, leaving her to rot.

“Weight of days lost holding you down;
you’ll look for me, but I won’t be found.
The bluebirds flutter in my chest. They want to sing!
You’ll have to break me open to hear anything...”

[Verilian]

Victor Lark +1 Wilderness Survival +5 Dagger +1 Acrobatics Lores: Dangers of the Swamp, Staying off the Road, Bringing out the Beast, Murderer, Looking into the eyes of Death Sophia +1 Hunting +3 Unarmed Combat +1 Acrobatics +1 Weapon: Club Lores: Bringing back the Wrong Gift, Adapting to the Human Body, Becoming the Beast, A Last act of Defiance, Looking into the face of Nothing, Murdered You Question My Logic? : Pretty self explanatory I think. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Notes: Good job guys. I am jealous.. I still haven't gotten to kill a PC. >.< Lol.