Flashback Tainted Hearts (Tinnok)

[Razkar]

35th Day of Summer
Outskirts of Taloba
23rd Bell

He slunk through the shadows like some guilt-wracked thief, and yet his feet carried him onward without looking back. No pilfered items were in his hands; there was no blood on them, no muted shouts and pounding feet as a patrol of guards pursued him. But still, he stayed in the shadows, and felt sweat drip down his bare back. Every step, every street, he waited for her voice like an arrow in his back.

Because he would turn, and see the question in her eyes... she would know the direction he was heading, and why...

You would destroy everything. Ruin her heart for every other, worthier male that would come after... but still, here you are.

"Yes." Razkar snarled to himself, and straightened up as he got to the perpetually-manned Main Gate. "I go."

He knew the men on guard that night, if only by repeated nods as he went back and forth through the gates. One of them frowned in confusion, probably wondering-

"What brings you out at this late hour, brother?"

Betrayal? Deception? Infidelity? Take your pick...

"Visiting a friend." He answered honestly, biting out the words as he clamped on his back molars, grinding down the whispering, insulting voice in his head. "She lives just beyond the walls."

The Fang Leader regarded him with eyes as cold as the iron portcullis. Like all the guards on rotation on the gate, her loyalty to her duty was beyond question. Every one of the dozen Myrians behind her would happily slit their own children before opening that gate to an enemy. Fanaticism may be an extreme thing, but it has its uses... and now, it was questioning why a male, sweating a little too much, would be leaving the city, ringed by the dark and chittering jungle, at so late an hour.

"Friend?"

The question was like a slap across his face. So much could be crammed into an explanation mark. Inquiry, accusation, disbelief... insult? Razkar did his best to keep his face immobile by the light of the burning torches. Stick to the truth, he told himself, or the parts of it she needs to hear...

"She lives in a shack beyond the walls, at the rim of the jungle. I leave tomorrow, and will not return for seasons, I think. Before I left, I-"

"Ahhh..." Gods, he could have gutted her for that expression on her face, the one that was mirrored by her grinning, elbow-in-the-ribs gesturing comrades. "I think I understand you, male. Be careful out there. You know we won't leave the gate to hep you."

"I understand, Fang Leader."

"Raise it!"

Unseen hands strained and grunted and heaved the two-ton barrier, bristling with poison-soaked spikes, out of his way with the screech of a dying titan. Razkar waited until he heard the telltale "click!" of the chain mechanism being held in place... and then waited a little longer...

Old chain. Well-oiled, but old. Best to give it a tick... now!

The male moved swiftly through the Main Gate, forcing himself not to look up at the thick iron latticework that could crush him like a skeeter without effort. He grabbed a dead torch from the wall and sparked his sword against a chunk of flint until-

-fire caught and smoldering in the faggot, spreading slowly but inexorably, turning linen and tar-rubbed plant matter into smoking, glowing flame... until it was bright enough to light his way.

The Gate slammed shut behind him, and Razkar began to move towards the tangle of fresh jungle beyond the walls. He sighed, shaking his head. A season ago, he would be walking a straight, easy line across grass cut very short, hundred of yards wide, a perfect killing ground with nary even a rock for an attacking army to hide behind. But now?

He got ten yards and then the nettles began to bite at his fate. Goddess, your Sister really needs to extend some boons to your Children...

Razkar regretted the thoughts immediately, of course, considering whom he was going to see. One marked by the Green Goddess, able to commune with animals and plants in a way not even a lifelong beastmaster could hope to achieve. He'd seen it, after all.

Seen a pack of slathering Akila Hounds rendered into puppies by her patience and compassion. Seen her speak to trees and plants and track down a monstrous thing that used to be a Dhani.

Razkar had seen all these things, and the mere thought of her eyes, yellow and hardened by years of persecution, sent his heart spiraling into his guts again. He gritted his teeth, concentrating on the endless tangle of vines and shrubbery he had to navigate. The torch was already blinding him, the light destroying his fragile night vision, but... you needed it out here. Fire was one of the few things the predators of the night feared... at least the ones on four legs.

He stamped and cursed and thorns ripped his flesh and he thought, Fucking gods, if she doesn't hear me coming, she's bloody deaf. Then he blinked at a spot in front of his eyes, something he assumed was the torch playing tricks... but it stayed... and he stomped out his own flame into dark death at in the rich soil...

Not a spot. A light. Hidden and faint but there, burning brightly... through a window.

Razkar's lips did a quick dance, flickering from grin to grimace to snarl to a final, tense, white line. He had come this far. When Syna still shone he had said his final goodbyes and promised himself that was what it had been... but the thought... the sight he did not see but his mind had made... it haunted him...

Tinnok, Wolf, alone. No friends, no compatriots... no-one like he or Aya to tell her the truth: that she was loved, that she was appreciated. But without being told such things, how could anyone hope to believe them? Faith only went so far, and then cruel reality told a very different tale... that was why he was here. Yes. That was why.

Lie to yourself if you dare, but-

"Gods, leave me-!"

The growl froze him like an ant hit by an ice age. Limbs stilled and his breathing stopped as if his head had been cut off. Deep, rolling, warning anger, territorial and indignant... then snuffling... and a low whine that came with softly padding feet and a tongue that-

"Godsdamnit, Dog," Razkar muttered, scratching the mutt behind ears he couldn't quite see, "Scared the petch out of me... hey, she's still up, right?"

[Tinnok]

She had told herself, warned herself of the day, had spent weeks preparing for the inevitable, had hunted, meditated, done anything to try to settle her mind on the matter, to feel, complete. She felt unimaginably selfish for the amount of time it had taken, this was their journey after all, she was only being left behind, which wasn't even fair to say...she had her duty to Caiyha, and leaving the Tropical Forest to which her biome contained would be the greatest kind of blasphemy. But she still saw their faces, and most importantly, their backs slowly walking away and disappearing into the foliage, and when she saw that...she knew she hadn't prepared herself, not at all, for the two last sentient friends she had to depart from her life for an indeterminable amount of time, unable to say a word, for it would probably just come as begging them not to go.

The part that annoyed her the most, however, was when she saw Eagle's face, her curt goodbye, and his, throwing his arms around her in a tight embrace, one which she should have given him from the start. He was her Eagle, though she winced at using the possessive. They had been through so many nightmares together and come out alive, somehow maintaining the thin veneer of companionship that had been threatened on more than one occasion.

She had faced vicious monsters, feigned betrayal, seen her entire fang slaughtered in front of her eyes, yet she had no fear of these things compared to telling Eagle her feelings, and to her greatest shame, the risk of hurting Aya was only a cursory worry on top of what the Myrian male would say to her when she did.

And now it was too petching late. They were gone, and she was alone again. She apologized to Caiyha then, for she was never alone thanks to her Goddess Mother's gift, but she begged the Being of Nature to understand her sorrow and woeful self-pity as she moped about her hut, setting a lantern in the tiny round window that didn't even have a covering, before shifting to her fire pit and slowly, ever so slowly starting a small camp fire. Her stomach roiled, and she found herself unable to eat, just taking slow sips of water. Pathetic, utterly pathetic.

So when she heard the sounds of rustling branches and foliage, much as if a giant was trying to sneak towards her camp. Tinnok was up, her bow string taut with a grey feathered arrow notched against the groove of the wood, the idea of her companions far from her mind.

She heard Dog bark, the sound they both knew as a friend, but Tinnok was confused as to who it would be. Unless it was Rarik or Kohl, two people who rarely ventured to her hut, knowing they would see her at the Tempered Steel lodges, she had no idea who it cou-

Her was dropped the second she saw him, recognized the outline of his form, saw a hand tentatively pat Dog's head in a way that suggested he still remembered seeing her eviscerate those humans upon their first meeting.

And Wolf cross the short distance of her little clearing, her arms wrapped around him, tightly, to make up for last time, half thinking that this was actually all an illusion trying to console her until she felt his arms wrap back around her. Realizing the brevity of that, the intensity of her hug, as if all of her emotions had exploded into the effort, Tinnok wondered if it was too much too suddenly, and pulled back, eyes searching for Aya, but not finding her. She retracted herself, a bit embarrassed, and swept a stray curl away form her face.

"Eagle, I...well I thought I wouldn't see you again. Is something wrong? I thought you already left?" Yellow eyes searched his dark ones for an answer, grateful for his presence, which was like balm on her emotional wounds, but tempering that with the inevitable. He wasn't coming with news she'd want to hear, certainly, they were still leaving, but the question was...why just him, so late, right now?

[Razkar]

Eagle didn't know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this unbridled... emotion! It was every bit as unsettling in its way as Tinnok's cold pseudo-dismissal of them was earlier that day. Not cruel by any means, but... restrained. Wolf all over, really, when Razkar thought about it. When you live in a world where practically everyone you meet hates and scorns you, you learn to hide your feelings.

So when Razkar was knocked back a few steps and pressed against her, arms around his neck, closer to her in that moment that he'd ever been outside of a sparring circle, he was... surprised.

Don't you dare! Don't you dare flare up right now! You stay limp or godsdamnit I'll cut you off!

Then her words lashed out at him in their confused way, and his thoughts were detailed yet again. Was something wrong? Goddess, did he really have to answer that one? For a few ticks Razkar stood there like the acme of foolishness, eyes flickering uncertainly around, mouth opening and closing like a beached trout, and... oh, yes... scratching behind his head.

"Yeah, well, I was, um... just, the way we left it... y'know, earlier... I just wanted... yeah, just wanted you to know that... people, they don't see what me and Aya see, y'know? When... when they look at you?"

Blinking, bemused eyes stard back at him and Razkar's face collapsed into one hand.

Verily, there was never a finer-wrought sonnet in the histories-

Oh, fuck off.

"This... isn't easy for me to talk about, y'know? Well, no, of course you don't, you wouldn't be doing this. N-Not that you wouldn't if you had someone! Not that, um... not that I... that is, if it wasn't for..."

Finally the stammering male gave up the ghost and crouched down to let Dog lick his face in male solidarity. Though he never understood the problems of Myrians, of course. It was much simpler being Dog: you saw a fine bitch and as long as she couldn't outrun you, you were well in, my son. Or pup.

Not so easy for Eagle, though. His feet had carried him here without thought or reserve, but now she was before him, with her face made of ovals and mesmerizing eyes... Goddess, they didn't even raise his hackles anymore, those gold coins in her head. Her hair hung down in tight braids usually but in the night she wore it loose, curl after curl falling over her shoulders and he could forget, forget everything she was and he was and-

Goddess, why didn't I think of any of this on the walk over?

"Look, I don't suppose you could invite me in, could you? Feel bloody stupid yammering on like this in the dark with-" SLAP! "-things I can't even name stinging me..."

Yes. Inside. In the wamrth. With her bed. And booze. Yes, that will be much better.

Razkar slapped a "mosquito" on the side of his head again, and waited with restless, shuffling feet.

[Tinnok]

She had expected a lot of things. A last word or request before they left, Aya stumbling behind, laughing and cheeks flushed with drink. Perhaps news, the trip being delayed by a couple weeks, maybe even an invitation for a final night spent together, though it wasn't what she had expected. But he was alone, and...he was acting in a confusing manner.

"I...uhm, thank you." She said, lips quirking to the sentiment. He can't have taken such a walk in the pitch of night simply to tell her that he and Aya cared for her, she already knew that, even if it wasn't the Myrian way to vocalize it loudly or often. She knew quite well how the world saw her vs. the eyes of her two closest friends.

Then his words took on an even more of a confusing tenor. It seemed as if he was apologizing for something, or something...her smile broadened. It wasn't often you got to see Eagle so flustered, and show it, so at the very least she could appreciate the moment, though her mind still didn't see the purpose of his words, or any of the conflicting feelings behind it.

She scratched Dog behind the ears as Eagle succumbed to the deadly trap that was the canine's tongue, exploring his cheeks and nuzzling the familiar male. From this view she got to see the reflection of muscled shoulders, bulging as his arms pressed off the ground, dark skin whose hue she could only envy glistening in the faint light. Stop, stop, stop feeding the fire you petching idjit, this isn't going to help, he's probably going to leave, go back to her, and-

And then he asked to be invited inside. Tinnok's eyes widened, golden orbs becoming nearly round in the faint flickering light of the lantern in her hut window. "Of course..I mean come on in."

Tinnok turned toward her shelter, tying up the vines that acted as her door to the side with a strip of leather. "Watch your head." she called out behind her as she slipped in. It wasn't as large as a long house, a small table to one side, furs and reeds taking up about a third of the floor as the strange bed Tinnok shared with Dog. Nissila was coiled around on of the many roots that provided support for the hut's structure. Tinnok rubbed under the boa constrictor's head, the snake's coal black eyes opening for a moment of observation before closing again, pink tongue flicking in and out rhythmically. She offered a stool for Eagle and grabbed out a leather flask and set it down upon the table. It was a berry cordial from the trading square of which she place two glasses, swatting away a fly as she did so. "Sorry it's not exactly...bug proof." She grinned, and like a true classy Myrian, took a swig of the booze right out of the flask, sitting down on the stool.

"Now a little more cohesively, can you tell me what the petch you're doing in the wilderness at night?"

[Razkar]

"Watch your head."

"Ow! Thanks... fuck..."

Wolf's dwelling hadn't been so much "built" as it had been "added on to". The foundations and most of the walls were, in fact, tree trunks and roots, masses of them. She'd tirelessly added to them, of course, but it really amounted to only two walls and a low roof of thatch and dried mud.

Too low, as it turned out.

"Ah, Nasila," Razkar managed to say slowly, eyeing the unimpressed reptile up warily as he took his seat. "So glad to see you..."

At Tinnok's touch the gigantic mass of scaled muscle shifted, shimmering by the single light of the hut, black eye sliding open and regarding the male with something between boredom and disdain... mostly the former. A whip-like tongue tasted the air a few times, and then those eyes slid closed again. Razkar shuddered but bit back his tongue before saying anything else.

She doesn't see it as a Dhani or a... relative. Just another Child of Caiyha, slithering around long before Siku and her nest of vipers ever arrived. So... be nice. And she'll be nice.

He almost believed it, too.

"Sorry it's not exactly...bug proof."

Razkar sniffed at the flask once she'd had her swig and nodded his approval. "Cherry and..." He frowned minutely, eyes dancing with playful mischief as he looked up at her grin. "... tastes like 'shine, to me, Wolf. Where'd you snag this stuff, I wonder?"

He poured them both a glass and took a slug from the glass for himself and it warmed his throat and his tongue and trickled like flavored lava into his stomach and... yes, he felt better. Alcohol always helped, if only in moderation. He'd known plenty of lovesick males who'd confused real courage with Svefra-

Lovesick?! Since when were you lovesick?

"Now a little more cohesively, can you tell me what the petch you're doing in the wilderness at night?"

Her question rescued him again, and Eagle's head snapped to her as fast as the raptor she'd named him for. Black eyes, usually so fierce and chilling, seemed lost and unfocused now, adrift in a strange world of sleeping boas, cherry cordial and a patient, smiling female who...

"... it's... not easy to say..."

Well, so at least he'd covered the basics of it. Eagle sipped again from his glass, swilling it around before swallowing, eyes drifting from hers to the fire. Better to look at that. Ever-shifting, eternally chaotic, but it never changed in its passions: it ate and it burned and that was that. Such... simplicity.

Razkar latched onto that. He was petching tired of complexity.

"I worry about you, is all." He managed to force the words out, reminding himself of the one solid, undeniable fact that had brought him here in the first place. "You're not a social creature. You don't make friends easily and even if you did, well... they'd still see you as... flawed. They don't see you as I... as we, do..."

Don't look at her. One flash, one glance, and she'll see right into your heart and she'll throw out out of here.

"You don't deserve to be alone like this."

His voice was a whisper. All the pain she felt but never let the world see, he seemed to be trying to... tap into it, give it voice, at least let her see what she'd buried so carefully for years and years and...

It was still no good. What did he know of her pain? His parents loved him; his siblings and his clan valued him. His instructors and superiors all agreed that, despite being a male, he was destined for a high rank within the Taloba Army. But Tinnok? She who was smarter, stronger, more skilled than he?

A shack of mud and roots, banished from Sacred Taloba and-

-with sudden anger the male threw the contents of his glass into the fire, making it flare and bellow like some fire-demon from the legends. Every object in the hut was suddenly burned stark and harsh into their eyes, and then the flames receded... but Eagle's anger did not.

"Remember the Arena of Ancients?" He said with a sad, wry smile of bitter nostalgia. "You showed me how this place worked that day. Told me not to bother trying to change it. And that... that was right. But I never thought I'd leave, and now..."

Words bubbled up from places he didn't expect; whether it was bravery or insanity birthing them, he didn't know. But speaking others was conjuring the rest, like litle fish bringing the sharks to the surface. Eagle looked her full in the face, saw how the little fire lit her so...

"... have you... have you ever had a mate, Wolf?" He blinked and then reviewed a couple of barrack room rumors he'd heard about Wolf when she was on the town, swallowing before adding. "Or a female, perhaps...?"

[Tinnok]

"it's Nih-sihl-ah." She corrected patiently as the constrictor had a staring match which could never be won with such an aloof creature. As Razkar took a seat, Tinnok leaned against the wall. She felt a warmth surge through her body that was not due to the alcohol. Simply being in Eagle's presence was like heaven after she had prepared herself to never see him...potentially ever again. Somewhere in the back of her mind she still saw this as a strangely boring dream leading to some of the fantasies she had once had...still had...still would have. Petch.

"The petcher who I...borrowed it from had had enough I think." She grinned happy for the topic change about the alcohol, and she took a light sip of her own wooden cup, letting the flavor roll on her tongue before sliding down her throat.

But her expression turned a bit more serious as he continued. What was this issue that he had to come to her about right before he was leaving? What could be so important. She fiddled the cup around in her fingers, a nervous tension rising in her stomach. Then he spoke again.

"Dont...deserve?" Her eyebrows curved in confusion, and she saw how uncomfortable he was here. That was the trouble with Eagle, he always thought too much about these things. The world spun the way it would, and perhaps in a thousand years Dhani would be gone and their blood would matter little in the children left behind but now was not that time, and he was merely drudging up a topic that the two of them had endlessly cycled around for the entirety of their relationship. Relationship, an odd word to say the least, but one that could be aptly fitted to the two of them.

Her mind started flickering, traveling, trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. He was worried about her, being alone, not having any friends, leaving her alone. This was a sentiment she was sure he and Aya shared, but it was not Aya here, awkwardly trying to comfort her friend, it was he. Her eyes blazed like the fire pit as he threw his alcohol into it, too serious now to joke about wasting her libations.

And then the final question hit her like a tone of boulders pushed off of a cliff. He saw her fingers tighten around her cup, her eyes grow hooded, as they did for defense, just like a snake coiling up, hoping it could simply retreat away from its aggressors but knowing it would have to strike out.

And then it clicked, his forlorn looks, the way his eyes met hers and hurriedly looked away, and the absence of Aya, they all clicked into place. She shouldn't have to be alone...

She wanted to hate him, to scream and throw her cup at his face, to shove him out of her hut to strike him hard in that hard lined and pierced face that haunted her sweetest dreams, to tell him to go the petch home and leave her to her loneliness. This was not what she wanted, what any woman would ever want, especially not Myrian. Why couldn't he have just left her and her brooding, given her that tight hug and said goodbye, and why did he have to petching think so much?

"I..." Her eyes were alight, muscles tensed, but all at once the fight went out of her. What did it matter now? What did it matter all of these feelings she had kept bottled up inside. She had done it for him, for Aya, for herself, but he had taken one of the greatest risks imaginable in coming here on this night of all of them, and she couldn't turn him away, no matter how much she knew she should.

"I sometimes wondered the chances, the colossal cosmic calculations that took place when I met you in the training yard, and at the end you gave me your hand and beat the petch out of that male, stood up for me when not a soul of my own flesh and blood would do the same. Not once, but again, and again. Trusted me, like I knew I could trust you." She looked up to the ceiling as if for answers. "And then, when I saw the tattoo on your arm, that first day that she gushed about you to me, Goddess I felt like the world was laughing at me again." She smiled, but it held no humor, no light. "Because I am the stricken monster, which I think...makes you the beauty." She did truly smile at that, though sadness hung in her eyes.

"But I knew it was for the best when I didn't hug you today, because even if no man has ever dared touch me, at least I could hold onto the memory that one would, even if it was never like that, and never would be." She looked drained. "And now you're here, like an image in my wildest dreams, and I can barely stomach the thought." A hand swept over her eyes. "Just go, Eagle, you know how I feel, how I've felt for a long time, and I understand that if things had been different...but, please..." She couldn't cry, she wouldn't, but she felt a wetness collecting around the rims of her eyes. If she made a move to wipe it away she was done for, but she couldn't seem to pull back the moisture. This wasn't what she wanted, it couldn't be...but at the same time it was.

[Razkar]

Why wasn't he stunned? Why didn't his mouth drop open in shock or his heart swell with manly satisfaction? Or, keeping in with the rest of the damned female's life, why didn't he react with disgust and revulsion that one cursed by Myri and Siku to be child of neither professed a passion for him?

Because you already knew. You've always suspected, ever since the cave... before the cave. You knew that when you came here... in fact, you were depending on it.

There was a low, almost feral... keening, as Razkar bowed his head and pressed his palms to his temples. His conscience, his soul, his doubts, the demon on his shoulder, whatever you wish to call it, he couldn't shut it off tonight. The male looked at the wretched Wolf doing pretty much the same thing, hands over her eyes, twin golden lamps doused and begging him to go.

So you should. Spare her more pain and the disappointment that will come with it. What can come from this? What good, anyway?

"Right..." He managed to mutter, rising to his feet, checking himself with unnecessary care, eyes flickering around. "I'll..."

Eagle was over a chasm now, and his wings were failing him. He stared at her until she looked up, realizing he hadn't left, and something squeezed and twisted his heart like it was in a vice at the misery in her eyes. His wings were failing. Every other time he'd been able to fly higher, ignore it, avoid it, go so far that the problems and pains of Tinnok were just that: hers. Not his concern.

But now, he was her concern, and in this final, snatched handful of bells before his departure, Eagle found himself in lands with no map. He stepped towards her, words formed on his tongue coming straight from a dark and desperate corner of his soul, speaking them even as his honor recoiled in horror.

"If... If Syna did not rise for us..." He whispered, looming over her until she looked at his eyes and then crouching down, folding his hands into hers, eyes torn between compassion and guilt. "If the night was... just for us... I would give you... give you something to hold..."

Eagle's hand reached out and stroked those curling locks. Goddess... he'd never imagined them to be so... soft. That word had no place with Wolf; it was like adding "cuddly" to "shark", but up close, her eyes swimming and lip trembling, she was...

You will bring pain to you, to her, and to your love. For one bell's passion you would curse yourself. You know this. So does she.

A hundred generations of screaming, proud Shorn Skulls warriors hissed in outrage from his very blood, but Razkar could not hear them now. He was... so tired... of seeing her alone. Seeing her denied, and... he realized with a flash of shame like a knife in him... denying himself. He couldn't see her as an abomination, blood-cursed and justly-scorned as a half-blood.

"It is not for pity." He said softly. "Not... charity. I just... We may not... So if we do not... I would not have you without... without one night... where you were loved..."

[Tinnok]

She wanted him to be gone when her hand lowered from her face, to be gone just like the dream this was, and she could wake up and cry over her misfortunes, drink a little, then fall asleep and forget all about it. But when it lowered she found he was still there, and closer then ever. He stepped close and she could feel the heat of him, had no choice but to meet his dark intense gaze with her own pitifully fearful one. She had never wanted him to see her like this, to know what a wreck she could be, especially concerning him.

But now it was all out, and he hadn't fled, or retreated, but was still there, even knowing what such an action meant for him, for her. If Syna did not rise. Well that was a thought wasn't it. She could keep Eagle all to herself for eternity, never having to watch the looks of others if she was with him, never having a care for the fact she had never even told her best friend she was head over heels in love with the Myrian male.

He grasped her hands. He had done it before, and she was reminded of that night outside of the cave, his gentle touch cleaning away the blood and gore, lying on the cool grass with her hand in his, as you could only do after suffering such a trauma. She had remembered wishing things that night, and again with the Dhani abomination, how close they had come to broaching the thin line between them, but it had never happened, had never been discussed.

And he had never...touched her face. Tinnok found herself leaning into his hand against her will. She still had will power, she could still force him to leave, do the right thing. But would it be the right thing? Petch it was all so confusing, and all she knew now was that they were here and he was declaring a blank slate, even if it was for only a precious amount of time.

"Eagle..." Her voice was soft, and a single tear dribbled down her cheek, bumping against her thumb. One of her hands slid around his neck, the other caressed his face, tracing his jawline, examining him under a penetrating yellow gaze as a small soft smile that he may never have seen before crawled across her lips, before uttering the phrase she had contained for so long, "I love you."

And then the half breed was finished, finished pretending, holding it all back. She had said it, and he had always known, and her face, already so close to his, leaned in, full lips pressed softly against his hand sliding through his shining dark hair.

[Razkar]

He heard the words that part of him had been waiting for, hungry for. Years they had fought, trained and lived side by side, separated by a few barrack rooms at most, and though they were so different, Eagle and Wolf had grown... far too close.

Even her lips on his hand were like summer lightning on his skin; he ached to see what they would be like on his own. Faces shadowed as they bent to each other, Razkar felt like they were closing across a monumental distance. Every inch seemed to take an age; plants and nations rose and fell an his mind seemed to drift away, all thoughts and logic overridden and sent screaming their dismay into the pit of him.

It would be so... easy. To give rein to that corner of his heart that belonged to Tinnok... and it did. But as her full, rapt lips came closer, one moment of passion that would never be erased, he closed his eyes... and he heard the words.

This is not you.

Not in his parent's tone, as most admonitions were. Not even in Aya's tone, sleeping soundly and without care or concern from her traitorous mate now miles away and in the thrall of one she loved as a sister.

No. It was his own voice. The last inch of his resolve; the bitter dregs of his stubborn pride, if you want to call it back... the bare bones of his character.

This will haunt you. Eat at you. Gnaw at your precious honor and pride and afterwards, you will doubt your word whenever it is given, for it will mean nothing.

"I... I..."

You should not have come here. Because now you will hurt her even more.

"I... can't..."

Eagle's head slumped with his shoulders as if his spine was made of molten wax. He would not have raised it for all the glory and honores fete upon him by the Goddess-Queen herself; not if doing so meant he would see the... betrayal, in Wolf's eyes.

You caused this. You pushed yourself and her to the edge of your word, knowing you could not go beyond it. This will torture her for longer than you can imagine... and you can't fix it.

"No-one would know... but us..." Razkar said, voice breaking, choked with disgust and anger and shame and hate and all of it directed at his foolish, wanton heart, "... and that would be enough. We... love her, too much... I should not have come... should not have done this... to you..."

Eagle had never seen his Wolf cry; he would not shame her now with the hot tears in his own eyes... but he forced himself, invisible hand pulling his head up by painful increments, until she could see the anguish writ large in them, the desperate plea...

All trace of the brave and dauntless warrior she knew, one that had cleaved through barbarians and Yukmen and Dhani and even their on race's traitors... all of it was gone.

Instead was a boy. A thoughtless boy who could not betray himself, and was suffering for his conscience. But it was more than a warrior's self-chastisement, or a spoken man's shame in indulging in flirtations.

It was the pain of one who had caused it it one he loved. Could he ask forgiveness? Dare he? Or would he fall back on that pointless, mundane word that meant to little to the world? Spoken a thousand times a chime and eroding into indifference because of its repetition. A reflex, bereft of meaning and weight.

Best to stick with the truth.

"I never meant to... hurt you... and I have."

[Tinnok]

OOC :

I thought this was a fitting moment for this little beauty

She had let her mind go, as one must when these sort of things happen, and as her lips drifted toward his, she realized suddenly, that his head was no longer in line with hers. And that it was all a petching trap.

She didn't look at the anguish in his eyes, or the tears collecting at the corners of his retina. She was up to her full height in an instant, another one and the rickety table shattered against the wall. Dog barked furiously from outside, and the half breed shoved her way outside, hair flying around her face, hands balled into fists. She couldn't even form the words, but they raced inside her mind like rapid fire. So you came here just to prove you were the better one? I'm the one willing to betray Aya, but you couldn't petching bear it, aye? Had to just rub that in before you ran off back to her so you could petch with a clear conscious. You could see everything, everything that I hid, and then you could show the courage to turn it all away when I was about to spread my legs. She screamed, a sound half human, half animal, almost like a howl, culminating in the emotions she couldn't bear to speak...before bare feet ran into the woods.

The foliage crashed, each step sending feelings up through her body as she received split second communications from the plants around her. Most of it was peace and harmony. Night was not a time for the absorption of the sun's nutrients, so it was the closest things that plants got to sleep. But she couldn't take solace in even this. Her feet pounded hard upon the ground, crashing through the foliage, arms pumping, feeling the motion everywhere. When the first signs of pain from her pace entered her lungs, Tinnok snarled and kept running, urging her muscles to push farther. Part of her mind knew that this was one of the more childish things she had done in sometime, but she wasn't precisely sure what else to do, because the glaring issue was at her home, and the city of Taloba despised her. The wilds was her only true source of solace, and she ran into it with open arms. Perhaps if she ran far and fast enough he would be forced to go back to her, and then perhaps he would die on his travels and she would never have to see him again.

Which seemed like one of the better options at this point in the evening.

Which was also when she stopped, nearly colliding head first into the center of a giant jungle tree, her fingernails digging into the bark and the tears streaming un-bidden from her eyes. This was foolish, it was all so stupid. She shouldn't be so upset, in fact, this was something she should have done when she was a petching teenager. She would have figured it out, gotten over the experience, and moved on. But that was the whole point wasn't it? No male had ever treated her with an ounce of kindness, respect, perhaps even basic civility, because Myrians were a bunch of supremely racist asses.

But there was one, and he was in love with her best friend, who didn't know her best friend was also in love with him. And that, that was something Tinnok could deal with, sometimes barely, but she could manage. What she could not manage was the temptation of Eagle offering himself up like a platter, then ripping it away in the same breath, as if he had the right, that his feelings mattered more than hers.

She wanted to scream into the night again, but she could not, only curl up into a ball and sob, letting out all the pent up emotions of two decades of rejection. It was all the same, this time she was simply the monster that threatened to separate her two best friends, instead of the one with the slits for eyes and snake skin, and from the way her insides felt like they were ripping themselves apart, it was the worse of the two crimes.