(SE) long shot

Astaroth

// i ride the edge, my speed goes in the red //

He remains in that position on the ground, unable to move as his chest heaves for air, his gaze deadened and hollow when she shifts back. His own mouth is painted with blood, both hers and his, but it’s the bruising that’s done most of the damage to him in soreness of keeping him precisely where he is. The bruising and the exhaustion where his body quite literally gave up. It’s such an uncomfortable sensation, reminded of his prone position in the Climb, but at least he doesn’t spot ink black feathers in the peripherals of his vision. That’s one perk.

“You made it clear I wasn’t your friend.” He grits out, pushing through the pain again before he finds a surge of energy to open himself up just enough to get a trembling arm underneath him – mostly just to spit out more blood and spit. The other elbow comes up and his head sinks between both of his arms, the prongs of his horns digging into the earth to keep him upright enough to take those short breaths against the pain. “That I’m some monster that you cannot be associated with, who’s carefree and glad to do what he does.” He pauses to cough a bit of blood, stubbornly spitting it onto the earth beneath him again. “Fucking hell, Maea. I’m used to being alone. I wanted to be alone.” Voice cracking and growing hoarser as it starts to whine into a whisper of hurt, Astaroth grits his teeth and shuts his eyes, hands forming fists pressed into the earth.

// hot blood, these veins, my pleasure is their pain //

// somebody told me that there's two sides to this life //

Closing her eyes, she hummed thoughtfully. Head lolling back until her long hair pooled on the ground, she considered her own actions over the recent past. "I did, didn't I." Maybe part of her had wanted to believe that they weren't. That her anguish stemmed only from what he'd done, and nothing else. "I don't... think it would hurt this much if I didn't want you around, though." It wouldn't be a problem walking away from people she cared nothing about. Gods knew she had in the past. The truly difficult part, it seemed, was learning how to stay.

"I called you that because it's what I'm afraid of being called," she confessed, more quietly. "I'm... scared. Of what I've become. What I can still become. It feels like... it would be so very easy to change into something else. The things I've done in the past... I think even you would be appalled if you knew about it." There had always been a darkness inside her. Becoming ancient, and suddenly surrounded by so much blood and death - it only made it feel as though her shadow self had been set loose on a playground with no rules or consequences - a bowling ball sent rolling down a steep slope, unable to stop until it hit rock bottom. Until it crashed, and broke beyond repair.

"I take it out on you, because... well... you're an easy target? And I don't know what else to do with all this... angst." How's that for honesty? It was a truth she hadn't even acknowledged to herself until now, and it tasted very bitter on the tongue. She really was cruel, after all.

"Do you still want to be alone?"

Maea

// I think I might've chosen darkness over light //

Astaroth

// i ride the edge, my speed goes in the red //

Remaining silent, because his throat is still on fire and his voice is disappearing slowly but surely, Astaroth remains there in the same position, head tilted toward the ground and propped up only by his pronged horns tearing up the earth beneath him, he listens with a flick of his tail as if to say yeah, you did. But then she goes on to say that she called him that because it was more of a fear of herself, and Astaroth coughs up another bit of blood, pushing himself up enough to try and sit up, to wipe away the remnants of blood on his face.

“This – This is your problem.” He says through a voice that alternates between being loud enough to hear and a whisper on the wind as it goes out and returns. “Of course it’s going to be scary. Change is always frightening.” He sucks in a short breath again, against bruised ribs and his scarred chest. “But you have got to start living with it. Compartmentalize it, I don’t fucking care. I do.” Because he isn’t this mess running around the Dusklight and the Inner Quarter. He’s this mess on rare occasions when it’s bottled up too hard and come to close. Otherwise? He’s a perfect gentleman by day and a nightmare for those that have earned it.

But then as she calls him an easy target, his dark hollowed gaze focuses on her, and after his lips part to speak and he tries to strain through it two entire times with nothing but air escaping them, bruised arms lifting to press the palm of his hands into his eyes, Astaroth starts to tremble again and his tail begins to lash out behind him. “F-Find someone else to project your fucking fea-fears onto.” He finally manages to grit out, teeth sharp and gnashing over and over again as he tries to continue keeping that vocal tonality.

// hot blood, these veins, my pleasure is their pain //

// somebody told me that there's two sides to this life //

Sinking back until her back pressed against the ground, she felt the cold of the snow and mud like an ache in her spine. Matching the one in her chest, and the throbbing, grueling pain of the wounds, all in all she thought it was about what she deserved.

"Mhm," she acknowledged, feeling the truth in his reprimands. She really had to. This... this wasn't how she wanted to be. Just like the fyrhund, she was so closed off in her own mental hellscape that anything that showed up became a threat or a target. Lashing out, flaring up, taking unnecessary risks and working herself to the bone, these were all symptoms of something more serious that festered within her. Saying it out loud only made it real; and this was where the real work began. Now that she didn't have anymore excuses.

"Yeah," she responded again, quiet and full of remorse. She would. Better still would be if she stopped being afraid at all. But that was as easy as making Asta stop being a cannibal, and she didn't know how to make either happen. Perhaps it was impossible, and she'd just have to learn how to live with her fear.

He didn't tell her to go away. Whether because he hadn't decided yet or for some other reason she couldn't tell, but Maea took it as permission to stay. She was in too much pain to move yet anyway. For a while, silence hovered between them, interrupted by the occasional cough and hack from the weary man. ".. would you stop me?" she asked eventually. "If it seemed like I was starting to slip?" She had no right to ask, not now. But she did anyway. Out of everyone she knew and trusted... he might be the only one who would recognize the signs.

Maea

// I think I might've chosen darkness over light //

Astaroth

// i ride the edge, my speed goes in the red //

It’s clear she isn’t leaving, even though Astaroth in his inability to speak full sentences right now had thought he made it clear. And in between hacking and coughing and the pain that reverberates between his bruised body, he cannot move and cannot escape having to listen to her quiet acceptance of what he’s said, as if the only way to get through her thick skull was bringing him down to this level of insanity. And it burns so hard against the control he’s so carefully cultivated in himself, the loss of it, the inability to do better.

Yes, he was locked away in stone for so long that he’d grown weak. But he cannot allow himself to use that as an excuse.

Eventually, Astaroth curls in on himself, forehead to his knees, arms wound around his stomach as the silence stretches and he can pretend that he’s alone with nothing but the whisper of leaves in the wind and the occasional creature that meanders past.

Eventually, that too, is broken, and his eyes shut impossibly tight as he wheezes an inhale of breath at the audacity she harbors to ask him to be her keeper. And no longer does he let his tongue smooth over his temper, not here, not now, even with the inability to do anything about it. “I will kill you.” Comes the broken up threat, half a whisper and half projected from a throat so torn he tastes blood again.

// hot blood, these veins, my pleasure is their pain //

// somebody told me that there's two sides to this life //

Yeah, no. He wouldn't. She had used up all the goodwill and all the chances, Maea realized. The threat in his voice was real.

"Sorry."

Bringing the arm up to her face, she bit down hard on the already bleeding wound. Pain flared red-hot and blinding, sparking up a crimson mist of healing magic around her fingers. It wasn't much, but what there was she directed towards Asta. It would help close the deepest gashes and perhaps fix his throat too. At least boost some energy - though she doubted he would be free from bruises or scrapes for a while.

"Go ahead." Letting her hand drop, she couldn't bring herself to care. If that was the cost she had to pay for squandering this relation, so be it. She really... couldn't think of a reason to stop him, if that's what Asta really wanted. It was running away, of course. An easy way out for her, though no doubt a relief for him and everyone else she'd fucked up around. 

Whatever he decided to do, she wouldn't complain.

Maea

// I think I might've chosen darkness over light //

Astaroth

// i ride the edge, my speed goes in the red //

The sorry doesn’t do much for the butcher, not as he had gotten so used to the quiet and the hope that he could lick his wounds alone. Instead, he doesn’t even get the chance to as the sudden sensation of bloodboon burns through him, soothing his throat but igniting another fury deep within him. Despite the soreness still remaining in the rest of his body, Astaroth’s jaw tightens again an impossible amount to where it feels like his sharp, pointed teeth are groaning against one another, before he manages to find the energy in him to stand.

It’s a shuffling sound, and she appears to have given up. Dark, shadowed eyes scan her prone form and he hisses out a sound of more fury, not thanking her for the unwanted healing, nor for the option to in fact give in. He was a monster, yes, but even he has standards.

Standards that have him not even saying a single word to her, before he turns on his heel and truly does vanish into the undergrowth, a slow trek back toward the Inner Quarter where he can be truly alone to deal with his rampaging thoughts and his temper.

- FIN!

// hot blood, these veins, my pleasure is their pain //