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 Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 4:49 pm
Thorne blinks at Jeremiah, his breath soft and slow and dangerously calm. The cracks fault him, trembling ruthlessly beneath the mask. It is like watching the waves of an unsteady ocean fall in and out. Here, and there. Broken and - masked.
"Maybe I am," Thorne forces out, "Maybe you're wrong."
He sucks in a sharp breath, breathing through the pain. Breathing through everything. He turns on his heel, lupine and predatory. He strides across the room, closer to Jeremiah.
His eyes are heavy-lidded, searching, night-dark and miserable. But there is hardness in his eyes, a steely glint. Unknowable.
"What else did he say?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 5:08 pm
Jeremiah blinks but stands his ground. There is still cold coming from him, his chill having taken over in this moment of emotional turmoil as it always does. "You're stronger than that. You bend, Thorne, but you do not break," he says quietly as the other is right there, searching his face. There's nothing to see that isn't already there. Blue-green eyes and shallowly hidden hurt and loss. Worry is there, concern and Jeremiah wears it all for it to be seen from the set of his mouth to the crinkle between his brows. "It isn't my place," he speaks once more. "It's better you two speak to each other. I just ..." A breath; it's cold like he is. "I needed to hear why from you." It is a repeat but it's still true and why he came.
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Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 5:25 pm
The words made Thorne huff, a wild, animal noise. He tugged at the night-black vest he wore over the crisp dress shirt. He looked to all the world something made to be carved from marble and set in stone.
"You're right," Thorne said, "But that doesn't stop me from being a monster too."
His eyes flicked to Jeremiah, bright and cruel and pained.
"He won't," he says it and his voice splinters into a laugh. Thorne turns away, the sound sick with misery, and spreads his arms to the empty warehouse, nothing but sharp lines and clean edges. It looks less like it is livable and more like some two-dimensional thing you found in furniture magazines about rich people with too much time on their hands.
"Haven't you heard it already, Jeremiah?" Thorne asks, and looks back at him. "He left. There's no way he'll ever come back. I'll return Alg to you, as soon as I can. As soon as he chooses. And then I'll let you rest, let you be. All of you."
His hands drop and he storms back into the shadows. There's a wall coming down between them.
Do not be afraid, Mare had said.
"It's better that way, after all, after all that I've done," Thorne says, and looks back at Jeremiah, "Is there anything else?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 5:39 pm
What is done, is done; what is, is.Jeremiah does not say it but he thinks it all the same. Instead he is quiet and lets the young man speak, lets him get it all out and wallow in it. His lips press to a thin line and those eyes of his darken briefly. "Perhaps," he says slowly, "when you return Algie to me, Chris will return to you but ..." His shoulders roll and he stands to his full height. This is a man who has been broken but he will face it and deal with it. He will find a way. "If you are going to be a monster, if you are going to be the thing that does these things-" His smile is sad. " Own it. Don't play at sympathies, don't make excuses. You do us a disservice and yourself. Be the monster and be proud of it." Jeremiah watches as he disappears into the shadow, bleeds away into them. "There's nothing else more than that but-" His eyes glow briefly, no longer blue-green but that unearthly shade they take in other ashdown. "If you return Alg as less than he was, Thorne, I will end you." Then in a glimmer, cold fire flickering to life, he disappears. Gone, save for scorch mark left in the ground from cold green fire that smoulders brightly and then dies. Like their hopes.
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Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 5:49 pm
Thorne is left alone in the emptiness of the warehouse, and not for the first time, he stares at the scorch marks on the floor and he wants to set it aflame.
But he doesn't bend, or break, or bow beneath the weight of Jeremiah's words. He'd condemned himself already, Chris had been the confirmation, the final knot in the noose.
Thorne closes his eyes, exhales.
The loneliness hurts worse than the threat.
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