Family & Group Plots: HistoryThe story behind this family is not a happy one. During the Kalona War, Tomislav was part of a cold, deadly family that fought brutally. They were a part of the vanguard, scoffing at those they saw as lesser, even among their own breed: the ones who came to the fight later, after the family with the razor-like icy spades, bright fangs, and ram horns had taken out much of the opposition. They had no need for strategy beyond the initial charge and the fighting and survival that followed.
Tomislav, during one such battle, was injured and found his way behind enemy lines. He still doesn't know exactly how he got there or what his injury was, only that he found himself being tended to by a regular mare and a unicorn, and woke up to a great deal of pain. He passed out again shortly after, but was awake long enough to note smooth, thick waves of deep blue hair and strange yellow eyes.
When he came to a second time, Tomislav stayed awake. Whatever the unicorn had done and wherever his wound had been, it had healed, but he was weak. The mare whom he had met when he was barely conscious, Eva, refused to let him leave, no matter how harshly he spoke to her. He even tripped her with his tail a few times, but she soon learned to avoid it. Although she was a regular and did not eat meat, Eva caught food for him until he was strong enough to stand and hunt on his own - weeks after the war had ended. He had no doubt that his family would not look for him; they were quick and harsh in their doubting, and he had both disappeared and not left his body behind. Surely, they thought he must have deserted. Soon, Tomislav stopped asking when he could leave.
A few days after that, he became rather quiet, resigning himself to attempting to be around her for as long as she would allow him to stay.
As it turned out, Eva never asked him to leave. She insisted on continuing to hunt for him until he was at full strength, for surely he could barely catch his own prey when he was well. Tomislav took the teasing with a scoff, but couldn't help but smile within. However, when he went to find her on one of her hunting outings one day, his smile turned to a chilled, horrified frown.
Eva was crying. He immediately went to her side and found that she was standing over a dead rabbit. He asked her what was wrong, where she was hurt, if there was anything he could do. Tomislav, for the first time in his life, was frantic over the emotions of another. He wanted to ensure that whatever had happened to make her cry, it would never happen again. The stallion almost shocked himself into unconsciousness when he realized the implications of these sentiments. He was afflicted with weakness. His heart had thawed. The emotionless front he put up was now just that - a front.
Rage at whatever had hurt Eva filled his chest, but when she told him what it was, the rage turned on himself. Eva told him that all life was precious, and that she had begun to take them for him. She had become a killer, and the one she killed for had claimed many of her own kind - had even come to the Kawani Lands with the intention of making them heel. And yet, she did this for him, because if she did not, he would go hungry, and another life could end. Every time she killed a creature, it brought her to tears, and almost to her knees.
Faced with the weeping mare and his own betrayal of her character, Tomislav did not know what to do. He did not know tenderness, and he couldn't exactly take her flying or spar with her to distract her. This problem - and his feelings - were things that he would have to face head-on. He faced them like he would a battle, darkly telling her that if she was too good for what his body required for sustenance, then he would take care of it. She protested that that was not what she had meant, that she wanted to keep him fed, but he would not hear it, and quietly distanced himself from her again.
Tomislav hunted for himself again, but didn't leave her company. They didn't really speak of the arrangement between them, and while he was being his sullen self, they began to simply coexist around each other - until, at last, Eva couldn't take it anymore. She confronted him while he was hunting, scaring off his prey on purpose just to get some show of feeling out of him. She was surprised when he didn't bare his teeth to her and threaten her. Instead, he asked her rather desperately why she'd done that, and then sighed. Eva's immediate reaction was something along the lines of "what the hell is wrong with you?" He was acting so strange from that cold, vicious stallion she had come to know - and somehow come to live with.
Tomislav protested that there was nothing wrong with him, or if there was, he would definitely not be telling her. Eva snorted; if there was anything he was good at, it was cold, short complaints. But, if she thought about it, he had not said a thing, and that was even more unlike him. Tomislav had apparently gone through a transformation of some kind in secret, and she had never noticed anything but the excruciating silence. "Something's changed, Tomislav," she told him. "In you, toward me. You've been so quiet."
Tomislav looked at the ground. He should have known that she would see through him; she saw through everything else he'd done, from figuring out when he was lying to dodging his tail by learning the way his muscles would move. "My name is Viggo," he said softly.
Eva could only stare at him.
"Viggo Tomislav," he clarified, not even managing a glance up at her. "My family gave each child two names, one for themselves and one to strike terror into the heart of their enemies. Tomislav... Is much more of a hard name than Viggo."
The mare's eyes had widened. "You thought I was an enemy."
Tomislav looked up at her. "It was a war," he said. "But I... I would not have you call me that anymore. You are not my enemy."
"What am I to you, then, if it has taken you so long to see a truth that has been known to me since I found you?" Something glittered in her strange yellow eyes, and Tomislav felt a jolt. Could a mare be so angry she would cry? Or was she sad? He had no answer.
You are something else, he thought,
something light to my dark, something to warm frozen blood. "Well," he began, "you've been more than an acquaintance or... a friend... to me. I've never had either. There was family, and there were fellow soldiers. I don't know if there is a name for what you are to me." His words all came out a soft murmur, directed at the ground and ashamed that they had escaped his heart at all. Eva had verily dragged them from him - she'd driven away his distraction from all of his feelings, which had been very inconvenient. Maybe she had noticed him hunting far more often than necessary. If she had and thought it was for anything other than hunger, though, she would have noticed... Perhaps that was what had brought her out here in the first place, before the change in subject. "Perhaps... companion would suffice?"
"Companion." The word came out breathless, and Tomislav looked up. The tears had gone from Eva's eyes as quickly as he'd seen them shining there, and had been replaced by something that smoldered. That was something that he recognized, something that turned his blood from lukewarm to searing. "
Companion," she said again, and shifted forward a step.
"What?" he had asked carefully, taking a step back. His eyes narrowed when she took another step toward him. Was she pursuing him? Tomislav's heart, which he once thought so cold, jumped in his chest. "Is it not accurate?"
"Companion can imply something that we are, in fact, not," said Eva, taking another step toward him. Tomislav stopped in his tracks. "Unless it is something you would like us to be."
How long had he waited for her to want this? How long had he actually been a decent person to stay in her good graces, aside from the hunting? Tomislav had to work his jaw a few times to get a single hoarse word out.
"Yes."
-----
Eva had been a small mare, a mare delicate but fierce by nature. And she loved more fiercely than Tomislav had believed anyone capable of - and she loved
him more fiercely than he thought he had any right to deserve. She had thawed his heart, breathed life and warmth back into the frozen veins of which he had once been so proud. Eva bewildered him every day, now that what they thought of each other was out in the open. Never had she been afraid of him, but she had never so freely thrown her caution to the wind, either.
She showed him the meaning of companion in small ways, first by pressing her forehead against his after he had spoken that
yes. It had not been what Tomislav had expected; it was far more innocent, far more pure than he had the instinct to think of. Then she tucked her head beneath his chin and let out a deep breath.
With that breath, Tomislav felt his new life begin, warm and sweet like the feelings in his chest. The little mare near turned him into a romantic.
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