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Rep was furious. So angry he couldn't remember another occasion where he had matched it. He'd been about to completely trash a common room regardless of the impact on his wages when Jordan had intervened with his comments and redirected the rage elsewhere. Redirected but not doused. All he could think about was the smart alecky guy who'd ******** dared bring up what he had. who'd persistently stabbed at things he wanted left alone. It was somewhere between rage and terror, a twisted up black and terrible mental place. He'd kill, he'd maim, he'd hurt anyone he could just to ease the emotional pressure that threatened to suffocate him.

He hardly paid attention as the distance spooled out behind him, almost running in Jordan's direction because if he didn't it was going to be in Evan's. Every fibre of his being wanted to charge Tracey first into that kitchen and then... and then it would get messy. As he headed through the forest he leapt to simply wrench branches down, to crack them in his hands, to break something, but it wasn't enough, never enough. He was drowning. He needed to settle things. Needed to show people they couldn't just say things so deeply wrong.

delicious. You could feel his shield crack William. You could taste his fear, you could know more about him than he will ever know about you. It would be wonderful.>

Tracey only made him worse, the half mad fear starvation of the axe almost tangible, like claws sunk deep into his gut.

He was flying on wings of adrenaline as he stepped out in front of Jordan, ruffled, twitchy and feral looking. "What?" he snarled, nails biting into his palms. "What the ******** do you want?"

Jordan turned to face Rep squarely, shoulders set, every line of his body speaking of fury, the stone of Ferros's ring flickering fitfully on his index finger. He smiled, an expression with no humor in it and too much tooth to be at all friendly. "I want you to stop acting like a b***h," he said, snapping the words out crisp and clear.

"What the ******** happened to not including yourself in an insult? Does that only work when it's you saying it? You're gonna let that define you?" Jordan snarled. "You're going to prove you're a scared kid by lashing out in total panic any time anyone gets close to a nerve?"

He spread his hands, standing with his arms held out to the sides, his head up, leaving himself unprotected. You won't do it. "Go ahead," he said. "It's gonna make you feel like a real man, huh."

This wasn't like their other fights. He wasn't holding back, wasn't gentling the words or allowing either of them any comfort. If he was going to drag the demons out into the light, he was going to have to dig the knife in and twist it, hurt Rep deliberately every bit as much as Rep had hurt him carelessly and without a single thought.

"It's showing them exactly where your weak points are," Jordan hissed. "It's showing them how to hurt you whenever they feel like it, because you can't ******** control yourself." He gave Rep another dead-eyed, razor-sharp smile. "What are you so afraid of? No, don't answer that. I know."

He turned his head as Rep circled him, and let out a sharp bark of painful laughter. "You're afraid you might like those things you want to hate so much."

He was right. He knew. It all came down to that, to fear and weakness and Rep's furious, terrified refusal to look at himself and understand. The smile melted away, leaving Jordan's expression blank and hard. "How can I know you when you don't?"

The brilliant, sharp line of agony that followed Tracey's blade startled him, and he staggered back, his hand darting out automatically into the summoning stance, Ferros's stone burning steadily bright even as the mask cracked for half a second, showing surprise, hurt, pain - but no fear. He couldn't be afraid of Rep, not after everything they'd gone through together and separately, not when Ferros's attention swung back to Tracey every time, reliable as a compass pointing north.

Jordan dropped his hand back to his side and steadied himself, taking a breath and hauling his freewheeling emotions and his expression back under control. Control was the center of all of this, self-mastery and will and all that buried, locked-down, furiously rejected pain and weakness and everything that came with it. He caught Rep's eyes again, feeling distant echoes of another self who'd been able to force Rep to look at him.

"No," he said, and with that choice, found himself calming, slowly but surely. "You don't get an excuse to hurt me. You're just going to do it. If that's what you're going to do."

HP: 49/60

"You don't want me to," Jordan said, firm and sure, certain in an deep and intuitive way that he couldn't reason out but trusted anyway. It was a lodestone pull that had never guided him wrong with Rep, like orienting to like. He kept eye contact, sensing that to look away now would be to lose every bit of ground he'd gained. "You didn't have anyone then. You do now."

You're hungry, Ferros said suddenly in a tone of dawning realization. You're starving. The dragon stirred, anger and yearning and something that approached pity swirling together in him.

"You hate yourself." Jordan watched Rep's face, the last remnants of his own anger slipping away again. He couldn't hold onto it, not in the face of this much pain; the sympathetic ache came slithering up out of the shadowy depths of him and drowned the fury in its stony weight. It made its way into his eyes, into the set of his mouth and the drawing-in of his shoulders. "You hate yourself and you'd rather deserve it than be wrong." It was an insight that cut closer to his own old pain than he was really comfortable with, but he couldn't flinch from it now.

He did startle slightly at the sudden exclamation, his eyebrows pulling into a frown. "How long has it been since he's fed?" he asked at Ferros's insistent mental nudging.