#// my toxic trait is not warning andie i was posting this today

[dcybrck]

closed starter for @faebanes ! | set after all the nonsense deron goes through during the fight.

the dust had seemingly began to settle, or maybe that was just the fog that settled over deron's brain to disguise the pain that was blossoming across his chest. unsteady feet carried him, more stumbled, without him even having to think about it. as if his body refused to rest until he had returned home once more. there'd been a concerned look in the guards that came to their rescue, but he'd brushed them off - knew that their attention was better spent on caring for sibusisiwe. that the fae mattered more in the moment than deron ever would. handed her off to them and shambled up like a shaky skeleton walking a death march. pressed a reassuring, promising kiss to her forehead that he'd return this time. most likely.

     how many times had deron promised that to someone? enough times that he'd never swear it, less the cauldron or mother tear him apart over it - again and again. 

  deron hadn't dared to shout the words to zora when the violence tore them apart, as if his soul knew that voicing them would bind the pair together. tainted her beautiful soul with lies that she'd carry until the day he actually drifted away into the wind. or worse, forge a pact that neither of them could take back once it'd set into the air of the universe.  yet even without the oath, the promise, the old magic bind, his feet still carry him in her direction. they use any energy that remains within his exhausted, torn body to make certain that deron returns to her. to fulfill the unspoken vow that he cannot remember making, but knows will haunt him no matter where he may stray on the continent. like the ocean returning to kiss the shoreline. 

   she appears suddenly, as if the cauldron heard the devotions he was whispering and answered the prayer. her eyes landed on him, the bloody mess of a being that deron feels, and he cannot help the way his mouth forms a smile. the pain matters so little now, lurching forward till he is falling into her arms, chin hanging over her shoulder. " zora," he breathed, trembling arms weakly raise to embrace her. " i found you."