#liable to be uncannily temperamental/rebellious/volatile even in the field/wrt orders abt it

[futurefind]

" at least i have you to look after me, eh? " from cyrillo for sa :’ ))

“𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥” 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘴. / accepting // @tvrningout

She sees red— literally— and her mind goes white. She focuses on what's important— what actually matters— and squashes everything else— the worry, the panic, the terror, the urge to cry and scream and throw up, the ghosts suddenly suffocating her— into a far off corner of her mind so she can get to work.

She doesn't remember much after that, but also remembers every breath with an eye-seering clarity. The reek of blood. How he was colder than he should've been. Crimson embedding itself in the cracks of her skin, under her nails. Every single stitch and plaster and bruise and scrape.

How she can't close her eyes, for even a blink, lest she see the life drain from his. Keeps checking and double checking and triple checking his face to make sure it isn't so, no matter how briefly.

After an eternity, after a blink of an eye, she's done.

She excuses herself to the bathroom (she thinks she says to clean up), and regrets it immediately. It hits her like a horsekick to the chest, she can't breathe she can't breathe she can't breathe— and she barely keeps herself from sending her fist through the mirror (and, changes are, into the wall behind it). She hates looking at herself, on a good day, and now—

Now she'd failed. Again. There's blood on her hands and it's not hers, because it's never hers. It's all for her but it's not hers, and it should be hers, it should've always been hers, the blood on her clothes and the eyes going lifeless. Why isn't it hers?!

Why is she—

She shoves the wind back into her lungs like gathering broken glass with naked hands, and pulls herself back outside. She doesn't think she actually got to cleaning. She just knows seeing Cyrillo again, like this, rips her heart out of her chest. But him still being here, gaze alive, lets it continue to beat — no matter how atrocious and gorey of a thing it is. That she is.

Sasume feels about as old as Cyrillo presumably is, maybe older, but without any immortality or undeath to keep her going. Like a puppet with its strings cut and joints rotted and clogged still trying to drag itself through its cues as if there's any audience left.

She sits at his bedside again, silently. Doesn't remember doing it. Can only stare at the spark in his eyes until she's seeing through them, seeing nothing at all, as if pretending to keep him out of her nightmares could ever keep him from joining the graveyard at her feet, pumping through her veins. Keeping her alive, no matter what she says or wishes or wills otherwise — because she's never had a choice.

" — at least i have you to look after me, eh? "

And she wheezes, chest crushing in on her ribs and heart and soul so suddenly and so fiercely once more that the world starts to spin. Heat floods her skin even as her blood runs ice cold, and acid creeps up her chest. Her vision blurs, and she isn't sure if the world is shaking or if her bones are.

"Don't—" she chokes on a sob, wetness leaking out of her eyes, and presses the hand she'd been gripping tight against her forehead instead of her own. She gasps, a keening, pathetic thing, and sees more than feels the tears pouring out.

It's not fair, she thinks, both distantly and as deafening as a thunderclap. She's not sure if she means this, or all the bodies piled up in her heart. If it's his being hurt, or that she's not hurt, or that taking all the gods damned blades and bites and bruises in the world can't spare those closest to her even a single one— no matter how much she wants otherwise.

"Don't—" she can't get anything else out. Doesn't even think there'd be a point. Even if, already, it feels like she's begging. For him to not play light, maybe, but also for the gods to maybe— maybe— show her even the slightest of favor and make it so this wasn't so. That maybe—

"I should've been there," she chokes out, nonsensically, world blurring again, pressing the back of his hand even harder against her own skin. If she gives even the slightest inch, even now, who's to say he won't slip through her fingers a final time?

"I should've...—" and finally, curled over herself like that, at Cyrillo's bedside as he warms her own damned bed, she weeps.