Prompt One: Cross
When Edarien told Inwa that Swan was being held in the oubliette, Inwa knew he had to pay him a visit.
"How are you doing today?" Inwa greeted, sweeping into the room with a clipboard in hand. Swan kept a single eye on the smaller Miqo'te, one ice blue eye staring out at him through a curtain of long milk-tea-colored hair.
The question was met with silence, but Inwa seemed to press on, looking the paper over before him as he stepped forward and took a seat on the chair that faced Swan's cell. The last inmate gave Inwa more than adequate information on the physiology and makeup of the inksouls that he truly didn't need to check on Swan's vitals. It would take weeks for the parasite within the viera to run out of enough aether to start killing him.
"Edarien said that there were those who wanted to save you. Do you agree with their efforts? Do you want to be saved?" Inwa posed a new set of questions, looking up to the other with a calm demeanor.
Swan was anything but calm, setting his jaw and sleeping back his lips to bare his teeth at the man before him. He didn't need an introduction to know who sat before him. Red eyes that glowed like the sun and crimson and black hair that emulated the light in the darkness. This was The Eternal he was born from. This diminutive man was Inwa.
"It doesn't matter," Swan cut the silence that stretched between them with measured words, "I'm already here."
"You have a choice," Inwa spoke quietly, brows knit together in concern.
"Don't mock me," Swan hissed at the miqo'te before him, his large ears beginning to fold backward closer to his head. "Death isn't a choice."
"You don't have to follow Edarien. You--"
"Could die instead?" Swan's voice rose over Inwa's. The swinging of his head to get a better look at the man before him revealed both eyes, wide and wild in their scrutiny of the man's idea of 'choice'.
"Bend the knee or die," recited like a far-off memory that tasted like ash on his tongue. "Death is not an option."
"That's not a choice!" The musician's voice boomed in his cell, pushing away from the cell bars to continue the pacing Inwa had interrupted with his presence.
"They want you to live. Even Silvain wants you to live." Inwa lifted himself onto his feet, walking away from the chair and the cell to place the clipboard down on a counter. When he turned back to the cell to see Swan still pacing, turning his head at intervals to glare at him, Inwa sighed.
"I mean it," Inwa lifted his head and his voice to make sure Swan stopped in his tracks and listened. "They want you to live. Don't take the care they have for you for granted. The offer for you is a difficult one, but this will only work if you want to live."
"Do you? Do you take the care and love others have for you for granted? Do you realize why they want me to live so badly?" Swan lifted a hand to rake through his hair, pushing it out of his face to make sure Inwa knew the sour look on his face was for him.
". . . I will check on you before the sun falls. Please take some time to think about what I said." Inwa took a few steps towards the sliding doors, stopping just before the threshold, watching them move to allow him to exit.
"It's not about me, Swan. You managed to make them care about you. They are saving you because of your own merits. That's why I don't think you should consider death an option, even if that does mean it's not a choice anymore." Dipping his head and turning it, Inwa lifted his lashed just enough to stare into Swan's face and then exit the room to allow him time to think. They would be seeing a lot of one another until Swan gave Edarien an answer.










