@xfindingtrouble said: ❝ sometimes we need the cold light of death before we can see reality. ❞ from percy,,,
She wishes she knew what to say to that.
Tragic, isn't it? There's no easy answer, no clever quip waiting at the tip of her tongue. She doesn't have anything to say to that and certainly nothing to take the weight out of it. A hand moves, and she only recognizes it as hers when she feels the soft skin of his ankle under her palm. Her fingers curl against the back of his heel, and she strokes her thumb across the top of his bare foot, her expression thoughtful, her silence deliberate.
"Sometimes," Vex acquiesces finally, and her hand slips up to curve against their calf. She is near overwhelmed by the sight of them, sometimes—the tousled white hair, sticking up at odd angles from the desperate ministrations of her own impatient fingers, the same ones now so gentle against their skin; the green of their eyes, almost startling, always beautiful; the crooked curve of their lips when they know something she doesn't and the crease between their eyebrows when she's said something deliberately wrong, just to get them going. "But—for what it's worth—I think, perhaps, we were inevitable."
There is a rage inside of her that is never quite quelled, located in the scarred chamber of her heart where she feels her brother's oath the most. There are scars across her body she can trace to map out a timeline of death and pain. There is a spot behind her left ear where Percy kissed her yesterday, one of his hands gathering her hair over her right shoulder and the other settled on her side, and his breath warm on her neck when he let out a chuckle at her yawn as she made peace with the morning. There is a section of skin where she has no sensation, the result of an exploding arrow that went off too soon and burned her fingertips while Pike was away. There is a hollow in the pit of her stomach when she thinks of Scanlan, and his silence, and her own guilt. There is a small cluster of freckles on her back that Percy traced when he climbed into bed beside her tonight, finger feather-light as he made out a shape that he swore was a constellation. There is agony inside of her, dulled only by years of learning how to swallow the pain she felt and let it burn her from within.
There is more love than she knows what to do with, sweet on her tongue like the taste of their kiss. Vex leans into them, and at once, they press their heels into the mattress so she can rest her weight against his thigh, her hand moving back to settle at their thigh.
"Almost losing you made me understand how badly it needed to be said." Her concession is quiet, thoughtful. "But even without that, I would have told you. I doubt I could have stopped myself if I tried."
