honore vivimus

Mireia scoffed at the melodrama that was thrown at her, as if she didn’t have to deal with her own demons over and over again, no matter how hard she tried to get rid of them. It seemed as if nothing worked—neither intoxication nor libertinage, not losing herself to her craft, nor even redemption and a positive mindset. She was always dragged back into her own sea of blood.

For many years she had tried so hard to let her kindness take the spotlight, but even her patience could snap when stretched too thin by a self–pitying merman. Especially if he thought that attacking their friendship was his ticket out of it.

Her eyes narrowed as they focused on his cold gaze, mind already at work, taking up his challenge with spite as fuel.

It was horrible. One second she was quiet and the next she had to avert her eyes. Her whole body jolted for the second that the mind–trespassing lasted, more than enough time to perceive all that anguish pushing him to say mean things to whoever crossed his path.

“What…?”

She couldn’t make any sense of what she saw, not in that moment. It was all tangled and twisted, charged with emotions too big and powerful to hold all at once. Multiple faces flashed in her head, some she could recognized and many others that didn’t even look real. Perhaps part of his self image? One of her hands lifted to rub gently at her forehead, trying to ease the sudden aggravation from the outside.

“Josiah… Why don’t you ever ask for help?” It was too much.

Slowly, he found his way back to her. There was something behind her gaze, the sort of darkness he recognized, perhaps because it resembled his own. He liked to think he had seen Mireia at her worst. They had been each other’s worst before they became anything else; before allies, before friends, before circling inevitably back toward enemies again. Was that not the way of the world? The same world he had wandered for more than three centuries.

"What is it, Mireia?" he asked, broken and yet unwavering beneath the devastation threatening to spill out of him. "What is it that you see in there?"

Because he knew she had done it. She had crossed that fragile line between them—that truce they had drawn in sand, that just as easily could be washed away by the tide at any moment.

A jarring movement, his arm reaching out to hook rough fingers around her wrist, his touch burning with aggravation and impatience. "Was it worth it? Tell me, was it worth it? Are you satisfied now?" No. She never would be. It unsettled him to know she had wandered the crossroads of his mind and found the treasure chests buried beneath the sand, every lock broken open, every crawling thing stuffed inside waiting to spill free at the first splinter of wood.

#c: mireia

No matter how he tried to look at it, Adrian wasn’t buying the innocent act. Especially not when the next words that left Josiah’s lips were aimed at his privacy. Truth be told, if he hadn’t sensed someone tailing him, all the advisor would’ve found at the end of his investigation was a merman who missed the stars so much he escaped at night to chart them.

Luck was on Adrian’s side, because not every one of his excursions was so wholesome.

“Mate, don’t even,” he exhaled, his expression falling flat. The game of pretend had never been of his interest, and at this point he was done with. There was no need to play in the dark of the night.

Adrian took a step closer, and then another, his eyes fixed on Josiah as a dangerous idea formed in his mind. One he didn’t even weigh; it was immediately executed.

“You and I,” he started with a low voice, his smirk stretching suspiciously. A finger pointed at both of them, just in case Josiah needed clarification. “We’re gonna get drunk together,” the King declared. And without warning, or the same consideration for personal space he conceded other people, he threw an arm over Josiah’s shoulder, prompting him to walk forward together. “Maybe that will ease the stick up your ass so we can have an actual conversation,” he added with a shameless cackle.

Don't even, what?

For a moment, Josiah looked stunned, as stunned as any man pursuing another man’s wife might be when said husband casually slung an arm around his shoulders and invited him out for a drink. Of course, the advisor did not know how much Adrian understood about his wife’s extracurricular affairs. During those endless meetings drowned in politics and strategy, Josiah had followed Adrian’s gaze lingering on the space between him and Her Majesty. Perhaps he had noticed a stolen glance or two. They had nearly been caught before.

Josiah had taken drastic measures to ensure a secret of that magnitude remained exactly that — a secret, belonging to him and her alone. He had never intended for any of it to happen, but his heart had spoken louder than his morals, and for once in his life, Josiah had listened.

Whatever Adrian wanted now, he would receive. For the sake of the secret. For the sake of keeping his head attached to his neck long enough to rest it against her chest again.

"Are you truly that lonesome, Your Grace?" he asked.

"I would suggest finding more suitable company. As you so kindly pointed out, I am merely a servant with a stick up his ass. How entertaining could someone like that possibly be?" His eyes gleamed with something devilish.

There were layers to Josiah, and if the king wished to spend the entire night peeling them back one by one, he certainly could.

Slowly, Josiah lifted a hand and, with the gallantry he had been known for, removed Adrian’s arm from his shoulders and lowered it neatly back to his side.

"I value my personal space, Your Grace. If you would be so kind as to keep your hands to yourself, I will not be forced to put mine on you." A threat drenched in syrup.

#c: adrian

He was asking her to do something that her body wouldn't allow her to do. Breathe. She shook her head back and forth, even with his hands on her. She'd managed to squash any emotion that she had down in the end, when she spoke to Elian. Maybe it had been shock from the fact that he wasn't Josiah. From watching him murder her guards in front of her without batting an eye. It was his face, though. And yet, not.

Saylor whined when he addressed her as Queen. Many times she'd asked him to not do that in private. It made her feel like that's all he saw her as -- his Queen. Why not love, again? Why not call her by her actual name, even? It only caused another wave of sadness to wreck havoc over her body.

"I was-- in the Dominion." Her voice shook as she spoke. "I had a meeting. Or, I was supposed to have a meeting. I--" Saylor couldn't remember if she'd told him about it. Most likely not. They weren't on the best of terms, lately. "You were there. I thought you were. I was confused because I didn't know why. I tried to talk to you. But it wasn't... he didn't... respond in the way that I thought."

She pulled back, glancing down at her clothes, which were still stained with blood. "He killed them. My guards." Saylor placed her hands on her blouse and ran her fingers over one of the stains, as if it would disappear. "And then I-- used the water to shackle him." She rubbed harshly on her shirt as she spoke, her eyes focused intently on getting rid of the blood. "I thought it was you. I thought it was, up until..." Saylor couldn't tell him that she'd touched his twin. Not now. "He reacted... badly. He didn't know who I was. He didn't understand. I released him and explained who I was. That I know him and his family. That I know you. I tried to get him to come back with me."

He’d tried to keep his brother’s return a secret. Even from her. It had been a mistake. Josiah knew the consequences a wrong of such caliber could bring, yet he had a duty, a promise he would not break this time. Elian deserved a brother who would trade his own life for his without hesitation. Nothing less than that. There were more than a hundred years’ worth of wrongs to make up for, and Josiah wanted to waste no time granting him protection, at least beneath the waves. At least until he found a way to bring him home. But he had known, sooner or later, Saylor was bound to find out. He had simply wanted to believe it would happen once he had crafted some sort of explanation for her.

Now, he was utterly unprepared (which was not something Josiah was accustomed to), being caught off guard felt almost foreign on him. "It was not me, Saylor," he confirmed carefully. "That was my brother, Elian."

He needed to bring her focus to that part first, before he could very gently move on to the more pressing issue: Saylor wandering into the Dominion as though it were nothing more than a casual swim through the ocean. His hands reached for her again, trying to stop her from wearing herself thin, fingers pressing into pale skin, soft, yet firm enough to pull her back to him.

"What were you doing there, my love?"

His brother must have felt threatened if he had gone as far as murdering her guards. And could Josiah truly blame him for behaving like a feral animal when kindness had been absent from his life for so long? He had seen what Elian had become. There had been no light left in his eyes.

Josiah lowered his head slightly, though his gaze never left hers, searching the brown of her eyes carefully. "He is not the boy I once knew," a quiet admittance. "He has lived in darkness for so long, Saylor, he no longer knows right from wrong." Like a child left lost for too many years.

Saylor watched as Josiah's hands moved to his own shirt and slowly began to unbutton it. She swallowed hard, her eyes unable to leave his fingers as he tugged at the cloth around his shoulders. Was he trying to distract her from the conversation? If so, it was working. "That's not true." She said softly. She hated how he always seemed to diminish his role, or place, in her life. As if it meant nothing. As if all it ever did was bring her pain.

His smile, which was hardly one with any form of happiness, caused her to frown. "How is that your truth? You just said what it could do to me, and you said nothing about yourself." That was the thing with Josiah, though. Saylor felt like she had to read between the lines with him. He rarely, out right spoke how he felt. And even then, she wondered if they were full truths, or if he hid some just so she wouldn't be hurt.

"Being with you had only ever brought me joy and happiness." She insisted. That was, until she was married. Now, it brought her sadness, confusion, and heartache, peppered with some joy. "And now... it's like we are oceans apart." Is that what he wanted? To put more and more distance between them? He hadn't stayed with her in her cottage the last time they were together. "Tell me your truth. The real truth. I can't accept it if I don't know it."

It was harsher, the tone he turned on her when he finally faced her. "Myself? I am a nobody, Saylor. Who am I in your story besides a man who loves you and cannot have you? It is my own mistake. I allowed myself to love you when I knew, from the very beginning, that one day you would be a married woman." A hand dragged through his hair, fingers catching hard at the roots in frustration. Had he been sober, none of it would have left his mouth. These truths would have remained where they belonged, buried deep enough not to trouble her. She was too kind to deserve the weight of them. His gaze fled to the wall, preferring stone to the sight of her face, to the sorrow gathering in eyes he despised seeing wounded.

Her confession had struck him like cold water. How had he brought her anything but trouble? The advisor went quiet then, crossing to the bed and sitting on its edge. His hands rested in his lap, loose and spent, while his eyes traced the rough lines in the floorboards. "Joy and happiness?" he repeated, "When, exactly? In the moments between slipping past guards? Between lies told to your family? Does loving in secrecy bring you joy, Saylor? Does it make you happy?"

At last, he looked up. His eyes were sad and hooded with exhaustion, throat bobbing when he swallowed that lump stuck in there. "How many times would you have me say it? How much more would you have us suffer?” A quieter sound. "I love you." Their eyes met. Blue on brown, "In a decade, I will love you still. In a century, I will love you still. I am immortal and for as long as my immortality lasts, so will my love for you."

He did not imagine it would change a thing. The ring upon her finger would continue to shine just as brightly. "Do you wish me to hurt for it? Because I do."

morsreliqua

The books are not what she expects them to be, but she can recognize the fact that they're rare, simply for how they look. Her fingers trace the covers. This is some gift, she thinks, wondering what it's going to cost her in the long run. Blood, souls.. what exactly is this man, anyways? She barely looks up from the books, stunned by the words on the cover.

The last time she'd read for fun and not for studying was well before she became something of a scout. Aspen pulls the books close to her chest and holds them there with a soft smile. "Thanks."

She studies him for a second, until her eyes catch on the pin on his chest and she gets the answer she'd been wondering about: Merfolk. Royalty..? Her eyebrows knit together as she stares at it, then realizes that she's being impolite and clears her throat.

"I just figured -" She looks down at the books, and her lips twist into a grimace. "Yeah, my mistake, no worries. You, uh, like books? That's a dumb question. I don't know how to act around.. I am putting my foot in my mouth, sir."

There was something in the young woman that reminded him of the innocence his twin brother used to have. He lived with that version still, even now, with Elian alive and standing, breathing, blinking those same wide eyes at Josiah. Elian was real, and yet robbed of nearly everything he had once been. This girl, however, still carried something genuine, because he noticed joy brightened her face when she accepted the books and thanked him, as though he had saved her life. In a way, perhaps he had, when they had both survived that greenhouse of horrors, and survival had a way of binding strangers.

Was that why he lingered now? Why he felt the need to remain a little longer and keep her company, to ensure nothing unpleasant found her while he stood there?

"I do like books," he said, "The classics, mostly." Josiah lowered himself into a kneel so their eyes met on equal level. "I am no one so important that you cannot speak freely to me. Is it not peace we claim to be fighting for?" His voice gentle, "You don't need to be afraid."

He meant to remind her there was nothing false in the kindness he offered, though caution, in her place, would still be wise. "Where do you live—" A pause then, allowing the space for her to offer her name first.

#c: aspen

seacourtesan

She needed a break. Deniz has only been at work at Sinsation for a few hours, yet already, the murderous urge to rid the world of her clients thus far was rampant. She can't do it. She simply can't live life today. What the mermaid wouldn't give to be back home right now, just spending the day with her siblings and pretending as if there was nothing wrong with her life.

And yet... It was because of her siblings, and it was because she is doing all she can to provide for them, that she must stay. She has to.

As a sigh left her lips and she gazed up to the sky. Resting up against the brick wall of the alleyway outside Sinsation, she soon tensed up at a sudden sound. Shit... "I'll be back inside in a moment; I was just taking a five."

outside sinsation / open to all / april 2136

Wrong girl. It was not Deniz that he wanted. In fact, he did not want anyone at all, but he’d been a regular at Sinsation long enough for routine to replace desire. His private booth was always prepared and his drinks already waiting, whenever he walked through the double doors. The girls were always a surprise he’d somehow learned to tolerate.

He’d told them to find him someone else this time. Legs that wouldn’t turn to fins in a few hours; a woman who didn’t remind him of what lived beneath the waves. However, every pair of lips reminded him of the ones he wished to forget.

Josiah pushed himself up from the booth, leather crunching beneath him as he stood and stepped out for a smoke, rough hands smoothing over his white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, pressing out the wrinkles left behind by red nailed fingers.

Outside, he saw her, the back of a woman who had chosen an interesting part-time job. Perhaps the forgotten had grown boring for her. It was none of his business, so he didn’t ask. "You don’t need to rush,” he said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his tailored pants. "They’ve assigned you to my booth and I’m somehow certain you’d rather be anywhere else." The corner of his mouth tilted into that familiar smirk.

#c: deniz

Her heart ached as he shook his head. Before, he would have. He may have hesitated some, but he'd have stayed. And now... Saylor's bottom lip quivered as she closed her eyes for a brief moment. She was losing him. Saylor's fingers gripped his tightly, afraid that he was going to suddenly pull away and leave her there alone.

"If that's what you want." Her voice cracked as her emotions threatened to break the threshold for the second time that night. If she was a different person -- a different Queen -- she'd have ordered him to stay. Demanded that he lay in bed with her and not leave until she said so. But then that would take away his choice. It would make her a horrible person, even if it was all she wanted in that moment.

As he lay next to her, it was as if he wasn't even there. He showed no warmth or care -- ignoring her as if she was no one to him. Her throat swelled as she grasped onto an extra pillow, pulling it in towards herself. Tears bubbled at the corners of her eyes as she pressed her face into the pillow. She wasn't going to be able to sleep. He was there but not. "Just leave." She whispered into the pillow. "You don't want to be here, so leave."

When he could no longer resist it, his head turned slowly, until his eyes met hers. It was an inevitable truth, his love for her. It was seeping out of him, through the holes of his eyes, and through his mouth. Every cut on his body was bleeding affection for her. There was no hiding it. Not in the dark, where honesty came easier.

If she looked closely, if she stopped doubting it, she would see it. She would know.

His free hand lifted, fingers brushing along her cheek, guiding her just a little closer. Close enough that his words barely had space to exist between them. "Here, with you… is the only place I want to be." A breath. "I'm in love with you, Saylor."

The words left him, and something in him gave way with them. Fear and restraint, the endless holding back, it all slipped loose, dissolving into the air around them, where his eyes could no longer follow and instead traced the shape of her mouth, plump and soft lips he'd forgotten the taste of. He leaned in to allow himself to remember her kiss. His hand slipped from her cheek to the side of her neck, holding her close within a moment that was so fragile, a single breath could shatter it. So he did not breath, he did not move, just let their mouths melt onto each other. It had been months. He remembered that. Her touch was the cruelest reminder, because now that he had her like this again, he didn’t know how he was ever meant to let her go.

cavernovs

His brother had become his interrogator. A softer, meaner version of the kind that used to crouch down beside him in the dingy cell, and pry off a scale with a blunted knife. Elian had whimpered then, everytime he gave an answer they didn't like; it had always been something they didn't like. A boy who didn't have the keys to his freedom, but had been told a hundred times over that he did. Eli wouldn't cower now, not on the surface with his brother's gaze that looked so unlike his own.

The fogged up glass he cannot wipe away is his memories lost behind fragility. If Josiah didn't look so like him, Elian doesn't think he'd have recognised his brother on the surface. But this is a mirror that doesn't easily shatter between them.

Elian wants to trust the brother he lost, even in the grief of abandonment. Even if he were left at the souleaters mercy. He had very little to confess; the sins he could remember, came after his origin. He wondered if violence had always been in his blood, or if that was something the Dominion had taught him. Did hate bloom from dying hope? How much had he forgotten, and how much had been rewritten in an image they wanted? He tried to filter the watery memories in his head, but darkness blinded the clarity. "I told you." Frustrated. He cannot remember. Maybe Josiah should air his memories, so Eli could have a foundation to look for in the burnt tapestry of his mind.

Long ago could mean anything. Elian had suspected that his time in chains had been centuries. But he had no recollection of a life before, to compare it to. No year, or date to reference, just a determination never to know captivity again. The price of that, is Najelon's mercy. Eyes travel up and down his brother, brows creasing in the centre, "What do you mean, unwell?" A sickness? He focused on Josiah's eyes that were reddened, and sore; exhaustive, like his were, when sleeplessness took him.

He didn't understand what Josiah meant.

"I don't know what you call them," Elian felt foolish, naming them that. But they were protecting her — albeit, uselessly if he could slice them up without much effort. He wondered what Josiah used his power for, in his realm. If Eli crafted his to be virulence; he's the blade in a demon's grasp. He notices how his brother's interest spikes, knowing he'd brought harm to his own people. Elian's too — since he were of their specie, but they hadn't been his keepers, or his allies in quite some time. He barely knew them beyond sharing physiology. "They were in the tunnels." Defensive, to imply they were dooming themselves, "If not me, then someone else would have cut them up."

He hadn't known at the time, who she had been. But he'd figured out her importance, when she'd said his name like she knew him. When she'd touched him, thinking she was touching Josiah. Eli is unfamiliar with gentleness, but she had been, even when she had drawn panic out of him, at moments because her righteousness had been loud and arrogant. He didn't know if he should ask his brother whether he were a King, to be so tangled up in royalty.

But maybe he had been wrong about how she'd look at him, she hasn't told you? Maybe they do not speak as often as they'd like, too busy leaving Elian to rot.

"Nobody ever looked at me like she did." Like he'd been something worth caring for. His mind wandered, briefly. "Or touched me like that," A quiet laugh — cold — to glance back at his brother, bitterness soured his tone: "They always think I'm you."

He did not wish to burden his brother with his own decay. A man who had lost everything, who had buried both brother and father at the bottom of the ocean, who loved a woman he could never have, was a man half alive. He had drowned himself in drink until numbness clung to him like mold on long lost buildings. The darkness inside him had turn his organs necrotic. There was no cure for the royal advisor.

Josiah cleared his throat. "It does not matter."

The smile he forced came too easy to appear as anything false. It fit him too well. He had worn it long enough that mask and man had become one.

"What were they doing in the tunnels?" It had escaped him. No one had mentioned guards going in the tunnels for nightly visits. Perhaps he had spent too long in brothels, and too little being vigilant of guards, advisors, ladies’ maids.

She.

He had a feeling it was either her, or her husband, that had allowed it. She went down there, into the tunnels, digging for answers. Why?

A cold unease settled deep in the pit of his stomach, a nauseating feeling he had not felt in so long. But Josiah had long mastered stillness. The art of feeling everything and showing nothing.

"What was she doing in the tunnels, Elian?" He asked, his voice a quiet sea before a storm. "I’m not angry with you, brother. No one is. I won’t tell a soul what you’ve told me." Whether that was truth or lie, he did not yet know. But Elian needed to believe it.

"She was kind to you. This is what kindness looks like." He reached for his hand. "Let us be kind to you."

#c: elian

Saylor pressed her lips together and nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't... I wasn't going to ask." Even though part of her wanted to know who he was spending time with. She knew that it would only hurt the two of them if she did ask. Saylor was already creating enough damage by being married to someone else while being in love with her Advisor.

She paused at his question. Saylor refused to avert her gaze away from him. She didn't want to appear cowardice, even though all she felt was guilt and shame from the answer she was about to give. "I'm assuming you mean other than during the wedding." Saylor laced her fingers together in front of her and tightened her grip.

"Don't apologize. It's--" She glanced towards the guards, who were hovering just a few feet away. "Leave us." She ordered and immediately, they dispersed. Thankfully, there was no one else around them at that hour. If they were, they'd be able to hear it. Saylor turned her attention back to Josiah. "I don't want you to act like it's okay. I know it's not." She ran a hand through her hair. "I want you to be honest with me. And I'll... I'll be honest, too."

"We have, yes. A couple of times." Her knuckles were turning white. "That's all, though. We haven't done anything else. And even that... I felt guilty. I still do."

Through the fog of his gaze, he could just make out the silhouettes of the guards, two of them looming too close, their stony eyes fixed on his every movement. Are you paranoid, Josiah? Or afraid they already know too much? He shook his head, over and over again as if the motion alone might wake him from whatever nightmare had taken hold. It didn’t. When the guards finally receded, it was her who remained to follow him, relentless in her honesty. He shouldn't have asked for it — her truth, it was more than he could bear, when it came for him.

He wanted to silence it, the truth of young love blooming between husband and wife. A love he should have known would grow strong enough to drive him out. That was all he would ever be to her — a lover, something hidden in the shadowed corners of her heart. A secret she only allowed herself in stolen hours, when the moon dimmed, when her husband slept, when guards could be bribed or turned from doors locked just a little too tightly.

The truth sat heavy in his throat.

Josiah unbuttoned his collar as if that might make it easier to breathe. One button, then another, each giving way with a quiet pop until the fabric loosened beneath his fingers. He shrugged his shirt from his shoulders. "I have nothing to offer you, but the burdens that come with loving an old man."

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth. "Being with me would punish you far more than it would ever bring you joy." His eyes found hers then, and lingered. “That is my truth, Saylor." A beat. "We must learn to accept each other’s truths… mustn’t we?"

closed starter for @josiahmaxwell

Not Josiah. Not Josiah. That wasn't Josiah. Saylor quickly sent a few texts to her Advisor, informing him that they had to meet. That she'd just seen him, and yet, hadn't, in the Dominion. Josiah had shyed away from her touch, then grabbed her chin. He'd sliced through flesh with water and cracked the bones of her most trusted guards in front of her. Her shaking hands brushed against the front of her blouse, which was splattered with blood.

Not Josiah.

The scene played out in front of her, over and over, as she swam through the waters and arrived at his chambers. She entered without knocking, closing the door behind her. Saylor swallowed hard as she pressed her back against the door. Her eyes flickered around the room until she found Josiah. She half expected him to have tattoos all over his face. He didn't.

"He... he looked like you. It was dark. I didn't--" Now that she was behind closed doors, away from everyone, her voice shook along with her body. I am stupid. I should have known. But I thought it was dirt. But even when not Josiah had told her it was ink, her mind had explained it away. "He's alive. He's alive. It wasn't you that--" Her bottom lip quivered. One of the only guards she had trusted with her relationship with Josiah was now dead. Had they thought it was Josiah that killed them?

"I'm not mad that you didn't tell me. I'm not. But I think I just made things so much worse." And he knows. He knows about us.

Buried in documents, papers that needed a royal signature and ones that did not deserve it, Josiah expected her arrival. He tried to busy himself, anything to keep from looking too shaken at the thought of her in his chambers, in distress, without comforting her with a single touch, or a kiss, or—

Since their last meeting, he’d told himself he couldn’t allow this to happen again, and again, and yet it kept happening. Somehow, he allowed it, perhaps because it was bigger than him. She was bigger than his principles, his morals, his pride. He would let her make a fool of him, if she so wished.

"Saylor, breathe." Josiah tried to command it, as his hands reached for her instantly, doing very little to stop himself this time. "Breathe, my love."

A soft, gentle voice that did not belong to a man like him, yet lived somewhere buried deep beneath, where only she could coax it from its shell.

He pieced together what little sense he could from the snippets she uttered. His brother. He had made himself known to her, despite every effort to keep him hidden. Why would you be so foolish, Elian?

Josiah had known that having his twin brother back in his life would not come without tribulations. Elian brought with him a tide of disturbances, ones the royal adviser could not simply hope would pass on their own, nor without consequence.

Hands cupped her tear stained face. "Tell me what has happened. As much as I might wish otherwise, I cannot read your mind, Your Grace." A noticeable shift between the name spoken in quiet affection and the one that kept them apart, as distant as the moon and the sun.

He knew how it sounded. But they had far greater problems now.

As he helped her up, Saylor leaned on him as Josiah led her towards the bed. If she lay with him -- if he stayed with her tonight -- would that count as cheating? Nausea hit her again, but there was nothing more for her to purge.

A frown formed on her lips. "You're not staying?" She'd asked if they could lay down together. Her and him. Maybe he has other plans. Someone else to see. Her stomach churned again as she stared at him. What did it mean, if he left? That he was done with her? That she had to be done with him?

Saylor lay down on the opposite side, towards him. Her fingers wrapped around his arm, her lips brushing against his skin just above her fingers. "I'm not ready for you to go." She whispered. She wasn't ready to be alone. Not after the panic attack she'd just endured. There was no one else she was comfortable around while she was in this state. Not even her brother.

He shook his head; a soft refusal of something he would not have hesitated to accept just a few months ago. Back then, he would have indulged freely in her offerings, holy as they felt. His hand, however, remained where it was, warm against hers. His gaze dropped to their joined hands when he could no longer bear to look at her. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ignore the sensation that tore through him when her lips brushed his skin.

It reminded him of what he had lost'; her. Because he was always going to lose her. "I can… um—" words that faltered, quieter than he intended. "—wait for you to fall asleep. Would that be alright?"

Holding himself together like this felt almost impossible. His heart was working against him, unsteady, relentless in his chest, while he forced the rest of himself into stillness. Josiah laid beside her, stiff, careful not to touch more than he already was, his free hand busying itself with the covers as he pulled them up over her shoulders. He didn’t look at her, because if he did, if he met her eyes, everything he had built to keep himself in control would come down like a house of cards.

deathbeckons

"Grey and dull are just fine. Life's too exhausting for technicolour all the time." Harley put on a front most of the time, if he were truly honest with himself. He was flirtatious and outgoing on the outside, but inside it was a whirlwind of emotions, churning together to become something he could never quite put a finger on. The one that screamed the loudest recently was loneliness, which probably has something to do with why he's bothering someone who clearly doesn't want to engage at the bar.

Brow furrowed as he looked to the man Josiah pointed out, shaking his head, "That's a bit too much, even for me." The witch liked a good time, and liked it even more when he got to enjoy himself with others, but there was something seriously off-putting about the man arguing with himself, so drunk that Harley was sure he couldn't even tell reality from fiction.

"It's fine, man. I get it. I'll leave you be." He smiled softly, even if there was a slight sadness to it. "Put his next one on my tab," Harley spoke to the bartender, picking up his own drink as he stood slowly from his seat.

Perhaps his brother would have found this encounter more entertaining. Would he have been more inclined to flirt with the stranger, to indulge in a night of careless amusement? Josiah couldn’t know. There was little he remembered of his twin. They had been young when he lost him, too young to understand much about matters of the heart, nor had they been encouraged to. Their father had filled their days with duty and honor, little else, Elian had long since been stripped of his. Josiah, meanwhile, clung to what scraps remained — for Saylor’s sake.

"Would you do me a small favor?" he asked before the other man could turn to leave. The bartender had already poured another mournful glass of scotch. "If you happen to see a man around here who looks a great deal like me, contact this number." It was an unusual way to keep track of his brother’s whereabouts, but Josiah was no stranger to gathering information in all kinds of ways and, in his humble opinion, the best at it in the world beneath the sea.

He slid a card across the bar. Daniel Preston — Lawyer, Preston Family Law. A number printed in bold beneath the name. "Thank you for the drink,” he added, "Enjoy the rest of your evening."

#c: harley

cavernovs

Elian sits on a scratched-up chair; it's flipped so he can lean forward. His arms lazily wrap around the backrest; he doesn't like hard surfaces resting on a scarred back; it occasionally aches with the paths of his history carved into it.

His brother stares at him from behind darkened shades. Black, bitter coffee lingers in the space between them. It's as heavy as the quiet, following Halloween. Josiah doesn't look so put together, here. It's the first time Eli has seen him like that. Hallows Eve had knocked the wind out of his gills, and instead, allowed a forgotten brother to see something recognisable in the dark of a shadow.

"I don't remember." A common trend in the sliding scale of Eli's mind. He sees flashes, prompted by unexpected meetings of faces. He glimpses an experience in objects he doesn't know. The same kind which he understands their workings; he can dismantle, and use them, but has no recollection as to where he learnt that skill. What Elian means to say, is that he barely remembers the waters; that was Josiah's home. There were memorable changes, in captivity, like the day they made him walk the Dominion tunnels on two legs, falling over and over, as he'd never known a thing like it. "I remember thinking of the ocean, eventually when they found a way to make deals for legged flesh. How long was that?"

Eyes wander to their setting; a quaint, surface stop. Figures locked in their own communications, and steam spilling out of clay mugs. Elian sticks a finger in the untouched coffee and swirls it. The burn on his skin is numbed; sensations, and nerves long ripped to shreds.

"You do look like shit." Eli notes, when Josiah says he's forgetting the basics of survival. A fool, he thinks, when he has free access to all those things. He always has. "Did you swim in a barrel of ale today?"

Eating. Sleeping. No mention of drinking.

He isn't empathetic enough to know if its because of his injuries on Hallows Eve, or if it's because he's pursuing a brother he left for dead; guilt must be a funny thing.

To remind them both how far removed they were from each others lives. Elian mentions: "I killed a couple of you, a little while ago. Guardians, I think." He doesn't know what they are, but they were in the wrong place. And they'd believed him to be his brother, as most have, since his return to the surface. Time has hardened Eli into stone, and Josiah chipping at the rock of what could have been, leaves him weak to a demon that would devour it for breakfast.

An expected answer, and a well constructed one too, If Elian had half the mind to keep a secret properly buried, Josiah might even have been inclined to believe it was the truth rather than the convenient excuse he offered anyone curious enough to pry, even his own twin brother.

Patience, however, was a virtue Josiah possessed in abundance, and he could wait. If Elian needed time to remember, then time was what he would be given. Josiah had already spent centuries waiting for his return, a little longer would not break him. "Alright," he said at last, folding his hands around the small porcelain cup. "Then tell me what you do remember." His voice softened, though the scrutiny in his eyes did not. "No need to apologize if it isn’t much," he added. "I’m here to take whatever you’re willing to give me."

Elian spilled his words like sacred gems, one at a time, as though deciding whether Josiah deserved a ruby now, or a topaz; something bright, but of lesser worth. Still, it gleamed with the memory of two boys once holding hands, now reaching for each other and finding nothing but air. An opal, the color of Elian’s eyes when they finally met his; the same shade of blue. Let me in, brother, Josiah wanted to say. Give me a little more of the diamonds you’re hiding.

But he instead listened without interrupting, wondering if he himself had become a shadow in his brother’s mind. Perhaps he had yet to prove worthy of trust to someone who had endured so much he no longer knew where to place it.

This was not the brother he remembered. Someone had stolen Elian and returned a version Josiah barely recognized. "Too long ago, I’m afraid," With the right help, Josiah believed his brother would find his way back to himself. Piece by piece, one day, Elian would become the man he was meant to be again.

Many would argue Josiah needed help as well. Elian wasn’t the first to comment on his unruly appearance, and the hollows beneath his eyes. At least he had showered today. "I suppose you’re right. If there’s anything you wish to know about me, I won’t hide the truth. I’ve been… unwell, but managing." It was the closest he came to admitting weakness. The confession that followed, however, threatened whatever fragile control he had left.

His hand rose to his glasses, removing them slowly, then setting them aside so Elian could see his eyes clearly — red rimmed and unblinking with sudden shock. "Guardians?" Josiah repeated. "Where did you meet these guardians, Elian?" A slight lean forward, "And what exactly were they guarding?" The King, Josiah assumed, or perhaps Her Majesty. If Elian had encountered guardians, then somehow he had found his way home, closer to the Crown than Josiah had realized. Perhaps keeping his brother’s return a secret from the throne had been a mistake.

#c: elian

“I could read your mind if I tried hard enough, remember?”

She reminded him, frowning at the disdain he was showing her this time around. Not that Mireia would dare do so to a friend, no matter how much she wanted to. Lying–creatures were so unbearable sometimes, but maybe he was being honest. Perhaps the Halloween events hadn’t messed him up as much as it did her. Josiah was strong–willed, even if sometimes he acted like a little asshole.

“Take that back,” she demanded, hurt flashing in her eyes. She had been the one to suggest the haunted house, the one pulling him along the Halloween festival. Guilt was sharp enough without his jabs. “You know I would if I could,” she muttered under her breath, mirroring his anger for very different reasons.

Her gaze followed the attempt to hide the scars. Hers had been fully healed in the Myre Grove, by the gentlest light fae at a clinic. One of her hands slowly smoothed over her arm, where one of the deeper slashes had been.

“We could get rid of those in the Myre,” she suggested, her voice softer, quieter.

"You wouldn’t like what you’d find in there," he said quietly, knowing she would still pick up on it.

If they could trade places, he would let her roam the nightmare that was his mind, where secrets lurked in every corner, threatening to emerge like thieves in the night, knives drawn for her back, her chest or her head.

He would rather be dead than live inside the chaos of his own thoughts and desires.

The Queen had made it unbearable for him to exist in his own skin, to wake in his own head, to swim through the life that had been thrust upon him. It was torture. What would Mireia think of it, if she had to live inside him instead?

It was torture.

The Myre. He would never trust a touch so foreign. The ocean was his home, and it would take him gently into her embrace whenever he was ready to submerge.

Halfway through buttoning his shirt, he decided he would not take his words back. In fact, he forced those furtive eyes to meet his own and said something he should have told her long ago, before he had allowed something close to a friendship to grow between them.

"I shouldn’t have listened to you. It was a mistake I won’t be making again. You can trust me on that."

#c: mireia

His words confused her, causing her eyebrows to knit together as she looked back at her husband. "What? Of course you're not a Queen." A silly statement. Maybe, at a later time, she'd ask him what he meant by it. But for now, there were other things on her mind. Other situations that threatened to get worse.

"Adrian--" Saylor began as he took her hand and began pulling her towards the Haunted House. She wanted to protest. To insist that she didn't need help. Not only that, but she wondered if it was best that she did this alone. If Josiah saw him with her...

Saylor let out a breath and shook her head. "He stopped responding." She muttered as she followed closely next to him. Her fingers tightened against his as fear seeped into her chest, slithering towards her heart. Greyson. Josiah. What if they were hurt? What if they couldn't find them?

As they neared the area that the screams were coming from, Saylor's eyes swept the crowd, desperately trying to connect with those she found familiar. It took several minutes before she finally recognized Josiah. "There!"

Saylor tugged Adrian's hand as she practically ran towards her Advisor. "Josiah!" Saylor shouted as she pushed through the chaos of the people around them -- Adrian in tow. It wasn't until she was upon Josiah that she released Adrian's hand and fell to her knees. "Are you hurt?" Saylor breathed in desperation as her hands rummaged through her satchel, pulling out a small waterskin. She uncorked it, coaxed the salt water from the spout and immediately spread it across several small cuts that she saw on Josiah's arms.

As her eyes raked over his body, her breath caught as she noticed his shirt, soaked in red. "Adrian..." Saylor's throat swelled as her eyes stung. Her hands shook as she maintained control over the water -- just barely. "I need more water. I can't-- I don't know if this is enough."

She needed to rip his shirt off. She had to see just how much damage was done to Josiah's body. And yet, all she could do was freeze -- staring down at the man she loved. If this is the state Josiah's in... what happened to Greyson? Saylor's bottom lip quivered -- her emotions threatening to take over.

Get it together. You're a Queen. You know how to help. You were trained in this. Saylor chastised herself as she forced her body to work once more. She guided the water down and underneath his shirt. "This might sting." Saylor whispered as tears bubbled at the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

@curseaddendum

“What? No—I meant—” Adrian tried to explain, but it wasn’t really that important. Besides, he couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at Saylor’s confusion. He was used to it by now, how his sense of humor flew over her like an aimless dart, but it still caught him off guard in the most endearing way.

Her overwhelming worry—quickly tipping into panic—that, he did expect. Adrian trusted that both advisor and commander would come out of the deadly trap alive. Maybe not unscathed; Calamity had proven time and time again to be a vortex of destruction. But Josiah and Greyson had the combined skills to make a formidable team.

And yet, there Josiah was. Bloodied. Still breathing. Still flushed with color, enough to rule out fatal risk, for now.

At Saylor’s request, Adrian reached behind his lower back and detached the water pouch he always carried with him. He handed it over, then crouched beside the injured merman, watching his wife’s movements closely. He’d been trying to learn from her. Healing wasn’t his forte, but perhaps some of her grace woud rub off on him.

“Ya sure got yourself in a pickle, mate,” he remarked, smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth, laughter ghosting just beneath his tone. “Hold still,” he warned, already reaching for Josiah’s shirt and ripping it open to expose the wound.

“This is no time for shyness, Saylor,” he added, pointed gaze finding hers, one eyebrow lifting. He knew their love entanglement couldn’t be allowed to interfere with anyone’s safety. He knew—he trusted—that she knew it too.

Did it sting that his wife, the woman he was slowly falling for, loved the man who resented their very political union? Yes. Did it sting that it complicated everything he had worked for, everything he had left behind? Absolutely. And still, easing the worry from Saylor’s face mattered more.

“Stay here,” he said gently, rising to his feet. “You take care of him, I’ll find Greyson.” The Captain was speaking now—decisive and unyielding. A look that suited him just as well as the crown ever did.

@josiahmaxwell

#c: saylor #c: adrian #i am once again unable to find a suitable gif

A shrill ringing pulsed in his ears, reducing his usually impeccable hearing to a dull, unreliable hum, but those hands on him, he would know anywhere. Warm and gentle, even when urgent in their concern. Josiah could not turn to face her, not with a woman in his arms, moments from succumbing to her injuries.

He knew that If Saylor was here, then surely so was her generous husband, the apple of her eye, her other half — prepared to evacuate anyone within reach, though perhaps just a moment too late. Where were the guards? he wanted to demand. The very guards who should have been stationed there when Greyson first entered.

Saltwater stung along the cuts beneath his torn shirt. "I’m alright," he said, “But I require assistance with this young woman. She is badly injured."

Then, instead of a helping hand, came his voice — Adrian’s. A furious gaze pinned the King. Josiah’s blue eyes burned with worry for the young woman in his arms, who had barely begun to live, foolish enough to believe that attending a carnival spectacle posed no threat to her safety. Two sets of hands warred on Josiah as though he was the one in need of aid. "It is not me you should be helping, Your Majesty." His tone barely contained its growl.

Before Adrian could protest, Josiah shifted the woman forward, pressing her firmly into the King’s arms. "Take her.” A command he'd not allow himself to make, if it wasn't necessary. "Get her somewhere safe. Greyson made it out already,” he added, with a certainty he did not entirely feel. “I’m certain of it.” He wasn't. But he needed this woman safe, and Adrian gone.

His body leaned toward Saylor without permission, their shoulders brushing and his head nearly lowering to rest against hers. It was an instinct born of helplessness, mercifully hidden beneaht the cover of night. Rapid breaths slipped past his lips while his hands lay in his lap, slick with drying blood. The cuts along his body, the ones Saylor carefully tended, burned and mended all at once. He let her be his savior. He let her nurse him back to life. Even as he felt undeserving of it. "I shouldn't have let him walk inside." he muttered.

@oftragxdy

A frown formed on her face as she noticed him not quite speaking in his normal way. He wasn't enunciating his words -- as if he was under the influence of something. Relief and concern flooded her veins. Not that she assumed he would try to find her, had she been away from the Kingdom longer than what she originally reported. But she had thought that maybe he'd question her. Instead, it seemed as though he'd busied himself in some way.

How many times had she asked him to call her by her actual name?

Her eyes flickered around them, ensuring they were alone, and she let out a sigh. "No, Josiah. We don't share a room. If he snores, I wouldn't have any inkling." A partial lie. Yes, they didn't share a room. However, Saylor had fallen asleep in Adrian's bed on his ship. She had yet to experience him snoring.

"I am just restless." She stated, hoping that he'd not push her for more. The last thing she wanted to do was to lie to him about her whereabouts. But she'd promised Adrian that she wouldn't tell anyone about the Ship. That she, too, would keep it protected. That meant staying quiet if she ever went to visit. "And you? Is this a swim of shame?"