i think i need more dark azriel. i think i need more irritable, sleep deprived, angry azriel. azriel whose hands shake and you don’t know why, you don’t if it’s stress or anxiety or a deep sated fury he can’t stifle anymore. azriel whose chest rumbles with growls and hisses he is too tired to stifle. bitter azriel. disillusioned azriel. azriel who is too disgusted by everything, by those around and by himself, to play nice anymore. azriel who doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink anymore because he is so….so lost to his ever increasingly dark thoughts that he just…forgets to eat and drink. azriel who can’t sleep—not because he doesn’t want to, but because he can’t, because his shadows have grown darker and needier over the years, wrapping around him and not letting go, sticking to his skin like tar and wriggling in all his thoughts, tainting them, staining them. and azriel lets them, because of course he does, he and the shadows are one, after all, aren’t they? he cares for them. he craves them. he doesn’t mind all that much that they become the only thing he cares about, because the shadows are right. he should be angry. he should be bitter. no one understands him, not really, but the shadows do. they do. and so he spends all his nights awake with them, listening to their whispers, letting them nestle deeper inside of him, until that line he’s always been so aware of, the one that has always separated him from them begins to blur. he doesn’t care. he doesn’t care. and the shadows don’t care very much, either, rather they are almost…happy with this turn of events. and the happiness is a muted thing of course, they cannot be happy, but azriel’s closeness grants them more freedom, and so they begin to roam. they are curious by nature. they like to hoard things. they like to seep and to stain and to steal the light from all their encounter, greedy things that they are.
and so it’s natural that they fixate on eris. eris is bright. eris is warm. eris is as fickle as the flames that play at his fingertips and azriel’s shadows taunt their other half with snippets of dreams and memories they steal from eris; scents and flavours that make saliva pool under azriel’s tongue. he dislikes it at first, of course he does, but the shadows burrow deep inside of him and those snippets of eris that they hoard become azriel’s own secret treasure. and his sanity begins to ravel, obviously. his anger grows, the trembling in his hands worsens. and he can’t blame it on the shadows, because he is the shadows—and so he blames it on eris, because that is easier and sparks an aching, burning hunger in azriel that is better than the hatred, than the numbness that it brings after it spills out of him in violence.
azriel doesn’t stop the obsession when it comes. doesn’t stop the anger, the jealously, the bone deep urge that grows in him to take eris and peel him open, layer by layer, rib by rib; to peer inside of him and learn what his heart tastes like when he sinks his teeth into it. he doesn’t stop it. he doesn’t stop it.
