your misery in life (is your ecstasy in death)
@saxhamsurvivor asked:
"Hold still..."
@hearthandhomeward | Titus Glauca answered:
For a while, he'd assumed he was dead, all things considered. For a while, he'd even been happy about it. No more conflict, no more divide-- no more fighting for one side and betraying the other. No more expectations, no future, no past, no honor, no pride. For a while, he is dead. And then he isn't, pulled back screaming to the waking world and the sun high, unyielding, unforgiving, overhead, as Arra yanks the blade from his chest and smashes a cure flask right in the worst of it. Drautos swears, violently, hands half-armored and digging into the rubble of what was once the First Bank of Insomnia, as the curative does its impersonal work-- what he wants to do is grab Axis Arra by the throat and break his neck for inflicting this on him. He was dead, gods-dammit, and he'd actually liked it. It is the longest series of moments in his life, longer than the eternal battle with Ulric, longer than every tedious moment spent in company of a king he loathed. Arra looks like he should be dead, too, haggard and wan, when Titus finally regains sense enough to push past the frigid fingers yanking bone and muscle and organ tissue back together to look at him. "--Thanks," and there is grudging gratitude there, because being alive means he can still finish what he started. "The others with you?" Furia, Bellum, other people he'd set up like ducks in a shooting gallery, pawns on a chessboard. His people, like Crowe, never intended to survive the Fall.
Axis watches his one-time captain with the implacability of a coeurl on the hunt. He can see the murder there, in ice-blue eyes, and ignores it as he does the begrudging thanks. He didn't revive Titus Drautos to save him, after all.
"I sent them on ahead," Axis tells him, flat and cold. "We need gear, clothes, a ride."
He should have cut Drautos' throat the moment he saw him breathing, but the peace on the older man's face had enraged him.
He still doesn't know if he intends to leave him here or lead him out, or pretend to follow like he used to. He thinks Drautos knows Axis will never be loyal to him again.
The kids are safe, and the man in Glauca's armour doesn't know where. It's enough for now.
