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With the coal-red glow still gleaming in her eyes, tongue moving slowly across her lips to catch that last taste she'd allowed herself, the thief stepped calmly through the overgrown weeds. One hand found the cold iron of the fence and gripped, allowing her to swing lithely over it. Ciara and it laughed in unison as she drew in a breath of crisp air, mellowed only by the faintest of mist.
"...of all the places to send me," she murmured.
I can still smell the gods damned things and no matter many times I rub my gloves on whatever comes to hand, that... sickeningly sweet smell is still there.
Roses. Of all the things to pick. Roses.
...I just... wanted to see her smile. Not that look that says she's trying not to cry or wants to be happy but something about me is keeping her from doing it. That genuine smile. I wanted to see it after today.
My timing is always so fucking perfect. What did I expect?
No one needs to know about this... duel- death match, suicide, whatever you want to call it- that he and I arranged. If I can get the glove back... Maybe...
Maybe what, stupid girl? Maybe WHAT?
You'll be all right? The world will be shiny? She'll smile and you two will go on long walks together? You won't be killing people anymore or scraping yourself along the bottom of Lion's Arch just to make gold for him?
Fuck it.
It's mine and it's the only thing that was ever really mine. I want it back, even if one of us dies.
...I'm never buying her roses again. I hate the way they smell.
...what the fuck, gods?
Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with either me or the world you brought us to? From having what was left of my heart torn out to a fucking job offer to ...to... that.
I... honestly don't know what to do, and I can't even figure out where to start trying. I'm starting to wish I hadn't met any of these people. It was so much simpler when I was just moving packages across Tyria.
...gods damn it... I can still taste her.
Why is it the damn man haunts me even when he's dead and it's someone else wearing his mask?
I couldn't argue with his logic- isn't that something? A man masquerading as a lunatic can rationalize more effectively than anyone I've ever met. I had to leave. It wasn't how he looked at me that bothered me. I'm used to that vague look of pity that most people have if they're not glaring at me. It wasn't even the tone in his voice when he said that the only death worth dying was in defense of someone beloved.
It was the fact that he was right.
I am being a coward, and I ...can't bring myself to do the right thing. The courageous thing.
I could say it out loud, as long as I was saying it jokingly, sarcastically. I can't... even say it to myself, even though I know it's true. I know... and I also know he's right.
...and I don't even have the spine to walk away. It wouldn't be hard. Some actual willpower on my part, distance. Silence. Leaving him to the women I know he's murmured those same soft words to night after night. The women he actually cares about. I can do my job without this.
He's right.
I am a coward.
Seeing those windows alight, I couldn't bring myself to even approach. I saw his shadow cross the window. Just one shadow. He was alone. I could have gone to the door. Could have laid a hand on it. Gotten what I came all the way out to Claypool for.
I didn't.
All I could think of was the fact that this is only beginning. There's no telling where I'll be tomorrow. What I'll be doing. Who I may be avoiding to keep myself alive. What right do I have to pull anyone into that? Especially someone... that I don't want to see dead.
Like that stupid, stupid kid. Damn nobles thinking themselves untouchable just because they have a stupid syllable or two in front of their names. The way he stuttered... He didn't even realize everything I could have done to him. Everything someone else could have done to him. Idiot. He just stared at that dagger like he'd never seen a blade before in his life...
...gods. A lunatic called me a coward... and he was right.
"I'm sorry."
...as if that would change anything.
As if it could.
It was a soft sound, the drop hitting the glass balanced in the basin, and pulled her gaze downwards in time to watch tendrils of crimson spread through the water. One hand left the edge of the table to touch the crest of her cheek, and when her fingers came away stained red, Ciara exhaled slowly.
...she'd thought it had ceased bleeding already...
The small room smelled of smoke and Ascalonian red wine, still dripping from her hair, with a coppery tang that originated from the slender redhead leaning heavily on the rickety table. Her lips compressed as she jerked a hand away from the wooden edge, examined the fine splinter embedded in her skin, and Ciara hung her head, the singed tips of her flame-coloured hari sweeping over her shoulders. A strangled, rasping sound passed as a wry, weary laugh, and she staggered back a step or two, reaching the room's lone chair and collapsing onto it.
Everything was trembling, and the splinter too finely evasive for her to reach. It was no more painful than the shards of glass she hadn't managed to extract from her stomach and hips, nor the flecks of burnt wood that had peppered the back of her neck and her shoulders. Dried blood itched on her lower back, flaked from her jaw as she turned her head to regard the basin, but she merely leaned forward to drop her forehead onto her knees.
A burn pulled. Bruises began to ache, and she felt the subtle grind of embedded debris beneath her skin as her muscles twitched from the stretching. The pain in her knee was low and deep, pulsing steadily with such intensity that she'd retched twice before finally dosing herself with a small vial of laudanum. Now it was bearable, only just, but it would take much, much more to reduce the throbbing to what was, to her, normal. Each breath tasted of smoke and her chest ached from the struggle to draw in enough air.
Distantly, she could hear the low murmurs, the sounds of comfort being exchanged, a voice raised in anger, footsteps and the creak of a bed moving. They had reached the inn safely, had met the Herald outside of the doors and been ushered in, and only when the door had closed on the last of them had Ciara eased into the inn herself. A quiet word with the owner, a gold coin passed from hand to hand, and the narrow room reserved for one of the chambermaids had been 'made available.'
Briefly, she wondered who was bunking with whom to give her this modicum of privacy.
Fingertips moving over the thin crust of blood, the redhead brushed at it, picking brownish flakes from her pale skin, and sat up carefully, shaking her hands out before she clamped them down on her knees to steady her trembling legs. Within her line of sight was the ruin of her leather coat, still sparkling with stars of broken glass and holding the smell of eager flames that she suspected would never quite be cleaned from it. Patches of the hem were charred, others shiny from the inadvertent heat treatment, and holding it up, she had looked through the dozens of small rips and holes at the lamp.
A door closed overhead, but she felt no real apprehension that any of them were leaving. With one nearly mortally wounded, one exhausted, another bearing more than one injury and him watching over all of them, there was little to no chance that she would have to take post tonight. With all of them, even Milli, on high alert, and backup undoubtedly on its' way, she let her shoulders ease down slowly. The expression on her face, had she permitted anyone to see it, would have given pause.
A smile sat on her pale, plush lips.
Drained, subtle and difficult to discern if one was not familiar with her usual solemn expression, it was, nonetheless, present. She couldn't wouldn't allow it to be seen, but as Ciara pulled in another breath and felt another sharp jab of reddish agony blaze in her lower back, she began to laugh quietly.
How very, very alive she felt...
"I've never felt like such an idiot in my life."
And there they would remain, addicts, junkies, both of them a drug to the other, feeding the other's habit, until they were too high on the feeling to care about the consequences of it all.
~Jack Kinkaid
