[The surprise flashes across his face, fast and hard and making his mouth fall open just a tad before his carefully cultivated mask of cold indifference slams back down.]
You don't want words, isn't that what you told me. On the network, calling for me in the middle of the night and you don't want my pretty words. Only action.
[But he makes no move to step up closer, he had been too close before and got burned. Not like the ring of barely healed burns around his wrist, the scarred and scabbed skin that he strokes in the middle of the night, remembering her face in the ring.
Somewhere along the last year, he's remembering her not as she was in Ravka, dressed in his colors and cursing him out. No, he sees her as she looked in Braccia- liquid gold and crimson lips. How she looked in Gyeongje, with her hair loose in the wind and fighting to right a wrong done by someone else. How she looked naked, spread out on the desert sands of Scorpion's Bend, with the pale light of the moons shining down on her skin. How she had looked in dreams and how very real she felt on the station.
How she looked in the red lights of Sedorum, her face tilted to his- looking from the grimy streets or hovering above him and all of the power held in hers hands. Both places.
The memories of her betrayal in Ravka and how she ran away is fuzzy around the edges, overlaid with how she looks in sleep, how warm she is when she's curled up against him and how easily he found sleep in her arms.]
Words could be lies, wasn't that the sentiment behind your little dare back then? But now you want more words.
[It would be funny, if looking at the sour look on her face didn't bring an echo of the same emotion to his own chest. If he didn't want her already, if she didn't carry all the hope for his dead future in her hands.
If the thought of her with the tracker didn't make his blood boil and the thought of her knowing it, and not caring, made it that much worse.]
I suppose you're right, it is none of my concern. Goodbye, Alina.
no subject
You don't want words, isn't that what you told me. On the network, calling for me in the middle of the night and you don't want my pretty words. Only action.
[But he makes no move to step up closer, he had been too close before and got burned. Not like the ring of barely healed burns around his wrist, the scarred and scabbed skin that he strokes in the middle of the night, remembering her face in the ring.
Somewhere along the last year, he's remembering her not as she was in Ravka, dressed in his colors and cursing him out. No, he sees her as she looked in Braccia- liquid gold and crimson lips. How she looked in Gyeongje, with her hair loose in the wind and fighting to right a wrong done by someone else. How she looked naked, spread out on the desert sands of Scorpion's Bend, with the pale light of the moons shining down on her skin. How she had looked in dreams and how very real she felt on the station.
How she looked in the red lights of Sedorum, her face tilted to his- looking from the grimy streets or hovering above him and all of the power held in hers hands. Both places.
The memories of her betrayal in Ravka and how she ran away is fuzzy around the edges, overlaid with how she looks in sleep, how warm she is when she's curled up against him and how easily he found sleep in her arms.]
Words could be lies, wasn't that the sentiment behind your little dare back then? But now you want more words.
[It would be funny, if looking at the sour look on her face didn't bring an echo of the same emotion to his own chest. If he didn't want her already, if she didn't carry all the hope for his dead future in her hands.
If the thought of her with the tracker didn't make his blood boil and the thought of her knowing it, and not caring, made it that much worse.]
I suppose you're right, it is none of my concern. Goodbye, Alina.