you can see your life out the window tonight. Who: Jareth Monaco & Divina Marcos What: Sparring. Where: An old warehouse. When: Monday evening. Rating: Some gore. Status: Complete.
The axe slammed against her side. Its blade bit in deep, blood welling thickly out of the fresh wound. And then there was the Dark, too: poison-panacea whistling through her veins, turbulent and cold—
Divina exhaled sharply. Deathbringer rose as if in retaliation. But this was not their first round, the wound not her first of the evening. The woman buckled forward, sword-arm falling to her side. The other shot out to Jareth’s shoulder in a grip that was at once forceful and trembling.
(The word would never leave her lips, but there was no mistaking the signal to yield.)
Around them, perhaps the shadows were dancing, coiling and uncoiling in response to the murmuring Dark. The woman grit her teeth, as though by sheer force of will her heart might be made to calm. They had fought too fiercely for a simple spar, a recklessness that her chosen venue allowed them. And yet, even through the pain, Divina could feel the tension leaving her body, the gnawing need to use the Dark sated by the thrum of battle. This was the only comfort the fell knight would deign to ask for, her fears at last falling from her shoulders like blood from the wound.
He was breathing too hard. Cuts littered his body, his torn shirt tossed somewhere into the dark recesses of the abandoned building long ago. Dried blood mingled with the sweat that ran in rivers down his face, neck, chest. The grip was a signal to end, and he pulled back, allowing her what dignity she so fiercely clung to.
(He couldn’t say anything; he would be bleeding and broken on the ground before he would admit defeat.)
His bicep was used to mop the moisture from his face, but it only served to rub it into his eyes; the salt burned, a pleasant reminder that he had worked himself too hard. A reminder that this had felt far heavier than a spar. It had served its purpose, but as the pain faded, the memories and thoughts and fears began to creep back in.
“Again?” Not a demand, not this time. A question. He was not the only one who had overworked themselves.
She breathed. “In a moment.”
A few steps (stumbling, although she would deny it to the last) led her to a nearby stack of crates. Divina sagged against the wood, sheathing Deathbringer with a hiss. Dark eyes lazily followed the man’s movements. She was well aware that his was a rage kept tightly-reined. Controlled. That he had gone so far now was a testament to whatever demons had plagued him the week before.
Normally, she would have kept her silence. But they were too alike in this moment; Divina was speaking before she even realised what she was asking:
“Who was it?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand - it was a strange, tenuous relationship that they had built, and while he could not say he trusted her, he respected her enough to tell the truth. “Aspel.”
Aspel had not called upon him once since she had fallen ill, and he had kept his distance, reacquainting himself with being an outsider to her life. Tension release had become his purpose, but he refused to cling to that place; it was not that he felt he deserved more, but that she did. A new life, a new lover, respect - things she had carefully pieced together and built. There was no room for him, and until she had touched him, he had made his peace with it.
(It still hurt; used and discarded, a vicious cycle he would never quite break free from.)
“You?”
For a moment, she did not respond, perhaps still stunned by his response. And yet Divina knew even now there were limits to what she could ask. How Jareth Monaco knew the councilwoman was not an answer she would prompt him for.
“Evander Finch,” she said at length. “Alys Coulombe.” Thirty-eight and twenty-six; how ironic that they would age so close to their deathbeds, time passing steadily on regardless of what it left behind. But these were not names he had reason to know (although neither was Aspel Cassul).
“Theodore Finch went missing after the storm. I found him in a tenements clinic.” Divina hesitated, raising a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. Her voice wavered only slightly—from overexertion, she would insist—when she added, “Happened to me, before.”
The first two names meant nothing to him - he couldn’t care less about most of the people in this city, and there wasn’t any incentive for him to rectify that, to forge ties - but he recognized the last. Theodore Finch was an overconfident asshole, one who had been missing since the snowstorm nearly a fortnight previous. It had been a constant topic amongst the EKP, with people speculating about the fate of the berserker.
Jareth didn’t much care - Finch could have frozen to death for all he cared - but the addition at the end had caught his attention. He knew what it was like to go missing, although it had always been a conscious choice on his behalf. The way Divina spoke of it, it did not seem the same was true for her. “Found in a clinic?” His tone made it clear he was referring to her and not to Finch, but he wouldn’t provide any further clarification; let her take it as she wanted.
“Left in the snow,” she said.
Her eyes fell shut at the rush of memories. Tactile. The biting cold as it licked her wounds, the scant warmth emanating from the slain beast. The fear. Divina licked her lips, eyes flashing open, spine straightening with an alertness for a danger unseen (long gone). She met the man’s eyes then, unsure as to why she was divulging this particular grief, a hurt she fought tooth and nail to keep hidden.
Or perhaps she did know: still, she could feel the Dark writhing in the wounds he’d bequeathed her. No doubt he felt the same from the ones she’d given in return.
“Found there, too,” Divina continued. “A few days afterward.”
He didn’t drop the eye contact, digesting what she was telling him. It was clear, despite the lack of pronouns, that she was speaking of herself. She would know he had no interest in Finch outside of sparring - something he had trouble coming to terms with as Finch was everything Jareth loathed. He wasn’t sure why Marcos was speaking to him of this, and while he had never been lost and left to die, he had lost himself.
Perhaps, in many ways, they weren’t too different after all.
She would know better than to expect any sort of comfort from him, so he didn’t bother to try. Instead, he said, quietly, “I lost myself. Hoped they’d all forget about me.”
“They?”
Everyone he didn’t say. “My ho- town. The place I’d lived before.”
“Ah.” Vague on purpose, but wasn’t she as well? She watched blood slither down his bicep like a languid snake. “I—” Divina hesitated, breath catching (it was only the wounds). “You have now… found yourself?”
That was an answer he was trying to find himself, and he shrugged. “Once,” he said. With them.
Here the woman thought of the looming estate, its halls filled with conversation and laughter. “And you have no intention of returning?”
He laughed, humorless and harsh. “No,” he said, letting his gaze drop. There was nothing for him there, not anymore.
The silence stretched between them then, heavy like the snowfall beyond the gates. Divina’s grip shifted on Deathbringer’s hilt. This man was not Morgayne nor Juliette; not Theodore, even, for all that the men were, in some ways, similar. And so there would no be no proffered gestures, no emotional displays—
And yet.
Divina pushed herself off the crates, swinging Deathbringer in a clean arc. There was no sort of comfort here, indeed. The black steel was leveled against the berserker with a cool stare. “Again.”
A brief nod, and his ax was lifted. “You telegraph Sacrifice. Hit me with it without my countering.”
“Very well.” A shaky exhale as she focused, the pain seeping into her bones, rattling through her like an angry knife. Beneath her the Dark shifted, took shape: she shot forward, a shadow in the night.