his fingers skip between his shoulder blades, hesitating near the base of his skull. his implant, hidden by the armor. good, that he has a way to protect it now, though it won't help his seizures. felix still doesn't know why he's here, or why that's a thought at all. ephemera could just as easily turn around and knock him senseless. kill him, even. freak out with felix at his back, throttle him until his windpipe collapses from the pressure.
it's stupid to let him at his back. they both know it, and yet. )
Me trying to tap out? That was mercy, I guess. A form of it. ( only mercy he knew how to give him in the moment: removing himself from the equation and releasing ephemera from a duty to be fulfilled. stand down, soldier. move on. but then –
but then. shit got all twisted.
felix drops his forehead against ephemera's back, between his shoulders. his armor has absorbed most of the early morning chill, and felix feels the cold across the nape of his neck too, like feathery wisps of ice. grounding. it keeps him in the moment. this is maybe crazier than anything that happened in that goddamn arena. felix thinks he's already lost his mind — before duplicity, before ortez left him. there was never any stopping it.
no salvation for the truly wicked, his mother used to say. on her worst days, she used to think he was possessed. her sweet boy, her only son Исаак, spitting image of her with his father's temperament, taken by the devil in the middle of the night. all that time in church, confessing his fucking sins away to any god that would listen on the small chance that it would cleanse him and she'd be satisfied.
she was right, all this time. just not in the way her drunken delusions told her she was right. no source for his wickedness. no devil or careless god to blame. he just is. )
But when I told you I'd let you? ( he's quiet, at a pitch that ephemera will have to strain to hear over the breeze and organic chirps of the city gradually waking. he rolls his forehead over ephemera's armored plating, exhaling slow. ) That wasn't mercy at all.
no subject
his fingers skip between his shoulder blades, hesitating near the base of his skull. his implant, hidden by the armor. good, that he has a way to protect it now, though it won't help his seizures. felix still doesn't know why he's here, or why that's a thought at all. ephemera could just as easily turn around and knock him senseless. kill him, even. freak out with felix at his back, throttle him until his windpipe collapses from the pressure.
it's stupid to let him at his back. they both know it, and yet. )
Me trying to tap out? That was mercy, I guess. A form of it. ( only mercy he knew how to give him in the moment: removing himself from the equation and releasing ephemera from a duty to be fulfilled. stand down, soldier. move on. but then –
but then. shit got all twisted.
felix drops his forehead against ephemera's back, between his shoulders. his armor has absorbed most of the early morning chill, and felix feels the cold across the nape of his neck too, like feathery wisps of ice. grounding. it keeps him in the moment. this is maybe crazier than anything that happened in that goddamn arena. felix thinks he's already lost his mind — before duplicity, before ortez left him. there was never any stopping it.
no salvation for the truly wicked, his mother used to say. on her worst days, she used to think he was possessed. her sweet boy, her only son Исаак, spitting image of her with his father's temperament, taken by the devil in the middle of the night. all that time in church, confessing his fucking sins away to any god that would listen on the small chance that it would cleanse him and she'd be satisfied.
she was right, all this time. just not in the way her drunken delusions told her she was right. no source for his wickedness. no devil or careless god to blame. he just is. )
But when I told you I'd let you? ( he's quiet, at a pitch that ephemera will have to strain to hear over the breeze and organic chirps of the city gradually waking. he rolls his forehead over ephemera's armored plating, exhaling slow. ) That wasn't mercy at all.
( he doesn't know what that was. )