ever know each other [ooc]
--
[bic] such a softer sin
It wasn't an answer. It wasn't a decision. She felt the level of hope, of anticipation, just drop. Down, down, down. He wasn't going to give her an answer. He wasn't going to give her anything. Her mother, she was dead. Aiji Sadira, the only one she could ever rely on, no matter how much the stability in it was anything but. She could handle her mother. She knew exactly what to expect, and how to deal. Ahren was something different, and the sickening darkness within her was all consuming. She didn't want his song and dance; she didn't want his excuses. She wanted him to make his choice. He wouldn't. She'd have to try harder if she wanted anything out of Ahren de le Poer. A lot harder.
Her voice was desperate, but she soaked it in some verbal equivalent to liquid nitrogen, to try to hide her pain.
"You don't have to tell me what happened, Ahren. I know the story, read all the books. I know any fact you could lift high enough to throw." She knew that must have sounded so bitter, but she didn't care. She
was bitter. If he didn't want her, if he didn't care about her, he could at least be merciful and say it to her. She didn't care about how she felt, as long as she wasn't in the dark anymore. She wanted truth. She wanted to know where she stood. But it seemed like he was going to keep the lights off forever.
Her voice, once an icy near-whisper, became a venomous snarl.
"I don't blame my mother for shoving you away. She had every right, and bless her broken soul... for all that blessing shit is worth... she was the smart one of us two." It was burning, everything she'd bottled up, and she couldn't keep it in and she couldn't control it. No matter what she tried to disguise it as, threatening and soft, or loud and cruel... she was desperate, and there was no disguise, no cover that was thick or sturdy enough to hold that inside. She hated Ahren de le Poer. He was her pain, her suffering... he was the death of her. He was the reason she had come to exist in the first place. She hated him...
Because she loved him, despite it. And that was the real killer.
She glared at him through welling tears, and lifted her form off the ground, a whimper escaping her as her shoulder groaned with the pain. Still, she knew that laying down was not going to show him what she wanted him to see in her. Her shoulder was cut and bleeding, and there was a bit of dirt in it, though most of both that and the blood had been rinsed away and absorbed by the snow that had melted with her body heat. She figured she must have sliced it on something on the ground. Her bag was about a mile back on the path; she'd have to retrieve it later. For now, she couldn't walk away. Not without an answer.
"I'm a fool, Ahren, but I'm an honest one if there ever was. I came here to seek out the remainder of what I could begin to call 'family,' at least by blood." Her tears were threatening to fall, but she couldn't be weak, because she would never get respect that way. The blood on her shoulder was drying into her pelt in the air. It stung. She laughed at it; that was no pain compared to the kind that didn't bleed. The sight of it refreshed her, because this was what had come of her weakness before. No more. She was stepping up to the plate... but would he?
The slight smile triggered by her laughter didn't fade much as she looked again upon her father.
"You wanted me from her then. She was alive to fight you, but I'm here now, and there's not a trace of her. So where's your fatherly desire now?"
Again with sounding bitter... but she said she was honest, right?
