Falls

The rush of water roaring in his ears and covering his uneven heartbeat was a relieving distraction from too many conflicting, squirming things in his mind, the stabbing cold a bladed relief from the weary tension of his muscles, and he let his thoughts drift away from his straining, cold-burning body. Let Cullen rage and roar with fury; let Ally flame with revulsion; let Fearghas- ...He didn’t know what Fearghas would do- would think about him in his absence, if he did at all. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Right now his body was concerned only with the pain of icy water, his mind fuzzy and numb with it.

A shrill cry had him twisting in the cold froth, and for a moment he thought the thing- silver and black and slight- was Ally, and he thrashed in shock and nearly went under, throwing himself toward the shore where she stood, wondering how dire it must be for her to approach him of all people- but as he surged up toward shallow water, her blurring shape coalesced into someone else altogether.

“Hey! Isn’t that too cold? How are you all the way in like that?”

He barely heard her over the thudding of his own pulse and the loud rasp of his breathing, his black eyes picking her apart again and again, as if unsure of his senses. Even on little sleep and bountiful adrenaline, however, it was clear to his hazy eyes that she wasn’t his brother’s fierce partner.

For one thing, she was a child. Not in the way his precious sibling was, either, but something so small and fragile that even semi-submerged as he was, he towered over her- not unlike the little filly he’d tried to gather for Cullen in the Peak, all that time ago. Now he found himself staring at her for a different reason altogether.

All those children he’d tried to fetch for his golden master, only to fail disastrously each time, and now one was perched fearlessly at his feet like a present waiting to be delivered. It made something black and awful twist and churn with increasing violence in his ribcage, until it tore up his throat and left him painfully as a scraping laugh from tight, straining lungs. Now that he was too disillusioned to not wonder why Cullen would ever want a filly in his bachelor herd; now that Cullen was too disillusioned to ever want him again, no matter if he could be of use.

Slowly, now, he shifted out of the deep water, his dark stare still soaking in the airy, trusting confidence of her as he drew himself up alongside her on numb, bloodless limbs.

“...You’re late,” he husked softly at last, the silk of his low voiced textured with a fraying edge. “Don’t come to me now.” She had large eyes the colour of early spring moss shaded by an old forest, the light of them soft and misty and the shadows seeming to sink down a long, long way. -Perhaps she wasn’t even real, but a figment of his sleep-deprived imagination fabricated to torment him with ‘what-if’s. What if he had chosen Cullen over all else..? What if he had never let that first seedling of curiosity grow when he’d first seen Fearghas crying out against him? What if he hadn’t tried to be greedy and secure his gentle brother’s trust even as he luxuriated in Cullen’s patient indulgence?

What if he had never slinked after Fearghas in a wounded huff to demand to know why he’d refused him- what if he had simply closed his eyes and accepted all the undeserved gifts his beloved master lavished him with without question or doubt?

-Suddenly the clouded silver filly’s face was that of Ivanna, and he flinched and jerked away from her, slithering swiftly onto dry land with a sluicing rain of water from his soaked and twitching flesh.

“-Don’t come to me now,” he half-begged again in a hissing undertone, quavering, and defensively avoiding those guileless green eyes with his own black stare, shaded shamefully beneath his pale lashes.