Common

Their reaction was a mess of opposites- first unbridled glee, then shock, then a welling of tears that alarmed him, smothered half-successfully at first, but the passion seemed to overtake their small body. Was it relief? Despair? Disbelief? Brow furrowed with a worry that still looked gruff on the meanness of his face, he mumbled, “Hey…” again in a raspy undertone, and took an uncertain half-step toward them- before a voice interrupted him, and it certainly wasn’t the little deer’s. A big, round, chesty voice with a lightness that sounded young, and without bothering to parse the words Heartbreak was shouldering his beaten body between it and the weeping horse, rolling his dark eye to it with a threatening twitch of his harsh mouth. To his surprise, he felt the brush of warm hide against his tensing body- the little horse was tucking themself behind him, closer than he’d have expected, and they were on his bad side so he couldn’t see them, but he briefly angled his chin down toward where he could feel them, a wordless commiseration.

The… Intruder? Was some tall, heavy thing, and Heartbreak wasn’t small, but they put his size to shame with ease. They looked like hot blood misting the air on a foggy morning, and the thought didn’t soften his initial reaction to them. “I don't mean to interrupt but... what is human?” they had said. Had he been alone, he’d have sneered- no, even if Anathema had been there. But it wasn’t Anathema shivering and wet-eyed at his elbow now. He straightened a little, not budging his dark stare from that hazy, diluted-blood-pink face. Their expression was all picture-perfect concern and softness laid like plush velvet over the vast expanse of their gentle young face, and he didn’t necessarily believe they were lying, but it rubbed up his spine the wrong way and made him bristle all too visibly all the same. He had never been good at hiding his feelings.

“You answer first, kid. What’s a tyrant?” he asked, forcibly choking the snarl in his voice down to a jagged low growl. If they didn’t know the concept of cruelty for the sake of cruelty, he wasn’t about to waste his breath trying to dig up cheap words to explain hurts they had no way to comprehend.

Especially not in front of his little fawn ‘friend’, their breath still sniffling hotly against his quivering ribs.