Common

They- the big one, the one who was now glaring at Heartbreak like they weren’t quite sure what else to do but be angry (Heartbreak could relate)- took a long moment before they responded to him, as if, despite their youth and size, they were making themself weigh their reply. At his shoulder, his little fawn friend had gone silent. He couldn’t feel their breath on his elbow anymore. He wasn’t sure why that made him twitchy, but it did, rolling his weight tensely as he waited on the big one. At last, they spoke, and for all the care they’d taken to consider it, their tone was snappish and abrupt, and he cracked out a laugh that sounded more like a pipe scraping concrete than any sound of pleasure.

“Kid,” he said, and it was a little less a form of address than a statement, his black-smeared mouth crooked in what wasn’t quite a smile but lacked the aggression of a sneer. “You don’t need all the answers. I could talk your ear off about it-” now it was a sneer, though not at the big child- “but you wouldn’t get it any more than if I said nothin’.” Eyeing the vaporous misty red of them carefully one more time, he shifted to glance for the fawn, twitching when he saw they were now several feet from his side. Tightening his jaw, he refocused on the big kid, edging a step away from them even as they turned on their big hooves in a huff (turned their back to him like it was nothing, like- he shook himself and kept his mouth shut, though their trusting exit made his throat strain to say something).

“I will take my leave and see if anyone else can help,” they huffed pointedly, and again he was hit with the strange urge to laugh, though he didn’t find it particularly funny that they lacked the sense to keep their eye on him as they retreated. The disparity made him a little light-headed, and again he glanced for the fawn, half expecting them to be even farther from him, but they were still there- looking up at him now, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that look. Awkwardly, he shifted his broken body under the weight of that strangely expectant stare, and he angled his blind eye back to them so he could ignore their expression.

“You ain’t gonna get nothin’ good from questions like that,” he barked after the tall kid’s back, the snowy white of it interspersed with faded coins of copper, not quite sure why he was bothering. He wanted to blame the holes the fawn’s stare was boring in him. “Sometimes it’s better not to understand, alright?” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d made it a question, either, as if expecting the big thing to acknowledge him. As if.

Unable to put it off any longer, he huffed out a breath and turned stiffly back to the fawn, keeping the misty-blood figure at the corner of his good eye even still. “Satisfied?” he grunted gruffly, though his gravelly voice was quiet again now, almost sheepish, and he avoided their big eyes stubbornly.