For a moment the tension between them is so high and so charged it feels as if physical blows are the only thing that could possibly relieve it, and then things shift between them. They both drop their armor, as if mutually agreeing to a round of ceasefire, only to then immediately requip their weapons, prepared to go as many rounds as it takes for one of them to give in. He readies his action, she takes a second wind.
No, she says.
I did.
The information confuses him and he freezes. He has no reason to believe her when the rumor exists that Solomon was the one to end the Wolf King's life, limping home months later to tell of it. And yet he does believe her. Not only because she has no reason to lie to him (really), but also because there is a note of something so deeply emotional in those three syllables that he cannot pretend to have not heard it. Cannot pretend not to
see it either as her eyes shutter closed and she shakes in front of him as if she's enduring those memories all over again. She's not with him now, not entirely, and he has no idea what to do about it.
Rehoboam has never been good at comforting anything. You didn't exactly want to show that you cared when you were among the brothers, even to children who were or were not your own. Even when Azizi had struggled with the absence of his mother, Rehoboam had felt unable to help him. And when Osiris had sobbed about missing her mother, missing
Paradise of all places, he had been unable to do much more than ineffectually pat her on the back.
But he tries.
It might be worthless and wrong and entirely unwelcome, but his charcoal muzzle stretches toward the trembling mare seeking to press somewhere against her skin, to try and ground her here, with him, in the present. They might hate each other here, might want to equally eat each other alive as much as help one another, but she is safe here. Or, at least, as safe as anyone ever is around Rehoboam, which is to say, not safe at all.
But there are no wolves in these woods tonight. Only two tired souls trying to climb mountains of pain.
She moves so quickly he is not even certain if he makes contact at all and his weight shifts abruptly to his hindquarters, his head own lifting in alarm as she unfurls in fury, brandishing the emotions roused by the memory as if they are a weapon that he, too, should fear.
Is this what you want? She snarls and his brow furrows, but he is too busy trying to move his head out of her reach to respond; he fails, and her teeth score against his neck, drawing a small rivulet of blood that immediately disperses into the rainwater.
She doesn't stop. Titania hurls words at him as efficiently as she does her blows and he is pushed backward into the rain in an attempt to avoid or dodge her. But each hit only reminds him of where they were just a moment ago. Of the tension that had crackled between them, as alive as it had been when they had come together to create Puck in a burst of fury and passion and fire and pain and pleasure.
Eve might have taught him to never lay his hooves on a woman that he loves, but Eve is not here. And Titania is not soft. She is as hard and sharp and jagged as his own broken soul and for once he doesn't try to pretend otherwise. When she rushes toward him, he rushes back, all attempts to guard himself forgotten.
OOC: This is grossly late. I had it saved in the words I write at work and must have missed it, I'm sorry!