CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

[dondarrion]

prompt eight | R U I N dressing-room style. closed to rog.

 

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[breeding]

[ He could break her — technically speaking — just as easily as she could break him. Of the two siblings, he's the stronger one, but they both know that even if it came down to the wire, he'd rather die than see a hair on her head harmed. It's why he doesn't try raising a hand in self defense when she slaps him, it's why he doesn't hit back, and why he doesn't protest. He's still not kind, not even outside of the Aviary, but love had taken roost in his heart from the moment he'd laid eyes upon his sister. (Each time out of the chamber — I know you, I've known you a long time, haven't I?)

Gently, he settles one hand against her waist, leaning just so into her touch even as the pain blossoms across his cheek. ]

Today going to be the day, sissy? [ he hums, pressing a kiss to her cheek. ] You break me down and stuff me back in a cage?

[ She won't, of course. (Can't. And Saul knows, despite any pretenses, that it gets to her.) He's her one blind spot. The one mission she's failed to accomplish. Though it's not as obvious, the opposite holds true, too. (When he whispers come away with me into her hair in the dull morning light though he knows she'll never agree, when he holds her hand a second too long before they part, when he looks at her whenever she asks him to come back, as if to say I live for you and I would die for you but please, don't ask me for this.)

For Saul (he never refers to his old title anymore), love has never been a realization so much as it has been a constant. A single surety in a sea of doubt, a single clear memory that ought to have been wiped away. ]

[pedigree]

[ Sometimes she wishes he would break her, would ruin her forever and leave her chest gaping. When he'd left the Aviary — still Sapsucker then — it had left a hairline crack in the foundation of Ruth's life. Not enough to kill, but profound enough to feel: a flaw that ran far deeper than simply cosmetic housekeeping, one that let the ivy grow on through into the basement of her otherwise empty soul and let the mortar of her bloodless veins be chewed to dust by a thousand little tendrils of pale green and ash white.

(The first time he'd come to see her, she shrieked at him: I should kill you! Those are my orders, you stupid little boy. The last time he'd come to see her, she cried: Kill me, kill me. Be a man, Sally, and kill me. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Afterwards, she'd held him, or maybe let him hold her, arms twisted tight around them and the sheets holding them together with a dozen different knots. It wasn't until after he was gone, two months back, that Ruth finally understood.

That pain in her chest, that creeping ache like a bruise that won't heal or that phantom tickle like a limb hacked without reason. Those were merely symptoms of a greater disease — a diseased he'd infected her with.

That word again: love.)

If only he would reach out and snap her neck instead of hold her. That is a pain that Ruth is trained to deal with. That is something she knows how to endure. ]

Don't call me that. [ Her voice is a whipcrack, but she doesn't pull away, doesn't turn her cheek. Frigid is a word easily used to describe Ruth, but when it comes to Saul she runs blisteringly hot — never cold, never lukewarm — always an uncharacteristically extreme.

Her hands tremble, flexing slowly at her sides. She wants to hurt him; she wants to set her claws deep and never let got. ] You have no right.

[breeding]

[ The words are as good as another slap, and Saul doesn't try to push his case, drawing her no further into his embrace (though his thumb traces an idle line back and forth along her waist) and pulling no further away. ]

Didn't mean t' stay away so long, [ he says, once the sting has lessened. ] Ran into a bit 'f trouble on the road. [ (There's a new scar to prove it, though he doesn't say so.) ]

Sorry.

[ It's an apology for a large number of things. One, for having kept away for two months. Two, for refusing to come back properly. Three, for having hurt her. Four, for being able to hurt her in the first place. The last time he'd come to see her, he had nearly gone mad with something like grief (please don't say that, Ruthie, please), both of their wretched states wound down by exhaustion and the familiarity of each other's arms, revealing the shape of that single, damning word.

He loves her. Of that, there is no question. All she has to do is speak a cold (hot) word and it cuts him straight down to the quick. (Kill me, she'd said, and he'd suffered a thousand deaths in the space of a single instant.) ]

Would've come back sooner 'f I could.

[pedigree]

[ Somewhere on her brother's body there's a new scar for his troubles and, even though he does not say as much, Ruth understands Saul well enough — what he's capable of, how he operates, what he's thinking — to know that it's there. Part of her wants to search for it, wants to lay her hands upon his body and strip him of all of his clothes, looking to revisit all the parts of him that she's already committed to memory a dozen dozen times before. It's an opportunity to notice and learn and rewrite the memory all the things that have changed during a prolonged absence. There is no way to make up for the time that has been so roughly taken from them — no way at all, and even if there were, it would not undo that initial blow of abandonment (a wound still fresh upon Ruth's heart that has no means to heal).

Her hands are shaking both out of anger and uncertainty when she finally reaches for him, a hand gripped around each forearm. Ruth steadies her breath, a slow inhale-exhale throughout her nose, but the facade is already flawed, emotion coloring ever action and reaction. ]

Did they hurt you? [ She already knows the answer, but the words come regardless. Tell me. Show me. Let Sissy kiss it better. Let me pretend like I can still protect you. ]

[breeding]

[ There is nothing that he wouldn't do to keep her safe. He's told her as much before, when trying to convince her into running away with him, but there's no effort that isn't met with that cry of come back, come back. (It's my turn to take care of you, Ruthie. We can be whoever we like, out there. Go wherever we please, do whatever we want. Nobody to tell us what to do, nobody to try to make us forget. Just you and me. There isn't a soul who could stop us.)

Nothing, it seems, save returning to the Aviary.

But each time she asks, he comes closer to saying yes. It wrecks him, to see her like this, if only because he knows she hates being like this, too. ]

'S just a scratch, [ he says, nuzzling gently at her hair. ('A scratch' here meaning a wound drawn down from one shoulder and across his collarbone. Had he been careless or had they sent someone better than the last time?) ] Can't get Sally that easy, eh?