aviary | CLOSED | prompt eight

[ There's no blame in Claret's voice and there never is. Not when it comes to him. She shrugs, awkwardly, one of her shoulders lifting and then falling again as she picks at something underneath one nail. ]

Sometimes people can't help it— y'know? Doesn't mean it's their fault.

[ For now, he has mixed feelings on the matter. He isn't ashamed of what he's done (though he will be, in time, and oh how that guilt will rend at him), and as such he isn't scrambling to cover for his actions. But on the same token, sometimes, when he looks at her, he wishes he'd been born better. ]

If you've done something, then you've done it, [ he says, the phrase far from eloquent but clear enough. ] You can't shift that blame.

Yeah, but— [ Claret knows she's arguing on weak ground, at best. Were her sins to be counted, there would be only one and it's an act she'd done freely, a part of herself she'd given by choice. Unlike her older brother, she will not live long enough to regret her sins or rethink her crimes. ] You can't really control how other people deal with. They— they make their own decisions, too, y'know?

I guess. [ There's reluctance to the concession, but it's the fact that he concedes at all that proves significant. With a near childish kind of annoyance: ] Let's talk about something else, Cee. Anything else. Or not talk. Anything. [ It's an obtuse sort of way of getting out of the discussion, but he doesn't much have the stomach for it at the moment. (He never will, but that's neither here nor there considering how much — or little, relatively speaking — they have left to experience.) ]

[ It's a little more straightfoward than simply changing the topic himself, even though it lacks just as much elegance. For all that Claret looks up to Titian, relying on him for both physical protection and the kind of possessiveness that comes part and parcel with the Duke name, there is still something overwhelmingly adolescent about him. (She blames Vermillion and father, she blames Cerise. Only that feeling of anger and resentment lasts only a moment, maybe two, before passing through her completely, leaving her to quiet resignation again.)

I wish you'd just talk to me. I wish you'd let me help. But that's wishful thinking and not in the cards. Claret knows that, she does, but sometimes she still hopes. ]

Fine, [ she says, a little disappointed, a little deflated. ] Just— whatever you'd like. [ She scoots forward a little, to the very edge of the couch — her version of being forward. (They don't have to talk at all, if he doesn't want. And Vermillion won't be back for another few hours.) ]

[ For once, it doesn't seem to be matters of the flesh that occupy his mind (though his gaze still lingers on the bow of her mouth just a moment too long). Instead of aiming for her lips, her neck, her breast, he lays his head in her lap, gazing up into her features as he makes himself comfortable. ]

I d'no, [ he offers, following a long moment of silence, reaching up for a lock of her hair. ] Everyone wants something different, don't they? For themselves, for others.

[ She offers her body to him — not the first time, not the last — but her brother doesn't take it, doesn't even seem to stop and linger over the possibility. It should probably sting of something like rejection, but for Claret it speaks volumes (speaks to the nature of their love) that he choses a simpler intimacy instead. His hand in her lap, her hands in his hair — a comfort that no one, not even coveted Vermillion, could ever hope to provide him. A warm feeling fills the cage of her ribs and colors Claret smile as she looks down at him, that coveted lock of her hair slipping from her shoulder as if reaching for his hand in turn.

Claret shrugs. ]

I guess there are some universals in the mix. Y'know — stuff everybody wants. Or, close to everybody. Some folks— they just wanna watch the world burn. I dunno. But mot people— I think most people just don't wanna be alone.

—is that dumb?

[ Titian's brow wrinkles, and for an instant, he seems adolescent in a way that he never got to be as a child. (There hadn't been any room for it. The first son of the Duke family, he'd been expected to mature more quickly than was necessarily fair, expected to embody the rising generation. The saddest part of that, perhaps, is the fact that he doesn't realize that he missed out on anything at all.) ]

It's not dumb.

[ (Not I don't think it's dumb, never I think because he is a Duke and the Duke word is law.) ]

I don't want t' be alone, either.

[ Titian might not think that he's been cheated of much of anything but Claret is nothing if not hyper-aware of that fact. Where nothing short of perfection (of leadership, of vicious strength and dominance) is expected from the eldest child, near to nothing at all is expected from the last. As a result, she's been spared both carnage and cruelty, but in exchange for a kind of invisibility — having little worth or agency where Titian and Vermilion have perhaps too much.

Claret often wonders, though to no real answer, whether Cerise would have been held to a similar standard, had she survived. Cerise, who so many say was so much like Claret. Would she have been left to bloom into kindness and obscurity, or would she have been carved to fit the throne that Vermillion now looked to inherit.

Dipping down, her hair hung around Titian's face she kisses him once on the forehead, once on the nose and then lingeringly upon the lips. ]

You'll never be alone. Not if I have any say in it. Okay?

[ He smiles once (happy, unsuspecting of the bloody road laid out before them) before mouthing the word back to her. ]

Okay.

[ So long as Claret lives, no, he will not be alone. But as soon as her life is taken, extinguished like a candle flame in the gloom of the inevitable night, Titian Duke will be more alone than he has ever been in his entire life. Left with nothing but blood on his hands, he will follow her into death not too long afterward, torn apart by those who would see the Duke name hold weight no more.

(Perhaps things might have turned out differently had Claret lived. But that, too, is a question without an answer, and one that has no place with the ticking clock.) ]

So long as we have each other. Right?

CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

CLARET | pound of flesh

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