[ P ] Just Pretend

Khepri Tiamat
I can wait for you at the bottom
I can stay away if you want me to
I can wait for years if I gotta
Heaven knows I ain't getting over you

---

It would seem he was back to being at a distance with her again as she simply stared at him while he moved about. She didn't immediately join him, but that was okay, she didn't have to if she didn't want to.

As she started to speak, he found familiarity in her story.

Ah, it always started with the mother, didn't it? Khepri found it amusing that they had had similar paths in the beginning and he could have ended up right there beside her if he had only been a 'true' Tiamat. Things could have been very different for him if he'd grown up in the Army like he should have. But he'd made a choice and he'd moved on... and there was definitely no turning back now.

"I see... that makes sense." he said. He could have tried to do the same, make his mother proud, but would he have? Could he have? He didn't know and now he never would. That was the sad part about her dying, they would never rekindle what had been lost between them. It was just... like this, forever now. "Did you?" he asked, looking up at her curiously. "Make her proud?"

---

ACTION • SPEECH

SIF ASGAUT

The question that followed made her pause, turning her attention away from the lake to look at him with a quizzical expression until he followed up with the second one. She’d shake her head slowly before looking back over to the waters. Thinking for a moment before letting out a stressed chuckle. “You can always ask her but she won’t likely respond. She never does,” morbid humor he probably wasn’t aware just this moment was so dark as she tilted her head to point at the lake, directing him to speak to it. She observed him for a moment, not saying a word but knowing he’d likely be confused until she explained, making her not waste much time to clarify. “I’ll never know what the opinions of any of my kin are on my decisions until I rest with them. This lake has been their grave since I was only a few moons old,” she explained after a moment, a pained but accepting note held upon her tongue.

It wasn’t like it was a secret her family had been wiped from this plain. It would be hard to not notice those that served going missing, especially when one held such a high rank and another brought light to a cold barracks. Still, most didn’t know she was related to them, so attached to the Helvig name now that Asgaut was practically absent, nearly forgotten from her gilded shoulders even though it had never left. She didn’t want the name to die but to stop that from happening she’d have to be open to a relationship with someone willing to also let her pass her name on. She was hardly ready to trust someone enough to seek romance though. An arranged marriage had been an option but that scared her even more knowing how much a face could lie no matter how kind it was in the public eye.

Carefully she’d get up again so not to step on him at all, the desire to leave tangible but she would not depart from his side as she took in the cold winter air. Taking another step toward him, she’d fold next against his side, allowing the plush of his fur to cloak her as she thought of her father. “Ambitious as everything but she fell for a storyteller without much of a claim to his name, so I’d like to believe she’d be content,” she finally said after a touch of silence, tucking herself close to him to soak back in that warmth, a little more relaxed this time than last as anxiety wasn’t so crippling. She couldn’t help but liken Khepri to her father from time to time, both such oddities that always had an ear pointed her way even when she didn't ask for it.

-fade-

Am I Beautiful As I Tear You To Pieces

table by rae - image by Lunicea

Khepri Tiamat
I can wait for you at the bottom
I can stay away if you want me to
I can wait for years if I gotta
Heaven knows I ain't getting over you

---

Khepri looked at her, confused for a moment before she explained that her family was all gone. This very lake was their grave and for a moment he tried to think of what that might be like. It sounded lonely, but so was his own existence and he had plenty of family to name... even among them he felt lonely. He'd not say that, of course, but it still ran across his mind all the same. "I'm sorry," he offered. It would seem they'd both suffered great loss but in different ways.

"Hopefully she is," he said in response to her later comment. He'd like to think Sif's mother would be proud of her for following in her paw steps. That was all his own mother had wanted and he hadn't been able to give that to her. Maybe he should have tried harder... but the Army, it just wasn't for him. He had tried to be a medic and that hadn't been for him either.

As she lay beside him, he leaned against her for warmth as the chill in the night air grew.

He enjoyed times like this, where he could just lay and bask in the company of another. It reminded him of times that hadn't been so bad. Times he greatly missed. He fell silent, unsure of what else to ask. It seemed each topic he chose led to more heartache and he did not want to upset his tentative companion on such a beautiful night.

[ exit khepri via fade ]

---

ACTION • SPEECH