We Put the Grr in Guerrilla Warfare

[Aver Brand]

Gaze fixed on her lover, Aver bent down to pick up the quiet blade. No Force at her fingertips – not until this thing was safely locked away. Even if it hurt, even if the Ternion burned her arms at the separation, sharp points of pain piercing her flesh with every breath. Even if she wanted to scream at seeing him bent and broken, at the images it called from a previous life.

Even if— enough.

Her chest rose and fell with rapid gulps for air, blue eyes wide open. Joy and surprise and anger all wrought into a singular pressure against her ribs, pushing up – pushing out. Maybe it was laughter in her throat, not a cry?

A drop of hot liquid rolled down her cheek – Aver wiped it violently away. Licking her lips, she called the old, familiar language to her mind, sharp syllables of Vong rolling off the tongue. From nooks and crannies, Ygdris crawled, claws clicking against the solid ferrocrete floor. Up her legs, her torso, over her arm. She opened her palm, let them take the cursed hilt from her grip.

But she watched him. Slowly, she released her iron hold on her presence. A hiss escaped between her teeth as she returned, spreading end-to-end through her own limbs, and then through his. (And hers, far away.)

In a beat she was kneeling next to him, glass cracking beneath armor and muscle. Shedding her gauntlets, peeling off her gloves, Aver grasped him by the jaw. Her thumbs traced the hard line of his cheekbones, the soft curve of his lips. She held his crimson stare and felt words well up but her throat was tight and her chest ached so.

She took his mouth, with lips and teeth, copper and salt on her tongue.

You’re not. You’re not because you’re not one. You’re we.

Two, always, woven together by scars and blood and hunger. Three, when she wasn’t wandering through the spaces between ancient stars. Four, when he stood with them, at once vast and singular in the eye of the storm. And soon, five, perhaps, though she had not yet met her with her own fingers and eyes.

I am, and I are all we.​

[member="Loray Tares"]​

 

[Loray Tares]

He looked on, absent the mania that had comforted him for so long, as she trudged forward. There was a clash there, one that could be anticipated, the likes of which was so rare. A clash that resulted from brutal honesty. Honesty in what he was, in who he was, and in how much she cared. He had lost grasp of that, caught in the slipstream of his anger and brutality. While still there, lurking beneath the surface, the mental relinquish of the saber had drained away much of the intensity of scarlet that colored his cheeks and gaze.

He nearly buckled beneath the embrace. The way she grabbed him, the way she clutched at his body, the way she forced the kiss – it felt like home. A return to center, a return to the passion that drew them together, he could happily forget the saber in the wake of this confrontation. But he couldn’t forgot the hole that was there in the absence. The way cancer might be cut free, he now spiritually tongued at the chasm that was left in the void. Despite whatever lack of control he had before, the centuries of destruction that were nested within metal, it gave him comfort when everything else felt like isolation.

Metal, copper and blood, teeth biting and lips pressed so hard against one another – he once more forgot where he ended and she began. As her bare hands pressed against him, tugging at the lines that needed pulling, the gauntlet of his left hand fell away. Once stuck within the sultry fog of hysteria, he felt the cool breeze of her eyes and the warmth that could be found in her embrace.

Hands crawled up her armor as one settled with a grip across the waist. The other found her throat, felt the hard pulse coursing across flesh. He wouldn’t pull away from their shared breath, heated and necessary, but his actions spoke words of his sudden clarity. And of words that no other being had ever heard from him. Not in such explicit meaning.

I’m sorry. For everything.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

They were a singular being in three disparate bodies, intricate and different, yet connected at a visceral level. Any perceived distance – of time, flesh, devotion – was at once insurmountable and insignificant. Three would never be one so long as they drew breath, but it was in fleeting moments like these that even barriers of bone and muscle could not keep them apart.

Ygdris sank into his ocean, and held his bottomless sea in the palm of her hand. The undisturbed leagues of an ancient forest drank from his depths, roots buried deep in their earth, canopy reaching high for their skies.

Immediacy gave way to the rare, gentle touch. She pulled him in, close to the steady beat of her heart. Felt him falter, his quiet admission rippling across the still surface of the water. Smiling against his lips as she cradled his head, she poured what she knew of warmth into the wound a thousand souls had left behind.

Lifetimes ago, Ygdris had known with utter confidence that the words would never leave her mouth. Part nature, part decision – whether she was absent the capacity or didn’t know where it lay beneath the glacier didn’t matter in the end.

Time had shown her better, shattered her pride and left her picking up the pieces. She found humility in a dream she never lived, stripped naked of armor underneath a burning mark of blood. A woman that owed her nothing taught her everything.

But now that she had to speak them – burning her throat – the words came easy. Right and true as any blade she’d ever held.

“I love you.”

[member="Loray Tares"]​

 

[Loray Tares]

What...what was that feeling?

The ache that was so stubbornly present, amidst the noise and clamor of a saber, was suddenly gone. Energy poured out from Aver, an age old connection that was far from rare. Yet, it felt different.

Pain wasn't the focus. Lust wasn't the focus. Comfort, warmth, attachment. Foreign and alien notions for those seeking pleasure from others suffering, arms wrapped around one another as the blood of hundreds and thousands dripped from their suits. The floor would have been slick with it and he would have known a moments peace from the expedition into the abyss of his own soul, into the void left by the weapon.

He heard the words but he didn't hear them. He felt them. He tasted them as they left her lips. This wasn't the thing he expected. It would have been easier if this would have paralleled the nights in the clubs, fingers coiling around the spirits of the dead, only to return to one another amidst the high of destruction. That felt easier.

Love was hard. For as long as he knew Vrag, he could never admit to knowing what love was. Not because he didn't love her, but because he didn't know the meaning. With Gabe gone, he assumed such notions would have left with him. But attachment, obsession, fierce passions, they clasped to him harder than they ever had with his twin present. Unstable from the transition, he clung to Aver now to keep himself together.

Not in the eons that they would spend together, would he have ever believed such things would spill from her lips. Yet there they were, words defiant of their status quo. Purposeful and married to a specific intent, a need that he felt well up in desire for acknowledgment and reciprocation. He would have died for her, years ago, and what they had become was something so much more potent.

"I..." His hand moved up her armor. He would find a way to break her out of it, even if it destroyed the suit in the process. "...have always...loved you." His words came through hard kisses pressed against her, the tug of her lip between his, and the gentle press of teeth against her jaw. With a hard grip on her armor, he pulled and turned, dragging her to the floor beneath him.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI3wS8-6xVY​

Exhausted for words, Aver let him guide them to the floor. Shards of glass and splintered wood creaked beneath the weight of muscle and armor as they pressed down, hands seeking purchase against clamps that held the plates together. One by one the phrik clattered to the ground.

The merc turned them around, not to assert dominance, but simply to get better access. The underlays went next, heralded by the satisfying hiss of the zipper as she pulled it down. She tracked her way lower, over the flexing muscles of his neck, crossing the clavicle, biting down on the flesh of his chest. His Kiffar tattoos rippled over scars over flesh over bone as he coiled beneath her touch – Aver pulled him up and flush against her.

With a graceless stagger, they were both standing again, light a few layers of protection.

Hooking a finger into his suit, Aver slowly dragged him to the kitchen, across the shattered pieces of the bed and table. Even in the absence of any light, her smile was evident by the glint of her teeth. She drew him close, let him press her into the counter on equal footing.

Her lips moved against the column of his throat, vibrating with soft-spoken words. “Come inside.”

 

[Loray Tares]

She pulled him to the kitchen, far from begrudgingly, by the loops of what remained of his suit. Flesh and scars and ink underneath calloused fingers, exploration that seemed as new as it was formative and standard. Teeth and nails, pressed against taut skin, not for the pain but for the nipping and nuzzling. As her lips ascended to his throat, he pressed her against the counter of the kitchen.

Drawing her mouth upward with the pressure of a sharpened black nail against the base of her jaw, he retracted from her lips ever so teasingly. Wrapping his hands against her hips, he lifted and set her on the countertop. Working over the material of her body suit, he slowly pulled the center zipper down to expose what lied within.

Hands move up and in, grasping the material by the back of his hands, as he de-gloved her. But only partially, enough to rid her torso of the material but not enough to free her hands. Instead, he leaned forward, pressing the material down against the countertop, restricting her hands behind her. With a crimson view that fixed on her soothing expression, he lifted one hand from behind her and pressed it against her chest. Palm moving just above the heart, across the slight luster of her skin.

His view fell, watching as her artery thumped against her throat, or how her chest rose with every breath. Pressing teeth against her collar bone and bathing her in shallow warm breath, he was more than willing to acquiesce to her demands.

“Where would you have me?”

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Getting a hinged door – albeit the sort you could install in a bank safe without a shred of embarrassment – had been one of their better apartment investments.

Because she could karking slam it.

Aver stopped the second she stepped inside, basking in the reverberation of ferrocrete. It helped with the tension in her muscles; with the cord wound tight in her gut; with the ache in her spine.

At this point, she couldn’t tell if it was her or [member="Reverance"] that was pissed. At this point, it didn’t even karking matter anymore.

Slowly, measured, like she was handling a nuclear warhead, Aver released her whitened fists.

Expelled a breath.

Opened her eyes.

With a grunt she began taking off her armor, piling the plates on the kitchen table before she yanked a bottle of Strong Corellian from the shelf and poured herself a topped-off tumbler.

Because kark this.

She downed it in just a few gulps, wiped the burn off her lips, and poured herself a new one.

This time, she crossed her arms and stared down into the amber liquid, mulling over the words as the scalding in her throat moved down into her belly.

“We need to talk.”

 

[Reverance]

The crimson of his sight glistened in the darkness between kitchen and window looking out into Nadir. The one she had broken, after he had pressed her against it, after she spoke of the meaning of others and how it related to him. It was a place of passion, and anger, and everything that stood in between. And with crossed arms, he watched quietly as she seethed with the things that fed him.

And fed her in turn.

Plate by plate, her physical form unraveled, not unlike the way her mind felt beneath glaciers that failed to hide effect.

Until there was nothing but her and her bodyglove, a tumbler filled with amber fluid and clinking ice.

"We do."

He spoke through hardened gaze, coming to life with the steps he took behind her. The vague world of her absence was coming into view, held at length against the murky shade of a fog he couldn't seem to penetrate. Or perhaps he didn't want to. Perhaps he wanted to hear what she had to say, perhaps he wanted the concerns spilling from her lips instead of her mind.

Nearing the island, he reached into the cupboard and pulled out his own tumbler. And filled it. With a cross of his arms, he sipped, tilting his head. As if he might have heard a noise he recognized. "What is it?"

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

She picked at her pointed teeth with a whiskey-soaked tongue, rolling the liquid around the glass.

Thinking.

“You know I went to talk to him.” A tight furrow formed in her brow as she raised the drink to her lips again, only wetting them. The burn helped with the ice in her gut.

“He was… okay.” A soft puff of breath. She raised distant blue eyes to meet his crimson gaze. “He was okay, Rev.”

“Normal. Says he’s a local cop or whatever, but… don’t matter. His head’s screwed on alright. Runs a this small alchemy shop in dustbowl of nowhere and…”

The frown deepened. “... he’s happy, Rev.”

It wasn’t that bothering her – his happiness. Wasn’t why she was pissed, either.

Aver tapped her fingers against the tumbler. Might’ve been glass. Might’ve been a hammer.

“And I don’t mind that.”

There it was, come out like an over-chewed piece of gamey meat. Her eyes were wandering again – the floor, the window… the bed. Hm. New. The anger slowly faded now that it was in the open, hanging between them like a bridge they’d either cross or burn.

Most times, Aver could tell where her lover was leaning but here?

She was karking clueless.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

He remained expressionless, watching quietly as she spoke. Reading facial cues, reading the way the words pressed out from her lips, the way she felt.

When it was all said and done, he let the silence of the room overtake them. Her anger may have faded but his, it only grew like a steady breeze. Nothing to be concerned to about, at first. But for the tribal and archaic, looking up to a sky that could breath mercy or pain, it was impossible to know whether those darkening clouds stood as passing shower or biblical storm.

He took another breath, clinking the ice about as he drank from the tumbler. A deep drink.

He had known that she visited Gabe, he could feel it on her. Smell him, even. No matter how much he wished for Selvaris to be the ending sever between twins, it never was. It was only with recent events that it became clear, that he couldn't truly escape the man. Not as is.

Gabe doesn't deserve to be happy, he deserves to suffer. He deserves the agonizing death that he wrought upon a helpless brother when he was born perfect and his brother wasn't. When he cried out as a baby, tears of pain and joy, as his own flesh and blood was removed from what should have been desired embrace. Gabe had never wanted him, not even when the soul returned in those moments of darkness where minds entwined.

Reverance had thought he killed the man with oppression, bottling up his mind to nothing more than a whisper. If it wasn't for that karking day on that karking planet, his own need to destroy something beautiful through choice of their own, than Gabe's light wouldn't have found rekindling. It was a mistake that needed correction.

"Normal..." He uttered through clenched teeth. "Happy." He shook his head. "Everything I am not. Everything that I stand against." Crimson eye moved towards the woman, sensing something else but unsure of what it was. "Where? Where is this dustbowl?"

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver smacked her lips.

“No.”

Corded muscles shifted under silver skin as she unfolded her arms, placing the tumbler into the sink with pointed care. Maybe she expected the storm on the horizon to break open, curl the darkened seas into uproar.

He was already boiling, surface simmering with barely contained… what? Anger? Envy? Hatred?

She could feel it leaking through despite the taut line of her jaw, cracks spreading through the dam like lightning from the clouded skies. Barriers were not her realm – she could only ever break them down, not build them up.

Pushing off the counter, Aver stepped around the table and brushed a cold palm against his warm, stubbled cheek.

“You aren’t because you don’t want that, Rev,” she murmured, pausing for a moment against his side. “You kicked him out because you wanted different things and now you have them.”

“Let him be.”

Her hand fell away, and Aver moved towards the bathroom. The rest of her armor hit the floor, and soon bare feet were padding over cool tiles.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Her hand might have fallen away, if it weren't for his reaching up and curling around the arm. He listened to her words, watched once more as she spoke, and shifted as she approached. His empty tumbler sat somewhere on the counter top.

[SIZE=11pt]“You would deny me this?” He spoke in tones that thoroughly mixed anger and incredulity. He wasn't sure if he was mad or if he was awash with disbelief. “I kicked him out because I wanted him dead. Tell me…” Teeth were bared in the same anger that she bore into the apartment. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Did I prevent you from obtaining your vengeance when it was plainly in sight? All those years ago?” His expression hardened to steel, jaw clenched and brow furrowed. “And now that it's so close, you would snatch it out from under me?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]If she hadn't pulled free by now, he would release her arm, freeing her to do as she pleased. “What makes you think I will let [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]anything [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]go? Even if you don't tell me, I [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]will[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] find him.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]He steamed as he turned, gripping the tumbler hard enough to feel it crack beneath his curled fist. This wasn't the soul Saber, this was [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]him.[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] And this was [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]her[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt], exerting control over a situation that was his to own. What was it, were these the changes and feelings she spoke of? Were these the things that he couldn't bring out in her. If so, maybe he was glad for the inability. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Swallowing anger by the gallons, he poured whiskey into the tumbler and moved towards the replaced pane of glass, looking out into Nadir. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt][member="Aver Brand"][/SIZE]

 

[Aver Brand]

From deep within her wells of patience, Aver drew, let him hold his wrist until he didn’t. Desert-matted red hair fell against her face, brow furrowed.

Sometimes she wished the reaction came easier, like it used to – but there was no instinct to snap her jaws back at him, to bare pointed teeth and tear him apart with words if she wouldn’t with claws. Aver merely held his gaze, and then his retreating back.

“I can’t stop you,” she spoke at length. Fingers reached up to peel the underlay off her body. Sweat – from Sulon, from their exchange, from the ride back home. “But it’s not the same.”

“Selenov wasn’t my blood – he was a piece of human shet who liked to brand little girls with his name after he was done with them. And if they fought back he’d do it again and again and again until they broke. He made me hate my skin, Rev, and it took me two decades of lives and people to get that back.”

Countless names stood between Ygdris and Vrag, some discarded like empty magazines, others year-long affairs woven of lies and deception.

“Was it Gabriel who chose to… kill you? When you were born?” Her footsteps retreated across the warm floor, then across cool tile.

“Or was it your father?”

She would give him space he clearly wanted.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

He watched as her reflection moved. She looked like Aver, down to the golden flesh revealed beneath the body glove and the way sweat always found particular ravines. Hair of fire, eyes of ice. Everything was Aver, except for the words spoken.

They were monsters, admitted to one another and the world around them. Countless innocents had died, an entire population of a planet wiped away for conquest. Empires fell beneath their feet, thousands burned. From Kashyyyk to Contruum, they could never reverse the things that they had done.

So, why was a small time alchemist, cop, pawn of the alliance, any different?

He shook his head, taking in those deep breaths, as he sipped from the whiskey. The reflection that looked back was the person he knew himself to be. A lover, a villain, a hateful man.

"In your justification, do you intend to belittle the vengeance I seek by suggestion that yours had it coming while mine doesn't? What of the women and men you've killed, since? What of their families, the people who depended on them? Were they as deserving as Selenov - or are you making excuses for wanting his life?" He huffed, finding a spot between exhaling air and chuckling. "We have killed without reason except to the service and joy it brings us. We are monsters. I need no justification for wanting Gabriel dead. No reason beyond the fact that I want it."

He turned, crimson eye flaring in the dark space between tile and hardwood.

"Why do you care about his life? What has changed?"

Twenty years spent in a body she hated. Twenty years spent in a body he hated. Until they both decided to do something about it. She sought vengeance, he did too. The only difference is that he was attached to the thing he wanted to be rid of. In a way, he was sure that his hatred for Gabriel was what gave birth to the joy he found in pain. His own, Gabriel's, it was all the same.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Laughter threatened to bubble up with her breath, but she caged it. Not now, not with his anger tipped precariously on the breaking point. Not while they could still speak.

Quietly, she leaned against the doorframe. The cold seeped upwards, mitigating the scorching heat dripping like molten iron from her lover. Scalding her spine, setting her nerves alive with fire. It wasn’t difficult to resist because of its sweeping, overbearing presence – it was because Aver craved that ire.

But in this moment, it would serve nothing.

“No,” she returned again. “Monster is what they call us because they have no other name for what we are. But we do – we’re [member="Reverance"] and Ygdris.” Aver gazed at him from the other end of the room.

“We’ve killed thousands to get what we wanted. That’s true and I don’t give a shet. I don’t regret it.” A breath. “But I’ve always wanted power.”

“And killing him? That gets me kark all. For you… I don’t know. What do you get?”

Her steps pattered over tile – she didn’t bother closing the door. There was the smooth slide of the shower, and moments later, the sweet release of cool water down her skin. Aver closed her eyes, resting her forehead against the wall.

 

[Reverance]

​"Perhaps you are right, we are different than monsters." He admitted, moving towards the bathroom as the shower started. "Better, worse, something around there."

​Watching her through the glass, form fogged by the heat and steam, he furrowed an ever deepening brow. He didn't know what he could truly get from the death of his brother. In all his wisdom, or lack of it, he was simply a beast that was chasing a prize. Never expecting to catch it, just content to threaten with the snarl and fast pace of his run.

​But now that it was in grasp, he could think of nothing else.

​The ice clinked as it thawed in the rolling heat as he leaned against the door frame.

​"I couldn't have given two shets about Selenov - except that it was important to you. His crimes didn't matter to me, except that they were done to you. We've both known and affiliated with worse." He winced as he fully considered the question, about how he could get anything out of the death of another. Gabe wasn't the one to abort him, but he prospered and cared not for the death of his twin. Perhaps he was never told about it but he knew - with every bone in his body, Gabriel knew the void and scar. Reverance felt such truth it as he swelled and grew in the darkness.

​Half a soul doesn't simply forget the other half, even when they are severed at birth.

​"What do I get out of it... " He looked lazily towards the mirror, not reflecting him but instead the mirrored form of the woman he loved.

​Release.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Grime washed down her silver skin, swirling about her feet before disappearing down the drain. Aver breathed, and let his cooling anger pass through her like the streaks of water beating down from above. Her flesh tingled, white scars rising across her back as she drew long fingers up to rinse her hair.

A tattooed arm emerged from the lazy fog, and blue eyes smiled above it.

“You think this doesn’t matter to me?” She raised a brow as she stepped out. Face to face now – closer than they’d stood all night. “I went down there and talked to him because this is important to you. And if it’s important to you, Rev, it’s important to me.”

She raised a palm to follow the pattern of his deep-green kiffar markings. Twenty years? She could draw them in her sleep.

“I had nothing to say to Selenov, but you? You two got some shet to talk about.” She traced her fingers up, grasping his jaw. A thumb reached over, sliding over his full bottom lip. Her eyes followed, and then her breath, hot in the chill of the evening as she whispered against his mouth.

“We both know killing ain’t the only way to find release, Rev.”

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Expression softened, if only mildly, as she approached. He was angry but even that, it seemed to recede with every footstep. She was livid when she entered the apartment and now, anything but. Had things affected her so much on this dustbowl of a world, that could stir frustration in such a way?

As she gripped his jaw, gripped his lips, and teased them with her own, he teased her all the same - gently caressing the v of her abdomen with the cold glass of his whiskey, ice present but ever thawing in the steam of the bathroom.

"Was it hard to see my face like that?" He returned, not yet ready to give up the conversation. There was no way in hell that the two would be conversing, no matter what force motivated them. Her standing before him like this, her pleading with him. If she wanted Gabe alive, mixing oil and water wasn't the way for it.

"He cared for you, I could always feel it...a heart that fluttered at slightest revelation of tenderness." He admitted, quietly, as he brushed his nosed against hers. Crimson eye flickering shut, he took in the taste of her breath. "And he hated himself for it. You may have brought that memory to the forefront of his peaceful existence..."

He smiled as he thought about the feeling of such upheaval, of Gabriel being forced to question things that he may have left for dead on the burning fields of Selvaris. Such suffering, it was a sweet flavor that he recalled fondly. Perhaps Gabriel didn't need to die, perhaps he simply needed to suffer. He had earned that.

"Whether he dies in my presence or a thousand planets away in the tranquility of his little alchemy shop...it will be by my hand." A timer started, decades ago. He wondered how far along it was, how many ticks were left before the world would unravel. Old age was something staved off by the dark side and in its absence, compounded by active attempts to dictate the lifespan of a clone, Gabriel was on borrowed time.

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Eyelids fluttered – breath caught. The point of contact was at once ice-cold and white-hot, and Aver dragged air back in between sharp teeth to focus again. Two could play this game.

“Yes,” she admitted. There was no shame there, in the drawn furrow of her brow, in the downtick of her eyes. Blue gaze fell closed as they stood, sharing the same breath, the same space – but never touching. Not yet.

“You had twenty years to figure it out,” she chuckled, soft against his cheek. “I had… what, a month? Of course it was karking hard.” Her fingers lingered at the corner of his lip, then traipsed downwards, over the smooth stubble of his beard, along the corded muscles of his neck.

Aver said nothing for a time, letting their presence flow and intermingle. It was a respite from holding her cards so close to her chest, from obfuscating every word. Before this brother, she didn’t hide.

“You weren’t two, for me, back then. You were one, and I… cared. For both.” She rested her head on his shoulder – mirror to how he would seek respite in the nook of her neck.

So many strange new things, so many strange new people.

And as ever, they had to adapt or perish.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

[SIZE=11pt]Twenty years to try and forget, to move on, to hope that Gabriel would simply cease to exist. Twenty years to live with the one opportunity he missed to reduce the man to nothing, finally removed from the body they shared.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]In his anger, he had never considered how this would impact Aver. She was never told of the two that formed the one, never told that the care she felt was derived from the feelings of not just Reverance. Was that the reason she attempted to stay his hand? Would he be willing to give up his vengeance…for [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]her[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]? [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Without her, he would be well on his way to this dustbowel to end Gabriel, after destroying everything he loved.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]His gaze moved slowly over her glistening figure, from head to toe, taking in the form that he never seemed to get tired of. If she was trying to divert his attention from the anger he held for his brother, she was so far successful. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Running his free hand along the back of her neck, fingers strafed through long locks of red hair. “Of course you cared for us both.” He confirmed, absent the expected anger that would come with such confession. He took in the fresh scent of her hair, closing his eye. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Does your affection for him linger? Is that the reason you want me to [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]let him go[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]?” It wasn't a question that was steeped in anger. He was simply curious at this point. Of course, he couldn't turn back time. He couldn't reverse the decisions he made when high with the expectations of reprisal. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt][member="Aver Brand"][/SIZE]