ORIGIN

damask perched high over the room's crystalline geography, a caroller pinned untouched beneath her taloned foot. the doorway cast her half in shadow: only her eyes and the sharp, broken white of her head and chest cut a silhouette, ghostly around black striation and a mask of gloom. thunderheads rolled in that gaze, deep and dark behind cold irises of shifting quicksilver. she could see his pulse, the telltale webs of vein and artery, the features and measurements she knew so precisely. high time he came. the coward.

he had lied to her. called her his darling, lavished her in love, listened and encouraged and made like he believed in her; but all that time, with every breath he drew, he had kept this unsaid. her own genesis. had he thought she couldn't handle the truth? that it would break her? that she didn't have the brains to figure it out herself? you didn't, though, and the thought brought a twitching tug to damask's lips, pulling them apart to reveal the slightest sliver of teeth. a slip of a talkative grandmother's tongue. that was all it'd been: not the product of his trust or her deduction — an accident. and after it'd come out, he'd been so gutless as to flee the scene without so much as one word about it? to leave her here for days? was that what he called fatherhood? was that so much better than eythan, who had met her only once?

you absolute child. she jerked her head to the side, stricken. you're not angry, not righteous, you're nothing but hurt. holing up here? not eating, not sleeping? keeping up this magic like you've really got the energy? as if you didn't all but tell him to get gone, take off yourself as soon as you could. as if you wouldn't've hidden too if you saw him any sooner. as if you weren't at fault. for letting it happen. for not seeing it first. for making him feel that you're too weak to know.

her claws tightened around her kill, beads of blood welling around them; but she stood up straight, tail sweeping the floor and wings folded tight to her sides. waiting.

she almost didn't want him to go to her. the gust of sheer foreboding, discomfort, anxiety, fury that came over her at the sight of him (all these contradictory emotions, the paradox so messy) felt enough to bowl her over. auré landed a fair ways off, making no effort to close the distance — the first of many gestures of care and sobriety. he was ... hurting. knowing him, damask had guessed that he would be, but seeing it hit her harder than any conjecture could: the way he shuffled, tiptoed, cast to and fro, hesitated to speak. she held her fire, a slight puff in her chest — not of pride, but of breath taken and kept.

"i'm sorry, damask."

it took no analysis whatsoever to diagnose his sincerity. and my name, he never ... he doesn't do that. darling would have irritated her, but damask, that showed real gravity. a kind of respect he seldom gave, respect for her as more than his daughter. she exhaled, fighting the temptation to soften —

"what happened — it wasn't meant to be hidden from you."

— and promptly defeating it.

damask's chin jerked sharply downward, crosshairs unwavering, eyes like storms beneath low brows. there it is. that treatment of her like something small and passive, something things happened to. something. his something.

this spell was new, but she'd been practicing. with an audible in-and-out of her nose, the fledgling shaped the wind into a shield before her — a wall, a point, a warning. auré's face wavered, slightly foggy through the filter of the barrier. hers would do the same.

"and yet, here we are. because it was." her voice was already ice-cold, bone-dry, and crystal-clear; but here, a real bite came in, canine teeth flashing through the dark. "why, auré?"

auré acknowledged her correction, and that was more than nothing, but not by much — not enough to stop the gunshot that came next. it palpably hit home.

loaded silence thickened the air. it took him a moment to muster a response, and even then, his explanation was riddled with false starts and dithering delays. damask stood motionless, save for the thump of her pulse and the grind of mental gears — parsing and discarding every word with impatient efficiency. that story? doesn't make sense. she had a father who was kind, devoted, and trustworthy — correct? what difference did it make if eythan called himself another or an uncle, so long as her needs were met? and if this was on eythan, why wasn't he the one discussing it with her? why had he chosen to be a father in the first place? why did none of this hang together? because it's an excuse. he's still hiding something. auré.

(or you're looking for evidence that isn't there. not testing a hypothesis, but proving a foregone conclusion. that's fallacy.)

let me breathe.

with a forcible toss of her head and one small rumbling note in her throat, damask abandoned her kill and pushed through the windshield as it evaporated. that wasn't exactly intentional, and neither was the stiffness in her legs; too much sleepless pacing and too many uneaten meals had hollowed them out. didn't matter, though. just as long as she didn't stumble.

"i made the mistake," he said, and that should've mollified her, even just a little — but it didn't. it made it worse. the chasm between them narrowed to eight feet, enough to make a statement without pushing her own boundaries.

"you're certain that's all of it?" (step.) "i'm not." (step.) "but i do have theories."

"that's it." damask lifted her chin, eyes narrowing from auré to the empty space he indicated and back. an attempt at one of his light shows, she inferred: he'd used this spell before, and it matched the occasion. almost karmic how this illusion was failing, too. "i mean to show you ... he was hesitant to share his magic, give life until we reached that — but ..." he's still hiding. dancing around it. blaming it on circumstance. "that doesn't explain why i thought that it ... would change anything. i don't know why i thought it would — whether or not he was your father or uncle or anyone else as your life-giver."

there it was, the crux of it all — and he couldn't even pin it down. his wings were rustling, his stammer worsening, the whole of him struggling; his confusion, evidently genuine.

"allow me to give it a try," damask said, the chill of the offer at odds with itself. got to make him understand. her contention came slowly at first, not exactly hesitant, but deliberate; then gathered momentum, pressed to its inevitable conclusion. "i think" — okay, deep breath — "you knew what i'd seen and thought the lie would protect me. that i wasn't strong enough to withstand the truth, or" — i've got this, i am strong enough, i am keeping it together — "smart enough to find it for myself."

that was not safe. she'd said too much. gotten so caught up in the attack as to tire of it and leave herself vulnerable. if she didn't get back on the offensive, he'd seize on her mistake and rip it apart.

swallowing, damask raised her sights back to their mark and fingered the trigger. how long were you planning to wait? did you think you could keep it a secret forever? she came close to asking — but she already knew the answer to that. with certainty.

"you were never going to tell me."

auré's invocation told her exactly what would come next. of course he wouldn't let her mistake go unpunished. she'd been a fool to hope that he would. the fledgling flattened her ears in self-rebuke and lowered her stance to the slightest crouch. bracing herself for the counterattack.

"you are strong — so strong, dar — ... i know you could've taken it from the start, but ..."

stop it. stop coddling me. damask took a step back and snatched her head back and forth, her vehemence a mirror of his. that quickness, that intensity (is honesty.) was denial. hunting, magic, those were different kinds of strength. he'd misunderstood. (but he is trying.) not good enough. she almost objected then and there, except: "... but i wasn't going to tell you on my own." she flinched. "i love you, damask — so much. too much, maybe." again.

"i ... i didn't mean to, but i ... didn't ... i didn't want you to choose eythan over me."

(he's not the one in denial, kid.)

damask was slipping. her muzzle twitched up and down, a near-giveaway of — something, a snarl or a scream or a sob, she didn't know. she wanted all and none of the above, wrestling, losing, shuddering with effort so thoroughly it hurt. just a second. all i need is a second to think it through. (and you're about thirty-three too late.) a little help, then. a sharp intake of breath hissed through grinding teeth, striking at jasper: the windshield again, to hide her face, just so she could collect herself — but (he deserves better from you) a barrier was not what she was given.

instead, a veritable deluge of empathic emotion: sorrow, exhaustion, withdrawal, but above all, crushing regret and fierce, fierce love — immoderate with inexperience, raw and tender and yes an awful horrible mess but for all its similarities it wasn't her mess and even as she reeled and gasped it wasn't her pain tight in her throat.

and the part of damask that was still damask sighed inside at that release. the intoxication of artificiality. a change came over her, visibly. all the fight gone up in smoke.

"i would never," like dusty feathers on her tongue, and these ones hitched: "i'm so sorry."

she staggered and stopped. his uncertainty hers. his heartache, a shrinking chain between them.