The Incoherent Begging of Clockwork Angels

Snow shifts noisily underfoot, as she pulls herself from her nightmares, the blurry blue above shining against it.

The sun had been hung differently in the sky before now, hours marching steady, her feet hot with life's essence and fear. She can’t stop moving, she couldn’t let herself be caught.

Not by him. 

Not by that overrated striking clock. Something heedless, red and worried asks, “why would brother do this?” 

In crawling march she remembers, that poor creature doesn’t know we’re dead to this monstrous man, to his Maker, only knowing a slight failing moment, not even why all was lost.

And she is so glad to be without the parts that remember.

How could she live that one moment in seven ways? right?

She’d rather rot. Though, she really was already, if that mad ticker was to be believed.

It was really for the best wasn’t it? That she ran. She couldn’t stay for that- that. She didn’t even want to name it. She didn’t wish it on anyone to be so pathetic, so easily had.

She wanted done with it, but she knew, she knew- it wasn't over, and he wasn't going to stop.

She didn't think there was a single piece of him that didn't revel in her pain, she couldn't afford what would be made of those pieces if he were ever to be incapacitated.

Their Maker was not kind, and it didn’t seem to her that such pieces, if they were few, would be so simply disposed of. Though it was her hope that if he did fall, that he would, knowing it was loyalty that broke him.

Such a being as him deserved it. Something gleaming, scared and hallowed begs, “be merciful”

And she thinks, “why bother?” all the mercy in the world wouldn’t make her pure, it wouldn’t cut from her soul that gears turn of, “brother, why brother?” as a stranger cuts at her body. All the work to hurt her, but he wouldn’t dare muss up his Maker’s creation.

There wouldn’t be peace either way, she’d been refused anyway, and these pathetic voices wearing away in her were no help.

“Where were you, dearest?”, someone familiar on the outside asks. Who she wanted, who she feared, maybe someone she loved. All other voices stop, just like her march. 

She feels she should be alone, like this voice should just be a memory to her.

They shouldn’t care.

They should never have cared.

Have you ever run toward something that should tear you apart?

“Not with such want.” a voice deeper lies. She’s wanted them before, and there is no piece of her that could lie convincingly about it. It was a blessing, wasn’t it?

Loving anyone?

“Falah?”, they ask softly, that slipknot of a name pulls her together and she is there again in her body, in the presence of someone she loved.

Someone- someone, she’s only sure she loved in this life. She holds that certainty as she slips away herself. Her Ahmel wouldn’t bother hurting her.

Sleep has always soothed the crooked edges of her soul, whether thick and dreamless or wispy and hallucinatory, Falah had always sought solace in the safety of sleep.

Tonight, holding fast to the terror of before, she is pulled back to that time in the all-before. When she was broken, and remade.

When pieces cut away from the unclaimed of the war before time became her, and everyone she’d been forced to follow. When she was grafted with but one eye of the Master and made a thrall of the beneath, all in punishment for a war half of her fought against.

And now, that leering eye spoke, “why don’t you see his love for you?” She felt the phantom pain of its affixture to her body, under the cruel light of her Maker.

She feels her tongue cut out, and the boiling fear of war boundless and insatiable, as the world blackens. This is only one life of her’s, the one she remembers most clearly.

It should feel worse.

But she wakes anyway.

Softly on the exposed grass of the common world, the sharp crystalline ice that had been the bane of her waking escape had been cleared. All for her to rest upon.

As they watched the fire beneath the black claws of the forest’s branches. It was no mistake, Ahmel had set her down here, beside him. Guilty. 

He is not her torturer.

If only to spite his character, loyal to the Maker. 

A repentant liar, her heart thief.

“You're awake.” he looks at her, his gaze holding her down. Everything hurts, her body stolen and made new in her dozing absence, her heart from his affection. How badly she wants to run.

“Yes.” 

He tends the fire, and she feels the enormity of his presence. 

She lies always by his side, and she feels sick with his worry, as he touches her foot.

It was the one thing he hadn’t healed.

“You shouldn’t run. I know you want to run.” he stroked where Ichor had run. There are no creatures to listen for, all but the driest of trees made themselves silent for whatever he wanted to say.

He brushed her leg softly, he was feeling for injury. 

Though It felt like only comfort.

“I- I- I do,” She felt caught again, he was still so soft with her. “I want to run, you aren’t safe.”

“Have I ever been, Falah?”

“No.” she’d be lying if she argued otherwise. She loved him with all that was left of her, but that hadn’t happened in the peace before worlds. There was a reason she marched on a cold winter's night.

But then, she also fell into the arms of an enemy.

“Then why run now?” 

She looked away from him, she couldn’t even help it. It was as if the whole world had gone quiet for words they couldn’t say.

But Ahmel was still gentle with the foot he hadn’t healed.