The reaction happens at shocking speed. Ekkehardt is on him in an instant, that furious, pulsing heat boiling the air around him; it distorts him like some unreal thing, a nightmare made manifest.
The knife is a painful line against Avery's throat. His fingers grind into the other man's shoulder as he pins him down one-handed. His eyes are bright and hot and smoking with fury.
He stays there for a long, precarious moment that feels like forever. When it comes, his voice is a hiss.
"I don't take another's life for something as petty as my own satisfaction. Nothing I can do will bring things back to the way they were. Your death would solve nothing at all."
He lifts the knife from Avery's throat, leaving behind a shallow cut that begins to well with blood now that pressure is no longer on it.
Avery doesn't move to get up, his breathing quick and shallow as he stares up at the ceiling.
He'd said he'd be fine with it, had even meant it to a certain degree. And yet once again, once he's faced with the possibility of his own death, that horrible, awful, aching fear grips at the very center of his being.
He can fully understand why Ekkehardt hates him.
Finally, Avery laughs, a small noise that grows louder and louder by the second, until his cackling practically echoes through the room. "To... To hear that from you of all people!"
He can't stop laughing.
It hurts.
He pushes himself up into a sitting position. "What if I attack you, huh? Get out a sword and go for your throat?" Another bark of a laugh. "Man, getting decapitated would suck, wouldn't it? But I'd get a GREAT prop for a soliloquy!"
"You'd find it far harder to kill me than the last time you did." In comparison to that wild laughter, Ekkehardt is much calmer, though he's far more visibly irritated now.
"Don't be such a fool." How could the man who killed him, killed his master, be this stupid and reckless and so unabashedly careless about his own life? "If you wanted to experience death so badly, you should have asked me to leave you back there where I found you."
"I don't have any control over you," he growls. Pity twists violently, sickeningly, in his chest; the creature there constricts insistently in his ribcage, the only heartbeat he now has. "Do what you like."
Always, always weakness. The hero had pierced him with a sword to kill him, and that scar, seemingly, still remains in his heart, seared into his bones.
He relents. Despite himself, despite Avery's provoking, despite everything.
(Grief is lonely, weary, making the world grey and dismal. At least when someone else is here - when he is here - the world seems to regain a little of its colour.)
"No," he says, at last, stiff and irritated and uncomfortable. "I don't want you to leave. But I'll hardly force you to stay, if you're truly unable to bear the thought of my grudge against you."
"It's not the grudge," Avery growls out in frustration, but doesn't elaborate. He gets it. He understands the grudge. He does. But that's not the only thing there and it's so maddening, trying to understand all of that and himself and everything else in a world that's flipped upside down and seems determined to make him question everything about who he's supposed to be in it.
He's not a hero though. More and more, he's certain he never has been.
He doesn't feel like thinking about this anymore.
"Hey," he says after a moment, wiping away the bleeding cut on his throat with the back of his sleeve. "You ever consider gardening?"
Edited (forgot the closing html again) 2020-08-04 05:16 (UTC)
The question catches him so off-guard that he answers completely normally.
"No. I can't say I have." A pause. "Did you want to make one? I suppose there's plenty of space for it, if you do."
He can't say he really objects to the idea. He might own this ruin, technically, but there's no end to the amount of space he's left alone to do as it pleases, with mixed results.
Avery shrugs. "Might as well. Makes it easier to have different types of food on hand, I'd think. And weeding would take care of that hunger of yours quite handily."
"Very well." He still sounds stiff, displeased, but he's not exactly angry any more. Sort of. Maybe. "It's not an objectionable idea, I suppose."
Ekkehardt sighs, pulling out another clump of weeds. They wither almost instantly in his hands; he wonders, vaguely, if it's because surging emotions have made the creature inside more active.
He wasn't this hungry before Avery came here. Then again, it's not as if hunger was much of a priority for him regardless. He'd been good at tempering it, a sort of ruthless management to prove...something. That he could still control some part of himself, even as his emotions spiralled out of his grasp.
"Just be patient," he says, and it's almost an apology. "It's not as if I'm going to throw you out, so you don't need to fret about that."
Avery leans against the shovel handle, resting his chin on top of his hands. "You could at least pretend," he almost says, but immediately realizes that he'd like that even less.
"Never been good at being patient," he admits with an almost childish pout.
"This is abundantly obvious," he retorts, the response almost immediate. He has to bite back a laugh at Avery's pout, annoyed at the fact he can even laugh about much of anything these days.
Avery amuses him. Lightens the heavy burden he was responsible for putting onto him in the first place, and he finds that cosmically unfair in some hard-to-define way.
"You've never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?"
He slips a hand free from is prison beneath his chin and tilts it from side to side. "Yes and no. Mother tried, of course, but I've always been the sort to take matters into my own hands if I needed to." He chuckles.
"What an unusual hero," he says, after a moment, and leaves it at that. After a moment, he goes back to rearranging the garden plot to his satisfaction, the tension in his body language lessening somewhat as he works. He seems to take to it well, despite not having though about it before.
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no subject
The knife is a painful line against Avery's throat. His fingers grind into the other man's shoulder as he pins him down one-handed. His eyes are bright and hot and smoking with fury.
He stays there for a long, precarious moment that feels like forever. When it comes, his voice is a hiss.
"I don't take another's life for something as petty as my own satisfaction. Nothing I can do will bring things back to the way they were. Your death would solve nothing at all."
He lifts the knife from Avery's throat, leaving behind a shallow cut that begins to well with blood now that pressure is no longer on it.
no subject
He'd said he'd be fine with it, had even meant it to a certain degree. And yet once again, once he's faced with the possibility of his own death, that horrible, awful, aching fear grips at the very center of his being.
He can fully understand why Ekkehardt hates him.
Finally, Avery laughs, a small noise that grows louder and louder by the second, until his cackling practically echoes through the room. "To... To hear that from you of all people!"
He can't stop laughing.
It hurts.
He pushes himself up into a sitting position. "What if I attack you, huh? Get out a sword and go for your throat?" Another bark of a laugh. "Man, getting decapitated would suck, wouldn't it? But I'd get a GREAT prop for a soliloquy!"
no subject
"Don't be such a fool." How could the man who killed him, killed his master, be this stupid and reckless and so unabashedly careless about his own life? "If you wanted to experience death so badly, you should have asked me to leave you back there where I found you."
no subject
"Do you want me to leave?" he asks, voice muffled. He does his best to keep it steady.
no subject
Always, always weakness. The hero had pierced him with a sword to kill him, and that scar, seemingly, still remains in his heart, seared into his bones.
He relents. Despite himself, despite Avery's provoking, despite everything.
(Grief is lonely, weary, making the world grey and dismal. At least when someone else is here - when he is here - the world seems to regain a little of its colour.)
"No," he says, at last, stiff and irritated and uncomfortable. "I don't want you to leave. But I'll hardly force you to stay, if you're truly unable to bear the thought of my grudge against you."
no subject
He's not a hero though. More and more, he's certain he never has been.
He doesn't feel like thinking about this anymore.
"Hey," he says after a moment, wiping away the bleeding cut on his throat with the back of his sleeve. "You ever consider gardening?"
no subject
"No. I can't say I have." A pause. "Did you want to make one? I suppose there's plenty of space for it, if you do."
He can't say he really objects to the idea. He might own this ruin, technically, but there's no end to the amount of space he's left alone to do as it pleases, with mixed results.
no subject
no subject
Ekkehardt sighs, pulling out another clump of weeds. They wither almost instantly in his hands; he wonders, vaguely, if it's because surging emotions have made the creature inside more active.
He wasn't this hungry before Avery came here. Then again, it's not as if hunger was much of a priority for him regardless. He'd been good at tempering it, a sort of ruthless management to prove...something. That he could still control some part of himself, even as his emotions spiralled out of his grasp.
"Just be patient," he says, and it's almost an apology. "It's not as if I'm going to throw you out, so you don't need to fret about that."
no subject
"Never been good at being patient," he admits with an almost childish pout.
no subject
Avery amuses him. Lightens the heavy burden he was responsible for putting onto him in the first place, and he finds that cosmically unfair in some hard-to-define way.
"You've never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?"
no subject
"Always worth the punishment afterwards though."
no subject