Seasonedfury - Tumblr Posts

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     Like so many nights before, she stands at the edge of the tower’s hangar. Looking out over the vast expanse of the Last City, ears ringing with the white noise of the tower and its people settling in for the evening, the sights, and more notably the smells, are still no less alien to her. She has been here for two years. Every day that ticks by is longer than the last, and every week shaves another mile from the time it takes for Petra’s mind to travel home. 

     A corsair, made emissary - A sword, meant to cut across the stars, dulled down on a grindstone into a butter knife, kicking and screaming all the while. Petra still feels like a sword. But she is still so, so far away from where she is meant to be. And for what?

     She watches them every day, throwing themselves from the tower into oblivion. She watches their ghosts drag them back into life molecule by molecule, and she loathes the faint scent of smoke, or ozone, or the sudden disparity of any scent in particular that surrounds them each time they return. How was she to know? How could she have? Her hands curl into fists around the railing at the sound of footsteps approaching, and she sucks in a deep breath, glancing over her shoulder to regard the newcomer with her lone eye.

     “Come to gloat? Or to chastise? I thought you had all gotten that out of your systems during the hearings.” She knows she speaks out of turn, but it has been too long a night, and Queen Mara is so very far away. So be it, if her sentence here is lengthened - She is already in her own personal hell, and how personal it is.

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She had noticed how the woman often came to the same spot, having kept an eye on Petra since the moment she had begun to live among them. For the most part, it was a silent watch, given from a distance with the eagle eye of Ikora or her most trusted – but today, that distance was broken as she approached the woman who stood on the edge of the hangar.

An eyebrow raised as she heard the words that came from the other woman’s mouth, though she wouldn’t say she was surprised by the snappy tongue either. And at first, the Vanguard doesn’t reply, simply coming to stand next to the reefborn woman, gazing forward, hands folded behind her back in a way she was known to do. Her eyes passively scan the city, noting all the lights that shone through windows. Down there, it never fully slept.

“It’s good to know that the city hasn’t taken your edge away from you.” She muses after a few long seconds, finally turning to give Petra the smallest side gaze. Ikora doesn’t reprimand her for her words, though she easily could. Lucky for the awoken it was much harder to break into Ikora’s anger than it had been many years ago.

And then, her eyes return to looking towards the city. Her home and the place she was sworn to protect, now more than ever. It was strange to think that Petra looked upon the same view with such obvious disdain.

“What is it that you seek to gain from standing here evening after evening?”

     “It would take more than a sentence here to break my spirit,” Petra mutters with a hint of venom, although the fact Ikora had yet to outright scold or admonish her seems to soften her tone just a bit. It’s been a long day. She has a longer night still ahead - It will be a welcome and pleasant change to have someone to keep her company for an hour or two, even if that someone isn’t exactly the young awoken’s preference. Ikora’s question would make her bristle, delivered in any other tone. But the warlock sounds genuinely inquisitive.

     Petra bites her tongue behind pursed lips in deliberation before she replies. Why should she give this lightbearer an answer? Surely she had given them all enough during those humiliating hearings. And yet, still... She glances to Ikora for a moment as she answers, achingly honest for just a moment, though her voice is still guarded, as though she measures every word. “It has the best view of the sky. I can see saturn, from this place, and I like to be close to my ship.” She trails off, taking a deep breath in through her nose and glancing to Ikora once more, the kind of leveled consideration that a wild animal might afford the one who has caged it. “Nothing to gain, Vanguard. A reminder of what is lost to me.”