"Come on. It's you and me, Red."
A lull.
It isn't so much a question as it is a declaration that he wills into existence when she passes him by.
When Frey speaks the words, he leaves no room for rebuttal, no room for her to grasp at straws and scramble for excuses that might justify her sudden disappearance. Frey no longer follows the swordswoman, but walks ahead of her instead, because he can no longer trust his eyes when she had disappeared right before them.
So he walks, and trusts - knows - that she would follow. She owes him so. The wind tugs at his wet clothing, the pitter-patter of raindrops against fabric a ticking clock that speaks to him of the passage of time between each footfall. Fingers curl into fists at his sides, an unknown well of tension waiting for release, even if the reason continues to escape him.
Few days of silence he could take.
She owed him nothing. Absolutely nothing.
And still she had come back.
And still she had pretended nothing had happened. Like the one conversation to start it all hadn't been the one to set everything aflame.
And still she had stayed throughout it all. Throughout the fight. Throughout the drinking. Throughout the idle daytime conversations.
And still it all angered him so. However unreasonable it was.
He should've been happy to see she was alright.
But he wasn't, and perhaps that is what condemns him. The weave of magic crackles and raises the hair along his arms, flickering along the skin as he walks past the people who have gathered with the sole intention of besting one another, each combatant walking away with wounds greater than ones acquired in the fight against the Myconids.
He remembers wincing at the sight of a particularly mean punch delivered right into the jaw of another, laughing beside Essence's overenthusiastic demeanor, quelling the concerns of others who denounced the practiced he'd called into being. He recalls bringing a flask to his lips when Sol first stepped up to fight another, uninterested at first, then slowly unwinding into a spiral of emotion born from someplace within his chest that he hadn't the slightest idea to name.
Fingers deftly take away the decorative buttons and strings holding his cape in place, curling it into a heap of cloth carelessly tossed over one shoulder. Finally, he turns on his heels to behold the red-haired woman standing no less than fifteen paces away from him, the brightness of colours so distinguishable now made indistinguishable in the dim illumination of the camp and the pouring rain.
And he wonders for a moment if he looks like her, too.
Like a painting once so bright and colorful, but that has been washed away.
@Sol
