Nyx stopped dead in her tracks and whipped to face them. “Don’t be sorry. Sorry is weak, Xia, and I don’t do weak. I refuse to be killed because you can’t keep up. So beef the fuck up or stay back and fill water barrels while I clean up your mess.”
Nyx turned back and stepped into the treeline. The path was familiar– the same he’d watched her walk when he stole her memory. They walked in silence, not even daring to look at each other. Brooks' palms stung from the force of his nails digging in, but if Xia didn’t want him to intervene, he would do his best.
For now.
Nyx had about three more crude remarks before he took care of the problem.
Try one. Her soul would be satisfying going down.Normally he disagreed with his darker half, but on this topic? They were on the same page.
They traveled in tense silence for a while before the winter cold dropped to numbing temperatures. The atmosphere rippled and a giddy flutter filled his stomach.
Chaos once flowed here in great force.
“Tell me about it, bud.”
“Did you say something?” Xia glanced over, but kept her voice low so as not to enrage the small beast stomping ahead.
“Just talking to the demons, Sunshine.”
Her smile was genuine and it felt like a bandaid on the wound their fight left behind. Maybe it was the beginning of a tenuous apology. He was ready to go back to normal.
Stop whining. It’s hard to live in here when all you do is pine after someone you’ve already got.
Rather than answering out loud, Brooks took the conversation inward.“Oh, it’s hard to live in my head? You can exit at any time.”
And leave her with you? Not a chance. You’ll be hand feeding her grapes in an iron prison.
“Oh, really? You’re the one who gets possessive at the most inconvenient of times. It’s hard for me to give her space when every step back I take, you take two forward. This is just as much your fault as mine.”
I will tear you apart from the inside.
“Good luck, buddy. Your shadow ass won’t have anywhere to live then. How are you going to restore order to the cycle of chaos if you don’t have any hands to choke someone with?”
Silence. Grumpy, brooding silence.
“You can just tell me I’m right, you know. It wouldn’t kill you. I, too, have a brain capable of problem solving.”
You’re not right. I just don’t have a good comeback.
“Exactly.”
Brooks let a moment pass between them before he went inward a second time. The relationship between him and his darker half was something he had no clue how to navigate. Before, it was as if Brooks were the one living inside Chaos. He was the part that longed for connection and beauty, while Chaoswas the great Father of Darkness. It was clear that Brooks didn’t know how to drive just as much as Chaos didn’t know how to be a passenger.
“Look,”he thought to Chaos,“I know this is hard. It’s been you and me for eternity, but maybe this is a good thing. We went to sleep because there was a piece missing, and that piece crumbled until it was a gaping chasm. I can do this, Chaos.”
I don’t like you being in control. The little beast was right. Weakness makes you hesitate, and hesitation gets you killed. Us killed.
“You know we can’t die.”
I don’t. We’ve never been this separated from the energy that makes us what we are. Of all the worlds we’ve created and watched destroyed, the chaos stays balanced. This is an unknown, and I do not like it.
“That may be the first ounce of vulnerability you’ve shown in the history of ever.”
I will slit your throat and wear the inside as a necklace.
Brooks huffed a laugh as he focused on the forward movement of his feet. Dried leaves crunched and made the birds scatter from trees. The breeze carried the musky smell of decaying flora and pine off of the evergreen trees. Brooks inhaled deeply. How long had he been stuck in that asylum and deprived of the simplicity life had to offer?
Too long.
