Killing Butterflies - Empires SMP

Nineteen - Reluctance

Scott didn't look up when Pearl came back into the room, her footsteps weighing heavily in the air. She didn't say anything. Neither did he. Just sat on the sofa, chin propped up on his palms.

She moved forwards, the wood creaking beneath her. It was… unsettling, how she commanded the room in such a way that everything felt like it was bowing towards her (She had been like that too, when they were angry and nature seemed to remember that they had died before and would claw her way back again and again, unable to rest, unable to die) and it was the simple juxtaposition of the way Pearl acted and the way Pearl was that made his skin crawl in an almost suffocating manner.

The silence continued.

His wings rustled uncomfortably, a piece of cold, cold something lodged in between the feathers. A part of him wondered how Xornoth managed with the amount of dirt (-and dried blood-) their wings had been caked in, before thinking that he'd rather not.

"So." Once upon a time, her voice would have been flooded with a deranged, angry sort of humour. Now it had nothing at all. Scott wasn't sure if it was much better.  

"So."

She walked in front of him, dress brushing the ground, her arms crossed and locked. It was at times like this that he noticed how her narrow face contorted, her eyebrows furrowed, her lips stretched thinly. The expression was something he had practically memorised, but it still took him back how different she looked now, yet how she looked exactly the same as before.

Her eyes flashed in the low light - not the raging, crimson anger she must have been feeling, but a blue grey colour. Nothing but what was there. Did she ever find the difference strange? Had she ever looked in the mirror and seen someone entirely different, see someone who edged on wicked? Or had she just left it all behind within one quick, willing heartbeat?

"Scott." His eyes flitted away from her, before being dragged back towards her with force. She looked faintly disgusted at him. "Are you going to explain… whatever that was?"

"I guess." He replied hollowly, shoulders hunching. His finger picked at the side of the sofa, running over the same piece of fabric on repeat as if an automation. They didn't have the most interesting texture, admittedly, and it became tedious incredibly quickly. But at the same time, he really didn't feel like looking elsewhere.

Her face pulled downwards, and her hand yanked in front of him to snap her fingers in front of him. He jolted and glared up at her. "Scott. Focus."

"I am focusing-"

"No you're not." Pearl interrupted him shaly, with the air of having done it multiple times before. Most likely because she had. "You're going to explain what just happened, and I am going to stand here and make you uncomfortable until you explain it." 

He pointedly looked away from her, fixing his gaze on the fireplace that sat firmly against one end of the room. He could count the amount of times he'd lit it on one hand. "You're not making me uncomfortable." 

"Scott. Explain."

He hated to say it. He hated to that he had to ask. "...which part?" He sighed, shoulders sagging. 

"Oh for the sake of the fucking moon-" She clenched her jaw. "-let's start with why Xornoth's wings are currently tied up in a position you know is medically unsafe."

"That wasn't even me." He gritted his teeth, surprising a shudder at the thought of his wings being trapped for so long. The non-existent ache burned straight through his bones. Then his mind thought about the tiny bones being squished into a permanent, grisly break, and he felt faintly sick. "That was Gem."