That silhouette, that stance, child-small but not child-vulnerable--not physically-- Illarion's horror is instant and deep. Half's at himself and the blood on his talons; half's at this first and fatal evidence his mind is gone, for he'd witnessed Kaworu's death and the hallucinations so often wore the newly dead to torment him with guilt.
And yet. And yet, he is Argonaut's creature through and through, for there's a dim and struggling hope beneath the horror that moves him to ask,
"Little bird?"
He struggles--visibly, he struggles--against that horror, unclenching his bloodied talons, and reach out toward that familiar-and-not presence. It feels Throneborn; it feels like Kaworu. It could be a demon, and he could have just doomed himself by reaching.
Yet how could he not, after all these weeks? How could he not?
no subject
That silhouette, that stance, child-small but not child-vulnerable--not physically-- Illarion's horror is instant and deep. Half's at himself and the blood on his talons; half's at this first and fatal evidence his mind is gone, for he'd witnessed Kaworu's death and the hallucinations so often wore the newly dead to torment him with guilt.
And yet. And yet, he is Argonaut's creature through and through, for there's a dim and struggling hope beneath the horror that moves him to ask,
"Little bird?"
He struggles--visibly, he struggles--against that horror, unclenching his bloodied talons, and reach out toward that familiar-and-not presence. It feels Throneborn; it feels like Kaworu. It could be a demon, and he could have just doomed himself by reaching.
Yet how could he not, after all these weeks? How could he not?