If there's anyone Paul can trust not to lose their head at ghosts, he wants it to be Gideon. She has been past the threshold herself and come back, and so what could be left to trouble her from the other side?
Rationalization is a stark and sterile word for lying to yourself, bleached bone-white and bloodless. He wants, he needs, he cannot tell her to go, he cannot ask her to stay, he doesn't know what to do to keep her safe, he can't stand not to be able to look through the maelstrom and see bright red hair and dead-treasure eyes behind a sword.
She screams and it snaps his heart to his spine, snaps his body into new motion faster than treacherous thought. His turning away whips into a spin on the sand as graceful as flight.
The dead man is still not so fast, but the point would be moot anyway. He takes in Kiriona's fury and her fist rocketing towards his face, and his expression shifts from surprise to uncertainty to abrupt accepting calm. He tilts his head and takes it on the jaw, swords fanning back behind him like swept back wings.
"Hey," he says, after a half-careful, half-stumbling step back, rocked by the force of her blow, the word a soft prelude to a sentence he doesn't have the chance to get around to.
Paul's tackle is as wild as his guttural snarl, but with the dead man already off-balance it still does the trick. He knocks them both down into the surf and rears up over him like a viper, knife raised and dripping, his body shaking in a twitching paroxysm of fury.
"Don't you dare," he hisses, bleak and vicious, "Don't you fucking dare."
The dead man looks up at him, gently. His hands and whatever they might still be holding stay under the water. He blinks salt spray out of eyes that are already full of it. He keeps his mouth closed.
Paul, who makes a wet, rending, ugly sound, something ripped up from a place no noises should come from, doesn't.
no subject
Rationalization is a stark and sterile word for lying to yourself, bleached bone-white and bloodless. He wants, he needs, he cannot tell her to go, he cannot ask her to stay, he doesn't know what to do to keep her safe, he can't stand not to be able to look through the maelstrom and see bright red hair and dead-treasure eyes behind a sword.
She screams and it snaps his heart to his spine, snaps his body into new motion faster than treacherous thought. His turning away whips into a spin on the sand as graceful as flight.
The dead man is still not so fast, but the point would be moot anyway. He takes in Kiriona's fury and her fist rocketing towards his face, and his expression shifts from surprise to uncertainty to abrupt accepting calm. He tilts his head and takes it on the jaw, swords fanning back behind him like swept back wings.
"Hey," he says, after a half-careful, half-stumbling step back, rocked by the force of her blow, the word a soft prelude to a sentence he doesn't have the chance to get around to.
Paul's tackle is as wild as his guttural snarl, but with the dead man already off-balance it still does the trick. He knocks them both down into the surf and rears up over him like a viper, knife raised and dripping, his body shaking in a twitching paroxysm of fury.
"Don't you dare," he hisses, bleak and vicious, "Don't you fucking dare."
The dead man looks up at him, gently. His hands and whatever they might still be holding stay under the water. He blinks salt spray out of eyes that are already full of it. He keeps his mouth closed.
Paul, who makes a wet, rending, ugly sound, something ripped up from a place no noises should come from, doesn't.