*Mature-ish and potentially triggering content ahead.*
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Two people bond over hate.
Over appreciation.
Over respect.
Over the darkest of past experiences.
Over loneliness.
Over understanding.
Two people who were both widows, blood-lines laced in Gondorian heritage. Blue eyes, green eyes. Cold by a wary nature and heavy-lidded by the stirs of alcoholism. Gaze locked, twinkling with challenge and intrigue. Dominance matched. Two equals with mirroring circumstances.
Parents to their daughters. Double A. Abriana, Ava. One passed and one taken.
Victims of a deadening love. The poison of envy and the lustful excuse of warming a stranger's bed. Clad mostly in black, long and dark hair. His pale skin to juxtapose the olive tones of her own. The red streaks of her fingernails across white flesh. The personal meanings of his bold tattoos. Once painful, now removed.
It could only be natural, or even inevitable, for the Raven and the Viper to bond in the closeness that they did. Whether it were his charisma or the scent of her locks. Her mother's beauty or his father's eyes. Her bitten lower lip, or the tilt of his head. Both of them stricken with suicidal tendencies. Slashed wrists or teetering on the edge of a rock-cliff. Both pained by the wrath of others or the innermost workings of their plagued minds.
Tainted souls doused in raw emotion. Dark passion. The simplest form of what could only be described as love. The stolen kisses, the traces of her fingertips over his stubbled jaw. The heat, the movement. Crimson lip stains leaving imprints.
Once an escape, turned a lover. A person to invest feelings within. To share the deepest of thoughts. To cherish, to hold. To cry on. And to laugh with.
Overcoming their addictions and vices to create a momentary family. The following babe now placed in her womb to cause worry and little preparation. The Viper's determination to become the best man he could possibly be. Happiness which was quick to subside.
The Raven's deceit after her fall, the sharpness of the step sent into her lower abdomen, the pooling blood from between her thighs now feathered outwardly across the Scholar Hall's floor, crying in agony and loss, surrounded by fallen books.
The way her brother scooped her up in his hold, hands soaking in the blood of his niece or nephew. His sister, the Raven. She was the killer of the babe once nestled safely in her womb. Now destroyed. Now dead. And left now for her to lie about, in the face of her lover, the Viper.
For she explained there was no babe to begin with, forcing her own guilt onto her lover. Selfishly cushioning the blow for herself, so that he would obliviously take the fall. Her eyes turning cold, the hammering of her fists against the broadness of his chest.
She had killed the babe, but he had taken the blame.
A farewell would follow, left with uncomfortable silences as the Raven and the Viper returned to their previous equilibrium. As though their lives were no longer shaken by an equal individual. Feelings would resonate, yet become ignored. The Viper would seek comfort in the drink and the warm touch of an unnamed woman. A sweet release from a despair too sore.
The Raven would write her thoughts, remaining particularly stoic on the matter as to not reveal a pang of weakness. In her eyes, she was a killer of a babe. A poet of dark contemplations. Left only now to her own devices. Without drink by her side, and a faux smile at the sight of her daughter coming to visit.
She could only assume that stolen glances could partake. From across a crowded room, perhaps a nod when the hurt had settled to a dull ache. Bitten lips and empty eyes, the raw emotion subsided to push forth the Raven's fault and the Viper's feelings of betrayal. A knowing, blood-shot stare after his last swig of whiskey, the ruckus of the other patrons going unnoticed as they briefly fragmented his view of her.
But the Raven wondered if the guilt would force her to look away, down into her lap or exchange her solemn demeanor for a smile over at one of her companions. Assuring whomever that would be, that she was certainly fine.
Two people separate over loss.
Over selfishness.
Over deceit.
Over the possibility that the Raven and the Viper were doomed to fail from the very beginning. But they were too tangled in love's web to become aware of the reality that they could not be fixed by each other.
Two broken people. Who now remain momentarily patched but never properly mended.
