A Little Broken [Three Trinities Haven Church]

[Sasha]

Sasha wasn't sure how long he would be allowed to touch her. But the ice cold should help ease the nose bleed. He didn't want to offer any other suggestions but she should tip her head back too but he let her be. This was probably too much already. And sometimes the way she spoke made him grow painfully aware of how attractive she was. Sasha wanted to ask about what was in her head -- filling her to the brim and causing this pain. It wasn't natural. At least he didn't think it was. But then there were any number of natural diseases that could result in this, but even those weren't natural -- normal might be the term to use.

She asked about what he'd done, and he didn't really know. But they hadn't come after him until those thugs in track suits had attacked him. "I don't know." Sasha said pressing his thumbs into her spine hoping to relieve some of the tension he found. He wasn't sure being this close was a good idea. "The last one I guess was because I killed the first one." That was the only logical reason for the second. She'd gotten away -- or rather he'd left her alive when he fled her reach. She hadn't died like the other one, he'd burnt to a crisp in the flames.

"It all started after... " the shard pulsed and fire and earth pulsed him like a nuclear explosion. Like the event that happened decades ago in the CEZ. That's what it felt like. That's what it had sounded like -- all those old videos of explosion like that, was what Sasha imagined it all sounded like, felt like to be at the epicenter and yet not get touched. The shard had protected him, but he wouldn't tell her that. She might take it from him. "I defended myself. the warehouses around me were flattened. The four thugs nothing but a pile of ash when I opened my eyes."

[Oriena]

She felt his grip shift; the hint of pressure. Her breath caught, not in a bad way.

She could be surprisingly permissive, but most people never discovered that about Oriena. Just Nox, and even he still tiptoed around her mercurial moods – unless the horde was involved anyway. Almost nobody else took those chances with her because they had good reason to fear her reactions, though. Even Ori found herself unpredictable sometimes.

There wasn't much to read in his voice, but she was glad she couldn't see his expression. If he was afraid or simpering it only would have sparked irritation at his touch, and a very different response, but as a faceless presence from behind she had no real notion of why he thought he could take the liberty. So she let him. His hands were warming from her own body heat. She was more than aware. It made her think of how close he’d held his palms to the flames, and of how easy it would be for him to shift his hand around the front of her throat.

Clearly he didn't understand the correlation of his own power to the attacks. But she'd seen plenty of the same before: people who explained it divinely, like Claire and her Wicca, or those who clutched a talisman like Mik’s lighter. She didn’t blink at the destruction he spoke of.

“Mine was less dramatic. I grew up pretty local – plenty of things for a fourteen year old girl to defend herself from around here. I only had the fevers once though. Wasn't until years later I saw what they did to people like us, just because we exist.”

[Sasha]

Sasha wasn't much on current events. He wasn't much on anything outside his own little sphere. He didn't really care one way or the other, but he vaguely remembered a bunch of morons hunting people who could do what the Ascendancy did. What he was just now realizing that maybe the shard was only part of the thing. She'd called him a god before... They'd come after him then... he was dangerous now. They sent people to hunt him. His hands had stopped kneading her neck as he thought about things. Distractions and all...

Her story seemed similar, and he did get sick after the first time, and again after the second. Sasha collapsed to his ass into the cold wet snow behind him and his breathing quickened. He was going to get sick again. "I don't want to be sick again." It felt like dying -- literal dying. The fever, the shaking, the pain. And it was worse the second time. Sasha completely fell inward, even his usual calming methods failing to capture his mind, failing to remember how to cope, how to live. Lost in the memories...

[Oriena]

She heard the sound of him fall backwards, and ignored it. When she moved the rag her nose was still fucking dripping. She spat the blood that had pooled in her throat and scrubbed a hand over her mouth in irritation.

The murmur of Sasha’s terror touched precisely nothing in Oriena. She could hear his quickened breathing and the press of his all-consuming panic in the snow behind her. It really wasn’t her problem. You either survived Sick, or you didn’t.

Yet she didn’t leave. Instead she glared up at the sky, wondering what might be summoned if he lost control in his fear, and if she cared about the proximity of Zeke’s church to whatever supernova he might set off. She let the blood-soaked rag drop to the ground. Then she sighed and crawled over to him, half climbing on him to wrap her hand at his throat. Not hard – it wasn’t a threat, not exactly. But it was a gesture most people struggled to ignore, which was one of the reasons Ori liked it so much. And she wanted to drag his attention back from wherever those sightless dark eyes strayed. Or maybe to just burn in the cross-hairs if they imagined her a threat. “Then learn to control it, dumbass. It’s yours, Sasha. So fucking take it.”

[Sasha]

Sasha didn't notice the movement. The hand around his throat registered and his hand clutched to the fingers pressing against his windpipe. Though he could breathe perfectly fine if he relaxed he gasped as though he couldn't pull a breath to his lungs.

A voice boomed in his ears. Why was she shouting at him?

It was enough to make him realize the dire straights he was in. A panic attack. A scary woman he should pull away from, but what if she squeezed a little tighter, a little harder. His eyes came out of the fog and he met her gaze. The words she'd said rolling in his mind as he tried to fathom what they meant. "I don't know how. I don't even know what the fuck it is."

He only knew that the shard protected him. He reached into his pocket and cold smooth melted glass greeted his palm. He didn't reveal it to her but he brought it out clutched in his fist and the other hand holding to the wrist still attached to the hand that make him look at her. His eyes flicked down with a passing thought. "I don't remember your name, only what you prefer." He let go of her wrist and delved into his pocket and pulled out the small bag of the designer drug she preferred. Zeke made sure he always had some and if it was his last he always saved it. He could get more, and there were priorities, Zeke took care of his own. Not everyone fell into that category.

Sasha sat up straighter and leaned into her grip, just a little, just enough to make his breath catch in his throat on each inhale. It reminded him he was still alive. He was still here. "How do I control it? How do I take it? How can I make them pay?"

[Oriena]

She rolled her eyes as he scrambled for the bag of drugs inside his jacket, like he thought the offering might placate her. But this wasn’t temper, and nor was it impatience to get high. Sasha’s breathing was still fast, but the pierce of his eyes was black as the abyss. Maybe he thought it was a bargain he offered, but it wasn’t one she’d take.

She pushed to straddle the rest of her way on his lap, high on his hips, so that he’d have to push back to properly sit up or else throw her off entirely. Her hold shifted just enough to angle his chin slightly up and to the side. Her body pressed close. Blood-washed lips leaned to warm a whisper in his ear.

“Oriena,” she said, knowing he was unlikely to ever forget it now.

She could feel the rushing of his pulse, the way he leaned into her grip like the hollow of her hand was exactly where he belonged.

“For a woman it requires submission.” Her tone was low and sultry, intentionally provocative for the imagery it invited. Yet the way she held him right now radiated dominance as much as it did danger. Ori was the kind of hellion most could never imagine on her knees, certainly not willing, and there was both promise and challenge in the way she whispered it like a secret. “She finds the maelstrom, and she lets it take her.”

The pressure in her grip changed; she angled him back to see her face, met his eye under the tangled shadow of his hair. “But not for you. Look for it, that anger, that fire – the one you felt when you levelled those warehouses. That’s power. Feel how wild and dangerous it is; how easily it’d burn you apart if you gave into it.” Her thumbnail slipped as she spoke, running a teasingly sharp line against his skin without releasing her hold. There was a smirk on her lips, dark with dare. She knew she scared him. “And then you force it to obey your will; grab it by the throat, and you make it yours.”

[Sasha]

She crawled on top of him further than she had been before. Her hand still around his throat. The dare in her eyes as she told him her power came from submitting. Never for a day in his life could he see her submit, see Oriena submit. Her name etched on his brain as she dared him to take the power that was offered. She didn't offer it, but someone had. Or something.

The shard in his had was warm, no longer the cool slick glass he'd treasured. There was fire inside, he'd always known. He'd always been drawn to the fire. It wasn't so much as he looked for the dark light that shimmered just out of reach, but it found him. It had always been there, nagging at him. Taunting him.

Oriena dared him to captured it with a mental strangle hold. To control it. To make it his own.

Sasha gripped the melted glass shard in the palm of his hand tighter, a small trickle of blood fell as it broke the skin of his palm where it had broken when it had fallen before. The pain fueled his grasp, the memory of the second attack. The power came almost too easily as he claimed it. The fire Oriena had started roared to towering heights. Where they had been bathed partially in shadows they now were rimmed with a fiery orange hue as the fire burned hotter.

Sasha poured more power into the flame before letting it wink out. Emboldened by the power, fear held little meaning in that first moment as he reached up and grabbed the collar of Oriena's coat and pulled her towards him and seized a kiss from her liips.