[color=gray][CENTER][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/3ha9yXEYY9lBZEVXD3sYzG?si=1c279fc0979d4309][img]https://i.imgur.com/r8gXLww.jpg[/img][/url][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=978184][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]The Lynx Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#978184][b]Dance Monkey #4.011:[/b][/COLOR] [I]My Heart's A Ghost Limb Reaching.[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center][INDENT][sub][color=#978184][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR]-[/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=#978184][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [color=gray][I]it's so hard to be. & dread wolf.[/I][/color][/right][/SUP] [indent][INDENT] The twilight hour is kind to her likeness, bathed in reds and eclipsing oranges with striking hues of violet that lance through the clouds above, her gaze pulled to the canvas heralded there as the figments of her past hazed in and out with the insistent ringing that came and went with her shuddering breath. Amma had loosely plaited her hair, still damp through some of the strands and donned a large black jacket hinted with muted ochre edges that signified House Gulo with a small shield and wolverine emblazoned there over her heart. She’d never even been to the Lynx building, not that it is difficult for her to locate with the structures being as close as they were, but even so she hesitated, rings twirled around her scarred fingers as she studied brick and sky and grass to better distract herself from the inevitability that someone would report that they had seen Amma Cahors looming yonder the doors as if a specter lost to the setting sun. She asks herself if she cares. It takes her maybe a minute to decide, every second spared with a sigh through her nasal and lips until the evening descends and the first herald of stars ignite the sky above, she enters House Lynx as if she owned the property with her glare locked ahead and braided hair tossed over her shoulder. Amma walks through the spacious common room without acknowledging those present before she pauses there, her head canted and that blue gaze sliding through her fanning lashes as she inquires aloud about Gil’s room. Silence rejoins her demands until someone answers in a whisper, gesturing above their heads that pulls a delicate simper from Amma’s full mouth, a blush and stutter her response before she disappears around the corner. Up a floor or two and another right until she hesitates, this time outside his dorm. Before, she had entered his hospital room without so much as an announcement, had easily slid through the doors with little reservation that now fixed her to the spot with a hand poised to knock. Amma is a creature that does not hesitate, she knows this, and yet here she raps knuckles against wood, opposite gesture clenched around the doorknob, preparing to enter on her wants should he fail to answer. He’s at the door quickly, not even pretending to distract himself from the wait after their brief call. His mind was a whirl, anxious and excited and wondering just what the hell he was thinking, with [i]that[/i] call to [i]this[/i] person, after sun-down and following such a volatile series of days. Gods, what must she think herself? What were her own expectations? What were [i]his?[/i] He opens the door. She announces herself with almost a whisper, her voice sliding through the minuscule crack as it yawns open just so, a sliver of darkness therein. [color=#978184]“Gil.”[/color] [color=#fce205]“Amma.” [/color] And he lets her in. Striding into his room is surreal and unbeknownst to her, it crosses an unspoken boundary as she steps over that threshold easily, sliding by with little to no reservation with her eyes flickering to him in a brief assessment before flitting away. His dorm is similarly furnished to her own, perhaps inverted with facing a different way with the building’s structure, however, Amma is more curious about the personal touches and nuances of his room, if anything, to distract herself. For the hour is late and the cloak of night descends, the delicacy of the shadows meant entirely for them. For whatever this was. Standing in the middle of his room, she smooths her plaited hair over her shoulder and turns about to regard him entirely, she realizes that they have not spoken since the first night they spent together, where she offered comfort in sleep and nothing more, his text that followed thereafter and the following night where she joined him and then left before he awoke. The events that followed twisted through her mind, so much that had happened in so little time. Her head slowly falls to one side, studying him through her dropped lashes before she says: [color=#978184]“I assume you’ve heard about what happened with Haven,”[/color] her breath flutters out in a sigh, edged in something she cannot place. [color=#978184]“And Lorcán.”[/color] Gil pauses a little too long before responding, standing by the window and watching the shadowed lights - half silver-moon, half lamplight-white - play dappled over Amma’s figure. Her hands, delicate and graceful, play with her hair. He held his phone up between thumb and forefinger, shaking it back and forth. [color=#fce205]“I’ve been kept informed, yeah.” [/color]He said, sure that Amma had been audience to the very same texts and frantic messages he had. He tossed the phone to his side where it bounced across his mattress. [color=#fce205]“I can’t parse everything that’s happened. Keeps happening. Seems every new corner is another strike against us.”[/color] Even in the waning twilight dark, he knew he looked tired. He could feel the bags under his eyes and the buzzing behind them. [color=#fce205]“I haven’t slept better since the Trials than when I’ve slept beside you. I didn’t…don’t want to presume. But whatever this is, it’s not just me, is it?”[/color] She could feign ignorance, she could deny and flutter her fingers one by one to dismiss the tension that, even now, coiled betwixt them, she could laugh and spell it to a passing fancy and nothing more. Her mind falls back to the words Aurora championed through her own despair, and the warmth and ease Haven and Rory found themselves in the gardens; Amma has always been wanted, she was the unexpected, the always desired. She’s never been needed though, and that in itself means something. Right? [color=#978184]“No,”[/color] she begins slowly, twisting the ends of her braid around her index finger, tugging and pulling to still the trembling in her hands. [color=#978184]“It’s… not just you.”[/color] The words are a struggle to reveal, but she manages just the same, lashes fluttering within silver-lined shadows at the admission; she feels emboldened under the fall of the night and takes a step closer. [color=#978184]“Is that why I’m here, Gil?”[/color] A sense of relief washes over him - the tension of a hanging question unraveling with the provision of an answer. A [i]good[/i] answer, no less. But it led to new territory - it was out in the open now, an agreement of something undefined but undeniably present. The weight of labels began to settle in around them. It was easy in the infirmary - silent shared slumber. Out here, it threatened to become real, and if it was real, it required tending to. Why [i]was[/i] she here? He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking up at Amma, her frame seeming to tower over him. [color=#fce205]“I…don’t know. I could ask you the same. You’re here because I asked and because you said yes. I asked because you’re the only one who can pull me out of my own head. Why did you say yes?”[/color] [color=#978184] “Maybe it’s the same.” [/color]She muses aloud, looking down at him through a curtain of wayward black strands and lashes, a glow bidden to her gaze that falls as she moves, not quite coming closer but shifting her weight away from her ankle, free from its brace. [color=#978184]“I almost didn’t answer, I still don’t know if I should have. There is so much -”[/color] Amma pauses, voice lost to a brief trill of laughter that comes away almost lost and without, unbidden but free nonetheless. [color=#978184]“So much that keeps happening. Maybe it’s just that simple; we don’t know.”[/color] [color=#978184] “Both so caught up in our heads we can’t figure out where to begin.” [/color]She delicately taps against her temple before her hand drops, the quaking of her palms and fingers caressed against the scar at her chest that steadily hums beneath her gestures. [color=#fce205]“With each other.”[/color]Gil said after a pause. [color=#fce205]“We can’t go on forever as…moonlight bedfellows, and unspoken tension. We figure this out and maybe we get our heads straight in the sunlight, too.”[/color] Amma supposed it was accurate, though she refused to utter so aloud, the utterance of ‘we’ so simplistic, it bore a weighted acknowledgment to what lingered there on the edges of moonlight. Instead, she closed the distance from where she stood and sat down next to him on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder as they had been a few nights ago. He had asked her here to drag him from the depths of his tumultuous thoughts, and hers were no less spun through with leagues of chaos and unknown emotions; things she may have felt years ago but had long since perished under the might of life undone. How the others made it look so easy, so natural, is lost upon her but her body turned into his almost naturally, angled in such a way she could almost decipher the uncertainty banked there in his steel-blue gaze. Her hands tremble, as they have off and on for hours now, but she knows this: her touch was one of reaping destruction and pain, but they had also saved others and she remembers holding his hand through the night before the rising sun had chased her away as if a dream. Here she recalls words spoken to her. To mend. Instead of sunder. Could she? And if so, where could she even begin? Inquires looping through her mind on repeat over and over again - Amma carefully reaches forward, hesitating, fingers arched and with a softness bidden over her features, she takes ahold of Gil’s hand and liken to that night, she enmeshes her fingers with his entirely and holds there; the cogs of her mind blissfully stilled. Gil doesn’t say anything; he accepts Amma’s touch, and a slight chuckle escapes him. Amma only offers a raised eyebrow, missing the humour of the moment, and Gil can only say: [color=#fce205]“I didn’t expect you to be so [/color][color=#fce205][i]warm[/i][/color][color=#fce205].” [/color] His foggy mind clears but his heart rate spikes; he breathes her in, smelling the faint clove cigarettes, and the night air still lingering in her hair, and the remnants of perfume about her neck. He leans forward, and ever-so-gently, their foreheads touch, and Gil closes his eyes, just feeling her rising breaths against his. Amma has never known peace; would not even be able to recognize the freedom of it, so dissociated from the concept that it takes her a moment to simply [i]be.[/i] Deep down, she is, as she once was: a girl, no more, no less. One that had been cast alone in the dark for too long, one that had shed away innocence to herald the creature of rage within, to protect the frailties of her heart and soul spent and broken. A flush, sudden and perplexing, immediately coils away through her lithe frame, her breath drops, and deepens, and the shimmering veil of intensity that often eclipses her suddenly spools away into nothing. Her eyes close and the trembling in her hands spells away with it on the flutter of her lashes, with their foreheads touching and their hands entwined, Amma leans into Gil, lulled by the moment, the world silent and beholden to her grace for once. She doesn’t know how she even manages to move closer, but she does and a shuddering breath falls from her lips at that moment, her touch against his tightening just a fraction that ignites a shiver up the length of her arm. They lock eyes, their breath mingling, circling around them and in and out of a shared pair of lungs. [color=#fce205]“Hey there, supernova.”[/color] [color=#978184]“Hey there, casanova.” [/color] The words are easy, no longer burdened by uncertainty, unknowing where they originate, but it all phases away into the backdrop with the weight of his eyes locked onto her- the way he looks at her stirs a heat, a fire lain dormant within as if eternally shimmering coals of yearning that immediately seize her. Amma studies the planes of his face, flickering up and side to side before descending onto his mouth leaning in close to her: [color=#fce205][i]If you know what you want, reach out and take it.[/i][/color] Words given by the man before her, words that flitted through her mind, words that spun purpose through her body as she did just that. Amma compelled herself to be selfish much like the creature she was, she closed that distance between them with a shuddering breath and caressed her lips against his own, eyes falling shut on the sensation that dipped away into nothing the moment she kissed Gil. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/indent][/color]