RP:Crimson Regret

Summary: Fate still sees fit to bring Cresente and Khitt(i) together. The barriers between the avian and Khitt slowly seem to drop as they both continue to meet, while within Khitti struggles with jealousy, stemming from Khitt's strange fascination with Cresente.

Breathtaking Cliff, Cenril

Cresente has long lost count of the time that has passed since he stopped at this place. Though a layer of frost proves how cold the open space is here, the avian man that stands at the edge of the cliff shows no sign of being cold. The gentle lull that alcohol provided earlier and the relief of his rolled cigarettes have since given way to something more painful, but not unfamiliar. Dressed in the plain clothes of a civilian and a dark shawl around his shoulders that serves as a hood to hide his face when needed, Cresente simply looks out at the clear sky. "If you've come to push me off, you shouldn't announce yourself by walking on the grass." He calls out to someone, or no one in particular. But he already knows who is there.

Khitt || “You seem very obsessed with the idea that I’m so bloodthirsty I’d attack you just for knocking me out once. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting revenge, but… I’m not going to try to hurt you,” Khitt said, bottle of whiskey in hand as he very slowly closed the gap between the two of them, though still staying a few feet behind him. He said ‘try’ of course, because he had a feeling that if he stated that fact without that single word, Cresente might scoff at the very notion that a human might actually succeed in doing so. Oh yes, he’d long since picked up on the low-key racism the avian had towards his kind. It may not be blatant and perhaps more ingrained, but the two people known collectively as Khitt(i) were the perceptive sort. He took a long swig of alcohol from the fresh bottle he’d taken from the Obsidian Refectory, and collapsed somewhat in the spot where he’d been standing, drawing his long legs up to sit cross-legged like a child. “You seem somewhat displeased with my existence as a whole. But, that’s your own fault because you’re in my city and it’s not my fault we constantly cross paths.” Okay, Cenril wasn’t “his city, but still. Khitti herself had been a fixture of the place for so long that it just felt like it was his as well. He quieted himself after another drink and just stared out at the long stretch of emptiness behind the cliff they were on. After a moment, crimson brows started to furrow and his lips twisted into a frown.

Cresente exhales roughly through his nose at Khitt's first greeting, and again at the implication that Khitt is more displeasing than most. "Your curiosity towards me is... unusual." His brows furrow as he looks back at the redhead as he takes a seat. "To stay in a neighboring city during the tournament would be rather inefficient to gather intelligence on other contenders, or find work. I can put up with you until then." Cresente crosses the distance to the seated Khitt, and squats before him, his wings reflexively reach out, blocking out the moonlight so that Cresente's expression is obscured. "Are you perhaps under the impression that my presence can numb something that you have lost, Boxer?"

Khitt just stared off in the same direction he had been, even after Cresente kneeled in front of him and obscured his vision. He couldn’t quite force himself to look at the avian, as the other spoke, that frown turning from something with some semblance of sadness to one with more spite or with disdain. The redhead sneered at Cresente when he’d finished speaking, finally peering at the avian from over his pince-nez glasses. “I don’t want anything from you. Neither you nor anyone else can “numb what I have lost”. The gaping chasm in my mind and heart is untraversable and irreparable.” He averted his gaze again, and took another swig, waving a hand dismissively at the avian. “Get out of the way. You’re blocking the moons.” Khitt uncrossed his legs and drew them both up under his chin, wrapping an arm around them both, while the other kept a hold of the whiskey.

Cresente does not reply to Khitt's admonishment, but does rise to his feet and take a few steps off to the side, turning so Khitt cannot see his face. A match sparks, and another cigarette is raised to Cresente's mouth. After a plume of smoke is returned to the icy night, and a considerable moment of silence, the avian turns his head to observe the witch. "The one thing you newer creatures have that I will not, is your short lifespan. It frustrates me." He admits. In the light of the twin moons, shadows are cast over the fine wrinkles of his face, making his mop of rarely maintained ebon hair cast tendrils along his irisless eyes as the winds displace strands. "It allows you to grieve deeper than our kind, in ways that I can only replicate a fraction of." He looks as though he were going to add to that statement, but thinks otherwise of it and turns away. "Does what you have lost still look at the same moons that you do?"

Khitt || Tears had begun to line Khitt’s eyes as the anger really began to set in. The anger wasn’t really for Cresente, however, even if the guy was now starting to get on his nerves after all the accusations. So what if Khitti was right and he did find him attractive? Even if his curiosity got the better of him at times of late, he would never act on those feelings. There was no point. It would go nowhere, and even if it did, it would end in pain. It always ended in pain and suffering. Khitt sniffled a little, the alcohol shaking things loose in his mind, as Cresente went on. “Yes,” the witch said at length, rubbing the tears from his eyes. “They left us. Even after fate saw fit to put us four together. To pull me and her from another timeline entirely and throw us into this one. I don’t… I don’t even know what I did wrong.” What he and Khitti were going through was literally a fate worse than death. “I don’t belong here and now I belong here even less.”

Cresente || Even if there were words of comfort to offer the witch in his trying time, Cresente did not have the words nor the emotional depth regained well enough to convey those words properly. Another drag of smoke. "I wonder if that would make you luckier or unluckier than me." He muses under his breath. "If you also have no place in this world, then do you intend to keep living?" There is no sarcasm in his voice when he asks this... just genuine curiosity.

Khitt set the bottle on the ground and wrapped his other arm around his legs, his gaze focused on the ground just in front of his boots. “I’m trying, but…” He sighed. “The only thing of late that gives me a semblance of “living” is boxing and even then… I still see her. Part of me wishes they were dead, if only because it would be easier. I would never have to worry about seeing her again. But… I can’t really wish for that. I can’t do that to our kids.” Khitt put his face in his hands and took a few deep breaths, letting them out slowly, as he tried to sober up somewhat and calm down. After a few moments, he let out another heavy sigh. “You said before you apparently are curious about me too. Why?” He was changing the subject, blatantly. It didn’t do well for him to linger on the thoughts of his failed marriage and that promise of death that he secretly hoped would take him sooner rather than later, though it would never be by his own hand.

Cresente takes a drag of his cigarette that's a touch too long, and forces him to clear his throat. "Because... you're someone that I could be fighting against in the tournament sooner rather than later." It was not a lie, but it was not the entire truth; Cresente had not observed the other contenders nearly as closely. "I have seen your boxing first-hand, but your magic of the shadows is something unfamiliar to me." He gazes up at the red moon in the sky, and how Vaalane's light paints the crescent of the red moon in a way that makes its shadow a deep wine red. Just like Khitt's hair. Just like-- "I do not enjoy speaking with others often. It makes me reminisce on things that are unnecessary to what needs to be done now." He puts out his cigarette and runs a hand through his hair. The middle-aged mercenary was not prepared to have to give a pep talk tonight. "Though you might get something out of speaking to others, even if you are not like them. You do what must be done because there are still those who depend on you." Perhaps it was the lighting, and the way Cresente looked away and down at the jagged abyss, but he almost looked... embarrassed.

Khitt just shrugged. “I’d keep to myself if I could, to be honest. But neither my vanity nor my guilds or various jobs will allow for it. Or these world-ending idiots. There’s always something I have to deal with. Someone to delegate to. Someone that needs to be brought down a peg or two.” A sigh. “We just want to be alone. Or Khitti does, rather… and maybe that’s spilling into my side of things now. So much so we’re making a new headquarters for the Necromancer’s Guild all the way out in the wilderness in Frostmaw, heh. All alone with nothing but the snow, silence, and ghosts to keep us company.” There’s another sigh and a shake of his head. “But, you’ve just said you don’t really fancy speaking with others and here I am rambling.” The witch snatched up his bottle of whiskey and took another long drink of it, then stood up and brushed off his suit. “I’ll do you a favor in the future, since you’ve been so “nice” and have been “putting up with me”.” There was a slight twinge of pain to his words that he couldn’t quite cover up, as if the things Cresente had said were like tiny serrated daggers that dug deeper and deeper into his mind and heart, further expanding that insatiable void that had been opened by She Who Will Not Be Named. “If I see you, I’ll leave you alone. Won’t approach. Won’t say anything. Assume during your matches that I’ll be cheering for you, even if silently.” Because I was. “We don’t even have to have a rematch. If being alone is what makes you happy, then I will respect that.”

Cresente sighs, his wings curling around his shoulders like a shawl as Khitt's bitter words ring out. "Speaking to you... is not..." His sun-worn skin turns dark around his nose and cheekbones. "...Unpleasant." The sorrows of being such a sophisticated race that he has to spell things out for this poor human! "You do not belong to this world, and in a way, I do not either. You can be alone around me while I continue my journey." The wind picks up, ruffling his jet-black feathers. "After this tournament has concluded and I have taken all the winnings I can get to fund the next step." As vague about the specifics as before, but perhaps the distance between the two loners has lessened slightly tonight. The amount of vulnerability shown here tonight has reached its limits for Cresente. He has to get away from the man with the wine-red hair. "I'm headed back to the inn, and I think you should sleep off your grief for tonight." He begins to depart, not waiting to see if Khitt will rise to his feet. "I will be cheering you on as well." It is spoken so quietly that it could almost go unheard if the wind had been blowing the other way. But once it is spoken, the mysterious avian has departed, leaving the human to his grief.

Khitt || Crimson brows furrowed in confusion as Cresente revealed the truth that Khitt could not see, even if it was only a small portion of it. Both he, and Khitti, were ever the type that needed things to be spelled out for them in the world of emotions. To assume was ever the road to a broken heart and they could bear rejection even less of late. The avian kept speaking and the proverbial cat had further gotten Khitt’s tongue, the redhead left to just stare bewildered at the other loner with his mouth agape, struggling for words, and then struggling even more to not reach out and grab Cresente’s arm, to keep him from leaving. He did, ultimately, but it was far too late and his arm dangled there in the air before drooping somewhat and falling to his side; an exercise in futility. The ‘I’ll be cheering you on as well’ had been blown along the right wind to his ears and continued to ring there even now. It felt different than the hollow screams of those fans that followed him during his matches and during SoS concerts and Khitt now hung on the avian’s every word. There was something that stirred in his chest and he was quick to quell it with more alcohol. “No. Absolutely not. Do not even think about it. Do not consider it.” He was speaking to himself, of course. And perhaps even to Khitti as well, though she had been silent throughout the entire conversation. Was there even a faint bit of jealousy there on her end? There was another utterance of ‘No’, more forceful and angry than the last, and then he finished his alcohol and tossed the bottle off the side of the cliff. Cresente was right. Sleep sounded like a good idea. He could only hope that his dreams didn’t betray him again tonight.