RP: Forged by Fire

Summary: Svard is by loose association a friend, having crafted Lita one of two beloved daggers in recent months. After the Blood Bowl Tournament and a subsequent bar brawl, Svard steals Lita's hard-won crown by means to lure her back to his forge, where he assists in healing her broken ankle and offers a rare glimpse into the workings of his forge and the beliefs which drive his work.

Svard arrived sudden, from the street, a night black as pitch beyond and he suitably sooted. This was the hazard of a life by forge and hammer. To say he wore it well, though, was apt. There was something dark about him. Sullied. It lived in the hard lines of his face and the wolfish glint of his eyes beneath coal-smudged cheeks. The well-kept beard presently fully of smudges. His song is that of iron on anvil. Theirs is of regrets, and guilts, and folly. Always singing, the Furies, and they trail with him as they oft did these nights. He does not mind them now. They are of use. It is company in the otherwise encompassing dark of the world after the sun's bedding. There is no mind paid to any attending. Instead, quick and sure, he is by the bench where work is done. A consideration of needles and inks. His dirty fingers smudging things that he touches, explores, and sets down. He smells of leather, iron, and sandalwood. Bare-chested, barrel-chested, and bear-armed. The great physical presence of him obvious. But, more so, is the shadow it casts. A darkness that stretches like ink to swallow what it can reach. A yawning emptiness of light and laughter.

Lita can feel his presence before she hears the shop door open or the muted sounds of footsteps across the shop floor above. Some people just ignore those 'closed' signs on principle. Locks, she decides, are important things. She debates leaving the yet unopened bottle of whiskey but decides to take it with as she heads up the stairs to the shop from the smuggling tunnels below. Dark eyes settle first on the simple iron crown and leather bracer left on the workbench, checking to ensure they're still there at all, before she closes the door behind her. Her hair is still wet, clinging to bare shoulders where the shadows of bruises are still healing from nights prior. The gash across her cheek has healed into an angry, thin red line and she's still limping a bit on her left ankle but at least the break had healed enough that she could walk, even if against that healer's wishes. "Not in the mood for your stories of furies tonight." She grumbles at Svard, resisting the urge to stare. "Didn't see the Closed sign?" She doesn't bother masking the irritation in her voice, though it's not meant for him. Three baths later and she could still swear she smelled that poor excuse for beer on her, from that barrel Spike had smashed over her head the night prior. She motions the bottle towards Svard. "Do they let you drink?"

Svard didn't look to her. Presenting, instead, only his back. The great stretch of his broad shoulders accompanied now by that strange tapestry of ink. The nonsensical collection of styles and depictions. Tally marks. Runic workings. Here, in the dim light, she might see them moving. A cuniform image of a man walking. A simple depiction of a bear being gut, innards splashing. No, it must be a trick. The light. The long nights and hard work. The stress. It must be. But when he moves it is a ripple of power. The bold, masculine cut of him traversing with an almost primal quickness. It is the crown now, in his hand, gathered up as he gestures once with his other hand. A beckon, rough and sure, along with that clipped ice-born dialect. "Come, girl." And he is out the door ahead of her limp. On the streets. And beyond.

Svard left the simple door open in his wake. Nevermind the sequence of heavy locks that ran up it. Nevermind that it should have been a quaint, working-class home. Ignore the dozens of strands of hanging herbs that blanket the ceiling. He walks through them, brushing them gently aside, and leaves them swinging in his wake as he cuts back towards the kitchen through what should have been a living room. These bundles are here, now, mostly floral. The drying flowers dropping petals onto a bare wooden floor. The scent of them sharp over the salt of the bay not far beyond. There are things that he knows. Dark, private things. Whispered to him through the long hours between the practice of his trade. The kitchen. Free from the bundles, he tosses her crown almost absently atop the table, before at once pulling from shelves a series of clay bowls. Each inspected, several discarded back to where they had resided, before he settles on three and turns instead now to a pantry door.

Lita is staring, despite herself, at the broad stretch of artwork he wears. Trying to trace its patterns as if she might some discernible meaning or answer. There is none. Just a headache that follows. And she moves to argue when he reaches for that crown. She's little fight left just now but she'll rally what there is, drawing a deep breath and probably a few choice words as she follows him out into the night. She won't admit that she's grateful for his silence. And she hesitates outside what looks, from the outside, to be a more private dwelling. But she follows a few steps behind him, taking her time to look around, reaching up to feel the collection of herbs and floral bouquets between her fingers. She's not sure what she might have expected for him but it would not have been this. She turns at the sound of that crown being tossed aside onto a table and remembers why she'd come at all. It wasn't much but it was important to her, an accomplishment and she'd worked damn hard for it. "You can't just run off with people's things." She's saying, knowing already he either won't hear the complaint or won't bother to respond to it.

Svard says nothing in answer. Loud they are. No longer singing. The chorus is one that he knows, though, and he hums it softly as he passes the softly-featured beauty. An almost soothing lilt to his voice. Unexpected, perhaps, given the wild look that he presents. So often it was this way. Though, if one learned to see, they could see all things. This was a lesson they had taught him. But now, as he pulled flowers from a bundle, he relied more on what -She- had given. The rumble of her council always near. The measure of calloused fingers, broad palms, more precise than it might look. There is a shameless way to how he moves. The way he presents to her. Both the bold, sharp cut of his pale stare to the way flowers are dressed into the bowl. Finally, he speaks, his words low as he tamps and grinds at the head of a daisy with the broad pad of his thumb. "You would say no if I asked you for some blood, yes?"

Lita watches him. It's been months now since she'd promised the pirate she'd stick around and she's kept her word but it is exhausting. When so often all she wants is to remember what it means to just watch. To listen. He affords this but it's as a strange a thing as he is and she doesn't trust either of them. She watches his work with those flowers and the silence lingers after his question. She should tell him no. Instead she lifts the hem of her skirt for the dagger sheathed at her right thigh. The dagger he'd made her, no less, and she slides the blade of it with ease across her left palm as she steps closer towards him with her hand outstretched. She doesn't lift her eyes to meet his, only stares at the blood carving a trickle across her alabaster palm as she waits.

Svard watches. There is no veiling the masculine cut of his eyes as the hem lifts, nor the way his eyes track not the blade but the coltish shape of her limbs beneath. The furies quiet briefly. He wonders if they forget that flesh binds the spirit(s) and all the rawness of what it is to be, or to have been, as they slip along the ethereal and measure their passing of time. He was not the first. Will not be the last. He is not now what he was. There, for a moment, is a tenderness in the way his fingers take her wrist. Turn her hand down as he brings the bowl beneath it. The droplets a macabre splatter across the contents of the bowl, crushed and battered flowers, in various states of freshness. It was not anticipated. In all the stories they had told him only a few had measured with her volunteering it. The rest discarded. She holds the blade and he reaches, grasping it, closing his hands along the edge until it bites through flesh tough as leather and parts it. His blood splashes across her own. Joins. They mix, like two oils, thick. For a moment his eyes meet her own and he is struck, again, but what he finds there. She is fair. And clean. His thumb turns, and grinds, into the bowl once more. "Sit." He says. But with less force than usual. It's nearly a question, really, as his chin ticks towards a chair at the table. It was so rare to be surprised.

Lita instinctually moves to tug her hand away when his fingers close around her wrist but his touch is not the harsh thing she'd imagined it might be. Her brow furrows and she watches. She's no idea what this is- what he is- or what pact here she might be entering into. She'd never believed in most things of a spiritual nature, things she couldn't hold or touch or save. But there's an inkling of curiosity here that only grows as she watches his hand grasp the blade of the dagger and she does not shy away from it. She meets his eyes but there are no answers there for the questions she hasn't asked and when he motions towards a chair at the table, she turns her attention towards it, hesitating a moment. There was still time to leave if she wished. "Did I just sign away my first born child or something?" She asks as she sits, not bothering to mask the sarcasm. "You're not gonna use that for a tattoo, are you?"

Svard notes the hesitation. And, with it, teaches her a lesson. "It's too late." He corrects her. Not that he could hear her thoughts but read her face, her consideration of the chair. The hesitation. It is not unlike a bunny. Though she lacks the long ears. He pictures her briefly with them and a smile tugs at his lips. It softens his face for the smallest of moments before he banishes it away. What follows comes as he moves past her to the other chair at the table. The bowl, and the muddled mess within, dusted then with crushed salt from a bowl that resided always upon the table's battered surface. "You did that long ago." Came his answer to her first question. There is no bite or malice to it. The simplicity of the answer offered without cruelty or judgement. "No." He answers. For the inks were different.

Lita is not surprised when he tells her it's too late. She'd chosen to follow him after all. Chosen to stay. It wouldn't be the first time she'd crawled her way from danger with barely a prayer to save her soul. Somehow, it isn't danger she senses from Svard. It is something perhaps far worse. Something that is only echoed in the words he offers next and she levels dark eyes on him, tension settling in her jaw and her shoulders. There was only one person around now who knew about her late son and all that had brought her to Rynvale's shores too many years ago. It is not sadness but anger that his knowledge of it- or the presentation thereof- pulls from her. Dark eyes flicker towards the crown he'd laid aside. She could take it and leave and be done with all of this nonsense. "What do you want?"

Svard said, "Sit." He answers again and, from the seat that would beside her own, he pats the top of his thigh with a hand. "And then give me your foot."

Lita swallows hard but sits finally, staring at him, brow furrowed. She leans back into the chair so she can lift her left foot and slide her toes across his thigh. Her left hand curls against the hem of her skirt, smearing a smidge of blood across the fabric and that dagger is still in her right hand in her lap, refusing to let it go just yet.

Svard looms in the seat across from her. The contrast stark now. The chair looks tiny beneath him. And, this close, so does her foot. Beneath her toes the soft wool of his trousers resides, warmed by the flesh beneath. Corded muscle wound like iron beneath her touch. A body forged like the steel he works. The consequences of a disciplined, oft-practiced trade. Her caution makes only for the foot's placement to be wrong. His hands dip and gather it up, once again with surprising care, so that the pads of her feet and toes are laid onto his thigh and her knee is forced to bend high. He is aware of the tension that floods the thin space between them. A bestial, mortal calling to which he has long neglected. But it is ignored. Brushed aside. Instead, the caress of his rough fingertips along her heel and ankle serve only to position her securely and where his pale eyes can see. "You will not sleep well." He asserts steadily. The pale cut of his stare finding the warm darkness of her own. She is beautiful but it will not help her here. He will. "A few days at most. That is the price." It is the mixture, then, that he gathers. It is slick, sticky, like crimson mud. In his hands it is painted with a smoothing of his fingers along her flesh. The entirety of her calf down to her foot, with his strong hands. Tender, even as they massage it into the damaged ankle, though her discomfort is anticipated and mitigated by a skilled touch. This takes time. All of it used. The floral scent that had dominated his living quarters now punctuated by the pungent, near-acrid medicinal smell of the tincture he paints her smooth skin with. His eyes tracking intently his work. Following the way lean muscle flexes. Tracking natural shapes, and patterns, to which most eyes cannot see.

Lita did not agree to this. She didn't sleep. It was often one of the perks of being a vampire. That sleep was not as often a necessity as it had been when she'd been human. While her brain still exhausted, often she could manage with an hour or so every few days and she'd been more than appreciative of that after her enslavement in Gualon, when for so long there'd been nothing but the memories and the night terrors and the blurred lines between them and reality. And it had taken her years to find her way back to herself out of that darkness. So a few days? She hadn't agreed to that. She moves to stand, forgetting somehow that her leg is propped up in his lap and her limbs feel useless anyway, for a moment frozen with fear and panic that seizes cold and all she can think is to move, to get out, to run. But his hands are stronger than she expects here, he knows more control than she does right now and she can only watch his hands, biting at her lower lip as she tries to draw thick breaths and blinks through vision blurring with tears. "Please..." she says softly, but she knows already that whatever he's done and whatever she'd unwittingly agreed to, can't be undone. And all she can think is how desperately she doesn't want to go back.

Svard lives for a moment in this moment. It has been some time. Though, he knows, that time both stretches and compresses pending the whims of -She- and the others to whom he is less familiar. The shadowed shores of Her place are not ever far from him. For others they are a life away. A journey to which they cannot find it within themselves to make. He holds them closer. And walks them now. The pale blue of his eyes going an abrupt, and boldly uniform white. White like eggshells. White like snow. An endless, uninterrupted, uniformed white. Though, she would see more. She would see pulling from him like mist a shape. With long-fingered hands. And a great, messy beard. And for a moment it is a frightening, yawning mouth of despair and confusion and panic and then it is simply him. The man to whom she has felt. His torso projecting from the still, silent, white-eyed shroud of Svard beyond. Translucent. Thin, and faded. But with his hands reaching down to take hold where Svard's are. A hint of gentle sorrow in his familiar features. Love in his eyes. As he caresses the battered ankle. Bones and sinew knitting together undertouch. Discoloration fading. He speaks but there are no words. Not that she needs his voice to know him. Not that she can't read familiar lips as they offer three words across empty space. A broad hand lifts to caress her jawline. As it had a hundred times. And when the touch fades the angry red line is gone and her skin immaculate. But -She- does not allow him this respite for long. -She- uses him, at Svard's behest, trusting the Champion she has chosen and the other furies run silent. He retreats back into Svard, whose eyes blink slowly back to themselves, and the voices of the furies are now whole. And Lita, who would have felt the unnerving sensation of flesh, bone, and sinew mending - is left with him. It was too late.

Lita has so few times in her years known true fear. It lives in her veins like ice now, a familiar thing as she watches him. One would think that a creature (and a soul- though the definition of this brings to light even more questions than answers here) born of supernatural means would therefore lend more faith in the worlds of supernatural things. But she has come to understand that becoming a vampire is not a thing of creation. That while there are heightened senses and abilities, it does not accentuate more than the potential that was already there. Like any other creature, there are those among them who are labeled as strong and others as weak. These are tangible things to which she can believe in. And there have been rare moments where she has allowed herself moments of unbridled trust and belief but they have been small and brief and without fail, inevitably destined to part from her path. She watches now without the capactiy for belief, even as she remembers the warmth of his hands against her skin. The same warmth that echoes unnervingly through her ankle and her cheek and she doesn't have to look down to feel the slight pains ebbing away already. "Wait." She exhales, feeling her lungs catch her breath and she leans forward, as if she might be able to reach out to him again. Her left foot is still on Svard's thigh, her knee bent between them as she perches on his knee with her right foot on the floor. And her hand reaches up for his face as she searches his eyes, trying to understand and having entirely no idea where to start. She wraps her arms around her shin and settes her chin on her knee as her eyes fall to the hollow of his throat, trying to make it all make some semblance of sense for her. She feels entirely small there, curled against him. And there are still so few answers. "I didn't ask for any of this." She tries to push away from him, the word feeling an entirely too heavy thing to wade through.

Svard does not move. Not for a long while. The price he pays a familiar, taxing thing. It rips deep. Roots around in the marrow. And when it goes it takes with it some parts to which he wishes so badly to cling to. But they whisper, always now, their consolations. Gratitude from the many on behalf of the one. It matters not for he is not their devoted. -She- is all that commands. And in the stillness, even as she draws close, even as her slight and beautiful weight is gathered against the strength of him it is -Her- that his heart and thoughts yearn for first. The answer is a calming quiet. The answer is a hand moving, as if of its own accord, to spread that broad and rough palm across the delicate small of her back. To keep her near. She smells fresh and sweet. She is cool and soft. Parts of him strain. And, instead of yielding to their demands, he speaks first to her own. "When has that ever mattered?"

Lita wants to go back to their interactions where all she'd wanted was to punch him. How had things seemed less complicated then? Her frustration with him only serves to feed her anger, an emotion she's far more comfortable with, even as his hand at her back is familiar. It should not be. "It should matter. I don't believe in your fates." Whether that made her any less susceptible to their mercies remained to be seen. "Did you bring me here just to taunt me?" Not that he'd forced her to come. She'd made a choice. She draws herself away from his lap, leaning against the edge of the table, looking to the crown he'd used to lure her here and then to the bowl of goop he'd smeared across her leg. "What are you? Witch? Demon? What do you want?"

Svard regards her. The cut of his pale eyes considering. It is now that he watches her most intently. Letting her questions run, one upon the other, as he remains in his seat. Her eyes are dark and behind them dances many things. Feelings. Aspects of what was and what could be. Undead, and yet, so entirely human. His immediate answer comes only after a long while, far from immediate at all, delayed even as his face settles with what will come. There is patience now. He feels it. -She- demands it. Guides him. An answer to his offering. The furies are quieter now. And, as he passes Lita, his strong hand finds the arch of her hip and brushes a caress across it. The subtle squeeze of strong fingers abandoning her shortly after as he moves by her to the door leading out into the yard behind the Smithy. "Come." And when she does - she will see the forge and the workbenches beneath the half-roof that covers them. Stone and mortar. A great bed of darkened coals raked across the field where iron is drawn and worked. There is a massive anvil, and a smaller one, not far aside. It becomes apparent the home is but storage. This is, and will always be, its heart.

Lita lets her eyes close to feel his hand on her again, her face drawn his direction despite herself but he doesn't answer her questions. She's not surprised. She grits her teeth at the single word he does offer and she wants to be someone strong enough to ignore him. To take her dagger and crown and head for the door instead, a more familiar life. She is not strong enough. And instead her fingers uncurl from around the dagger he'd forged and she abandons it now on his table. She reaches instead for a white daisy from one of the hanging strands and she spins it slowly betwixt her thumb and forefinger as she follows him. The forge to him is a sanctuary. She recognizes the same love there that she knows in her shop for ink and paint. There is love and devotion, patience and creation and there is the work that calls and can only be silenced in the acts of doing. These are voices she understands. Things she feels and understands, without words, as she takes in the sight of this place he's welcomed her into. She moves past him here, into the heat of it, letting her fingers trace the tools on the workbench, the way she'd seen him do in her shop. She lifts the flower behind her ear, tucked into raven curls as she lifts her eyes to his once more. "Show me."

Svard studies her further. Here, in the dark, lit only by the moon. It suits her. She is beautiful. The night doesn't veil her but embraces her. It draws around her like a blanket and she snuggles in. Barefoot on the dry ground. Patches of grass in all directions. He beckons. She follows. Less hesitant now. And what he draws her to is a large, covered crate. Within is coal. Black as pitch. His hands cover her own. They are swallowed up in the size of his but his touch remains tender. Surprising gentility in the great mitts to which his profession has honed. He guides her in plunging her fingers into the black of it. Gathering it up. The large lumps soft to the touch. Inky black. His fingers close around her own and guide hers to crush it, effortlessly, for it is soft and fractures easily. "It starts here. Heavy, soft, black as ink. Not easy to find. Keep the place you find it secret. Slow to fire but burns hotter, longer. And can be used again. Bring that with you. Both hands full. Yes, like that." The forge is a dormant swell of stone, wide and deep, enclosed on three sides. Elevated four feet off the ground. Here, he guides her, his touch soft, and everywhere it falls leaving a smear of that almost moist-feeling coal. Black streaks. Thick on her fair, flawless skin. "Rake it even over what exists. Use this." They are close. So close, in truth, her back often presses to his chest. And his hands are certain in their coaching - but unoppressive. Her way is allowed to find itself. She is not to be caged.

Lita has never been afraid to get her hands dirty. While the tattoos afford her a shop and a place, it is more often charcoal and paint she reaches for in her own artwork. The sudden want to draw and sketch is a familiar thing as she crushes the lumps of coal against her palms, glancing up at him only once as if asking if this were alright. And he offers more words here than he had before, though there is no more an answer in them. The coal is thick where it smears across her skin, unrelenting but she follows his directions carefully here, aware that this is not her place and yet he makes space for her here. His larger hands cover hers as he shows her how to make space in the coal they've raked and the inky black of it embeds itself beneath her nails as she moves it. He cradles her hands and leaves her a handful of softer wood fibers and shredded bark and she arranges it into the center of the coal she'd dug. The strands of thin wood carve abstract patterns in the black of her palms and as she flexes her fingers, the dust of the coal splits and crackles against her skin. The flame he strikes makes her lean away from the forge for a moment, pressed back against him before she reaches out to grasp his wrist to light the forge. She'd made the choice. She had to see it through now.

Svard is solid against her. The strength of him, that broad chest, the channels cut along his core where muscles reside - is no accident. And still, ferocious and strange, he is gentle here. She is allowed to play, to find her way, and his guidance is more the ends than the measure. A forge does not light quickly. It builds. And first the flames she makes lift and live and then, with encouragement, she rakes fluffy chunks of partially burned coal over them. Smothering them. Counter-intuitive to the means of which other fires are started. They watch together, though, as the black smoke turns white. And thick. And curls, elegantly, through crevices in the partially fired coal to run upwards and into the chimney above. Now, his broad hand runs once more across her hip. There is intimacy in the touch. A lingering reassurance. But then his strength is gone and he, bare-chested, flanks the forge to a hanging handle of metal in the shape of an empty triangle. There is a chain it attaches to. One hand claims the middle and pulls. A slow, steady draw, the thick trunk of his bicep flexing. Veings revealing themselves. And the sound of air rushing in from below her fire makes a soft "whoosh". "Slow to start. Not to be rushed. As the smoke grows, oily and thick, you add more of the fresh coal. Until the smoke tints yellow and green. The colors of sickness. If you've a good nose you'll smell sour eggs. Sulfur." His accent is thick but his common is better. Soon enough, the small nest of smoking coals has grown. Over a food wide radius billowing dense smoke until, at last, a sickly green/yellow tint begins to form in the smoke. The strong hand abandons the pull and, instead, his foot finds a pedal. Here, now, his weight comes down. And while he pumps it the whoosh sound turns constant, and throaty, and the heat grows rapidly from the flameless fire before them. His hands take hold of her middle. Secure. Strong. And his words steady. "Feed it with that dark coal. And watch. As the smoke grows. And grows. Soon, it'll turn to flame. Stack the coal along the edges of the fire there. Yes, good." She is intuitive. Focused. And as the flames begin her eyes are drawn to them and he watches them shine with the dancing gold and orange. "The fire is pure. The coal is not. So the fire chases it all away. And the impurities run. Turn to smoke and flee the fire. Eventually, there will be no smoke. And the coal will become coke. Hard, and pure. The worst of it chased away. The rest fuel for its purpose. It lives and is consumed by its purpose. It is a tool for the fire - the energy to which all creation is truly owed. But the flame, though mighty, still relies upon the coke. Do you see?"

Lita tempers on the edge of impatience, watching the smoke rise and curl, fascinated by the patterns they draw and the paths it takes. Here they are souls on offering for whatever gods he worships and she watches them fall as martyrs and saints. That flame is the only and sole purpose to which they are created for. Without it they are nothing and worse, meant nothing. His hands go unnoticed as she follows his instructions, the cool of the coal thick in her hands as she moves it now, an offering. She sees, hears, understands and doesn't all at once. What should any of this have to do with her, this sanctuary to which she'd trespassed. She reaches up to take the small daisy from her hair, its petals smeared now in coal and smoke and imperfection and she reaches out to add it to the fire he coaxes life to. This small offering she has to make.

Svard is silent now. A long while. The flames dancing along the coals. His eyes tracking over her. Watching as she watches. They are the now lit by the glowing gold of the fire. The forge bathing the area in dense heat. And, as she stands, his hand lifts to draw along the back of her neck. The warmth of his touch a fire of its own, buried beneath dark curls, along fair skin. The tips of rough fingers tender, but firm, as they massage tender circles into lean muscles. The smudges they leave made without apology. The masculine nature of this affection unveiled. While she watches the flames - he watches her. "To whom do you offer it?"

Lita doesn't answer him at first. She can't. She doesn't believe in the things he does, the gods he does, she's no capacity for it. And the last thing she wants to do in this place is offend his belief in that. But he's offered her words and this brief glimpse into himself and it deserves some sort of answer that's true. "Not who." She says softly, the words almost sad as she relaxes at his touch. She should pull away from him. He is, still entirely a stranger to her and yet here she knows him. Sees him. "Not anymore." She clarifies. And the tears fall across her cheeks silently and without warning, as if pulled from her without consent, carving silver divets through the soot on alabaster cheeks. "An idea. What she could have been." The words come but her lips hardly move to find them, dark eyes never leaving that flame they've nurtured. Maybe she spoke of herself here. Maybe not. "What she could have been before. What she can never be without it."

Svard said, "In time - all things find themselves as they should be." The words are not spoken so much as summoned. Pulled from the very fabric of the world that inspired them. There is a certainty in his voice and, more than this, there is an assurance. A sense that all things dark serve this light. The coal. The night. But she is crying and all at once there is that tenderness again. The sleek-figured girl in the little black dress had found something in the flame, in the freedom, and as she wrestles with it he gently draws her into the strength of an embrace. The arms curling around her little shoulders are so ferociously strong. Muscles like boulders under taut, smooth, sooted flesh. But he is soft. And the scent of him is leather, sandalwood, and char. This is a vault as much a vice. As though what she offers, every sorrow, is locked away. He has never told a secret. Even now, as the flames dance across the coke, he's merely brought her to a place where she might find it for herself. There is something sacred in it all. And she, in the end, is held gently for it. There were many gods and he did not know them all. But he knew a prayer when he saw one. "I know what it is I must make you."

Lita doesn't shy away from here when she should. For the first time in weeks, there is no want to run. Instead as his arms circle her shoulders, she lifts her hands up to his forearm, small fingers squeezing muscles that should not know the capacity to hold her with such a gentleness, and yet. She dips her head slightly into the crook of his arm until her forehead rests against his skin for a brief moment and her lips the salted earth of him. An offering, a prayer, the repentance of the unworthy. She does not believe in his gods and yet she believes. In something unnamed. She lifts her head again, swallowing hard when he speaks and she turns finally to regard him. The way the firelight dances in shadows across his rugged features and is held steady in the fortitude of his eyes. "Can I stay and see?" She does not ask what he might make or why. She knows he wouldn't answer if she did.