Lost Creek Hollow Butterflyfish

(how i see crowfeather rn

you are not at war

eternal soldier. dutiful son. imperator. eagle.

his jaw was tight once more, brow furrowed; on an exhale, a ragged sound emanated from the back of his throat. germanicus felt his eyes welling. crowfeather went on. with love, with adoration. with acceptance. this stardark soul who the roman had so harmed now bared breast to his revelation as if they had not been apart.

the shadow described him as an artist setting charcoal to an unblemished canvas, and it felt somehow as though all of his sins had fallen into chalkwhite ash beside the path.

oh, damnable tears! was it easy to weep so freely once the dam had already been shattered? germanicus did not know, only that the hotness had become liquid and cut across his cheeks in streamlets of sorrow and apology and perhaps even relief.

but his eyes did not waver from those of crowfeather.

you do not need to be afraid.

"do you remember what i said. heart to heart." his voice shook but germanicus would not yet allow himself to be overcome. he searched for another stitching of worn memory. "i remember how you said with you, the day we hunted boar."

the yellowpaint eyes were a caress as suddenly he realized that crowfeather's own had lightened to the sheen of fine amber. "it lives in my mind." his voice broke but he did not look away, shoulders tensing, chin trembling for a moment germanicus might have found unseemly as a soldier were it any moment but this.

"i watched you moving so skillfully in the water that it has never left me. you were almost — i think, at that moment, i knew i did not wish to be without you."

tactician. warrior. a studying man who did not draw from a tome but from a diary, ink-stained, weather-worn, hidden at the bottom of a traveling rucksack beneath a week's rations.

"i cannot recall that i considered becoming a father before you, crowfeather," germanicus admitted with a tightening to the edges of his open, threadbare gaze. he studied the eboncast features of the shadow for whom he had long denied love, denied the entry of his heart even when the other had pleaded.

"but i do remember you gave me a name from your people, and i gave you one of rome." his throat felt as though it had run raw with the billowing grey of a forest fire softly dampened by rain. "peak where eagles soar." his kiss was soft, hardly more of a breath that traced in ardency along the shadow's throat. "apollo."

crowfeather had offered the breadth of his spirit. but germanicus had turned away, and again he demanded that crowfeather remain where no harm could come to him, the desperate act of a soldier who has lost too many to think with warmth any longer.

germancius remembered the righteous, flaring anger of the shadow, wielded in wrath where there there had once been a softness routed by germanicus.

yes, the eagle remembered all these things. "i loved you before i knew." and then when he had known he had said nothing. his lips pressed softly to one cheek, and then the other, seeking the almost unreality of crowfeather's starglow form. 

"i am finished with fear."