Whitebark Stream crawling back to you

the shallow brook murmurs against the banks, a steady wash of water over stone. anoré stands at its edge, watching the way the current distorts her reflection. shifting and unraveling at the edges before reforming again.
she does not recognize the face that stares back at her. once, it had been crowned in laurels, embraced by the god crow, and the warmth of her children. they filled her every corner. it had softened her, before.
she exhaled through her nose, bitter, "what's left, lunarre?" she can't bear to look at herself anymore.
she steps forward and the water swallows her paws first, then her limbs, but the cold does not reach deep enough.

fluid timeline!! will figure out placement later

shroud in smoke, he is announced by the flapping of wings. the guttural croak of a raven, that soars past and above the woman, dipping first to nip in harass upon her ear.
blackfell comes from the brush that guards the stream, dark countenance bleeding with a tension that clings heavily to him. it is in his muscle, his blood, his very being. muscles twitch to life, thrumming with a barely held power at his flanks, at his shoulders.
crimson eyes swipe upon the backside of the silver woman. her words strike the most; the name she utters like the unsheathing of a longsword, aimed at the exposed throat. blackfell feels a dark tremble. he feels a tide wash over him, crashing inwards. threatening anger.
lunarre. her name is spoken not like a prayer but like a insult. it is spoken with disgust, it is putrid and it is bile in its execution. he looks upon her like she is loathsome; and that is what she is. he walks alongside her, the distance between carefully held taut by a tension that may snap at any second, and the son of nemos looks upon his aunt woefully.
i thought of you when i killed your son. a lie, for @Emýr still drew breath—somewhere. mercy blackfell would not show him again.

the raven’s wings beat against the air, a sharp, feathered intrusion. it swoops low, its beak grazing the edge of her ear, a nip that is more insolence than malice.
then comes the shadow behind it. she does not turn immediately. she knows him before he speaks. before ruby-fire eyes cut through her back. before his heatless burn smolders against her periphery.
when she does turn, it is slow, deliberate, the measured motion of something not afraid—beyond fear and feeling. her gaze meets his without flinch or falter. 
"is that you, kolfinnr?" she would not give him the honor of his given name. not from her tongue. her voice is a dagger drawn slow from its sheath. ready, but not reckless. it is restrained only by the thin veneer of civility she grants like a coin tossed to a beggar. it carries none of his fire, none of his barely leashed fury—only tired cold.
the water clings to her as she emerges, cascading down the curves of her body in silvered rivulets. glistening glass beads on her chest and hips.
she tilts her head, studying him as one might an old wound, long since scarred over, "i knew you, once." she says, her lilt carrying the weight of a distant past neither of them seemed to want to escape. it always came back to this, somehow. always by him.
"and i know you lie poorly." her voice quiets, but it is not weak.

his name upon her tongue; it is a lance through the shoulder, the chest, striking like flint upon stone. a match lit, pressed to kindling and imploding to wickering flames of lapping heat. he centers blood gaze on her and snaps teeth, a silencing snarl.
do not call me that. not her. never her.
he is silenced by the manful urge in his gut. water slipping from her skin in gleaming trails, clinging to the curves of her body like melted silver. it beads along her chest, her hips—he inhales sharp breath. not letting his gaze betray his long held desire, but only his wrath and scorn and fury.
she means to provoke. with the tilt of her chin, the arch of her spine. her arrogance was beauty—her beauty arrogance. blackfell takes four strides and is upon her, shoulder meeting wet, pale fur, but not with longing. with brutish touch.
shoving her. his neck craning, his head tilting to let crimson, beady, malicious stare seek down a scarred face and lay upon hers. and if i had? he asks, showing her teeth. why do you haunt my north? he demands answers of her.
why do you haunt me? he wished to ask.

there you are. he is upon her like a black storm. his fury, his eagerness—it’s all so familiar. and it hurts.
she bites back the iron threatening to crawl up her throat. she'd wanted to leave the grey marches behind. all of it. yet here he was, here she was, entertaining this tiresome dance of theirs. they'd done it again and again. she wanted no part.
but she knew where it hurt. knew where he was weak. he was only but a man, and a crownore man at that. all of them, the same in blood and breeding.
then he shoves her. she does not retreat nor bend to his will. he did not get the satisfaction then, he would not get it now, "if you had," she starts, her voice a cruel glass shard against his pyre, "you would have done so by now." 
a step forward, her side carelessly, unintentionally riding the dips of his chest, "you are crownore. you would have snatched the opportunity the moment it presented itself. for a crow takes. yet, you did not.”
she cranes her head to stare at him over her shoulder. suddenly, she turns away, as if dismissing him, and her scarred thigh crests his front as she passes, "not for a lack of wanting, though."
one, two, three strides. why do you haunt my north? she stops. the very question ignited something cold and sharp within her, a maddening frustration that threatened to broil just beneath her skin, "haunt your north." she repeats, quietly, "your north?" now, with constrained heat. she cast him a cruel gaze, "i wish to outrun that north. i am no ghost who wishes to be near you." she spits the very words as if they are poison. because he is poison.
"if i am with you, it is because you bury me there. made me part of you." because you will not let go.

he knows the affect he has on her. it is like water meeting fire, a sizzling and popping that dissolves all. smoke, rising, beating against the ceiling of a great hearth. the great hearth they could have made—together.
how many women had blackfell been betrayed by in his lifetime? too many to count. and yet, this one had hurt most of all. the first woman. the one who came before all—and she haunted the paths of his mind, selfish reminder of what could have been and what never was.
it is why she earns his ire now, and it is irate in its pulsing. coming from him in mighty waves that seek to consume and to ravage, the slicing of a crimson gaze upon silver ice, piercing skin and flesh and soul. i should have. he sneers to her now. breath wasping close, upon her face, ghosting in the cool spring air. there could be no more steps taken that would bring him closer; her body pressing, his stealing touch. and then she is gone.
feline steps leading her away only slightly, scarred hindquarter passing his chest that trembles in the wake of her touch. she sees him in ways that feel like a violation of every black, cold corner of his being. blackfell growls—short, dry, gurgling in his throat and trapped in a cage of teeth who have seen no end of bloodshed. your pathetic sons, he taunts, seeking to lash her in any way that he can. weak shouldered. weak minded. pushing further, uprooting. weak-loined. for it was no secret; each one of her sons favored their own sex—or at the very least, it was rumored.
and he relished in each one.
where she seeks to create distance, he will close it again. quickly. now coming up behind her, his forelegs threatening to wrap her hips, to drag her down beneath him. testing her, testing that connection most carnal that had driven them always. lashing closer, snapping his teeth to the scruff of fur upon her neck. would they come to blows?
i would have given you strong sons. he taunts. i still can. he taunts more. the truth is: she disgusts him. he does not want to touch her. but it would appease every burning nerve in his body to draw some sort of reaction from her. i do not burn with you. you only want me to.
if you are here, he cuts around her, pressing his chest close to her shoulder, seeking to drive his mouth to her ear where he will growl lowly, it means i might claim you again.

it comes like a wave—dark, suffocating. the moment his poisonous voice slithers into her ear, something inside her recoils. the past rushes up to meet her. his hearth, laden with wedding gifts she never desired. her, wrapped in a silver veil. a symbol of possession, not devotion. she was no woman, no bride. 
she thought she had buried those nightmares. yet he dredged them back to the surface like a corpse from the grave. she exhales slowly. it is her shield against the tightening of her chest, against the way his presence coils around her like iron chains. he is a specter, a walking ghost, the embodiment of the kingdom that took and never gave.
and for all his cruelty, for all his snarling and needling, she knows the truth of him. he wants her to feel this way. her skin pricks when he places himself behind her hips. it means i might claim you again. she should not let it touch her, but the words strike deeper than they should, setting her nerves alight.
no. never again.
"stop." it is not a snarl, nor a growl. not some cutting remark meant to wound. it is quiet. frayed at the edges. heavy. she turns to him, fully this time, her breath a thin thread between them, "i am tired." it is not a plea—it is a fact. and gods, is it the truth. she feels it in her bones, in the ache of old wounds and even older memories.
“of this. of you.” her pale eyes search his face for a reaction. for any sign of the man who used to look upon her with such adoration, "you want me to fight you. to keep this between us alive because we don’t know what we are without it." without the grey marches, the life they were supposed to live there, she means. she knows he knows it too. she felt a fool for even entertaining him, right here, cloistered in this thicket. 
“you may stand here and snarl and spit at me all you want.” her voice is steady, but it is hollow, "but it won’t change the fact that it is ruin. you will not find a fight in me. and i will not be dragged back into that life."
she does not tremble as she holds his red gaze. but beneath the ice, beneath the steady rise and fall of her breath, is weariness. a silent sadness that goes beyond him. since the moment she learned what it meant to belong to others before herself.
“i know what i want. but, what does kolfinnr want?” this time, she points his name without insult and venom. she points it to his soul, the young boy without name, crackling with undying flame and gold. before the throne. before the blood. before the fall. not blackfell. kol.

he stills.
her voice—quiet, final—lands harder than any strike. not because it wounds, but because it denies him what he came here for. the fight. the flame. the one thing they’ve always had between them, twisted and violent and real.
but she gives him nothing.
don’t call me that, he says, but there’s no bite to it this time. no fire. the words drop from his tongue like stone. heavy. unfinished.
his eyes rake her face. not to hurt. to find something—anything—of the woman he once loved like a starving man at a feast. but there’s no feast here. only bones. only frost. only her tired gaze, the kind only grief can give.
his jaw clenches.
you were the first thing i ever wanted, he admits, voice rough, cracked by truth. and the first thing i ever lost. he steps back. not far. just enough. the heat between them ebbs, not broken, but folded. drawn inward.
go, anoré.

hollowed gaze traces the sharp lines of his form, and she sees it then—his flame, waning, no longer a blaze of gold and fire, but a sputtering ember, struggling against the dark. a fire so hot that it'd consumed itself.
and somehow, she respects him for it.
softly, intimately, she speaks. she utters a confession. an unspoken truth never shared.
"you were to me as well, blackfell." 
and she turns away, the cool wind sweeping through her hair, the faintest trace of sorrow in her chest—not for him, but for what was never meant to be.