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Love is a dangerous thing, and we don’t always know how to do it right.
— Richard Siken
Rin felt the gentle rise and fall of Kitay’s chest against her hand. Like the ebb and flow of the tide, each breath a wave that swept away her fears momentarily, only to bring them crashing back again with the next exhale.
The feeling of Kitay's body against hers was like a sudden rush of icy water, jolting her out of her fears.
She sat straddled across Kitay’s hips, observing in sick fascination every line of tension etched in his form as he gripped at the bed sheets, betraying some sort of inner turmoil inside of him. It was a sickly mesmerizing sight.
Rin could feel Kitay’s heart thumping against her palm as her fingers traced tender lines along his sternum. She relished in being close to him like this. It’s almost as if she could pretend they were one and the same.
Kitay was breathing and his heart rate normal.
But Rin could see the way his head shook back and forth, as if fighting off an invisible opponent he couldn’t quite escape. She knew she should wake him, release him from his pain. But a sick fascination rooted her in place—the sight of Kitay writhing and thrashing below her, tormented by the horrors of his own inescapable mind, held her captive.
Leaning in, she pressed her palm against his cheek, brushing her thumb along his cheekbone in a tender, calming motion—the same way he had comforted her countless times through breakdowns and nightmares.
Kitay was Rin’s anchor. That meant a terrifying, unpredictable liability—knowing that her most cruel desires and all her guilt was laid bare before him.
But also that his pain was her pain.
Pain, however, was an old friend of Rin. Suffering is her status quo. It is the fabric of her very existence, woven into every fiber of her being. Even a strange part of her found that she relished in the pain, adored it, really.
Rin embraces suffering the way one would joy.
She takes the pain and molds it to be a part of her, another lethal weapon of hers to be used to oppress others. Misery had become so natural to her that she couldn’t extinguish it even if she tried. She knows nothing else. Suffering is all she is and all she needs in order to be the ruthless general Nikara needs.
So what is she supposed to long for? Love?
Her ribs were a cage for a broken heart. Love is essentially worthless, it was a horrible thing that brought Rin nothing but pain.
So if Rin couldn’t be loved, she must be feared by all.
And yet, love remained an enigma—a craving she dared not acknowledge, a vulnerability she despised. Pain, she could always handle. But at the simple warm, affectionate touch of another—she shatters. It reduces her into nothing more but a malleable, wide-eyed puppy. She had never had the privilege of being granted love in its purest sense, love had merely been a tool used to puppeteer her around. A distracting chewtoy, dangled to make her bark and heel at command.
Rin therefore hated love, but it always remained a strange dislike.
(But Rin had gotten used to being a wild collection of paradoxical sentiments.)
Despite the pain it brings her, she never stopped craving it. It was an insatiable hunger, a primal need to be held so she wouldn’t break. It was a carnal desire that made Rin feel human in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. And it settled the debate that she was to not be human anymore. Humanity hurts too much.
She had abandoned her humanity, cast aside her empathy, and sacrificed it all for cold-blooded rationality—until she would bite the very hand that came to feed her.
Rin was an untameable animal, ferocious and unbendable like steel. She strode forward to rip the world open with her fire. She killed indiscriminately, she turned them all to ashes—she killed civilians and enemies alike.
She was a goddess, handed an empty canvas of a forsaken land, free to be molded to her liking. And what was an empty canvas without art?
But despite all her attempts to divest herself of her humanity, she never quite succeeded. And the proof was the boy laying sound asleep with her. Or was he even a boy anymore? Have Nikara aged Kitay into a hardened, broken man? Or was it Rin who stripped him of being a boy filled with hope and childlike naivety?
If only Rin were as cold as she pretended to be, maybe she could let go of him.
But Rin found that she couldn’t. Was it because he was the fuel that fed her fire? Her moral compass and last scrap of rationality? Or the simple but brutal truth of his unwavering loyalty?
She found his loyalty mirrored a wounded place she knew too well within herself.
Rin continued to watch Kitay’s features contort in fear and pain as he twisted and turned beneath her. Only her legs, wrapped steadily around his hips, trapping him to face whatever unseen monster he was confronting in his mind.
Kitay doesn’t deserve to shoulder this pain. Rin knows that.
She also knows that it’s a pain she has doomed him to carry for the simple sin of being associated with her.
Kitay, her better half, doesn’t deserve to carry a pain that’s meant to be hers.
She poisons everyone around her, but Kitay is the only one who seems to come back for more. It’s as if he carries a dark desire to be picked apart and ruined by her.
Absently, Rin thinks Kitay must be the only good thing left in Nikara. How come the virtuous always have to be tormented? Kitay was born surrounded by stability and love, he wasn’t meant to be surrounded with lies, murders and systematic violence. Violence does not course through Kitay's veins as it does Rin's; he was untouched by its filth and stain.
How Kitay has remained hopeful and pacifistic throughout all their adversities will always be a mystery to Rin. Why had war carved her into something monstrous, but left Kitay intact?
Was she simply weaker—or had the hunger for blood and fire always been there? Brimming and festering beneath her skin, waiting for an excuse to surface and wreak havoc.
Rin listens curiously as Kitay begins to moan in distress, locking every distressed sound away in the depths of her mind to be played on repeat on the cold nights when she needed a reminder of what she was fighting for. Of why surrender is not an option; no matter how hopeless or dire their circumstances got.
Kitay suddenly let out a small whimper, compelling Rin to softly shake him awake—an action far too tender for a merciless goddess like herself who has slaughtered thousands with the same hands.
Kitay stirred awake, his eyes slowly cracking open, before eventually recognising the familiar face leaning far too close to him.
“Rin,” he whispered, and Rin thought her name had never been spoken of so softly before.
“You were having a nightmare, you can go back to sleep now,” she deadpanned.
Kitay’s gaze, heavy with the bone-deep exhaustion of a man twice his age, softened even further—if such a thing were possible—before his eyes fluttered shut once more.
Rin felt a fissure form in her heart.
But she was not supposed to be possessed of a heart anymore.
It had been taken from her, stomped to the ground and broken in a million grotesque pieces—leaving it unrecognizable and revolting to anyone who dared gaze upon it. All that was left was a gaping, open wound where her heart’s supposed to be, and a dark handprint scorched over it. Showcasing the heartless monstrosity she was, capable of all evil.
But Kitay had kept the small flickering flame of her remaining heart pieces alive, tending it with utmost affection and dedication.
Her heart was gone, replaced with a warm flame, burning only for Kitay. It was that small flame that invited the tiny gesture of humanity from Rin to release Kitay from his nightmare. The last sliver of humanity she still allowed herself.
Kitay kept Rin human. Rin might make sure Kitay’s heart keeps beating at night, but Kitay makes sure Rin’s heart remains burning and alive at all times.
She needs him like she needs air to breathe.
But needing Kitay came easy. Loving him was harder.
Loving him tore at her soul, an incessant itch that gnawed at her, a relentless ache that twisted within her chest. Each moment of affection was a battle waged against the walls she had erected around her heart and mind. Yet, she couldn’t deny the fragile hope it granted her.
But it also kept Rin’s thread of hope as an unsolvable noose.
And nothing could ever hurt more.