Slipping Through The Cracks

The sun had barely set as Ishvi trudged towards the community centre, exhausted from his lack of decent sleep and a sort of bleak numbness that never seemed to leave anymore. His hair was wet, clothes dry, and he smelled vaguely of coconuts - his usual state at this time of night in the week since his duel. He'd been cutting it close, flying over the ocean closer and closer to sunset, risking burns and pushing himself harder before swimming back. He still had a bit of a burn on his face from accidentally shifting inside out of direct sunlight.

Burning, drowning, falling. There wasn't much difference to any of it - he was so tired, but he didn't want to be alone. So he came here for company, or at least the pretense of it, since he wasn't exactly close to most people.

Ishvi hesitated at the door, collecting himself, trying to look like he wasn't still feeling so lost. He didn't want to bring down the mood with just his presence. That was when he saw her - Johanna. He felt sick to his stomach, already flickering slightly from guilt at the sight of her. The half-angel looked down at his feet, if he'd been able to speak the shame would have stopped him right then.

@Pallas

Ishvi could barely focus on what Johanna was saying. All his rushing thoughts were drowning her out - She knows. She knows. She knows! And if she hadn't realized already, it was only a matter of time. He may not have been visibly different, relatively minor power changes, but surely angels could tell when someone was falling. And even if he could've hidden it, lied because it wasn't detectable when he was typing, He was too ashamed at having finally proven them right.

Johanna was his leader, the closest thing to it, even if she was younger. Couldn't face her, couldn't flee, so he fumbled for his phone with one hand, holding out the other in a just a moment gesture that revealed his badly burnt palm from holding his own daggers. The flickering was almost constant now, as he struggled desperately not to shift in front of her.

Phone in hand, Ishvi answered her with his text-to-speech. Swimming. It explained a bit of his appearance, though it wasn't the whole truth, and swimming had been involved. Then he hesitated. He didn't know what to say, where to begin. He'd dueled Maarab, felt it necessary, but thought it might harm Johanna to let her know that monster was here. I lost a duel. A lot has happened. You were all right. I've failed.

Startled by Johanna's reaction or rather her lack of a reaction to the fact he was falling, Ishvi stopped flickering briefly and just stared at the angel. He mouthed her name silently, not sure how to respond at all. Could she not tell after all? Should he tell her himself and face the disgust? He doubted she could hate him as much as he hated himself right now.

Instinctively backing up a bit as she moved closer, Ishvi typed a little more. He took my tongue. It will heal. He didn't kill me. Ishvi had to pause at that. Gulp a nervous breath of air. He'd started the fight because the half-demon needed to be punished, or that's what he'd told himself. But he was falling not because of the duel, but because of self-destruction, that moment when he'd stopped fighting and told the other half-breed to kill him.

They didn't harass me. They had done something in the past. We won't fight again. Their home was destroyed, it couldn't be fixed, and he was pretty sure Johanna would only get hurt as well in a fight. She was superior to him, but Maarab was a trained fighter who'd already killed who knew how many angels. You're the last real angel left. Don't risk yourself.