Prompt: #18 Bent
Summary: If you look close enough, you will realize that we are all a little bent.
A/N: This is a stand alone.
Curvus is Latin for "bent, crooked".
Curvus
There are things that start out straight. It does not take a genius to realize that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. That was logical and completely reasonable. It was just that, most things in life were curved. There was always that bend in the road where it forks off into different directions. There were barriers that forced you to take detours. Such detours often took you to places you never imagined you would go. It was during one of these detours that he had veered completely off his once straight and narrow path. Once that happened, once there was that bend in the road, there was nothing you could do to make it straight again. The path would forever be tainted and you would always find delay.
Once something was bent, there was no way to make it straight again. He had learned this fairly early on in his life. The first sword that he had caused to appear had been one with a thin blade. It was light enough so his small arm could lift it easily and he had cherished it. It had been beautiful and he had spent many hours shining and sharpening the edges to maintain its loveliness. The beauty it held in his eyes was later altered when one day he had missed his opponent and ended up slamming the entire blade against a sharp edge of marble. After the jarring shaking in his shoulders had subsided, he found his precious sword had been dented. No matter how smooth he tried to make it afterwards, it never again retained that perfection that it once had. After awhile it became clear that he could no longer even use it. It was then that another sword had appeared for his use. This time, it had been broad and not so easily disfigured. He learned two things then. The first having already been mentioned and the second, that he would never let himself become that angry during a battle again. If it had not been for his emotions, he would have never damaged his sword in the first place.
This rule also applied to a great many things. A broken feather quill could not be repaired, it could only be replaced. A chip in a stone statue could never be reattached once it had fallen. A drop of blood that escaped your skin, could never be welcomed back into your body. Some things just could not be put back together. The best you could hope for was to find something to replace it with.
He feels like that now. The weariness within his bones was so acute that it felt like they were crooked. He felt as if he was the one that was bent. The resulting effects of his long and arduous journey were taking its toll not only on his body but on his spirit. He wonders if there had ever been a time when he had been straight. A time when he had been perfect. Maybe it was when he was younger. Back when he was a child, things had seemed perfect. He remembers being happy then. Things could have been considered straight and good and pure then. After the trials he has just been through he feels dented, bad and tainted. Now, the only thing that was left to do was to replace him. That was the only option because he knows he can never be fixed now. He had strayed too far and taken too many winding roads instead of sticking the course. The person that he was now could never be straightened.
"Don't even think about it," he hears behind him, breaking through his musings.
Despite how exhausted he feels, he has enough inside him to smirk. He listens to the sound of a body lower itself to join him as he sits here on the ledge of a towering building. Their legs dangle precariously over the edge as they take in the sights of the city below them.
"What am I thinking?" he asks, without turning his head.
"If you jumped, your survival instinct would only kick in and save you," is the response.
"My need to survive is not like yours," he answers honestly.
"Then that means that I would have to save you from yourself if you did."
The answer causes him to look over at her and he immediately wishes that he had not. Looking at her always seemed to distract him. Especially when she is smiling the way she is now. The chilly night air is blowing strands of her blond hair across her face and he does not even hesitate to reach out and brush them away for her to tuck them behind her ear. She was something otherworldly to him. He is not sure what he had done to deserve her in his life during this journey. The things that she had willingly done for his sake. While he had been broken and out of shape, she had always remained whole and perfect. His imperfections were dark contrasts while hers only made her look more perfect to him. She was the exception to the rule.
"Both of us surviving what we just finished only to die by gravity," he muses, leaning back and giving her a long look.
She smiles back at him as she tilts her head.
"We have already seen worse ways to die," she replies.
That they had. The mental images of those ways were enough to convince anyone that he was anything from innocent.
"But I think dying without you would be the worst," she finishes and his entire body jerks as he looks back at her.
That statement from any other woman would have made him scoff. There was no way any of them could imagine the different ways people could die. It would only end up sounding like some overly dramatic, blindly uttered vow of misplaced devotion. The fact that it was Stella saying this, he could not even think to scoff. His mind could not think of a word to describe his feelings to this.
"Living with me would be a fate worse than dying," he says. This was true too. He attracted trouble and his life was chaos defined. He leans into her face as if in silent challenge.
"I have survived so far," she replies seriously and she emphasizes this by leaning into him too. "Life without you would be wrong." Her hand reaches up to caress his jaw.
"Even as misshapen as I am?" he asks, his tone hopeful.
She brings her face closer so that her lips are hovering just below his.
"Yes," she whispers before his lips are crushing hers.