Spill Your Heart Out

Twilight looked at his hands, occasionally flexing his fingers and watching the darkness dance around them. His gaze was fixated on the wisps of energy, too preoccupied to care about his current position on top of a rather tall apartment building. His legs hung off of it, occasionally swaying back and forth in the air. Then again, he could fly, so any potential danger there was of falling was reduced to a solid 0%. He let his wings spread out to their full wingspan, granted they were never really that big. He kept his tails close, however, for if any irresponsible mobian came wandering up the stairs to the top of this building he wouldn't want them to step all over his tails. 

For a second, Twilight glanced up at the moon. It was full tonight, it was also rather late. So late that below him, only a few mobians were scurrying from place to place. Sometimes there were moments of quiet, where no one was walking below him. He was too fixated on the darkness to seem to care much.

It had been a long day. Very long.

Amber was still picking out leaves and twigs from her fur, the folds of her torn clothes. She drew a long sigh, finally reaching the corner of her apartment block. That long sigh, it made her draw her head back and look up towards the ebony sky. And that was when she saw it; a pair of legs dangling off the ledge. A very familiar pair of legs.

Blinking slowly,  Amber took steps back to make sure she wasn't seeing things. She stepped a little too far back though, and almost got ran over by the scarce cars that passed by that hour. However, convinced what she saw was real, she began an urgent stalk into the apartment building and into the elevator. It stopped only at the top flat, so she had to take the stairs onto the roof. 

She opened the door carefully, so carefully that no sound was made, and she peeked through the crack and observed. "...Twilight..." Before she knew it, there she was approaching him.

Twilight's ears twitched. Footsteps, good god. He closed his eyes, letting the mobian go their way but as he heard the footsteps get closer and closer, he was more inclined to turn around. After a few more steps, he did and he was incredibly surprised to see Amber. In fact, he was so surprised that he nearly fell off of the building they were on. Luckily for him, he could fly and he took off into the air, hovering just below Amber's eye level. He flew up to meet her eyes, the darkness that was around his hand still trailed behind him slightly, it clouded around his hand and dispersed like smoke. His eyes displayed a strange aggression, as if he was protective of this area. This area wasn't specifically his, but it was an area in which he stayed occasionally. 

"What?" He spoke without hesitation this time, as he would talk to any normal mobian who might have stumbled upon him. His words were blunt, right to the point, as if he didn't realize who he was talking to. Normally being around Amber made him more nervous, more quiet, but this time he appeared to be taken by the darkness. He was too deep within his thoughts to care about anything else, it seemed.

Her ears flattened to her head, as if his tone had stabbed knives into them. She admitted, it wasn't necessarily because of the volume, although, compared to the deafening silence, he was as loud as a plane engine. But no, that was not the entire reason. Amber wasn't used to such hostility in his voice. Which was funny, since they met with a near-death encounter. None of it showed on her face, however. 

The wolf shifted her stance, turning her body slightly to the side and avoided his piercing crimson stare. She was just too tired. Oh, so tired. Her hand reached up and tugged her scarf loose from her muzzle, allowing herself a long exhale. Her knees began to weaken and she sank. Lower and lower until she was sitting. "Forget it." Her voice is hushed, oozing with fatigue. It sounded similar to a gush of wind, rather than a voice. Her voice was gone.

Amber did not question what he was doing there. Why he was there. She didn't question his apparent sour mood or his hostility. She just sat there, arms propped on her knees and head hung to the ground as if she were an android that ran out of batteries. The only contradiction to this was the rise and fall of her back as she breathed a steady rhythm.

Not welcome. That was what she picked up. So Amber dragged herself up and started to approach the stairs again.

Twilight placed his feet on the roof, steadily landing and bringing his wings closer to his body as he did so. He watched Amber walk towards the stairs again, silent as could be after his first statement. At this point, he could have done a number of things. He could have run up to her and stopped her from leaving, he could have told her to wait, he could have apologized. It's not like any of these things would have ever crossed his mind though, those things just don't apply to his way of life. As Amber was walking towards the stairs, some thoughts did run through his head however. She had been the only one to have ever left. Perhaps a little too melancholy for his tastes, but it wasn't like he ever cared. She was the only one who left him alone. 

For some reason, the feeling felt upsetting. Or, rather, it was supposed to. In all of Twilight's current emotions, his apathy reigned free. In the back of his mind, he couldn't find himself caring about this very much but at the same time this feeling was new. It was a guilty feeling, one that did want to make him call out and stop her from leaving just so he could apologize. He never did, however, after all- what a horrid break in the character he has worked up to build for himself around others. Being alone was hard sometimes, and he knew that feeling. He liked being alone, he chose to be alone. There was no reason for him to have not been alone, because he chose this. The dark aura around his hand spread to the rest of his body and swirled around in silence like a thick smoke. He swallowed and turned around, looking at his hands again. 

The feeling lingered for a bit longer, but everything in his head overpowered it way too much. His head began to hurt, the screeching pain spread across his head as he looked away from this scene. It was too much.

She was a whole mess of contradictions. With each of her feet gliding over the other, Amber was straining herself. Both emotionally and physically. She forced her eyes to remain dry and focused on the handle of the stairway door. She absolutely refused to fall into old habits. To fall down into the dark hole that had taken her years to crawl out of. 'Hollow it. Hollow everything.' She told herself, as she struggled to keep the temperature unchanged. Yet, it was funny because the more she recited to herself, the more her chest welled.

Subsequently her shoulders began to square and the wolf buried her face into the folds of her scarf. She watched her arms, willed them to remain straight, to not interlock her shaking fingers. Even though they still search desperately for something to grasp. Even now. All the heat and cold boiled inside of her and she could actually feel herself shiver. And for what? Because she was naive? All those years being manipulated and oh god, she still fell for the same routine again. She thought, she had really thought... That she had established something with Twilight. A small sense of trust and security. But there wasn't. There was absolutely nothing for her to hold on to. Wolves were pack animals and Amber knew that it would be her downfall. 

Yet she still couldn't understand, and she doubted that she ever would, why she was still so... Vulnerable. But more importantly, why Twilight could make her feel so vulnerable. She hated how uncomfortable it felt, yet she couldn't get enough of it, and her mind was spinning but she was also too tired to bother. It was as if he had a remote, a switch, connected straight to the emotions that gush and bleed with trauma that she stored deep inside. She hated how he had that much control. And she knew him for less than a month.

As her hand finally grasped the doorknob with a rattle, Amber stared blankly at her reflection. She watched her own eyes. Her mouth and nose. And still it felt like she stared at a stranger. "Freak." She hissed, low enough that she could barely hear it herself. And yet, Amber felt amusement. How could anyone like her, when she didn't even like herself?

Oh yes, she was a whole mess of contradictions.

Twilight balled two fists and closed his eyes, his vision engulfed his whole self and he became painfully aware of everything. As he stood there alone with his thoughts, he felt everything and nothing, the screeching that was contained in his head pierced through his entire body. His senses ascended past general awareness and towards the truth, the painful truth of his entire existence. The forgotten thoughts deep inside his mind unraveled and came pouring forth to a place where he was made aware of them again, all of those awful memories. The wolf, the hunter, the hunted, the survivor...

They all converged at the same point in his thoughts and burst out. The darkness swirling around him in a storm burst out, and before the horrific cloud of destruction actually touched enough to cause permanent damage to anything- including Amber- it was all sucked back in. As he re-absorbed this impossible amount of energy, Twilight let out a pained yell- no, scream even. The sudden release of emotions cause the excess energy to burst forth towards the sky, like a dark beacon which was- fortunately- probably hard to catch in the night time sky. It was potentially painful to those around him, the emotions all came forth in a giant mass of troubling thoughts. It was a jumble, impossible to fully make out, of emotional pain that he let forth before abruptly ending it by dropping to his knees. His eyes were empty, his thoughts were empty, he was empty.

Before she could even turn the knob, a sudden blast of energy slammed her drained body into the door. She could hear the sound of impact, but otherwise, there was no pain. Save for the slight dizziness in her head. What did hurt, however, was the agonizingly loud scream Twilight had released. Amber cringed in pain. It was as if her body had been glued to the door, for she was unable to move from it. Paralysis? With straining effort, she forced her head to turn, looked as far as her eye would allow. And then it hit her. The wave of troubling thoughts and crippling emotions.

"Why?!" Suddenly her mouth was open and her voice came screaming. It scared even herself. "Why did you leave?!" Her body was trembling and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Amber felt possessed, like her body had found a new soul and she merely watched it wallow. But she knew that wasn't the case. "You left... Me..." Amber winced, her throat opening and closing without rhythm and she struggled to breath. "...Alone..." Her vision grew blurry, and that was all she needed to infer that she was crying.

And that was where she drew the line.

Amber forced herself back into her body and reigned control of her limbs. Slowly, she began to slide to the ground, on her hands and knees, the wolf focused her glowing orbs on Twilight. She watched him, unblinking, until he dropped to his knees. Everything stopped. Time stopped. Sound stopped. Yet her tears, they still fall, and they soak the ground which they fall upon. Her eyes, they shine with unsure emotion. It was anger, yet not entirely so. A combination of confusion and uncertainty. Fear. Vulnerability. And slowly her mouth formed words. "How... Could... You."

It wasn't a question. It had been more of an accusation. Amber was crying, but the only sign that she was were her tears. Out of sheer pride, the wolf was up on her feet, moving like a puppet on strings towards Twilight. Her hands were out, braced, as if she were about to strangle him. Yet they just hovered there, she just hovered there. Unsure of anything. The temperature dropped and it spiked, up and down unstably like a roller coaster. 

Once more, she locked her eyes with his.

His gaze shifted downward at Amber's sudden outburst, his ears shifting in movement slightly as they flicked downward and then back up again. He stared at the ground, his eyes cemented to a blank spot on the roof of the building they stood upon. The rest of him stayed stationary even as Amber got closer to him, her arms outstretched in what would have registered as an aggressive stance in his head if he had been looking- if his mind had been fully there. It wasn't. It was like he was somewhere else. Really, mentally, he was. His entire body was filled with an emptiness that replaced the once aggressive emotions spinning about in his head. His breathing was calm, even, he seemed to have a handle on himself so that he wouldn't have gone panicking at the slightest misstep. Twilight was never one to panic. 

What felt like hours was truly just a few minutes as he finally looked back up again. His eyes met hers again, and he stared for a few minutes. He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then closed it again. He appeared to be looking for the right words to say, it was written all over his face, he just seemed so unsure. Perhaps upset and overwhelmed on top of the emotions that began to flood his entire being as he locked eyes with Amber again. There was a few more moments of waiting, no movement, no sound. They were at a stand still, a miraculous point in time where everything simply stopped. That's what it had felt like, it might as well have been exactly that. 

"I just..." He started, his voice was almost a mumble. "My whole life... has been a series of... running away..." 
And that much was true. Running away from everyone, most everyone that he had ever met. There were few moments where he could say he happily conversed with creatures and stayed for long. Only a few came to mind, and he did not willingly stick around them- they stuck around him. He was constantly leaving everyone that came into his life, leaving them or chasing them off. If he had ever faced anyone, it wasn't for long. He couldn't face his problems. He couldn't even face the things that brought him joy or at least contentment.

It was as if his voice pulled her back to life again. Her fingers began to twitch and her joints unlocked. She pulled them back to her person and pulled them through her hair, across her streaming tears and wiping them away. Ears flat to her head, feet moving back to establish distance. Quickly, she pried her eyes away from his exhausted gaze. Because, they reminded her so much of herself. The flurry of emotions she felt previously just melted... Leaving her body with the tears she cried and now she is left feeling hollow again. Another callous to cover a wound. Her heart must be full of callouses now. Almost.

Hearing. That was all she'd ever been able to do. But now she didn't even want that. His words, they picked and pulled at her scars and callouses and she can bare the gush of emotions, pain, bleeding through. She covered her ears, moving away to escape. Yes, run away again. Amber. Deeper and deeper into her denial. The denial that haunted her and will haunt her always. The temperature plummeted drastically, leaving the air so brittle and thin that it was ready to snap. She scared herself to be able to see the vapors of her breath. Amber watched in the stillness as the vapors faded, only to appear again each time she exhaled. 

She didn't need help. No, she didn't. She was fine. She's always fine, so why won't anyone ever believe her? Everything that's happened to her... "Everything... That's happened... To me..." Her heart wrenched and ached, just when she thought she would never feel pain again. "I did... To myself..." Tears welled and she fell along with them, slipping into a crouch with her tail pressed to her form. "It's my fault- I can't- I can't face it- "

A soft canine whine left her throat. "So I run away too."

Twilight swallowed hard. He blinked, and life returned to his once dead-looking eyes. Their usual shine now present, though he didn't appear happy. His face was a clear mix of regret and sadness, they swirled around as the only emotions occupying his entire being at that current moment. He looked like he had a lot to say, everything to say, but the sentences wouldn't come out. Words stumbled over themselves in his head, and a thick static masked his thought process. His mind was so full that it might as well have been empty, because he did not know how to deal with the current problems that he faced regarding his emotions.

The sharp cold air around Amber hit him, and he shivered slightly. The extreme change in temperature would have destroyed a normal mobian, but his biology was so absolutely different that the only thing it did for him was make him feel slightly uncomfortable. He got up onto his feet, still in a crouch, putting his arms over his knees so that his hands hung off lazily. He looked normal again, or at least, he appeared to be how he usually was as he became aware of the world around him. His upset look became his usual apathetic one. On the inside, barely anything had changed, it was still a battle of feeling after feeling for him. 

He looked at Amber plainly, sort of distanced from her upset feeling- though he could recognize that she was feeling upset from the tears. He frowned, more so trying to grasp at the feeling she displayed. He felt upset too, but no tears came down. If he was mobian, would he cry? Who knows. Thinking of all of this running away, thinking of his problems with all of these emotions, he looked at her almost in wonderment because it was just something he had avoided all this time. 

"What does that feel like?" He asked, his incredibly bluntness was probably very inappropriate. "... I wouldn't know." He added, as if the words would justify his weird and out-of-place question.

Amber felt undone. Why won't the tears stop flowing? Why won't they stop melting the glue and concrete she'd used to build the walls she put up? Now, she too was exhausted. Her eyes yearned to close, but she knew that would only allow for the build up of liquid in her eyes to spill. She wanted so badly to lay down and drift away to sleep. Reboot her system and her mind and wake up as numb as any other day. Numb to the truth, to the blood staining her hands and the pile of grave markers building from day to day.

The sound of Twilight's shifts were like jerks towards her senes. Keeping her alert, conscious. Yet Amber stayed where she was. She didn't dare, oh no, to move her line of sight to the shadow fox near her. She couldn't, because she knew she would meet his gaze, and they would lock eyes. Like they always seem to do, and it was such a wonderful thing. But not right now. No, at that moment, the feeling of his gaze on her made her shudder and wish that she could become invisible, disappear. She didn't want him to see her like this, she never wanted anyone to see her like this. His eyes, oh God, his eyes. He was boring holes into her and it made her squirm.

And when he spoke, she considered her urge to lose consciousness. Her head was spinning from all the crying and emotional rush. She figured more of it would allow her to shut down. "Like..." Her voice was shaking, and she couldn't juggle breathing and speaking at the same time. "Wanting to be dead, but being afraid of dying." Her hands were shaking, perhaps from the cold that surrounded them, but still she forced them to move through her hair. 

"It's like... You were never born... You were just dropped into life- no, not even life... An endless, nightmarish maze. And you run because if you stop moving... Your past comes back to get you-" She began to chuckle, a bitter, broken sound. "But no matter where you go or how fast you run, you just seem to get yourself further and further away from the way out, where you want to be... But you don't even know where that is."

Amber was close. Her body began to sway as the flood of emotions burst through. Just a little more. "Because you're lost. And you just want to go back to the home you've never known."

She shut down.

Twilight stared, blinked, then stared again. 
"Is that what crying feels like..." He uttered to himself, loud enough for Amber to hear. He moved in closer for a moment, hesitated and held himself back. This sure would be awkward. He felt the need to comfort her, however, a strange need to comfort her. As if he could feel himself understanding her explanation a little too much, he clutched his chest slightly and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, this time for an extended amount of time as they sat there on the rooftop in the nighttime silence. He swallowed hard yet again, trying to process everything before opening his eyes and setting his sights on Amber once again. 

He moved in again, this time trying to wrap his arms around her. A hug, perhaps. Yes, a hug. Though their limbs were probably tangled in a strangely awkward position, he tried to give her a hug- a gentle one, a warm one. Nothing too tight, but it was clear that he did hug her even if it was not something she could feel. He had seen mobians do it to each other before, out of happiness, or to cheer each other up. He didn't quite understand it fully, but he thought that she might. 

Hopefully, she would.

Everything was a haze now. Vision a vignetting blur of images, slowly flickering on an off like a loose lamp swinging from side to side within a dark room. She felt as if she'd been transported into a submarine, where every sound, every sense, was distant. Echoing far from where she was. Her mind had fallen into a lockdown, leaving her body and receeding into itself. She was aware, yet not conscious. A happy place, where she was detached from life by a screen. Like a dream. 

Breathing in, breathing out. She caught a whiff of a foreign, familiar scent. Her eyes moved slowly in their sockets, catching a glimmer off of black fur and arms holding her. It scared her. But she couldn't react. She was confused, and also afraid. Was Twilight suffocating her? What was this? Her fatigued mind was too slow to register.

The light grew dimmer for a moment, and she let out a gentle exhale. Ears twitched, she bobbed her head up to look at the fox, even though it did no good. She wanted to know what was going on.