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The sun is far above them high and ruling when it all comes crashing back to her. They're waiting in one of the many alleys that Baldur’s Gate has to offer. In the larger scheme of things, it means nothing.
Two buildings filled with unimportant things right behind a large and lavish home, owned by whoever, she did not care to learn. They would learn soon enough anyway, she is reminded of this by the white-haired vampire's soft cursing while he fiddles with a back door lock.
Daytime now sure but, well, she trails off as she thinks it. Confused and zoning out on the walls she wonders why in the world she knows this place. Why she knows what it looks like in the night. It is not a memory from now as her mind recalls smooth stone where cracks now lay, posters where all are torn and unfamiliar.
Theres a song stuck in her head low and nagging and nothing she has ever heard before. A memory of a memory.
It is here when the sun is far up, the cracks are deep and the posters are ripped and unknown that she begins to finally remember something. No longer a memory of a memory as she feels it in her bones as it calls back to her- her memory.
Warm hands meet her now ungloved ones, covers discarded onto the rocky ground. He is always so gentle when he holds any part of her even if only her hand. It is a type of gentle she weeps over not understanding how to give him the same. He says that she does but when her nails almost instinctivly dig into the skin so carefully placed within her own she is reminded of what she is and is not.
“You're thinking too hard”
He says it low like a secret for them and takes her other hand, beginning a slow dance. The large house that sits before the alley is home to an event with music loud enough to pour into the quieter pockets around it. They cannot feel it the way the people inside can but the way Enver moves in tune with her may make her believe they know the rhythm better anyway.
“We have traded places tonight it seems”
The dance within itself is a slow thing and in her movements, she tries to convey an apology, a sorrow of sorts. I don't want to hurt you, but I do. I want to rip you open and crawl inside of you, is that not terrifying? Why do you not cower? Phemine was not made to open like a corpse at the hands of a man. She was meant to be the opener, the mutilator. The bloody offspring made to be unloved by any being with a sense about them. The love in his eyes went against any god she could have believed in by the start of this night.
“Share your mind with me”
His own moves go against her own and yet they still dance like the courtly and highly appraised people they were so far from. His moves said the words he would say out loud while her own were a secret, but one she was willing to share in a portion. He would know the rest, he always did.
“You are so… kind with me.” you touch me as if I am the finest silk you fear to ruin, you touch me even when I am covered in blood like I am the white bird they say is pure. You know it, you know I'm not pure I am its antithesis in all entirety and you still touch me like I am the bare bones of the fragile sick animals you fed on the streets when we were kids.
“I am sad to not be the same to you”
“You are, just in your own way”
“Is it not painful? Exhausting? Disappointing?”
“It is painful to cut myself on the metal I work with, exhausting to stay up writing letters to nobles I hate, and disappointing that we cannot just take the world together at the drop of a hat. But being with you relieves these aches, it does not make them.”
She makes a noise of disagreement and turns her face from his but the smile that graces her features forces its way through her facade.
“That was disgusting”
They both laugh and it's the first sound other than the music that Phemine is sure travels through the space. Honeyed and just as rhythmic to her.
“You asked”
Silence falls over as they shift attention back to their dance. Her apology turns into her in a truer form. Her movements are rigid in some ways and the way she moves leaves the smallest white scratch lines over the palm of his hand. She does not see it in his face or hear it in his words but the way his body responds to her own is an answer. He is utterly infatuated with her in the form given by the brutal father that she came from. A monster in purest and he would rather let the beast sink its claws in his skin than see her wane in worry for his safety. He is safe with her. She could kill him and he would never fear it, fear her. For dying by her hand is the gentlest way he could go.
“I got it!”
The sun is beaming down into the old alley and she is forced to stand and believe the love she has found in these people could be equal to the storybook love she finds pieced in her memories. Phemine shakes her head and sighs, kicking herself off the wall.
“It's about time”
“Well, why don't you try to pick the lock next time?”
She just rolls her eyes and follows the rest of the group into the room. The recollection is already beginning to fade, burnt at the edges by a time so long ago now. Enver had told her himself who she was, the past they shared. It came with cautious disbelief because any man could spin a story.
But not just any man could look at her the way Enver could.
She would give anything to forget again.