Vignette
There were many things Aivey learned to expect. A handful more of those she'd come to accept; E'sere was a vain, often self-centered, goal-oriented person. She expected that. Donavon was his right-hand man (sometimes quite literally), the two had something she probably wouldn't... something she wouldn't ever understand. She accepted that.
She had a knife.
Donavon fucked up.
Aivey replayed the conversation with E'sere in her mind. She'd replayed it a handful of times... enough that she'd lost count beyond her pitiful set of learned numbers (one two three four five six seven eight nine ten)... E'sere'd once promised she'd learn the rest of the numbers just from that base. He'd not exactly lied, not really.
Donavon fucked up.
E'sere hated him, and not her. Aivey imagined that; imagined a different way for the conversation to have gone. He'd have accused Donavon of trapping her, he'd have cut Donavon instead of her, he'd have not looked at Donavon instead of avoiding her and he'd have told Donavon to leave. Not her. More than anything, Aivey imagined it was Donavon who E'sere called a fuck up and the only thing she didn't change was that it hurt Donavon to hear that more than it did getting cut.
Aivey leaned forward and rested her chin on her knee. The tip of the blade she held poised against the top of her opposite foot. She twirled it gently, cradling the pommel in her palm as her thumb brushed the hilt.
She'd accepted that in the end (long before ever reaching it) E'sere was right. They'd come from two different worlds. His was of glitter and glam, hers was mostly of revenge and blood. He had Morelenth, she had been twice overlooked and would never known that part of his world. Aivey didn't exactly lament that loss, only what it meant. In accepting it, Aivey'd accepted another fact and it was that E'sere was too good for her.
That'd been the problem all along, not just for her but the whole cause. Better people than J'lor and Nera, than her father's men and the people who followed them...
But not her father. In her eyes, he was better than anyone she'd ever known and anyone she would ever imagine. He was the exception. Just as Aivey expected and accepted that she'd never be good enough to please him, she accepted that she'd never be good enough to keep E'sere.
It'd taken as long as she'd expected it to. Days into their new mainland home, and he'd booted her aside.
Acted like she was an errant slut, one of the many from his past. E'sere who'd slept with more people in a five-day stretch than she had in a five-year period treated her like a slut.
But she wasn't angry at him. Oh, the anger built alright. It built and it mutated and it strengthened, but none of it was directed at E'sere. She'd done him wrong, even in trying to do something right. Aivey felt nauseous in thinking of it, the act, and her skin flushed and heated in an entirely unpleasant way.
The hilt of the knife slipped away, Aivey's sweat slicked palm the culprit. She watched the knife teeter on its point before it tilted and toppled to the ground. And as it lay there, Aivey glanced at her half-reflection in the blade.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to go back to E'sere and beg his forgiveness, to admit to him all that she accepted and expected, to swear any number of promises to him and mean each and every one just for the chance of him taking her back.
Aivey wasn't that girl. Aivey told herself that, pounded that into her head until that voice shut-up and the girl looking back at her from the knife's edge died. When she did, Aivey picked the knife up. Holding it at an angle and tilting her head at a similar angle, she studied the new reflection.
It was reflexive. Quite like the way she smiled at her father whenever he smiled at her. When the reflection smiled, Aivey smiled back and then ever so carefully - reverently - quietly, Aivey hid the blade safely away upon her person. She stretched until her joints popped and her bones ached, until the stiff numbness of her muscles warmed and the sharp aches dulled. And when she was done with that, Aivey stood.
She had a man to see and something told her in a sweet, deliriously hungry little voice that it wouldn't be easy to find him.