isolt griffin
Hatred was something Isolt had not oft felt in life, the glowing embers of ire having never taken to the tinder of her beautifully forgiving heart. Always had she tried to understand, to forgive. Never had she professed to actually loathe anything or anyone... until now. She had felt it with the spitting of every obscenity, every poisonous curse whispered into her innocent ears by Risque's serpentine tongue and with the damning blow of every punishment exacted against her. With every raised fist and silver device she had felt the festering hatred within her blossoming, blackened petals unfurling to release the corrosive venom that was her secret wrath. And now, as the wall of flame snaked into every crevice of Risque's dominion, feeding upon it as the matron had done the souls of those she kept, Isolt watched as that hatred shriveled to ash and was carried from her upon the back of the night's cool zephyr. It was unclear whether she might ever prove capable of wholly moving beyond what had transpired here; and yet the sight of roaring flame overcoming Syn, light cast into the darkness, might begin the arduous purification of what had been tainted.

Isolt's attention is only coaxed from the mounting flame and the warmth which it casts upon her upturned face by the low rumble of the emerald-eyed man's rolling baritone. Just these few syllables seem to highlight the completeness of her solitude; the loving familiarity of the two men annotating the degree of loneliness to which she has tumbled. The mention of "home" drives a cruel spire into an already tender heart, for Isolt knows all too well that no such place exists for her anymore. It is for this reason that she hesitates when he addresses her, delicate brow furrowing as she peers first at the ground before meeting his gaze with her own. "I don't know, it's been a very long time since I've gone home," she whispers, the syllables somehow rising above the crackling roar of the building inferno. In truth, the young woman could very well have returned to Raven's home and the company, albeit strained, that was promised therein. But it seemed she could venture no further in this life without finally facing the demons that lingered in the predatory silence just beyond her every waking moment. After all, there was only one place that had ever been home. "But," she continues after a drawing pause, "I guess there's only one way to find out."

This is all she seems capable of offering him, this and last piercing glance into depthless emerald before the copper-crowned girl turns to make her last departure from this place that had been their shared nightmare. She does not intend for him to follow, for surely the promise of home and this Nadya who awaits him will prove a far grander venture than shadowing a wayward vampire to a locale unknown. And so tension drags its rigidity up the curved length of her spine, anxiety prickling a glacial chill at the base of her neck, with the sensation of his presence not far in her wake. He may have rendered her aide, might have saved her from the hellish depths of Syn's belly... at yet is he not the reason for her presence there to begin with? Had it not been he would had cast this first of many stones?

It is homage to the intensity with which she desires to be home that Isolt does not move to evade him, nor is she troubled by her current, rather scandalous, attire. Her thoughts are only for the home that she had left so unceremoniously, and her dearest and lifelong friend who would surely believe herself abandoned by the redhead who had never returned to her that night. Never since had Isolt dared to return to the apartment she had shared with Harley, though she had wanted it more than anything else, for fear of what she might discover. The death of Harley's parents at the hands of vampires during the girls' adolescence had been a heavy-handed blow to the duo, a hand that had sowed the seed of prejudice, of hatred, within the heart of her raven-maned friend. Isolt had justified her prolonged absence more than once with the affirmation that she would have rather died a thousand deaths than see that hatred directed at her. But even the thought of Harley's scorching ire was not enough to keep the redhead at bay any longer. Come what may, she would, finally, go home.

The ardent pace she had adopted slows as Isolt traverses the entrance to their building, her body growing static as the young woman gives pause at one door in particular. The door to apartment twenty-six is chipped, scuffed from a thousand different caresses, the timeworn number six hanging loose and upside-down on its slender peg. Deftly the crimson-haired woman raises a single hand to retrieve the key that, as it always had (and despite vehement protesting on the behalf of their landlord), rested snuggly within the frame just above the door. The cool metal is turned over and over in a now-wildly trembling hand as Isolt looks to the emerald eyed man she knows has followed her here. It cannot be said why she looks to him... only that she does, for a lingering few moments before resolutely moving to open the door. "Harley." It is a tentative few syllables whispered into the darkness before slender fingers cast the expanse of their living room into brilliant fluorescent light. "Harley... it's me."

And yet even as the words leave her lips, Isolt senses the emptiness of the space that had once been akin to the pleasant warmth of a lover's embrace. It is, despite the presence of so many familiar things... hollow. Only when her eyes caress the items she had known so well does Isolt begin to realize that all is not as it was before. The oddly-comfortable leather coach is there, as is the small circular table that rests within their generously-appointed "breakfast nook", but no longer is there the slight clutter resting upon their kitchen countertops, no longer are there a slew of jackets perched upon weathered hooks... and no longer are there pictures hanging upon the far wall of their living area. "No." The word falls from her lips as a lament, the lightened rectangles upon the wall where once pictures had hung causing hope to sink as a weighty stone within her belly.

The timely click of heels is all that echoes in the hollow space as Isolt nearly sprints to the room that had, once, belonged to Harley. She knows, somehow, before the yellowed light flickers into every shaded crevice that all she will find, all that awaits her, is emptiness. Isolt stands in the midst of the gutted room in a moment of staggering disbelief before sinking to her knees, a muffled and somber noise thrumming against trembling lips. All she had ever yearned for from the moment she had awoken within the bowels of Risque's expertly-crafted dungeon had been to go home, to return to the only person who had ever truly understood her and to bask in the glow that was this familiarity. But instead she had stayed away... kept at bay by her own selfish aversion to the hatred that had loomed as some spiteful dark cloud. As much as the thought sickened her, Isolt had abandoned Harley as surely as the world had abandoned her.

It is a notion that has her crumble.

"I should have come sooner," a choked whisper echoes into the room's barrenness, speaking perhaps to the man who lingers just beyond; speaking, perhaps, to the ghosts of what once had been. "I was so... selfish and I left her alone. I- I should have just come home..."