PISTOLS AT DAWN // DOUBLE-JOINING

[TYDEUS]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Whenever Tydeus did his job, he did it with the weight of his own obedience settled on his shoulders. For Valkyr, he was broken by the physical damage; he learned his place with his face in the dirt and their claws under his skin. But the lion had learned his place not when Bones put him down, but when he chose to stay there. The truth was that he could take the pain for as long as the other kept it up, right until the day he died. What he couldn't take was the knowledge that he chose not to. What was asked of him wasn't always painful or strenuous. Sometimes it was so simple and light that he fooled himself into believing that there would be no harm in listening — there was always harm. Every interaction was Tyd walking on a razor blade. He could get himself killed with one misstep. That fear hadn't set in right away. He'd been defiant, angry. Snapping jaws and snarls, like a feral animal rushing the bars of its cage. It took a few repeats for the unrelenting pain to settle in, and from then he'd almost made it easy.

Maybe Valkyr is right to call him a slaver's toy. Sometimes he wonders if that's what Bones sees in him, something entertaining. But if that were the case, he supposes that he couldn't be more entertaining than a group of people who shared his tastes. (At the same time, they seem to be easily replaced — why else would they be here? He shouldn't put any value on himself, so he doesn't.) Like the other lion, Tydeus finds it terrifying. All of it, everything. The fact that early on into this thing, he'd perk up a little bit whenever Bones unchained him, eat the food he offered without shame. When he stopped being a person and started being a house pet, and then when he started being something else. It's scary. He doesn't want to be different.

He can feel the stranger's eyes on him as Bones talks. Tyd doesn't look back, just stares at the ground and then glances up at the larger lion. "You shouldn't be asking me," he says quietly. There's no point in that.