"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
The sand sprays around him, the rough granules clinging to his sweat-covered sides. Sabrael welcomes the heat, though. The sun bakes his sloping back but he puts his face into the light anyway, lets his corneas rage against the blinding bright. It is no less than he deserves. It has been a long time since he has been home – too long – and the lost time splinters him. The last thing he remembers is the Forest: lace curling the edges of his blurry vision, the slurred sound of too many voices too close, the rage of red, red. After that, (after he stumbled, blindly, out of the woods with his senses no longer intact) the beast had taken over. After that, he had lost himself for days, weeks, months.
The dragon burned through the last vestige of winter and the entirety of spring.
He wonders, now, if the purple manipulator had known what would happen. If he sensed what lurked beneath the flesh and sinew of a stranger, knew that he’d be powerless against such an insatiable hunger for freedom? He has no answers to his musings, only memories. Those are dark and ghastly pictures that he is similarly powerless to ignore in his mind. He tries to forget the irrational slaughter of so many innocent creatures, tries to blank the coppery taste of blood soaking in-between his teeth. He tries not to remember the fear, the way it had lit in his prey’s eyes – the way the dragon had thrilled at it. He tries not to remember the death, the way it had leeched the light from his prey’s eyes – the assured confidence of each kill.
He tries not to remember, but the nightmares do not let him forget.
Sabrael sinks into the sand just after the tide line until the heat is blistering. Then, with a decisive snap of leathery wings, he moves inland. Each step towards the jungle is painful. He thinks he will see her bones somewhere, splayed and bleached by the sun (fissured and fractured by Him even before her untimely death). But even as he winds deeper through the vines and snaking, curling roots into the heart of the place, he never does. The speckled stallion breathes a sigh of relief when he sees no sign of her.
It is too quiet. You’ve been gone too long, he thinks; the dragon snarls within him. A deep frown creases his dusky lips, leaves a dent in his angular face. He considers leaving Ischia, maps out the path from the Forest to here. He’s seen it from the sky, after all – has scoured all the crannies and nooks and secret places with cold, reptilian precision. But home is here. Home is where Ashley had promised to take Wallace. Home is their oasis of sand tossed like an afterthought above the other lands. He will not leave, because they should be home. He will stay, because the beast wants nothing more than to fly away – and it is time he tamed it.
The words fell hard and solid between them, the thump of iron at their feet, weighted down in her hollow voice by the depth of pain she buried away from their prying eyes. Even to her ears, it sounded like a cold accusation, sharp and biting and hurt. You left me.
Her breath had caught when she saw him, the familiar sight not as welcome as she wanted it to be. A stab mercilessly punched deep into her breast. She had nearly turned away, had almost not approached and gone back to her stupid cave filled with memories of crying alone, sleeping alone, dying alone. Of learning that she was pregnant, slowly growing painfully bigger and hating each morning more and more for it. Alone. And now with twins; white and purple and nothing like her. And everything like him.
The sting of abandonment swelled within her, though she knew it was not fair for her to feel it. He owed her nothing, was not even a friend. Just a boy she had met and enjoyed time with. Just a man that had stayed away from a disgrace that only got what she deserved and no more.
Her jaw clenched tight as a lump formed in her throat, and sharp and wounded brown eyes held his evenly with a shadow of a challenge in them. Why didn't you just stay gone? Why did you bother to come back. She faced him squarely with a petite body, purposefully shielding the lace at her hips from easy view. The addition of his wings were ignored, and the fiery wildness in his eyes, too. He had always been impressive; these changes didn't alter that though she wished they would have.
She suddenly couldn't stay any longer, couldn't be in his presence. Her lace revealed as she turned, reminding him that she was used and worthless, but she didn't care. An impossibly soft and flowing tail whipped at her flank, a gift from Ashley as he'd grown out her hair that had always been so matted and tangled and then chopped clean off. Like a child's.
She threw the words over her shoulder.
And somehow she made Welcome home sound like Go to hell.
A mousy-brown smudge that rises above the sand, stands like she is still in motion (or wants to be). He thinks her a mirage at first, a fleeting, fever-dream of his dragon’s creation. He’s had so many lately -
The heat comes first, a heaviness that spreads from his belly to his chest and up into his throat. It feels like his innards are crisping in hellfire, like he will melt from the inside-out. But he never does. The beast always pulls him back from the brink when it takes over (or maybe he never toes the line between life and death, even, it only seems he does). When he wakes in control, Sabrael has retained only glimpses of his frantic flights and blood baths. It is better, he tells himself later, but wonders. What have I done?
Heat rises in him again at the sight of Wallace, but before despair drowns him, he realizes it is an altogether different kind of fire. He burns at a memory he has grasped tightly in order to remember. Purple. Red. Forest. Lace. Lace. It curls around the edges of her now, despite her continuous shifting, hugging her hips like a shawl she would rather not wear. Every detail of that day comes rushing back then, besides a few missing pieces from the Irishman’s fog. Most of the details afterwards he should remember too, but doesn’t. He should recall following the guardian party home, splashing onto the shores and finding her a place. He should remember standing outside of her shelter while she slept, well or unwell, and soothing her in the latter case.
But those memories would be false. None of it happened.
There will be a child, he thinks, but she is alone. Sabrael takes her in, fully, measuring the angle of her shoulders, the set in her jaw (all hard and square) before realizing he is her mirror. He softens his stance, relaxes his wings so that they pull jagged lines in the sand as he moves forward. She launches her first grenade and it stops him cold. You’ve been gone. There is no pity in her eyes though she sees the changes in him. They have both changed in ways incomprehensible and unfair, but she spares him nothing while he means to give her everything. Every apology, every “I’m sorry” and more that he could not do before. She turns and leaves him with a parting welcome home that makes him feel anything but.
Before fire scorched him from the inside out, he may have walked away and let both of them cool down. But he is remade (burned and blood-soaked and wild) and he rises to her challenge. The roan pumps his leather wings and lifts into the salty air with ease. He glides just ahead of Wallace and lands easily in front of her, close enough to exhale smoke in the space between them (remnants of the dragon’s quiet rage). “There is nothing I would enjoy more than ripping that monster apart limb by limb for what he did to you.” Gold-flecked eyes close forcefully because he can feel himself slipping away, giving into the heat and his murderous thoughts. He pauses for a long time, too long to be comfortable, before daring to look at her again.
When he opens his eyes, anguish meets her stone glint. There is no way to tell her, though. No easy way, he amends. He is a monster just like the one who tried to ruin her. Even worse, he’s not fully in control of himself, not easily reined in. “I’m sorry,” the words are simple, the meaning so much more. I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for not being there for you. I’m sorry for what I might do.
The guilt of his recent activity—or lack thereof—has haunted him for quite some time. This is what he has experienced in his short time here. The wracking guilt of not being there when the apocalypse came raining down upon them all. The confusion of his battered heart to know which direction he should take; the children he’d sired who would have to pay for it. And the woman who had loved him—the one he’d abandoned to the belly of a beast.
That he had left Wallace alone to suffer at the hands of another could not begin to grate on him more than the others. The fault was his and no others. Lacey. The name she’d whispered there in the forest in the aftermath of what had happened to her, the name she had been branded with. The stench of blood and the smell of sex that wafted from her. She was more than that. And she had never known her worth…
And now thought she had none.
The disturbance in the jungle immediately alerted Ashley to his presence. Sabrael’s journeys had taken him across the mainland in search of Kerberos, who has since seemingly disappeared. The bastard would pay dearly—when they could find him.
And they had a woman to take care of; and her children to protect.
Ashley’s eyes went dark as he felt the cold chilling presence of Wallace stirring, and he apparated to where they were. Stepping seamlessly out of the void from one end of the Island to the other, he keeps his distance from Wallace—not sure if his presence here is wanted any more than she wanted Sab to be there. He nods to the dragon, mentally acknowledging his pleasantries—he knew that they would be forgiven for not being uttered aloud.
Words like honey dripped from Ashley’s tongue, deep, and warm—cautious. He stepped towards her, his eyes trained on her face. She was beautiful, even without the curious patterning on her hide. But the last thing she needed to be was reminded of them.
“Hello, Wallace.”
and the girls caressed me down ughhh that's that lovin' sound
She heard him lift from the ground to escape and that knife in her breast dug deeper. It was irrational, illogical, to feel so hurt that he would just abandon her again when at that moment she was the one trying to storm out of there. It shouldn't matter if he walked off too, or flew away, but it did. Her jaw clenched tighter and stupid, fragile eyes dared to moisten. Why did she have to lash out, push him away and make him leave again? Why did she have to care at all?
But he didn't leave.
He dropped to the ground before her and she stopped short with eyes slightly widened in surprise, a billowing steam of his breath between them. It must have been his, because hers had suddenly gone missing again, buried deep in lungs that refused to drag more oxygen into her.
"There is nothing I would enjoy more than ripping that monster apart limb by limb for what he did to you." Almost a growl, a gravelly sound that made her blood course swifter and her head turn away in shame. Just as she did, he shielded her from something dark and new in his eyes, a subtle shift that she couldn't quite catch before his eyelids fell and his walls went up. She wished his words hadn't felt so good, hadn't felt so safe. He would have still said them had she been anyone else. She knew she was not special; not to him, not to anyone.
They had also stung, though, and her eyes remained away from him even though he couldn't see the self-blame screaming so loudly there. It was her fault. She had brought this on herself. Maybe it had not been done to her, but done because of her. It was all her fault. But her gaze was drawn back to him as he held so very still, steely again so he wouldn't see her as weak and fragile as she felt just then, wary of what more he might say.
He was quiet for a long while, struggling to batten down the hatches, lock the cage in his mind. And she was tempted to reach for him, tempted to lightly brush her muzzle to his and seek his hidden truths he clutched so close. Her own were laid so bare. But nobody ever touched her anymore, not since that day she was found so ruined. And maybe it wasn't fair to want his secrets, to stand on even ground when this was her own doing, so she withdrew with barely a breath across his heated nose, her eyes and heart hardening against the vulnerability.
Those swimming eyes of his opened to reveal a pain she couldn't understand, even as it stirred its match deep inside her chest. A suffering, a sorrow, a guilt. "I'm sorry," he said, and the full meaning behind it was clear. She hated how strongly those two simple words could affect her. She hated how she must have needed to hear them, from anyone or maybe just him, and how her anger slipped from her needing grasp, desperate to stay strong before him. How quickly she wilted. But she found being strong was a losing battle.
"Hello, Wallace."
She flinched violently, startled by his smooth voice from seemingly nowhere, and subconsciously stepped closer to Sabrael as though she could put him between her and Ashley. Bitterness flashed in her eyes and she side-stepped away when she realized what she'd done, her ears pulling back in frustration at being so jumpy when it was only Ashley, not something to fear.
Ashley had come so silently, and was so careful and cautious as though approaching a terrorized little creature. She was both annoyed and grudgingly pleased by it; annoyed because she didn't want them to see her as something so fragile and broken and damaged. But pleased that he would consider she might not want him there and come to her so uncertainly, put the power in her hands when she was so very powerless.
And she didn't want him there, she'd wanted them before when she needed them. When she needed a strength she could no longer find within herself.
But they'd left her. Alone.
All they'd cared about was dumping her on Ischian soil and being free of her again. They didn't really care.
And now nobody ever would.
What do you want, she forced out quietly, her breath stolen away as her glare avoided them both.
She doesn’t know that the words are for her and her alone.
When he says that he will tear Kerberos apart, it is a promise that he will come unhinged. That, when he frees the beast caged beneath his breast, he will risk everything (and everybody) in order to avenge her. Because his control is tenuous at best. He does not know what will happen if he relinquishes himself in his entirety to the dragon. The molten fire will char his throat. His body will bend and his bones break until there is not a shred of Sabrael left, only the behemoth that blots out the sky.
He’s Become before, of course, but not by choice.
Blood had already salted his lips and desecrated his innocence, clawed at whatever youthful dreams he’d still harbored for a better life, a better world for his presence in it. Mercifully, he cannot remember what died to feed the beast, only remembers the spongy gristle of them between his molars. He knows, now, what can happen if he goes there again. Chaos will erupt – or not – and he’s willing to find out for her. He’s ready to stake other lives on permanently penalizing her perpetrator. She thinks he would do it for anyone. She is wrong.
He waits for Wallace’s blessing, but she turns away instead, draws into the shell of herself. The dragon has no reference for sorrow (only sees a weakness that Sabrael is blind to) so it retreats within him. Even with his eyes closed, the stallion can feel the smoke moving in the air between them, stirred by her shifting. He thinks she will touch him, reach out and span the space he so carefully put between their bodies. But in the long, terrible seconds, she stays away.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it fades like the smoke into the warm Ischian air. The long, aching seconds tick on in silence but not without change. The bay roan can see it in every part of her. His words corrode her strength slowly, desperately so, chiseling away the hard lines and edges she built out of necessity. She’s always been tough like the coconuts that fall, unaffected, onto the hard-packed sand at the edge of the jungle. But even if Kerberos had broken her open, Sabrael knows she, too, is just as meaty on the inside. This will not destroy her – not if he has any say in it.
A smile like low-dawn starts on his face. Now is the time to touch her, he can feel it as sure as the heart thudding in his chest. But just as he stretches his neck to brush her cheek whisper-soft, she startles into him. He doesn’t see the threat at first, and his hackles (and the dragon) raise. But when he turns, it is only Ashley standing in the sand a distance away. He blinks back his greeting, sharing the silent acknowledgment of responsibility they both feel. Wallace is on alert, again, and he knows he’s missed his chance. “We are here for you. But if you want us gone, we can be too.”“I can be” his eyes seem to say. It is not what he wants. He regrets the last time he walked away and left her with Ashley, if only because he wanted it to be him instead.
02-26-2017, 11:35 PM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2017, 11:37 PM by Ashley.)
Ashley is shattered.
That Wallace would turn from him and spit words at him as if there was nothing between them—familiar feelings, love, lust, and all the affection of family—cut him further than he would ever let the dragon see. Sabrael’s feelings for Wallace were not as subtle as he wished they would be, but it warmed the ginger-king’s heart to know that there was someone who truly would walk through fire for the pain this young woman had suffered. Wallace was so much more than a pretty face.
She was the day late friend that he had found—a woman that could have been his, had she now belonged to someone else. She would always be the dragon’s, just as the dragon would always be hers. Two hurt souls, passing as ships in the night. While the magician could exhert his influence over them—he knew he wouldn’t have to. He could only hope that these two would find each other on their own.
He bows his head slowly, the red hair falling in front of his eyes, shielding her from seeing the pain she has caused him—the tumultuous hurt that has been burning his brain for months. Didn’t she see that they were trying? Couldn’t she know that they had been searching for months to find the man who had taken such a perfect porcelain doll, and cracked her beyond repair? He supposed not, but he held her with all the tender grasp as one would handle a newborn baby—beautiful and perfect.
Wallace’s innocence had long been lost, but she was still beautiful and perfect. Her children were innocent in all this, and Ashley had found it in his heart to welcome them to their home… they could not be blamed for their father’s sins—and the ginger man would not lay that burden at their feet. They, like their mother, had his protection.
Always.
Even if it cost him his own existence.
Ashley looks slightly to catch Sabrael’s words, nodding. He would not be in her presence if it was not something she wished for. Pain of that magnitude has no scale—and they had a villain to find. Sabrael’s hint at responsibility for her and what happened is evident. Ashley feels it too. The burden that someone could come onto their shores and hurt one of their own. But that it was Wallace—that was a sin that could not be remedied.
Soft words then, hoping that they will get through to the beautiful grullo, are uttered just barely above a whisper—husky, and with all the meaning that they could—stemming back the tears that Ashley never cried.
“We love you. And however we can help… That is what I want for you. Even if it means never seeing me again. I just want you to know… I love you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I will regret those actions until the day I die.”
He smiled slowly and her breath caught in her throat. There was a heaviness between them, she suddenly realized, a charged quiet that set her heart pacing uncertainly. She thought he might reach for her, might touch her, and she groaned inwardly at how she wished it were so. But that was stupid, so stupid. Of course he wouldn't. How could anyone but the one who had done this ever want to touch her.
She swallowed, her heart stuttering in her breast, but then there was Ashley and she startled into Sabrael only to rebound right off him, frustrated with herself. Her glare avoided them both as she asked what Ashley wanted. But it was Sabrael who spoke first, his voice a molten heat that should burn her, singe her and not feel so soothing and safe. We are here for you. But if you want us gone, we can be too. Her expression wilted into uncertainty again as she was drawn back to his face. I can be, he didn't say. No, she didn't want him gone. But she couldn't say it. Couldn't be so vulnerable.
Why did this feel so incredibly terrifying? Here, they gave her that sense of being in control, the freedom to make her own choices, when she was still so powerless and lost. And yet somehow she was afraid, because she never seemed to make the right decisions and they would let her make more mistakes and become even more worthless in their eyes, even more of a burden to them. There was a knot in her breast she couldn't smooth away, tangled and messy and painful. It stung her, the desire to be something, mean something to someone and know so certainly that she never could. She never would.
Their kindness cut her so very deeply.
Her gaze slid hesitantly to Ashley then as he spoke, so much more fragile and vulnerable than she ever wanted them to see. We love you, he stabbed into her. She shut her eyes over the tears that threatened to spill over. I love you, he added soon after, and she choked on blades in her throat, shaking her head and wishing it would deflect his words from ever reaching her. He killed her with his soft words, with the meaning she couldn't possibly accept. With his sweet lies of comfort.
I can't -I need to go, she whispered as her gaze fell away from them, her heart in tatters and only ripping apart even more. Her chest hurt, so tight and empty as though there were a gaping hole she could feel but not see. She turned from them, her movements stiff, and walked blindly though her head was raised, a tear finally sliding down her soft, brown cheek.
Because she was not weak, and she refused to shatter to pieces before their worried eyes. Not until she was away, would she collapse and let herself weep like the fragile, broken thing she must be to them now.
