"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
I will commit my soul to your door tonight, and I'll last 'til the gas fumes float on higher
She comes home, although she barely remembers how.
Her scaled sides are split by his talons, her neck bloodied. She feels the dried blood running down her, as though it means to encase her, entomb her, but the only thing that she truly feels is the hollow mix of rage and despair that creeps through her—that threatens to pull her under. She wanders mindlessly through the different lands until she finally arrives to the Taigan forest, but even then, she feels no relief.
All she can remember is the look on his face when he saw her.
When she had felt paralyzed beneath him, his teeth sinking into her neck.
She swallows hard and it comes out as a dry sob, her entire body nearly convulsing with the disgust and the fear and the mind-numbing agony that overwhelms her. She could go to her mother, she thinks, but she has no desire to intrude upon the sanctity and peace of her parent’s home—not like this. She could go to her sister, but her sister has no desire to see her; just as her daughter would rather avoid her.
She could find Beth, but she doesn’t want him to see her like this.
So instead she stands, blinking slowly into the trees, as the tears begin to make their way slowly down her cheeks, falling to the ground as the blood slowly drips down alongside of it. The darkness will come, she knows, as the shadows grow long and the sun begins to die away. The darkness will come.
in a dying love I'm nothing but a stone cold liar but, oh, I got an iron in that fire
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It has been the quiet life he had always so desperately wanted.
Though it is not always living with a viper, they have settled into a kind of easy routine.
He loves her the best way he knows how, which isn’t always the right way, but he makes an effort. It is more than can be expected from something that was not built for this kind of love, he thinks, though he seldom ever says this out loud. Only on the occasions when she still finds fault in the way he loves her.
Things have changed and he has resigned himself to the fact that they will never again be as they had been once. When it had just been him, just as he’d liked it, wandering. But it is a small price to pay for her, he thinks. Even if their children -- most notably their daughter -- have never been particularly fond of him, drawn always to their mother. Or, in Gospel’s case, to something else entirely.
But there have not been children in years. Just the two of them.
He finds her by accident. If he were being honest, perhaps he’d have admitted that he hadn’t even realized she’d gone. Not a matter of indifference but of domestic comfort. The kind of comfort that meant they could come and go as they pleased without raising alarm.
But he finds her by accident and he feels no glimmer of joy. No, he finds her now and he is doused quite suddenly in ice water.
“Adna?” he asks, quiet, so quiet that the tears cutting rivers down her cheeks are almost louder. His gaze falls heavy on the blood where it pools at her feet. He is seized by panic. It interrupts his heartbeat, gets his breathing heavy. “Adna, what happened?”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
I will commit my soul to your door tonight, and I'll last 'til the gas fumes float on higher
He has always loved her as though he does not understand her.
And, perhaps, he hasn’t.
She certainly hasn’t understood him.
But, in the end, that hasn’t mattered. No matter how many times he stood like a stone wall, no matter how many times she has thrown fists against it until she was bloody, they have always managed to come together again. They have managed to weave into one another’s life until they found the rhythms of domestic comfort that she had assumed would never be theirs to claim. But it had, it had.
His whisper sounds like a scream, and she shudders, flinches as though it was Ghaul again.
Her eyes are slightly wide when she looks up at him, as her tear-streaked face angles and the bloodied scales catch the dying light of day. For a second, her eyes do not focus, but when they do, she sobs again, her thin chest heaving, the only sound to break the silence between them, to make a sound at all.
“I,” she starts and then finds that she can’t. The words stick in her throat and she drops her head again, shuddering as the tears flow more freely. It is enough to make her remember the moment. Remember what it had felt like to feel him against her. To feel the way her scales had split beneath his talons.
Every ache and bruise on her screams in protest now and she stumbles forward before catching herself.
She opens her mouth to try and explain but, again, no words come.
in a dying love I'm nothing but a stone cold liar but, oh, I got an iron in that fire
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is no more equipped for this than he is for loving a wild thing.
But he had known what to do when she had gone for his throat.
This is something else entirely.
She shudders and grimaces and he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know if he should go to her or keep his distance. He understands that whatever panic exists then belongs to him alone. Because there is something about her that is eerily calm. Or perhaps numb.
And he has never been injured the way that she is injured now.
(Though he cannot know the extent of the damage done to her psyche, will certainly never understand it.)
His frown deepens as he edges closer. And she comes forward, as if to meet him, before she catches herself. Rights herself. Returns to center.
She doesn’t answer, not really. But her silence speaks for itself, he thinks, and it compounds the panic writhing in the pit of his gut.
He goes to her. Even if he shouldn’t. He goes to her and he touches her gingerly but he does not possess the magic to make it better. The most he can do is huff hot breath across her shoulder.
“Who did this?” he asks and he will not ask anything else of her.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
I will commit my soul to your door tonight, and I'll last 'til the gas fumes float on higher
She cannot decide if she is grateful that he closes the distance or if she, desperately, wishes that he would leave her alone. She cannot decide if it is relief or shame that floods her when he is finally at her side and she can collapse against him, not thinking of the blood that she smears against him, the way that her skin stings in protest against the sudden warmth of his hide. She doesn’t care though because, for the first time, there is something comforting, something real, and she is suddenly starved for it.
Adna turns to press her face into his neck.
Where the rest of the world bleeds away and it’s just the two of them.
Where even the sound of her own sobs begin to grow muffled.
In this space, where it’s just the spice and the heat of him, that beautiful normalcy he somehow thought was anything but beautiful, she can almost forget what had happened. Why she was crying. Why her sides hurt so bad, why her entire body ached and trembled. It’s only when he asks that question that she is drawn back to the present, her mind nearly snapping as everything rushes back into stark relief.
Another tremble and snap, like autumn leaves beneath a careless heal, and she whispers
“Ghaul,”
as though he would hear her if she was any louder.
in a dying love I'm nothing but a stone cold liar but, oh, I got an iron in that fire
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is not equipped for this, certainly.
But he can make himself solid enough for her to lean against.
He can brace himself against the weight of her that seems to suddenly lack in any real significance. As if someone or something had carved all of the substance out of her.
She sobs into his neck and he closes his eyes against the sound of it. Tentatively ducks his head to press his mouth against her chest, as if she might somehow draw some comfort from the gesture. The heat of his breath. The weight of it.
Until she speaks and he goes perfectly still. He does not draw breath. He does not exhale. It’s almost as if the heart ceases to beat, too. Until his eyes flutter open and he exhales long and slow. It is not resignation but something else. A quiet kind of understanding.
And he wonders where she had gone, where they had crossed paths, if she had gone looking for their daughter, thinking she could bring her back. But he doesn’t ask because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
All that matters is the blood. Her blood, though it feels like his, too. With how desperately he has loved it and how thoroughly it has soaked into his skin now. He lifts his head and lays a ginger kiss against her temple and exhales another long breath.
How he wishes he could vow to destroy Ghaul. But he cannot. He will not make promises that he cannot keep. He leaves his mouth where it rests against her temple when he mumbles, “what can I do?”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
I will commit my soul to your door tonight, and I'll last 'til the gas fumes float on higher
Oh Beth, she thinks, nearly delirious with the emotions overwhelming her.
He had never wanted a life like this. Had never wanted any of the complications that have been introduced since he had the misfortune of running into her. She feels it like a brand against her throat, feels that painful knowing she is an inconvenience he never would have had to bear were it not for her.
But, for once, she doesn’t push such insecurities on him.
Does not make him bear the weight of that too.
Instead she cries softly into his neck, trying to focus on that familiar scent of him, on the way that he always smells slightly of smoke and pine needles and the earth. How he is the most solid thing that she has ever known—how he exists outside of the politics and power-grabbing of the world.
He is her Beth. He is home.
He asks her what she can do, and she crumbles against him, wants to crawl into his chest where she can stay safe forever. “Just hold me,” she asks, her voice meek—certainly more meek than she has ever known herself to be, especially with him. “I don’t want to smell him any longer,” she chokes on the words and shudders against Beth. “I don’t want to feel him against me,” this quieter, a whisper.
She closes her serpentine eyes and breathes him in.
Just Beth.
Her Beth.
in a dying love I'm nothing but a stone cold liar but, oh, I got an iron in that fire
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It had been easier to deny it than confront it for what it was.
It had been easier to convince himself that the beast had only wanted to draw blood than it was to accept the reality of it.
Even if his blissful ignorance had been brief, it still smarts when it shatters.
Because there is no convincing himself that what she says could possibly mean anything other than what she says. Always been one for accepting things at face value, Beth. She was the only one gifted with the ability of making words mean something they didn’t.
Never knows how to say the right thing, but he knows how to do what she asked. Curls himself around her as sweetly as he can manage - which isn’t very, because Bethlehem was not built for softness, but he has to believe it is at least better than whatever she had endured - and exhales a shuddering breath. Fans warm breath across her shoulder.
Were he stronger, braver, more violent, perhaps he would have vowed to avenge her. To drag their daughter back to Taiga. To right all the wrong things. But he is not strong or brave or violent, so he merely presses his cheek against her skin. Holds her and tries to make it warm.
“It’ll be all right,” he murmurs. A promise he has no business making.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
