"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 can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
It is dark when he returns home to the Cove, or at least it had been his home this morning. The sea breeze is cool against his face when he lands in the sand. He has not sought out Gospel in some time, preferring to leave her alone for the most part. She had not taken kindly to his proclaiming Clarissa as his wife and yet she had always stayed close by. It gives him some hope that she will not lunge for the soft part of his throat and yet he doesn’t hold his breath.
The hellbeast sniffs at the wind until he’s certain he has her scent. Then, he slinks off further up the shoreline until he sees her familiar outline in the distance. Ghaul is in no hurry to catch up to her, especially given the curve of her belly. He has quickly learned that those with child are more apt to show their teeth than any other time of the year. And he doesn’t blame them, considering how on edge he’d been while his own nest was still brooding.
But he draws near and he offers a soft croon to announce his approach. He even braces himself for any attempt on his life.
“Gospel,” he says quietly, as though a conversational volume might invoke her wrath. “It’s time we spoke.”
And then he stops with several feet between them, wings poised and something like a smile on his scar tissue lips. Part of him has missed the way she tried to rip him apart, the quiet exchange of friendship in her mauling. The language of violence is spoken so easily between them that he forgets they were never born of the same sacrifice.
She is tired.
For perhaps the first time in her life, she is bone-tired.
Because there is life stirring in her gut, when there should only be death. Ironic, she thinks, or would think if she had any concept of irony, that Stave had both taken her life and given it to her.
She does not know that there are two heartbeats in her gut. Two pairs of eyes, two mouths, eight coltish limbs. With nothing to compare it to, she thinks this weight, this unbearable weight, is normal.
Oh, how she loathes it.
She lingers near the water where it is coolest, occasionally piercing her tongue with venom to dull the ache at the pit of her.
She turns her head slow, lazy when he emerges. Or materializes. She is uncertain of the extent of his magic, what he can do with it. Doesn’t care as much now as she once did. When she worshiped him. Before she learned that the feeling would never be mutual.
He says her name and she watches him a beat, considers telling him that he is wrong. She is not Gospel. She is some other foolish thing. But, in the end, she merely tips her head and says, “Ghaul.” Not as sweet or chaotic as the first time she’d let the word slip into the charged air between them.
But does she have anything to say to him? What is there to say?
05-05-2020, 11:11 PM (This post was last modified: 05-06-2020, 12:57 AM by ghaul.)
GHAUL
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
He has never felt more alive than he does now. The almost jarring hum of raw energy floods his veins until he feels as though he could tear down mountains if he only willed it to happen. When she only turns to watch him, a flicker of concern whispers into his mind and he edges closer to examine her better. There is no fever seeking to peel her apart, nor is she colder than he might have expected her to be. Has she wilted so much since he saw her?
He swallows nervously as that whispering blooms into a frown across his face. Ghaul steps closer and presses his nose to the corner of her jaw before he pulls her close to him. His first friend. The one who kept away that awful winter chill that might have otherwise snuffed the life from him. None of this would be possible without her at his side, he thinks. A sigh eases from his lungs and into the wild tangles of her mane. The time has come to issue her prize.
“Gospel. You gave me my name, you gave me your warmth when my fire was only dying embers,” he whispers softly to her. “I want to give the Cove to you. This place is sacred to me and I would trust no other with it.”
Slowly, carefully, his wings stretch forward and fold over her back. This is the land where his children were born. The Cove is the nest where he grew into the monster he is now. There could be no other person at its helm, he thinks.
Her first instinct is to recoil and to gnash her teeth and to curse him for daring to touch her. And if not for all that unbearable weight and the way the exhaustion has hollowed out her bones, she would have. But the most she can manage now, heavy and tired, is a low hiss. A hiss that has never worked to deter him before and certainly does not work now.
He beckons her closer but she does not budge, makes him come to her instead. A stiff embrace, certainly. And she wonders, quite abstractly, what he wants from her. She hates how weak the child in her gut has made her. So weak that she has spent the majority of her pregnancy hidden away, lest someone see her in such a state.
Perhaps it only makes sense that he should be the first one to find her. To find her without her fight. Just as they had found each other years before. Shivering, alone, all fight.
He murmurs into her mane and she lets him, wonders what it is he’s getting at. And then, when he bestows his gift upon her, she frowns in turn. She wants to cast herself out of his reach, to study his face, but he folds his wings around her and she is powerless.
“Pangea is yours,” she says, the only explanation.
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
He should have known she would not receive his gift as kindly as he gave it. Still, he is only mildly surprised at the way she questions him, and mostly it just hurts. Pangea is the throne of the east but this place is the jewel, for him. The red dust and canyons foster strength while the territory has been the foundation for everything good in his life. He wilts at her words, dropping his wings to his sides to release her from his gentle embrace. It is not enough for her.
“I am King of the East, beside my brother,” he confirms with a short nod of his head. His chin lowers and he studies all the differences between her hooves and his talons for a while. How could he begin to repay the mountain of debt she holds for him? Those shoulders that cradle all his worries in this world slump in defeat.
“Gospel, I love the Cove. I have given it everything, and I cannot trust anyone else with it,” he pleads, tracing his lips across her brow to better understand her expression. “I would be your champion and protect you both with my life.”
And then he pauses, still pressing his lips to her temple. He digs deep and searches all that he has to give, hoping for some morsel more to give her as an offering of his gratitude. The desperation to appease her twists like a knife in his heart.
“I will make your child my heir, I will rip any ruler from their throne and make it yours. Speak your heart’s desire and I will give it to you on top of my homeland to you.”
He has misunderstood her, all the more reason to loathe her condition.
He draws back his wings and she is grateful to be free of the weight of them. Even still, she feels some sharp stab of irritation.
But he takes this misconstrued meaning and he speaks and she can taste the desperation in his tone. It sits bitter and heavy on her tongue and she wants to hiss and spit but the pain and the weight and the exhaustion are too much to bear all at once. So, she merely stands there and she lets him speak.
She stands there, tired and weak and irritated with both, and allows him to drag his mouth across the plain of her forehead.
“It was meant as a form of congratulations, Ghaul,” she says and does not bother trying to conceal the barbed edges. Because this is the Gospel they both understand, the venom, and she draws her head away.
“You deserve the throne,” she continues, “I have no doubt that you will do great things with it.” But she does not want to be touched by him, not now, and she finally gathers what little remains of her energy so that she can draw herself away from him.
“You owe me nothing,” she adds, at last, “you never have. But, for you, I will look after the Cove.”
Perhaps there is still some part of her that worships him.
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
He can taste the anger burning across her every word, both for him and for the way her body feels. He wants to chase her when she puts space between them and keep her safe there in his grasp. But she is her own, entirely and wildly belonging to herself. There was a brief time when he thought he wanted to control and own her, but that time has passed as he matured. No fraction of Gospel could ever be contained, much like the rest of the eastern kingdom.
He breathes a sigh of relief when she speaks and yet the knot in his heart remains in its place. The ache in her bones cannot be plucked from her, much as he wishes it could be.
“I owe you all that I have. Father would have found me cold and lifeless if not for you,” he counters as he tilts his head to observe her. “The entities will remain here with you. I want their gifts to keep you all safe, if anything were to happen to me.”
He does not elaborate. Where before his voice was soft and entirely devoted to his desperation to lighten her spirits, now it is cold steel with no room for such emotions. Ghaul does not believe he is so rare and blessed that he will not answer to the fire he wields someday. This is a harsh truth he does not share with anyone, however. Not her, not Clarissa or even Draco. He reserves this fact for himself.
“You have been my greatest friend, now and forever,” he confesses, still withholding any softness that might bleed into his voice.
She remembers. Remembers the way they had curled themselves around one another, hissing and spitting and giggling with wild, reckless youth. She had belonged to him then. And her mother had come to fetch her and Gospel, she had pledged her allegiance to the darkness. Adna had been powerless to drag her away from him and her father had not even tried.
She bristles at his display of weakness, though his voice is hard now. Should anything happen to him. How she loathes his willingness to acknowledge that he, too, is merely flesh and blood and sinew when he has always been so much more than that. To her and to everyone else.
She remembers, too, when he had come to her delighting in his own blood.
His greatest friend. She sets her jaw and looks away, out over the water, wonders what this all means.
She does not doubt that she has what it takes to lead. And it does not surprise her that he has decided that she is the only one he can trust to look after the land in his absence. She skirts her tongue across a fanged tooth.
“Bring me Bethlehem,” she says.
Because now, more than ever, her father is absolutely nothing. But she smiles then, something cold and calculating, though he cannot see it. “It’s time that he and I spoke.”
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
He will find eternity when his mortality comes to claim him, he thinks. And he will walk gladly into the great beyond knowing that this world, this plaything will remember him until it crumbles to dust. Every mouth will know the shape of his name before he parts from this life. But, more importantly, his brood and hers will never know the burden of caring for weaklings. They will never claw their prizes from the greedy hands of the unworthy.
They will never breathe fire down the throats of their opposition.
But when she commands him, his hunger to do just that is born anew. His simpering expression turns to an awful grin as his wings spread wide. Ghaul remembers her father’s outline against the frigid backdrop and the way he merely stood aside when he took her. Yes, the first life wiped from this plane should be the first that ever yielded to him. He places a delicate kiss to her forehead, a thanks for her brilliance. And then he steps back to admire her.
“When I return with him, should I drop him into the sea or spear him on our burning tree? Or would you reserve the honors for yourself?” he asks, tilting his head and remaining poised for his departure as he watches her. His fat black tongue slips between his teeth and traces the corners of his scarred lips hungrily. Already, his mind scrambles to compile a list of all the names she might utter to him after Bethlehem is smeared across the beaches of the Cove.
She has never known power like this.
And she can see now how it might be a dangerous thing. But she has never shied away from danger, has always beckoned it to come closer, coaxed it out of hiding. She has always welcomed it. When she first set eyes on him, when Stave slowly bled the life out of her, there in the forest when darkness had loitered in her periphery and she had called it out of hiding.
But he grins something awful and she follows suit. Tilts her fine head as he presses a chaste kiss into the plain of her forehead and then takes one shuffling step backward, away from her.
She watches him go. And feels awash in that same delicious glow as he studies her. She had belonged to him once.
She had belonged to him once.
And now. And now he has risen to more appropriate power and she is following keenly in his footsteps.
His question deepens her lilting smirk and she turns her gaze out over the water again.
