She was waiting when he returned to their resting place. The cross painted in crimson on his forehead and the blood on his lips caused most who saw him to back away. Those that did not move then usually moved when they saw his eyes. Dark, angry red eyes that seemed to swirl the vitae coursing through him. At times, he moved faster than she could really see, but she was always keenly aware of his location. He was at the door and then behind her and then, but a moment later, laying as if sleeping. His eyes did not close though. Brit laid against him not shying from the bit of wetness that pulled away crimson on her fingertips. She processed feeling the harder patches of his clothing and realized that it was dried blood and matter that had soaked and dried in the cloth and in his hair.Slipping from him, she got a basin of water and started with his hair. Only the sound of trickling water that sponged matter until it loosened enough to be carefully cleaned off of him. She worked without a sound and slowly less she disturb him. The water in the basin had to be changed time and time again. Brit didn’t pull away from the small flecks of matter she encountered. She noticed his hair was streaked and colored abnormally even after it was clean. It took her a long time to remove his clothing. She found that it felt different and she put it in a bucket of water to soak before she worked to loosen debris of wounded and dead beings from him. She washed him clean even trying to find the retractable talons. Hours later, the basin had been rinsed many times, and his nails and skin were clean and no longer smelled of dried blood.
His clothing was another matter. The fabric was old but there was something about it that disturbed her. She spot cleaned it…to the best she could. She did not wish to use the machine less she leave it and the clothing be taken. Or just being caught out alone. It was nearly sundown when she finished with the clothing and boots. Using the small sink in the room, she bathed and pressed her clean body against his just holding him tightly. Her fingers trailed through his hair while she felt his closeness and watched him in the small light of their single source which allowed her to see. Fingers caressed him over and over circling over his chest and arms. She traced lines along his throat and mused his words saying she had been burned.
She whispered, “I remember nothing…and I am fine because you are near.” She pulled herself closer to him hand held her self tightly against him. As the sun set, Brit wondered if she could do anything to help him let go of the beast within that had taken him down the path he was on. When she woke, he was gone again.
Lorne stood not a pace from the window, staring off in the hospital's direction. Perhaps it's sillouette was visible from the library through the sepia haze, and an outline of the attached out-patient wing, to an exceptional pair of eyes. It was not a part of Lorne's world that evening, nor those that spoke from the semi-circle of chairs at his back.
ReplyDeleteHis world was away somewhere, in pieces, pouring over possibilities of where she might be this minute, what she might be thinking, or saying. What was she doing this evening.
The expression that faced him ghostly from the section of glass before him was open wide, inviting the world before it in to fall forever, and nowhere. Two voids, deep as skies, where eyes might have been where not so much trained as pointed vaguely in the direct Brit quite often ran at the end of an evening, when it was time to sleep the day through in his haven...in his company.....in his arms...
Lorne was past the veil when it was happening. The library seiged--would-be intruders contending against butter knives Brit had jammed into the door frame, keeping all without, though not indefinately.
No one had been there. No one had come to her cries for help. The self-named emporer himself carried her away when he couldn't find the one for which he had been searching. Lorne had arrived at a run, charging past armed gaurds at the barred doors of the shadows' strong hold.
He closed his eyevoids at the memory. Her screams...Slipping past the barred doors, insubstantial as air, the pain she cried at the top of her lungs cut him across the entire breadth of his mind.
Staring down the sum total of all the shadows, each producing one weapon or another, the only person there was Brit. The only one. She hung above a thick gout of volconic steam, burnt and burning, ribbons of her skin hanging from a face screwed up in agony. Lorne clenched his eyevoids tighter to remember.
Bringing her to the roof, blind and deaf to the world, she lay in his arms, chanting "red red red"...Where had they all been? Who had brought her from the fire, and restored every inch of flesh, choking back a sense that the world was emptiness without her? She had not remembered. She did not remember. She remembers waking up to Ethan...Now she watches Ethan descends into a mad spiral of revenge--rage and murder, never quite adding up to Brit never being burnt...
Brit had no sorrow for remembering nothing of her near-death. In all her blind faith will she be dragged to fall and shatter where she might otherwise have simply been made safe...As Lorne's eyevoids open, a sort of desparation frames the sorrow in his expression to look angry, and he sees the hospital. He sees the out-patient wing. The door is to his left. The window could break so easily, and be made to part for his passage...but all around him all there was were walls, and his world was only smaller and smaller...