Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

Sometimes, the dance called life is graceful. Sometimes, you step on a toe or fall flat on your face.

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Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

Post by PrlUnicorn »

((Originally posted between Aug 31, 2013 and Oct 13, 2013))

((Part of this))

The Tie that Binds

Once upon a time, do all tales begin that way? Some begin with Once upon a midnight dreary. What is often forgotten is that the Brothers Grimm didn't write happy, winsome tales. They wrote lessons. Sometimes, they were dark lessons as reminders to children that there are consequences for bad behavior. There were things that went bump in the night. The tales also told of rewards for those that stood as heroes against those things in the darkness.

She tried to be a hero, she tried to be good, but there were always shades of grey. To preserve one life, another might have to be taken or placed at risk. She had been meant to be a princess in the royal court of what humans had called Atlantis. Life can not only be cruel but ironic as well. In a time of great joy, a daughter of Poseidon was drowned by a would be suitor. For all his power, the grieving father was not able to breathe life back into his child. He struck a bargain with his brother, the Lord of the Underworld, and the three sisters, who arranged the meetings with death. At an appointed time, the young woman would be reborn in a land and time far away with no knowledge of who she had been. She would be left to find her own pathway in life. She would, however, be watched from afar. Her fate was to shape the destiny of others and, somehow, unite a disjointed family.

Life went on for those left behind. She had been reborn into her new life: plying her gifts in the healing arts. She was different, this much she knew. How different, however, was just beyond her reach. While she found happiness in many ways as her first father had hoped, one thing eluded her. It wasn't an unusual story, finding love and losing it by folly or circumstance. When she finally convinced herself that it was never to be, there he was. Nothing worth having is ever that simple. Someone from a past that she didn't remember was determined to destroy it all by telling her who she was. The lovers survived it, they conquered it, and the villain was vanquished. Was he, really? The evil dead lurk in dark places, they hide in nightmares, and they wait for vulnerable moments. The moment came with a ripple in time. Things changed, the dead returned, and the world turned up upside down.

She wasn't confronted with that dead man. It was much worse than that. It was her nightmare come to life and then some. Her nightmare had become a reality as she faced what might have been. She looked into a familiar face. It was careworn with a hardened expression, but it had been her own. Even if that woman had missed a date with destiny, there was still hope for something better.

The second figure had been harder to face. Lifted hands revealed scars on the wrists that should have disappeared long ago. As the third woman, yet another aspect of the first, lifted a hand to her throat, it was clear that, she had been the victim of a cruel and torturous death. Her fingers were pressed against a razor thin slice that had severed every possible vein and artery.

Fate was still playing cruel games. How was she going to cope with this one?
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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The Stone that Sharpens

Margarítis had been her name in a time long before the one called Jesus Christ walked the Earth. She stood in silence as she studied the pair before her. Whatever event had tipped the Nexus and caused tears in the time space continuum had provided a unique opportunity. The lady could see what might have been and what had become of those that had shared the same beginning as she did.

She was not certain what specific circumstances had befallen the second woman present. At some point in recent history, misfortune had reared its head. There were enough signs to show that this was the woman in her nightmare. The one that had missed a meeting that she had not. Yet, there was hope for something better, a change of fortune? In the mind of Margarítis, this woman was to be called Hope.

The third, however, made her heart ache. Margarítis knew exactly what had happened. This was what death looked like or would have. She had managed to hold herself together enough to not cry. The dress of white and blue satin with embroidered trim was almost the breaking point. It had been the gown she'd worn when making promises to the man that held her heart. This would be Morrigan.
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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The Knife that Cuts

Margarítis looked between the other two women. "I know who who you are and that this was once your home, but why are you here now?"

It was Morrigan that spoke first. "I want restitution. I want vengeance. I want my life back! Mostly, I want to rest and not be roaming between worlds." Her voice rang of anger, regret, sorrow, and pain.

Hope sat in silence, as the woman, whose skin was a white as the satin of her gown, spoke. Then she said, "We came here for help and to help you."

You're alive," Margarítis said to Hope, "there is hope for you. I can help you, somehow. I don't speak to the dead often, I don't how to help her." A graceful motion of her hand indicated Morrigan.

"We have a child who can, but it's best that she not see this." After brushing her fingertips over her throat, Morrigan looked out of the window. The room had grown so cold that it felt like an early frost had settled in. She wrapped her arms around herself and began to rock as if soothing an infant. "Where are they buried and where is she? Will you tell me these things?"

She braved the cold to stand near Morrigan. "Who do you mean?"

She turned a cold a cold expression on Margarítis. "You're his widow. You're their mother. Living or dead, a mother should know where her child rests."

It suddenly became clear what unfinished business needed to be dealt with. "I am no widow and his children are alive." Her warm fingers rested on the other woman's cool flesh. "Don't you see. She was saved and you never knew, but you made sure of it."

"But," Morrigan countered, "I was told they were dead. That only one survived." Her voice trembled. "He was killed because he was unfaithful.. because."

"No." She gestured toward the door that lead out of the room. "Come and see for yourself." The house was far too quiet at that hour and three sets of footsteps echoed in the hallway.

A man's voice came from one of the other rooms. "Who's there?"

The women's attention turned toward the voice, but only one of them answered. "It's just me, I'll be in soon."

"So he is alive," Morrigan murmured. "It is true. Why do you allow him to remain here?"

"I love him," Margarítis whispered as she opened a door on the second floor. She could not help but notice that Hope was frozen at the top of the stairs. Remembering, perhaps?

The room was dimly lit by the breaking light of dawn streaming in the window. For the first time since she showed herself, Morrigan smiled. Two rosy cheeked babies slept peacefully. Both were clearly alive and not just one as she had been lead to believe. As a piece of her soul was allowed to rest, her hair was no longer white. It now held the brilliant colors of an autumn sunset.
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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Hope shied away from the tender scene and looked out the window to the garden below. She had never seen those tiny faces before and could not share in Morrigan's happy discovery. Her own baby that should have come when this set of twins had was lost.

"Might I?" She was overcome with emotion and couldn't finish the question. Her body language spoke clearly enough, she wanted to hold the child she had thought to be dead.

"You're cold, so, we'll wrap her up." Margarítis swaddled her daughter and allowed the other woman to cradle her. For her, this was a simple everyday joy that came with tending her little ones. For Morrigan, however, this was something glorious that that was stolen from her. While in the presence of the children, not a word was spoken of the circumstances that had brought the three women together. That taint was something none of them desired to spread to the innocents that were once again settled into their beds.

They retired to the comfort of the garden patio. Morrigan's voice broke the silence. "I don't understand. I was told they were dead. And that he had been ... "

"We had been the victim of a madman."

One of Morrigan's brows lowered as she said, "Well considering he killed me, I think that title suits him aptly."

Hope spoke for the first time since they'd entered the nursery. "I was a victim, too, but not in the same way."

Margarítis joined hands with Morrigan and Hope. "We can't change what was, but we can try to make peace with it."

Hope shook her head. "I'm not so sure we can't change some of it. Maybe that's why we're all here."

"I still have to face him, there are things undone," Morrigan's tone was bitter.

"The madman is on the other side. He's the one that's dead not ..."

While she had shown great tenderness in the presence of the young ones, Morrigan had drifted back into the stoic countenance that she previously displayed. "Then I shall deal with him when things are settled here with the living." She released her hand from the grasp of Margarítis and folded her hands on the table. "Tell me, after what he did, why you allow that man to live here." Air rushed through her teeth like a snake's hiss.

Margarítis sighed and spoke softly, "Unlike you, I was able to learn the truth." To say the subject upset her was an understatement. "Even dead, it was months before his hold on my mind was finally broken. I still have nightmares. Two in particular." She glanced to Hope. "It's you I see in one of them."

"And the other?" Hope murmured.

"It's a child's voice. She keeps calling out, but I can't quite understand her."

"One matter at time would be easier to solve. Life is not always so simple." Morrigan's eyes close for a while. "Neither is death."
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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Margarítis waited a bit before disturbing Morrigan's reverie. "I haven't spoken to him about it. Perhaps, I should have."

She inhaled slowly to calm herself. "That would have been wise. If you have not then he never knew what was done."

"I think he knows more than he wants to say. He's the one that," she paused to take a few slow breaths, "brought me home." Even with these two, she had kept that secret. It had occurred to Margarítis that the lack of someone coming was why Morrigan met her end. She found herself wondering if the current shift in the Nexus was, in fact, the catalyst. Was her nightmare of Hope and her dilemma a harbinger of the presents events?

"How do you know he wasn't guilty?" Morrigan's expression was one of suspicion.

"It took a long time for the aftereffects all the drugs that were pumped into me to wear off." Margarítis had a little girl lost expression on her face. "I don't mean the physical ones." She lifted a steaming mug of tea to her lips. "There were episodes of paranoia for months. I kept looking over my shoulder. Not literally, but it might as well have been." Her fingers tapped the side of the mug. "Some things shouldn't be said where many ears can hear them."

Hope sighed. "People sometimes forget proprietary when they think no one else is paying attention. It's been my experience that that is when we're being watch all the more."

Morrigan nodded. "What you're saying is: half truths, smoke and mirrors?"

"What you and I were subjected to," Margarítis said with a look to Morrigan, "was truth bathed in bad liquor. You know, the kind that smells just a little too sweet, but not enough to make you sick until after you drink it?"

Morrigan nodded. She knew it all too well.

"It was like that." Her mug was set on the table and she rested her jaw in upturned palms. "He wanted me to love him and I wouldn't. His first step was to show me how my husband was killed. Thought if the man I loved was out of the way, there would be room for him. When that didn't happen, he said he was going to show me what happened before the separation.?


"You weren't truly separated, were you?" Morrigan asked with raised brows.

"Not legally, no, but having to face certain things on your own is difficult at best." She lifted her fingers away from her face in a sort of shrug. "It was easier to think of it that way. I have children that needed their mother."

"He didn't tell your baby was dead?" Morrigan had suffered through that before she, herself, had been killed.

"I think he might have realized that was an unforgivable sin." She frowned. "He didn't think about the child that I didn't get to know before he took her life instead of mine."

"Yes,"Morrigan said before repeating word a few times. "Much as adultery would have been." Her eyes closed. "That's why he bent that business around like an old gnarled tree."

"Yes, but it backfired."

Hope listened in silence as the other two women discussed the connection between them. Her time would come.
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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The process of healing for one of the women had begun. For the time being, Morrigan and Hope kept their distance from the man of the house. There were plenty of signs that Margarítis had had guests, but that wasn't an uncommon occurrence. If her husband noticed, he said nothing about it and likely put it down to friends coming by or his wife working on some community project.

Margarítis hoped that by helping the others, she could bring peace to her own heart and mind. There were times when the nightmares just wouldn't leave her alone. She immersed herself in books and the often forgotten pastime of needlework. A quilt for one of her daughters was in the process of being sewn. In the middle of the night when insomnia struck, she could be found cooking.

The nightmare where she had seen Hope made sense now. It wasn't a vision of what might have been; it was a vision of what could be in the past if things weren't set to rights. There was the matter of the frightened child calling out. She couldn't tell if it was the voice a of girl or a boy, it was too young to note a marked difference. Over and over, she heard, "I want to be... I want to be."
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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The Love that Lied

Hope had patiently waited for her time to come and it had. She studied the other two women sitting with her before speaking. "Despite our ties, your husband was never mine. We were, no, are close friends. He always seems a bit lost, as though a piece of him is missing."

One of Morrigan's brows lifted. "How is it that you came to be here? What went wrong for you?"

"I survived the attack on my person." She laced her fingers together and rested her hands in her lap. "It was my child that was lost. They never even told me if it was a boy or a girl. I was in no condition to ask." Her eyes closed as she lost herself in a more pleasant memory.

Pain was clear in the expressions of Margarítis and Morrigan. They had experienced similar losses. It occurred to Margarítis that neither of the other women knew who died and bought her that all too precious time that she needed to regain her freedom. It was better if they didn't know, things were already far too complicated.

"What happened to you?" Morrigan reworded her question.

"The long version or the short?" Hope replied.

It was Margarítis that answered then, "Both."

"The short one is easy." Hope chuckled humorlessly."I took a fall down the stairs and had a miscarriage. As for the man that claimed he loved me, I didn't see him after that night." The mug of tea rattled as she gathered it up. "I keep looking over my shoulder and wondering," she took a long breath, "if he'll be there hiding in the shadows somewhere." She shivered as though someone had walked over her grave.

Margarítis shook her head. "I have the feeling I know what happened to him. He won't be troubling you ever again."

"The guardian?" Morrigan asked quietly.

"The younger," came the reply.

"It wasn't supposed to be her," Morrigan muttered.

"She is who she is, none of us can change that." Hope suddenly looked weary.

"She's an old soul," Margarítis murmured. "It was for the child's sake more than for yours."
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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"I need to know what happened to him," Hope spoke with a bit of tremor in her voice.

"Let's start with what happened to you," Margarítis rested her hand on Hope's.

"I listened to both of your stories. You met the same man," Hope paused, "more or less, on the same day. Each of you have had different paths. I met someone else that night. I met the man that took you prisoner. When I met your husband," she gestured to each of the other women with one hand, "I had the sensation of having missed something. As if he was the one that should have been and wasn't."

Margarítis caught her lower lip between her teeth as she pondered if what happened to Hope had been a direct result of the current upheaval in time and space. One man out of place in time could have changed things for all of them. More than one out of place could mean a disaster on the horizon.

Morrigan had been considering similar things. Such as: when the nexus had finished spinning its crazy web and she returned to where and when she belonged, would she be given a second chance. Or would she have to be content with having learned the truth of things?

"I don't even know how we got married. We were always fighting." She laced her fingers together and rested them against her stomach. Hope sighed. "Fear of being alone, perhaps? For years, I'd been say that I'd never marry again." She toyed with the mug of tea on the table in front of her. "That last night, if I hadn't been off balance and been trying to protect someone else, I might very well have killed him myself."

Morrigan's eyes narrowed. "Just what did happen that night?"
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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"I ... endured," Hope said with a sorrowful expression on her face.

Margarítis and Morrigan exchanged looks. To endure was often the greatest triumph. To survive, persevere, and outlast those that would do wrong against them.

It was a few moments before Hope continued, "I don't even remember what we argued over. A harmless flirtation? Something taken out of context? He was jealous to the point of having volcanic rage fits. He pushed, he shoved. He never liked it when people fought back. We were alone in the house that night. I'd sent everyone else away. Holiday events. I thought the privacy might do us some good." She shook her head slightly. "I finally punched him in the gut and started to run. For the child's sake, I tried to get away. I felt his hands on me. The next thing I knew I blacked out. That, unfortunately, was in mid fall down a flight of stairs." There was a vacant look on her face. She knew she was better off not remembering that fall.

Margarítis sighed and gently squeezed Hope's hand. "He can't harm you anymore."

Morrigan's expression hardened. "He better remain where he is. On all counts."

"Morrigan," Margarítis asked, "what happened to him where you came from?"

"I am not certain when he got there or whose hand dispatched him. I do know that he was committed to the depths of Tartarus."

Hope blew out a breath. She suspected much the same regarding the man that once professed love for her then committed the crime of murdering an innocent. "When I finally came to, he was gone. There were three female voices, they sounded so far away. I awoke feeling that sticky warmth on my thighs that every woman knows is blood. There was no ... sense of panic or fear. Anger, concern, sympathy, but the others, no." Her eyes closed as she took a sip of the still warm liquid in her mug. "I taught them well, I suppose. They eased my physical pain, but understandably could not take away the pain of loss and no longer feeling the stirring of life within." She tapped her fingers against the side of the mug. "None of them had the skill to remove the stillborn child without harm to me. They remanded me to the care of a trusted physician."

Silence, but not an uncomfortable, one passed as the three considered the woman in question. The general consensus was that it had been a wise choice.

"The youngest of the three voices was gone. I doubt she remained in the house. The older ones would have considered the possibility of his return. I remember being wheeled through sliding glass doors. I heard the eldest of those three talking to a man. She explained the fall and what needed to be done." She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "I know who it was. He must have been at the hospital for something when he saw us coming in. As the world was going black around me, I heard the voice of the guardian. I ... wish I knew what she said."

"I know what she said," Margarítis whispered.
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Re: Sublimation: The Ripples in Time (NSFW)

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"How could you know?" Hope asked in a whisper.

"I dreamed of it," Margarítis replied in kind.

"This should not come as a surprise to you, Hope." Morrigan looked over her companions. "What happened?"

"The plain and simple fact is that the guardian handled things her way." Margarítis folded her hands together.

Hope held her hands out, palms up. "What did she do?"

"She was raised as we were, to put the well being of family above all. Her brother or sister murdered, her mother nearly so." Morrigan lowered one brow. "She executed the responsible party. What else could she do?"

Hope was silent. She knew that no one at the table had the right to pass judgment. At some point, each one had done something she had never spoken of. For most of their lives, they'd dug themselves out of their own troubles. Finally, she found her voice, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on that horse."

"It's more than that." Morrigan drew a shawl about her shoulders. "Murder, in and of itself, is a heinous crime." She rested her jaw in her upturned palm. "To murder your own child and leave its mother for dead?" Silence followed. In the back of her mind, she heard the echo of footsteps on the stone floor of a mostly vacant room. She was aware of the heavy, corded ropes that cut into her wrists. There was, however, no sensation of pain. Morrigan had been in a drug induced paralytic state when she saw the flash of silver in front of her. Had it not been for the mirror that her captor had place across from her, she would never have known her life's blood was gushing from the gaping wound he'd left in her throat. She knew that monster, the one haunting her even in this odd place beyond death, was the husband that left Hope for dead.
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