devolving; did you say something?

[Peaches]

Was it not enough to use me, to hurt me?!

Over and over. A fractured recording of the words played a distasteful soundtrack in her head. It spun out of control as soon as she hit past her bedroom door, dancing with a reckless warpath through the low lit domain dotted with snapshots of good times. And it continued to grow louder, with different verses, skipping over a convulsed melody that snuffed out all the different songs she could have remembered.

She thrashed through the shadows in a wild display of erratic behavior. Some kind of animal wearing a girl-skin coat of dawns own light. Savage, scared, caged to a corner of reality that didn't come with a key. Clothes were pulled off to decorate the cave dwelling of this new found creature, with glassy eyes and an open mouth that was swallowing air as if she might asphyxiate from the message he gave her. Half naked, stalking about while trying to get a grip.

To breathe deep rather than rapidly.

To use him. Use. Use, she knew about that term. She had been a putrid doll of that term, once upon a time. Long ago when she couldn't fend for herself and still sought some kind of soft hand from a vile monster incapable of mastering the true form of compassion. She had danced with more than one devil in moonlight, bloodlight, dawnlight. The waltz was etched into her bones to where she felt she was constantly vibrating to their needs, theirwants.

How dare anyone assume the role of an accuser with her. To try to tear away her matyrdom with false belief. Endangering that fragile psyche, fragile as thin multicolored stained glass, to splinter deep enough to cut at the soul.

To hurt him. Hurt. Hurt, she knew about that label. She was positive she could speak that word in a thousand different languages, all ranging from verbal to physical interpretation. Splayed like a butterfly across the table for dissection would put the limelight on every lapse into the nightfall she had toed. A bit of sun that had spilled into all the black; even sunshine could die when the dark became too thick.

Falling to her knees as some washed up seraphim who had been missing her wings for a millennia; her life seemed to stretch to times she couldn't recall when being slammed up against the proverbial wall by the events of her past mixed with the events of the now. She had always been strong enough to carry the weight of a hundred worlds but now? Now she found that her backbone had dissolved, the tenacity to survive the storms gone with the wind that blew her down.

Losing the stoicism brought on the tears. Mashing the salted rivers into her cheeks, her chin, back into the liquid of her eyes with the heel of her palms. This wasn't worth it. This test of her will had not been a utility to climb mountains, to touch the stars. It hadn't come with a warning label or a handbook, only two pairs of eyes that had watched her since the trembling shift of ethereal to eternally normal. There was no prize at the end of this detailed conquest. Nothing but the reminder that she was the last of the untamed. The forgettable. Just a relic in a long list of fairy tales told to children.

It can be normal.

Fingers slipped, slid, and curved beneath the weight of the mattress, going elbow deep till they slid a long the familiar cylinder of orange. A plastic bottle that held the cure for her delirium. She had her moment with it, not too long ago; she recalled the way the pills rattled in the gut of it when she tipped it from side to side.

I can be normal.

Routine was coveted. Being mundane was better than being otherworldly. Her presence in this role brought more tenebrosity than it did lambent greatness. She felt more lonesome as a curator to an unseen realm in ruin than going back to the roots of her carefree beginning. There was a need to pick up the pieces in the broken kingdom of Hollywood than there was to patrol the Wall, to exorcise the Nothing from the great spirits, to play a double life as a brilliant smile and a tired pursuer.

And it would just take one, maybe two? Just a quick sip that would time warp her back to the days of nursing hangovers and a nightlife that came with neon light followers. She could resort to being fucked up for the rest of her life if it didn't mean having to care about the sting from sick tongues. If it meant deprogramming what made her a princess and returning to the land of junkies as just another pretty face to dismiss after a few nights of wrinkled bed sheets and broken bottles of vodka.

Her consequences didn't out weight what she proposed to herself as a good idea at the moment. There wasn't time to think about it, to put the bottle back and just wash away the tears, drink away the punishing regret of getting him hurt, sleep off the headache that came from a bruising struggle and not getting the last word in.

She popped the top, her hands shaking out of fear and excitement. Her old demons smothering the newer ones with victorious crows, rejoicing in the return of what had been absent for over a year. Two pills were shook out into the goblet of her palm.

Normal. None of this is normal.

Her thoughts couldn't become loud enough to overwhelm the recollection of minutes which kept displaying like a video behind her eyes. Get out!, he had yelled.

Popping them into her salt lined mouth, heaving with a wrenching of nervosa when they were finally swallowed.

Just one or two.

_________________________________________


Pupils are unresponsive!

I need 2 CC's of flumazenil!

She's going into cardiac arrest!

We need a ventilator over here!

( Cross posted from: http://rdi.dragonsmark.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t= 27812 )

[Hope]

How can one measure the weight of value?
•
The weight of impact?
•
The weight of a life?
•
The weight of a thousand?
•
Or simply the weight of one.
____________________________

On a night where an eternal rain poured unto the weathered concrete streets below only brief synapses of plasma could light the coagulated grey skies. Thick and palpable was the scent of metal within the air and it was dense enough that one might think they were walking through the sea itself.

On a night where a lighthouse went dark on its coastal perch it could send all of the ships cradled in the sea into a state of unparalleled panic. Caught in the jaws of calamity they would abandon hope of ever proceeding and scramble to come back home. Some would make it while others would rue the day they'd ever set sail.

On this night a perverse inquiry came to mind which led to another followed indefinitely by more. The rain was not the only dampening force that had been on the move and what entered through the front door of the facility was masked from the plethora of security cameras and the footage they held sacred.

On this night a man's weight would be measured by an unimaginable scale. What weighs more- a man or a paperclip? A fastening device that could not bear the load of mere pounds held a grown man unmoving, stuck in paralysis at his desk. For the nurse down the hall it was a rubber eraser- for the doctors who had been in the lounge it had been spare sugar packets. All of them had weights varying yet none of them could budge, their lips refused to move as did their entire lengths. Seemingly useless items caught them dead in their tracks, sitting innocently on their shadows. Should the lights go out in sheer bad luck the lightning would make due. Until the source of the dampening would leave they were all temporarily within their inescapable prisons.

On this night there were a few scars left. The idea of walking through the shadow of the valley of death never quite seemed more practical than as she slowly tread down the hall lined with a mortifying silence as this one's. No telephones to ring, no maintenance workers to fill the halls with their ambient white noise. All of the technology had been left in tact but right now, with the red dripping from the newly forged gash below the right eye she had been solely responsible for the screeching of the blade against the sterile tiles.

"I don't really believe in coincidences, maybe I used to, but not anymore." Her silhouette was in the doorway while her shadow was cast out into the dim room and over the bed. Her vision was on the one inside the sheets and tightly wound in her cocoon. The cacophony of the lingering blade was put to rest as she entered and took a seat in the chair beside the bed.

"Getting attacked tonight felt a little too coincidental." She was quiet for a long long time after the line as she looked upon the portrait before her.

"I don't know where we are or what this place is. I don't know why I was brought here; but I knew where I was going and what I was doing. Maybe it's invisible or maybe you can see it but it's clear there's a thread connecting us. I'm made of the same material as you." She sat crooked in the seat and watched the dancing lightning through the glass pane windows, mesmerized by their fluid linguistics; how they were formless and bound to no one.

"I am grateful. I don't understand it and I can't now but I do understand one thing." She rose and began to head back towards the door, halting once more with her silhouette fleeting and her shadow receding, soon to undo the spell upon the entire facility and its faculty.

"Take your time." She didn't have to close her eyes to remember the depths in which she had incubated. The darkness that had consumed her and the cold she felt at the sunset even now. It was a feeling one could never shake- the clutches of death. "We'll talk about it, about all of it." She could feel the gritty taste of blood and metal filling her mouth as she coughed a spurt onto the seamless tile work below her. "Don't lose your way."

[Peaches]

How cold is it?

Whispers caught on the shell of her ears. Hundreds of them reciting the same line, a chanting question that spun across her skin like finger tips. Thin remains of ghosts that didn't belong here. She knew they were lost but so was she; any lantern of hope had been shrouded in the thick of the black that surrounded her.

Confusion wasn't an emotion that existed here. There was no fear, no terror. No guilt or whimsy. It was an empty vessel that she floated in that carried no actual currant of direction. A blip of another particle that once housed such a ferocious light was now wet to where the wick wouldn't light.

How cold is it?

No need to breathe here. There was no running rivers of blood to keep her skin ignited and her eyes lit. She tried to move but there was no instinct to make motion fruitful. Hanging in a suspension of gravity with no thin wires to puppet her.

How cold is it?

She felt the rustle of her hair across her shoulders. It slanted and hung in a twisted fashion; what color was her hair? Was it like a spun gold, or dried wheat? Did it feel soft when dripping between her fingers, or did it crackle with a brittle texture? And her eyes -- were they open or were they closed? A world developed in piceous ink that had not evolved with starlight or sunlight made it hard to gauge which one it was: Opened or closed?

How cold is it?

What did cold feel like in comparison to this? Did heat feel separate in a category to whatever this was? No recollection of her flesh becoming pimpled with goose bumps but she was puzzled with the murmured inquiry that kept breathing down her neck, against her face, near the blades of her hips.

How cold is it?

She didn't know. She didn't care. The concern seemed pointless to answer and even less helpful in the thick of things. So she listened for nothing in an aphotic tomb.

How cold is it?

[King]

"I was thinkin'.. When you wake up we could go to Disney."

"Remember? Get you some Mickey ears an' me one of those dumb pirate hats from that ride?" Terry said through a weak smile.

No answer came.

One sided conversations. That's all she could do with the blonde slumbering within the hospital bed beside her.

"So.. Get better, righ'?" Warm hands took one of Peaches' own and offered it a squeeze. How she wished those digits would curl and return the gesture; but they wouldn't. Lifeless. Not lifeless. She's still alive, but not here. Words -- maybe they could get through to her. Not maybe. She wouldn't allow herself to live with a maybe. Not right now.

"I know you can hear me.. You're jus' takin' your time to answer." her features took on a pained expression. Self doubt there, but she tried her best to ignore the nagging feeling from the edges of dark thoughts that attempted to plague her brain. Have faith. Those words meant more now than ever.

Have faith. Put your faith in something higher. Everything will be okay.

She snorted back then and let out a small laugh. "We're gonna freak the **** outta' Mel, ain't we? We gotta' do somethin' crazy for Christmas.. It's gonna be our first, you know? As a family. Me 'n you.. an' all the people we're gonna invite over."

Terry began to dip forward. Her grasp on that single hand tightened as she drew it up and pressed it against her lips.

"I know you can hear me in there.." her green eyes squeezed shut. "Wake up.. I need you."

[Shadowlord]

Days had passed since last they'd spoken, since that fateful night at the Park's manor, the battle which had shattered so many things. Much of the facade had been struck down during the Nothing's attack, and it was only with powerful, soul-stretching magic that any of it had yet been restored to proper shape.

But the baronial manors were resilient in the way many other places in Rhy'din were not. Reconstruction of a building, too, was one thing. Reconstructing hearts, minds? The far harder task. He'd spent those days in a black emotional darkness, having returned to work at the orphanage for a few hours each day, having sought out some semblance of normalcy.

A call from Wilson shattered that goal.

"She's been in the hospital, sir, it appears to be a drug overdose."

"Drug overdose? She doesn't use drugs, not anymore."

"Just relaying what the doctors have said, sir."

So he'd dropped his tasks at the orphanage - busywork today really, just forms to review and sign as he re-matriculated himself slowly back into functionality. Dropping paperwork literally at his desk, he grabbed his coat and was out the door with a hastily penned note of explanation. Days of quiet anguish had become a sudden, sharp agony, and guilt and remorse welled strong within the elf's heart.

-------

He could hardly have gotten to the hospital faster if he'd teleported, but reconstructions at the manor had drained his magic to a nearly nonfunctional state. The sick feeling which had lingered in his stomach - the thus far incurable remnants of the taint which had had him for weeks now - was still there, but he was somehow managing to suppress it, keep it at bay. Time out of her presence might account for that, or the fact that since the battle the Nothing, the Devourer, had been weakened generally by Peaches' eldritch might.

As he approached the source of that eldritch might, laying in the hospital bed with an IV drip stabbing the creamy flesh of an arm, he felt the first stirrings of the Devourer's seed within him. Long moments the elf stood there at the room's threshhold, deciding whether or not he should simply depart right then and never look back.

But the Devourer was not ascendant in him, not today. His hope of a full cure lay right here, and he couldn't shake the feeling he'd had more than a little to do with her current state. He steeled himself and fought back the rising, incoherent murmurs of the Devourer within, and approached the hospital bed. A single red rose, grasped in his slender fingertips, he set down at the table beside - a mild chill cantrip replacing the need for a vase - and continued to struggle as he watched her, mind forming words which he couldn't say to her directly, not now.

I never meant this. Never meant any of it. Those words I said, the anger I felt. They were not sourced in me, weak as that excuse is. Too weak. You were just trying to help, while I acted the petulant child.

He knelt by the bedside, and took one of her hands, fingertips like ice against the elf's warm palm.

I won't leave, this time. I'll spend every waking moment I can, here. Unless Terry kicks me out.

A small smile touched his lips, then, though there was more than a grain of worry in the elf's mind; he would no doubt encounter Terry here, soon, and had already prepared himself to answer some hard questions if it came to that.

Even should the Devourer consume me, wipe my thread from this existence, that we never speak again... I miss you, Peaches. You are needed here, in this time, on this world, in this chaotic mess of a city. The city needs its siren. Please find your way back, young lady. My Lady of Honor.

A single tear dripped from the elf's eye along his downturned nose, to splash once onto her cheek ere he kissed it away with a feather brush of lips; he then settled in for the most difficult wait of his long life.

[Fourth]

August 22nd...


Though the day was a clear one, a personal, private storm reached out across Rhy'dins complex scope. The cloud was not visible, it existed within the confines of the third layer, perception gone wasted, rotten and degraded. The ball of dark lit energy, a fitting mount for such a dystopian figure, drew jagged lines between then and there, here and now as it streaked through the joined tendrils of a common thought. A hospital.

She'd forsaken these things, buildings she'd never need or accept. The last time she'd entered one, another close friend, perhaps the closest, had rested. Sent by her own hand and her own mistakes, the memory was spoiled. As lights flickered and hope died, the enigmatic storm of emotions lowered itself to this world. Resplendent, Melanie's form seemed fitted to the pitted, scarred armor that draped itself around her phantasmal figure. Simmering rage danced along the edges of a mind bent on the demise of so much, anything and everything. As security guards took in the martial form, they quickly moved to deny her entrance. Stilled by a leaden glance and a dangerous thought, the tide of assistance wavered, broke and fell along the shores like merchant ships at Dunkirk. And so it was during the entire trip, slow and solitary, lonely and confusing. Another one was here. They'd all ended up here, the three of them. Only she'd remained free. Clarice, dead by her actions, her failures. Terry, seriously wounded by her own hands, her intentional actions. And now Peaches.

Peaches, that ray of sunshine, so very often the only creature able to shatter the veils of Melanie's secrets, the only beam strong enough to puncture the perpetual gloom that lingered around Melanie's stricken mind. A bastion of hope, living proof that all would, at some point, be well. As she reflected on those things, the overwhelming anger seemed to gnaw, like a pack of rats, at the strands that held her warped mind in check. Undeniably, her gloved hand pounded along the empty walls. Like a bell calling the damned to sermon, tile and surface agents splintered and chipped as she vented helpless, poignant fury to those who'd never listen. Armor meant to inspire hope, a figure intended to lead the masses to the promised land. They'd called her hero, they'd called her a savior. A dark lit reminder, a silent guide in the darkest of night. Maybe the two were not that different, no.

Her steps, and her fist, stopped as she stared into a closed door. The gentlest of touches, fingers spread wide and soft, pressed the creaking object in. Within seconds, her streamlined bulk seemed to fill the room, each breath stealing more and more of the light's weak offering. As always, it was this way. The sight of the sun siren seemed to consume the darkness, dispell and negate it with glorious ease. Even so inert, the woman's nature so easily counteracted Melanie's own dire prophecy. The change was visible, contagious. Anger did not bleed into, for once, apathy. Rather, it fell into the quicksand that formed honest desolation. Not another one. Please, no one else.

Her face, so often a stoic mask of laconic fortitude, seemed to reject the twin trails that creased pristine features. As the tears grew upon sooty lashes, they seemed to hang, captured in the liar's web of beauty. None of that mattered, not right now. All that mattered is another of the trio seemed to be stricken. As she neared, the same gloved hand, damp with tears caught as it pressed itself along her face, lowered itself to take a single strand of sun kissed blonde between fingers cloaked in black.

"I wish I could have done more, Peaches. The greatest sadness is never who I've hurt, it's those I couldn't help."

The words were murmured against the backdrop of a silent sob, something that shifted the plates laced over her chest. So enthralled, she'd not seen the single nurse who'd remained in the face of such shifting, tangible agony.

"Ma'm?" Her words were soft, curious. No one knew the reaction that could be expected from what'd become the night's dark champion. "You can't stay here. So much...energy. It's bad for her. Can you go, please? I'll tell her you came, I know your name."

She'd not seen the woman, though she heard her voice. As her face turned in that direction and her hand went limp, she offered a shrug and a nod that reeked of defeatism. "Yeah, I know it's not good for her." Final words followed, words that rolled off of a chin she'd pointed back down towards the bed. "I know and I'm sorry. She's right, Peaches." The walk back, if possible, was worse. What had been lonely was desolate, what had been lost was cast adrift.