*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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A house, in the twinkling twilight... She's laughing, laughing as the child—
There's a man in the mirror that is covered in blood. He stares and Caj stares back.
He pukes in the sink, gagging against it all as the metal shakes around his hands, crinkling and tinkling as fingers twitch and flex against the porcelain, a stuttering spasm—
The armor slides off like a cool shell, dropping to the floor with loud clunks as each piece unwinds. He's down to the oft-forgotten human body inside, flesh and meat and bones and he stumbles into the tub, sinking low into the cold bite of water.
A— a house, in twinkling—
There's only empty noise in his head, a ringing buzz suppressing all the awful thoughts, any cognizant thinking, and the water is shimmering around his cheeks, dotted and stained red as blood drips down into its depths.
He's swimming in a child's blood.
It's the first coherent thought he has and he has to turn, lean over the side and vomit again, chest lurching and heaving as there's nothing left to give, no more retribution to be had. His knuckles are blanched and shaking, tendons pulled tight as his head hangs over the side.
It's like he can't even control this body anymore; it shakes without his permission, shivering and shuddering as it heaves and gasps, alive without his will, breathing without his command and all he can think about is the blood.
"Let me be the thing that terrifies them," he had told her, but he hadn't meant it, not like this. Not like this. Not like—
He was going to kill her, the part of him that endures says, breaking but pushing, pushing through it. He was going to kill her, what was I supposed to do? What could I have done? Where did I mess up?
He slumps out of the dirtied tub and onto the frost-bitten tiles, all shaking, gleaming limbs, a body in collapse but not feeling it, not seeing it.
"Careful," she had warned, her old fingers still gripping hard for one last time. Careful—a warning he should have heeded, should have taken to, up in high lonely mountains away from these creatures and the games they play, the games that could have only ever brought him ruin.
I'm everything they said I was. The villagers, the city-dwellers. All of them, Nan. His vision blurs and fractures, the liquid sliding down his cheek and nose hot now, not from the tub but somewhere deeper. They were all right.
The warm hand on his arm is imagined, a gift from memory, a comfort he no longer deserves but leans into, yearns for with fracturing longing, just as he yearns for that orange glow of firelight and the heavy hang of quilts and spices, embracing, consoling. It is everything he lost, everything he would claw back to, if he only knew how. The hand squeezes and he scrunches his already closed eyes further against the reality he will have to come back to, the man he will have to see in the mirror.
Another hand is pushing the wet tendrils of hair away from his face, a soothing thumb brushing down his cheek as he shutters and gasps, and he feels the kiss of other, softer hair on his shoulder.
When he opens his eyes, she is real.
"N-no," he splutters, because these hands are not Nan's, this face, crumpled in pain, not hers. It's hers.
He shrinks back against the tub, arms curling around himself, legs pulling up in confusion and shame, deep shame, but Fae gives him no leeway; the distance he tried to put between them evaporates.
"Caj," she says, her voice nothing but a broken whisper and he can't stand to hear it that way, not when it's his fault. "It's okay. It's okay."
"Leave," he manages as her hands touch his shaking wrists, his shaking blood-stained wrists—covered in awful things, rendering awful things—but she holds tight.
"I'm not leaving you alone," she says in a kinder tone than he merits. "Not right now. Sit up, I'll get a towel. It's going to be okay."
"It's n-not," he chokes, head shaking even as her soft hands coax him up, lean him against the tub. "I don't deserve—"
And then her pale, delicate hands are on his face, holding his cheeks and jaws, warm and real and solid and everything he had dreamed of when he couldn't help it, and the silent yearning is there, beneath all this damage, wishing for things he can't have.
"It's my fault," she says, her beautiful green eyes glassy and spilling tears as she holds tighter but always gently, "I brought them in, I demanded— I should have listened to you, I should have been more cautious. It's my fault—"
And maybe she sees the resistance in his face, the denial, because she winds herself around him, winds herself in a way she has always been, deep down beneath matters of flesh, down in the matters of the soul.
She holds him, clothes turning dark with red-tinted water, face pressed against his neck, and he can't help but to break further, to shiver and hold her, everything he could never deserve, back.
"I'm staying," she murmurs, a mirror promise to the one he made her once, a vow created in blood and tears but forged in souls. "I'm staying with you."
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A/N: Happy New Year! ... ? Man, I really planned this poorly. We're entering the new year on a bit of a dark note.... not that next chapter is much cheerier. Well, at least you'll be getting the next one a whole lot quicker than this one—sorry about that! We're back on track for normal postings.
Chapter notes: Caj tells Finn about his place for mental escape in Partisan's "The House in the Twinkling Light." He also reminisces about Nan and the villagers in "Careful."
