Ruin Maketh Me

97 - FINAL CHOICE

He doesn't wake.
What if he never wakes?
My hands can't help but clench my knees until the dip and rise of bone cuts into my palm with the edge of the fabric. Hurts. But then again, what right do I have to complain?
I reach out a finger to brush away another stray strand of white hair folding his face in their tenderness. But my touch just hovers there, a centimetre from his skin. I can't seem to make it move. It just trembles, pathetic, weak, and the hair still mars his face.
I close my eyes, but his countenance is still burnt into my mind. The one of his unheld wrath, his blame - in the midst of which he was still beautiful, and now this new one, of his stubborn peace. He looks exactly as he does asleep, brows unforrowed, muscles relaxed into a rare visage of childish innocence. The only difference now is that his hair's longer, his teeth sharper, his nails crueler, and he's not really asleep.
     I keep lying to myself.
Clack.
My shoulders flinch, and I turn slowly around. Long platinum hair, skin like milk, and I almost think he's jacques. I fold away.
Some time through the night, the barrier lifted over the Bond again. I had felt it, although I pretended not to, and I had felt the pricking ache like the pain of a scar - some multitudes higher even than last time. I didn't dare to probe deeper, but the temptation scratched at me like an itch. "Come, look at me, see the damage you've dealt." It screamed, over and over within the cold stare of the moon.
"Get some rest."
Still the gentle Sol I used to know.
I swallow, and my voice scratches out like that of an old man, "It's fine, I'll stay a little longer."
Clack. Clack. Clack.
He walks slowly besides me, holding an arm out against the bed post and keeping an eye on the floor as if measuring our distance.
"He won't be waking anytime soon. He's merging with his Shadow, that in itself takes a considerable amount of time, not to mention, he absorbed all the excess energy from the magic warp."
I bite my lip, not looking at him. Not looking at anything.
"Even if he's successful, there's no guarantee how long it'd take. It could be a week, a month, a year, decades, centuries."
"He'll be successful."
A pale crescent of a hand tightens around the bedpost form the corner of my eye, but he makes no response.
"Do you remember what I'd told you before? We're heading for a happy fate."
I still have the strength for a pallid laugh, "Do you really still believe that?"
The floorboard creaks and falls silent.
"Yes. Yes I do." He laughs a little too, "Did you know? If there hadn't been a magic warp interfering with Ralphus, we'd all be dead by now."
My mouth opens, but really, there's no turbulence within me.
Finally, I say, "How's Julius?"
His hand falls from the bedpost, and he takes a step back, bright hair swinging behind him, "He's back again; in his room, and he won't let anyone in."
A kaleidoscope of black spots kiss my vision, and I slump backwards, massaging my pounding eyes.
"And so, can they detect his Otherworldliness?"
"If they look closely, yes, but Julius is rather adept at hiding things deep inside him."
My lips tip up again. When did smiling become such an automatic motion for me? Just like a doll, a marionette, a mindless object, smile, smile, smile, even when you're sad, even when you're dying, even when the whole world's crumbling.
"I'll be able to influence the Board, there are no prob—
"Sorry."
My lips are numb. I think my voice must be numb too, everything sounds so empty even when they're full of meaning.
"Sorry." I say again.
Sorry for hurting you. Sorry for being so cruel to you. Sorry for taking everything for granted. Sorry for dismissing you. Sorry for using you.
"Sorry."
Perhaps, now, it's finally lost its meaning.
"I know." He breathes.
But he's not saying 'I know' to my sorrys, no, they're an answer to something else that I think I understand. They sound so forgiving.
He steps closer towards me, until his arms are enclosed gingerly around my shoulders. We stay still like that for a second, hot breath puffing over each other, and he kisses me gentle and warm on the cheek.
"And you're right." He murmurs, holding me loosely as if he's holding me tightly, "If I hadn't known you were my mate, I wouldn't have stood out, I wouldn't have cared to meet you or know you. But once I knew you, I learnt to love you truly, and now, if I could go back in time, I would force that self to meet you whether you were my mate or not."
A diluted sourness swims through the pit of the stomach, "I wished you could've told me."
He trembles.
"You should've told me."
He swallows, loud in the cold prescience of the room, "I wanted to, I tried, but..."
"But you couldn't." I smile grimly at Ralphus's halo of white hair, "You were scared. And yeah, I admit, I would've run away if you had told me."
Sol's breath hitches, "I still should've told you, I know it now."
His arms draw away, and he steps back, retreating behind me with halting feet.
"I'll make some food for you, you probably won't leave his side will you?"
Another heaviness presses into the dullened bond.
Just as the door opens, and his footsteps fade out of reach, I lean against my chair and say, "I'm not as cold and cruel a person as you think."
His steps pause, "I know that too."
A tender pink blooms through the Bond, and the door clicks shut behind him.
I take a deep breath and bury my head in my arms. All this... I can't help but think this is some attempt to make up the smudges of my previous life. And yes, however hard I want to deny it, deep down, I know that there's room for Sol and Eirwen and even fucking Jacques, but Ralph, Ralphus, Ralphus, Ralphus— Everything's gone wrong, and now the lines of this supposed 'fairytale' are all disintegrating into senseless letters.
Months, years, decades, and if Ralphus never wakes up... In just another seventy years I'll be withered and dying, perhaps, already buried under the ground or burnt to cinders. Untethered, inconsequential ashes doomed to living in a jar until some careless accident releases me entirely - to be lost.
A stone lodges in my throat.
Perhaps, in just a mere month the glowing shards of our conversation and touch will be mere, fading impressions left to the weathering of—
"Are you still brooding about it?"
I leap up, throwing my chair backwards with a crash.
Red inks into my vision, and right there, leaning against the door is Leonard with a regained laziness and composure despite his set jaw.
"When did you get here?"
The manufactured relaxation drips away, and now that I look closely, I can see dark purple smudging his eyes like poorly drawn kohl.
"There's no goddamn need to be hostile."
Molten lava replaces blood in my veins, "No need? Did you just say no need? What's fucking wrong with you? If it weren't for you—
"I didn't know what was happening either!" He roars, canines extracting to their full length.
My arms fall to my side, "What do you mean, you didn't know?"
     He ruffles his hair violently, tugging out strands of blood red between his fingers, "That's what I want to know as well! After I got to my room, I became so furious, so unlike myself. It was like a collar was tied to me, I had to go up, I had to find out for sure."
     His words burn into silence without warning, and somehow, a strange fear without any origin passes over me.
     "What do I care?" He continues sharply, just before I finally conquer the cold in my guts,  "You're an Otherworlder, I didn't care then, so why would I care whether Julius is one or not? Capital punishment?" He laughs barkingly, "I've done things that would've gotten me executed a hundred times over! It was as if, as if, something had taken hold of my mind. It had felt so natural then, so natural..."
     Leonard's eyes flicker around the room, lighting over me, Ralphus, the ceiling, the floor, each wall, each piece of furniture with an unfocused daze both wildly sharp and alarmingly empty.
     Too frenzied.
     Again, an expression I know very well.
     I think I must've shown that expression too holding onto that slim little book. Mother, see, I'm a good boy. Mother, see, I'm praying for us both. Mother, see, I know my psalms.
     "The Uhyls of this world wouldn't do something like that."
     His gaze snaps back to me, and the glint dims slowly like an extinguishing lamp.
     "There's no fucking use saying things like that." My fingers clench into fists, "You did what you did, and there's no changing anything! So why are you here? Are you here to apologise? Or are you here just to gloat?"
     "Apologise?" He scoffs softly, back straightening, "I feel apologetic, but there's no need for me to apologise. Were you planning on hiding it from Ralphus forever? Until the very day you die? You sure have the guts."
     My breath leaves me entirely, and before I know it, my fingers tear into his shirt.
     "Do it, and you'll regret it." He whispers, all glaring emotions reshuffling behind his gaze until nothing leaks out but an unfazed stare.
     I want to smash my fist into his face and press him against the wall and shout, and shout, and shout, and shout. But the sparks in my veins fizzle and die, and the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice steals everything away from me.
      I sag, fingers loosening from the fibres of his shirt.
     "I'm here to pass on a message from Hoplin."
     My feet stagger a little, and I turn away from him, "They should've come themselves."
     "You should take a look at yourself." Leonard says tonelessly.
     I run my hand through my hair, tugging at the strands for the sharp sting of pain in my scalp, "They're the one you should talk to about Uhyls."
     He makes no response to that, only steps forward and rights the fallen chair besides the bed.
     "Don't run away, they said. Step forward and do something and don't think of the consequences, just leap forwards. Don't let yourself get pulled in the flow, the story still carries on; it won't stop. They said it was important."
      My eyes flicker to the dull and dusty floor. Don't get pulled in the flow. The story still carries on. I laugh. Of course it does, I'm not the main character in this story. Even if I'm gone, the play still goes on, there's more plot to it all than these transient lines I have.
     Is that what you want to tell me, Uhyls?
     "Do you have a reply?"
     I grip the wooden armrest and sit back into the chair, the hard rigidity digging into my spine.
     "You two seem to have gotten close." I smile coldly.
     Again, he makes no answer. Yet, neither does he leave.
     I smooth the duvet over Ralphus. How many times have I done this now? Surely already tens of times. And yet, I still can't manage to touch him. I reach out a finger again towards that unreasonable strand. We lie so close together, the warmth from his cheek rolls by the tip of my finger, but they fail to make contact. It's like we're two magnets playing at how close we can reach before repelling each other.
     But who's repelling who? Me? You? Us, both?
     "If you want to touch him, touch him." Strong, wilful, not-understanding.
     My finger shivers. We touch. And for a moment, I regain the same warmth residing over my skin as we laid together, hugging each other close, back to chest, your wings wrapping me tightly as if I was the last thing you wanted to lose.
     A groan shifts through the room. But it's not the wood, or the walls, or the floor, it's Ralphus, coming deep from within him, through his chest,
     I try to pull away, but I'm stuck tight with his skin, so warm, I almost don't want to move again.     
     Heavy footsteps clang towards me, but before they can reach this unclear destination, all sound is sucked away into oblivion along with the colour and slowly, the distinguishable, tangible things that make up this very space. Atoms, polymers, the human perception of the world disintegrates into nothingness.
     I do not feel fear.
     At least, I don't think I do.
     Even when the sea of the untouchable and indistinct spread achingly closer and closer.
     I am not allowed to turn, but Leonard had been behind me. So now that I can see the glimmering disappearance swim to my side, has he disappeared? Has he broken down into parts unseen by the eye, and has those parts fizzled away into a wave of energy added to this devouring?
     "Ralphus? Ralphus!?"
     He doesn't wake. His eyelashes don't even so much as flutter against the silken canvas of his skin.
     He really does want to condemn us to death.
     Tell me what I should do.
     Where's Sol and Jacques and Hoplin? Why haven't they come yet?
     They should've noticed. They should've.
     But, now, even when the edge of oblivion kisses my feet, no one comes running.
     This is a mid-sentence interval, yet, it's undeniable that this is the end.
     Should I melt away like this? In this way that feels so natural, so silent, fearless.
     'We'll be together forever.' They whisper, tender claws of darkness crawling through my hair, kissing my face with spider-web softness.
     Together forever, forever, forever, forever—
     My eyes fall into the shifting glow of Ralphus's long white hair spread around his head like the halo of an angel.
     And I feel fear.
     I can't leave like this! I can't leave any of them like this! Not when the true end to all things have yet to come! I refuse to acknowledge this slow, tortured disappearance.
     "Ralphus!" I shake his shoulders with my other hand, "Wake up, goddmanit!"
     I need to do something, I need to stop this, I need to fix all of this.
     But HOW?
     HOW?
     Pure golden light spills from my left pinky along with a searing pain that sizzles through my hand and wrist. All matter seems to still, and the yet remaining space and light are stained a satin gold.
     "CHOOSE." A sonorous but alien voice blares through the distortion of space, suddenly loud, suddenly quiet, "Save the herd, and you will die. Save yourself, and the herd will die."
     I try to turn, but it's like I'm frozen into place. I can't blink, I can't bend my arm, I can't take a step back, I'm limited to being a statue of no life. CoNTaIned.
     Who are you?
     "I am power."
     POWER? Whose power?
     "I am the power passed on from the very first father to the very first child, I am the accumulation of the generations, as I will be until the very last. SO, CHOOSE." It orders, every sound ripping from its hollow voice, "The power of Voight was granted upon you for a reason. You are now the holder of the legacy."
     All thought drains away into an empty ocean. I have power, I can save them! I can make it all right again.
     "Save the herd, and you die."
     Save them and I'll die? Why? Why does it have to be one or the other?
     "These are the consequences."
     I gasp within, pounding on the walls of the hardening wall casing my mind. Finally, finally, when I came to the will to live, to mend, to face everything and everyone, why do I have to be knocked down so cruelly? I want to live, but if they die, it's pointless! If they live and I die, it'd be pointless too!
     "THERE IS NO OTHER WAY."
     There has to be other ways! Nothing has just one solution! I will live, and they will live too.
     "No. Do that, and you will both perish." It states simply.
     I slump, sinking deeper and deeper down that spiral staircase of OASIS. They don't sell two-way tickets to hell...?
     Is there really no way?
     "CHOOSE."
     I WANT TO LIVE, but—
     "CHOOSE."
     I know, I know, I know, really, they didn't have to spell it out for me, I know!
     I punch the unbreakable wall.
     Don't get lost in the flow, this is a story that'll go on without me. All other characters are unlosable characters. All that's fucking bullshit! I'm doing this because I want them to live! What would be left without them? Nothing. I can't do all this again, it was so hard for me to build it all up the first time. The talking, the fighting, the getting-to-know, and the drawing apart, the mock angers, the true angers, the love, I tried so hard! Asier, Eirwen, Sol, Lily, Set, even Leonard, I can't live in a world without them, not anymore.
     So, if I choose, can you definitely save them?
     "YES." One easy answer, "You have no other choice, imposter."
     And so, I choose.

-

AN: FINALE fast approaching!!! (10 chapters maybe 15 maximum) I'm so excited!