Present Day...
It was one of those nights that was going to be too quiet. Dusk had recently fallen marking the passing of the moons over the sun, the red-orange-yellow just enough to set the sea in the forever distance on fire. Fall had arrived in Rhydin with its color changing leaves and brisk, windy music bringing with it the festive turnover of the Marketplace.
Cris received a vague message in the early hours of morning; the early hours that had always kept her awake for as long as he'd known. The Day After. The day after the night they'd seen each other for the first time in eight years.
It's Leena. Marketplace. Six. I'll find you.
Six in the morning. Angel's mercy, that had not changed. Though his sleeping habits certainly had. And so the early hour did not find him in a disgruntled mood. Fatigue darkened the skin beneath his eyes for a completely different reason. He'd been through the market enough to know at least where it was, and he picked a landmark that he felt was out in the open. A fountain forged of marble that somehow kept running despite the chill in the air. He came upon the market square at a brisk pace, gaze sweeping in the early morning blue. Only those as crazy as him were awake.
There were a few. Businesses were opening, awnings rolled down, chairs and tables situated, and blue collar seamen tumbling out of the most interesting places. They weren't entirely alone.
She'd seen him after she turned a corner, prompt like she remembered. Hands stuffed into her coat pockets, she approached the fountain, trying her best to come across as nonchalant. It only made her look like she was stalking because that's how time had forged her stretch of legs. She was wearing jeans, normal things, fitted like a glove and tucked far into a pair of brown boots. Her hair was loose, shorter pieces fighting to fall across the right side of her face.
"I didn't think you'd come," she said when she ducked closer, angling herself away from a bustling patron jogging by.
No, they were not alone. The figure he cut was not impressive but it did set him apart. Slim legs, long, encased in black gear that had every sling filled with the weapons that he had. A long dagger lay against the outside of his right thigh, shorter throwing daggers at either hip and another slim weapon, a collapsible baton within easy reach of his right hand. His left circled around the crystal hilt of a dormant seraph blade. He had a leather coat on, black as his gear, worn open over a crew neck, white t shirt. And he stood still, very still. The only thing that moved was his hair, shifting in the breeze, dusting his temples.
When she spoke, he turned, mouth parted in surprise and he took a moment to fill his gaze with her presence. Her life. "Why not?"
She'd stopped about three feet away to take him in as he did her. He was entirely different but the same in ways she remembered. In the light her eyes was depthless, silver pools reflecting the sun and his were still springtime green no matter the season. Her expression was guarded, features still as if she was holding something back. "I choked you, used your full name, and called you ridiculous." She wanted to smile, but it came out as a single corner lift of lips.
Like her, he narrows his gaze, finding the hints of the girl he'd known in the woman who now stood before him. She had not grown very much. Upward, anyway. The longer he looked at her, the easier it became to accept the fact that she was real. That he really was seeing her again. "Does any of that change who you are?"
The partial smile faltered and she pulled her lips in, shaking her head. "No. No I guess not." Her shoulders sagged beneath an invisible weight and she looked away, a poor attempt at admiring the fountain. "Have you been in town long?"
He looks away after she does, though his gaze follows a yawning man across the square who disappears through a thick door. Moments later, the store front's lights come on. He fingers the hilt of his blade, warm from his palm, only slightly slick with sweat. "Since July."
She looked back, stealing a moment to study his profile and the sharp angles of growth that had not been there once upon a time before. He had grown just a little more, still trying to top her. This time the smile was real. It was there. Just like the distance that stretched between them with so little to spare.
His features were still soft for a man's; full lips in their frame of dark stubble, a long nose, high cheekbones and those damnable eyelashes that at time he wished for the patience to pull out. When he looks back, he finds her smiling, and it puts a suspicious tightness onto the face she was studying. "What?" He could have been seventeen again.
"You're different, but not. Its-- it's ---" she paused, caught in her study, at a loss for words for so many other things. "It's just different." She shrugged, coat pockets alight with movement as her fingers searched to toy with one another as they often did when she was at odds with herself.
"I'm sorry." And he was, though he did not know what for. It was just a feeling he had, the words leaped over each other to get out of his mouth, to her ears. Then, without warning, "Where have you been...?"
Her chest rose and fell with a breath that couldn't have made it into words if it tried. She wanted to look away, so bad. So bad. But she didn't. "Everywhere," was what she finally said. It was the truth too, never in one place too long. She edged a step closer, looking over her shoulder, avoiding a collision with a woman on a bike tossing newspapers. "I tried to tell you..." and she had difficulty looking back.
What in the Angel's name was that supposed to mean? Frowning, the expression much darker, much firmer than it had been in his youth. "When? When did you try to tell me? Since I know nothing, it does not seem that you tried very hard."
She returned the tone she deserved from him with a slash of pale brows. "I sent you fire messages for almost a year...after. I tried." The noises around them were starting to pick up, people mingling, merging into a crowd that was blooming. The city was waking up.
"Fire messages?" Disbelief and despair were a poisonous combination. "I received none of them..." The city could wake up around him all he wanted. The rising light makes it easier to see the shadows on his face, the black clasp of Mark's on his throat and the one half hidden on his collarbone.
One of her hands shrugged itself out of a pocket, too desperate to be contained. Her arm swung out, wrist turning, palm up as if she was holding a handful of those messages for him to see. "Everyday, Cris. More than once a day sometimes."
Looks abruptly away from her as if her presence hurt his eyes. "That does not make any sense." He turns, freeing his hand from his blade to pass it through his hair, drying the anxious sweat of his palm against his brow. "Where did you send them?"
"Where else? Where you lived." She was riding the rise and fall of a myriad of emotions unbuckled, finding a poor attempt at controlling them. She'd been so practiced, so good at it.
"Angel's mercy..." Making it to the fountain's ledge, he sits down hard with a creak of leather and clatter of blade. Palms come together, long fingers with their scars finding their partners before his mouth. That could mean several things... "Leena, I relocated to New York within a month of Theron telling me you were dead. But my parents...they should have received these messages, they should have told you. Have you received nothing from them?"
She blinked at him, following his movements with her eyes before turning to face him. "New York?" She echoed. At a loss for the span of a few beats before she followed up with, "Nothing. I got nothing."
That did not make any sense. None of this did. Her presence here, after so long. The severing of communication between everyone he cared for. He slid his fingers into his hair. Lank, wet earth brown draped over his knuckles, sliced with their share of wounds. "You've my attention now," muscling through the tightness in his voice. "Tell me now what you could not tell me then."
That free hand that had fought its way from the confines of a pocket drifted to her side, alone and cold. She looked down, picking a patch of marble at random unable to look at him anymore, not willing to hear the pain in his voice that he wanted to hide just as well as she did from hers. "I was--shot."
"I know," he could not stop himself from saying it, though that made little sense. Dragging his fingers back down over his face, over the sandpaper stubble on his jaw, pressing them into his lips he took a moment to steady himself. Hands lowering a moment later, he wetted his mouth. "How did you survive?"
The other hand had had enough and escaped to find its mate. This time her eyes drifted to her right, looking at nothing but the past and the rush of everything that came with it. "The man that I pushed out of the way. His wife was a nurse." She didn't want to relive a single thing about it.
It could not be this simple. Seven years, and that was all that had happened. It was not a grand scheme meant to keep them apart, or an attempt on Theron's life. Or anything extreme. Only a terrible coincidence. Exhaling, Cris puts his brow against the outside of his thumbs.
Not quite. Every story had chapters and chapters to those chapters and maybe one day she'd tell him. She chanced a look, fingers in a tangle in front of her. "I wasn't supposed to be there."
Keeping one hand at his brow, he lifts the other, palm facing her, to stall her words. A moment later, his hand returns to its previous position. Eyes closed, brow tight, he sits as still, silent and cold as the marble beneath him.
She wanted to pace. Wanted to sit. Wanted to jump into his lap and hug him for seven years and cry an ocean's worth of tears for everything that neither of them even knew had happened. Seven years. She blinked several times and looked up at the sun, willing the brightness to burn it all away. But all it did was turn her vision into splotches of white so she closed her eyes like her father had done every morning and stole its strength.
"You're correct," voice raw, as if from overuse, but in his imitation of a statue it's an evident display of restrained emotion. "You were not supposed to be there, Leena. You were supposed to be safe."
Her sigh was barely real over the din of life around them and the calming song of water trickling through the fountain. "I know." And what more could she say? Plenty, but that's all that found its way to the surface.
Nothing about his posture changes. He has become one with the fountain, a black fixture with a weary face. "Why have you not told Theron?"
She flinched with the mention of her father's name, crossing her arms over her chest as if guarding her heart from any more ache. "I can't. Because then they'll come back. They'll break him until there's noth--" her voice cracked with the sorrow that threatened to take it. She turned away from him at an angle, looking at the ground. "I can't see him."
If he looked up any faster, he would have given himself whiplash. Even through the anguish of her answer, there was no denying the cold surge of relief that he could feel tingling through his blood. Theron was alive. "Have you heard from him...?"
Her head shake was sharp, a few jerks back and forth. "No. He doesn't know. No one does."
He lets that sink into his mind. "No one. Save me." Folding his hands, he lets them dangle in a loose clasp between his bent knees. "How long have you been in town?"
She exhaled, if everything around them was silent, it would have sounded like his name. "Since the spring." She unwound one of her arms to pinch the bridge of her nose.
"For the Angel's ****ing sake," spits, head hanging low. Lank locks nearly as black as his clothes fall in a curtain to disguise his brow and temples.
She didn't say anything. Arms recrossing themselves, she paced once back and forth as if that's all she needed to chase away the emotions that were screaming release. "Why did you go to New York?" It had been eating at her since he'd said it.
He supposed he should have expected it. He'd been asking the questions so far. There is not much color left in his face and her query drains the rest of it. "I needed to."
She glanced at him, stared, falling into a minute of all those years ago. Her brows pinched together, fighting off a battle that was soon going to be lost to the sheen that shimmered in her eyes. "Cris," it was another start without an immediate finish.
Swallowing, he pushes back those thoughts like he pushes back his hair, looking up at the raw sound of his own name. Brow wrinkling, tense with emotion he was so unwilling to show until it ached. Pressing his hands to his knees, he slowly rises to his full height, gaze never once leaving hers.
No one around paid them any mind, the young couple of somethings lingering by the fountain on a gorgeous Fall day. Somewhere music was playing, a beautiful sonata by piano. An argument picked up on the corner between a cyclops and the dragons selling newspapers. It was all out of the ordinary and absolutely okay. "I'm sorry," she told him. Told the boy that she knew forward and back that was now a man with the shadows smeared beneath his eyes and the stains on his soul.
Sometimes it was a wonder that there was a world at all outside of the one that had him in its clutches. How could so much happen, how could he feel so much, see so much, hurt so much without anyone else realizing it? Mouth tenses at her apology. He was not entirely sure he wanted it, but some part of him needed it. Some part, somewhere deep, that he hid beneath everything else.
Boot heels silent on the cobblestones, the pace he takes to close the distance between them is not a hurried one. He fully expects her to pull away from him, especially when he lifts his hands, reaches for her shoulders like no time has passed at all.
He should know better than to expect anything from her that made sense and sensibility. She'd tested him for years, kept him on his toes, hardly ever doing what he thought she would. And although she tensed when he moved, she didn't stop him, only a half a step behind meeting him in the middle. If someone asked them later who got there first, it was hard to say. Her hands slid between the opening of his coat and beneath, around his waist like they thought they had a right to be there. She buried her face in his neck and closed her eyes, wilting. Done.
He should, but it wasn't his fault that he'd spent the last seven years without her. All the things he knew; about life, acceptance, friendship and the love of a small family had all been replaced. Rusted, corroded, covered in dust and stained with blood. So it was no surprise the quiet gasp of shock at her visited embrace, but it does not take any time for him to return it. Leather creaks as he wraps his arms around her as far as they would go and holds on tight, like he's afraid he'll fall straight through the earth without her there to hold him up.
This close, she'd be able to tell. He'd grown into his lank, finally, but what muscle tone he'd had had been withered away by too much in too short a time. The curve of ribs easily detected, shoulder blades sharp under her hands. He smells of leather and metal, with a smear of cigarette smoke and honey. Fingertips dig fiercely into her shoulder and he tightens his face until he can breathe easily again.
Her hands remembered things they shouldn't have but right then, right there in that moment she was going to be selfish and take, take, take. They found their way up his back to splay over the thin fabric of his tee-shirt, pressing hard enough to draw him closer than space would allow. Two parts of the spectrum, endless despair of loneliness, smeared across seven years like a spilled glass of water. He had grown and the fit was different, but it felt the same. Everything about it. She'd gained maybe an inch, a narrow waist, and enough of a chest to mark her a woman. She smelled of sunlight and rain, summer's breeze, and something faintly sweet. The tears had waited long enough, spilling over to wet his skin where they fell.
For the days after Theron had told him of Leena's death, he'd wished for this very thing. He'd wished so hard that sometimes every blond head he saw walk past his manor on the street he'd make believe it was her. And within a moment she'd be looking up at him. Or she'd be in his arms and he'd be holding her, making sure she wasn't bleeding. And she'd laugh, wondering what kind of person would put such a horrible thought in his head. She wouldn't die. She'd never die, she wouldn't leave him like that.
Her humid tears warm his skin, he could feel her breathe. Feel her clutch at him. Like she was trying to prove to herself that he was as real as she was. But in a contest of who had a better grasp of reality, she would win. Completely. Too stunned, still, to do anything but hold her, he turns his nose into the soft fall of her white gold hair, moving his palm finally from her spine to cup the back of her head, a gentle comfort for the sorrow she was pouring onto him.
The tears carried with them memories she feared, those she mourned, those she missed. They fell for him, for her, and for all the other things hidden away, locked up tight behind a door that she never wanted to open. Her tears were cool, like the first drops of rain on a Spring day; one after the other after the other sliding down his neck where they were caught by the fabric of his shirt. It was goodbye and hello commingled into one. Her fingers gathered up fistfuls of cotton in an attempt to hold on tighter as if the slightest breeze would take him away. Silence stretched between them and it was more than enough.
As the seconds became minutes, their embrace, to him, was less about his own need to assure himself and more about his desire to get her to stop crying. He'd never handled crying women well and he could thank the Angel that they rarely figured that out. His attempts at kindness were merely taken for just that, not some primal male fear of emotion. But even so, he did not think there was anything he could do but stay right where he was. With his palm smoothing down her hair, finding the curve of her neck, laying across the Mark he himself had put there so many years ago. He murmurs quiet words against her crown, sounding like Shh, it's alright, I'm here. Dark to her light, the gentle breeze mixes his hair with hers.
She was so quiet, so so quiet. And so still. There was nothing to her and something so much more. She didn't think that she had any more tears left after all those years of forgetting them. But seconds became minutes and it didn?t matter that they were standing in the middle of a busy square, bustling with people and the explosion of morning light. She closed her eyes, tipping her forehead against him, and took a breath that was so deep it could have been her last. Her shoulders rose and fell beneath his embrace. "I'm sorry," she whispered into his chest, words heavy with weight.
There had been many moments lately where he'd thought to himself that the world could go to Hell and he would not give a damn. Now, very slightly, he felt the same thing. The morning sunlight only brings more people onto the street, but he did not care who saw him, who saw them, or who had to skirt them to continue on their path. It also brings the harsh contrast of his skin to his hair to light. He'd always been pale, but not quite this much. Shadowy smudges stand out beneath his eyes and his face is lean, leaner than it should be, dusted in pepper dark stubble. His arms circle tighter around her after her apology. "I know," says in response. "So am I."
Something that resembled a laugh spilled out when she exhaled, unaware that she was holding her breath. She forced her fists apart in the spread of fingers and ran her hands down his back. Beneath his jacket it was easy to feel the press of too much bone into her palms. "For what?"
It felt nice. Unlike when she knew him, he was no stranger to touch now. He'd been touched in so many more ways than he thought possible, both in agony and pleasure. But he was no less starved for it now than he was when he'd been fourteen. "I don't know," admits. "I wanted to say something. But. For not being where you could reach me, I suppose... My parents would have told you, something must have happened. Gone wrong, or, or your messages did not get through..." He'd been trying to pack his concerns over his family behind the cracking dam in his heart that held back everything else.
She was looking over his shoulder, stare settled on the bright yellow and white stripes of a cheerful awning. She thought for a second that its happiness was mocking them. "Stop it. You don't have anything to be sorry for." Even though everything that made up the moments that had recently passed were so familiar, it was as if they had traded places. Beneath his arms, her shoulders fought the tightness that wanted to creep in as if simple art of touch was foreign to them.
"I know." He can feel it. The stiffness in her body, like their embrace had gone on too long. And maybe it had. They were no longer children. Much had changed for the both of them. Exhaling, he begins to unwind his arms from her. "Though, I'll not let you bear the full weight of it on your own."
No, they weren't children anymore which was why it was effortless for all the things they weren't saying or doing to push them apart. She'd started before he had, tucking her chin so she could scrub her palms none to gently over her cheeks, an attempt at erasing any evidence of weakness. "You'll do no such thing, Crispin Elias Ashwood." Her arms fell to her sides when she took a half a step back, hands diving into the pockets of her coat as if they had done something wrong. Crisp air flooded the space between them. She was looking that the length of the blade next to his hip, avoiding eye contact. "It's mine to shoulder."
Scoffs. "By the Angel, stop calling me that. You are not my mother." Steps back when she does, his hands falling to their usual rests. One around his blade, the other at his side. "It does not have to be yours completely." Certain she knows that, but he says it anyway.
That cost her a half of a smile, something else she didn't do nearly enough. She looked at him, doting on things that the sun brought to light. The smear of too little sleep beneath his eyes, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the dust of stubble. Things that had changed with the passage of time, the experience of memories, and the weight of secrets and nightmares. Her smile was a quick thing, gone in a blink. She was thankful for the hair that fell into her face, obscuring any attempt at scrutiny. "You're so tall."
She was so good at switching from this to that to avoid talking about things she didn't want to talk about.
His hair, like hers, is at a good enough length to fall across his temples, able to hide his eyes when he needs it to. Eyes that were sharper than they had been in his youth, like the edge of a blade, the frost over the green more evident; lashes long and dark and unchanged. His dark brow better fits the scowls that he'd been prone to. Over the years, he had not seemed to realize the importance of posture. "You're still short," lip curls. She seemed to have only transferred her smile to his mouth.
Habits were easy to fall into when they were shared. The smile ghosted back over her lips and was awfully close to reaching her eyes, but not quite. They were so sharp, glittering pools of gray edged with diamonds. The color scrubbed into her cheeks highlighted the freckles dusted there. "You're good?" She wanted to hear the lie he was going to tell her, even though it would break her heart.
It was like the universe had taken them both to the whetstone and ground them until they became deadly. He could only see the girl she had been because he knew her. Her transformation was not surprising. Neither was his. He meets her question with a slight narrowing of his eyes, unsure of why he felt like she only wanted to hear one thing. To comfort herself before she turned and walked away. He could never hide anything from her. Her query was useless. Lips part, he takes in a breath. "No." He did not even soften it with an excuse, or explanation. If he told her the truth, she might stay.
Her lips puckered when she breathed out, lids falling closed so that her lashes crested like wings over pink cheeks. Head down, she shouldered this new weight along with the rest. "You've always been a horrible liar."
Snorts. The longer he thinks over her words, the wider his smile gets. "And yet you still continue to give me the opportunity. I think you rather enjoy seeing me fumble. But what of you? Will you lie to me and tell me what I know to be false?"
She glanced up at him quickly before looking away. The air was fresh full of baked goods and brewing coffee. Her shoulders rose and fell with a careless shrug. "No." It was another sigh left to the wind. "I wasn't and I'm not." Her attention drifted back, an easy thing to do. All those lost years. "Your girl needs to feed you more."
Internally grateful that she'd decided not to lie. They could at least acknowledge each other's intelligence. Blinking, then, at her observation. "My--oh. Erm. She's trying. I do not have much of appetite these days," brief lift of his shoulder, the leather of his coat gently creaking.
"You should find it." She'd always spoken like that to him, kind suggestions with the tone of an order that wasn't really meant to be. So bossy sometimes. It made her smile again, so different from when she was younger. The tone was aged well beyond her years and pulled from a place she pushed aside. It was familiar and new. "So you're sticking around?" An implication that lit up a hope behind her eyes.
Brief collapse of his features, the kind a child would give an overbearing parent. Pushing his free hand through his hair, he decides to address her question instead. "I am. I've not yet found a reason to leave town."
She was relieved and didn't waste the time hiding it. "Good," she breathed. "Don't." Again, another indirect sentiment and meaning layered within those few words. And as if she just realized they were standing in the middle of a crowd, her shoulders lined straight and she looked around, coming close to scowling at others like they shouldn't be there. "I don't know how long I'm going to be here for."
Any warmth he felt at her gentle request is erased by her admission. Something very close to a door slams behind his eyes, turning their color matte, the sheen of them abruptly gone. Nodding, he sucks on the inside of his upper lip. "I see. You'll tell me before you go, yes?"
There was something in his tone that had her gaze snapping back. The change was so minor she was surprised that she picked up on it. "Of course I will." She sounded...offended, but immediately scolded herself. She had no right, did she? "Cris there's so much--" but she cut off, pressing her lips together and sucking them in as if she was trying to hold the words back. "I don't want to."
He'd gotten much more skilled at retreating behind a wall of iron. His name brings his gaze back to her and a furrow begins forming between his brows. "Then don't."
Her expression remained stoic. She was also finding it harder to look away. "Okay," it was a promise without the words. "Walk with me. I'll show you where you can get the best caramel apples in town." She stepped away, angling herself in a direction for him to follow.
Surprise only shows itself in a swift blink. He hadn't expected her to agree. But he could also keep himself from being all that hopeful that just his two worded request would be all she needed to stay. By the time he figured out what she'd said, she was already moving away. "Hey, you can't just..." Whatever he was going to say, he loses, falling in step by her side.
