Topic: The Glimmer Of This Tainted Moonlight

The Redneck

Date: 2014-06-14 13:47 EST
Some people thought that the transmission of a soul through life into their afterlife was instant, or nearly so.

Those people were wrong.

There was a gathering place, a centralized point where the dead went after they were cleansed, stripped of their memories completely, to wait for judgement. And though judgement didn't really determine whether a person spent their eternity in a paradise or a hell, well actually it did.

The choices, the beliefs a person had in their living life determined where they'd go in their afterlife. Whichever diety or Power they'd held most dear claiming them from the instant their hearts stopped and the light left their eyes.

From their home world their essence travelled, snapped up like a rat in the mouth of a hungry terrier, to the Astral. And from there, they'd be scrubbed clean as they sifted through filters into a place that was, and wasn't really a plane. There they waited, sometimes an eternity, sometimes a moment, it all depended on the dead.

There, stretching from horizon horizon, and back around behind it to, in a world of misty grey with nothing in the way of landmarks but for the podiums where the Recorders were, the dead waited. Waited for their time on the mark, waited for their time to pass on and begin their promised reward for service and belief.

Movement here for the living wasn't common, the esssence of life had no need for landmarks or gravity or beaten tracks. Willing herself to move, the redneck floated from the Portal she'd activated. In memory and thanks a thumb ran the edge of the key ring tenderly before she slipped it back into a pocket of her jeans.

With the memory of a man's face held firmly, stubbornly in her mind, the woman began to drift. Single mindedly she bore down, fought the image to hold and clarify, squeezed her eyes shut against the washed out blur of once-life around her until she'd bumped up against one of the podiums. Thorn felt the beginnings of a dread laden relief then. It was highly likely he'd already passed on and through then. Gone on to where ever he'd been drawn to in life.

Bribery worked no matter the Plane, no matter the Purpose. When suitable payment had been accepted, (the dying breath of a unicorn for one, the feel of sunlight on the skin of an elf child for another, the squeal of a rabbit in a trap for yet another), she'd been allowed to read the appropriate pages in the Books.

The Dead Books held the names of those who'd died. All of those who'd died in the Multiverse. From its beginning to its ending. All of the dead's names were recorded there.

Except one.

With her heart breaking once again, the redneck keyed the Portal home. Squared her shoulders and went to keep the promise to her brother.

Delahada

Date: 2014-06-27 00:12 EST
?Have you visited her yet??

?No.?

?Why not? Have you two fallen out, or do you think she'll prickle you with questions??

?Questions.?


This cliff?.

The last time he had stood here, overlooking the sea, the season had been different. Then it had been the end of November, when most of the trees had turned skeletal in preparation for the frost. Dead, damp leaves had been the scent heaviest in the air, almost overpowering the brine of the salt spray that roiled with the waves that crashed upon the jagged rocks below. In eight years time, much of the gaping maw had corroded, making his perch here now precarious.

Now it was Summer, and he could feel the seconds sloughing away on the dreadful countdown taking him closer to the Fall. Autumn. His mother?s season.

?Is death cleansing?? Sinjin had asked him.

Salvador closed his eyes and remembered. Though the rocks under his bare feet held no memories of that time, he could still recall clearly the thick slur of the sinner?s accent. He conjured up the scent of spices and sex and blood that had clung to the man?s skin, a constant reminder of all the Ravnos had denied him in those times.

He had not come here to seek his own ending, not then and not now. Though he could look back on the memories much more clearly now than he had been able to then. He had never asked, but now he wondered. Had Sinjin really worried that he had meant to jump?

He opened his eyes and looked down on the white, churning froth of the sea. The thought had never occurred to him, then. He only imagined it now because of what had been before, but it was not a notion he was entertaining putting into action. Not in the least.

Salvador crouched on the precipice like a gargoyle ready to spread his wings and drop into the sky. He could not fly, though; he knew. He could not willingly conjure his wings into being the way so many other fae creatures did. Not like Jasper. Not like Chryrie. But they were different species of an ancient, twisting, and gnarled tree. He, himself, was nowhere near the roots. He, himself, was little more than a leaf barely hanging on while the Autumn winds threatened to tear him from the branches.

?Maybe when death comes, you will know everything,? said the sinner?s ghost in his mind.

Salvador shifted, sliding one leg over the edge and then the other until he sat with his legs dangling. He put his palms to the rocks beside his thighs and leaned forward. He did not worry in the least that anyone might happen by and push him that extra inch to send him careening to his death. He imagined himself dropping, like a stone. Maybe he?d land on one of those sharp spikes below and find a quick death. Maybe he?d flail and thrash and drown as the sea swallowed him. Maybe he should think about putting some effort into learning how to swim.

?Maybe life is just a process to fill the gaps in between the knowledge you start with and the knowledge you receive.?

?Who are you??

Twice he had asked the sinner that question, that night. Salvador shut his eyes and let the past wash over him. The sound of the surf smothered everything else. He had asked because the answers were important, even though they were different each time.

One was truth.

One was lies.

Together they made a single man, a creature, who had been his everything.

?Sin and Tohias will eventually tear each other apart until I go mad. Until I die.?

Salvador drew in a breath and lifted up his head. He leaned back until his face was aligned with the sky. ?If only it was that simple,? he whispered to the stars. For a while he had started to believe that was the case. So long as he wasn?t asking questions, searching around, or thinking on it for too long, he could imagine the sinner dead.

How much easier things would be if that were true.

Though assuredly no less painful in any case.

?Is Sinjin dead??

?I... I don't know.?

Another time and another place flooded his mind with recollection.

?Then only two things are possible? He either doesn't want to be found, or there's nobody left to find. For your own peace of mind, I recommend you take to heart the second and objectively better of these possibilities.?

And he would have been okay with that. Skid?s advice was the wisest course of action. Once he?d stopped crying like a broken-hearted stupid little boy. When he was capable of thinking again. Even if it had only lasted for a few hours before he was sobbing all over another person, and another. And the one had suggested helping him find closure in her own way.

This afternoon, though, he learned there was never going to be any closure.

?I'm sorry love. He's not in the Lines, and he's not in the Books. He doesn't seem to be dead.?

Hearing the echo again of that much more recent memory was the knife wound stabbing and twisting in his heart. Again. Much the same way that Gem had used the sinner?s name as a weapon against him in defense of her son, but worse. Now the dagger?s name was hope, and it was going to kill him.

He had cried only briefly this afternoon. He had let the tears splash down on the counter of the bar, with his head buried in his arms. He shook with the pain. The wounds were still fresh and raw. Even weak and hurting from forty-eight hours of extracurricular insanity, he refused to let the real hurt show. He had sucked it up. He had put his mask back on. He had lifted his head proudly. And he had curled up in Thorn?s bed to rest a little more.

An hour later he woke choking on a dream, and he had left to wander alone.

He had found himself here. Where, perhaps, in some small way everything had begun. He wished to God he was possessed of the same disconnected madness that had plagued him then. Even more he wished that by simply being here the sinner would come up behind him as he had eight years ago, when he had only been just a boy. A stupid boy. A frightened child looking for comfort where he would find none.

Salvador sucked back the wail that wanted to leave him, turning it into a sharp and shivering reverse hiss pulled through his teeth. He pressed the thumb of his left hand into the palm of his right and clutched it in his fist, holding both hands tight against his chest. It was all too much, happening so fast and all at once. Suddenly he wished he was incapable of feeling. He wished he could be more like her, less a man and more a monster with no heart to speak of that could hurt quite like this.

In that moment, she was the only person he wanted, needed, and he pitched sideways, trembling, with a desperate whisper.

?Mam?.?

Instead of landing his temple on hard stone, a cushion of purest, coldest silver awaited him as he fell. Her hands were icicles sifting through his hair. He turned his face into her lap, to mute the sobs, but could not still the shaking. She was silence. She was death. She was the pillar of unfeeling that he could never be. And she came, when he called.

?Hush now, my son,? said She. ?My Salvador.? Her words were a whisper of haunting, melancholy, copper chime. ?I am here.?

And in her arms, he wept.

Delahada

Date: 2014-07-24 11:35 EST
Two months, give or take a week; that?s how long it had been since he stood on this deck looking out over the sea. The house was quiet as a tomb. Behind him, the sliding glass doors were closed and locked. The spacious living room was shadowed in gloom and shrouded by gauze curtains that had not yet begun to yellow. He sat on the topmost step with his back to it all, chin on his folded arms which rested on his drawn up knees. He looked out across the ripple of the moonlight as the ocean swayed.

?The heart does not so easily forget what it once gave. You should know that, Sal.?

Eight years later, the sinner?s words still haunted him. Everything the man had ever said stuck with him. No matter how hard he tried to forget, throwing himself into other hobbies and people, there was no getting rid of him.

?Who haunts you the most???

That woman. Who had she been?

?He's not around anymore.?

?Oh? You still think of him??

And Cianan. The drow had known the woman, obviously. He had only learned her name from the dark-skinned elf having said it. Helena.

?Why not??

?I wish I knew.?

Maybe he was shipwrecked somewhere, he thought, watching the surf roil and glow against the sands late that night. Sometimes the sinner played pirate, he knew. Maybe now he was on some tropical paradise he could not escape from and just could not get back to him.

?He . . . doesn't want to be found??

Or maybe Skid was right.

?...Forever is a long time, hermano. Even I will not last that long, and I don't intend to??

Had Sinjin planned to abandon him from the start? Salvador had been such a stupid fool of a boy in the beginning. Heartsick and lovestruck for a man who belonged to somebody else. A man who had taught him so much about ?different kinds of love.?

This house was so very similar to all the others the sinner had owned while Salvador had known him. The layout was practically identical to one that had been burned down. They all had decks just like this one, where the man could sit and smoke and watch the sun set over the waves on the horizon. A very, very old ghost of him still lingered, and if Salvador shut his eyes he could feel him sitting there, sprawled in one of the sun chairs, behind him.

?They?re all expecting me to get over you and move on,? he told the ghost lurking in his memories.

The only response was the roar of the surf. There wasn?t even a wind to carry whispers to his ears from far away places. In the midst of Summer, the dogwood trees held only leaves, their blossoms long since fallen and decayed. His words were met with silence.

With a sigh, he turned sideways and lay his back across the upper step of the deck. He bent one leg up, boot sole flat on the same level as his spine, while the other supported him on the next step down in a similar fashion. He dug a hand into his pocket, retrieving a roughly carved wooden chess piece made of maple. He rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the cross on the king?s crown, using it as a worry stone, a habit he had developed in the sinner?s absence.

?Do you have someone in this world who is exclusively interested in you? Someone who pines for you and you alone? And someone to whom you represent the same interest??

?Why does there have to be only one?? he asked the stars. The woman had asked him that, tonight, among many other invasive questions. He had only just met her and saw no reason why he should answer her, but they were words that cut deep and left him brooding.

No one came to mind who fit that description. Not even Rei. As far as he?d been able to determine, the mongrel shared his wandering eye and lust for others. Though, also as far as he knew, his oldest friend turned lover had taken no one else to bed since they had become?

What?

He set the king on his bare stomach and lifted his hand to look at the star-pattern scar still nestled in his palm. What did it mean? It certainly did not mean they were exclusive to one another. Rei had not put such restrictions or demands on him. He knew better than to try.

But the other one?

Salvador?s hand formed a fist and his jaw clenched. The voicemail and the texts preceding it he had received that morning still boiled and churned at the forefront of his thoughts. All the words he and Anatolios had shared. If he were his, the fae-child would not be free to be his own man and sleep with half the fcking town, as his jealous fellow monster assumed he did.

He had not texted the other man back. He had not called. He had no intention to, not even now.

?You only think of yourself and what you want, not what I need or want.?

Well?? Yes.

?We fae are selfish creatures.?

One after another, the voices flooded in. A variety of male and female echoes of the past, both recent and distant. Salvador flung his arm over his eyes and breathed deep as the memories overwhelmed him.

?You should be...considering me.?

That was the voice that left the strongest impact in his thoughts these days, and yet even the sinner?s ghost could overpower him. Sinjin had never asked such things of him. They had a strange relationship. Nobody but them understood it. That held true even now, to this day, when people sounded surprised and asked him, as Cianan had.

?Oh? You still think of him??

If he didn?t, he would not have come here, back to this house, this tomb, this museum full of memories that everybody seemed to want him to let be swept away with the tide. Salvador?s off hand reached for the king resting on his stomach, and he gathered it into his palm. Exhaling a shuddering breath, he listened to the roar of the waves and let them lull him to sleep, right there on the deck, in the open air.

His dreams were full of memories.

Delahada

Date: 2014-09-03 15:32 EST
Salvador ran headlong and heedless through the city streets that night. He knew the way, all ways, to the destination in his mind. He could have just as well spirited himself through the Veil to get there faster, but even in his haste he was in no rush to discover what he suspected may be true.

The cloth in the alley had smelled of smoke and ashes. There was something disturbingly familiar about the circumstances, and he did not at all want to believe the conclusions that were falling into place in his head. There was no denying it, however, when paved city streets were traded for hard packed dirt roads and eventually a grown-over driveway leading to a house by the sea.

Or . . . what had once been a house by the sea.

Beyond the semicircle boundary of a half dozen and one dogwood trees, there was nothing left but ash and charcoal bones. Sections of burnt frame reached up to the sky like blackened, dead fingers. All that remained of the house was its ribcage.

Salvador's mad dash had halted and transformed into a sluggish stroll the moment he had passed the wall of trees to see it. The long sword, Tizona, fell from his grasp and splashed into the tall grass that had overgrown from months of neglect and disregard. He crept closer, breathing hard and feeling as if he were trudging into a nightmare.

Just shy of stepping foot onto what had once been the front porch, he stopped. Very suddenly he found himself stricken with a handful of emotions he was not at all prepared to deal with. The flood of them made him sway in time to the sound of the surf lapping at the sands down on the shore nearby.

Skid stepped into the clearing behind him, quiet as the grave. He stared up at the carcass of the place his friend had once called home; that his friends had once called home. As Salvador swayed with the surf, lost in the terrible swell of emotion, Skid took up Tizona lest it be forgotten.

He approached Sal, tentative, with only a plaintive warning: "Mind your shoes, Salvador."

Skid's voice behind him was as good as a hand reaching out to steady him. He rocked backward a step into a supporting arm that really wasn't there, and then lurched forward again.

All at once a crushing sadness wanted to press him down and bury him into the dirt. This was his house, their house. At least, it had been, until he had shut it up like a museum as his brother had suggested.

Skid?s words were a dreamlike suggestion that slithered in through the turmoil waging war in his head. There was so much: sorrow, anger, fear, doubt, confusion, and underneath it all still a layer of love he could never really get rid of no matter how he tried.

Mind your shoes, Salvador.

So he stepped out of them, one at a time, leaving his boots behind on the dirt and burnt grasses to put his bare feet down on the cold, blackened porch. He pulled in a shaky breath at the instant revelation this skin to surface contact provided him. There was nothing left of the house. The fire had melted away its meat and its memories. "There's nothing here," he whispered hopelessly.

Skid did touch him this time, stepping up from behind Sal to press a hand to his shoulder. "Do you want to go further; to try to see if there's anything?"

Salvador twitched at the touch, the spikes under his shirt rising only marginally at the spine and not even enough to make a noise. He sucked back another shivering breath and nodded. The single word that spilled out was one he practically gurgled on. "Y-yes."

He knew there would be nothing, though. Fire was a cleansing power as much as it was destructive too. Forests were razed this way to make the soil fertile for planting. Whatever new might grow here now was out of his hands, unless, he thought, he took the time to salt the earth and make this place more dead than it already was. That idea settled at the back of his thoughts, while the forefront was consumed by others.

He placed one foot in front of the other after a long, hesitant moment, and passed through the broken black teeth that marked where the door had once been. A brass doorknob buried under soot and ash skittered across the creaking, fragile floor that remained as part of the foyer when he accidentally kicked it.

Though he read absolutely nothing from this wreckage, the memories still stirred up before his eyes. Here there had been a side table where he had left a note. His hand hovered, trembling, over the small pile of cold cinders, recalling, and a single tear rolled out of his eye unbidden before he moved on and trudged toward what might remain of the stairs.

Skid moved in his wake, taking it all in in silence. His hand remained upon Salvador's shoulder as he searched through the wreckage of his now, once and truly, former life.

Every single step pulled a tear from an eye and rolled it down his cheek. He was as oblivious to those as he had been the blood leaking from his palm back at the Inn. No thought had been put into staunching the flow, and even now the hiss and smoke of his blood where it landed was a muted backdrop under the constant growl of the sea.

The stairs were a jagged maw opening into the belly of the beast. They were not at all sturdy enough to step on anymore. He touched one with his toes and the shape of it crumbled to dust under not even any weight at all. He blinked as the flurry of ashes swirled in the cool night breezes.

The quickest way down to the lower level was to jump, or to step through the Between places to simply take him there. His heart dropped into his stomach and weighed him down too much to consider using any magics that might be stirring in his blood. So he brushed off Skid's hand from his shoulder, swayed, and took the leap to land in a sprawled crouch on the creaking boards below. Another, larger swirl of ashes spiraled up around him where he landed in what had once been the living room.

The Daemon followed in a dropped step, landing silent behind him. He kept close, but the wreckage mesmerized him at times. Even he seemed to lose himself in a memory here or there.

From here they could see how the kitchen had collapsed into the basement. The walk-in freezer was buried now under so much pitch, having been far too heavy for the burning floorboards to support any longer.

Salvador rose slowly from his crouch, coated thoroughly now in the drift of long cold ashes. "More than a week ago," he mumbled distantly. He could at least determine that much from the fact that there was no more heat. Everything that could have burned had done so.

His eyes swept over the area, seeing overlays of what had once been, pulled from his own memories. There was nothing to glean from the ruin itself, but he could still imagine it as it was.

There had been his favorite chaise, and the sofa and chairs. The room beyond that caved in wall had been where he housed all his weapons and practiced at swordplay. Deeper in there had been a weight room and a study with a wooden chess table set aside just for him. Now there was only rubble.

Salvador turned and trudged out onto the remains of the deck, which crumbled instantly beneath his weight and took him tumbling to blackened sands. He crawled out of them, his face being washed clean by the constant trickle of tears running down his cheeks. Hunched forward, he pressed his fists into the paler sands beyond, grit his teeth, and tried desperately to contain the sobs that wanted to come out of him.

He did not at all question how this had happened. He had been thorough in turning off the utilities, cutting the power and the gas lines. For months the house had been dormant, silent, collecting dust. Very few people knew of this house, and though time and the fire had obliterated any traces of history to tell him for certain, he knew.

Only one man could have done this, would have done this.

As he had done to the apartments he had shared with other lovers.

As he had done to the house he had shared with Augustine, before Salvador.

This was Sinjin's work; there was no mistake. It was so like him that the fae-child suspected no other cause, not even the chance of a wayward lightning bolt striking here. "Hijo de puta,? he hissed to the sands. ?T? pendejo.?

__________________________
(Co-written with the amazing Necromesh.)

Delahada

Date: 2014-09-03 15:33 EST
"He's alive, then." Skid stood in what remained of the sliding glass doorway that once overlooked the deck, sword in hand.

The Daemon kicked the cracked, weak boards from the edge of the door's frame and stepped off, showering sand and soot as he hit the beach. Light steps carried him to the fae-child, and he buried Tizona in the dune beside him as he sank down to sit with Salvador. He sighed, and stared at the sea while an arm settled around Salvador's shoulders.

It was the Daemon's warmth settling around his shoulders that broke him. With a choked sob, he leaned into Skid's side, nodding with his face in his hands. He tucked his legs up like a little boy wanting to crawl back into the safety of a mother's womb, though he had never actually come from one.

"I knew he was," he whimpered dismally. "Thorn didn't find him in he Deadlands either." All the pieces fit too neatly in place for it to have been anyone else, too. Tizona had not got into that alley on its own. Someone had deliberately put the sword there for him to find. And there was the jackdaw. "That stupid fucking bird," he grumbled through his teeth. The edges of a whine cut through them too.

He wasn't sure how he should feel here, but all emotions all at once burbled at the surface. Anguish and anger, heartache and sorrow. His heart thudded against his chest, pounded on his ribs to remind him that there were still the lingering traces of love in there too. And for that, he gave breath to a seething lie.

"I hate him."

Skid brought that hand up from Salvador's shoulder to his hair, pressing it in. His eye turned to the sky. He sighed at the petulant declaration, something that could only be borne by love. "Kornari'ouith. I think only time will tell us whether or not that's the case," moments passed, "and whatever that case may be, whatever you choose, I'm with you."

Then the Daemon asked him, "What will you do now?"

Anguish was the emotion that fixed itself on his face, visible for a moment when he turned to press it to Skid's chest instead of in his own hands. Those fell away to scrabble helplessly at the Daemon's scales. Only because he was a surface to scratch at, something solid and real to press his pain into.

"Thank you." Those two words were a strained whisper. Salvador was trembling now from the effort it took to contain all the emotions that boiled inside of him. Amid all of it was a swell of warmth, the love he felt for the Daemon he called his friend, born from the promise Skid just spoke to be at his side through this.

And as for the answer to the Daemon's question, Salvador only shook his head and said, "I don't know." That was truth. The board lay empty behind his eyes; he couldn't even imagine the pieces, or think clearly on where to place them if he could.

"You, Salvador, never need to thank me." A simple little thing, weighty as he'd let it be. He considered the fae-child's indecision, and the great difficulties he had to be facing now before he could come up with something solid to ask.

"Will we stay here and figure it out, or will we leave?" He gave him something concrete to hold on to, something he could process laid out right before him. Something much easier to answer.

"I can't stay here." For the love of God, he was actually sniveling. He sucked back a sharp, shaky breath to try to steel himself. "I just can't." Not now. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Salvador lifted his chin and pressed his head up under the Daemon's jaw. Then he pushed away from him and twisted aside to grind the tears out of his eyes with his wrists and knuckles. Deep breaths only choked him up further, because he inhaled soot on every one.

He leaned sideways to slap his and around Tizona's hilt and used the sword to lever himself to his feet. He was unsteady, though. The trembling was constant, backed by another realization.

"And I can't go home." Not to Matadero. Not yet. Not like this.

The swirl of the wind in the sands kicked up soot and memory with the sound of every crashing wave. Skid's warmth was all that had kept the wind from ripping and tearing at Salvador, but now his voice carried through. Strange, decisive. Skid had never extended this invitation to him, before.

"You'll come home with me."

Skid's decision was so affecting that in that moment the fae-child felt only his warmth. It was a powerful enough invitation of solace that everything else sloughed away from him. Salvador nodded, took up the sword, and turned back to press himself to the Daemon's side once more. He dropped his forehead to rest against his Skid's chest again and said, simply, "Okay."

__________________________
(Co-written with the amazing Necromesh.)

Delahada

Date: 2014-09-09 14:56 EST
I watched you go out the door
With poise I'd not seen before
I saw you shine, you shine
I collapsed to the floor
It promised it'd miss me more and said,
"True love is mine.
I missed you.
Did you miss me?"


?Sin burned down our house.?

Those exact words had been shared with two separate people in the past few days. The reactions had been precisely as he had expected, but not what he had hoped for.

Shock had stricken Thorn first of all. ?What a fucking dick,? she had said, her tone hard edged with a tightly restrained underlying fury. There had been a sense that she could have said a lot, lot worse. And then she asked him, ?Are you all right, love??

The truthful answer was no, he was not all right. He knew what it meant when the sinner eradicated all traces of a home he had once shared with someone. Salvador buried everything under a mask of fatigued anger and tired stoicism. At the surface, what he let everybody see was a man who was bone weary and detached from the moment.

Deep, deep down, however, he was a stupid, sobbing, heartsick and heartbroken boy desperately yearning to be held and be told everything would be all right.

But not by any of these people.

?You are a frightened child looking for comfort where you will find none.?

All his life, no truer words had been spoken about him than those, from the mouth of his mother.

He had not found what he went looking for in his brother, either, when he caught him on the street only a short while ago to tell him about the house. Mesteno had the right to know. After all, he had been the one to tell him to give it up and turn it into a museum. Maybe he thought telling him could shift the blame away from himself and onto his brother, and maybe his brother had welcomed the idea.

?And you and he... have you spoken? Has he come to you??



Of course he hadn?t, and Mesteno did not understand why. His brother?s words still hung heavy on his heart that night when he left his company to aimlessly wander the city streets. He paid little attention to the world moving around him; his head was too full of words, his brother?s and everyone else, to notice much at all.

The streets were almost empty for him. The shop-keeps were beginning to pack up and with the cool pre-autumn air settling in, windows were shut and street-goers slipped into inn doors and bar rooms. But Salvador was not so alone as he wished to be.

The jackdaw came soaring high above him, his crowing call a perfect mimic of hoarse laughter.

He was not so far gone in his own head tonight that he neglected to notice, either. Noise like that shattered comfortable silences and made him stop while the spikes shrouded by the flow of his shirt literally bristled. They stretched at their joints, rising and clicking before settling, making a muffled sound almost like a disturbed rattlesnake.

Salvador searched his sides and then looked up to scowl at the shadow shape he could see against the moon, but he did not reach around to grab the hilt of the tanto shrouded under his shirt. The harsh laughter echoed in the air above him as the bird circled in the air, but it did little to hide the voice that followed.

"You'll have to pardon him," someone very familiar murmured. "He's not wholly mine."

The scowl faded when his attention turned down from off the bird to regard the ghost standing in front of him. There stood Sin. The sight actually set a tremble into the sharp breath he inhaled.

The Spaniard looked no different than when he had left, standing a dozen or so paces away where there had been no sign or scent of him before. His expression was stoic, but the dark shade of his eyes were intense. His hands were jammed in his pockets. He waited.

Several things wrote themselves all at once on Salvador?s face. The first was obviously shock, added in with a heart-thudding terror. Uncomfortable with these feelings, that's when he reached around to take the tanto by the grip, if only because it was something certain, a lifeline to clutch onto in this moment. The first step he took was not forward, but back, to steady himself while he struggled for words, which, as we know, weren't his strong suit all around. All he could do at first was stare.

The sinner swayed forward briefly and then back again, trapped on a leash of his own design. He did not watch Salvador's hand on the tanto, but he knew it was there and he knew what would happen; it was written, along with so many other things, on the litany of emotion that crossed his once-lover's face.

"Did I not," he said quietly -- carefully, "always say that I would come back?" There was no accusation in his voice -- no sadness, either, nothing but measured tones. "Did I not always say," he went on, "that I would come looking for you?" The jackdaw wheeled through the air, drifting west with the wind.

Eight inches of steel had nothing on words that could cut like that. Shame wrote itself on his face next, and he shut his eyes tight, stubbled head bowing. There was the faintest click, the tanto locking back into position as if he had perhaps marginally drawn it, by a hair, a second ago. One finger after another, his hand withdrew from the hilt and drifted back to his side. There was the barest perceptible nod, and then, he managed to hiss one word.

"Yes."

The sinner didn't move an inch.

"I don't fault you for any of it," Sinjin confessed. "None. But you knew I would come back. You knew I would come looking for you. And everything that was us -- that was me --" He finally lifted his hand from his pocket and gestured uselessly in the direction of the ocean. "Left there like a headstone. Like a grave without a name that was Us. Like I was dead."

"Because I thought you were," Salvador hissed. The right hand clenched with his teeth, at his side, empty of the long knife (or short sword) he'd left in its sheath.

Sin lifted his chin in bare centimeters, questioning.

"Am I dead to you now, Salvador?"

Salvador took a step forward without thinking -- until he did, and stopped.

"No. I--" Everything else he choked on for a moment. He lifted his chin defiantly but did not dare meet the sinner's eye. Sorrow wrote itself in his furrowed brows, and calculations turned circles with his eyes as he sought what next to say with a heart-hammering desperation. "I don't know." And now he looked. "Are you solid? Are you real?"

Those words were unmistakably Salvador.


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(Co-written with the spectacular Sinjin Fai, with editing help from the amazing Necromesh.)

Delahada

Date: 2014-09-09 14:58 EST
"Of course I am," Sinjin murmured, the first hint of emotion in his voice. He dropped his hand again, flexing uselessly at his side. "I've never not been real." This time he couldn't stop himself; when he swayed forward, steps followed. He cut the distance between them in small degrees. When did the streets become so deserted and silent? Who knows. "And I don't think it is autumn just yet. Is it?"

"Two weeks." Salvador?s words were sort of wheezed there, he was finding it hard to breathe, smothered in disbelief. But no, it wasn't autumn yet. Near enough to have him skirting very close to the edges lately, but not yet. Both his hands flexed and lifted, fell and lifted and flexed again. He had some difficulty taking another step, but he did, just so he could reach to touch.

The sinner didn't stop him. He wouldn't have stopped him if the boy came against him with that damn blade. But as he closed the rest of the space between them, he lifted his hand and reached to touch the side of the boy's face; his expression cracked at the edges, just for a moment. Heartbroken, angry, tired, distant -- all of it there, all of it the same-but-different as before.

There was that fissure between them, but the anger and heartache and fatigue he shared with the sinner too. Salvador was trembling and his breath shook through his teeth. He patted cool hands against Sin's chest, pawed at him, plucked at shirt fabric, and then dropped loose fists against his shoulders shortly before his forehead hit the sinner's chest as well.

How did he do it? How did Sin always turn him into this sniveling, whimpering little boy. The dam broke, and of course he cried.

"I'm sorry... I went looking. I couldn't find you anywhere! I looked and I looked... And I told Mesteno finally, and he said... He said I should leave the house. So I did, but I only locked it up! And that note... It was stupid. I should've--" Frustration came in two short heaving breaths. He lifted his forehead to look Sin in the eye and snarled the outrage with the faintest glow of danger hitting his eyes.

"Where were you?"

Sin couldn't help his sigh when he felt the boy's head hit his chest, familiar and cool; his fingers slid through buzzed hair and Sinjin dropped his head to inhale the scent of him, which he had only received in pieces before this moment. He only half-listened to the shuddering confession that Salvador rambled on -- none of it mattered to him -- but when the boy looked up with rust-colored eyes, Sinjin met his gaze, his hand slipping down the boy's jaw.

"Where I always go when I have to leave," he muttered, a little quieter than before. "Paying debts. Ones that I will have to return to again, someday." Someday. But not now, and not just yet. Not when the divine, red-hot anger of the half fae was standing there in front of him. It was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in years.

There was no containing it anymore. Everything inside and out was a torrent of conflicts. Emotions warred from hot to cold and churned like the fire lighting up his eyes.

"Of course you will." Salvador growled those words; seething. His right hand splayed across the sinner's collarbone and he pushed against him, but not quite away. His left hand gripped the sinner's shoulder tight enough to dig his nails in.

"I want to hate you. Everybody fucking thinks I should fucking hate you," the boy snarled. And then a blink snuffed the fire in his eyes and he shook with silent laughter, bowing his head as he shook it, too: no.

"But I can't... Even after everything, I can't. But things are different." He tucked his head under Sin's chin and stepped into him as far as he could without pressing.

"Of course they want you to hate me," Sinjin muttered, even after the younger Spaniard's rage began to expire. "They love you. All of them. I saw it." And I hated it, I hated every second when they started to surround you. "And they think I will take you away."

"I love you. Now I love him, too." Salvador had never been this conflicted before. Not with Mara or with Havoc or with anyone else. Sin had always come first, but what now?

The sinner wrapped his arms around the boy and held him close; he felt the shape of him, hardened muscle and the rigid spines beneath his shirt; the blood that had coagulated and cooled from his time with Mesteno, who surely hated him now as well. He buried it all, along with a dozen others things he?d smothered deep into his core.

"I'm not going to take you away," Sin said, as if it was that simple. "From him -- from any of them." The sinner's eyes looked past Salvador and out into the empty streets as he rested his stubble lined jaw against the boy's temple.

"You aren't mine any more." That had been made clear to him. Abundantly, painfully clear.

Salvador choked on a sob; he wouldn't let the noises come, but there was no stopping the tears now. Not with those so final words. The right hand joined the left in gripping instead of spreading and pushing. He turned his face into Sinjin's neck and let the tears fall there, on his skin, where he could breathe him in; the first time he'd drawn that scent in in too very long a time. He shook and he shivered and he hooked his arm around, elbow behind shoulder and hand sinking into hair to hold the back of his head.

"No." With one single word, Salvador was both agreeing and pleading. Please don?t go.

Even if he had been pleading, Sinjin knew anything else would be false. The house, with its empty bay windows and darkened corridors, had been all that was left -- a memory, a figment left behind, a deliberate parting of the past.

Salvador had made his choice long before the sinner even turned his eyes back to Rhy'din again. But the Spaniard smelled the same, felt the same, even tasted the same; where the boy moved on and grew and learned, the dead man was stagnant.

It was for the best, for Salvador. Sinjin told himself that, and knew it was a filthy, ugly lie, but he also understood it no longer mattered. The boy had made armor of his lovers, his loves, and among them Sinjin was looked upon as a tarnished crack.

"Did you find Tizona?" he asked, his voice quiet against Salvador's temple.

The breathless laugh was absurdly abrupt, but it spilled cool against the sinner's throat all the same. There was something soothing in that split second of confirmation that his suspicions had been right.

"Yes." Salvador sighed. "Thank you."

That instant of relief conflicted too terribly with everything else he felt. The laugh had been a glimpse of madness, and he wormed his other arm around as if by possibly clutching the sinner harder he'd never have to let him go. And maybe he could...

If he put his mind to it and tested the growing powers inside of him even further to their limits, maybe he could keep Sinjin forever; lock him away and take him out to play whenever he wanted. The fae in him hungered so very fiercely for that, but Autumn was yet two weeks away and he told that part of himself to shut the hell up.

"Te amo siempre, mi alma," the boy whispered through a wash of tears. "Always my soul. No one will ever be that but you."

To Sinjin he was still just a boy. Hearing those words broke whatever pale imitation of a heart Sinjin had left. One arm eased from around Salvador and lifted -- up along his arm, his shoulder, smoothing up one side of his face as he tilted the fae-child?s chin and kissed him -- once, just once, to feel it again.

"Te amo," Sinjin reminded his once-lover, and hated himself for it. "Go home, mi alma." His voice was gentle. The longer Salvador allowed himself to linger, the worse it would be.

Salvador sagged and sighed into that kiss, but did not press. It was enough to make his arms melt away, pull his fingers from Sin's hair and instead touch the side of his face. Nothing could possibly be worse than wanting to ask the sinner to come home with him, out of reflex and habit and what still remained an overwhelming desire to be his again, as they'd always been, and not being able to, because nothing could be the same now.

A final tear slid out of the corner of a closed eye. Salvador swallowed, nodded, and stepped back with his head bowed to obey that last order. His hands fell to his sides, balled into fists, and his mouth worked at struggling over the words he never liked to say.

"Goodbye--" because even as a whisper he knew it meant forever, "--Tohias." The air behind him shimmered as he took one more step back, and vanished through the Veil.

That name. It physically tore into the sinner in the worst way -- he hadn't heard it in so long, not like that. After the hiss of the Veil shivered away, Sinjin sucked in a sharp breath and nearly doubled over from it, his whole body shivering from the pain of it -- and the anger that coursed through him still, unrelenting.

But it did not matter. None of it did. The boy left him a grave, and Tohias would stay buried there. The Spaniard straightened again and sucked in a breath, turning on his heel to slump toward the shadows like a beaten dog.


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(Co-written with the spectacular Sinjin Fai, with editing help from the amazing Necromesh.)