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He had absolutely no idea why he was there, but that was hardly unusual. And maybe deep down, he really did know why, but they were always such stupid and pathetic reasons that it was just easier to deny them completely. Oh, because denial had done him so much good, had it? He could have laughed to himself, but something about the prospect of hearing himself echo down the crystalline chambers scared him -- probably the fact that he hadn't really laughed in so long that the laugh belonged to someone else entirely now. Besides, his reflection was a hideous enough sight as it was. Laruku hardly recognized himself anymore. Scars seemed to obscure half his face, both his ears had more or less been torn in half, and he looked so dead. His face was like a skull and his eyes were sunken and tired. And splintered into a thousand pieces because of the dazzling crystals.
The hybrid stopped and sat, leaning against a wall. Looking up, he traced two fingers over the mostly-healed gash over his throat and sighed. He could feel the fur and skin ripple beneath his touch and he could feel himself swallow. Death would be easy, theoretically, but theoretical things were labeled theoretical for a reason. You should have died that morning. All it would take was a split-second impulse. That's all it would take. But he had no such impulse right then. He had a daughter at home that would miss him if he disappeared, even if he wished desperately for her to just hate him. Looking at her hurt him in more ways than he could ever describe with words, but words had failed him for a thousand other feelings too.
Laruku pulled his knees up and rested his arms and head on them. It was quiet and lonely there -- it had been his goal, perhaps, just to get away a moment, but now that he was there, he wished he wasn't. Even here, in this obscure little cave, there were so many memories.
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indentThey would end up calling her the hermit woman of Storm, if they weren't already. It wasn't often that the raven lady left the lands, mostly under the cover of darkness or only for something of extreme importance. It wasn't that she didn't want to be seen, more that she simply didn't want to be bothered. Phasma had grown tired of life by now, tired of all of the things that popped up just when she thought she had something good going and, quite frankly, she was also tired of being so alone. Sure, she had a pack, but it was full of youngsters and newly formed families. Like it used to be, Phasma just didn't quite fit.
indentWith her the ebony woman carried along a blanket, a velvety type of material colored almost as blue as she ocean. She kept the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders, pulled closed in the front by the two hands that held it in place. She'd decided to go out just for the sake of being out, perhaps because she wanted to have one last walk before the snows came back in a heavy rage and she felt it safer to stay in the lands. Her travels had taken her along the edges of the Yawrah, following it until she broke off and toward the caverns. Her legs were tiring and the cold was only helping to make her bones ache, which meant she needed to find a place to take a rest.
indentOf course, when she finally found the entrance to the caverns, she didn't expect to find anything other than darkness. She spotted him not to far inside, looking rather ragged. "You look empty." She commented, stopping a foot or so away from him. Her voice was quiet as she spoke, almost uncertain. He didn't hold himself the same way as she remembered from so long ago, then again, she could've just been interrupting a weak moment.
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The crystals reminded him of birthdays and new years, shattered expressions and warm nights. The snow outside reminded him of graves and fireflies, dandelions frozen in the ice. The wind whistling shrilly through the narrow passage ways reminded him of banshees, real or imagined, calling for his death because he had eluded its grasp for far too long. His vision blurred like a thousand mornings melted together with the sunlight dazzling and blinding him, piercing through him like he was the vampire and the monster. Two suns and one was out, a bloody hole in the sky, dripping with days and months and years of regret, passed by in the blink of an eye and filled with metaphors he used to understand. And maybe he still did, but the cold weighed down on the black heart in his chest and his throat hurt when he swallowed so he was trying not to breathe.
Nights like these seemed like the perfect times to die, but they were so beautiful that he couldn't do anything more than observe them and not think beyond the outlines. Maybe he had heard her come. Maybe not. Maybe he had and denied their existence because denying things was what he did best -- it was how he survived. Even in acceptance, he denied the core of the truth because by even thinking there was an ultimate truth, he was believing a lie. Deep down, he knew that, but he didn't bother with it. Her voice seemed muffled, but his ears had been flattened and the wind was still screaming outside, louder even, as if it knew that nothing good could come of this. Why was she here? Why did she bother speaking to him? Why was he worth even that?
His life had been filled with weak moments, but he couldn't remember them all anymore. Between thrashing pianos and suicide attempts, there had been other gaps in time where he had been less than presentable too, but... what. His memory was faded around the edges because it just took too much energy to care. There were some memories that would never leave him and those were enough. I've been empty a long time, he said quietly, voice scratchy and rough. A shell, a container for two wicked souls. It was too cliche to call one a demon and one an angel. He knew that he was no angel, even without the other thing in his skull. They were both monsters in their own right, each destructive and sadistic in their own ways. Sociopaths with no regard for their fellow man or beast. I would change it if I could, he whispered and there was cackling in his head. They weren't his words to speak, but those were the syllables he had fallen in love with.
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indentShe'd had moments before, times when it felt like the whole world was up against her. Most of those times were the ones that made her feel like life wasn't worth living, she'd be better off not having to face it. Honestly, Laruku had given her one of those times, really, yet there she was being civil toward him, worried for him to some odd extent. Even now the raven woman still wasn't sure what to make of the whole situation. What to think of the things that he'd said to her that day. If there really was something inside of him, something him but not quite, then could she condemn him for it's actions?
indentSomething deep inside her understood, she'd merely been avoiding it though. She knew that it was possible, that he could very well have been telling the truth. Few things in the world were as crazy as they sounded. Phasma could recall demons, ones that had haunted her and chased her through the shadows during the weeks after Chael had attacked her. Those demons, she believed, were very much real. It was only herself that was keeping her from fully believing him about his own demon. There was a quiet sort of understanding in the onyx woman as she stood watching him, something that she hadn't yet been able to bring herself to speak of. Not even Tsunami knew about the demons.
indent"Are you certain you want to?" Her words came calm, laced with the fact that she wanted to understand. Of course, some might take offense to her asking, but perhaps he would not. It was fair question, really. Perhaps there was something about it that made him feel good, though it didn't seem likely, or some part of him that didn't want to let it go. She was at his side in only a few short steps, turning on her heels to put her back toward the wall and seat herself right beside him. A few tugs of cloth and the blanket was quickly removed from her shoulders, pulled out in front of her so that she could press her back against the wall without pinning it. She covered herself then, leaving slack on the side toward the hybrid Alpha, which she tossed across to cover whatever part of him it managed to hit.
indentShe wouldn't let him freeze and, if he didn't want to share it with her, the least she could do was let him have the whole thing to himself. She was warm enough, anyways.
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She frustrated him. All he wanted was her to hate him because he deserved that, but she was a better person than he and so she didn't, wouldn't or couldn't. He did not understand her, but it made him feel even worse. It was people like the dark wolfess that made people like him seem all the more weak and pitiful, unable to care for or carry themselves, unable to conquer all of the sad dreams and demons that laughed and taunted them from the back of their minds -- it was strength like hers that made him wonder sometimes why he couldn't be the same, why he couldn't just let himself trek on past all of the bloody graves and lonely nights and nightmarish memories because none of it should matter anymore. She had lost more than he had (you've never had anything to lose), so why was he the weaker one here?
He flinched when she sat down and again when the blanket brushed against him. Most of it fell back down on the ground so only the femme remained covered. How could she stand to sit next to him? How could she stand to even look at him? He would not take her warmth from her -- it was cold yes; he was cold yes, but he deserved that too. Yes, he answered in the same quiet voice as before, Don't you? The tattered hybrid wanted to change everything, beyond even what poetry had been spoken to him before. It was cliche also, to wish that he had never been born, especially in this season, but whatever ghost showed up to try and change his mind would not be able to show him that anything was worth his having survived his first birthday.
His mother would have survived if he had not been born and certainly the saint that had been described to him would already be worth that. Perhaps Ceres would not have died if Kiriska had lived. Tsunami would never have tangled with him that day on the borders and Ophelia would not have had to toss herself in to seperate them. They all could have lived without all of this drama and heartbreak. Maybe the grey wolf would have ended up with the woman next to him after all, but their children would all have survived. He could not think of a single positive thing he had contributed to the world around him; he had only taken and destroyed, and destroyed. Laruku could not look at Phasma, I would change everything.
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indentAn eye for an eye didn't exist to the raven woman. It was not her way and never would be. She would not steal from a thief, rape a rapist, nor murder and murderer. Such things were not in her ways and nor were they the ways that she believed should be gone by. Laruku had killed, his punishment was now the turmoil that he was going through, at least in her eyes. What in the world could he have done before that though, to begin this stage in his life? From what she understood, what all she'd been able to piece together, was that this started long before the moment he killed her child. Had it been because of her and Tsunami? Wasn't he doing alright back then?
indentHe'd taken something away from her and even now she still felt bad about Tsunami. She still felt as if she'd taken the yellow-eyed male away from him. "Why would I?" She asked quietly, tugging at the blanket a bit, trying to cover his feet at the very least. "The way I see it, even if we could go back and change things, is that we might save one thing but we'd lose something else of equal importance." She believed that to be the case, anyways. "If things are as I believe, then some things are just meant to happen. Ire might not have been taken that day but I think that something else would have taken him away, if he was meant to be taken." It wasn't the best example but it was one that he might understand.
indent"If you want to change things, Laruku, then take the time to do something good. Something you're proud of." That was the way she liked to live or, at least, the way she had been living. It had been some time since she'd stopped to make something out of her day. "If you feel you've done something wrong to someone, look them in the eyes and say you're sorry. No matter if it helps or not, at least you had it in you to do so." It became a little more personal in that moment, she was aware of that. If things were the way that he'd said, if there was something inside of him that he couldn't control and he really did feel sorry for what had happened, then he should at least have the guts to say it. She wanted to forgive him. She really did.
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The past was his weakness because without it he was nothing, but with it, he was even less than nothing. The future had never been a tangible thing for him and he had never been able to picture it as anything more than a vague idea just beyond his grasp. He didn't think about it or plan for it. There was only a past and a present and both were miserable. It was why he had always wished so desperately for change, for something to destroy what had already been set in stone -- there was nothing to change in the future until it became the past. He didn't know how to make better what hadn't happened yet and it was why he couldn't look forward. What lay behind him was easy to fix with words, with senseless wishes and dreams, but there was nothing he could do. Maybe that's why he chose to dwell on it. He was afraid to act.
Maybe Ire would have died regardless, but it didn't have to be in such a horrific manner and it didn't have to be by his teeth and claws. It didn't have to be him. He had always been selfish like that. The hybrid could not remember if he had already apologized. He probably already had. But the mad hysterics had hardly been appropriate from the last time they had spoken to one another and the words and screaming had already started to fade in his head. His insides had been twisting ever since the woman had entered the cavern, but the longer she spoke the worst they knotted up. He couldn't stand to be there because she could tolerate him, because she was everything he could never be and because maybe he knew that she could and did make Tsunami more happy than he ever could have been otherwise. He had no place sitting next to her.
What could he change? He still couldn't even look her in the eye.
The wound on his jugular stretched when he inhaled and he felt his breath catch in his chest. You're an amazingly good person, Phasma, he whispered painfully, trying desperately to swallow the lump in his throat. Laruku turned his head reluctantly and sullen blood-red eyes found their way to her face, sleepless and defeated. I... He closed his eyes and looked away again. He was still too weak for this and the knots in his stomach would not come undone. I'm sorry. He still wanted to change everything.
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indentThe past was not something that she would toy with, though she dwelled on it more often than she would've liked to admit. There were painful things in the past, memories and could-bes, but Phasma knew that all the wishing in the world would never change it. She could have killed him that day, he likely would have let her, but Phasma knew that no matter how badly she hurt him, no matter what she did to him, that it wouldn't bring Ire back. What was the use of causing even more pain? It wouldn't have made her happy, it wouldn't have made her feel better. If anything at all, she'd be even worse off than she already was. He'd been in a bad way that day and that was why the woman even gave thought to what he'd said.
indentHis words came and all she could manage was a slow shake of her head, she'd never been one to take compliment well, especially when it was just her nature. The woman who wanted to believe that everyone had good in them, that everyone could change for the better if they so wished it. She wanted to help them all, she always pushed to do so, though it had been quite unsuccessful to some extent. That didn't mean she would give up though. For a brief moment she caught a glimpse of tired eyes. Eyes that made her heart fell like it was going to crumble to dust. They were so sad and empty, so completely hopeless that it hurt her.
indentAlmost as soon as he began to speak his eyes were pulled away, his words complete, and she was silent. She should have touched him then. Should have laid her hand on his face to keep him looking at her, to show him he could do it and to give him whatever comfort he might have gotten out of a simple touch at that point in his life. It was to late for that now though, but Phasma still wouldn't let it pass. "I forgive you, Laruku." Her words were almost a whisper but genuine none-the-less and, in a completely gutsy moment, she dropped the hand closest to him to lay against his arm.
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A voice in his head was laughing at her. Both of them knew he didn't and would never deserve it, but he had been getting a lot of things he didn't deserve lately. Ahren had called him a good person and Melisande had said she loved him and that she didn't care about his past, but neither of them knew the details of all what he had done as well and grotesquely intimately as Phasma did. It hadn't been their son he had taken. He flinched again at her touch and pulled his knees closer to his chest. She was warm; he was cold, and he felt like he was contaminating her just by being there and it was so much worse the closer she got. Why would she touch such a disgusting thing? Because she's a better person than you. Gentle touches for comfort -- when was the last time anyone had done that? The only people that wanted to touch him wanted to kill him. Even Tsunami.
The tawny hybrid with too many scars wanted to tell her otherwise, that she shouldn't forgive him, but he knew it would not sway her. And it didn't matter. He would never forgive himself and that would be that. Did Tsunami rejoin Storm? He had smelt like it, if only just a little. He didn't remember much else about that morning anyway and was sure it hadn't been him there the whole time. He couldn't remember how it had started and how it had ended, only that there had been claws at his throat and the sun in his eyes. A glorious sunset to vanquish the demons of the night, except it had all ended in failure.
Laruku didn't want the grey wolf to be back in Bleeding Souls if only because he got the feeling that he would never be happy here. There was nothing but bad memories and if he had found somewhere more peaceful once, twice now perhaps, then he should go back there, and take Phasma with him if they were happy together like he liked to think they were. Elsewhere, they could have more children that wouldn't die in all the horrible ways they were subjected to in this horrible river valley and he knew Tsunami loved children, no matter what he had said about them in the past. And if he didn't want to keep the promises broken before he left again, then the ragged alpha would welcome another fight, another attempt at slaughtering the demon in his head.
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indentLaruku had a friend in the raven woman or, at least, a potential friend, if he might ever come to accept the fact that she could tolerate him enough to try and be his friend. In a way she almost felt as if she understood him. She knew of the most horrible thing he had done, or what she could only assume was the most horrible, and she knew of the reason he did so, or what he claimed to be the reason. Phasma wasn't the type to just brush things off easily either, she would give credit to his explanation as it was really the only thing that she could pull together to make sense in her mind. Now they were here, Phasma knew things, and yet she'd forgiven him. She only wished she could show him that she could be a friend.
indentOf course, as he pulled away from her touch, she also understood that it wouldn't be an easy thing. Perhaps he was paranoid, assuming that she would only try to get close to him just turn around and get back at him for Ire's death. He should have known that it wasn't something she would do though and, right now, she could only conclude that he didn't feel like he was good enough for friend. She'd known that feeling before. Frowning to herself, she turned her eyes to watch him for a few moments, pulling her hand back toward herself to rest it in her lap. He spoke then and the frown on her face grew. She shook her head.
indent"I haven't seen him since he showed up at Storm." He had promised her that he would return and now she was suddenly feeling like a fool for believing him. "I'm not sure where he went. I'm not even sure if he is coming back." That was, what, three times now that he'd disappeared? It was almost sad that she lost count and she was starting to think that this time, he just might now come back. "Did he visit you?" He certainly had to have, unless Laruku had just picked up his scent while out wandering.
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Good and evil were vague and undefined concepts, but they had always been highlighted and bolded enough for him to understand the difference between the two. He had grown up trying to be what no one else around him had been, clutching at that golden halo like he would die without it. Gradually, as he grew older, the glowing light slipped away and he walked the hazy line that he was starting to lose sight of -- that was a natural thing though and he hadn't really cared all that much until the downward spiral began. And even then, at some point, he had been able to come to terms with everything he had had and lost. But it seemed that that acceptance had coincided with the birth of the sinister grin that lurked in the back of his head. Deep down, he was probably a just masochist. He did it all to himself and he didn't know how to live without it anymore.
Visit. Someone was laughing; that was just such a funny way to put it. And Laruku found that he couldn't keep from smiling, even if it was a wretched, forlorn smile with no mirth in it whatsoever. He came to kill me, he said quietly, lifting his head just high enough to reveal the recent horizontal scars across his tender throat. I don't know why he stopped. He rested his chin on his knees again. It was probably mostly a lie -- he knew why and wished it weren't true because it would hurt less if it weren't true (but if it weren't true, he'd probably undoubtedly be dead). How long was he in Storm? And if he wasn't coming back; where did he go? And for fuck's sake, why aren't you with him?
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