"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
His new, bloodied brand stings. His shoulders ache. His wings are gone. He's no longer immortal.
These things are the least of Dahmer's worries. These things mean nothing to him if Ellyse hadn't escaped Carnage... if something had happened to Smoak in their absence. His stomach is curdled with fear but the black beast's expression remain catatonic. So much had happened in the Dark God's lair, all things that he wishes he would never had to relive.
He had killed Carnage's portrayal of Smoak, he had killed Desole. He had watched as Carnage had turned a mare to dust.
And Ellyse... ever the strong, capable, fearsome Head of War, had flung herself into paradise as if she had nothing good to come back to in Beqanna. Dahmer can only hope that Carnage had not decimated her paradise the way his own had been, but the black beast knows not to hold out much hope for that. The celestial God had proven his affinity for torture.
Tephra is the same as the day he and Ellyse had been chased by the lava-hounds, but he is different, and he feels out of place. How long had he been gone? Offspring's scent still permeates through the volcanic island and this gives Dahmer a small tendril of relief, but he has no need for the Overseer right now. It's Smoak and Ellyse that he searches for, his heart beating frantically but his blue eyes dull and unfeeling, and when finally he spots the champagne mare across the verdant field, Dahmer calls loudly to her and falls upon his bloodied knees in relief, unable to move any further on grisly, gaping shoulders.
He gasps at the pain but refuses to linger on it, instead searching the field to see if Ellyse had heard his call.
she is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness
Not even the salty brine of the ocean tide could wash away her sin, nor the thick, dried blood that lay entangled with her feathers – so unkempt and out of place, but she is too worn and too weary to care. Her wings lay outstretched across the frothing waves, to and fro they come and go, sweeping her further into the dark and ravenous ocean – brittle, bent feathers linger along the surface, swept away by the current enveloping her long but weakened legs. The gentle lull is nearly enough to soothe her – and though the salt seeping into her open wounds did cause her to flinch and to gasp, the initial shock of it faded with time, and soon she is numb, longing for the ocean to take with it the blood and carnage that had been wrecked upon her body.
Finally, she has emerged from the sea, with the pale sunlight gleaming from a vast and open sky overhead – warming her to the bone, but she can hardly feel it – her skin is numb, from the sea, from the ache, and her heart is steady but barely beating. The claw mark across her sullen, empty eye socket had been cleansed by the tide, and what lay beneath the dried blood and seepage is a bright, gleaming wound of red – more discernible than it had ever been. Three deep, devastating marks across the ridge of her brow and into the roundness of her cheek – a reminder of what had been, and what would never be.
She would carry the burden of her heartache for an eternity.
Still, the anguish had been softened by the warmth of her children nestled to her breast – each had been safe and whole and untouched, and she has never known such gratitude before. Her lips had pressed a thousand soft, featherlight kisses across their faces (her mouth, her lips ache, as does her jaw, from snapping at the hundreds – the thousands of ravens that had pecked and pried at her in the barren wasteland).
But still, she had to keep moving – to find him, she had promised Smoak that somehow, some way – she would find his father, that she would bring him to him. The heavy, burdensome dread holding her heart captive had been too much, and she could not bring herself to tell him the truth – that something terrible had happened. That some inevitably would not make it – and as her memory is reminded of the ash and dust one had already become, her despair and desperation to find him is unsheathed, and so she searches, isle to isle, seabed to seabed –
Ledger had survived, but how much of him had? He seemed disjointed, as broken in spirit as she felt physically – scathing, cruel words spat at her; all that had been shared between them had been little more than an illusion. His deep hatred, his betrayal and his cutting words had been proof of it – what she had thought could be would never be.
She wondered if Dahmer survived – would he be as broken as he; as hateful, as deranged as he?
And then – his voice – a soft echo, carried through the heavy humidity and the distant ocean breeze. Her single eyelid closes over a tired, wary eye - listening; surely it was deception. Another trick played by the dark and malevolent God that had destroyed what had once been good. It is not until she can see him at last, as her heavy lashes unveil her only eye once again, stark and pitchless against the drying, golden grain sweeping around him. Dahmer.
”Dahmer!”
Her legs – still worn, still sore and heavy with an ache of fatigue – carry her to him, until her pale lips are pressed against his forehead, feeling his warmth, tasting the grime and sweat clinging to his skin, brushing away the tangled forelock shielding his piercing, but broken gaze from the unabashed sunlight. Her own knees buckle and her neck drapes over his own, drawing him closer, wordless as his own blood begins to stain her gilded skin and the ivory wing lain over him. He was broken, bleeding – torn apart like the rest of them, as Ledger had been, as she can been – but he is breathing, and there is a pulse within his veins –
”Dahmer, I thought –“ she whispered, her voice quivering, as the hefty burden of their torture finally settles upon her shoulders with the weight of a thousand suns. ”I thought I had lost you, that Smoak – he’s been looking for you, and Ledger, he ..”
But then, finally: ”You’re alive,” she breathes, a truth she can barely hold onto.
she rules her life like a fine skylark, and when the sky is starless
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
His pain is pushed to the wayside as Ellyse's champagne physique appears on Tephra's horizon. He can see her head lift up to inspect him from afar, can hear in the wind as she calls for him. Dahmer's breath catches at the sight of her alive, and partly well. He can see the gashes down her face, red and angry, even before she nears, but then it's the eyeless socket that catches his attention when she is closer. His chest quivers with sadness for her, his once-lover, as her muzzle presses to his forehead, just above the brand Carnage had burned into his face.
He sighs warmly into her touch, turquoise eyes fluttering closed to lose himself in the affection, though he feels he doesn't deserve it. He had tried to save her, when they were back in their cages, but that didn't make up for him murdering Desole, or Smoak. He had watched them, felt them, both take their last breaths. He does not deserve this treatment from the champagne mare, as much as he wants to succumb to the feeling of being needed.
She bends at the knees, resting her wounded body against his. He wants to tell her that he isn't worthy of this, that he had killed their son, but the words won't come out. He settles into his silence, letting Ellyse speak, instead. When finally she comes to rest on her last statement, the black beast leans into her and lets his eyes flutter to a close again. When he speaks, it's only a murmur, only for her. "You should see the other guy," it's hinted with humor, but only barely.
"You saw Smoak? Is he... is he okay? What about the twins?" the black stallion asks as bile rises in his throat. He suppresses the memory of his son's last breath, forces it away with a shaky exhale, before leaning his body further into Ellyse. "I tried to go with you, I thought that..." he pauses, bites his tongue. "I was so worried about you, Ellyse. I'm sorry about..." he means to say your eye, but instead drifts into silence for another moment. "And... Ledger?"
she is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness
. She, too, had done the unspeakable.
She could still hear her father’s skull cracking beneath her weight; the way his collapsed esophagus gasped for a final breath of air – she, too, had sinned, and she, too, would bear the weight of her decision. Her pale lips brush across the nape of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath an entanglement of matted knots, reminding herself over and over that he is breathing and that blood still flowed through his veins with a heady pulse. There is so much to be said, but so much that cannot be uttered – she can feel the hesitance between each labored breath, but she does not need to ask to know that he had faced a fate worse than death, just as she had.
His weight is pressed against her own, and she does not waver, enveloping him with an outstretched wing – ignoring the anguish of a single, splintered bone somewhere beneath the unkempt feathers – and laying her cheek across the ridge of his shoulder. The stench of blood is heavy, but she can only sense the ocean, the thick pluming of ash and smoke – the beads of sweat rising to the surface of his dark, wounded flesh, where his own winged appendages had been torn away from his body. It causes an edge of uneasiness in the pit of her belly; she lost and eye, and he, so much more.
His gentle jest is unexpected, and a breath of laughter emerges from her throat, though her ribcage and lungs both ache from the effort. Her cheek caresses the side of his neck, with a soft murmur reverberating against the column of his throat. ”You are ridiculous,” she says, but there is a tendril of tenderness in her tone that cannot often be found; she is more beholden to him than he can imagine for his humor.
Quietly, unshed tears stain her unmarred cheek, as the heaviness of their suffering threatens to suffocate her. She does not attempt to hide her anguish from him – he was suffering, too – her children, Ledger - the mere mention of his name is enough to stir her stomach into another knot, though the anger had since ebbed, replaced with regret.
”Smoak is wise beyond his own years,” she murmurs softly, with the shadow of a smirk hiding within the corner of her pale mouth – fleeting, but present. ”he obviously did not get that from you.” And then, the humor is gone. ”He was so worried, Dahmer, he thought that we –“ she breathes, hardening her resolve. ”he thought what we thought. That all was lost. Joaquin and Joplin are well -- he kept watch over them.”
And Ledger?
”Ledger –“ she begins, but it is difficult to form the words, which become hollow and empty within her throat. ”—he is not well. He lashed out at Smoak, and I barely managed to keep him from hurting him. He is .. unstable, deranged,” she murmurs, uncertainty laced in her pained words, but finally – ”he is as lost as we are.”
”I know you did, Dahmer,” she whispers softly against the crest of his ear, draping her neck over his once more, as the tangled ivory of her tresses blend with the darkness of his own. ”you saved me. If not for you, the wolves –“the wolves of fire, of brimstone and magma that had nearly taken her life”— I worried for you, too. I thought that ..”
Her voice catches, and she cannot speak anymore, overcome and breathless both.
she rules her life like a fine skylark, and when the sky is starless
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
The children are lost to him. Real or not, they are gone. Smoak fears him and he finds he does not care. Nothing matters anymore since she had betrayed him, found her solace in the winged stallion. There's a moment when he thinks to leave Tephra but he has nowhere else to go. Besides, he has unfinished business here. With him. Simpering whiny pathetic thing he was, able to recall the fear in his eyes when faced with the bear. That was what she had chosen, a weak foolish boy who knew nothing about true loss and hardship. Had no idea how precious love was, had been. (Hers most of all) He had no idea what true pain was. But he will now.
Although he walks between realities, the promise he had left (the threat) had not been forgotten. Dahmer had taken his family from him and he would pay for it in blood.
Carnage had caused far more damage then any magic trial he had put him through before. Playing on his biggest fear, his worst insecurity. Laying just the smallest seed of doubt and fanning the flame until it had consumed him. That was all it took to break him completely. To finally snatch his heart and mount it as a trophy. The vapid glass replacement still hangs strangely in the cavern of his chest. It had cracked at the bottom when he had felt the merest taste of his love for her. The pain had been unbearable, he will do anything to avoid it again.
Anger, however, is a different story. It’s the fuel that keeps him going, replacing the comfort and love that she had once provided. The burned skin that marks his castration, the stinging throb of the X across his chest. It only adds to his madness. Anger and pain. He can see nothing straight. Reason is lost on him.
Seeing them curled together makes him lose his marbles all over again. ”YOU!” The roar of the bear echoes over great distance, thundering with rage and betrayal. Perhaps once there had been a moment where he had thought Carnage had tricked him, had been dishonest. Not this time, the evidence is there before him. Entwined and embraced. A single claw points to his enemy, saliva dripping from his exposed fangs as he snarls angrily. His paw is shaking. Raaquel is at his side, he can almost feel her ghostly touch as she tries to soothe the beast. Pleading with him to stop. He shrugs her off with a low growl, she can't stop him. He has nothing left to live for. He doesn't care. He cares too much.
”I warned you. Thief of my heart.” He snarls as he stalks closer, the gold flecks in his eye a strange shade of red. ”I TOLD YOU!” His claws clench at the earth and pull it free, unearthing layers of lava that singe at his pads and he can’t even feel it. ”STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!” Ear splitting and thunderous as he throws himself at the source of his poison. If he couldn’t have her then he sure as hell wouldn’t fucking have her either.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Dahmer had not thought himself capable of humor, but even such a small statement or mirth lifts his spirits. It seems that Ellyse hadn't expected such a response from him, either, and her surprised laughter creates a warmth in his chest that he had suspected he would never feel again. You are ridiculous, she says as she nestles closer and the black beast can only smile with fatigue, though her laughter has done wonders for the battered Commander already.
His heart is nearly torn asunder with thoughts of Smoak, though Ellyse gently coaxes him away from those dark thoughts again as she gifts him with another jab. The newly-wingless stallion scoffs with amusement though offers no rebuttal - she is correct, after all, and it surprises Dahmer how much truth there is in her jest. Pride for their son swells in his chest and the blue-eyed stallion sighs with a combination of it and sadness. "I did not ever wish for him to grow up so quickly," the black beast admits to Ellyse, glad that they are positioned so that she cannot see the torment that has settled across his face, "but I am so proud of him for watching over the twins. His willingness to be responsible came from you, I think."
The champagne mare tenses under his touch at the mention of Ledger, prompting memories of the one-eyed flaxen in Carnage's cage, leaving Ellyse behind without as much as a second glance. His own heart aches for the Head of War, for the happiness that she deserves and yet seems unable to capture. But when the mare finds her words, his sadness makes way for fury and Dahmer forces himself to exhale slowly before responding through clenched teeth. "I will remove his other eye should he ever speak to Smoak again," the black beast growls but lets the conversation shift away from their son, trusting that Ellyse had done what she had needed to do to protect the boy.
"And you saved me, Ellyse..." he whispers, though doesn't elaborate. He wouldn't have survived Carnage's playground without having something to hold on to - and it had been thoughts of Ellyse, and of Smoak, that had kept him from breaking. He hadn't realized just how much he could care for the champagne woman, or how selfless he could be after realizing that Smoak would be better off in life with Ellyse than with him, if only one of them had been able to escape the Dark God's lair.
YOU! reverberates suddenly through Tephra, loud and raging and powerful. Dahmer throws his dark head skyward and away from Ellyse, blue eyes falling on bear-Ledger in the distance. He allows the champagne mare to recoil her wing gingerly from his back before he grunts in pain and rocks his thoroughbred frame from the ground. His knees ache and his shoulders threaten to give, but the black beast's own anger overpowers his self-awareness as he moves towards Ledger with ears pinned and lips peeled back in rage.
The bear's roar reverberates again and he can feel it in his chest, but Dahmer does not face the polar bear with fear as he had last time. Thief of my heart, Ledger calls him as he stalks closer and Dahmer thinks briefly on the brand centered on his forehead. The black thoroughbred scoffs, his pupils hardening like daggers as the deranged one-eyed bear rips at Tephra's loam.
Dahmer lowers his head, curling his muzzle to his chest as Ledger roars at him again. He recoils a stride, his front leg giving out briefly as the white beast lunges, but he is able to keep himself clear of the assault, if only briefly. "YOU LEFT HER THERE, LEDGER! YOU LEFT HER TO DIE!" Dahmer spits back, accusatory, "And if she could have ever forgiven you for that, you... attacked... our... CHILD!" He screams with furocity, and then he is charging at the one-eyed beast, but his frame has shrunken and suddenly he is airborne, a loud caw released as he circles overhead in the form of a raven, looking for an opportunity to dive at bear-Ledger's one good eye. He will have time later to wonder at this new power. Now, though, he has business to attend to.
she is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness
She does not need to see the way his gaze is cast with sorrow to know that there is regret within his heart – it is laced within every word, etched into the very core of his vocal chords as his confession is breathed into the stillness of the air. She can feel it in her own – a heavy sediment of guilt and grief, weighing down her otherwise bruised and battered heart; she could only imagine that he must feel the same. Wholly helpless; unable to erase the heartache that she had seen so clearly gleam within the pale hazel of her young son’s eyes beneath the cloudiness of his unshed tears. He was too young, but she had been young, too –
When the world had been blackened by war, by death and destruction.
”He is strong,” she murmurs softly against his skin, unrelenting in her affection, tracing the shadow of his shoulder with her pale lips. ”and he will be stronger for it. He has us both – and you have no idea how worried he is about you.”
The line she so rarely crossed had been blurred, and she no longer cared for her prideful ego, nor for her self-preservation – she had thought Dahmer dead, and to feel his pulse thrumming and to hear his shallow breath fill his lungs is worth more to her than the decorum she had spent so long desperately clinging onto. It was worth more than her pride and fragmented ego, which had hurt her as deeply as it had kept her guarded.
She loves him, deeply, and she cannot hide from the frayed edge of shame that clutches so tightly to her for taking so long to realize it. It mattered not whether the connection she felt was platonic or otherwise (she is no longer foolish enough to believe she could be deserving of love in any capacity, but she loves him anyway); but she had been foolish enough to let her own vanity keep her at bay. Dahmer had been unwavering – an unmoving presence in her life unlike any other; through the heartache, through the birth of a son born out of a brief and fleeting moment of desire and the unsteady parenting and uncomfortable dynamic that had followed, through the wreckage that had become their lives in the aftermath of a malevolent dark God and his wicked sense of humor.
He was the closest friend she had ever had, and his warmth coiled against hers stirs her weary heart – she would not let another moment pass in which he is unaware of it; she would not waste the time she had left wishing it away.
But then – a bellow, echoing through the stagnant air, and her heart is thundering inside of her chest again, startling her to her unsteady legs. Her body is still seeping from the various wounds littered across her feminine frame, while the broad expanse of her winged appendages draw tightly to her barrel. Her single eye roves the dense vegetation, tracing the outline of the one her heart had so foolishly fallen for – in a time that seemed so long ago; but now her heart is only blackened by the sight of him, as her own anger (and hurt – he had been right that her heart had not been pure; that it had not been whole for him – but she loved him, and he had spurned her) resurfaces with a vengeance.
Thief of my heart, he called him, and she is incredulous, and livid – she was not one to be stolen; an object to be traded or bartered for, to be pilfered and taken and neither was her heart. It yearned for what it desired most; it guided her erroneously but passionately and it was hers and hers alone – until given to another, until crushed and scorned by another, and she is reminded so vehemently of her past, of the way love had escaped her grasp time and time again.
Like father, like son.
STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!
YOU LEFT HER TO DIE!
”ENOUGH!” she cries, as the length of her body is sheathed in diamond, glittering beneath the bright and unyielding sunlight. She aches to put an end to it, to stand between – but she cannot; Dahmer is airborne and before her eyesight is able to register the transformation, he is airborne – with outstretched, iridescent wings, with a loud caw emitted from his sharp and darkened beak.
Her heart seizes in her chest at the sight ( a hundred, of a thousand ravens clawing at her cheek, her eyes, her finely preened feathers – cawing, gnashing, lashing out – the memory is heavy on her mind) and she is filled with apprehension, but also a deep, unshakable rage. The dark God was a beast of irony, and it is not lost on her, as the bear that bore the very same claw that had gouged her eye out fought the fierce raven that had tried to suffocate her in the barren wasteland, a thousand miles and a thousand worlds away.
”Stop! Please, enough!"
she rules her life like a fine skylark, and when the sky is starless
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
There is pleasure that the black beast does not flee, that he seems to have found a set of cojones after all. All pinned ears and bared teeth but what match is a broken horse against a crazed bear? Dahmer avoids his first assault but it doesn’t matter, he will come at him again and again until his blood stains the ash beneath them and his bones are cracking between his jaws. The madman laughs as the dark thoroughbred spits back verbal abuse. ”BECAUSE OF YOU!” Half hissing half screaming. ”Oh she always had you to rescue her didn’t she? Why did she ever need me when she always had YOU!” Teeth snapping in his direction as his claws swipe at him again. ”Remind me how you both ended up there… TOGETHER!” With another roar he lunges at Dahmer just as the man’s threats hit the air, there’s an explosion of feathers as his enemy is no longer equine but bird. He is practically cackling now despite dodging the attacks to his face, snapping at his wings and throwing his paws out to catch the raven. The irony not lost on him. ”SCAVENGER!” He thunders in vindication, even as the birds talons lash at the skin on his snout. Fangs snapping as he retaliates. ”You must have it…” Snarling, thinking he may be the key to finding what had been lost.
For now he knows, somewhere beneath the tattered and frayed edges of his loose mind, that something is wrong internally with him. That the strange ache in his chest is abnormal, that something is not right with his heart. The madness that holds him makes it hard to articulate what he feels but he does feel the difference. The broken crack and sharp shards, the vapid swirl, the strange weight. It was gone. Frozen? Missing.
How could they be so blind to see that the reason he had left was because he had loved her so much? So broken with her betrayal, unable to face what was real. That he knew how Carnage’s world played out, that he never had a hope of saving her to begin with. And why should he when she didn’t care for him and been so careless with him. It was not like she did not know how deep his wounds ran, hadn't known from the beginning that he was already a broken man. Nothing could stop him from his assault on Dahmer, bird or equine, he will devour him. Not Magnus who cries out for him to stop. Not the twins (one which in reality is actually watching with wide eyes and fear, crying softly from her hiding place, the other more than likely at her side) but they can’t be real anyways, not Adaline’s broken glass call. Nothing.
Except her.
It is her voice that draws him away from the bird, growling and heaving as he turns to her. She is all glittering rock and he is laughing again, the pain fresh in the red and gold flecks of his eye. ”Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” He chortles, seeing so clearly and yet unable to sound sane. How fitting when her heart sparkled as hard as her armor? He lumbers to her, shifting back to broken stallion except for the claws that linger where his hooves should be. He will not attack her. It would do no good, will bring no release. Even if she has what has been stolen, he will not find his heart in her.
The hard glint of his pupils finds her face and suddenly his claws begin to rip at his own chest, tearing at the X (which will never be removed thanks to the Dark God’s magic) and spilling his own blood to the floor. It spurts and his teeth are gritted although they never waver from her face. ”Do you see?” He seethes, as talons pull at his own flesh. As hot tears run freely from his good eye and trail down his cheeks. Still locked in on the sparkling ridges of her face. Trying to make her understand just how deep the damage was. ”IT IS GONE.” Missing. Broken. Stolen. Gone. His daughter (a ghost he thinks) is sobbing and he can hear her through pinned ears but they are all doomed now. It is too late for any of them.
Blood flows freely from the open wounds he has created, looking back and forth between the two. ”Friends.” He snorts, with disbelief as the good eye (still glistening with tears) shifts to Dahmer (in whatever form he remains) and then to her. Remembering vaguely what each had claimed the other to only be. ”You aren’t friends. You’ll never be friends.” And he stares past her face to where his father stands just past her shoulder. He knows. He knows. ”We will never be friends.” It’s unclear who exactly he’s addressing or perhaps the intention is meant for them all. ”You’ll be in love till it kills you. You’ll fight, shag, and hate each other till it makes you quiver but you’ll never be friends. Love isn’t brains children!” And he chuckles flatly, hollowed gaze looking to the patterns of crimson that drip upon the cracked earth from his gaping breast. ”It’s blood. Blood screaming inside you to work it’s will.” He whispers, finally looking back to her. ”I may be love’s bitch but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”
Looking past her once more with aching sadness to that who still stands behind her, miserable. ”But you already knew that didn't you Dad?”
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Ellyse's outward affection is unfamiliar, but oh, how he loves it. The black beast sighs, letting her words and her touch soothe the ache in his chest. There had been a time that his infatuation for Lucrezia had kept him blind to the wonder who was Ellyse; he had known her name and her prowess, but he hadn't sought to know her. If only he had done so sooner.
Ledger's bellowing voice draws them both from their private thoughts and gentle expressions. They are on their hooves at nearly the same time, and Dahmer (foolishly, perhaps) trudges forward to face the ivory polar bear. His chest, so recently warm with affection for the winged champagne mare, is tight now with rage and his blue eyes harden against the threat that is Ledger. The bear screams at him and he screams back, rising to the challenge just as Ellyse's voice reverberates behind him, calling for both of them to stop.
He is already airborne, his dark wings spread wide as his beady eyes watch for an opening to dive at Ledger's face. SCAVENGER! the bear screeches and for a moment, just a brief moment, Dahmer wants to laugh in the face of the madman. At the way he has unraveled. But, alas, he cannot -- not when he is privy to how Ellyse feels (had felt?) for the one-eyed flaxen. A pang of sadness reverberates through his heart and Dahmer is no longer set on harming Ledger, but on turning his attentions to Ellyse to be sure that she is alright. The new glistening sheen of her coat draws the raven in, coaxing him closer to her so that he circles overhead to inspect.
She pleads for them to stop and Dahmer heeds her call the way a hellhound returns to its master... the way his hellhound mother had returned to his father. He circles low to the ground, finding a spot in the grass beside the diamond-encrusted mare before curling his iridescent wings back to his lithe body. The black beast has to concentrate intently for a moment to shift back to his equine-self and worry clouds his thoughts, that perhaps the bear-Ledger will trample him or lunge at Ellyse in the few moments it takes him to shift back to his wingless, branded body.
Instead, though, the other male seems to sink further into his madness. He chortles at Ellyse, nearly sing-songy for a moment before coming nearer to her with insanity in his eyes. Dahmer doesn't know how to react, doesn't want to shove Ledger away in this state but also doesn't want him (is he ripping at his own chest now?) to further injure Ellyse, whether emotionally or physically. He, too, hears sobbing in the distance, but the blue-eyed stallion is too far enveloped in this interaction to consider where the sound is coming from, his heart pumping too quickly with adrenaline to pull his gaze away from the stallion who could change back into a bear at any moment.
He tries to find words, anything that could talk Ledger down from the edge of derangement, but Dahmer knows full well that any interjection from him will only fuel the flames of Ledger's madness. So instead, he stays silent with pinned ears and a sad ache in his chest, and presses his hip to Ellyse's to let her know that he will not leave her. To offer that same unwavering support that he has always given, without hesitation, to her as Ledger spills the contents of his chest to the soft earth of Tephra.
she is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness
She can hardly look him in the eye.
He is not the same – he is different, carved into by a malevolent and merciless, reshaped into a bitter and broken fragment of what he had once been, and she cannot bring herself to seek his gaze; her own stare averted to the soft and supple soil sifting beneath her weight. Her heart is heavy, yet empty, and it is altogether almost enough to steal the breath away from her lungs while her thrumming heartbeat exerts itself tirelessly within her chest. The tension in the air is impossible to ignore, and dread has already begun to fill very crevice of her being – the tender marrow, between the taut tendons and tightened muscle of her physique, beneath the diamond plating of her glittering armor.
He is plucking at her, taunting her for the gift bestowed upon her (given, while much more of her had been taken – her bruised pride and empty eye socket said more than the heavy armor that lay across the slope of her spine). She can feel the ire beginning to filter through her hazy mind, pooling where uncertainty and wariness had once settled like a heavy sediment in her sordid blood. The anger is coursing through her – the very same rage, the very same wrath that had wrought her when he had turned away from her, a wicked gleam of loathing in his only eye, when she had been forced to feel her father crumble and breathe his final breath beneath her weight – and she is trembling. Quivering, end to end, while her heart is shattering all the while, proverbial pieces of what had been left falling away from her.
She can feel Dahmer searching the hardened tension of her clenched jaw, the emptiness of her hazel eye (as empty as the still bleeding, seeping wound of her gouged eye socket), the vibration of her pounding heartbeat she is almost certain he can feel as her shoulder presses against his own, urging him away, placing herself in between the devastation that lay before her. He is unkempt, unbound, falling apart in front of her and she is torn between wanting to tear him limb from limb, wanting to sink sharpened bone into him and force her to fall before him, as helpless and as powerless as he had made her feel –
But she cannot –
Her breath is shaky, uneven, for when she does finally see him come undone, bleeding and prying apart the flesh across his marred, heavily scarred chest, she can see him -
Broken, bleeding, behind the grievous anguish, beneath the trembling hatred, self-loathing, and regret.
Each word is cutting, pressing into her already tender heart and weary mind, deeper - deeper, until she can hardly breathe, and she is only drawn from the uncoiling nightmare by the gentle touch of Dahmer. His hip presses against her own, where her battered and aching wing lay loosely tucked across her barrel and along her flank, and a breath she did not realize she had been holding is released. The anger and the vehemence fall away, leaving the saddened, broken husk of the war-bound General, as the echo of a distant cry – soft, muffled sobbing, wracking her daughter’s breaking, frightened heart – remind her there is so much more beyond her own selfish heartbreak.
”Ledger,” she breathes at last, searching for any semblance of the one she had loved, of the one that had taken her heart from her so fully and so recklessly – only to see a face she can no longer recognize. ”I –“
But it is too late, he is too far gone, and the mention of Magnus causes her heart to clench so tightly inside of her chest, she is made dizzy by it, tucking her chin closer to her chest, shying away from the sight of him falling apart. He is disbelieving of her, hateful of Dahmer, imagining Magnus – the one that had crushed her spirit, the one that had broken his son time and time again – and she presses her shoulder into Dahmer again, urging him away.
”I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, a forlorn gleam in her eye as she quietly drives Dahmer closer to the hearth of the island, where the frothing volcano oozes magma, just as Ledger’s bleeding, broken body has begun to stain the soil beneath him with the deep scarlet of his blood.
”I will find you,” she promises, quietly, softly. ”I will make this right.”
Somehow. Some way.
she rules her life like a fine skylark, and when the sky is starless
