"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
Beyza had not wanted the girls to wander on their own in the darkness. Although one of the monsters had been their kin, and maybe - through Jamie - they all were, she did not want to take the risk that they would harm the three perfect girls. But now, with the sun returned, she lets them explore as they wish. They have their shadow wolves with them and, typically, each other and she is not overly worried about them getting into trouble.
Not to say she does not occasionally check in on them with her magic when she is not by their side, sending her vision to spot them.
Her love for the three girls has not faded - it grows daily as they begin to develop their own personalities. Every other emotion, however, Beyza has resumed her habit of packaging them away. When uncertainty rises up whether the sun returned because she had failed Jamie, when she feels both guilt and joy at its presence, she sweeps these thoughts away and only lets herself feel bliss or sweet neutrality.
It is early in the morning and there is not a cloud in the sky above Pangea. Beyza is wandering through one of the canyons, where the low sun has not quite reached and there are still shadows - but not for long. Soon the sun will continue to rise and everything will be washed in brilliant summer light. The girls are off somewhere else, playing or exploring, and she is for the moment on her own.
There’s a small smile on her crystalline features while she walks eyes on the bright sky, and the only thought she allows through into her head is that she hopes Este is doing better now.
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
At first he thought it was the rage that made him blind.
The violent way the anger tore through him like a thing with teeth. Cracked his ribs, took him to his knees with the way it punched holes in his lungs.
He felt them, the dark things that retreated.
His family slithering back into the shadows, out of reach.
And he cried out for them, gnashing his shark teeth, lunging into the dark places as the sun returned and bathed all the world in light again.
The light touched them all but could not touch him, not like the others. When darkness finally fell, the glow flickered. Faulty. Something sinister.
He douses it the first night, surrenders himself to absolute darkness, revels in the rage that courses through him. Gone is whatever softness the daughters had coaxed out of him. Gone is whatever fondness he’d felt for their mother and the sacrifices she had made for him.
When the sun rises again it brings with it a fresh wave of anger and it is even fiercer than the first. He sucks in a sharp, wheezing breath and emerges from the shadows where he spent most of his youth and goes to find her. He makes no effort to use the aid of magic to locate her, he allows his anger to carry him across the miles of desert until he happens upon her.
He does not stop, does not pause or hesitate, he immediately reaches for her with an invisible hand and closes it promptly around her throat. (It is not this simple, of course. It is dark magic as he reaches into the soul of her and clamps dark fingers around her life force.)
“What have you done?” he demands, loud enough that his voice echoes in the canyon.
Beyza’s dreamy thoughts cease when she thinks that she feels a storm coming. A glance to the sky shows no clouds and it is only a moment later, when Jamie arrives, that she understands that the feeling had not been a storm of nature but of death itself. In his rage he is beautiful and terrifying and she has no trouble seeing why she had been so desperate to draw him out from the shadows.
But then he grasps onto her life force and she feels cool shock for a moment before something else takes over.
Fury blazes in her at the feeling of his magic invading her and she quickly moves to shove him out of her soul, snapping those dark fingers if she must. Electricity begins to crackle and spark across her white coat as it had when Straia had threatened Pangea. And now Jamie was threatening her? She expects the guilt to vanish but it doesn’t, it lingers like fog in the back of her mind, and she is absolutely furious that one of her first instincts is to apologize. To promise to find a way back, or a way to temper this so it is easier for him.
But she does not want to do that anymore. Not now that she’s seen the cost, not now that her daughters have felt warmth.
Her voice is quiet in comparison to his shout but it is filled with venom as she fixes a white fire gaze upon him. “It wasn’t me but I wish it had been, Jamie. I wish I had brought back the sun.”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
There is no doubt that she is the more powerful magician and she breaks his hold on her with ease, expelling him with a sharp snap of electricity.
(And perhaps if he were anyone else this would have served to remind him who she was, who they were -- friends, at the very least and even more than that at the most. But he is Jamie, a dark thing.)
This sharp jolt serves only to compound his rage and he flashes those ink-black teeth as he continues to advance.
(Does it pain him worse to hear her say she wishes it had been her?)
Even in this blinding light (how he has always hated it!) the shadows converge and take the shapes of two great-horned elk that flank him as he advances through the canyon. He does not expect her to allow him to bear down on her without a fight, but what will he do when he reaches her?
Would he kill her if she let him?
Would he leave his children without a mother?
(Curiously he does not think about the three perfect daughters now.)
There had been a time when he had been something other, something strange and timid and he had been confused when she’d called him the Reaper. But there is no confusion left. She made him this.
He draws a dense fog down around them, blocking out the sunlight. There is no comfort in it now, not like there had been that day when he had met their daughters and he had urged her to rest and there had been the unspoken implication that he would protect them.
“Will you make me kill you, Beyza?” he asks, the rabid anger in his tone replaced by the same old eerie fog. “Oh, Beyza, don’t.”
The fog closes in around them and Beyza’s glow brightens but not as much as she wishes it would. She cannot magically enhance it to hurt him, she’s not sure she’d be able to hurt him at all - except to defend herself. There are too many rules in place around her own magic and she wonders what she would be like without them. How brightly she could burn if there was no heart inside of her.
But she will not find out because that heart ties her to three perfect lives that have changed everything.
Because she likes how real she feels when she is with them - like she has finally solidified and become alive after all these years of just being a ghost, a reflection of light.
His response earns a laugh from her, cold and mirthless, and her eyes continue to blaze as the electricity along her coat sparks with more intensity (though it is all for show and would not, she’s pretty sure, cause any harm if it were to be touched). “This is how the world should be, Jamie. And you’d kill me over wanting it?” She doesn’t say that she would like to see him try. She who had helped teach him how to use his magic, she who had been practicing with hers for longer. There is still a thrill somewhere deep in her at the idea of seeing him unleash all that he is so she can witness it. No fear, though - because she is certain that no matter how angry he gets, no matter how powerful, she will always be able to burn through the shadows and survive.
Her voice is quiet when she continues but it is more of a dare than it is a gentle request. “Do I mean so little to you now that the world isn’t darkness?” In the face of his fury, it is easier to swallow down the way her heart aches at this idea. There will be no timid touches, no blurring of edges for them now. So she pushes deeper, past that pain and into a fury of her own and spits out more words. “You did not deserve to have the world changed for you. Not at the price it came with.”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
She is the more powerful between them, he knows that.
But his fury makes him gnash his teeth. His fury makes him believe that perhaps he could overpower her. Because there is good in her where there isn’t an ounce left in him.
Because she is capable of love and compassion and Death had taken his conscience once and he still hasn’t gotten it back. He is a dark and selfish thing and this is a betrayal he doesn’t know how to forgive.
How great her power when she laughs that cold laugh and the electricity flares. The great-horned elk rear their ugly heads and the shadow-thing flares its dark nostrils, its own freakish eyes blazing.
Would he kill her?
Yes. Not because he wants to, no. But because she had betrayed him. She had not brought back the light, but she had wanted to. She wishes it had been her.
Could he kill her?
No.
He knows that.
She is the greater magician.
Those shark teeth catch the light she emits as he tilts that peculiar head when she speaks next.
Her imploring softness elicits no softnes from him. There is none. He is not a soft thing, Jamie. Is she disposable, Beyza? He had loved her for an instant. In the presence of the third daughter, love embodied. The only time he ever felt it. The only time he ever could. He is not a thing built for love, but they had been friends once.
“You betrayed me,” he hisses. And then recoils. As if she has spit acid in his face. He did not deserve it.
“How dare you,” he snaps and then lunges, teeth bared. But he does not touch her. He respects her as the stronger magician even still, despite his fury. “You owed me, Beyza, after what you took from me! After what you denied me!” His voice is amplified now not only by the echo in the canyon but by magic, too. “It is not up to you to decide what I deserve!”
05-18-2021, 03:24 PM (This post was last modified: 05-18-2021, 03:25 PM by Beyza.)
She stands firm when he lunches - hissing softly when there is no contact. Even now he won’t touch her, not even to strike. Her pale eyes narrow at his angry words before they widen in surprise. Beyza doesn’t need magic to shove her nose at him, to push him as she bristles with anger and pain and steps closer. “What exactly did I deny you, Jamie? What more do I owe you?”
That harmless electricity arcs in wilder sparks around her. A pretty, intimidating, and useless show as she feels her emotions begin to churn out of her control. She tries to wrestle them back into their boxes, back to where they cannot affect her.
“I owe you nothing. I killed for you, I tried to destroy the sun for you, I bore our daughters because of your dream of them. I would have never denied you anything.” She’d thought that so many times she isn’t sure she’d ever spoken it aloud. But the weight of that truth is painful now. She’d wrestled with thoughts of diminishing her light to ease his pain, of bending herself to fit into his life just so he’d keep her. And she had been happy with that, thrilled with his reverence of her power and filled to the brim with her own reverence for his.
But it hadn’t been enough. She is furious that he could possibly think she betrayed him after everything. Just because she wanted the sun back?
Or was it a betrayal that he was no longer the focus of her world? That she was no longer caught in his gravity.
Her voice waivers as she continues but she manages to get a handle on the ache, that desire in her to smooth things over and tell him whatever he wants to hear. “I believed in a future with you until I discovered what a loveless wasteland it would be. Until I got a taste of something more. So yes I wish I had had brought back the sun. I deserve better than the cold, dark world you want. My daughters deserve better.” The emphasis is there on purpose and her eyes blaze as she stands close to him and whispers those harsh words.
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
He retreats and she advances. She has no reason to fear him, she never has. She has seen him at his absolute weakest. The crippled child who could not even bear to look her in the eye so many years ago, the exhausted thing he had been when they’d traveled through the Afterlife together. She knows him better than anyone, he thinks, perhaps even better than Livinia. She knows exactly who he is and where he has come from.
But that also means she knows exactly what he has sacrificed to get here.
There is nothing more she owes him. Whatever debt had existed between them - real or imagined - had been repaid several times over. (And perhaps there is some sharp twinge in the valley between his ribs when she insists that there is nothing she would have denied him. The same blade he’d felt when she’d made it clear once that they were not friends - the only time he had ever denied her.)
“We had a plan!” he snaps and those freakish yellow eyes go perfectly black so he is nothing but shadow and shark teeth and unbridled fury.
Love. He scoffs, cannot help it. There are so many greater things than love! What a childish thing to want! Can she not see that she is above love! But he will not try to make her see. He does not have a chance before she is insisting that the daughters are hers alone and the eyes flash an electric red.
He does not lunge. Everything in him runs cold. The fog that has descended around them turns from dark gray to deep black. He draws in a long, rattling breath, calculated. “Your daughters?” he echoes, the voice quiet as death now. He takes a measured step toward her, steady. A predator. “You would have no daughters if it weren’t for me, Beyza.”
Their plan. Beyza doesn’t respond to this, isn’t sure if she trusts herself to. She believed in that plan with all that she was, believed in him - would have used all her gifts to enhance his and been his shadow, his moon. And she isn’t sure if she believes that she deserves more, but she thinks she wants more - wants it enough that it does not matter whether she deserves it or not. She wants the chance to live, to feel like she is more than the echo of her beloved twin or the catalyst to Jamie’s might. To discover what she wants for herself and not because she’s trying to craft a world where Jamie will stay by her side and see her as something worthy.
She doesn’t so much as flinch when he steps forward, though she is still wreathed in her electricity - pale eyes locked on him. The sparks around her are the only sign of movement, the only glimmer of life as she stands utterly still.
It hurts to know that she remembers every instance where he has touched her because it had always felt like too little, and how when they had made their daughters it had finally started to feel like enough. Beyza won’t speak of that, though, unwilling to voice the near-desperation for his acceptance that had driven her since he first avoided looking at her and then later, how deeply she craved his affection.
Her voice is quiet like his, sharp like her brightness. “They may have been your idea but they are not yours.” She blinks then, once, and speaks before she can reconsider whether it’s wise. Maybe she just wants to see what he’ll do, maybe she wants to see him come completely untethered so she can use it as justification for what she says next.
Though something like fire sparks in her gaze when she speaks, her voice is still low and she is still so still as she waits, standing amongst the deep black fog like a bolt of lightning frozen in time.
“I’m taking them, and you will never see them again.”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
He mistakes his fear for fury.
(White-hot terror at the prospect of never seeing the girls again, his girls -- their girls.)
Because he is not a thing built for fear and this is the only way he knows how to translate it, through a lens of anger. Rage. It expands until it swallows him up whole. But it is that same kind of lethal fury, the quiet kind. Steady, pulsing, cold.
The kind of fury that convinces him that he could kill her. If that’s what it took to stop her from taking the children from him.
But it is not love that sparks this fear, is it? Because, just as he is not a thing built for fear, he is not a thing built for love. He loved them for the amount of time he’d been near them, in the proximity of the third daughter, the only time he ever could. But he feels no natural love for them now. No, it is a matter of possession. Power. He does not feel for them the way Beyza feels for them. The girls, too, had been part of the plan.
(Is this a tantrum, then? A vicious, wild lashing out at the way things are collapsing around him when he’d been so certain that they would be successful in their conquest.)
His nostrils flare and the muscles tremble beneath the surface of his shadow-skin as he stares at her, the eyes still glowing a mercurial red.
He could kill her.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he draws in a rattling breath and wraps a cold hand around her throat again. Squeezes as fiercely as he can for the space of a breath and then abruptly releases her.
jamie