endings
Billy McCann
Wed 08:40PM CST
Night or morning - she's sleeping, or attempting to sleep, fine pillowcase cool beneath her cheek, her hair spread out loose around her. The room is cast in multiple overlapping shadows, deep and grayed, city lights bleeding into the condominium from the big fancy windows, the city strewn beneath her feet like diamonds for her to walk on. Ain't no telling what wakes her, or if she was already awake or if she was in some no-man's land that's stuck itself between the two, some nightmare flatness that ain't sleeping and ain't rational, neither. Ain't no telling what drags her from whereever she is, either.
Her alarm clock bleeds into the blank blackness of the night, digital numbers, red, smeared, 3:47 with a dot in the corner to indicate A.M. There's a sound, a pop, like someone pulling a cork from a bottle of cheap dandelion wine, a moment of nothing and then a moment of something. There was nothing at her window, and now there is a lean hard shape blotting out half the city view, and now there is a smell that is not entirely pleasant in the air: acrid ash and blood. Blood beneath it all.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 08:45PM CST
Her sleep had become troubled since her news, the loss of Tucker was a blow, that few could understand. The disappearance of the McCanns on some unnamed dangerous mission [the evasions, illusions...all torn] had layered itself upon the weary young mind. She had nightmares, that cool pillow was so cool with the drying remnants of now chilled tears. They'd been hot when they fell. She was in mourning, a grief laden state barely relieved in sleep. The dark thoughts of many kinds which had come in the wake of everything had frightened her guardians, her few remaining friends.... Silver Fang mental states being what they were, her deep depression was understood.
But there's a degree of restlessness, slender frame caught in twisted pink sheets and the thin cotton nigthgown beneath. Only breif moments when she was still, somehwta peaceful, and looked like Sleeping Beauty amongst the trappings of yuothful affluence. And into that cma eunfamilair scents... which made the dainty nose twitch, which roused groggy senses, her eyes sunk into pale shadowed hollows in her face. She wore grief well too, a watcher might note. Finally head rolled to the side and eyes cracked, taking a frowned inhale and confused...
Billy McCann
Wed 08:52PM CST
"Arabella." Her name, a hard familiar voice gone raw, meatgrinder raw. Not Miss, no, none of the damn trappings that go along with everything else. Her name and a midnight voice dragged from a hoarse and bloodied and blooded throat. They keep this part of it from girls like her, don't they? The figure doesn't move. He ain't facing out, he's been facing in all along, staring hard at her as she sleeps, the outline of her body beneath the sheets, her hand tangled, her mouth slack, the tracks of tears across her soft cheeks, flushed with sleep, wonderin' whether he's selfish to wanna wake, compromising on the distance between coming and going by staying, but out of her immediate reach. "I ain't got much time."
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 08:56PM CST
It wasn't a voice she expected to hear, in her bedroom, now... they'd layered the levels of deadly certainity on her over and over again until she'd broken into profound emotional pain. [Cursed... my care is a curse...] How everyone she cared about could so suddenly be gone tore at the carefree spirit.
"Billy?" The astonishment, and the concern which rapidly follows. She's heard similar sounds, though it was Rasputin and she nursed him back to life in a room just down the hallway from this one.
Pushing up in her bed, still mostly modest in attire, the faint scent of roses waylaid by the aroma he brought with him, of blood, of battle... she still prayed it wasn't his death too.
"I thought I wouldn't see you again... are you..." Voice breaks on the question he can likely anticipate. Please please don't leave me too... everyone leaves me, is leaving me, has left me...
Billy McCann
Wed 09:06PM CST
"I ain't here fer no more'n a minute, Arabella." His breath comes harsh and raw, each one's a fight in itself. There's something wrong with his abdominal muscles, then pulls and scream fire along his nerves each time he breathes too deep or too long. There ain't no hitch in his voice, though. He bears it like he's done born everthang else. "I just knowed I couldn't leave without sayin' somethin' ta you. Without seein' you agin."
The figure at the window doesn't move. She gets up, astonishment and concern, sleep still in the back of her throat, hair spilling around her shoulders, the sheets catching against her shoulder, then her arm, her abdomen, the little girl's nightgown, the modest neckline and her skin, luminous in the darkness.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 09:12PM CST
Lips press together in a pained line and she's still moving. If he won't she will, and unless he has the fight left in him to stop her, she's sliding from the bed, robe and slippers nearby forgotten so its only bare limbs and scant cover of her nightgown in the soft warmth of Chicago's summer night. "You're... Oh Gaia, Billy... you can't leave me again..." It breaks in ehr voice again, mellifluous tones normally are strained with the pain coming to life once more inside. Green eyes glitter in half light and full shadows, the minefield this has made of her heart and soul livid in their reflection.
"Aurich's gone, Jaan, Rasputin, Viktor, Tucker, Jodi, your brothers... I can't lose you too..." She'd barely begun to explore the emergence of feelings along that road from friendship to more. She could vividly remember the frantic beat of her heart as he whispered poetry harshly into her ear, as he promised he'd kiss her, as they walked, talked and simply sat in silence at times.
Bare feet moving in silent pad as she crossed the room to her window and him, ghostly in the pale shade of her ngith clothes, her dark hair darker without daylight giving it dimension. "You're hurt... I've tended others who were hurt. I can find... the healers, or call Josephina..."
Billy McCann
Wed 09:29PM CST
Roses and - beneath that, beneath that manufactured fragrance, so pleasing to humans, men and women, beneath the stuff ripped from the hearts of flowers and graced softly across her skin - there's something else, as familiar and natural to her as the dark-water scent is to a deep forest pool. He breathes in deep - she can see his shoulders twist, his hard features lit suddenly by a splash of red from the next tower's private helipad, nostrils flaring, hard mouth set in a dark line - and takes in the mixture of scents that sloughs off her skin.
Healer? Josephina? The litany of her lost: he don't seem to hear any of it. He don't respond to none of it. He just stares hard at her as she crosses the darkling room, steps from pool of light to puddle of shadow, bare feet whispering across the plush nap of the expensive woolen carpet, soft as new spring grass. There's the sound of her voice like water, she's talking but he can't really hear her. He had things to say but they ain't so much in the forefront of his mind no more, though death's at the back of his throat, death's in his eyes. Death's in his eyes, and life is in hers.
He makes a noise, not so much strangled out of him as tamped down, firmed back into place, pushed deeper, and puts out a hand like he's going to push her away, the level of her shoulder - there's something dark, leaking on that hand, the broken knuckles cracked and raw, the grime and dried blood caking the blunt nails. Puts out that hand like he's going to push her away, but instead it hovers there a moment and the distance between them (he can hear his heartbeat, bloodroar, battlesense and something else loud in his ears) is measured by his reach, and then suddenly - his hand glides over her shoulder, buries in her hair and he drags her forward until she's hard against him and kisses her breathless and the distance between them ain't measure by the length of his arm but by the weave of her nightgown.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 09:37PM CST
She'd half expected him to hold her back, the pride and distance she'd seen so often in her Silver Fang relations and friends always in the back of her memory, even beyond the hazy remnants of the Raptors. Bear their burden's alone... always alone and she was so tired of being alone. The tiny details about him were secondary things she saw, and would likely remember at another time... now was only the half surprised sound as his hand slid over nearly bre shoulder to find the thick wealth of chestnut curls, so like he had on a rainy night walking to his truck. Only now, its not poetry whispered in terrible tormenting whispers to her ear but the promised kiss instead.
Her eyes were large, so close to him now, very much like the forest pools in themselves, and lips were still against his a moment before surprise faded into acquiesence, and she was returning that kiss. I might lack the studied touch of one who did much kissing but it had her feeling behind it.
One could only hope it was enough, because knowing he was probably dying against her was tearing her up inside and outside all she gave back were bright eyes with the watery edge and warm kiss.
The cream cotton of her gown would likely be ruined, and she couldn't care less, what coated him, bled from him, no doubt soaking into the fine weave of the cloth. She came up against him, as if she alone could keep him with her. Finally, he was released from her gaze aas lids drooped over them and she gave over to him completely in that moment.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:00PM CST
His left hand is balled, fingers tangled with the fabric of her nightgown, a fist at the base of her spine, five hard knuckles pressing against the fine cotton, heat bleeding through to her skin, counterpoints to the hard facets jointing her supple spine. His right hand is splayed open behind her neck, calloused fingers, slippery with blood that flows still from somewhere, that dampens the back of his hand and her dark hair, that soaks into her nightgown a spreading stain. Fingerpads, rougher than the rest, the callouses from a lifetime of playing and playing and playing the steel-stringed guitar until his fingers were bleeding and the strings was broken and there wasn't nothing left by the hollow thumb of his hand against the body of the instrument.
He breaks the kiss and leans forward, into her, unable to release her, breathing hard, rough chin against her cheek, cheek against her forehead, several days' growth of whiskers scratchy against her fine skin, breath coming hot and hard, deep, ragged gulps. The fingers of his left hand tighten reflexively around the fabric, the hem of her gown rising against the back of her legs as if it were a curtain. His grip on her neck tightens, then, and where it seemed like he couldn't get enough of her, he's letting her go like she's on fire, the twisted nightgown that had crept up her calves to her knees, half-way up her thighs as he gathered the fabric in his hand like fishing line in a reel falling back to its modest level, he's pushing her away from him, breathing hard. Maybe she can't see it: maybe that kiss is an innocent thing to her, Florence Nightengale's cool hand on the fevered forehead of a dying man, but he's not just dying, he's also living. There's more than pain at the forefront of the instinctual mind that lives like a fucking animal beneath his lean human skin.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 10:09PM CST
The sticky warmth cooling against her skin where the nightgown clings now with the stains left by his wounded body. She's gasping herself, the kiss robbing her of air that she now seeks to draw back... so when he pushed her away it was with less then her usual grace leaving her a stumbling marionette in the moonlight and city glare. The small sound uttered was protesting and pained all in one. Whatever else he was feeling, she was most easily read as afraid he would leave. Fear, it drives her, and the care she had, which might have blossomed towards more in time and perhaps no one will ever know?
"Where're you hurt, Billy... let me help you, please..." Plaintitive sound with the heated undercurrent his kiss had raised threading sweet European accent.
He's pushed her away and she comes closer again, trying to see where it was he was hurt now, as she watched him. Caged animal or simply a man she cared too much for to simply let go... her whisper was poetry this time. Something she'd read in ehr weeks of mourning her brother, then Tucker, adn hoping it wouldn't also be him.
"Live for my living,
or else I must die.
Don't leave me alone,
a world hear that cry."
It summed up her thoughts nicely as she reached for him once more.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:32PM CST
"No." His voice was raw. Now it's feral, near a snarl, a hard knot of sound that tears through the back of his throat. She reaches for him; he grabs up her hands in one of his, hard fingers curving iron bands around her own, soft and fine and shaking - is that her shaking? Is that - god, fucking hell - him? Softer then, but in a voice threaded with iron, with hard-edged fire-forged steel. "No. Y'cain't come no closer. I ain't reasonable, I ain't responsible, an' next time y'touch me I'm gon' do more'n kiss you, Arabella."
The scent on his breath, Scotch - alcohol, something fermented - suddenly asserts itself beneath the blood and grime. He should turn around and look at himself and see the echoes of his brothers in his eyes. He's turning aside when she quotes that, raw and forceful, and he sucks in a deep breath like he's been gutshot, the sound whistles dark through the thick night air. The edges of the world are dancing dark rainbows, now. The room folds in on itself. "Let go. Turn around and git back in yer bed." The command strips past his tortured vocal chords, harsh and hoarse, but threaded with all the authority of his blood, his moon, his tribe. "Go on. Git back in yer bed - " as his grip tightens on her hands, he grabs her upper arm with his free hand, fingers digging into the soft flesh, steering her stumbling backwards. In this darkness, the deaths of his brothers riding hard on the curve of his consciousness, the pack and its bond to the totem disintegrating fasted than a sandcastle at high tide, he doesn't know his own strength. " - git back in bed an' close yer eyes. Fer me. Go on - "
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 10:40PM CST
His harsh gutteral sound, words so raw they make her blink pull her up short, not that his hard grip hadn't done likewise. Years glittered now, understanding beyond what she wanted to know dawning. She wasn't completely innocent of what could happen, simply had not done such herself... and his last.
"Billy..." Choked around a sob that wanted to break loose and she refused to allow it. The pain which flares though fragile seeming body as he exerts command [strength of wolven kind beyond] upon her. That flare of the eyes where she'd disobeyed Aurich so many times, even till the last, she'd followed him until she no longer could... why should it be any different now. "Please... don't make me just... leave you, like this..."
Falling back from him before she headed for her sleep tosed bed, sheets in disarray, blankets folded neatly on a nearby stand unused in summer warmth. It took every ounce of her she had to do as he asked, trembling as a few hot new tears slid free finally and she settled in bed, but those eyes won't leave.... she watche dhim, trying not to break down.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:51PM CST
"Close yer eyes." He all but snarls, the tension bunching in his broad shoulders, curdling in the lean musculature, the slow extrusion of blood from somewhere, drip drip drip onto her fine, fine carpet like a slow-leaking faucet. But she doesn't close her eyes, she's crying in her bed, and instead of crossing the distance between them, instead of going to her, instead of any of a thousand almost kind things he could do for her, he turns his back on her, turns to the window and the city's lights beyond that, his own reflection like a ghost against the black shell of filth prettied up by the endless twinkling lights, diamonds and dust and dust and diamonds. Not his words, but another's, because that's all he has, that's all he's ever had, and his words aren't enough, the wolf inside his head eats them up, scrabbles through him, and it takes fucking effort to turn his back, to stay here when she's beyond him, her purity, her scent, his words, no - another's - his death, his brothers.
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."
His rough voice is now a tarnished golden thread, the power and grace of his singing voice still implicit in his ragged tones. His breath makes a hot circle on the glass with every line he utters, but it disappears with the next. Her eyes aren't closed, she won't close her eyes, but he almost closes his, sees his reflection and a different one, an impossible future, bee-loud glad and purple evenings, lake waters, peaceful nights, green eyes - impossible - and chestnut hair.
The last line ends. His voice is still and silent, and maybe in the spell cast by the Moon Dancer's skilled weaving of another's skilled words, maybe for a few graceful minutes, she won't realize that there's no one standing at her window anymore, maybe she won't realize that he's gone.
Wed 08:40PM CST
Night or morning - she's sleeping, or attempting to sleep, fine pillowcase cool beneath her cheek, her hair spread out loose around her. The room is cast in multiple overlapping shadows, deep and grayed, city lights bleeding into the condominium from the big fancy windows, the city strewn beneath her feet like diamonds for her to walk on. Ain't no telling what wakes her, or if she was already awake or if she was in some no-man's land that's stuck itself between the two, some nightmare flatness that ain't sleeping and ain't rational, neither. Ain't no telling what drags her from whereever she is, either.
Her alarm clock bleeds into the blank blackness of the night, digital numbers, red, smeared, 3:47 with a dot in the corner to indicate A.M. There's a sound, a pop, like someone pulling a cork from a bottle of cheap dandelion wine, a moment of nothing and then a moment of something. There was nothing at her window, and now there is a lean hard shape blotting out half the city view, and now there is a smell that is not entirely pleasant in the air: acrid ash and blood. Blood beneath it all.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 08:45PM CST
Her sleep had become troubled since her news, the loss of Tucker was a blow, that few could understand. The disappearance of the McCanns on some unnamed dangerous mission [the evasions, illusions...all torn] had layered itself upon the weary young mind. She had nightmares, that cool pillow was so cool with the drying remnants of now chilled tears. They'd been hot when they fell. She was in mourning, a grief laden state barely relieved in sleep. The dark thoughts of many kinds which had come in the wake of everything had frightened her guardians, her few remaining friends.... Silver Fang mental states being what they were, her deep depression was understood.
But there's a degree of restlessness, slender frame caught in twisted pink sheets and the thin cotton nigthgown beneath. Only breif moments when she was still, somehwta peaceful, and looked like Sleeping Beauty amongst the trappings of yuothful affluence. And into that cma eunfamilair scents... which made the dainty nose twitch, which roused groggy senses, her eyes sunk into pale shadowed hollows in her face. She wore grief well too, a watcher might note. Finally head rolled to the side and eyes cracked, taking a frowned inhale and confused...
Billy McCann
Wed 08:52PM CST
"Arabella." Her name, a hard familiar voice gone raw, meatgrinder raw. Not Miss, no, none of the damn trappings that go along with everything else. Her name and a midnight voice dragged from a hoarse and bloodied and blooded throat. They keep this part of it from girls like her, don't they? The figure doesn't move. He ain't facing out, he's been facing in all along, staring hard at her as she sleeps, the outline of her body beneath the sheets, her hand tangled, her mouth slack, the tracks of tears across her soft cheeks, flushed with sleep, wonderin' whether he's selfish to wanna wake, compromising on the distance between coming and going by staying, but out of her immediate reach. "I ain't got much time."
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 08:56PM CST
It wasn't a voice she expected to hear, in her bedroom, now... they'd layered the levels of deadly certainity on her over and over again until she'd broken into profound emotional pain. [Cursed... my care is a curse...] How everyone she cared about could so suddenly be gone tore at the carefree spirit.
"Billy?" The astonishment, and the concern which rapidly follows. She's heard similar sounds, though it was Rasputin and she nursed him back to life in a room just down the hallway from this one.
Pushing up in her bed, still mostly modest in attire, the faint scent of roses waylaid by the aroma he brought with him, of blood, of battle... she still prayed it wasn't his death too.
"I thought I wouldn't see you again... are you..." Voice breaks on the question he can likely anticipate. Please please don't leave me too... everyone leaves me, is leaving me, has left me...
Billy McCann
Wed 09:06PM CST
"I ain't here fer no more'n a minute, Arabella." His breath comes harsh and raw, each one's a fight in itself. There's something wrong with his abdominal muscles, then pulls and scream fire along his nerves each time he breathes too deep or too long. There ain't no hitch in his voice, though. He bears it like he's done born everthang else. "I just knowed I couldn't leave without sayin' somethin' ta you. Without seein' you agin."
The figure at the window doesn't move. She gets up, astonishment and concern, sleep still in the back of her throat, hair spilling around her shoulders, the sheets catching against her shoulder, then her arm, her abdomen, the little girl's nightgown, the modest neckline and her skin, luminous in the darkness.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 09:12PM CST
Lips press together in a pained line and she's still moving. If he won't she will, and unless he has the fight left in him to stop her, she's sliding from the bed, robe and slippers nearby forgotten so its only bare limbs and scant cover of her nightgown in the soft warmth of Chicago's summer night. "You're... Oh Gaia, Billy... you can't leave me again..." It breaks in ehr voice again, mellifluous tones normally are strained with the pain coming to life once more inside. Green eyes glitter in half light and full shadows, the minefield this has made of her heart and soul livid in their reflection.
"Aurich's gone, Jaan, Rasputin, Viktor, Tucker, Jodi, your brothers... I can't lose you too..." She'd barely begun to explore the emergence of feelings along that road from friendship to more. She could vividly remember the frantic beat of her heart as he whispered poetry harshly into her ear, as he promised he'd kiss her, as they walked, talked and simply sat in silence at times.
Bare feet moving in silent pad as she crossed the room to her window and him, ghostly in the pale shade of her ngith clothes, her dark hair darker without daylight giving it dimension. "You're hurt... I've tended others who were hurt. I can find... the healers, or call Josephina..."
Billy McCann
Wed 09:29PM CST
Roses and - beneath that, beneath that manufactured fragrance, so pleasing to humans, men and women, beneath the stuff ripped from the hearts of flowers and graced softly across her skin - there's something else, as familiar and natural to her as the dark-water scent is to a deep forest pool. He breathes in deep - she can see his shoulders twist, his hard features lit suddenly by a splash of red from the next tower's private helipad, nostrils flaring, hard mouth set in a dark line - and takes in the mixture of scents that sloughs off her skin.
Healer? Josephina? The litany of her lost: he don't seem to hear any of it. He don't respond to none of it. He just stares hard at her as she crosses the darkling room, steps from pool of light to puddle of shadow, bare feet whispering across the plush nap of the expensive woolen carpet, soft as new spring grass. There's the sound of her voice like water, she's talking but he can't really hear her. He had things to say but they ain't so much in the forefront of his mind no more, though death's at the back of his throat, death's in his eyes. Death's in his eyes, and life is in hers.
He makes a noise, not so much strangled out of him as tamped down, firmed back into place, pushed deeper, and puts out a hand like he's going to push her away, the level of her shoulder - there's something dark, leaking on that hand, the broken knuckles cracked and raw, the grime and dried blood caking the blunt nails. Puts out that hand like he's going to push her away, but instead it hovers there a moment and the distance between them (he can hear his heartbeat, bloodroar, battlesense and something else loud in his ears) is measured by his reach, and then suddenly - his hand glides over her shoulder, buries in her hair and he drags her forward until she's hard against him and kisses her breathless and the distance between them ain't measure by the length of his arm but by the weave of her nightgown.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 09:37PM CST
She'd half expected him to hold her back, the pride and distance she'd seen so often in her Silver Fang relations and friends always in the back of her memory, even beyond the hazy remnants of the Raptors. Bear their burden's alone... always alone and she was so tired of being alone. The tiny details about him were secondary things she saw, and would likely remember at another time... now was only the half surprised sound as his hand slid over nearly bre shoulder to find the thick wealth of chestnut curls, so like he had on a rainy night walking to his truck. Only now, its not poetry whispered in terrible tormenting whispers to her ear but the promised kiss instead.
Her eyes were large, so close to him now, very much like the forest pools in themselves, and lips were still against his a moment before surprise faded into acquiesence, and she was returning that kiss. I might lack the studied touch of one who did much kissing but it had her feeling behind it.
One could only hope it was enough, because knowing he was probably dying against her was tearing her up inside and outside all she gave back were bright eyes with the watery edge and warm kiss.
The cream cotton of her gown would likely be ruined, and she couldn't care less, what coated him, bled from him, no doubt soaking into the fine weave of the cloth. She came up against him, as if she alone could keep him with her. Finally, he was released from her gaze aas lids drooped over them and she gave over to him completely in that moment.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:00PM CST
His left hand is balled, fingers tangled with the fabric of her nightgown, a fist at the base of her spine, five hard knuckles pressing against the fine cotton, heat bleeding through to her skin, counterpoints to the hard facets jointing her supple spine. His right hand is splayed open behind her neck, calloused fingers, slippery with blood that flows still from somewhere, that dampens the back of his hand and her dark hair, that soaks into her nightgown a spreading stain. Fingerpads, rougher than the rest, the callouses from a lifetime of playing and playing and playing the steel-stringed guitar until his fingers were bleeding and the strings was broken and there wasn't nothing left by the hollow thumb of his hand against the body of the instrument.
He breaks the kiss and leans forward, into her, unable to release her, breathing hard, rough chin against her cheek, cheek against her forehead, several days' growth of whiskers scratchy against her fine skin, breath coming hot and hard, deep, ragged gulps. The fingers of his left hand tighten reflexively around the fabric, the hem of her gown rising against the back of her legs as if it were a curtain. His grip on her neck tightens, then, and where it seemed like he couldn't get enough of her, he's letting her go like she's on fire, the twisted nightgown that had crept up her calves to her knees, half-way up her thighs as he gathered the fabric in his hand like fishing line in a reel falling back to its modest level, he's pushing her away from him, breathing hard. Maybe she can't see it: maybe that kiss is an innocent thing to her, Florence Nightengale's cool hand on the fevered forehead of a dying man, but he's not just dying, he's also living. There's more than pain at the forefront of the instinctual mind that lives like a fucking animal beneath his lean human skin.
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 10:09PM CST
The sticky warmth cooling against her skin where the nightgown clings now with the stains left by his wounded body. She's gasping herself, the kiss robbing her of air that she now seeks to draw back... so when he pushed her away it was with less then her usual grace leaving her a stumbling marionette in the moonlight and city glare. The small sound uttered was protesting and pained all in one. Whatever else he was feeling, she was most easily read as afraid he would leave. Fear, it drives her, and the care she had, which might have blossomed towards more in time and perhaps no one will ever know?
"Where're you hurt, Billy... let me help you, please..." Plaintitive sound with the heated undercurrent his kiss had raised threading sweet European accent.
He's pushed her away and she comes closer again, trying to see where it was he was hurt now, as she watched him. Caged animal or simply a man she cared too much for to simply let go... her whisper was poetry this time. Something she'd read in ehr weeks of mourning her brother, then Tucker, adn hoping it wouldn't also be him.
"Live for my living,
or else I must die.
Don't leave me alone,
a world hear that cry."
It summed up her thoughts nicely as she reached for him once more.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:32PM CST
"No." His voice was raw. Now it's feral, near a snarl, a hard knot of sound that tears through the back of his throat. She reaches for him; he grabs up her hands in one of his, hard fingers curving iron bands around her own, soft and fine and shaking - is that her shaking? Is that - god, fucking hell - him? Softer then, but in a voice threaded with iron, with hard-edged fire-forged steel. "No. Y'cain't come no closer. I ain't reasonable, I ain't responsible, an' next time y'touch me I'm gon' do more'n kiss you, Arabella."
The scent on his breath, Scotch - alcohol, something fermented - suddenly asserts itself beneath the blood and grime. He should turn around and look at himself and see the echoes of his brothers in his eyes. He's turning aside when she quotes that, raw and forceful, and he sucks in a deep breath like he's been gutshot, the sound whistles dark through the thick night air. The edges of the world are dancing dark rainbows, now. The room folds in on itself. "Let go. Turn around and git back in yer bed." The command strips past his tortured vocal chords, harsh and hoarse, but threaded with all the authority of his blood, his moon, his tribe. "Go on. Git back in yer bed - " as his grip tightens on her hands, he grabs her upper arm with his free hand, fingers digging into the soft flesh, steering her stumbling backwards. In this darkness, the deaths of his brothers riding hard on the curve of his consciousness, the pack and its bond to the totem disintegrating fasted than a sandcastle at high tide, he doesn't know his own strength. " - git back in bed an' close yer eyes. Fer me. Go on - "
Arabella Eberstark
Wed 10:40PM CST
His harsh gutteral sound, words so raw they make her blink pull her up short, not that his hard grip hadn't done likewise. Years glittered now, understanding beyond what she wanted to know dawning. She wasn't completely innocent of what could happen, simply had not done such herself... and his last.
"Billy..." Choked around a sob that wanted to break loose and she refused to allow it. The pain which flares though fragile seeming body as he exerts command [strength of wolven kind beyond] upon her. That flare of the eyes where she'd disobeyed Aurich so many times, even till the last, she'd followed him until she no longer could... why should it be any different now. "Please... don't make me just... leave you, like this..."
Falling back from him before she headed for her sleep tosed bed, sheets in disarray, blankets folded neatly on a nearby stand unused in summer warmth. It took every ounce of her she had to do as he asked, trembling as a few hot new tears slid free finally and she settled in bed, but those eyes won't leave.... she watche dhim, trying not to break down.
Billy McCann
Wed 10:51PM CST
"Close yer eyes." He all but snarls, the tension bunching in his broad shoulders, curdling in the lean musculature, the slow extrusion of blood from somewhere, drip drip drip onto her fine, fine carpet like a slow-leaking faucet. But she doesn't close her eyes, she's crying in her bed, and instead of crossing the distance between them, instead of going to her, instead of any of a thousand almost kind things he could do for her, he turns his back on her, turns to the window and the city's lights beyond that, his own reflection like a ghost against the black shell of filth prettied up by the endless twinkling lights, diamonds and dust and dust and diamonds. Not his words, but another's, because that's all he has, that's all he's ever had, and his words aren't enough, the wolf inside his head eats them up, scrabbles through him, and it takes fucking effort to turn his back, to stay here when she's beyond him, her purity, her scent, his words, no - another's - his death, his brothers.
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."
His rough voice is now a tarnished golden thread, the power and grace of his singing voice still implicit in his ragged tones. His breath makes a hot circle on the glass with every line he utters, but it disappears with the next. Her eyes aren't closed, she won't close her eyes, but he almost closes his, sees his reflection and a different one, an impossible future, bee-loud glad and purple evenings, lake waters, peaceful nights, green eyes - impossible - and chestnut hair.
The last line ends. His voice is still and silent, and maybe in the spell cast by the Moon Dancer's skilled weaving of another's skilled words, maybe for a few graceful minutes, she won't realize that there's no one standing at her window anymore, maybe she won't realize that he's gone.
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