841, outside the walls.
Scream.
Blood.
Silence.
Deafening, blissful silence.
And pain.
Hot.
It…it burns…no, it burns, it burns, make it stop, please…
Walk. She walked—no, stumbled, fell, dragged—away from the scream and blood and silence. She found, immediately, that she could not walk away from the pain.
The heat wreathed her, and the cold of the silver hazy rain couldn't touch her. She held her arms against her small, broken frame, against the sharp, jutting ribs and pale skin that hadn't felt sunlight. Not for years and years and years...
Her legs…she was supposed to feel them, right? Wasn't that how it used to be—every part of herself under complete control, her mind alive with a sort of cold clarity? It was different, because she had never felt pain like this, pain that took hold of you and wrapped you in its burning embrace—and you knew it was hopeless to run from it, to grit your teeth and endure.
In her mind, the scream had returned. Through the steam that curled from her shoulders, rolled through the silver of the storm, it was unbroken.
She wanted to be numb. Like her legs felt. She moved them on instinct, out of the somehow-sure belief that she would die if she stayed where she'd fallen. Near the scream and blood and silence.
It went against her nature to lie there and let her life go—to what, she didn't know, but she did know it was to something.
Death.
Death was familiar. But death was cold and this was hot, and all she wanted was to be somewhere in between.
That feeling was familiar, too. She'd felt it before, in a place that might've been far away.
What's it called?
The pain was almost nullified, just for a second. The cold and heat were absorbed together, bound together—for a moment.
Home.
The gray smudge against silver was foreign—a heap of something unfamiliar, something unnecessary, something unimportant. He watched, still, quiet, not sure what he was watching for.
Maybe it was just some leaves, someone's clothes they'd forgotten to take off the line, blown there by a careless wind. And it would be blown away again. And he'd forget about it.
He was aware: of the weight beside him, a small blond figure, head resting forwards as he slept. Of the hardness of the cheap wooden bench. Of the streaks the rain traced down the glass of the window, like tears.
The wind was blowing. You could feel it in the shuddering of the old, frail house, see it in the wavering course of cold, fast drops, hear it in the baleful moans of the storm. Know it.
The rain wasn't faltering as it pounded the gray smudge, flattened it to the hard cobblestones between the houses and buildings. The wind wasn't moving it, the unfamiliar, unnecessary, unimportant smudge.
Seconds or hours could pass while he was in this unfocused daze, and he wouldn't know the difference. He kept his eyes trained on the only imperfection among the silver outside, stared at it till it seemed to fade in his vision and become even more meaningless.
After hours or seconds, something moved him to get up. Something did, after all this time had passed with his bones slowly freezing in place, their weight rooting him to that bench, next to the sleeping boy.
So he got up. He left the house, brushing open the stiff, adamant back door and exposing the single-floored house to the frigid air. There was a sound of protest from the boy, who had woken, but it cut off as the door slammed, wedging itself back into its frame again.
He ran, narrowly avoiding tripping over his own feet. His body was another gray smudge, standing out like a bruise among the silver.
He regretted it—leaving the small wooden house. He regretted it as soon as he crouched in the few millimeters of muddy water that stood piled up on the cobblestone, a lake. The cold chilled him, soaked him through. And the raindrops—as they fell on him, around him, through him; somehow, they hurt.
If the piled-up water was a lake, the body, the tiny form of a person collapsed in front of him, was an island. The person that might've been dead was an island.
He didn't know what he felt—other than longing for the safe, warm place he'd left, other than the wish that he hadn't left that place. Other than these, he might've felt horrified, but it was only for a brief second.
Then he felt terrified.
She had her back to him. Rain-darkened pale gold hair covered her face, wildly unkempt as it fanned out around her head, soaked in the muddy water—and she wasn't dead, he realized as he recoiled away from her. His heart was beating. Hard, fast, not in his chest but in his throat.
He paused. He was suddenly more aware of the sound of rain.
Her eyes were closed, beneath her hair. Closed tightly, brow furrowed—and the skin on her cheeks, it seemed, was colored pale pink, like it was slightly marred. His stomach clenched tightly, because he knew what that would mean.
His hand almost shook when he reached out, when he lightly brushed her hair away from her face to see it better. He had a split second to recognize the reddish diamond-shaped patterns on the side of her head, expanding from the corner of her eye and down her face.
Like a spring, almost, she reacted. She woke up, not dead, not even close, twisting her body and lunging for his wrist.
He cried out—or tried to, but the sound died in his throat. He wanted to back away, run back to the house before this little girl—this little girl with sky-eyes—tried to kill him.
He was sure she would try to kill him.
He probably could've broken free, but he didn't. He stared back at her—she was pale, too pale, like she was sick. The feathery diamonds etched on her skin looked like wings, spread at the edges of her face. It almost made her look ethereal, if not for her hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes.
Yet, her grip was strong. Mud caked in the baggy hooded sweater she wore, which might've been white a long time ago.
She looked angry—maybe scared. Maybe, if you noticed the wideness of her gaze and the stiffness of her stance, she was scared.
She spoke, from a throat rubbed raw, from a voice she hadn't heard for years and years and years, "Is…is this…home?"
Uncertain.
Pained.
Hopeful.
Desperately, despairingly hopeful.
He felt an unexplained rush of sympathy, and for her, for this sky-eyed girl he didn't know, his heart sank. He was struck with memories of pain and heat and blood and fear, and he knew at once what she felt like.
Knew at once what she wanted to hear, what she'd been through, what she'd done.
"Yeah," he said, quietly. She heard him, in his voice edged in a whisper; afraid what his words meant, afraid of who would hear him. On his wrist, her hand tightened. "This is home."