Sunlight and Ice

Created on 4/20/2014, 12:37AM

Kali lounged across the ice, the tips of her claws digging into the soft layer of powder that covered it just a few inches from the hole her human had carved into it. Tiny crystals of ice dug into the soft fur of her side, but she just closed her eyes, enjoying the contrast it provided with the bright sun that floated so high above.

Will spoke, like a whisper of a breeze across her fur, free of the despair and desperation that had clouded his thoughts ever since Abigail and Senteron had been killed.

Against the snow, her paws curled of their own accord, her claws extending to glint in the sunlight as she peeked one golden eye open to look at them, imagining the snow around them turning red with the blood that had stained Will's hands. Behind her eyes, the glint of sunlight against her claws turned to infinite sparks of gold, and beneath her teeth, she felt the struggling pressure of a small neck within her grasp, fighting with all its strength to escape even as a splash of warm blood struck her fur.

Will was speaking still, his voice low so he wouldn't scare the fish, explaining to Jack Crawford and the bloodhound sitting at his feet exactly how it was they planned to catch the monster that had killed Abigail and Senteron. Exactly how it was they would lure Hannibal Lecter and his blood-soaked owl into the light. Kali closed her eyes, and felt again the subtle weight across her shoulders where Stergata had perched, her talons digging into the loose fur of her neck, keeping her entranced with her pitch black eyes as she leaned forward over her head, forcing her to look up at her as the light that destroyed her ability to think continued its disastrous flashing. It had always reflected back at her through Stergata's eyes, lighting them blood-red in between one moment and the next, until it felt like she was drowning in it.

And Jack Crawford and Bersheyna sat through it all, the man gesturing for the flash, a smile of oblivion on his lips. Bersheyna' eyes were fixed on the ice-hole, as though hoping she would be able to see the trout they were hunting. Though her human couldn't have been any less subtle aside from outright shouting it to the sky, the FBI agent didn't want to hear what they had to say, and neither Jack nor his daemon bothered to look beyond the first layer of meaning.

As far as they were concerned, all that Will Graham was talking about was fishing. They didn't see the teeth that were bared behind her human's lips when he smiled, and they couldn't see the dream they'd often constructed, the river water rushing past them with a swift current, tugging at her fur and the fabric that covered his legs, fishing rod swinging through the air with perfect precision, the lure sailing through the air to drop with a soft plunk in the water, exactly as they'd planned.

Jack Crawford couldn't remember constructed conversations with the ghost of Abigail Hobbs or her daemon, as they stood with them in the water, a soft smile on her softer face, Senteron stretching one of his golden arms down to trail his fingers in the water, and watching with undisguised curiosity as Will threw the line. Bersheyna didn't remember the way the little monkey hands had gripped her fur when he'd fallen from Abigail's shoulders into the water, climbing onto her back with fistfuls of her fur, shaking with both fear and laughter. They'd never gone fishing before.

They're the same thing, aren't they?

The words, softly spoken, half turned away in something like shame, still echoed in her ears even across the lonely expanse of the ice. The way Senteron's paws had twisted to his chest, fingers curled and hidden, his head lowered just the slightest bit, still played out behind her eyes. The empty rush of the river hadn't been able to fill the hole that had been torn in their hearts.

Because they knew, deep in their hearts, the horrors that Abigail Hobbs and her white and gold marmoset had been forced to live through. They knew the acts they'd been forced to commit, the blood they'd been forced to spill. They knew the terror and shame that clouded their eyes, the cowardice that was nothing more than the need to survive that had burrowed itself so deeply into their minds that they forced themselves to forget what it was they'd done. They couldn't accept the reality that faced them, so they turned to what was normal, and replaced the human bodies with those of deer. They had to keep going, even though life seemed to have forsaken them for a nightmare world that had no end.

On some level, Kali knew, they had known. No matter how many walls they built within themselves, no matter how many personalities they shoved into the farthest reaches of their mind, there was no hiding from what they'd been forced to do.

The fur of her belly and legs freezing against the snow and ice as the merciless sun beat down on her from above, Kali curled into a ball around Will's seat, and let her leopard's tail flicker to a rest beside his feet, her eyes shut against the vision of stubborn ignorance that sat across the ice from them. Jack Crawford had said from the very beginning that Abigail was involved with the murders. He insisted that she was a killer.

But she wasn't. And deep in her throat, Kali felt a growl beginning to rumble to existence. Because she wasn't. She was a victim. But Jack wouldn't see that. Bersheyna wouldn't see that. All they would see was the blood on her hands, and the Shadows that had stained her daemon's hands gold as symbolically as it could get.

But now, when they pointed in the direction of a real killer, Jack Crawford was happy to pretend that it had been nothing more than a fever, than the desperate fear and horror of their confusion and the evidence that was being framed against them. Bersheyna was happy to sit there, looking down into the icy water, pretending that nothing was wrong with the world, happy to rest safely under the lie that had been thrown to them.

As far as Jack Crawford was concerned, the Chesapeake Ripper had died with poor, terrified Frederick Chilton and his flying lemur daemon, and Hannibal Lecter and his Palau owl were nothing more than the unfortunate victims of misguided accusations thrown by sick, on-the-spectrum ex-FBI agents who were suffering from a terrible disease that messed with their heads.

Her claws flexed again in the snow, and, hidden behind her paws, her teeth bared themselves, and her muzzle wrinkled in a silent snarl. Above her, Will Graham smiled. "I'm an excellent fisher." He said.

She could already taste the blood against her teeth, and purred with an outward sigh of contentment, Bersheyna huffing along in blissful, ignorant, agreement.