1 - a thought
It came naturally to her now. She would half-wake, hearing no matter how deeply she slept when he was troubled by his nightmares. She would pull closer to him, embrace him, try to smooth the fearful lines over his forehead with her touch and warmth.
Marco's reaction varied. At times, he would frown in his sleep, mutter, still agonised, and she would simply hold him until it passed. Other times, he awoke. Once woken, he would always turn to her, gather her into his arms, clinging to her as if she was the only light in a universe of darkness. He might weep. Or he might grow silent, force himself quiet and calm, and they would both fall asleep and wake together in the morning, still entwined. Or, he would kiss her, a fierce and possessive and hungry kiss, so unlike the usual tender and considerate lover she knew. Then, too, they would wake entwined.
She never had nightmares any more. Not since three years earlier, when she had first fallen asleep in Marco's arms, content and perfectly safe.
Nothing in the world could harm her – Marco would never let it. He had kept his promise: throughout her second pregnancy, she had never needed to morph. She had borne a healthy baby boy – a child which had celebrated his second birthday the very day before. A happy, carefree child, whose parents loved him more than life itself, and who was blissfully unaware of his father's ever returning nightmares.
Marco refused to speak of them in any more than the vaguest terms. But she was certain.
Each night, they were getting worse.
Causing the nightmares was a shadow from Marco's years in outer space after the war. The years when Marco found himself the only survivor of Jake's mission into Kelbrid space. He had been captured by a breed of aliens called the Elŷrrics. They had given him a gift: a silver tiara which had broken his mind and turned him into an eager slave, through the use of never-ending anguish and slivers of joy only when he served his masters well.
He had not worn that tiara for years, but still it beckoned for him, called to him, coaxing and tormenting. It did not intend to relinquish its hold, and it was another thing he refused to speak of – a thing he would not give up, for it had told him not to.
She had learned to recognise the signs of when it reached for him. He would touch its pocket at odd times – a tick he could not be rid of – and now and again fury flared across his face as he fought it in the only way he knew how. But worst was when he was listening to its patient, sweet song. A distance appeared in his eyes, the life left his smiles as his mind travelled somewhere else, and the warmth lacked in his touch.
Despite the years, the tiara still owned Marco. She knew he loved her – she had his heart, his soul… but the Elŷrrian slave's tiara had his mind. And it had all the time in the world.
She could not help but feel that her own time was running out. With each passing day, Marco was slipping away. The nightmares were only the start of it. Even awake, Marco had begun to look haunted. Sometimes the looks he turned on her belonged to someone else – evaluating, considering scowls like nothing that fit on his face. He would retreat more and more to a corner within himself, somewhere beyond her reach. If prompted he would emerge from his shell, careful as if afraid to break some precarious balance. He would shrug her questions aside: it was nothing. And the obvious joy he took in life otherwise always dispelled her worries. But the nightmares, always intensifying, she could not ignore.
He had never woken twice during one night before. The tiara had always had the common sense and patience to leave him alone after the first time, allow him to sleep, not push him too far at once.
Yet here he was. He had rolled away from her in his sleep, and as she stirred, feeling his distress as she always did, she was still too groggy with sleep to consider the strangeness more closely. She would consider it in the morning.
And it came so naturally. She shifted herself closer to him, wrapping an arm around him and hooking a leg around his. He woke. At first he was about to shove her away, but then relaxed. He turned to her. He was blinking tears from his eyes as he placed a tender kiss on her forehead, and hugged her close. His arms were strong and safe about her, and as ever his body was a shield between her and harm. Or so she could normally envision. But now, as he did after those nightmares, he smelled of fear.
"No matter what I ever say, or what I do," he said, "I do love you. I always will."
"Yes, Marco. I know you do. I love you too."
"Don't let me forget it," he breathed, his voice quavering. It was the most desperate plea she had ever heard from him.
"I won't," she promised.
Some tension evaporated from his shoulders. He exhaled as if he had been holding a deep breath. She sighed and snuggled into his embrace. Eventually the two of them returned to sleep.
And then she woke alone.
She left the bed and went to find him. The house was eerily quiet, and cold: she shivered, barefoot and dressed only in a knee-long night gown. Her son slept peacefully in his bed. Marco must have checked in on the boy – the door was closed, and she herself always left it slightly ajar. She continued. The study was empty. So was the kitchen downstairs, and the living room beside it. She found her lover in the bathroom. He was sitting on his knees, his back to her. His arms and head were draped over the bathtub's side, hidden from view.
"Marco?"
At the lack of response, she approached.
She found a knife in the bathtub's bottom, lying in the middle of a pool of blood. Marco's wrists were both deeply cut.
Wailing in sudden despair, she tore the limp body from the edge of the bathtub, and fell to the floor beside it. She ran her shaking hands over his still, pale face, down the sides of his neck. Frantically she began searching for some sign of life – any sign of life.
"You can't do this to me," she whispered, again and again, as if whispering would help. Words flew over her tongue, thoughtless, disconnected, one already grieving, another denying, and many still hoping. "You can't, you wouldn't. You –"
There – weak, faint, a sliver of movement at Marco's jugular vein: a pulse.
Her tears streamed in relief. She dared hardly breathe.
"Morph, Marco," she urged, shaking him. "Morph!"
There was no response. Her relief evaporated in the face of an awful realisation: Marco was unconscious. And already unconscious men did not morph.
"No," she rasped, collapsing over him, burying her face against his neck. "No no no… I'm not giving you up. Not… morph. Just… morph."
Her mind, was haunted by all-too-believable images: losing Marco was losing her last fellow Animorph. Once, she had lost them all. She had let them go. She had been left alone, incomplete. Marco's unexpected return to Earth had saved her in more ways than the obvious.
She could not let him go.
Her parents, she had lost. Her Ronnie – sweet, kind Ronnie, whom she had loved, would have married – also lost.
And now Marco lay lifeless beneath her, the last of his blood slowly leaving him, and he was too far gone to be reached, too far gone to save himself.
But Cassie would not let him go.
She dug her fingers into his shoulders. She pressed against him and searched for the core within her that was the morpher. She began the changes. To wolf, a morph she knew better than any – a morph Marco had identical.
She let the morph slip like sand between her fingers: she felt it seep into Marco. He was a part of her, no more, no less. A cornerstone of her existence, her closest family, her dearest friend, the father of her child. She knew him like she knew herself – as she could urge and control the changes in her own body, she could steer Marco's. She knew every line and curve and crease of him. Every gesture was familiar, every glance a reflection of her own soul. Where one of them ended, the other seamlessly began. A part of her… and more than that.
And as Cassie morphed, she dragged Marco through the same changes. She coaxed, cajoled, forced. She did not focus, or consider it: she simply made it happen. Marco had already surrendered, surrendered everything – her manipulations met no resistance. And when she felt life and own will return, she reversed the morph and let them both melt back to human.
Marco opened his eyes and lay staring at the roof. He made no move, no noise, but his chest heaved with a slow, reassuring breath.
Cassie, exhausted as morphing had never exhausted her before, remained draped over him, her eyes lightly closed. She kept her fierce hold on him, daring him to leave her again.
An hour later perhaps, or perhaps only minutes, Cassie spoke: "What for?"
Marco raised an arm, studying his uncut wrist. "How?" he wondered.
"How? Because I'm not letting you go so easily. Why? What for?"
Marco, at first, had no answer for her.
"Marco," she whispered. Her voice was breaking again. She knew. "The tiara. It told you to…"
"Oh, no. It wouldn't waste a slave like that," Marco replied bitterly.
"Then…" And again Cassie understood.
Marco had not been acting under the tiara's influence. He had simply been trying to escape it. He touched her cheek – she caught his wrist and leaned her face into it.
"It wanted me to kill you," he croaked, his words thick with pain and grief and fear. "And I would have done it, too. And… and… worse."
Cassie pushed herself up on her elbows, looking down at Marco's face. "If you wanted to hurt me, Marco," she said softly, sincerely, "there's no better way than you dying."
"You don't know the Elŷrrics. You don't know the tiara. You don't –"
"But I'm sick of seeing how it pains you. So it's time to do something about it."
Marco had been lying sprawled on his back on the floor, emptied of vitality and joy and hope in a way a balloon could be emptied of air. At her firm words, life and strength exploded back into his being. But not the kind of life one might hope for: this was the life of primal fear, the strength of desperation. Pure and simple, they lit up Marco's dark eyes as he flew up, seizing Cassie by the shoulders and staring into her eyes.
"You're not taking it from me," he growled menacingly, shaking her, digging his fingers into her shoulders hard enough to bruise her. "No. I won't let you."
"Of course not," Cassie assured him, making no attempt to escape his grip, and meeting his focused ire with calm.
Marco released her with a curse, shifting away as if she had burned him. He collapsed into himself again, hiding his face in his hands. "Let me be," he asked. "Leave me, before I –"
Cassie sat herself on her knees next to him. "Leave you?" she repeated. "Now, when you need me? No. You know me better than that."
She rose slowly, reaching down both hands. "Come on," she said. When he made no move, she grabbed hold of his wrists and pulled until he followed her up.
Author's Note:
-builds barricade-
-dons helmet-
-readies defensive scowl-
-takes deep breath-
-peeks out-
Well? What thoughts have ye, ye reading scoundrels?
Honestly. I know Marco suiciding is out of character, and I should have built up to it much, much more, but this would be longer than KW Chrons if I did. I just wanted to quickly portray exactly how much the tiara terrifies him. How, exactly, it terrifies him, is up to each and every one's imagination. Imagine what would terrify you. What would leave you a weeping wreck in a corner, unable to move and think and feel anything but horror and regret and your own powerlessness? That's what the tiara uses. That's what Marco's tasting, day in, day out, dream in, dream out… Read Welcome Home and it's explained in more detail, that's from Marco's point of view.
I won't be saying anything else until after the story is done. So enjoy. And if you're going to flame me, please do it constructively, or you might as well not, for I'm smart enough to see the obvious flaws in this myself, thank you very much. And yes, I'm still going to write it, and post it, no matter what you say.