Title: the geometry of a ghost
Disclaimer: I don't own DGM and the characters.
Pairings: Road/Neah
Warning: dark-ish themes.
Only five years old, and the bloodlust already burns so bright. It gurgles in Road's veins, trailing up her skin, and flickers like the evening stars in her eyes, there one moment and gone the next.
Only five years old, with silky long hair and elegant eyebrows, so charming a child, if one does not look too deep—how sweetly she curtsies, how soft her smile, how witty her repartees. The adults smile in turn and brush her hair with fingers fattened and calloused from years of feasting, and tell her mother that a bright future awaits this child. The lady of a well-connected lordling, perhaps, or even the bride of a prince.
But the other children avoid her—they are the ones who can sense the disorder in her soul; it is they who see how Road's smiles end at the edges of her lips; it is they who see the taint of bloodlust spiralling in her eyes, like woodsmoke curling out into the white sky during a hungry and lean winter.
They are the ones who run screaming from her when she presses her perfect white teeth against her red lips and sinks a knife into her cat's belly. The blood puddles in her lap, a large circle of red against the cream silk of her skirt, and drips onto the ground.
But Road only smiles when her governess berates her for the animal's death. "It was old," she says, "better it should go this way than suffer. No?"
She's ten when she first wonders how it might be like to conduct a war. Not from the throne, but from behind a veil. The ultimate power, to be hidden, safe from assassination, and yet capable of inspiring fear if only through the dance of strings, the shadow-play of marionettes.
That winter Road's father brings the children to court. She curtsies to the king and sits in the shadows with cake and pudding propped on her knee. She watches the soft touch of the queen's palm against the king's wrist, the queen's lips murmuring against the king's ear, and the king's nods, so soft and common, like a puppet jerking its wooden neck.
She thinks about dynasties and how they topple.
At the tender age of ten, she's already a puppet-master in the making.
When they return to their ancestral seat, she practices gestures. The birdlike dip of her wrist, the snap of an embroidered fan. The twirl of a skirt, a slim ankle exposed just so. The flip of hair over her thin shoulders where bones creep under her skin. A smile, coy and half-hidden behind her be-plumed fan. Her dance-mistress is pleased. Her governess is not.
"You're too young for this, my lady," her governess says.
"Bah," Road says disdainfully, and turns away. "I am destined for great things. And to do great things, one needs to practise. You wouldn't understand that."
Fourteen, and she wins her first conquest.
The young lordling, the heir of their neighbour to the east, presses an earnest finger against Road's wrist. They had once been playmates as children, and he had seen the full extent of her bloodlust.
But now he's too blinded by young lust to see clearly the caprices of her heart. He sees only her slim wrists, her gamine smile, her tiny, corseted waist that fits within his palms. He sinks his cheek against her neck, lips pressed into the hollow of her throat, and she lets him kiss her.
"You're so beautiful," he says, as they sit by the pond watching the ducklings learn to swim. "I want to marry you."
She smiles and flutters her eyelids. "You'll have to tell my father that."
"I'll tell him!"
"Will you?"
"Yes," he says, so pitiful in his earnestness.
"First prove yourself a true knight," she says, "go to war with the King and secure a reputation for valour."
"If you kiss me," he says, "and give me a token of your love, dear Road." His fingers tighten meaningfully against her knee.
And so she lets her lips linger against his cheek, just beside his lips. She cuts a lock of hair and tucks it in a locket for him to wear around his neck.
So off he goes to war, to earn his sword and medals and his place at the King's table.
Fifteen, and she breaks her first heart. Crushes it underfoot, like the discarded petals of a once-blooming flower.
The young lordling comes back from the King's side, with scars on his cheeks and fingers calloused from wielding his sword, to news of his mother's death. She'd been sick with consumption when he left. They buried her while he was away, quickly shrouded that pale corpse with its red lips and gaunt cheeks and protruding eyes, and now she rests forever in the family's crypt, alone in the darkness.
But that he can bear. What he cannot bear is the sight of Road, bejewelled and dazzling, silk dress clinging in all the right places, perched lightly on his father's knee, her hair curling over his father's shoulder.
When the lordling sees his father and Road so entwined, he lets his goblet fall to the ground with a crash. The wine spills out, a deep burgundy, spreading like a sea of sin and remorse across the polished floor.
"So careless," the lordling's father says, hand tightening around Road's waist.
Road smirks and says nothing as she watches the boy's heart come undone like a spool of thread.
She says nothing when the lordling rushes back off to wage war at the king's side, like a man frenzied.
She says nothing when news comes from the front—news of the rash attack by one of the King's battalions, news of the countless deaths that stains the snow a dirty ochre.
She says nothing when they hold a mass for the young lordling, says nothing when he is lowered into the musty darkness of his family crypt. She does not don her mourning robes, for why should she mourn a useless soldier?
Sixteen, and the Earl comes for her.
It's night, and she stands and stares into the pond at the edge of her family's estate. The moon is a splash of silver in those dark waters. Somewhere deep in that inky wetness, large fish swim, chasing each other across the length of the pond, so free, and yet not so.
There are days when Road too feels the walls of her family's castle closing in around her, walling her into an early grave. But she knows better—knows there is something greater in store for her than a good marriage and an alliance for her family.
Night after night she looks into the sky and watches the stars, and the slice of moon in that great darkness. Somewhere out there, someone is calling for her. She feels it in her bones, in the nightmares that creep through her sleep—of monsters that fly by night, of brokers of death and destruction, of war and misery unending, of widows in their black weeds and orphaned children begging in the streets.
She dreams night after night of sulphur and brimstone, the dead chained to rocks, a cacophony of noises that rise into the dread night. She dreams of souls recalled to life by some strange alchemy, of the people who live bloated with poverty and disease, and the scythe that cuts them all down, king and peasant alike.
Fearful dreams these, nightmares that could chill the bravest heart, and yet she welcomes them, though she burns with a fever that defies the surgeons and the apocatheries, that worries the priests and her family.
Consumption, the servants whisper in their quarters, having caught sight of her dark eyebags against her wan, gaunt face. And some, recalling her antics with the lordling's father, speak among themselves of Cupid's disease. She doesn't correct them, for the dreams occupy her mind. She dreams by night and relives them by day.
With the dreams comes the tang of home in the air. The searcher is coming ever closer; she can feel his call through space and time. Her time will come, very soon, and how she yearns for it.
Finally, on the night of her sixteenth birthday, she waits at the edge of the pond and stretches her fingers towards the sky. The moon is a bright disc in the sky tonight: an omen, a sign, and across its silver face a silhouette drifts.
So Road waits, as the silhouette comes closer and closer. It's the searcher himself, floating in with a small umbrella.
"You've come," she cries when he lands, and runs towards him. Engulfs him in a tight hug. "I've waited so long for you!"
The searcher returns the hug with a bemused smile. "But you do not know who I am. Not yet."
Road doesn't let go of the searcher. "I know you're looking for me, and that's enough."
"I am the Earl of Millennium, my child." His smile is kind and his hands are warm.
"Yes," Road said. She untangles herself from the Earl's embrace and takes a step back. A very small step. "I am glad you've come, Master Millennium! May I call you that?"
"You may call me anything you wish, dear Road."
"You know my name!"
The Earl chuckles, a deep-belly sound that echoes in the silent night. "I've been waiting for you, my child, for longer than you've been waiting for me."
Road looks sideways at the Earl. "I've had dreams…"
"I know. You are the Noah of Dreams, my child, and—but ah, I forget myself. It's cold out here. Let us go, and I will explain to you what we are, and what you are to become. You are destined for greater things than this, my child," the Earl says, gesturing around him, "as I'm sure you know."
Road takes the Earl's hand. "As you say, Master Millennium."
And so they rise into the sky. Road clutches the Earl's hand tightly and does not look back.
Eighteen, and a stranger arrives at the Earl's manor.
He's bedraggled, like something the cat dragged in, and dripping onto the Earl's fine carpet besides. His well-worn, travel-stained boots track mud over the marble floor. A nearby Akuma in the frills of a servant makes tutting and tsking sounds under her breath, but nonetheless pulls out a cloth to begin wiping away the mud.
Road stops at a doorway and studies the newcomer. Most people are in awe of her, and dare not meet her eyes for more than a few seconds, but the stranger returns her stare and doesn't drop his gaze until she looks away.
The Earl introduces them that night. "Neah Walker," he says, "and he is the Fourteenth Noah."
Road fixes the Earl with a confused stare. "There are only ever thirteen of us, Master Millennium. So you have told me."
Neah Walker frowns at Road, and opens his mouth as if to say something.
But the Earl holds up his hand and speaks first. "Well, yes, but the times are changing. Many things are changing, my child. Perhaps—perhaps the cycle is different this time."
Neah is closer to Road's age than the other Noahs. They spend a fair bit of time together, studying, learning the use of their powers.
As time passes, Road allows her walls to fall, if slowly. Like a flower she unfolds herself petal by petal, until Neah sees through to the person she really is. She feels so vulnerable, so bare, uncloaked, but Neah is ever gentle and kind.
Together, they study arcane magic; they walk the gardens in the moonlight, throwing crumbs into the pond for the fish; they draw each other's portraits; she teaches him to dance and he sneaks them out to the night markets, where they mingle with the common folk and he teaches her the names of the street food: hot eels, pea soup, pickled oysters, mince pies, trotters and ginger beer.
One day, as they study in the rose garden as is their wont, he moves closer to her, thigh against thigh and clears his throat.
"What is it?" she says.
Neah looks sideways at her, face serious and brows drawn. He looks and looks and looks, and does not say anything.
"Well?"
Finally he takes her palm in his, and says, "I love you."
And she lays her head against his chest and feels the heady rhythm of his heartbeat against her cheek. The thrumming of his heartbeat against her palm. "I love you too. Stay with me."
"Always," he says, and tucks a blooming rose behind her ear.
Nineteen, and Road feels the bedsprings creak. She sits up and looks over at Neah trembling under the bedcovers.
"Nightmare?" Road rests on her elbows to press a kiss to Neah's forehead.
"The end of the world," Neah whispers. "The Apocalypse."
"Hush." Road threads her fingers into Neah's hair. "Shhh. I know, I know. It looks terrible."
"It's not. What I expected."
"Is anything ever?"
"That's not what I meant, Road. I—"
"Hush," Road says as she takes Neah's hands into her own. "Master Millennium will take care of us."
Neah pulls back, sits up. "No, no—that is—I've never thought—never wondered about the people. The bodies, where they come from—I—surely this is not—"
"Neah. Calm down. Look at me, Neah." Road presses her fingers against Neah's jaw and looks into his eyes. "Master Millennium is doing humanity a service. And we are helping him. You and me both."
"That is not—I did think—"
"Neah, please. It's just a nightmare. You know how good Master Millennium is to us."
"I—yes, you're right." Neah finally relaxes.
Road lets her shoulders droop. The tension flows away. She slides her leg against his thigh. "Now let's help you forget the nightmares."
Neah lets her kiss him where she pleases.
But if she had looked into his eyes, she would have seen the doubt still lingering, unquenched by desire, would have had the chance to stamp out the rebellion stirring in Neah's heart and mind.
But Road doesn't look up, doesn't study Neah's eyes, doesn't talk. Instead she lets her lips and body do the talking, and gives the seed of doubt room to grow.
Twenty, and she watches Neah smash a beaker of glittering liquid onto the floor. Glass shatters, and the liquid within spills out to form a circle, like a halo of blood, like a red sea reclaiming the land.
Road swings her feet from her perch on the nearby divan. "What are you doing?"
"This is not right." Neah sinks to his haunches like a wary animal. The red liquid seeps around his polished boots. "This is not right!"
Road slides off her seat to join Neah. She crouches too and slides an arm around his shoulders. "I don't understand you."
Newly returned from a visit to his brother, Neah is all prickliness and distance. He turns his face away from Road. "We cannot keep—we cannot—we are not the arbiters—it is not right—"
"Might makes right," Road whispers, lips ghosting against the shell of Neah's ear.
His hands tremble, ashen in the half-light. His face is grey and the shadows are dark beneath his eyes. "I can't do this. Not when Mana—he—"
Road presses a soothing hand against the small of Neah's back. "Shhh. What happened when you went back?"
Neah tucks his chin in. "He told me he was ashamed—he told me I was wrong to—to pursue this line of—God!"
Road flinches at the word. "Don't say that. You know better, Neah. You know who we are, what we do, and our calling—"
"I don't know better!"
"Neah—"
Neah recoils and springs away. "My own brother called me a monster! To my face!"
Road forces herself up. She watches Neah's face, contorted with misery, the tears in his eyes, the clenched fists resting against his desk, the curve of his back, the tilt of his chin. She says, "We're not monsters, Neah."
"We are!"
"Don't be such a child—you're always like this after—"
Neah throws another beaker onto the floor. The glass cracks, splinters, breaks into a multitude of slivers, reflecting the firelight like little eyes looking accusingly at her.
Road shivers, and feels a deep chill in her bones. "Please calm down, Neah."
"You're a monster," he says, and turns his back on her. In the glass fragments there are a thousand sinewy backs, a thousand heads of curly hair. "Monsters consort with one another, don't they?"
And then he laughs—an inhuman laugh, like the shrill call of a mourning animal, like the keening of the mortally wounded soldier.
And Road feels for the first time the pain of a pierced heart, the agony of love unwinding in slow demise.
Twenty-one, and Neah slides his dagger against Joyd's neck, pressing it tight with reckless disdain. Blood sputters, falls, dripping onto the carpet which the Earl had bought from a vessel sailing from the East Indies just a year ago.
Road stands at the doorway and stares at Neah from across the room. It feels like a lifetime ago when Neah first walked into her life, when they first fell in love. And now he looks at her as if they had never shared kisses and memories and secrets and nights, and the blood that stains the floor is as a great sea that keeps them apart. The river of Charon itself, perhaps, life and death everlasting and mingling, ringing in the death throes of their world.
Twelve dead and one left. Herself and the Earl.
Alone, again.
Always alone.
Always the odd one out.
Neah pushes the knife down. Joyd screams, a terrible sound, a sound of misery and pain combusting on each other.
"Monster!" Road screams, as she watches her brother slide down onto the ground, flopping, fingers desperately staunching the wound, slipping, slipping, slipping, and then hitting the ground, everything glistening red with a lacewing stillness, until the death rattles shudder to a stop.
Everything: so still so silent so red, death itself given flesh, destruction in all its incarnadine glory.
Neah looks at her, hair in his eyes, in his mouth, scratches on his arms and bleeding from a gash on his head. "You're the monster. All of you!"
"Us!" Road says angrily.
"What's going on, children?"
The Earl steps into the room. He takes in the scene—the grey faces of the dead, the knife in Neah's hand, the bitter smell of blood in the air. His wide smile fades quickly.
"Master Millennium," Road says, touching the Earl's arm.
The Earl looks straight at Neah. "Put that down."
Neah laughs. "Why should I? You're wrong, all of you. There is a God, and he will mete out divine retribution!"
The Earl slaps Neah, a resounding sound. Neah topples like a puppet.
"Don't you say dare say that to my face, Fourteenth!"
Road wants to go to Neah, to wipe the blood from his face, but Joyd's broken body draws her gaze. There's something wrong with her heart—it thunders in her chest, and a sickly stillness crawls through her veins. She thinks she might laugh and cry at the same time.
"Please, Neah," she manages at last.
"You've done something unforgivable." The Earl looks down at Neah, fury in his eyes as tears stream down his face.
"Master Millennium!" Road throws her arms around the Earl's knees. "Please. Give him a chance. He doesn't know what he has done!"
"He knows." The Earl's eyes are like a blaze. "He knows!"
In a last surge of strength, Neah struggles to his feet, lunging towards the Earl. Road reaches out, but she is—
too slow—
too weak—
then—white light, so bright that her vision is momentarily lost, and Road trembles against the floor.
Then she opens her eyes, and counts thirteen bodies on the floor, the Earl sobbing on his knees. She goes to the Earl, wraps her arms around him, and together they mourn.
"I'm sorry," the Earl says later on, when the dead have been buried and their tears extinguished. "I know you loved him."
Road catches the Earl's fingers in her own. "I'm sorry too, Master Millennium. I'm sorry I loved him. I shouldn't have told him—"
"No, my child. Don't blame yourself. We will wait for the cycle to repeat itself."
Together they stand, hand in hand, among the dead and the dark, as the sun dips below the horizon and shadows creep through the graveyard.
Midnight, and the Noah of Dreams lies alone in her bed, with only ghosts for company.
Night after night, for thirty long years, Road dreams of Neah, of their last night together where he stands by the doors to the balcony, his hair rippling in the wind.
With his back to her, he says, "I'm going to visit Mana tomorrow."
And she says, "Please stay with me tomorrow. We'll—"
Sometimes she says, we'll pick strawberries tomorrow. Other times she says, we'll walk down to the seaside town and watch the fishermen sail past. Or, we'll go for a picnic and watch the sunset. Or, we'll study new magic tomorrow.
But no matter what she says, Neah doesn't ever turn around. Instead, time and again he walks into the balcony, and disappears into slivers of dust, there one moment and caught by the wind in the next, and she is all alone again, alone in that big empty bed they once shared, with the weight of twelve other ghosts on her shoulders: a paralysing sense of loss, the burden of Atlas a shroud around her arms.
"Come back to bed," she says, to herself—to the air—but he never does.
She can never bring herself to forget his gentle smile, his heartbeat thrumming against her palm, stolen kisses and long walks in the gardens.
And so she waits. To meet him again. At the end of things, whether in heaven or in hell.
-fin-
Childhood dotted with bodies.
Let them go, let them
be ghosts.
No, I said,
make them stay, make them stone.
(Origin of the Marble Forest by Gregory Orr)
AN: Thank you for reading.