Noor
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"Sadiqi , I'm so cold…"
He holds her close, trying to pour his heat into the tiny figure curled against his side. So delicate in his grasp. Like a butterfly's wing, trembling in his hands.
She's been like this for days, but in the hours passed she's begun to fall under some strange spell. Pressing his hand against her forehead, he retracts it quickly - burning hot. "How can you be cold, little one? You burn like the desert sun."
Her pale eyes are rimmed in smoldering red flesh. Shadows stretch out like dark brushstrokes beneath her lashes. "Is this what winter feels like?"
Softly, with the tenderness of a mother, he gathers her to him and lifts her in his arms. The earth is cooler in the dark, hiding away from the sun. She takes her into the blackest corner of the deepening gloom. An ache grows in his heart as the thought finds him there, where it is too cold for hope, too far away for the comfort of light to reach him - what if I lose her? She is all I have in this world.
"You will be all right, my little dove," he breathes into her hair, chasing the whisper with a kiss. "It's only a touch of fever. You'll be right again."
Her voice is a thin sliver of breath in the dark. It almost escapes him, melting away into the silence of the cavern. "I'm not afraid."
His cheek rests against her crown of cropped hair. "La taseebny kidda. You are mine now. Your mother doesn't need you where she is. I need you here, habibti."
The ache in his heart begins to bloom. He can feel strands of it escaping, roaming through his veins. They unwind like little vines and curl around his arms until they weaken around the burning shape in his hands. He doesn't let go, no matter how terrible the weakness is, pressing on him like a weight. He is her anchor. If he lets go - God, if he should let go. Would she disappear into the air? Would the arms of her dead mother find her here, in this blackness like ink, and take her up into the light? He would be truly alone. The only hope he ever had would be gone.
He squeezes his eyes shut, buries his face into her until his skin disappears in her hair. His knuckles turn white as he holds her. La taseebny kidda, and he speaks it like a prayer.
"Sing to me?" She pleads, snarling her fingers in his shawl. "Won't you, please?"
He remembers so little of his own mother. If she existed at all, a dream of love he made for himself to combat the hatred of the pit. There is a voice he remembers. No other attachments to that old, dismantled memory of his. No arms around him. No black hair like a veil over him, shielding him from the world. Only that voice - soft, haunting, and it finds him only when the world is quiet enough.
The words are Arabic, but different from the dialect spoken in the pit. Still, the sand and the desert sun are woven into its sound. The words are the harsh grains of the earth. The melody like the heat of the golden, strident sun. He doesn't know what they mean - only that they are the last relic of his past he has left. The only proof that he had a mother, and that she sang him to sleep in a voice that still ghosts through his dreams. Softer, more desperate than any whispered prayer to the gods above.
Sleep, sleep love of your mother
For everyone is asleep
Even the birds are asleep
Light of my eyes, O Allah
He feels her, as she slips down. Falls into a darkness kinder than the one that holds them now. Her breath steadies. Her heart beats strong and unyielding in the frail rising chest.
"Ebqi qawiyah, little dove."
Her fingers tighten, if only just for a moment, around his thumb.
She doesn't feel so cold anymore.
author's notes: changed a few things since the last story i posted. do enjoy! :)
disclaimer - i don't own bane. he belongs to DC comics.