Chapter 11
Glorious, glorious, glorious child, pure child, take forth a journey across the world, thy purity be our own, be the worlds. Sweet winds to trail after thee and banish the tainted dead air we do breathe, at your touch the waters purify, the dead flames leap to life. And by thy light is all fell shadow is lifted.
Book of Regeneration
Author's note,
Rene Yuan angsty fluff… some stuff on Martel's death, more on Yuan's existence, as well. Wrote this to "Me Against the World".
"Night Reminisce"
Z'eh was pale, aloof, and distant for days. Rene frowned, thought it over, then after it didn't seem to fix itself waited until the bandit was asleep walked halfway across the pax Desian base to knock on Yuan's door. She wasn't scared about waking Yuan up, Yuan never slept, was always wide awake, so she waited and he opened the door. His ever alert ice hued eyes flicked onto her, noted the dark circles with only the faintest of frowns, but that was –for Yuan- the same as saying "What's wrong" and acting all concerned. He nodded, gestured for her to enter, and closed and locked the door behind him. Once he never would have bothered, but now that Z'eh was around…
Yuan was angry, and he was horrible at hiding just how angry he was to her. He was scaring Z'eh, and that was wrong. Only knowing that what Yuan was doing was wrong allowed Rene to get the courage to do this.
Taking a deep breath Rene said the first thing on her mind.
"What'd you do this time?"
"I fail to understand the question." Yuan's tone grew just a touch sharper, the effect something like tying a razor to the tip of Yuan's weird sword staff hybrid weapon.
"I don't want to get mad at you; I don't want to have a fight." Rene said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "But I will if you dance around answering me."
"What are you, my conscience?" Yuan spat.
And it was then Rene knew this was going to be bad, a bad fight.
"What did you do to poor Z'eh, he's acting more timid then a rabbit."
"He started it!" Yuan snarled, anger actually coloring his bloodless looking cheeks, making him look… well non seraphimish.
"You didn't!" Tene gasped, thinking that Yuan had actually shown the poor man his wings.
"Didn't do what?" Yuan growled, between being annoyed and hating Z'eh and growing even more annoyed with her lack of proper grammar Yuan wasn't quit too sure how he was going to deal with all this inconvenient non-angelic input that mortals called emotion.
"You didn't… angelic him did you?"
"No…" Yuan felt the tenseness leave him, felt the pressure around his shoulders, the harsh words that had been building and clogging his throat dissipate. Now he understood why she'd been angry, scared, worried, and had confronted him. He sighed in relief as the unaccustomed feelings of anger and frustration faded. "No, I did not show my wings, or cast a judgments spell upon him, though I have to admit the temptation is there. He… annoys me Rene, more then you can comprehend."
Rene bit her lip, she hadn't expected him to calm down so fast, and cocked her head to the side, her green eyes bright, curious.
Much like a child who, seeing their action had garnered themselves some reward and wanted to learn how so they could milk the situation to its limit.
Seeing the look, recognizing what it portended, Yuan chuckled. With a lazy gesture he made a chair that he'd put in here for her to use hop across the room. Rene took her seat with no signs of shock or horror that she'd shown the first time he'd done the spell, now that she was sitting on the stool –he'd offered her a more comfortable chair like his, she'd picked the stool for some strange reason anyways- he sank into his padded long backed chair and clasped his hands together, looked at her, waited.
"Why don't you like him?"
"I don't like most people." Yuan admitted with a shrug, feeling no shame over the confession. "Humanity, the "sacred" elves, and the bulk of the persecuted half elves, are backwards, stupid, and crude. Z'eh, epitomizes these traits."
"Oh…" Rene frowned. "Well that's kinda stupid, I mean not everyone's two million years old so they don't have time to get as smart as you are."
"I've been alive fore two millennia Rene; I am only two thousand years old."
"Only?"
"You had to say that… didn't you…" Yuan sighed, bowed his head, and the long locks of blue hair fell forward to cover half of his face.
Green sharp eyes grew distant as the girl mulled over what had been said, considered the unspoken promise and apology, then she focused on something that was really bothering her.
"You need a hair cut."
"Stop mother-hening me Rene." Yuan growled. He closed his eyes, hearing another woman's voice say much the same thing to him so long ago…
"Someone has to do it." Rene sniffed. "You don't take care of yourself so I have to do it sometimes. You're a handful, you know that?"
Yuan opened his eyes, his lips quirked into a half smile.
"You don't need to feed me, I'm sufficiently house trained, and I can defend myself, I'm not much of a pet."
"I know." Rene nodded her green eyes sparkling with laughter. "So when can I get a cat?"
"Rene." Yuan chuckled. "You are sleepy, and there's the door, use it and go back to bed, we'll talk some more in the morning."
Rene slipped from the stool, and then went to the door, at the threshold she paused.
"I… forgot the password again, Yuan." Rene sighed.
He knew from her tone she was lying. The way she would not meet his eyes, the waver in her tone, all were telling. He almost called her out on it, almost asked for the real reason. At the last second he stopped himself, even as she strangled over some small garbled word fragment right before his name. Let her have her secrets, he had his own, she had her own, there was nothing wrong with that. He stood, the chair whose comfort he could not feel had no way to lure him back into its embrace, and because of that lack of sensitivity he was immune to the effects of lethargy, laziness. He walked up to her, his black cloak rustled behind him, the halves no longer tangled amongst his legs, nor did the strings and cords rasp against his throat with an unbearable continuous touch. It had taken time, a few adjustments –and a slight change in his gait- but he had grown accustomed to the complex Triet styled cape and had actually grown frond of it.
"You don't have a good memory as I do." Yuan said with a slight smile. "There's no shame in that, no wrong."
She didn't protest as he set his hand across her small shoulders, shifted his cape so that it draped over her and offered some warmth that the magic topaz chilled steel seemed to suck out of the very desert. She walked with him; seemed content –even happy- that he lay one hand on her shoulder, that she was shielded from the world by the soft black fabric of his cape. What a poor shield fabric was though, any arrow, any knife could pierce it with ease…
He opened the door, scolded her affectionately, and told her the code for what felt to be the hundredth time. She –as always- only looked up at him with those hauntingly familiar laughing eyes. Then the laughter faded, for just a second, she seemed to make her mind up about something, and she smiled up at him.
"Good night Yuan, if you do sleep tonight have sweet dreams."
Then she hugged him, he stiffened, but she ignored that. Rene snuggled against him until he awkwardly patted her head and in a very tight strained voice wished her pleasant dreams.
She let him go, for one second pain flashed in her emerald eyes, then with a bright smile ducked into her room. Though the door closed it did not shield his ears to the soft sobs, the hiccups of pain. Concerned, he put his hand to the smooth steel, though he could have forced it open and confronted her –or just typed in the damned code- he didn't.
What could he say?
Even the sound of her pain –a source less pain that couldn't be defeated by blade or wit- filled his heart with heaviness and put a painful pressure against the back of his eyes. He sighed; his hand fell down to his side, the digits traced an invisible pattern across the steel. Her pain, it made him freeze, hesitate, as surely as the sight of the crazed knight Maveric charging Martel had made him freeze.
He recalled and felt the same icy stillness; the same sickness coupled with a horror a rage that had overwhelmed him two millennia ago creep back into his mind. It was part memory, part reality, a blending of both. He hadn't remembered anything after Martel had looked up from healing Kratos, despite his memory that never forgot… the red haze came and his mind's eye was stained a bloody red in those hellish final moments. He could see Maveric's blade descend, could remember every detail of that weapon, vaguely feel himself drawing his Swallow.
A falcon had screamed, Kratos had cried out in agony, Mithos screamed as if that knife had torn his soul from his body…
And he had come too with the torn corpse of a man at his feet, blood dripping from his weapon, the stench of lighting cook flesh thick in the air. He had been panting; the lust of killing, of committing wild bloody murder was fading. He'd almost gotten ill as the hatred and rage seeped out of him, as the reek of death, of lightning, and the sight of the thing at his feet that was no longer recognizable greeted him. He dropped his blade, coming to realize that –even as she was dying- Martel was healing Kratos, that Mithos had drawn the Eternal Sword that even more battered ruminants of the Tethe'allan's shadow touched unit were coming at them.
He shuddered, shied away from the memories of the fires Mithos had summoned then, shied away from the screams and smells of a burning regiment of fifty humans being enveloped on lava.
Sickness wanted to come for him then, he staggered away from the child's door. Reached up and nearly ripped fistfuls of his hair out to stop the damning flow of memories, as if mere mortal pain would pull him from the hell born memories that his angelic mind relished in showing him again and again.
Sobs, the child sobs cut into his heart, the only part of him capable of being wounded now due to his blessed immortality. That pain was enough to bring him back. Mithos faded, his black wide eyes, his mad ranting and the waves of fire… it all stopped.
From behind a steel door… he heard Rene sob…
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to speak, even though he was anything but composed.
"Rene…"
The sobs were quiet, like she was trying to gulp them down so she could talk.
"Do you want me to open the door, for me to come in?"
It was half strangled; he couldn't really understand what she'd said. He decided to take it as a "yes". He taped in the code, slipped into the room. She was on her bed, curled up, a ball of misery. Not quite understanding what he was doing, not knowing what he could even do, he sat on the edge of her bed. A trembling hand –all on its own accord it seemed- smoothed back her green locks, gently wound then unwound the silken locks that he could not feel.
She sat up as the worst of her sobs stopped ripping through her. Rene's confusion matched his own, save that she showed it.
He wrapped his arms around her, drew her close and held her to him as the last sobs passed through her.
"Are you feeling better?" He whispered.
"Y… yes…" She hiccupped and he patted her back as he had seen parents do with their very young offspring.
"Rene… I don't know what you want from me." Yuan sighed, pulled back and she looked at him, her heart in her eyes. "You could say it a hundred times, a hundred ways… but I doubt I can give you what you want. There… you… look like someone, someone I knew who died long long ago. I was... a half elf then and despite my split of blood I was a whole man. When I became an angel, the person who did this to me…"
He took her hand in his, guided it so that it rested over his heart. Even under the tunic she could feel the stone, the crest made of white silver that had been imbedded in his chest long ago. Her eyes widened, her young face twisted in horror as she felt just how large it was, as she imagined how deep it dug into him.
"When he made me into a Seraph my heart was bleeding, she had just been murdered... To keep me from dying Rene… the Lord of Heaven ripped my heart out and replaced it with this."
He released her hand, though she kept it over his cruxis crystal.
"He took my tears, stole them, stole my feelings, my hope, my dreams, my faith, he ripped all of that and so much more. I couldn't fight him, I was week, sick, and he was strong." He sighed, absently breathed on those damned blue locks that fell over his eyes; they shifted… then fell back over his face. "Lately… lately I've become more of myself, or rather what I once was. Pieces of my heart are coming back, I am healing, but I still bleed Rene. When all has been restored I'll be as I was before, a man with a broken bleeding heart. That's why… if you need something here," He tapped her chest with an index finger. "You are better off going to Z'eh for it. At least he is mortal, and understands mortal things."
He looked at her, and though he was pain and his soul screamed in agony he could show none of it. Leaning forward he moved to push off the bed.
A small hand wrapped around his wrist; stopped him with a touch though her strength was nothing compared to his.
"Try to get some sleep Rene." He said in a tight voice.
"If he took your tears… then… why are you crying?"
"I am not…" His voice broke, shattered, and he bowed his head as acid seemed to seep past his eyes and cut burning paths down his cheeks. There was a thump, a pillow falling over, then a small hand rested on his shoulder, he turned to see what in the Gods name she was doing. She ignored his look of surprise, an expression of intense concentration on her face she used the pillow cover gently dabbed at his eyes.
Only when he had stopped crying did she set the cloth aside, then she wrapped her arms around his neck and nestled against him.
"Every thing is going to be alright Yuan. M-maybe things are sad now, but they'll be alright again, I promise. I guess I forgot, and that's why I was crying… Everything is going to be alright, so you don't need to cry anymore."
Yuan took a shuddering breath, both grateful and grieved that the tears had stopped. The familiar numbness of his seraph existence loomed before him. He wrapped his arms around Rene, held to her with the same desperation that he would hold onto the remains of his mortal soul.
