Kaleidoscope
14, Inferno IV
Seven Days Ago
There was probably no way to get hold of water. And Padmé was too weak with her efforts and exhaustion to try. So when his wiry frame had shaken with violent coughs, she had just watched with bated breath, wondering if it was possible for someone to cough out his lungs. Finally, they stopped and he laid back on the sand, curling towards her.
He had very blue eyes. In that poor, scarred face, they seemed to mock with their beauty.
"Why?"
She wasn't sure if he actually spoke but the question seemed to eat into her very skin like the acid tears she did not even know she had shed.
Then the heat and exhaustion conquered her again and she passed out.
When she woke, he was gone and the second sun had started its descent. She felt the fast chilling of the desert like ice in her bones, behind her eyes… Her mouth was filled with his ashes. Padmé lay on her back, watching the distant smoke from the ships and wondered if she wasn't having a strange nightmare about Hell.
Or if she was in Hell.
''
The fire ran all the way into her throat.
It was a sort of fever, she realized later. Much later. Time was a myth. Birth and death were one as she lived through this cycle of hot and cold forever. A cog in the wheel of eternity, dying and being borne again and again until she shattered into so many pieces there was nothing left.
Little bones. Pieces of bones. A grotesque jigsaw puzzle.
'You eat them, you know.'
The clear ivory powder of a shattered skull congealing together to hover over her own. A death mask. Her own.
Water pressed against her lips and she drank it blindly, feeling the ice and fire burn their way down her throat.
''
Two Days Ago
The day the fever broke, Padmé woke in the shade of the two ships, wrapped in an unfamiliar cloak, a bottle of water and a protein bar by her side. The events of the past few days seemed to wash over her in a daze. It took her a moment to remember her own name.
She shifted her head a little, heard the soft slide of sand beneath it and saw her nurse, her savour, her protector. He slept, sitting up, his face in profile. In twilight, she could barely see the scars in the sharp line of his silhouette.
Painfully, she struggled towards him, dragging herself up so that she hovered close to him. She stretched out a hand to his face, holding her breath so that he didn't wake, and found them. She traced the burn scars with her fingers. She held his face with both her hands and kissed it.
"Thank you."
She found his burnt black glove of a hand and kissed it as well. Then she lay back down, tucked into his side and fell asleep.
Blood in her hands. Wet, slippery warm.
'You drink them, you know…'The second time Padmé woke up, it was a moonless night. The fire showed her nothing except the faint ring of animals, hovering outside the ring of light.
Then she looked up into the face of a monster and the sound of her screams almost deafened her.
In the distance, the wild animals howled back.
''
He always ran from her. Nothing she could say or do was ever enough to make him stay.
''
tbc