Author's Note: A rating change, because this chapter contains material that is rated M, NSFW, or my personal favourite, NNA. Near the end of the chapter, so please don't skip reading the whole thing if stronger rated material isn't your thing. I think I made the point of no return pretty obvious for those that don't.
Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
When Last We Met: Trapped in exile on the Other Side without the cooperation of his princess, Cain is forced to sit while DG makes sense of what she's done and what she thinks is right. He still holds hope that he can convince her to return home to the O.Z., but without fully understanding her true reasons for running, he can't know what good his words will do.
Chapter Thirty Eight: Heavy In Your Arms
It was not the downpour that chased them into the house, but the wind. It was a relentless wind, and cruel, with chilled fingers to seek them out beneath the safety of the porch roof, driving the cold sheets of rain at them until they were forced to retreat into the house.
While Cain was content to stand at a window and watch the sky light up and the rain lash the yard, DG was not. She lingered on the threshold behind the flimsy screen door, each flash of sheet lightning illuminating her eyes and casting her cheeks with muted shadow. The rush of the rain against the canvas stretched over the attic roof was a hollow, haunted sound, but for all that pounding and for all the thunder, the house was quiet. Where once he'd cherished these silences with her, he could hardly stand the emptiness between them.
It wasn't up to him to begin this time, he knew, and so he kept his tongue and watched the fury of nature unleash upon the little farmstead. He had to admire it somehow, this summer storm; for all its wildness, and for its beauty. He thought it likely DG had stood just where she was the night before, as Azkadellia's storm had swept across the prairie, no fear in her heart at the sight of the funnel cloud, numbed to it. Was she truly as reckless as all that, or had she sensed the magic as the wind had overwhelmed her?
Had she been waiting for him?
"You can't put this off forever, darlin'," he said quietly.
She shifted against the door-frame, careful not to look at him. "I can do this for days."
"That there is true enough, but it don't change anything." Still, had to chuckle at her brass, but when a strong gust of wind rattled the screen door in its frame, she flinched, hugged herself all the tighter, and tried to brush it off. She was immovable, unbending. She did not jump at the wind.
"I'm not looking to change anything. I'm just not ready to talk about it yet. Is that all right with you?"
"What if it's not?" he asked. She had no reply for him, and the minutes stretched out long and silent, with only the sound of the rain and thunder to fill them. "Well, fine, princess. How about this, then? If you aren't gonna start talking, I will." He was of half a mind to start tearing into her, a sudden and spiteful whim, and he was forced to pause and bite back an onslaught of frustration and long suppressed anger. It startled him, the intensity with which it came on, and the will it took to put it back where it belonged.
"We did this earlier, and –"
"And," he cut in, "we'll keep doing it 'til we get it finished."
"Damn it, Cain," she swore quietly, shaking her head, that dark curtain of hair. "Why are you doing this to me?" Dry eyed, disbelieving, there was no heartbreak in her voice, though even in the shadow he could read it plain in her face. Sighing, he walked over to the door and took up leaning against the other side of the frame. She had the courtesy to pull her eyes from the storm to watch him, intrigued at least. Closeness, he had found, was crucial – and preferable, besides.
"I think you're too scared to admit that you already know why," he said, trying to catch those sky eyes with his, but she seemed to have fixed her gaze on his throat, a safe enough place to easily avoid whatever it was in his own eyes she didn't want to see. "Maybe I wasn't right to leave you the way I did, and I know it wasn't right to stay away so long without word. If this was just about you needing to run, then I'd let it be, but you've dug your heels in here, haven't you? You don't want to go back."
"I do want to go back," she said. "I want to go home. I told you, I told you, that I wanted to go home. But I can't, ever."
"The witch tell you that?"
"Cain –"
"Did she?" he pressed. When she stayed silent, watching him sullenly, he raised an eyebrow in question. It didn't work. He sighed, aggravated; across from him, the girl flinched. "What the hell are you so scared of, DG?"
"I'm not scared," she muttered, meek and petulant. A gust of wind tore through the gnarled old tree that towered over the yard, sending a flurry of shadow and porchlight dancing across their feet; their own shadows stretched black and unbroken across the floor.
"You've been scared all along," he said, shaking his head. "Not willing to admit that it was out of your hands."
"But it wasn't!" she said, her lips breaking their firm, impassive line to frown. "And my mother knew. She knew what she'd done when she saved me and how it would end. She knew what she was doing when she sent me to Finaqua with you. If not for Azkadellia – no, no, I won't let her sacrifice herself for me, not again."
"That's her choice to make, darlin'," he said, gentle as he was able, but he knew it wasn't enough. "It isn't up to you or me to say if –"
"She made that choice for me," DG said, and her chin gave a quiver. It was only then that he noticed she was trembling all over, head to toe. "When I was little, and the sorceress – when she –" She struggled to put to words the heaviness in her heart, and her tongue was losing the battle. Quickly, he put a hand on her arm to steady her; her skin was cold, and it prickled beneath his fingertips.
"I remember," he said. Gods above, he'd never forget. The eerie, singsong voice of the child sorceress, a mother's wail of anguish, and a dark haired angel dead in her bed, those sky eyes of his princess lifeless. Through the eyes of another, a vision consumed by the fog of time and pain, he had watched – they all had watched the moment that the fate of the country was sealed with one girl's ambition, and one mother's hope, placed squarely on the shoulders of a child who would not remember.
"She gave me life, Cain," she said, and then laughed her frustration. "Of course she gave me life, she's my mother, but – she gave me her Light, and every second I've spent at her side, I've taken more! Every touch, every look, every breath. From the moment I was back in the Zone. Don't you see? I have to stay away. I have to." Her pale eyes burned with determination, and for a moment he was struck speechless as he finally, truly began to understand. "I wish there was another way, but –"
"I don't think you're seeing things clear yourself," he said carefully.
"I'm not? Do you know what I see? Do you?"
He took a deep, steadying breath. "I think you see more fault you need to make amends for. I think you see this as something you can fix, but you don't got the right. No one does."
"She did," DG whispered, and as she turned her head to stare into the darkness through the screen, the soft porchlight refracted over the tears caught on her lashes.
"Princess," he said, sharper than he'd meant to, "they need you."
"They always need me," she said, voice hoarse with the effort of holding back.
"That's –"
"Do you need me, Cain?"
The argument he'd been trying to piece together in his mind fell apart as her words cut through him, unbearably deep. Thought and pulse and breath all seemed to stop within him; even the rain outside seemed to slow. She watched him so closely, and when neither assent nor denial fell immediately from his lips, she went back to her night and its rain. He struggled to regain his tongue, and though it was true he thought briefly on his own exile and his course of redemption, it was the solid warmth of her that came back to him in a rush, the memory of so many midnights with her tucked close, and the lonely, empty nights that had followed since she'd gone.
"I think I do," he said, and if there was the faintest tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth, he did his best to hide it as her eyes returned to him. "That all right by you?"
Mutely, she nodded. He reached out a hand and she came to him. His arms curled around the small of her back as she folded herself against him; the chill of her bare arms, the press of her icy cheek seeped through his shirt-front and set the hair on the back of his neck to standing. He leaned his weight back into the frame so that he might take on her weight, as well.
"Not going to lie to you, DG. I was sent here to fetch you home," he said, his mouth against her hair, and yet even this was a lie, a well-intentioned omission that would guilt him and shame him and come back to haunt him, he knew, but he could not bring himself to add to her burdens and cares. "I want you to think long and hard on this."
"I have, Wyatt," she said, sounding so tired. "Every waking moment since I left. I can't go back."
She cannot go back.
"You shouldn't have left," he said, and within, he branded himself a liar and a coward. "I shouldn't have let you."
"You didn't get a say." She looked up at him, and there was sweetness and love in her face, shining through the worry and doubt he'd grown accustomed to seeing.
"I want one now," he said, near forcing the words until they came out a choked whisper. Her brows knit together as she watching him, looking in his eyes for an explanation she knew he wouldn't readily give. And perhaps whatever she found there frightened her, for in the next moment, she'd ducked her head down against his chest to hide her face, snaking her arms around his back to hold herself as close to him as she could. Tight, she held him, until he felt like all the strength in her thin little body was wrapped around him, spooked and cold and quivering, but he was done letting her run and hide. Slow and careful, he ran a hand along the side of her face and coaxed her into looking at him. "I'm not asking you to up and drop everything here. Put an end to this, give it a proper goodbye, and come home with me."
She'd been fighting back tears, but they fell as she lost her focus. A few pale, shining streaks on her face for him to run his thumbs across, but the evidence of her battles couldn't be wiped so clean away. Still, she gave him a smile for his trouble, and it was enough. "Wyatt, I want to," she said in a voice close to breaking, "I want to go home, but –"
"Just think on it, darlin'," he said. "It's all I'm asking."
She gave a tremulous sigh, and nodded. "Fine," she conceded, but the smile was gone. She withdrew her arms, sliding her palms up her chest, and he thought she meant to push herself away, but in the next instant her small hands curled around his parted shirt-front and she was tugging him down, and it seemed almost by pure accident that their mouths met. A sweet kiss, light as the rain pattering in the yard and just as cool to the touch, and when she pulled away it was only to sink her teeth deep into her own lip, squeeze her eyes shut tight, and turn away. And damn him, he let her go.
"Goodnight," she said quietly, offering him that lie of a smile she'd gotten so good at. "We'll start figuring things out tomorrow." And then she was walking away, gone out of the kitchen and around the corner. He made to follow her, but the loud creak of the stairs echoed through the dark, empty house, and he stopped. She all but ran up those stairs, and the finality of her door closing severed what little courage he'd had to chase after her.
He closed the back door on the rainy night and walked slow through the house; at the bottom of the stairs he paused, but there were no lights to give her away, no noises to betray her. He imagined her sitting in the dark in the broken eaves of her childhood home, caught in a spiral of blame and guilt that had a stranglehold over every part of her.
With a heavy heart, Cain went to bed. When he opened the curtains in his borrowed bedroom, the water running down the windowpane cast jagged shadows against the wall. Somehow, the darkness was not so complete, the gloom lightened, and he could almost believe that sleep would be easy in coming this second time around.
He slipped off his shirt and settled himself into the bed between sheets that were cool and stiff. On his back, one arm resting behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine DG above him, alone and awake in the dark as he was. He did not have to guess at that. Nights were a haunted time, and the girl had her share of ghosts following in her wake. He tried to force his thoughts away from DG, but she consumed him as purpose always had. He found himself replaying the events of the day over and again in his mind, the storm that had swept him in, the lonely highway that had carried him, the diner where he'd found her, the house she'd brought him home to.
Home. This was not their home. He could not say he missed the O.Z. just yet, though the feeling was there, a longing and an emptiness that nothing could set to rights but by the familiarity of home, of the twin suns and rosy, painted sky, the burnished towers of Central City gleaming in the waning light. Eventually, as was always the way, he thought on his home by the creek, the house he'd raised from the ashes of the first, the rickety dock, and the barn he hadn't finished. It was a reassurance that Jeb would check up on the place, but images of the old house refused to leave him; the collapsing cabin, the tin suit, and the swampy countryside slowly reclaiming the desecrated remains of what had once been his home and his life.
Cain sat up in the bed and ran a hand over his face. His eyelids felt heavy, his body heavier, but while his exhaustion nagged at him, sleep was more elusive, begging for chase when he held no desire. He knew that dark dreams waited him if even his waking moments were tormented by a past that would never be still or quiet. With his bare back against the cool wood of the headboard, Cain leaned his head back against the carved edge of it, eyes closed, so very tired, but the creak of a floorboard outside the door made him open them again.
She slipped through the door as a shadow might. He remembered her magic and how she'd conjured a darkness to hide her, but this was no illusion, as he caught a glimpse of pale skin here and light fabric there. His heart made its way into his throat as he sat up straighter, but she was beside the bed before he could find his tongue and beside him before he could use it. The soft mattress dipped under her weight, and she knelt next to him and he found himself glad for her presence and his blood seemed to hum a little faster. It was a familiar feeling, forgotten and dizzying, and, looking at the girl beside him, troubling.
He did not trust his mouth to do his speaking, because the first word that fought for voice was 'no'. He swallowed it back but didn't find it to his liking, and while he struggled with himself, she leaned forward and kissed him; it was soft and imperfect, and it tasted of her hesitance. Unable to keep his hands to himself, unable to keep his priorities straight, he reached out and wrapped his fingers loosely around her wrist, giving her a tug and guiding her to sit on his legs so that he could face her properly, depending on the blanket over top him to keep the whole thing decent. That, and the constant whispering of his conscience, reminding him of why he could not have that which he wanted, and his abject disappointment at that fact startled and discomfited him to no end.
DG took his hand. She was as conscientious as she always had been, expecting rebuke or indifference and when she found none, she tangled her fingers through his, delaying the inevitable moment when one of them would have to break the silence. And the minutes dragged along and her hand warmed in his. The sky outside the window gave another feeble flash, but there was no thunder to follow. The storm was passing, but the rain went on and on.
"Tell me that I shouldn't be here," she said, so hushed and staring down at their hands with a fixation.
Resisting the urge, so many urges, he said, "Don't think I can, darlin'."
She said nothing in return, going back to the comfort and safety of the unspoken. Her whole body tensed for a moment, her legs tightening on his, and he closed his eyes, wondering absently if the gods of this world would hear his prayers. And then finally she did speak, mumbled really, something inaudible that might have been an apology, and then she was letting go his fingers and shifting her weight to move off him, and in an instant his hands were anchoring on her of their own volition to keep her right where she was. He found her legs to be sinfully bare, and suddenly he was clutching her, fingers dug into the soft skin of the underside of her thighs, pulling her into him for a kiss of such force, his head was knocked against the oaken headboard. His heart seemed to skip a beat, and time jumped with it, for it seemed only a moment later that his hands were tangled in her hair and he was breaking away from her in desperate need of a lungful of air, and oh, how that first free breath shuddered.
"What is it you want, Deege?" he asked, trying to be tender, trying to be easy, but somehow she'd scooted closer and she was just about in his lap, and his words came out low and barely sounded like his own, but the words were his, because he'd said them before, more times than he would have cared to admit. He'd pressed her before, wanting to hear from her lips that she wanted him, though he'd never expected to be asking it of her like this. I want too much, she'd said the night he had cornered her in her room to say his goodbyes. I want too much, she'd said that night on the road in the rain, away from the lights of some sorry little village where they'd stayed and mapped their route south. And now he pressed her again, and she sat back and shook her head.
"Don't make me say it," she whispered. "You know it's you. You always knew."
"And that's not too much to want?" he asked, sliding his hands out of her hair, a delicate task, before placing them on her shoulders. A forlorn hope of relative safety.
"Right now it seems like just enough," she said, and he couldn't say he'd ever heard her more certain of herself.
"It does," he said, and his jaw clenched hard in an effort to stop before he said too much, but there was no stopping this now, there never had been, he knew that too well. "Nothing I want more than to lay you down right here, but you know we can't let –"
"I thought we were done running," she said, bloody stubborn to no end.
"We are." The words were an absolution, and Cain wondered himself if he believed in them, the sweet promise, too simple and too good to be true. "No more running," he agreed, more than a little surprised at his grasp on coherency as she placed her palms flat on his chest to better feel the thundering of his heart. The night's storm paled in comparison to what raged inside him then. She tilted her head down to kiss him nice and easy, and the taste of her hesitance was gone, replaced with something he couldn't name. She leaned further into him, hands sliding up and over his shoulders, arms winding around his neck as she gave in to his mouth, and he to her warmth and her trust. His body betrayed his resolve and his purpose, hardening against her despite every godsdamned sane reason not to, and he abandoned pretence to embrace the bittersweet ache of his undoing.
He meant for it to be a gradual thing, a dance to draw out, languid and lasting. It certainly started out that way, kisses soft and tender, moments melting one into the next, a breath, a whisper, a sigh. There was a smile on her face, he could feel the curve of it on her lips as he captured them with his, but all too soon those innocent kisses deepened, and his hands were no longer content to keep to inviolable ground. But where her hands were eager and shameless, he'd always had a tendency toward thoroughness. He allowed his hands to map her shoulder blades, her back, the dip of her waist and the angles of her hips that always lent to the illusion of boyishness. When he slid his hands around to her backside, his fingers playing with the edges of her thin undergarment, she gave a gasp and pulled from him to mumble a broken curse against his mouth. He smirked and squeezed her flesh gently, watching closely as her head went back to expose her throat, the very tips of her long, dark hair brushing against his thumbs as he dug them into her a little tighter. He placed a kiss on the soft joining of her neck and shoulder, the next on her collarbone, a third a little lower on the swell of a breast bare beneath her camisole.
There was no mistaking the determination of her hands as she drew the garment over her head. Almost as soon as she'd thrown it aside, her hands returned to him, running over his chest then, searing a line of slow burning fire on his skin. Her mouth lowered to his, demanding, unyielding, and the storm in him raged all the more fiercely as he dragged his hands heavily up her bare back, holding onto her as if she could anchor him, when every bit of sense that could find voice said that she was like to be what drowned him instead. All but naked in his arms, nimble fingers and wicked tongue teasing him within an inch of sanity, was there ever a more glorious way to find his end?
She shivered when he touched her breast with his fingers, and cried out when he found it with his mouth. A wave of desire swept over him, consuming him to the point of breathlessness, and he groaned low in his throat when her little hands crept down between them to tug at his belt, insistent but inefficient.
"You sure you're wanting this, darlin'?" he made himself ask, picking the words from the haze in his mind and unsure himself of their meaning. To desire was a base instinct, one that bodies had won over minds for long ages, and he was not the first man to fall to the charms of a girl who might not have had the slightest idea of what she was unleashing inside of him. Still, there'd been a time in his life when he'd prided himself on the tight rein he held on his emotions, the control over his every action and ambition, and damned if his conscience would let him go down without a fight, when already his heart and his body had taken the leap.
DG sighed. He reached up and put a careful hand on her jaw, and felt her throat go taut as she swallowed hard. "Do you, Wyatt?" was her response, ever avoiding confrontation with her questions. "Do you want me?"
"Yes," he said without hesitation, "but that don't mean –" But the words died in his throat as she sat back on his legs, her backside cradled against his knees. Her hands, shaking as they were, worked his belt open. The soft clink of the buckle echoed inside his head, shutting out most every thought except those that whispered of want and will and desperation. And maybe he'd be damned to hell for this sin or a thousand others, but he had none of himself to spare for the caring. He was lost to her. He always had been.
Warm, deft hands slipped inside his trousers, and he gave a sharp hiss at the sudden intrusion. It was almost nothing to wrap his fingers firmly around her arms and pull her back up to him. The blanket was tangled somewhere around his knees now, but it put him out of reach while opening her up to him as her legs spread wider to accommodate his thick hips. He claimed her mouth with his before she had the chance to argue. She let go a soft moan against him that he imagined had been born as such, but she went pliant in his arms as she gave herself over. He slid a hand down between them, beneath the damp fabric of her panties, and another cry fell from her lips as she broke away from his kiss. When he pulled his hand away, fingers slick and glistening, she was close to panting and he'd lost his grasp on what restraint remained to him.
With a little coaxing, Cain had her raised up on her knees, and he slipped his trousers down over his hips. His body, his hands, his mouth all moved with a familiarity he thought he'd long since forgotten as he took himself in hand, the other finding purchase on her hip and guiding her down to him, impatiently nudging the imposing fabric aside to find the soaked heat beneath. He slid into her, the angle wrong, the fit tight, and without thought or care he shifted his hips and pulled her into him, and there...
She gave a whimper and her nails bit into his shoulder, and for a moment the world around them refused to turn. She was quick to recover with a ragged gasp but there was no mistaking that first, tiny cry. Shame filled him as she trembled atop him, and he wrapped his arms around her. He tried to ignore the scorching, silken feel of her, the pulsing of their bodies, the unrelenting pressure and insatiable urge to move; tried to focus on her sweet mouth, on the stillness and the beat of rain on the window, but there was no stopping the rush between them now, and even as her lips quivered, she drew him into a kiss without restraint, wild and devouring. His hands spread over the gentle curves of her backside, rocking her against him and fighting the tide of inevitability.
It wouldn't be a long struggle. Time bled away and the dark bedroom around them hazed into oblivion as he lost himself to the selfish chasing of his own pleasure. Their pace was slow, he tried to be easy, tried not to hurt her again, but once begun he would have had better luck trying to stop the rain from falling. He was surrounded by her, consumed by her, and each time she sank down upon him, filled herself with him, she overwhelmed him, again and again. Each hitching breath that escaped her lips coursed through his veins like fire, and when she clung to his shoulders, abandoned herself to his guidance and rhythm, he knew his fighting had come to its end. He buried his face in her neck as the world around him went blinding white; his release tore through him with an intense fury that ached as he spilled himself within her.
A promise, broken. Purpose and passion had forced his hand, but not his heart. No, now body and soul, he was hers, and she was his.
Slowly, Cain came back to himself, dizzy, his head swimming with fog. She kissed his mouth, and ran a thumb down his cheek. He felt boneless, weak, and it was no small feat to even summon the energy to smile beneath her lips, and yet somehow he managed, and more, touching her gently, her face, her hair, her breast. Their bodies, slick with sweat, began to chill and her shivering began anew, yet neither of them wanted to move, to untangle their limbs, pull apart. Just a moment more.
"No more running," she whispered, her forehead pressed to his, and gods forgive him, but he wanted to believe her.