Pale Blue Shadows
I'm so very sorry this took so long. My muses got a bit lost. For the record, I'm aiming to wrap this up around chapter 40…
Also for the record, this chapter was written against Florence and the Machine's "No Light, No Light" on a constant replay.
Chapter 37: Anything
Roxanne didn't think she had ever seen Syx look so evil, or so terrifying, as he did in the shadows of the bloodstained hallways of the hospital.
Perhaps Syx did have plans for what to do with a city.
Roxanne could only hope. After all, she was no longer the one making the decisions.
Roxanne awoke to a chill touch across her inner thigh. Pain shot up from her wound, as fingers slipped across it, leaving a balm in their wake. In just moments, the cool balm was sinking into her skin, easing the pain in a way no hospital medication or treatment had managed.
"Syx," she whispered as her eyelids fluttered open.
"Shhh," he breathed, sliding another coat of the healing balm he'd developed for her across the exposed wound. Raw, damaged skin drank it in, taking advantage of the various enzymes and healing agents that his DNA coded for.
Roxanne shivered. Memory flooded into her, leaving her feeling as raw as the wound to her leg. She let her head fall to the side, focusing dimly on the texture of the silk sheets she lay upon. She watched a lock of her dark hair slip down across her field of view, obscuring the world beyond. She let a long, shuddering sigh fall from her lips. The ragged catch of breath that suggested a sob was caught just in time. Tears blurred Roxanne vision, causing the dark threads of her hair to blur before her.
"Shhh," Syx murmured again, his hand stilling against her bare leg, "Don't cry, Roxanne." His voice was strangely collected, and though his emotions seemed composed, Roxanne could feel the wobble in his control. "You'll be healed before you know it," he continued, "The pain will be gone in just a minute or two."
Roxanne could not contain the sob that followed that declaration. The wracking sound that escaped her was little more than an animalistic howl. In trying to fix things, she'd made them into a disastrous mess from which she could see no absolution. All that she had loved about Syx was wrapped somewhere deep within him, far from her reach. His failing grip on his end of their emotional link scared her. After everything they had been through, he was still scared to let her feel what he felt. Everything was wrong.
"The pain isn't the kind," she gasped behind her tears, as she turned away from Syx, curling inward upon herself, "that you can fix with some cream." She swallowed hard, pulling her knees upward into her chest as she lay heavily on her side. "The pain is from what I've done to us." She snuffled back the wetness, running a bare forearm across her nose. The sobs wracked her chest, even as she struggled to hold them inside of herself. The ache in her lungs mirrored the ache in her heart. It seemed fitting. She snuffled again, fighting to get the words out. The words that would acknowledge her culpability in all this, her role as the true evil force. "The pain is from what I've done to you. What I've made you do."
"My love," his voice was too distant, too cool for Roxanne to bear, "I'm just fine."
"No," she finally shrieked, grabbing the pillow from beneath her head. Without thought to physical pain, she twisted herself upright as she flung the pillow forcefully at Syx, where he kneeled partly on the bed. He barely blinked as the pillow made contact with his face. Roxanne watched, a pool of horror in her gut as he shifted his weight back slightly to the foot that rested on the floor. She shook her head slowly as tears worked their way silently down her cheeks. "You are not even close to fine. You're… you might as well be on another planet. You won't let me in," her voice was loud, nearly shrill in her own ears, but Syx didn't even bat an eye. "You won't let me in," she repeated, the dread in her veins sifting into her voice. "How bad must it be, how angry must you be at me, how hurt, for you not to let me feel it too?" She pressed onwards, leaning forward towards him, ignoring the lingering pain in her thigh as she inched along the silk sheets.
"How terrifying must it be in your head, for you not to want me to see? How badly have I fucked up for you to be so damn cold?" His stare remained impassive, cool green eyes watching her without emotion behind them as she raged ever closer to his black-clad form. "Even after all the damage we've done to each other, you're holding more back," Roxanne's voice had fallen to little more than a hoarse whisper as the tears dried against her skin.
Roxanne found herself in a near-crouch, staring up at him through the distance of a mere foot or two of space. In her head, she found herself strangely calm. It seemed very simple, now that she forced it out into the open. It wasn't de-atomized bodies of innocent people that had her horrified, it was his coldness; the lack of light in his eyes. Being here with him, without having him, was a feeling that could destroy her. She would rather die than spend a minute more in this separateness that had grown between them. She would rather kill by his side, rather be the darkness than be anything else without him. She needed him, no matter what the terms of that would be.
"Stop holding back," she whispered, eyes boring into his own, emotions forcing their way into him. If he wanted to be evil, then they would be evil. She'd do whatever it took to fix this, be anything if it meant they could be together again in the way they had been.
"Stop holding back?" he grated from between inhumanly sharp teeth. "If I stop holding back…"
"You might kill me," Roxanne finished calmly. "But you will definitely kill me if you stay like this. I'll die of the guilt and heartbreak." She tilted her head slightly, "Feel what I feel." She reached for his hand, her pale peach hands wrapping around his pale blue one as she pulled it close. She flattened his hand against her breast, forcing him to feel her heart beating beneath the thin fabric of the camisole she wore. "Feel what I feel," she hissed quietly as her eyes darkened. Whatever he wanted from her, she would give. Whatever he needed, she would provide. If it took years of proving herself, she would do it, to mend what she had broken in that moment of weakness. Her individuality, her values, her beliefs, her very personhood meant nothing when weighed against a life without all of him within her.
His green eyes glared down at her. His hand flexed reflexively against her breast, where she had trapped his hand against her. Without a second to think, his other hand had tangled itself into her hair at the base of Roxanne's skull. The slightest pressure dragged her upwards, pulling her to her knees even as his still-booted foot left the ground behind him. "You aren't scared?" His voice was little more than a growl. "You aren't terrified that the evil alien might take your life, or your identity? That you might lose yourself?"
Roxanne felt a tiny part of herself buck at his words. A horrified part of her that screamed out against losing herself to him, to this darkness that had finally consumed him. She quashed that part against the iron certainty that this was truly it for her. There were no choices left to be made. They had all been made long before. There were only consequences to face now, and running from them would only destroy them both.
"No," Roxanne smirked darkly as she slid her hands towards him. Fingertips slipped lightly across the angle of his jaw, relearning the feel of his skin. "I'm not scared anymore," she murmured, closing the distance between them as she leaned closer. His mouth crashed down onto hers before she could complete the motion, always impatient. The flood of his emotions came pouring down the link between them, swamping Roxanne's mind completely. For a moment there was only blackness. Blackness and the taste of his tongue. Roxanne struggled for an instant for the air she needed to fill her lungs. Then the need hit her. The need and desire and jealous rage. The betrayal and the hurt and the frustrated fury that was born out of the love. The blinding, terrible, all-consuming love that demanded eternity. The kind of love that Roxanne had long ago stopped believing in. The kind that drove lovers to their deaths and men to madness. The sort that belonged only in stories, and could never survive in real life. Roxanne grabbed onto that love and pulled it into herself, wrapping her heart and her thoughts and her very being in the impossible feeling.
Her hands sought purchase against the back of his neck and the flat plains of his shoulders as he leaned into her, forcing her backwards into the cool silk sheets beneath them. Frantic fingers crawled across the leather of his jumpsuit, seeking the hidden zipper and once finding it, dragging it down the lean angle of his back. Roxanne swam through a haze of feelings she couldn't quite contain, her own indistinguishable from her lover's. Teeth scraped against sweat-kissed necks as whatever fabric remained between them was wrenched away.
Roxanne felt just as found as she felt lost. His touch drew lines of fire across her skin, his mouth biting and sucking at her pulse point in time with the furious drive of her heart beat. She could drown in him, but she knew she would die happy. His hands were not gentle, his nails clawing scratches into her skin as his teeth left their own marks. He pushed her down into the bed, violent lust swimming incoherently in his eyes as he desperately tried to mark her as his own, to erase any memory or trace of anyone else who dared to have ever touched his mate. The possessive need drove his actions, and as Roxanne felt her own nails drag roughly across his skin, she knew it was consuming her as well.
He took her without any pretense or romance, and Roxanne welcomed him. She didn't feel beautiful or gentle or kind. She felt hard and cruel and very nearly monstrous. She felt like darkness, filled with violence and sex and pain. It was a delirium of wild emotion and action. Pain drowned in pleasure, but only enough to drive them onwards. She was his, completely, utterly, irrevocably. There could be no others. Roxanne could never bear it.