Chapter TWs: Panic attacks, PTSD, anxiety attacks.
Night had fallen some hours before, the pale moonlight sweeping across the sands and reflecting off the water. It contrasted sharply with the small fire they had started, which flickered and popped. If it had not been for the warmth so desperately needed (or the cover provided amongst the harbor's many ships), he thinks they might have smothered it long before the darkness had even come upon Babylon. It is a risk, after all, but a small one they are permitted to take.
Despite the pleasures of the fire's heat upon his flesh, he does not stay long, or at least not long enough to hear the end of Sargon's tale. He has no use for memories, especially not those marred by senseless nostalgia (perhaps not the right word, he later decides, but it suits his feelings just fine).
Being further from the water proves to be a bonus.
He can still see them from the watchtower he has made his resting place, sitting around the flames. Sargon's arms moving about as he recalls the tale of their adventures and at times he can hear them laugh at something unknown – he had been nearly done with their adventures in Azad when he had announced his plans to do something more useful than telling stories. He thinks they must be nearing the end of the tale entirely, or at least he hopes so - if only because its end would bring about some peace and quiet.
It is a thing of beauty, he supposes. For things to be so calm and silent, as though the troubles about them have slipped away into the darkness, consumed within it until daybreak. It feels strange and safe, so very much unlike everything from the previous day. So much unlike the nights before, in which he had been the one consumed within the darkness and his dreams plagued by nightmares. He feels burning in his throat at the very thought and he swears for just a moment that the markings on his arm glow brighter.
He runs his fingers along the marks, the heat of the infected flesh soothing his cold fingertips. He has missed this. The feeling of being alive, no longer suffocating within the mind of his counterpart, is welcomed and needed. A small bit of tension that can be released upon his already twisting stomach. He plans to enjoy it.
"Something on your mind?"
The voice startles him, the sudden break in concentration making his heart stop. He is quick to act though, not letting being taken by surprise make him freeze up. Instead he grabs onto the sword at his side and turns to face the intruder. To his annoyance, the source of his startled mind is none other than Azar. She takes a minute to consider his sword, which rests only a hair's breadth from the tip of her nose.
"Stop being so dramatic." She says, using one hand to push the weapon from her face. After a moment more of watching him, in which his own heart continues to beat rapidly within his chest, she hauls herself upwards from the ladder and onto the small platform.
"Only if you stop sneaking up on me." He mutters, setting his weapon on the ground next to him (closer this time, just in case). "What are you doing here?"
She looks around, taking in the sights only visible from the new height she has been granted, before answering, "Sargon wanted to check on you."
He snorts, crossing his arms to signal his annoyance at the very notion.
"I thought you might appreciate if it were someone else." She adds, taking a seat nearby. It takes only a moment for her to settle and he realizes she has no intentions of leaving quickly. He frowns. "Or not."
They sit in silence for some time – he has hopes that it will convince her to leave him, but after several long minutes pass he is forced to admit defeat. With a heavy sigh, he pushes himself upward, straightening his back against the beam behind him. When he is settled, he turns his attention back to his guest and says, "Out with it."
The sea answers him, the water rising and falling onto the shore with a rhythm that should ease the tension in his body, but instead only gives him more reason to be on edge. He clenches his hand closed, his fingers curling around the fabric of his clothes. He wishes to be free of this place and with every passing second, every brief sound, he can feel his mind twisting tighter and his throat fill with the sour taste of discomfort. Nearby, the girl watches.
"I have questions," she says, voice quiet and eyes soft, "about Sargon's tale."
His throat tightens, the breath in his chest feeling as though it will choke him. The memories are unpleasant and still so fresh in his mind, almost as if they had happened to him not a month before. For two long years he had been dead, had experienced nothing and knew nothing, but still it eats away at him like a parasite. The sheer idea of nothingness gorging itself on his soul until he fears that he will be consumed and nothing will be left. He wants nothing more than to forget these things, or at least to make Sargon pay for his transgressions.
"Then ask Sargon." He snaps, eyeing her with suspicion. A small part of him worries that she can sense his fear, or that she will pray on his weakness. "After all, I am a demon not to be trusted."
She sighs, it is a heavy thing that makes her shoulders slump. Her hair moves across her face in the breeze, the dark locks appearing black in the night, and she brushes her hand across her face. As she does so, she answers, "I would like to hear your side."
He frowns; relaxing his shoulders slightly, he says, "My side is his side."
"I believe you have your own story to tell." She replies, her fingers beginning to trace the wood beneath them gently. He watches the movement with half-interest, using it more as a distraction to keep from meeting her gaze. "I suspect what you tell me will be only filled with half truths, but your story will no more be lies than Sargon's own. You both believe your side to be the truth – so perhaps that truth lies somewhere in the middle of both tales."
"Are you always so insufferably objective?" He mutters, the glow of his arm flaring up once more. It catches her attention and she watches the light dance around the timbers surrounding them. Her eyes are caught in it and he briefly thinks they might be fire themselves. "Hearing my side will change nothing. I am still the enemy."
"That is true, but you are also an ally. Perhaps it is as they say: 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'" She sounds confident in her words, as though their common goal ensures his compliance. If there is any uncertainty in her beliefs, he cannot see it behind the haze of light that floods her face. "If we are to defeat this Empress, we must at least try to understand each other."
He scowls, a hard line splitting his face as he lets her words sink in, "You really are insufferable."
"The bramble to the pomegranate." She laughs, crossing her arms across her chest cheekily. The sound rises above the sounds of the water beneath them momentarily, but eventually it vanishes just as quickly as it came. There is a pride in her, one that lifts her shoulders and straightens her back. It is something that makes her words more irksome.
He huffs, more dissatisfied with her presence than before, "Repeating proverbs from a child's bedtime story proves nothing. If anything, it only serves to strengthen the point I made."
Satisfied that she might take his tone as her signal to leave, he turns away. Forcing his body around until he is able to look out to the sea. He takes the sight in for a short moment before squeezing his eyes closed. His heart pounds as he waits, willing the seconds to move faster so that he might return to his previous position. It does not take him long to realize that she still will not leave, that none of his word, or his biting tone have convinced her to return to the sides of her precious royals. He feels that his stomach may drop, the sounds of the water not far enough from where he sits sounding closer than ever before. His throat aches then, as he thinks of waves crashing upon the shore, or the pressure in his lungs as water fills them.
"Merikh."
Her voice sends a burst through him, like flames building up inside of pot. He cracks, the shards moving in all directions until the parts left are shaking where he sits. He feels as though his heart may spill from his mouth when he speaks, "Do not call me that."
"It is your name."
"I have no name."
She rests a hand upon his shoulder and he wishes that he could snarl – send her reeling back from him until her skin was free of him. He finds that he cannot will the sound through the constriction of his lungs though. Instead, her grasp pulls on him, willing him to turn away from the sights before him and he follows, the dangers suddenly falling to his back and freeing him once more. It does not put his concerns fully to rest, but the air in his lungs ebbs and flows easier than those moments before. He settles himself again and she hums, clicking her tongue lightly, "You are afraid of water."
"I fear nothing." The reply is unconvincing – marred by not only the biting tone of his voice, but also the way his shoulders have slumped and the stiffness of his spine eased. The steadiness of her eyes upon him makes an unwelcome itch crawl through his skin and he continues, "Clearly you have more to say about the matter. Out with it."
Her fingertips squeeze themselves into his flesh soothingly, her touch seeming to ground him more than ignoring what lies behind him has. The incident has once more softened her edges and filled her eyes with knowledge. He forgets for a moment that they are not sitting in her home – thinks it impossible someone could remain as she does when their very world has begun to be torn apart (he tries not to think of how the citizens of Babylon have proven him wrong before). She says, "If you fear that I will find your anxieties amusing, I do not; such things are not shameful. There is no sense in being so proud, just as there here is no sense in bringing about harm to yourself."
He laughs; bitter and exhausted, but still offers the amusement to her, "Yet you stayed."
"And I did not think my presence so unwelcome that you would drive yourself into a panic rather than make conversation." She replies, her hand moving from his shoulder and her fingers skimming across the flesh of his arm before finding rest on her own knee. She holds herself with self-assurance, though it does little to hide the tinge of worry that creeps into her voice as she speaks, "It happened before. Earlier today, yes? When Sargon first suggested we find shelter in the harbor district."
"How perceptive of you."
Unexpectedly, she laughs. A soft thing, almost hollow – empty. Yet inside of it he hears a spark of something else. It is something he finds he does not quite understand. Like a thought stuck at the tip of his tongue, but unable to form fully it sits and he mutters with irritation. Azar in turn quiets herself, though a smile now rests just as softly as her laughter upon her lips, "Tell me your story."
When he does not answer, she adds, "Please."
His boots scrape the wooden floor beneath them as he gathers himself up, pulling his back straighter and chasing away the knots in his stomach. Azar keeps her gaze locked on him, her eyes wide with anticipation and igniting with curiosity. It takes him some time to settle, racking his brain for the words he wishes to speak. He thinks so little of the tale and he has no desire to impress the girl with fancy speeches about the movement of time, but still he finds his tongue tied. After all, where should he begin the story of his birth? Should he tell such a private tale at all?
"Fine then," he mutters with a sigh, defeated in his internal struggle as the girl beams with eagerness, "but do not interrupt me with inane questions. Understood?"
She nods and brings her fingers to her lips, twisting them as though she has just secured a lock. His lips twitch with amusement before falling again into an unpleasant frown.
"Know, first, that what Sargon tells you of my birth is untrue." He begins slowly, as if walking upon water that might swallow him up should he not tread carefully. "I was not spun from the ether; I was not conjured by the Vizier. Nor was I the creation of the Sands of Time – no, the Sands played only a role in awakening me fully; they rose me from a half-slumber.
"Think of it as something like your conscious: a voice that whispers in your ear as you move about you life. The voice is always present, but never corporal." He pauses and stares down at his infected appendage, clasping his fingers closed until his nails dig into the blackened palms. "I have been alive since the moment his lungs took our first breath – and perhaps longer still. So no, I am not a creation of the Sands."
Azar shifts, her knees shuffling along the floor in a manner that reveals her desires to bombard him with her questions. Amazingly, she does not interrupt and he can practically see the way she swallows the questions back, the still present hardness of eyes softening slightly as she takes in the beginning of his story.
He raises a finger to his lips to remind her of the promise she made. Her lips form a thin line in response, the annoyance of being reminded becoming immediately obvious. He laughs at her expense.
The night continues much the same and it is not until the end of his account that he realizes how silly the whole ordeal feels – and worse still how familiar. Still, despite his discomfort with how this present has paralleled Sargon's past there is a strange relief that moves through him. As though his muscles have unwound and his blood can move more freely through his veins – he enjoys the feeling of no longer being confined within the shadows. As though the story being within her mind has freed him from the clawing hands within the darkness for a short time. He does not feel the fear of being engulfed and forgotten within once more.
It is not until the sun begins to rise that he realizes his tale has gone on for too long – that he has become wound up in the tale and forgotten the beauty in conciseness. Azar does not seem to mind though and she listens with rapt attention (though he knows that she has weighed his words against Sargon's from the beginning, he still finds himself relieved that she has decided to continue to listen at all).
He finishes just as the moon falls over the horizon.
"I awoke in the desert, my memory clouded but intact. Nearly overtaken by the darkness as I was, the sheer weight that the void of death had permitted has nearly overtaken me." He says, concluding the tale with what little he remembers through the haze of his rebirth. "While in my mind, the experience was like waking up from restless sleep – as though the experience had not happened at all – in my subconscious I was aware of every passing second of the passing years. A torture that was permitted because I had the desire to continue living, to survive when the Sands that permitted me to awaken had been ripped from the only body I had ever known."
"You were afraid of death?" Azar finally questions, her voice startling him after her several hours of silence.
He glares, furrowing his brow in a manner that speaks to his annoyance, and says, "I thought I told you not to ask questions."
"You said not to ask questions while you told your story and I did not." She counters, rolling back her shoulders and stretching like a satisfied cat. "Now that we have reached the point where I enter, it does little use to continue on. After all, I am aware of the events that took fold."
He frowns and she smirks. Raising his hands in defeat, he admits, "I suppose, if you are so eager for me to be done! Fine. Ask away."
Questions begin to pour from the girl's mouth, spilling onto the floor beneath them so quickly he thinks that they may begin to fill up the earth like a sea. It makes his head spin and he does the best he can to answer – though he is forced to ask her to slow down more than once. He does his best to answer with simple yeses and noes, but finds more than once he is caught up in another bout of storytelling. Despite his annoyance, the girl seems to appreciate his efforts.
Her last question is what startles him the most, breaking him free from his more agreeable attitude in much the same way that it does her own (he swears her eyes had not been so dull and her body so stiff before). It is like a bucket of ice water being poured across his flesh, soaking him until his lungs are tight and skin aches for relief. Sudden, but in this case, the question is not without justification.
"Will you kill us when we are done?"
He clenches his teeth, tight so that they might shatter in his skull. There is no point in lying to the girl, no point in pretending to be what he is not when she so clearly knows the truth. This is his purpose – his revenge. He shall take it as he sees fit when they are done.
"Yes."
A/N:
i) P. M. Michèle Daviau, The world of the Aramaeans, Sheffield Academic Press UK 2001, pp.65-9
"The bramble sent to the pomegranate as follows:
The bramble to the pomegranate:
'What good is the abundance of your thorns
to one who touches your fruit?'
The pomegranate replied
and said to the bramble:
'You, all of you are thorns
for him who touches you!'"
"The pot calling the kettle black" equivalent.
