She had not been sleeping. Such a thing was impossible here. But her eyes had been closed and, for a moment, her mind had been quiet.
When a shriek, louder than the squeal of the bolt, slammed them open again.
For the briefest instant, somewhere between the dark and the light, the shadows of trees flickered where there should have been bars.
She could smell him.
"Laura."
The musty dank of rotting undergrowth slipped under her hands; slithering up her spine even as her shoulders scraped against the wall with a staggered rasp.
His face was hung with shadows, but they made a poor disguise.
"I've wanted to meet you for a long time."
Night after night of relentless pursuit had ensured she would never forget the shape of him.
"That's funny," and her spine prickled as she pushed up against the concrete, willing her legs to stand, even as screamed to run, "I distinctly remember flushing you out of an airlock."
He laughed a little at that. And stepped out into the light.
The Leoben looked at her curiously, his head tilted slightly to one side, as if he expected to recognize something in her face… as if he expected her to recognize something in his.
"My brother once told me that he had seen a lion where a woman stood."
He moved towards her with a predatory languor, the heel of his shoe scuffing softly against the ground like the quiet rustle of dry brush.
"Tell me, how long would you stare into the flames?
"Did they speak to you, Laura? Did they sing? Scream?"
He puts insidious ideas in our minds.
"What did you hear when your prayers were done?
More dangerous than any warhead.
"Did they answer?
He creates fear.
Quivering fingers reached for her. Stretching out in loving caress, even as she flinched away, to gently tuck away her hair. His touch, featherlight, as he traced the curve of her ear. Black eyes raked across her face with all the hungry fervor of the starving void.
"How the Gods must have wept at your return."
His breath hot on her face.
"But you are not for them. There is no beauty to your stillness. But in the way that you move…"
Her skin crawling as a trembling hand brushed the side of her face with the barest kiss of his fingertips. Frozen in his sight as his eyes finally snapped to hers to rob the very depths of her soul.
"Your demons stare through shrouds of mist. Not gemstones. Like, marble underwater…. Or sage, in winter."
There was no light. No salvation. The vast marvel of the universe, reduced, to this thin breath of space that stood between them.
She felt the breath thin in her chest, her skin prickling in warning, even as he lowered his hand. His brow furrowed.
"Our Lady of Sorrows." He pronounced quietly.
"She filled your head with such desolate misery… that sufferance paved the path of the righteous. That the Gods only responded to sorrow. And let you suffer every loss as a punishment. Because every petulant step away, every selfish hope to carve out a life different than the one she chose for you. Only forced Them to clear your path. And all those people, Laura... You could have saved, if you'd only offered up yourself… She taught you that, didn't she?" he murmured, so close now that she could watch her eyes brim in the reflection of her own.
"You don't know anything about-"
"She was wrong." And black eyes softened to a shade of human brown, "There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for..."
A low and familiar roar in the distance rumbled the foundations of the prison. The droning siren an accustomed nuisance. She watched carefully for his reaction, but his focus remained unbroken.
"You are not a beacon of conflict, Laura. This is not your path."
"You have robbed us of all others." She bit back with a snarl but Leoben merely shook his head.
"He will come back for you. You know this. But this place, and all that you found here, will be little more than memory and dust. And when the circle turns 'round again… we must all of us play our part."
Laura felt her blood freeze in her veins.
"…I don't know what you mean." She breathed, but the barest quaver betrayed her.
His patience, a gentle exhale, fluttered across her forehead.
"The blood of the new generation flows through you, but it is not yours to pass along." He said softly and the smallest of whimpers shuddered through her nose at the strange tenderness of his words.
Almost as if in apology.
Laura shook her head in weak protestation; her lip caught between her teeth.
"You don't know that."
"I saw it!" he vowed urgently, his eyes burning black with a divine fire.
"I saw it." He repeated, softer when she shrank away, "In the Opera House… bathed in the light of God," reaching for her with all the hesitance of holy reverence to dip his fingers into the soft of her hair.
"A perfect lamb."
