Disclaimer: See the chapter before the chapter before the last.
A/N: Mustwritefaster, timeisrunningout! Final edited edition.
*
Clar sat in her cell. The walls were cold, so cold. She could not feel herself. The walls were cold. There was so little room for thought, so little room for control. She could not feel the breath of air that passed across her face in the endless still, felt no end, no end to this lack of intuition. Clar had never felt this before: the need to listen to reason before intuition. But there were bars. Endless bars that kept her from that privilege. The barrier of body and spirit, a hurdle. The walls were cold, and Clar felt it acutely. The cold scent of death, bleak death.
*
Words. Words meant nothing to Clambrithe. They were beneath him; words were the advocates of devils that haunted his soul. Words were a necessary evil, for communication, but never for understanding. For, he thought cynically, what words could express the damage of death? Words left him bereft of soul. Whatever remained of his own soul. Clambrithe wanted to save it. Save himself. Save his own soul. What words could express the loss of one's sanity? Not in this world. Not where words held no substance. For so long, a silver of death could speak far more than words. Blade and blood.
Want my pity, want my pity, want my pity.
Then why did those words echo so? How could something so trivial as words mar his sense of direction, of duty? Jonathan. It seemed surreal that he, Jonathan, had succumbed to such a weakness. Not Clambrithe, but Jonathan.
Another whisper of thought. Just another conscientious thought. One among the millions that had passed before it. Not words. Not thought. What? What folly? What fault?
I see it in their eyes. In their eyes. Their eyes.
I see it too. Some part of it screamed, I see it too.
*
Clambrithe leaned against his windowsill, watching the sea. The sea continued still, untroubled by his doubts. The ocean said nothing to him.
'Jonathan.'
Clambrithe turned shortly, a dark light in his eyes. Another hare stood at his doorway. 'Colonel.' A short nod of acknowledgement to his mentor.
'Jonathan, your mind weighs heavy.'
Such intuition once more. Clambrithe felt enclosed. Whom could he trust? Clar. A ferret, human, thing. He had known her for a month. Yet this substance, this sudden upsurge of emotion, emotion at long last.Then there was the colonel. A hare he had put faith and trust in. Endless seasons of learning.
Learning. Lessons on how to end life. Death.
Clambrithe did not know. Could never know, not in this life. Not when torn between the wars of his own sanity.
Colonel Vande. Clambrithe had known him since childhood. It was he who taught Clambrithe how to use his first blade. It was he who brought Clambrithe through the trials of childhood. It was he who had shaped Clambrithe, shaped him into one of the most prestigious majors in the history of Salamandastron. It was to him that Clambrithe turned to. To him that Clambrithe had expressed his fears and hopes. It was he who had set Clambrithe on this path. He who made sure Clambrithe fulfilled it with the grace that was demanded of him.
'Colonel.'
A question and an answer.
Let yourself go, Jonathan.
Let yourself go.
*
The meeting commenced that night. The air was stifling, beyond life. It was death in that room, death and animosity. It was a council of death, a council of necromancy and lunacy. No intuition. What life could be led that way, without intuition? Jonathan, oh Jonathan. He demanded release, demanded to breathe free air. Not this death, not this death. Widepaw's face still remained serene. What serenity in death? What serenity in feeling the cold walls of your madness fill you? Trap you. Death, Jonathan, it whispered. Death.
They were immersed in relative debate. Widepaw uttered the words. 'She must be killed.'
'No.'
The entire table turned to face him. Clambrithe felt the chains of eternity embrace him. Fell forward into infinity. Fell freely. Fell with the grace of liberation.
'No.'
'Jonathan, you've gone mad.'
'No. No, not her.'
Jonathan felt the key in his pocket. The key to his life. The key to his freedom.
He ran. Clambrithe ran, Jonathan ran, and for that moment he was running away.
'Jonathan!'
Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan.
*
'Clar, Clar.'
Clar jerked away from the bars. Spun wildly, unsure. Jonathan. She could see Jonathan there. Not Clambrithe, never Clambrithe. This was Jonathan Clambrithe, not Major Jonathan Clambrithe. This was salvation. This was freedom. This was truth, spoken so plainly.
'Jonathan,' she cried. The bars fell away suddenly, and she stumbled out of the cold on feet she still could not use. 'Cold,' she whispered, 'Too cold.'
'No death,' he whispered back. 'No death. Not death. Never.'
Fervour. Fear. Freedom. Jonathan felt them all. Felt. Felt for this first time since he could remember to feel. Lived, lived for a moment and burned. Burned with this need.
They came. Widepaw at the front, Vande barely a step behind him.
Jonathan and Clar clutched at each other, entwined in a moment of destiny, bound only by intuition. Such mindlessness. No questions, not any more, not in this dark. The dark welcomed them. No death in this dark. Never.
'Jonathan, are you mad?'
'Maybe,' he murmured back, blue eyes not meeting the colonel's. Bright blue eyes of life. Jonathan was not sure from where his composure was derived. 'Maybe, but I am free.'
'Free? Jonathan, you've been bewitched! This thing has murdered your sense of mind!'
'Not murdered,' Jonathan said quietly, eyes on the floor. They flickered to meet Vande's gaze for a fleeting instant. 'You did that for me, colonel.'
'Major Clambrithe!'
Widepaw was outraged. There it was. The need to succumb. The need to follow the path he had faithfully trod for the past years of his life. No. Not when this level of life was in his grasp. His. His alone, his life. Never. No pain of death could take that from him.
'Look at her, my lord. Do you see death?'
Widepaw's eyes never shifted off his own. His own blue eyes, made of pale ice. Melting ice, revival, strength, colder than even the fever of demise.
'Clambrithe, move away.'
'Look, my lord.'
Widepaw's eyes flickered. Only for a moment. But Jonathan held some of his trust. Clambrithe had held some of that for a long time. Years of service, of eternal, internal bleeding. Jonathan demanded payment. Demanded it. Felt Clar shiver in his arms, shiver in their perverse circle of trust.
'Jonathan.'
'Look at her, sir. Look at her and tell me she deserves to die.'
Yes. The words breathed life back into him. I want these words.
There was a silence. The shadows broke and surged in the flicker of the candlelight. The only illumination in the cells, the only warmth. Clar trembled in his embrace again. Then she spoke.
'I don't know death. I know only my intuition. I know only my saving graces. Only this integrity.'
Hysteria. That trembling was hysteria. It burst forth in screams, in sobs, in quaking shoulders.
'Do you think I want this? Are you so mad to assume that if I even had magic, I would want this? I could have killed Jonathan, but I didn't! I could have killed, killed you all, killed you with this madness in my soul. Killed you with only these ideas. Have you any notion? I never needed to do that. You kill yourselves. You kill, and you kill without discrimination. You kill your children, you kill them and yet you never repent! How can you bear it? Bear this death! You send them to their doom.'
'Clar, shh. Listen to yourself. Calm down.'
They painted an odd picture. Clar, leaning on him for support, unsure of both body and mind. Foreign arms that were not hers curled about his waist, her face buried in the folds of his jacket. His own arms attempting to keep her standing, yet attempting to protect her. Protect her. From himself, from them, from everything. He needed it; needed this last remaining scrap of instinct. Survival. Self-preservation. Intuition.
Jonathan saw the revulsion in the eyes of those who were - had been - his friends, those who were - had been - the people he had put his trust in. Already thinking of them in past tense.
Why?
I thought you knew.
Intuition.
Self-preservation.
Clar was sobbing into his shoulder.
Jonathan could feel the tears. The tears for the all the bloodshed, tears
he himself had never found the courage to cry. Jonathan felt it then. Felt
her courage - this release. This release she had granted him. This release
of emotion, of the bonds that held his mind in check. To him, if to no
one else. She had risen above it, above everything. Clar had risen above
him. No courage could symbolize this blind belief, this blind belief in
intuition, in that which seemed most right. Above him. Jonathan let the
first of his own tears fall.