Hey people. I've rather avoided doing this, as I seem to do on all hard chapters of this fanfic. With the others I bull on ahead, but this... this one requires some delicate handling. Mostly because it's very hard to get the characters right. Even Jon, who artistically is the least complex of the darkstalkers to write, is far more complex than my usual characters.
A big shout-out to reviewers. Hope last chapter explained part of Morrigan's problems to you.
Well, I won't babble on. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 23
Shining in the Dark
Morrigan's Mindscape. No time.
Morrigan's sobs slowed after Dimitri called to her, and finally they stopped. She looked up at him, eyes wet with tears, hair bestraggled, dress in shambles. Her body should have given the impression of something fallen, something wrong, but to Dimitri, she merely gave off an impression of great pain. Of misuse, of a life gone wrong. She looked at him as frightened animals will look at their captors, wary of blows and helpless before them.
Dimitri walked forward, stepping down from the finger of this giant stone hand and walking to her. But as he walked forward, he felt something in front of him. Then, he had the strangest sensation of being *pushed*- of being thrown back. Only keeping his feet with an effort, he tried to walk forward. The force on him grew stronger, became a stone wall, a great fist. He pushed against it anyway, cursing the unknown force in his way futilely. As he continued pushing, he heard chuckling behind him, a laughter he'd never heard before. He whipped around, already moving into a fighting position. Behind him, smiling monstrously, Garik Aleksia stood, wreathed in flame. At the sight of her tormentor, Morrigan let out a small cry and hugged her knees to her tighter, wrapping her wings about herself more. Garik took no notice of her, simply looked at Dimitri and laughed.
" You! What the hell are you doing here?" Dimitri said, settling into the combat pose he'd been taught. " You're dead!"
" Dead," Garik said, chuckling, " but not forgotten. Never forgotten, and so, in this pitiful excuse for a reality that Morrigan calls her mind, I live." The figure waved his arm, indicating the bleak stretches of waves around them. " Rather proves the old saying that we live on forever in memory..."
Dimitri bared his fangs in an age-old gesture of hatred. " Then I end your life right here. I will not let you hurt Morrigan anymore."
" Like you can stop me." Garik rolled his eyes at Dimitri, another age-old gesture.
" I can try," Dimitri said, running forward, cocking his fist back to strike at this monster that had plagued the woman he loved for so long.
The wave of force that hit him picked him up like a rag doll and threw him across the stone hand. He hit with such force that had he been in his physical body, he would have broken all of his bones upon impact. As it was, in his new spiritual form, he merely felt such agony as he had never known. He lay where he was, gasping and panting.
" And now what will you do?" Garik said, almost conversationally, as if this were a topic for discussion over tea. " You can't best me. Why bother fighting? There's no point, no gain."
" Because it's right," Dimitri said, struggling to stand, weariness shaking him and wracking his body. " I will fight you because it is right. No matter what the cost."
" What, has your high and vaunted honor," Garik spoke this last word with disgust and contempt ringing in his voice, now surprisingly clear, sexual lust no longer thickening it, " demanded such a thing of you? Has your great honor," and now Garik's voice picked up, as if anger was twisting it, " become so important? Why bother? There's no gain in it. Your honor will kill you."
" And what of that?" Dimitri asked, his voice gasping with pain, each breath shuddering agony as he put his hands on his knees and struggled to stay up, " So what if honor kills me? Everyone dies. But not everyone truly lives. If, to live, I must die... what does that mean, when measured against that great scale, on which we must all stand and be judged, when all that's right is upheld? If all life mounts to is making a stand when the rain comes pouring down..." Here he stopped, realizing that he was saying something important here, something key, something that went beyond all the trappings of this situation and was true everywhere. Then, slower, he continued on. " If that is the sum and measure of a man, than I will not fail. I love Morrigan. I am a mortal, and the definition of a mortal is weakness. All we do is marred by weakness. I have failed, many a time, when I could have done better. I have failed Morrigan many times recently, when it seemed I did not care, never noticed. Never saw her pain and suffering. And for that, I am sorry." Dimitri looked at Morrigan, small tears pricking the corners of his eyes. God, yes. He had failed her. And it looked like he was about to fail one last time. " But, here, I've been given a chance to try one last time. To try and stand, where before I fell. And I will try." Standing up on shaky legs, supporting himself only through sheer force of will, he said, " Even if it kills me."
" We'll see," Garik said flatly. And for Dimitri, the torment began.
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Morrigan's Thoughts. No time.
Morrigan, in her pain, watched as Dimitri was battered by blow after blow, as fire and wind and crackling thunder struck him again and again, as his standing form jerked with each blow. She felt no emotion, just a sort of numbed cold. Her thoughts slowly turned inward, towards the speech he had made, before this seemingly endless torment began. What kind of speech was that? She had never heard it's like before, save in poetry or writing. And yet... It had come from the mouth of a man, a man she knew and liked. Not loved... such an emotion didn't exist.
Or did it? The vampire even now being torn apart seemed an expression of purest love, of honor, of higher things. That he would stand against someone so much more powerful than him... why? Was his sexual need for her so great that he could not comprehend life without her? Was that it?
Before her, slowly falling, bleeding horribly, Dimitri fell. Garik did not laugh, smile, or do anything at all to show his triumph, merely watched dispassionately as Dimitri fell. Morrigan crawled over to him, some semblance of emotion returning to her as she saw Dimitri's face. It was torn and gashed, great wounds covering his scalp. Already his eyes were fading, the light in them dying.
As she crawled over to him, placing her right hand on his hurt face, he said in a voice already half-dead, " Morrigan."
She looked at him, wondering what he could possibly say at this point. What anyone could say, given time and world enough.
" I'm... sorry," he choked out, breath puffing the small particles of dust that overlay this great stone hand. " So... sorry. Couldn't... fight him."
" You can still escape, you know," Garik said impassionately, gazing down at Dimitri with a look of utmost superiority. " I left the door open. Simply will it so. Escape to your physical form. It's alive and well. You'll be safe there."
Morrigan waited, her hand on Dimitri's head, waiting for him to disappear. There was no point in continued fighting. To encourage him to leave, she said, " It's allright, Dimitri. You'll find another lover."
" No," Dimitri said, and to her surprise his arm moved slowly, feebly, as if to raise himself up again. " I... won't leave your... side. I must... keep trying to...!" Here he drew in a deep pained breath, as part of him shut down and fell apart. Mastering himself with a visible effort, he choked out, " Must keep trying to... help you. No matter... what."
" Dimitri," Morrigan said, and it pierced her heart and supposed great knowledge that maybe, just maybe, the things in life she'd only dreamed about in private (and mocked in public) were real, that maybe there were such things as hope and love and truth and honor... that maybe not everyone fell to the rain.
Above her, Garik's mouth twisted in rage. " Die!" he shouted, a great force rippling out from him, a blow intended to finish Dimitri once and for all. Dimitri gathered his paltry will, to try one last time.
Morrigan screamed, and in that scream was all the defiance of one raging at Fate itself.
Darkness. Total and complete. Dimitri could not see his hand before his battered face. He turned, looking. Seeking.
" You cannot be rid of me, Morrigan!" Garik's voice, roaring out of the darkness. " I am you! I am the hate and the pain and the fear and the loss... I am the all and the nothing!"
" You are wrong!" Morrigan shouted, and her voice suddenly seemed to grow, to strengthen. " You did represent me. For a long time, you were me. But now..." Dimitri felt her mind turn to him, and the strength in it- strength born of madness- shocked him. Here, in the darkness of her own mind, Morrigan's strength was beyond reasoning. That great force turned from him, and he heard her voice again, in the darkness. " I will believe. If nothing else, Dimitri gave me that."
" Believe in what?" Garik's voice, shrieking through the dark. " Belief is for weaklings and fools!"
" Wrong!" Dimitri shouted, surprised he could even speak in this place. " Belief is for the pure and the true. Belief is all there is in this world." Miraculously, blessedly, the pain he had been feeling was lessening, falling from him like dead skin. Or maybe it was more like raindrops that could no longer touch his skin. " Belief, in God, in what is right, in the good in this world... it's all that has ever sustained me, even in those dark times when I thought everything had fallen through. And now, in the dark, I will continue to believe, to hold on."
" And I choose to believe now," Morrigan said, and Dimitri felt some great force gathering, a force of great and infinite strength, matched in that power only by the kindness behind it, the justness of it. " Not in denial of what has happened to me, but because of it. You made me fear."
The force gathered, and the dark brightened, on some great and indeterminately far horizon, brightened into a white beyond all understanding, as Morrigan finished the last words the mind-Garik would ever hear.
" You made me fear... fear to believe. But I will fear no longer!"
The white came, and Dimitri and Morrigan were awash in it. He saw Garik, one last time, and for one shattered moment he thought that Garik's face had changed, shifted into Morrigan's face, became for a moment what it really was- because in that light, no lie could ever hold- the fragments and pieces of Morrigan's own pain, given reality in her madness.
And then...
Darkness.
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Small pond in Aensland territory. Twenty-five seconds after Dimitri touched Morrigan.
Jon and Felicia had stood still, watching Dimitri. It seemed that he had just touched Ebonrule to Morrigan's forehead when her eyes opened, not slowly as if waking, but with a snap, the eyes of someone who has just taken a terrifying plunge and survived. Her breathing, for the last few seconds slow and rhythmic, suddenly changed into the fierce, gasping breath of someone who has just been running. Dimitri, standing calmly until now, suddenly snapped too as well, breathing just as hard as Morrigan. He slumped backwards, not so much sitting as falling, dropping Ebonrule as he fell. The spear's blue light faded as it withdrew from Morrigan's eyes and dropped harmlessly to the ground. Dimitri let out a sigh, then a cynical grin covered his face. Morrigan looked up at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears.
" Morrigan," Dimitri said, starting to laugh and chuckle, " holy shit. I never want to do that again."
" Dimitri," she said, half-needingly. She had done it; Garik was gone in her mind, wiped away by that great force. But she had not done that. Great as her power had been in her own mind, it had been no more to the force that had come than an amoeba to a whale. What had happened there, in her mind? What had happened, to cause that great shining in the darkness?
Looking over at Felicia, protectively clutching a small crucifix she'd gotten out of one of her pockets, she thought that maybe she knew. She shook her head, from where she lay on the ground. Time enough for that later. She was free now, and her madness was gone from her like a rent cloak. She looked at Dimitri.
" Dimitri," she said again. He sat up, marveling that his body did not ache or bleed in the million places Garik had torn at it, and grabbed her in a fierce hug. She returned it, glad to have his strength and warmth to cling to.
" I almost lost you," he said, and those simple words, said many times in many languages, summed up everything for both of them.
They held each other. And in the dark of a Makai night, a little light was found.
-See you guys later. Review please!
A big shout-out to reviewers. Hope last chapter explained part of Morrigan's problems to you.
Well, I won't babble on. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 23
Shining in the Dark
Morrigan's Mindscape. No time.
Morrigan's sobs slowed after Dimitri called to her, and finally they stopped. She looked up at him, eyes wet with tears, hair bestraggled, dress in shambles. Her body should have given the impression of something fallen, something wrong, but to Dimitri, she merely gave off an impression of great pain. Of misuse, of a life gone wrong. She looked at him as frightened animals will look at their captors, wary of blows and helpless before them.
Dimitri walked forward, stepping down from the finger of this giant stone hand and walking to her. But as he walked forward, he felt something in front of him. Then, he had the strangest sensation of being *pushed*- of being thrown back. Only keeping his feet with an effort, he tried to walk forward. The force on him grew stronger, became a stone wall, a great fist. He pushed against it anyway, cursing the unknown force in his way futilely. As he continued pushing, he heard chuckling behind him, a laughter he'd never heard before. He whipped around, already moving into a fighting position. Behind him, smiling monstrously, Garik Aleksia stood, wreathed in flame. At the sight of her tormentor, Morrigan let out a small cry and hugged her knees to her tighter, wrapping her wings about herself more. Garik took no notice of her, simply looked at Dimitri and laughed.
" You! What the hell are you doing here?" Dimitri said, settling into the combat pose he'd been taught. " You're dead!"
" Dead," Garik said, chuckling, " but not forgotten. Never forgotten, and so, in this pitiful excuse for a reality that Morrigan calls her mind, I live." The figure waved his arm, indicating the bleak stretches of waves around them. " Rather proves the old saying that we live on forever in memory..."
Dimitri bared his fangs in an age-old gesture of hatred. " Then I end your life right here. I will not let you hurt Morrigan anymore."
" Like you can stop me." Garik rolled his eyes at Dimitri, another age-old gesture.
" I can try," Dimitri said, running forward, cocking his fist back to strike at this monster that had plagued the woman he loved for so long.
The wave of force that hit him picked him up like a rag doll and threw him across the stone hand. He hit with such force that had he been in his physical body, he would have broken all of his bones upon impact. As it was, in his new spiritual form, he merely felt such agony as he had never known. He lay where he was, gasping and panting.
" And now what will you do?" Garik said, almost conversationally, as if this were a topic for discussion over tea. " You can't best me. Why bother fighting? There's no point, no gain."
" Because it's right," Dimitri said, struggling to stand, weariness shaking him and wracking his body. " I will fight you because it is right. No matter what the cost."
" What, has your high and vaunted honor," Garik spoke this last word with disgust and contempt ringing in his voice, now surprisingly clear, sexual lust no longer thickening it, " demanded such a thing of you? Has your great honor," and now Garik's voice picked up, as if anger was twisting it, " become so important? Why bother? There's no gain in it. Your honor will kill you."
" And what of that?" Dimitri asked, his voice gasping with pain, each breath shuddering agony as he put his hands on his knees and struggled to stay up, " So what if honor kills me? Everyone dies. But not everyone truly lives. If, to live, I must die... what does that mean, when measured against that great scale, on which we must all stand and be judged, when all that's right is upheld? If all life mounts to is making a stand when the rain comes pouring down..." Here he stopped, realizing that he was saying something important here, something key, something that went beyond all the trappings of this situation and was true everywhere. Then, slower, he continued on. " If that is the sum and measure of a man, than I will not fail. I love Morrigan. I am a mortal, and the definition of a mortal is weakness. All we do is marred by weakness. I have failed, many a time, when I could have done better. I have failed Morrigan many times recently, when it seemed I did not care, never noticed. Never saw her pain and suffering. And for that, I am sorry." Dimitri looked at Morrigan, small tears pricking the corners of his eyes. God, yes. He had failed her. And it looked like he was about to fail one last time. " But, here, I've been given a chance to try one last time. To try and stand, where before I fell. And I will try." Standing up on shaky legs, supporting himself only through sheer force of will, he said, " Even if it kills me."
" We'll see," Garik said flatly. And for Dimitri, the torment began.
************************************************************************
Morrigan's Thoughts. No time.
Morrigan, in her pain, watched as Dimitri was battered by blow after blow, as fire and wind and crackling thunder struck him again and again, as his standing form jerked with each blow. She felt no emotion, just a sort of numbed cold. Her thoughts slowly turned inward, towards the speech he had made, before this seemingly endless torment began. What kind of speech was that? She had never heard it's like before, save in poetry or writing. And yet... It had come from the mouth of a man, a man she knew and liked. Not loved... such an emotion didn't exist.
Or did it? The vampire even now being torn apart seemed an expression of purest love, of honor, of higher things. That he would stand against someone so much more powerful than him... why? Was his sexual need for her so great that he could not comprehend life without her? Was that it?
Before her, slowly falling, bleeding horribly, Dimitri fell. Garik did not laugh, smile, or do anything at all to show his triumph, merely watched dispassionately as Dimitri fell. Morrigan crawled over to him, some semblance of emotion returning to her as she saw Dimitri's face. It was torn and gashed, great wounds covering his scalp. Already his eyes were fading, the light in them dying.
As she crawled over to him, placing her right hand on his hurt face, he said in a voice already half-dead, " Morrigan."
She looked at him, wondering what he could possibly say at this point. What anyone could say, given time and world enough.
" I'm... sorry," he choked out, breath puffing the small particles of dust that overlay this great stone hand. " So... sorry. Couldn't... fight him."
" You can still escape, you know," Garik said impassionately, gazing down at Dimitri with a look of utmost superiority. " I left the door open. Simply will it so. Escape to your physical form. It's alive and well. You'll be safe there."
Morrigan waited, her hand on Dimitri's head, waiting for him to disappear. There was no point in continued fighting. To encourage him to leave, she said, " It's allright, Dimitri. You'll find another lover."
" No," Dimitri said, and to her surprise his arm moved slowly, feebly, as if to raise himself up again. " I... won't leave your... side. I must... keep trying to...!" Here he drew in a deep pained breath, as part of him shut down and fell apart. Mastering himself with a visible effort, he choked out, " Must keep trying to... help you. No matter... what."
" Dimitri," Morrigan said, and it pierced her heart and supposed great knowledge that maybe, just maybe, the things in life she'd only dreamed about in private (and mocked in public) were real, that maybe there were such things as hope and love and truth and honor... that maybe not everyone fell to the rain.
Above her, Garik's mouth twisted in rage. " Die!" he shouted, a great force rippling out from him, a blow intended to finish Dimitri once and for all. Dimitri gathered his paltry will, to try one last time.
Morrigan screamed, and in that scream was all the defiance of one raging at Fate itself.
Darkness. Total and complete. Dimitri could not see his hand before his battered face. He turned, looking. Seeking.
" You cannot be rid of me, Morrigan!" Garik's voice, roaring out of the darkness. " I am you! I am the hate and the pain and the fear and the loss... I am the all and the nothing!"
" You are wrong!" Morrigan shouted, and her voice suddenly seemed to grow, to strengthen. " You did represent me. For a long time, you were me. But now..." Dimitri felt her mind turn to him, and the strength in it- strength born of madness- shocked him. Here, in the darkness of her own mind, Morrigan's strength was beyond reasoning. That great force turned from him, and he heard her voice again, in the darkness. " I will believe. If nothing else, Dimitri gave me that."
" Believe in what?" Garik's voice, shrieking through the dark. " Belief is for weaklings and fools!"
" Wrong!" Dimitri shouted, surprised he could even speak in this place. " Belief is for the pure and the true. Belief is all there is in this world." Miraculously, blessedly, the pain he had been feeling was lessening, falling from him like dead skin. Or maybe it was more like raindrops that could no longer touch his skin. " Belief, in God, in what is right, in the good in this world... it's all that has ever sustained me, even in those dark times when I thought everything had fallen through. And now, in the dark, I will continue to believe, to hold on."
" And I choose to believe now," Morrigan said, and Dimitri felt some great force gathering, a force of great and infinite strength, matched in that power only by the kindness behind it, the justness of it. " Not in denial of what has happened to me, but because of it. You made me fear."
The force gathered, and the dark brightened, on some great and indeterminately far horizon, brightened into a white beyond all understanding, as Morrigan finished the last words the mind-Garik would ever hear.
" You made me fear... fear to believe. But I will fear no longer!"
The white came, and Dimitri and Morrigan were awash in it. He saw Garik, one last time, and for one shattered moment he thought that Garik's face had changed, shifted into Morrigan's face, became for a moment what it really was- because in that light, no lie could ever hold- the fragments and pieces of Morrigan's own pain, given reality in her madness.
And then...
Darkness.
************************************************************************
Small pond in Aensland territory. Twenty-five seconds after Dimitri touched Morrigan.
Jon and Felicia had stood still, watching Dimitri. It seemed that he had just touched Ebonrule to Morrigan's forehead when her eyes opened, not slowly as if waking, but with a snap, the eyes of someone who has just taken a terrifying plunge and survived. Her breathing, for the last few seconds slow and rhythmic, suddenly changed into the fierce, gasping breath of someone who has just been running. Dimitri, standing calmly until now, suddenly snapped too as well, breathing just as hard as Morrigan. He slumped backwards, not so much sitting as falling, dropping Ebonrule as he fell. The spear's blue light faded as it withdrew from Morrigan's eyes and dropped harmlessly to the ground. Dimitri let out a sigh, then a cynical grin covered his face. Morrigan looked up at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears.
" Morrigan," Dimitri said, starting to laugh and chuckle, " holy shit. I never want to do that again."
" Dimitri," she said, half-needingly. She had done it; Garik was gone in her mind, wiped away by that great force. But she had not done that. Great as her power had been in her own mind, it had been no more to the force that had come than an amoeba to a whale. What had happened there, in her mind? What had happened, to cause that great shining in the darkness?
Looking over at Felicia, protectively clutching a small crucifix she'd gotten out of one of her pockets, she thought that maybe she knew. She shook her head, from where she lay on the ground. Time enough for that later. She was free now, and her madness was gone from her like a rent cloak. She looked at Dimitri.
" Dimitri," she said again. He sat up, marveling that his body did not ache or bleed in the million places Garik had torn at it, and grabbed her in a fierce hug. She returned it, glad to have his strength and warmth to cling to.
" I almost lost you," he said, and those simple words, said many times in many languages, summed up everything for both of them.
They held each other. And in the dark of a Makai night, a little light was found.
-See you guys later. Review please!