DISCLAIMER : No matter what I want to think I do not own the Heralds or Valdemar, not even a single Companion. Even though I like to pretend.
She was dying. She could feel it, inside her, invading her. Her body was already a corpse, thin, pale, and light. She would have described it as a husk, she had read that somewhere. It fitted. A husk, like corn, something to throw away once you reached the core. The only stuff worth keeping. Here was the difference, though; she had no core. It had been taken from her, brutally removed, cauterized with a hot poker. Taken with a hot poker.
Her core, the only thing that mattered. She was dark inside, pale out. It made sense, in a weird way. The white sheets were as white as her uniform. She didn't want the uniform, she wanted black. White was painful, the reminder of her core, of her emptiness. Blue...
The healer had had blue eyes, and she had screamed and screamed, wept and wept until she had slammed him against the wall, and he had left. The last of her strength spent on destroying the hint of love. Nothing to hold her back, nothing.
She never saw him again, but tears crept down her face at the memories he had stirred in her. Staring into the intelligent eyes, falling and swimming, empty and full, that moment of life that defied explanation, that paradox. That hated love, that left her a husk.
She wanted to go, she didn't want anything but release. The one thing they refused to give her. She was visited, off and on, by any number of people, faces she had long ago allowed to blur together, become one all-consuming mass of hate. They hated her for being what she was, her looks, her emptiness. They kept her in a special room, one to stop the others from Feeling the despair that wracked her body.
When she felt at all.
White walls. White flanks. She whimpered, the room was hot, like a poker, burning into white flesh, felt through the unbreakable bond, burning her mind, her body, her soul, but leaving no marks. Nothing the healers could see.
There were voices in the hallway.
"I don't know how long she has."
"We-ell, she's in perfect physical health..."
"She's a shell."
She wasn't as shell. A shell was something one left willingly. She was a husk, one that was cast aside once her love was torn from her. The one she had raised from foal to adulthood, that had grown with her, been with her since that important paradox, oxymoron.
She willed herself not to breath, to let go of anything that held her back. She almost let go of her shields, but the moment that she even showed a sign of weakness, he was back, trying to get in, the 'help' her. She saw the blue eyes, his and hers, his kind and concerned, and a collage of hers. A buffet. Happy, laughing, even just content. Then they rushed up, pain filled, hurting, betrayed... her throat clogged up, but she didn't have any liquid in her to cry with. No salt water to trail down her cheeks in morning, only white cloth in a white room. She couldn't breath and welcomed it, her end. Waited for.
They rushed into the room, trying to calm her, seeing what she was doing, green against the white. They sat her up, laid hands on her, tried to calm her.
She screamed, brutal croaks that ripped her throat, sending blood like spit from her mouth, her ugly words hitting the healers like physical blows. She struggled weakly against strong, cold hands, hands that felt cool to her fevered body, that dried out husk.
She stopped struggling and willed herself away, until she was gone...
Her body a husk once more.
