I do not own Gargoyles, or any of the characters which appeared in the cartoon. All original characters seen here were created by me, but everyone else is not. This writing is for pleasure, not for profit...Please don't sue.
The Nightmares Saga Chapter 5: "Reality Leaves Its Mark "
She stands in a familiar but dark room. Her parents and her love stand before her, with angered and malicious looks on their faces.
"What! You are pregnant? You carry that swine's child in your womb?"
"Yes—no, I mean, he impregnated me…" She starts, with the tears beginning to fall fast.
"You whore! You mated with him, and now his seed grows within you." His once gentle voice resonates with vicious anger.
"No! It isn't like that. Please! He injected me with something, and now I'm pregnant. Please…I love you. This was completely against my will. You must believe me! Dear God, why won't you believe me?" She pleads..
"You lie! To think that I could trust and actually care for a whore like you…Be gone from my sight! You are no longer a part of this clan, nor will you remain our confidante. LEAVE!" Her love points to a door that suddenly appears before them. She looks to the door, and when she turns back to him, her love disappears.
"What? My daughter, is this true?" Her mother asked in amazement.
"Yes, mom, but please let me explain…"
"You are a disgrace to our family," Her father yells. "…to carry the child of a criminal! You go against all that our family represents!"
She goes to her parents with her hands outstretched to hold them, perhaps in apology, when they both take two steps backwards.
"We wash our hands of you and this demon child! Be gone from our sight!" Her parents shout in one voice.
"It isn't this child's fault! Please don't blame my baby! Please!"
"We don't; we place the blame squarely on your shoulders for allowing this to happen. You have besmirched our family name, and for that, you will never be forgiven…"
They disappear, leaving her devastated, and alone; she is now truly alone.
The darkness dissolves slowly.
She wakes.
Elisa awoke sobbing, in the throes of this new nightmare. She was facing the reality of being pregnant and, more terrifyingly, carrying Tony Dracon's child. The dream, however, had revealed her darkest fear; she feared her loved ones would reject her and this child if they ever found out of his or her existence. Of course, this completely depended on if she would ever break free from Dracon's compound. Perhaps she would remain his prisoner in this house and this foreign country for the rest of her days. This thought caused her eyes to release more tears.
Elisa wiped her eyes with the top bed sheet and sat up in the bed. She propped the pillows behind her, and looked around her room. There were new books on the two bookshelves near the window that she had not seen before; no doubt they were placed there while she slept that night. She could see that the cover of the book on the top of the pile had a baby on the front. She immediately recognized the book as one of those guides to pregnancy she had seen the last time she was at the bookstore in Manhattan. Dracon wanted her prepared, and since she had so much free time on her hands while she was confined to this room, she could read these books and become familiar with all the ups and downs of motherhood.
Elisa could not truly believe this was happening to her. She touched her stomach over the covers of the bed, and tried to make the idea of being a mother stick in her head. It still felt as if it were a nightmare.
She had a rising sense of nausea, no doubt morning sickness combined with the images her previous nightmares had left her. She rose from her bed and hurried to the small bathroom that was located on the other side of the room. Falling to her knees in front of the toilet, she lifted the toilet seat and nearly dunked her head in the bowl, allowing the bile and last night's soup to come up. Her hair, once thick and flowing, was now a tangled and thin mess, so Elisa didn't care one bit that it was not being held away from the toilet. The colour escaped from her face, leaving her normally tanned skin a paler shade of olive. As she continued to vomit, she could make out the sound of the door to her room opening and footsteps approaching.
Tony, she thought. He's come to gloat. Sure enough, it was Tony, wearing his usual expensive suit and shined shoes. He walked towards the bathroom after seeing that Elisa was not in bed as usual. Stopping at the door, which Elisa had left wide open in her haste to get to the toilet, Dracon whistled as he played with the two diamond rings he had on his fingers.
"Enjoying the pleasures of pregnancy already, eh?"
Elisa turned a little to look into his eyes, and perhaps spit at him, but she was weakened from the vomiting, so she could only glare at him with contempt.
"Elisa, you look like a truck ran you over, backed up, and ran over you again. I want my wife looking better than that when I come and see her…"
Elisa turned again to the toilet, as another round of vomit was threatening to come out. After a few seconds of dry heaving, keeping her eyes on the toilet bowl in front of her, she said, "Fuck you, Tony. You are going to burn in hell for what you are doing to me." Feeling somewhat confident, she kicked her leg out behind her, making contact with Tony's shin. He let out a loud scream, and dropped to his knees in pain. Elisa rose to her feet shakily and attempted to run for it, when she felt his hand on her ankle, squeezing tightly, and yanking backwards on it, causing her to fall to the ground. Luckily, she had her hands break her fall forward. Dracon got up and crouched over Elisa where she fell on the floor just outside the bathroom door. He seized her hair harshly, and pulled it back so that her head was above the ground in a painful angle. He lowered his mouth to her ear.
"You fucking bitch…you're lucky that you're pregnant, because otherwise I would have kicked your stomach until you were coughing blood. I'm going to have to teach you a lesson in manners."
He pulled her hair back further until her throat was constricted enough to make it hard for her to breathe. He continued.
"Lesson one, bitch: respect your husband."
With those words, he used his free hand to turn the diamond ring on his hand around and slapped Elisa hard on one cheek, causing her old cheek wound from when she was first brought to the compound to reopen and begin bleeding again, as well as adding to the cuts. He maintained his hold on her hair, and he pulled back again.
"Lesson two: violence against your husband will only cause more pain for you."
Dracon slapped the other side of her face with considerably more force than the first slap had been. Her eye immediately hurt her terribly, and she felt a trickle of blood beginning from her lip and new cuts caused by the sharp point of the diamond ring he had turned towards the palm of his hand. At this injury, Elisa began to cry, but could not sob because of the awkward position her head and neck were in. She could see his face from the corner of her eye. There was something sinister and terrifying about the way he looked at her, and the way his lip curled as he began speaking again.
"And the final lesson, Wifey, don't fucking swear at your husband!" Dracon yelled, pulling her hair just a little more then letting go of it without warning, causing Elisa's face to hit the hard tiled floor. She felt bruises and cuts on her cheeks and suspected at least one of her eyes would be black by the end of the night.
Dracon rose, straightened his suit, and looked down at Elisa, who was still reeling from the slaps he had bestowed upon her.
"Follow those rules, and you just might survive life with me for the next 70 years." With that, he stepped over her and walked out of the room.
Elisa slowly rose from the floor, and walked to the bathroom mirror to inspect the damage done to her face.
Just as she had suspected, one of her eyes were swollen and would be darkened in a few minutes. The cuts on her cheeks were caused by Dracon's rings on either hand, and stung as Elisa tried to clean them with water. While her hands were under the cool running water, she took a palm-full and ran it through her tangled hair, cleansing it as best she could without shampoo. Since she was not given any sorts of bandages or gauze pads, she had to hold toilet tissue to the cuts until they stopped bleeding. Holding the tissue to one cheek, she walked to the bed and sat upon it, facing the window.
She felt the wedding band that had been thrust onto her left ring finger a little over a month ago. It was smooth and gold. The band was thick and made her think that Tony had actually spent a bit of money on it. She rotated the ring once on her finger. She hated feeling it on her finger, but Tony had once warned that if she took it off, she would have her finger broken. She didn't want to take that risk over a ring that meant nothing to her anyways.
Her body ached, not only from Dracon's visit, but from heaving just seconds earlier. She rubbed her stomach with one hand and her neck with the other hand. Feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, she felt tears forming again in her eyes.
iDamn these hormones making me emotional/ishe thought. iI never get like this. I also never let someone manhandle me like that. He probably would have broken a rib or two if I wasn't pregnant. This baby is killing me, yet his or her existance also saving me. /i
She raised her nightgown until her stomach was bared. It was still fit and flat. She knew that within two months, there would be a little bulge there to indicate that she was pregnant. She again put her hand to her stomach. Looking down at her stomach, she spoke aloud.
"I swear to you, Little One, that I will protect you, as you protected me tonight. No more tricks. I will make nice with Dracon for you. My reason for living is now to ensure you are safe and taken care of. I promise you, my child, on my own life."
As she said her final words before pulling the pregnancy guide from the bookshelf, a single tear rolled down her cheek.
The district of Feijao Baixo, Sao Miguel, 7:27pm
Diva was tired after a night of roaming the countryside. She followed her nose to some freshly baked bread and had finally reached her destination. She was still carrying the communicator in her mouth since it intrigued her so that it blinked and made wooorrrr-ing noises. The owner of the bakery was just closing his door for the lunchtime when he spotted the Jack Russell terrier looking desperately at the store.
"Queres um pouco de pão, cãozinho? Penso que sim!" (iDo you want some bread? I think you do/i) The kind baker said, reopening his door, and allowing the small dog to enter. Diva dropped the communicator onto the narrow sidewalk and followed the baker inside the shop.
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, 4:27pm
Owen Burnett, also known as Puck the fey, was diligently filing some paperwork for his boss, David Xanatos, when a beeping noise alarmed him. Looking around his office for the source of the beeping, he noticed one of the many screens on the wall adjacent to his desk had a blinking light on it. This particular screen showed a world map on it, and the red flashing point was flashing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Surprised to see the radars picking up one of the communicators in the ocean, Owen decided to speak with Xanatos. Perhaps he had sent one of his employees to Europe without informing him. He picked up the telephone receiver on his desk and dialled.
"Mr. Xanatos, there is something I think you should see."
"What is it, Owen?" Xanatos replied.
"One of our communicators has just come online, and our systems are showing its' location as the archipelago of the Azores in the Atlantic."
"I don't recall sending anyone—"Xanatos had a sudden thought. "I'll be right there."
"You were right, sir. That is Detective Maza's communicator whose signal our radars are picking up from Portugal. But why hasn't it worked for four weeks now?" Owen stated calmly. Xanatos nodded, deep in thought.
"Regardless, Owen, Goliath and the others must be notified immediately. They will probably be very anxious to go to this island to check it out. Have the jet prepared. We will leave shortly after sunset." Xanatos turned to walk away when Owen spoke.
"Right away, sir, but what if Detective Maza is not with the communicator or worse yet, what if the communicator is attached to a corpse?"
Xanatos shook his head, attempting to rid his mind of that gruesome image.
"Let's focus on getting to Portugal. The rest we'll have to figure out when we get there."
That said, Xanatos continued walking out of the room, and began his short journey to the parapets where Goliath slept in stone to await his awakening.
Roars of awakening gargoyles could be heard ringing in the night. Goliath was the first to awaken. Turning to jump off of his resting place, he saw Xanatos standing there. Curious, Goliath walked to him.
"Xanatos, what brings you here, waiting for me to wake?"
Xanatos' face showed his excitement for the prospective development in the disappearance of the detective, though it was not for sure that it was a good development. Xanatos believed this would be a great opportunity to prove his trustworthiness to Goliath and the clan if he helped in bringing Elisa home. "I have news, Goliath. Detective Maza's communicator just came back online about three hours ago. The signal is coming from an island of the Azores called Sao Miguel. I have my private jet ready to fly us over there. It's a 5 hour flight. If we leave right now, we will have some time to check things out before you sleep again. It's a 5 hour time difference."
Goliath's eyes widened at the news.
"This is most welcome news! We will go there and bring her home! Let us go now, then!" He could not hold his excitement and relief, but Xanatos had to brace him for what they could find.
"Goliath, don't get your hopes up. This is a lead, for sure, but this doesn't necessarily mean that we will find her where we find the communicator. For all we know, she might already be…"
Xanatos stopped himself for fear of Goliath's wrath at the idea of Elisa being dead. It was a wise choice, because Goliath understood what Xanatos' pause was about, and roared loudly, summoning the others to join him on the top parapet.
"NO! She is NOT dead! We will bring her home!" He shouted to Xanatos. The other gargoyles began coming to the top parapet. Angela was the first at her father's side.
"Father, what is the matter?" Angela looked at Xanatos. "Why is father so upset"
Xanatos looked apologetic.
"I'm sorry for implying that she is…dead, Goliath. I hope that I am wrong. I just want you to realise the seriousness of the situation."
Lexington, Broadway, Brooklyn and Hudson flew up to meet Goliath and Angela. Bronx could be heard running up the stairs to get to the top as well.
"What's going on, Goliath?" Lexington asked cautiously.
"Yes, lad, what is all the yellin' 'bout?" Hudson asked.
Goliath looked over his clan, took in a deep breath and began.
"Xanatos says that Elisa's communicator is now emitting a signal. It appears she is in Portugal. We will leave at once to bring her home." Goliath said, ignoring what Xanatos had just said about getting his hopes up. As his words were spoken, the clan began demonstrating their relief, and speaking all at once. Xanatos stood for a few seconds, seeing how the news was affecting the clan, knowing that if he were to speak to contradict their hope that she was safe, he would have a very silent or very loud 5 hour flight. He decided to talk to them after they landed on Sao Miguel.
"If everyone would follow me, we have a plane to catch."