AN: I'm still alive, if anyone's still interested in this story.
Sleep had never come easily to Akavi. Over the years, she'd grown accustomed to the half-conscious gray blur into which she descended every night. In part, she was thankful for it. She could still remember her dreams from when she was a child. Night terrors, the doctors had called them. She could remember seeing their faces, empty eyes, clawing fingers. And their screams.
At the time, she couldn't have realized how her future would be shaped around these terrifying visions.
She'd never stopped thanking Thurisaz for taking those nightmares away.
As it were, sleep was determined to avoid her tonight. She lay in bed for hours without so much as dozing. Still, her eyelids never grew heavy. Her thoughts were simply too scrambled to allow her any rest. Her mind was buzzing with Michael and the Druid war and the Council and Silvyn…
At 2 am. it started snowing. Fluffy white flakes drifting slowly and quietly down over her windows. Still, she couldn't sleep.
She sat up, crossing her legs beneath her, and switched on the bedside lamp. A smile lit her face. She'd always liked snow. It was as quiet as death, and though she knew how cliché it sounded for her to compare them like that, she clung to it nevertheless. She loved both. They gave her peace, or as much peace as she could get.
Her thoughts turned to Michael, and she wished they hadn't. She hated not being able to control her thought pattern, but Thorn loved to do that to her, usually as often as possible. She let the sound of his voice play inside her head and sighed.
She'd given up fighting a long time ago. Fighting whatever it was that drove her to do whatever it wished. Perhaps that was because her master was by nature a neutral rune. It had slowly squeezed the fight out of her, the urge to find something other than the future that lay in this bloody world. Hell, she knew she'd been born to kill. She knew this was where she most belonged. This was what she did best.
But she could still remember the look on Kalai's face the day the Council made the decision. The day the clan of Perthro chose Akavi to be the clan's Thurisaz. The day Kalai lost all hope that Akavi would grow up to be a priestess, like herself.
In every sense, Akavi was the perfect choice, abandoned by her mother shortly after birth and left in old Kalai's care, to grow in power and cunning under the High Priestess's watch. She'd grown up hating her family and clinging to the old beliefs, isolated from the world's corruption and shunned by most of the clan.
But that hadn't stopped Kalai from hoping. And those hopes had been dashed. Akavi could still remember seeing the tears on old Kalai's face as she was led to the Council to receive the Curse.
She hadn't had a very large family. This had also played a part in everything. Shortly after her father had raped her mother, the end result of which would ultimately produce Akavi herself, the Perthroi clan had cursed him with sterility and misfortune. Her mother had moved to the east coast to live out her life in quiet solitude with her oldest son, Matthias, the child of her union with a man long dead. Then there were Akavi's two uncles, brothers of her mother, who each had a child and a wife. Also, the matter of Akavi's three living grandparents.
Her task had been relatively easy, unlike Michael's, whose family was relatively large and widely dispersed.
Where had she been going with this?
Oh, yes, the fact that for the greater part of her adolescence, she'd constantly questioned the futility of the blood-stained life which she lived. Kalai, whom Akavi loved more than anything, had been forced to watch Akavi grow up to murder twelve people in cold blood, despite the fact that some of them had been murdered indirectly - that is, without physical aid from Akavi.
Akavi had never asked for Thurisaz. But she had accepted it, and grown to love it. And Kalai could do nothing to protect her all-but-biological daughter from the most destructive of runes. For Perthro, the rune of mystery and the future, had no power against the rune of protection and willpower.
And so, Michael's voice played in her head, and she allowed it to. It gave her chills, and she liked them, but she didn't like that she liked them. And she didn't like the feeling she was suddenly overwhelmed by. She knew the feel of a gaze as if it were a physical thing that she probably could have identified in the dark. She was being watched.
Her gaze found the steady read glow of the alarm clock. Four in the morning. Her limbs ached from sitting still for so long. Snow still fell in blanketing silence outside of the windows.
"You treat me as if I'm a common victim, Michael," she murmured, turning her head only slightly to regard the door to the walk-in closet, hidden by shadow. "Easy to sneak up on, easier to dispatch? I feel hurt." Dropping his cover, Michael strode out of the blackness and up to the bed. He leaned over her and glared darkly at her.
"How is it that you thwart me at every turn?" He demanded. "You know where I am. What I'm doing. How I'm doing it. Why?" Akavi allowed a small grin to escape her blank expression.
"Would you like to sit down? You must have been waiting outside for hours." She felt his anger pour over her like hot air rushing out of a cracked oven. It made her smile widen. She wasn't going to give him all the answers he demanded just because he demanded them. He was beginning to realize that, he to whom nothing had ever been denied. And he was pissed.
"Woman, why do you taunt me so?" He hissed, lunging forward in a blur of speed to grab her shoulders with his iron grip. His hands were ice cold. She could feel it through her sleeves. The look in his eyes reminded her of the center of a fire, a frigid blue, deceiving in its innocence. His teeth were bared. He was furious.
Akavi felt a thrill of adrenaline enter her bloodstream. Her limbs came to life. Her senses doubled in sharpness. His hands grew colder on her arms.
"Are you in my head?" He was asking. "Conjured by Thorn to motivate or infuriate me? To make me suffer? How do you know my thoughts? How do you know who I am?" His grip on her had strengthened with each question until she couldn't help but wince from the pain.
"If you break me in half, I will be unable to answer any of your questions," she said through gritted teeth.
"If I let you live, you won't answer them anyway," he retorted. "What do I have to lose?" She choked out a laugh. She reached out her hands and started pushing against his chest.
"You don't want to kill me, Michael. You just want to reclaim your dominance." Either her words or her touch were convincing him to back off, and his grip was beginning to lessen. She suddenly became aware of the smooth, warm, unyielding muscles of his chest beneath her hands. She pushed the thought aside. Quickly.
"I'll give you some answers," she relented, giving him a gentle push and settling back against her headboard. "No more random attacking, though. I don't take kindly to that sort of thing in my own home." He watched her steadily for a few more moments, and then gave the slightest of nods, settling down at the foot of the bed, eyes fixed upon her.
"Two questions," she stated. "Choose wisely." For a moment, he looked like he wanted to stand back up, or demand more, or just pout. Then his eyes narrowed.
"You say we are linked by Thorn. Why is it that I never knew of your existence?" Akavi sighed.
"Two reasons: because I never made nearly as much of a fuss over it as you did, and because you never bothered to try."
"So I'm careless?" She grinned. Was he baiting her? Looking for an excuse to kill her?
"How many times have you been shot? Stabbed? Killed?" He glowered at her.
"Don't answer a question with a question," he muttered.
"But in your answer, you find my answer. You are careless with your life and your work because you choose to be, because you know the consequences and will face them. I am not, by any means, a cautious person. But our type of death is an experience I'd rather not suffer through more times than are completely necessary." She tilted her head at him. "In a way, that makes you stronger than me."
"In a brawns versus brains way, perhaps." Was that self-degradation she was hearing? From Michael Myers?
"Death is not something that bodily strength can prepare us for. Muscles are not something that can help us withstand it." On a sudden whim, an unspoken urge, Akavi pushed up from her sitting position and moved closer to him. "You spent over a decade staring at a wall, Michael. That you can endure death says something about you that I have not yet said. You have a superior mental strength that surpasses even mine. Perhaps, even the Council's."
"Shut up, Akavi," Michael snapped. "No matter what you say, it doesn't change the fact that I'm here. I came here. I came crawling back like a dejected puppy." Akavi frowned. She hadn't thought of it like that. Was he really so spiteful towards himself that he might think every action to be an action of submission or defeat?
Why had he said that? Why had he voiced such an unconfident opinion to her? Didn't he distrust her? Didn't he hate her? Didn't he want to escape her?
"I don't have time to coddle you, Michael," she growled, "so I'll make this quick; I don't think you realize the power you hold over me, or them. And you're too busy questioning your ego - or lack thereof - to fully comprehend the magnitude of what you really are." She was getting the faint impression of déjà vu. "Haven't I already told you that you're Thurisaz's most favored child? Do you understand what that means, or do you just like hearing me talk?"
"Don't bait me, Akavi." Twice now, he'd said her name. This was a new development. It had never happened before. Was he warning her?
"Then tell me why you think you're here." Silence. There was a gentle wind outside, sending swirls of white over the balcony. The snow was at least three inches thick by now. Michael was watching her still, eyes intensely focused on whatever it was he saw when he looked at her.
His lips twisted into a smirk. "Maybe I'm here to collect my prize," he said softly.
Anger unfurled within her. She felt her pulse speed up instantly. Her glare came back full force.
"For your sake, you'd better not be talking about Thurisaz's gift," she growled. Suddenly, the foot or so that separated them seemed mere inches. His smirk became a maniacal grin.
"You know what Thurisaz meant. Are you in denial, Akavi?" She balled her hands into fists, head pounding. Her anger was consuming her. How dare he bring that up? How dare he think of her as his possession, his trinket!
Then, without warning, he lunged for her.