Shahrazád's Ghosts
Chapter 29: Darling (Bella) Part VIII
2416 A.D.
He raised the cup. No time for words now; time for deeds; and with one of her lightning movements Tink got between his lips and the draught, and drained it to the dregs.
"Why, Tink, how dare you drink my medicine?" But she did not answer. Already she was reeling in the air.
"What is the matter with you?" cried Peter, suddenly afraid.
"It was poisoned, Peter," she told him softly; "and now I am going to be dead."
"O Tink, did you drink it to save me?"
"Yes."
"But why, Tink?" Her wings would scarcely carry her now, but in reply she alighted on his shoulder and gave his nose a loving bite. She whispered in his ear "You silly ass," and then, tottering to her chamber, lay down on the bed. His head almost filled the fourth wall of her little room as he knelt near her in distress. Every moment her light was growing fainter; and he knew that if it went out she would be no more.
She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
oooo
Darling did not once look back in the rearview mirror, once the car lurched into motion down the isolated dirt road. She left behind the old Scottish castle and its unsettling fragments of her sire's past existence. Relief warred with anxiety. She could feel Peter's eyes flitting back and forth between the windshield and her face, but she pretended she did not notice. She fiddled with the embroidered hem of her silken dress, and she avoided meeting his eyes.
She still didn't know what she needed to do next.
Darling's entire world was turned over. For 239 years, she had believed Edward had killed her Margaret and Jane, before killing himself. Now, he was absolved of three murders, out of over a thousand, and somehow those three made all the difference to Darling. Those three deaths were the catalyst that propelled her onto her future path and fired the hearths of vengeance in her heart.
But Margaret lived, and she lived well. Her mother died in childbirth. And Edward was killed by his own sister, even if the tools used to dispatch him were originally intended to aid his suicide. If Darling had known, would she have stopped Alice? Could she have stood by and let Alice throw that match?
Probably.
Maybe not.
She wasn't sure anymore.
She had spent so many decades so full of anger, needless anger.
Well, perhaps not so very needless, she considered, when she thought of the memories of that final massacre.
Perhaps he really did need to die.
But she was no longer as certain about her own life choices in light of the fall of her sire.
It would be a long drive before they reached the airport- and an even longer series of flights to reach Borkou. The silence between the pair was as tense and volatile as it had been on their arrival in Scotland. Despite a full day and night of arguing, Peter obstinately refused to see reason and she inwardly seethed – her anger fueled by an immense arsenal of fear.
"I need to return to Neverland," she informed him, late the night before. They had retreated into their own little haven on the moor, separated from the rest of the conscious world around them by an ocean of rolling grass. For a time, she had basked in the safety and comfort of his arms. Then, she spoke the truth she knew he would not like. "I'll come back for you, after."
She could feel his head turn against hers to more clearly see her face and she could feel his voice rumble through his chest as he refused.
"I am going with you to Neverland," he said.
"No, you aren't." She pulled away from him so she could face him. She half-entreated and half-commanded him to see her point of view.
"Yes. I am," he answered, while twisting a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I have my own business to attend to. Khalid shared the location of his mother's burial. I need to finish the task I started."
"Tell me where the body is and I will do it."
"No."
"Fine. Come along, then, but once you have disposed of the body, you must return here."
"You cannot think I would let you out of my sight, now. No. It won't take but half a day to take care of their mother and then we will travel onwards to Neverland. You are coming with me to Zouar and then I'm coming with you to Neverland. There's not an argument you can make that would change my mind."
"Don't you care what fate befalls Bell and Michael? They need you here. What if Demetri returns?"
"Ah, I see. Now I am to worry more over the fate of Bell than my Darling? You honestly believe I would let you face all the forces of Volturi alone?"
She hissed. "Stubborn, pig-headed Pirate. Can't you understand? It is because I will face the Volturi that you must remain here. Aro must never find you or know of your existence."
"But I happen to know a queen with a very powerful shield and her own army. I intend to stay by your side, no matter what you face"
"That kind of naiveté is what would get us both killed, or worse. Even if I did not anticipate Aro's arrival, I still would refuse you to return with me, because of that same army you mistakenly put your trust into. The Braves, the Lost Boys, they are bound to me and their jealousy burns as bright as yours would. They could not bear to let you live, now that you are mine, and how could you bear them? As long as the others exist, you should be jealous. The jealousy would consume you until it destroyed you.
"As long as the mating bond remained unrequited, we could all exist in a fragile harmony. That is now broken. I cannot return with a mate. One of us must grow up and leave Neverland and the other must be consumed by Neverland. It's the way of things. That is how this story always ends."
She tried to temper steel over her thin-as-lace resolve, but she saw his own obstinacy rise in response. His eyes flashed with determination, and he wrapped his arms even tighter around her.
"Perhaps it is time to write a new ending," he whispered. "Or start a different book. Stay. Don't return to Neverland. Let us be off together and we can start a new story, together."
"Just leave?"
"Yes."
"Then what becomes of the Lost Boys and Braves? I simply set them adrift to wander the earth at will? I hand them over to Aro for his own personal use? Do you think, once Aro recognizes I have the capacity to create such an army, that he will ever stop searching for me? I have made sure that I am the only one who knows how to create clones. How long and how far do you think we can run before Aro will find us, and then I would be without my army and the fortifications of Neverland. Can't you see? The only way is for me to end this. I must use my army for what it was created for and only then will we be free to start a new story."
"Fine. Then we return to Neverland, together… and don't you for an instant think I can't find my way back there if you try to sneak off without me," he said, giving her such a penetrating, knowing stare that she nearly caved under the weight of it. As if he could read her mind, he had stumbled upon exactly what she was thinking of next.
"What is the point of any of this if you do not survive?"
"What of you, my Lady?" he said, stressing his pronunciation of her title. "You created us all for this very purpose. Allow me to fulfill my purpose at your side. There is little sense in me staying here if harm were to fall on you. Do you think I could bear it if you did not survive?"
She gave an exasperated sigh and hung her head against her hands. She did not know how she could make him see, how she could make him understand, that it was Peter's very presence that would be her greatest weakness in the coming battle. Like Achilles, whose mother's own hand sought immortality for him by dipping him in the River Styx, that same hand left him vulnerable. When Darling herself was granted immortality, she was given her own Achilles' heel, engraved into her very DNA, and a single arrow could fell her if her carefully hidden weakness was exposed.
Separated by continents, she sought to keep one weakness safe and shielded by secrecy. How could she protect him, if he insisted on following?
Their argument only grew more heated, the longer the night stretched on, and when dawn broke, neither was closer to surrendering to the other. Darling still clung to the vain hope that she could persuade him along the way, but the very strength of his resolve was one trait she loved so deeply about him, and she just hoped they could both survive it.
ooooo
The flight to N'Djamena was followed by a shorter flight to Koro Toro. They drove as far as Zouar and then left the truck outside the highland village. Then, in the cover of darkness, they climbed upwards among the rugged crags of the Tibesti Mountains, until the came to a nearly invisible footpath. This wandered around rocks and crevices, higher and higher, until it brought them to a well-hidden cave, shadowed and cooled by the overhanging rock ledges of the mountains.
"This is it," Peter said, and he motioned to the earthen floor of the cave. Then he began to dig with his hands.
"Why here?" she asked. "I assumed they would have interned her near her husband and son in Zouar."
Peter stopped digging and turned to face her, his hands dark with the brown soil. "Khalid's father found her here, after she escaped from Barzakh. Apparently, she was afraid your sire would follow after her and harm her human family, so she hid herself here for a time. Her husband and his relatives found her here. After her death, her husband buried her here and proceeded to visit her on the night of her death every year that followed, until his own death occurred. Badiyah's sons followed his example. Khalid and Kassim have returned here to this cave every year since to honor her memory. When they discovered your sire had stolen away her body, they were furious and made sure to remedy the desecration."
Darling took in the uneven, hidden cave again and tried to imagine Badiyah here, growing heavier each day with Edward's child, and she shuddered. She had never once wanted to consider what Badiyah had faced, after she escaped. This was made more difficult by each phone call she made to Buffy, but at the time, Darling had assumed she was only growing ill and weak, not that she was facing the burden of a supernatural offspring… of two supernatural offspring.. within her. Darling had avoided thoughts of the human family Badiyah belonged to or how her disappearance, return, and subsequent death would impact them. In her single-minded jealousy – for Edward's affection and for her own survival of Edward's affection - all Darling had wanted was for Badiyah to be gone.
In the end, Badiyah, too, had only been a decoy. A pawn. A meaningless clone in the orchestrations of a man lost to self-imposed madness. If Darling wished for her own fate to matter, then she had to admit to herself that so did Badiyah's.
But Darling wasn't Edward...and she had not been following orders. She had knowingly, willingly caused the death of the former guardian, and her ghost still haunted the cracks and crevices of Darling's mind as much as she had Edward's disintegrating temple.
It was infuriating. Compared to Darling, Badiyah's life had been so very brief. Hardly a flicker of years passed and yet the woman was still remembered. Even through her death, Badiyah gained admiration and devotion for herself. The woman's footsteps sowed adoration wherever she went. She had succeeded in garnering a home, a family, a place to belong, and most of all, love.
She thought of the frail, thin woman with the hair streaked with silver, her tanned skin inscribed with the stories of more years than Darling ever could have survived as a human, and Darling was torn between her unresolved jealousy and admiration. Two hundred and thirty-nine years later and it was Darling who still remembered her and who was now keeping vigil at the woman's grave.
Pebbles and clouds of dust filled the cave as Peter dug with his vampiric strength. It did not take more than a half hour for the chest-deep grave to be unearthed and the female skeleton to be exhumed. Fragments of disintegrating cloth and hair still clung to the corpse and dark tarnish mottled the silver jewelry, but Darling could still recognize the adornments and the woman they had once belonged to.
"Well, that's it, then," Peter said as he dispassionately counted the bones and searched the grave for any lingering remnants of the woman.
As if she were any other Bella. As if she were just a clone.
Darling placed a hand against his chest to stop him from continuing and she shook her head. She did not take her eyes from the bones as she spoke. "Peter, leave," she entreated. "I think… I mean… I will call you back, in a moment. I need to… she needs to… just go, please."
He gave a slow, questioning nod but he complied, making his way a few yards down the trail. She knew he could still hear her, but she did not care. The illusion of privacy was enough to put her more at ease, or as much at ease as she could be, considering where she now found herself.
"Well, Badiyah, we meet again," Darling whispered. Her voice was so low that no human ears could have heard what she said. Darling crouched on the ground, far enough from Badiyah that she was not in danger of coming into contact with any of her limbs, but close enough that she could still whisper into the vanished ears of the lifeless skull stretched out before her. "Do you remember me? Did you ever think we would come upon each other, as we are now? Buffy always wished to speak to you again. I would have run the other way."
She let herself collapsed onto the floor of the cave, her back leaning against the wall of the cave, and she looked out of the cave mouth to the rocks beyond and she wrapped her arms around her knees.
"Yet, here I am, seeking you out." Darling bit her lip between her teeth and tried to sort through her jumbled thoughts. "Did you hear Edward, after? Did you listen to the hours and days he spent talking to you, after? You must hear me, now, then. Listen, carefully, for I do not think I will have another chance to speak to you in future."
Darling let her eyes fall upon the hollow eyes of the skull and imagined they were again bright and brown and full of expression and then Darling frowned. She cast a stone at it. The pebble bounced harmlessly off the skull and fell onto the ground behind.
"You foolish, foolish woman!" She cried out. "He could never had become what he was, without you. You helped him become that. You fed into his madness and let him drink our lives away. You made him what he was."
She grabbed a larger stone and began to pound it against the skull, pulverizing the bones like seeds in a mortar and pestle.
"Why didn't you leave sooner? Why didn't you leave him as soon as you saw the first Bella die? Why didn't you refuse to create any others? Why didn't you burn the entire place to the ground yourself and murder him in his cursed sleep? Why did you insist on staying, on feeding his insatiable appetite, on loving him, straight into his madness?"
Darling paused her destruction of the bones to gaze at the bits of jewelry and cloth that still remained. She knew why Badiyah failed to leave and she hated her all the more for it. She hated her because she understood the answer that the bones could never speak out loud.
" Did you ever once think your fate was in punishment for all the suffering the Others experienced for you? Did you ever feel their accusations on your skin, in your ears, after they were gone?
"I hate you. I've hated you for so long because you had what I wanted. You were loved. You were cherished. You were mourned. Your life and death mattered.
"You have had your revenge for my part in your death. My guilt has eaten me alive and that should please you… Only it wouldn't. You were too good for such petty satisfaction. Too self-sacrificing, too noble, too.. too…everything I am not. You would not rejoice in revenge any more than you would rejoice in my death in exchange for yours. The worst of it is you would have done just as I did and given my life in exchange for yours, if I hadn't gotten to you first, or at least I think you would. Maybe, for Buffy, you would have chosen death.
"We were, all of us, cursed with the same fated ends. Would it have been better to have no life at all? Would it have been better for us to die before we knew any other way, like the others did? How did you live with yourself, after so many of us were given as an offering to the desert?
"I know… because you saw the crimson happiness in his eyes after and you knew that the offering pleased him and that was all that mattered. His happiness was worth it all and so we kept his eyes as red as scarlet and we poured wine down his throat until he burst with his delight… and if he had woken, we would have done it all again.
"What I want to know is how did you leave him? How could you tear yourself away? He was your entire world, and still you left! You lived on your own and died on your own and you did not regret it. You went on to live a new life, despite the blood your hands were stained with."
Darling threw her stone against the opposite wall and it burst into pebbles and bits of sand from the strength of the impact. Then she cradled her head on her knees, her wracking sobs causing her entire frame to shake with her cries.
"Badiyah, what am I to do now? What am I to live for? What is it that is worth dying for? For so long, all I wanted was to avenge Margaret and now I find she her alive and well and Edward innocent of at least some sins and my own hands stained with more of my own than I ever imagined. How do I seek my own life, apart from Edward and his ghost? Tell me how you did, so I may do likewise!"
Darling looked down upon the body of the woman who had given her life for her husband and children, one last time, and then she closed her eyes. She lingered there, allowing the apparitions of the past to speak into her present, then she opened her eyes.
She knew what she would have to do... at least, she thought she did.
"Peter, you can finish," she called out as she rose to her feet. She straightened out the folds of her rose-colored dress and then she left the cave. She did not want to see what happened next or have to watch till the very end.
She could hear Peter, though. His Pirate song echoed through the cave walls, rich and deep and mournful, as he ended the last of the human Bellas. It gave her a sense of satisfaction to think that it was Peter who officiated the final rites of each of her sisters, giving their souls the honored end their Creator and Destroyer never bothered to give them. Now, perhaps, they could all finally find their rest.
Peter returned to her sometime later, watching as the sun began to rise over the jagged peaks around them and pushed grey shadows into ever-lengthening inkblots on the rocks around her. He didn't speak but he gently reached for her and placed his arms around her shoulders. They stayed as they were until the sun reached its pinnacle in the sky overhead.
"We should go," Darling finally said. She stood to her feet and she wrapped her head and dress in a dark veil to keep off the relentless rays of the sun. Peter nodded and pulled the hood of his cloak over his own head until only his eyes were visible. Then they made their way back to their truck.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Peter said, while they walked.
"No," she answered, harsher than she meant to. When she saw him stiffen, she relented and softened her tone. "Not yet, I mean. Someday, I will, but not now."
He nodded. She could see the myriad of words he wished to say wash across his face like a bucket of water poured from a ladder, but he bit them back and allowed them to continue in silence. His reticence was a greater comfort to her in that moment than an entire symphony of platitudes and expressions of affection would have been and she gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek in thanks.
"Well, let's be off, then," he said. "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
She forced a small smile in response and placed her hand in his while he started the car.
It wasn't until they reached the entrance of Neverland that they realized that something was wrong. Terribly and horribly wrong.
Oooo
Author's Note: Well, this is shorter than I intended and we didn't get as far as I thought, but it feels like a good stopping point so we'll split the chapter here.
