Thank you for the follows and the favs! I apologise in advance though because instead of light-hearted fluff this chapter is nothing but Hurt/Comfort.
Shadows of the night
inspired by: River of Tears by BrunuhVille
time frame: set in my Bright are the Stars universe (Meta!Nine AU), post Journey's Beginning
She wakes up screaming. His name. Again and again. Not for the first time.
Her haunted cries are forlorn little things, she knows. Strangled, yet piercing in their intensity they writhe and twist whilst in her head she sees him burn.
Like a growling beast the flames rise high. They sing and hiss as they devour him greedily; the angry blaze a living creature that has no care for her or anyone. It's leaving her behind, alone and frightened.
He holds on tight while she is falling. Into nothingness, the never-ending Dark. Her hands reach out but no matter what she tries, they cannot touch him anymore. The Valiant Child is dying, right before his eyes and there is nothing she can do.
He apologises, asks for her forgiveness as he takes away the pain - a light so brilliant, so consuming, eating her alive. She knows what it will do to him and so she pleads, desperately, begs for him to stay - without words and in any language she has learned he speaks. But he is fading.
Her voice is but a mournful prayer now, tearing her away from the cruel vision.
She comes to slowly – such a painful process. Somewhere in her mind she notices her cheeks are wet, her throat is sore and hurts. She gasps.
Irritated muscles bend and flex her joints, her hands grasp blindly at anything that is close enough to find. For an endless second she is lost, shaking violently while inside her heart beats frantically in its cage.
The drum is much like rolling thunder in her veins.
Too often, too often has she walked in dreams like that; too often woken to a world in which they were the truth.
She is tired, broken - far beyond repair. Too far gone for any of her kin to ease the pain. Her family is beaten, helpless because without him she is lonely and it takes her breath away to know that she is living in this life. Confined to a universe that has never even known his name.
But not tonight. Not this time.
She winces.
His arms are wrapped around her upper body. He is cradling her and it's pure instinct that she budges- burying a pallid face in his chest as if it is a haven. With his own head bowed he has tucked her golden one beneath his chin, as safely as he can. Her mind might well be tricking her, but she believes to hear him whisper.
"Just a dream, Rose. Am here. It's okay." The words are gentle on her shivering skin, his fear is silent. So unlike her own. "M here. It's alright, I'm not leavin' you."
There is a tremor in the way he speaks, a sound that she should recognise but doesn't. Still, she trusts that this is real.
He is there. She can feel him next to her – alive and breathing, and she holds on to that if to nothing else.
"No' again." It's a promise, rashly made but he is trembling as well and she knows he will do anything to keep his word. Tear down planets and entire suns, if he must (although sometimes that thought worries her).
Needing no command her head moves in a minute nod as she curls up against his solid frame, seeks his warmth; hides in his presence while around them time flows steadily.
She hates those dreams, genuinely hates them because once they were her past; wants to run away because somewhere deep inside she is scared that they might also be her future.
She is certain that at last her heart would truly shatter if she were to lose him one more time.
Tonight, however, he is with her and she clings to that, stays in his embrace until her mind succumbs to sleep and her exhaustion.
He is with her – a guard and a protector – lying down so close to her she can feel him still, and somehow this is all she needs to keep the shadows of the night at bay. All that she could ask for, for tomorrow is another day. With him.
And that is all, she thinks, that matters.