Gargoyles: the Resurrection

Nightingale, Part III

Somewhere Outside of Space And Time

She had floated in the darkness for an age, curled around herself with all of her limbs, floating as if she'd been in the shell once again. Time had no meaning here, nor did space. There was only the numbing cold that leached away her desires, her memories, her very will. At first she had fought it, fought it with fang and talon, struggling to remember. Struggling to feel. Struggling to not give in and float in the numbing void around her. She didn't know how long she'd kept it up – a millennium or a split second in time. But eventually, given enough time, the Abyss would creep into the hearts of those who had come here and steal away, one breath at a time, that which made them alive.

She supposed it really didn't matter, really. All time was one here. And she no longer cared enough to want to know how long she'd held ground from the Abyss. She was content enough, after a fashion, to float along lost in her own maudlin and fading thoughts. Occasionally, images swirled murkily at her, blurred and skewed memories, she supposed. People and places she'd known before this. But what did it matter to her anymore? The images had once had the power to snap her out of the white noise for short periods. As time went on, the images, the memories began to lose their potency, began to lose their power over her. Now, it was all but destroyed.

She let the hazy and dream-like blurs of pastel colors drift past her mind's eye, turning her attention back to nothing in particular. She was bothered by her lethargy on some abstract level, but she knew she wasn't going anywhere. Perhaps this is why her kind generally didn't believe in a life after death. This was no life. She wasn't even sure she was dead. This… this was a grey, devoid, colorless, bleak and depressing place. If she still had been capable of concern, she'd be worried about her sanity by now.

The images whirled softly in the back of her mind. Occasionally, she twitched. Just slightly, but still more than she had moved in quite a long time. Or perhaps it was a short time. It was hard to measure that which had no meaning, after all.

The quiet whirling in the back of her mind moved forward to be an irritating buzzing sound, like the high-pitched whine of a mosquito looking for somewhere to land and bite. She didn't know where that analogy came from. Irritably, she flicked an ear, and a fine powder of dust sifted slowly from the tip of her lobe to sparkle in thin air and dissipate slowly.

The feeling grew stronger, and with it grew her irritation. She raised her head from her knees and looked around. She saw nothing but what she had been seeing since she had gotten here. It was mind-breaking, the void… But now something was sparkling in the distance … if space and distance had relevance. The last remnants of curiosity blazed to life in her heart, and she squinted, trying to determine what it was.

She didn't have to wait long, before the glittering, sparkling thing was upon

her. A half-remembered feeling of confusion and wariness built in her as she tried to back away from the shimmering sash of light that wrapped around her. Distantly, she heard a voice chanting, rising and falling in volume. The confusion and wariness built up into all-out panic as the dust-mote light tightened around her, and began pulling her from her cold, listless, emotionless and painless existence into a world of agony and doubt, fear and incomprehension.

She screamed as she felt something tear free from her, and sheets of white-hot pain washed over her in waves. Her vision went scarlet, then white, then black. By the time it returned, she was being shoved unmercifully into something that was familiar in shape, but dim and uncomfortable, crowded, with not enough room for her to fit. She struggled and fought against the imprisoning, shrieking with a rediscovered fury and all the strength she could muster. But it wasn't enough. The entrance to the prison was slammed shut, locked, and bound with the strongest bands of iron and magical protections. She railed against it all, beating at the exit with her fists

and feet, screaming madly, but it was to no avail.

Something from the dark reached up and drew her down, down into the blackest reaches of the pit. She had time for one more shriek before she faded out of

consciousness.

oOoOoOo

Castle Wyvern, Aerie Building

August 21, 1997 AD

"I'm telling you, it was her!"

Lexington patted his arm and smiled patronizingly. "Suuuure. Of course it was, Brook," he agreed sarcastically, turning back to his computer screen. "Your dead girlfriend, a thousand years gravel and dust, suddenly showing up in the middle of a Manhattan fire. Forgive me for doubting you. Next you'll be telling me you've flown her and have eggs on the way. She's dead, Brooklyn. Gravel, dust, rock. You couldn't even grit an icy walkway with her remains she's so dead."

Brooklyn saw red, and yowled in fury. He had his small brother yanked out of the chair and up by the neck against the wall before he was more than half-aware he'd moved. His eyes blazed with white rage, and his voice snarled from between gritted teeth. "Don't you ever," punctuating the word with a slam against the wall, "ever talk about her like that again!"

Lexington scrabbled at the wall with his feet, hands trying desperately to pry Brooklyn's claws from his throat. He snarled back, own eyes flashing white, and raked his foot claws down Brooklyn's thigh. Blood welled, and the red gargoyle howled in pain, releasing his hold on his smaller sibling. Lexington dropped coughing and wheezing to all fours, rubbing at his throat and glaring at Brooklyn.

"Jesus, Brook! What's gotten into you?"

Brooklyn, feeling nothing but the pain from the sluggishly-bleeding talon rips in his thigh and still in the grip of anger, lashed out with a claw that came within a hairsbreadth of slicing through Lexington. His return strike was aborted when a huge, dusk-colored fist caught his wrist in an unforgiving grip. Goliath's voice, laced through with supreme irritation, rumbled into his ears.

"Enough!"

With an ease of motion, he threw Brooklyn to the other side of the room, and he ricocheted off the wall with a grunt. Catching himself before he was dumped face first onto Xanatos' disgustingly plush, thousand-dollar-a-foot carpet, he rubbed at the back of his head and glared.

Lexington was still on all fours, massaging his throat, slightly behind and to the right of Goliath. The clan leader was eyeing Brooklyn in a manner that crushed his anger and snapped him back to his senses. With deliberate carefulness, he folded his wings about him, and crossed his arms.

"Now," Goliath said in a tone that brooked no argument, "explain to me what this was all about."

Brooklyn slumped down onto the ground, wings and tail and shoulders drooping.

Haltingly, he began to explain to Goliath what -- who -- he had seen earlier. He meant only to mention the new gargoyle who bore an eerie resemblance to his dead rookery sister, but everything came spilling out. The stone dream, the fire, his inner turmoil, and how confused, how frightened, the female gargoyle had been.

Goliath listened without interruption, then set a hand on his second's shoulder as Brooklyn trailed off his story, then broke down and wept like a hatchling.

oOoOoOo

Manhattan, Lower East Side

Later

She shivered, and drew herself tighter, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, her head bowed miserably. The wind hissed at her, carrying the smell of burning chemicals and soot to her nose, and even a few buildings away, she could feel the heat roiling from the flames that the people in the streets were trying so desperately to put out.

What happened? Did I... do that? I... can't remember...What do I remember?

She remembered pain, and voices. Sharp objects poking her here and there. A

confusing babble of images that flickered through her mind faster even than she could follow even with her thoughts.

"Subject 001-Z4. Motor functions normal, brain activity optimal. Call up the training programs, and give it another session."

She remembered glass shattering, and a whoosh like water gushing over smooth rocks. An inhuman howl of pain and rage, maybe from her throat, maybe from another's. A doubled fist raised high above her before smashing through a panel of some sort. Sparks flying into the air before the thing she'd broken exploded with a rush of air that threw her back against the wall, with enough force that it knocked the wind out of her. More explosions from farther away, and the panicked yells her keen hearing picked up effortlessly. Clawing her way through a wall to find herself in a maze of hallways, terror overtaking her as she blindly smashed through walls and doors until she found a window. Wings snapping to either side and the sweet breeze that washed over her.

"Help me! Oh Jesus Christ, someone help me!"

A man cut off from escape by a solid wall of flame inside a building whose roof had already partially collapsed, his clothing starting to smoulder. His screams of hopelessness and despair. The overwhelming urge to protect him. Dropping into the flames and tossing him over her shoulder. Clawing up the wall and unfurling her wings to catch the winds the buildings were tossing back and forth between themselves. Flying the man to safety, with him gibbering in terror in her ear. Depositing him on the roof of a building several hundred yards away from the fire. Three-quarters of the way back to the disaster zone before she even thought about what she was doing.

Over and over again, she mumbled something about living to protect, all the while curling in on herself, her wings coming around to cover her, pressed into the shadows. She shivered, and muttered, and then a voice cut into her ramblings. "No...You're dead..."

She leapt to her feet, and pressed herself against the brick of the outcropping behind her. A monster had appeared, directly in front of her. Red skin, blazing eyes and devils horns against a shock of white hair. A long tail, and demon wings, tipped with tiny hands.

No! Stay away!

It was on her lips to scream her thought, when something started niggling at the back of her head. Recognition, of a sort. Familiarity. An eerie sense of timelessness and an out-of-place sensation that crept along the base of her spine and ran through her wings. She came away from the wall, tentatively reaching out a tri-fingered hand, and shakily whispered the name that had come with the recognition. "Ruadh?"

He breathed something and jerked forward. Agony crashed down on her, spiking through her head and flaring like fire along all her nerve endings. She shrieked for him to get away and ran blindly towards the edge of the roof, her throbbing head held in both hands. She leapt to the small half-wall on the brink of the fifteen-story drop to the streets below, and jumped. Her wings dragged at the air, until they caught, and she whipped around on the current into an alley. Her speed more than she could handle, she crashed into a Dumpster, and the lid banged shut. The noise was lost, even to her, in the general babble of chaos and confusion from the fire.

She huddled in there for what seemed like forever, before the tingle in the base of her neck and along her wing struts. Again a sense of familiarity rose in her, but this one was instinct, not memory. She knew, somehow, she had to get to high ground, a safe place, before the sun rose. Biting back sobs, she pushed against the lid of the metal box, and drove her claws into the side of the building.

Her higher thought processes shut down, she flew by instinct, racing the sun to find the highest, most defensible spot she could in the amount of time she had. Landing on a church steeple, she curled into a recessed section of the roof, and brought her over and around her. It was almost like she was in the egg again, oddly comforting. As she huddled there, waiting for the sun to rise, her thoughts turned to trying to sort out the confusion. A silent tear slid down her cheek as she tried again and again to figure out who she was and why she was here, and that's when the sun took her.

When the first light of dawn reached the steeple of St. Michael the Archangel's church a moment later, it was to reveal another statue amid the dozens of gargoyles and grotesques that decorated the roof.