Just wanted to say thanks to Risika Kiisu Seto and Jeanniebird for the reviews! Here's the next chapter.
Chapter 3
It's still raining when he returns. He hesitates on opening the door due to the morning's incident, even despite its resolution. However, he has to force himself to; the rain is coming down much more heavily than it was the previous day, and if he doesn't get inside soon, the wet chill would surely get to him.
He focuses on the man as soon as he steps in, eyes constantly flitting around, searching for what else has changed. You're being a fool, he tells himself, walking around to the other end of the table. This man is dead. Dead. You ended his life. You were there. You watched his soul bleed out through his throat and wrists onto the ground. After all, of all the things in life, death is the only one that was truly permanent.
Eyes still shut, mouth still closed. As far as he can see, everything else about the body is as it was before he went to sleep the previous night, except for the head position. The blood has started to form a brown crust around the wounds, which is only to be expected – he has done this countless times. He know what he should and shouldn't expect.
He traces his claws up the side of the man's neck and face, carving little valleys in the once-flushed skin, now tight and cold to the touch. Dead three days, dead forever – a journey nobody returns from. He runs his fingers down the rest of the man's face, then strokes his head slowly. He looks almost like a sleeping child – soft innocence left unguarded, holding a different kind of beauty. His closed eyes look so serene…
Sabretooth pulls up a chair from the corner of the room and sits, one leg crossed over the other and hands clasped in his lap. He stares into the body's eyes through the closed lids, absently tapping his foot to the steady rhythm of the rain. Nothing about the body changed while he sits there…and the calm drumming of the rain draws him to sleep before anything does.
A flash of lightning and the following rumble of thunder both heard very clearly and felt through the floor shock him from his sleep – he scrambles in his chair, startled, and keeps his hands on his knees with his chest rising and falling in raucous gasps of breath. It wasn't just the thunder that startled him though, for as soon as he opened his eyes, he was met with a sight that was not right. In the liquid shadows of the room, black lowlighted by darker shades of black, near the muddied charcoal of the body's hair, two glassy grayed marbles stare back into his eyes.
No. No, no, no. There's no way for the body's eyes to have opened while he slept, against gravity like that – there must be a reason for this, as there was one for the other nights. Perhaps...perhaps he had accidentally opened those eyes when he removed his hand from its face. That has to be it – nothing else would make sense. Even though those eyes were closed when he drifted off, he opened them before he sat down…if he tells himself this enough times then maybe – just maybe – he'll believe it.
The lamp he turned on is off, that's the second thing he notices. It just burned out, he tells himself, and relief washes over his blackened heart when he tries it and finds this is true. He's almost afraid to turn back around for fear of finding something else different, like one of the man's arms being raised, or his head, or to find him standing up or gone, even. He forces himself, though, and breathes another relieved sigh when it turns out that he's just being paranoid, that there really is nothing to worry about this time.
There's still a cold chill tickling along his spine and all his limbs while he stares into those empty, silent, yet familiar eyes – his natural feeling of being watched, now more powerful than usual, has a reason behind it. He draws his fingers down over those eyes and closes them once more before leaving and locking the door tight behind him. He pulls his coat – previously having snagged it on his way out – tighter around him, shivering against both the rain and the still-present nervous fear in his heartbeats.
Soo, there's the newest chapter! The next one is most likely going to be extremely long, unless I decide to be evil and place a cliffhanger in there somewhere. Like always, please review!
~Nara