10. Finale
AN: Inspiration lost is eventually regained. I'm gonna try and get back into the habit of updating regularly – and feel free to provide me with a prompt, scenario, pairing, ect. to help me build up steam. I hope this update will do for now, however. 333 I love the summer!
The gash in her side is blossoming like a morning carnation across the stretcher, and the liquid blood is pooling in every crease and dip in the taut canvas, but it seems to her like the most natural thing in the world. Arra can't tell how long it's been since she fell, (the hours pass like wind-blown leaves, and the minutes at the pace of a turtle) but she knows that this is karma - karma for doubting and condemning the boy and all the others that came before him. She always has been notoriously prideful, she realizes with an icy dropping sensation, and it is a bitter pill to swallow on her deathbed; but if her hubris has taught her anything, it is that what is put before her she will manage, no matter how great the challenge. Now, to drift off into whatever lies beyond seems like second nature to her, and oh, how she longs to allow instinct to pull her into the comfortable dark.
But she has been disregarding her obligations – terrible but understandable, as the sensations ebb away and pour from her sullied flesh. She'd waved the medics off long ago, catching the hopelessness in their eyes and being well-aware of the impossible depth of the gash. Silently, she thanks her inborn, feminine predilection for empathy, for simply knowing these things when they need to be known. Strong as Arra is (or pretends to be, a voice in her head accuses) the thought of looking down and seeing her intestines spilling out of the yawning red brings nausea to her and a new wave of pain as her muscles clench in response. She is also aware, through the anxious and sometimes spiteful looks cast towards her, that they are eager for her to hurry up and die – and she would, too, but she has a final obligation to attend to, and he is beside her, holding her hands in his own tight enough to crush human bones to pieces.
Larten has been perched beside her since they entered the infirmary, watching her like a hawk and barring her from the edge each time she closes in on the proverbial abyss. It longs to swallow her up and pull her away; he pulls her back, obstinate and hardheaded as always. He will not allow her to pass into the darkness.
Their partnership is a part of history, fallen to dust and obliterated from current affairs – and someday it will not even be history, because they will have left nothing to posterity but a frayed hole in a record that is nearly nothing but the absence of material.
His words have melted into obscurity for her ears and voice has transformed into white noise, which vaguely reminds her of nightingales singing and taking flight; she would love to drift away on such a beautiful key but, she considers, it is cruel not to listen to his desperate pleas. So she concentrates and defies the reluctant synapses, forcing logic and coherency to return to her slowing mind.
" – can beat this, Arra, I have seen you overcome worse. I am certain you can."
His hands squeeze hers tighter – his knuckles are white and bloodless - and it hurts, but now is neither the time nor the place to consider this, as she is well aware. He is still desperate for her to live, even while they both know her strength has reached an end. So she does her very best to sit up, feeling the gape of frayed flesh and it's solid, icy screaming hurt somewhere in the back of her mind. Startled, Larten has reached around her and grabbed her other shoulder, mercifully taking the weight from the wound. Her head lolls back on his shoulder and she takes a moment to savor just how right this seems – it has been years, after all.
Her voice is quiet and rasping, like raw timber stroked against the grain.
"I'm dying, Larten."
It registers somewhere in her darkening mind that he has rested his chin on her shoulder and buried his face in the filthy fabric of her shirt, and she can feel dampness of tears through the cloth. He pulls away straight-faced and stoic - as though he has not briefly lapsed into grief and shown her weakness – until the lines on his face crease suddenly in an expression of effortful deliberation. Arra takes advantage of the pause and pulls herself up a few inches, levering the weight onto her hips with an airless gasp of pain; but she can see his face better, and that is all that matters to her. The way his eyes are shining, shaded with thought, it might have been him doing the dying and her left to watch – but that would be far too cliché for her enjoyment… you weren't supposed to enjoy death, anyhow. He speaks dryly, emotionlessly, and she can tell that everything is seething, searing, and burning in waves inside him. The man's eyes, with their customary dirty olive losing their shine, tell her how terribly he is hurting. Larten speaks softly and sternly, like a child who, no matter how hard he tries, can simply not understand.
"You cannot."
She almost wants to laugh – but, then, that's probably the blood loss making her feel so hysterical. To laugh at him – inconsolable and confused, more pitiable than she has ever seen– would be an unforgivable sin. She wonders if, had the roles been reversed, she would have suffered as terribly as he is now; something makes her doubt it, but she leaves the subject in the shadows that have been dogging her grating breaths and narrowing line of sight.
"I'm afraid it isn't optional."
The truth is unpleasant, but she is sure he will handle it, will recover, and will return to the world unharmed; that is the nature of life, and he is strong. She feels life running like a river, a stream, a gently spouting faucet beneath yellowing compresses and wrappings. But Larten is insistent, squeezing her shoulders in a surprisingly gentle hug. He is determined, but it will do him little good.
"You cannot."
He seems unable to understand just how easy death could be, how easy it was. But, she knows, eventually he will learn. So she summons up a few dredges of strength from her reserves and lifts her uninjured arm around his shoulders in a lethargic gesture of comfort, tilts up her chin to meet his ear and whispers, "I must."