It infuriated Aurora.
That after such positive, life-affirming news, after the reminder of why she'd wriggled free of the mire of her past and diligently pursued a future she hadn't always believed in, her fears caught up with her.
The night George had died, she'd been at home, studying Renaissance sculpture while field stripping and cleaning a pistol. She'd eventually heard the news from a colleague of his, a beautiful woman in her late thirties named Zalea who'd started in the business when she'd been younger than Aurora. She was unfailing clever, elementally dangerous, and exceptionally difficult to read.
But that night, she'd shown the most sympathy Aurora had ever seen from her, or would ever see from her. While Zalea didn't necessarily run to friends, she'd respected George Hampden as a colleague and benign competitor. More than she could say for most. The details she'd given Aurora had been sparse, but did the job sufficiently. Being involved with the wrong kind of people was part of the trade, but George just hadn't quite had enough leverage. They'd shot him like a dog, left him unconscious, bleeding out from what could have been a survivable injury.
That, however, was not how the memory was replayed tonight.
Tonight, she was there. Kneeling and immobilized, she was forced to watch, her muscles leaden and her joints like blocks of wood.
She didn't know what George and his eventual killer were talking about. All she could see was her mentor arguing with a young man no more than nineteen, with dark, scarred skin and hard, desperate eyes. When the boy withdrew a pistol, street-bought and poorly maintained, George hardly flinched. He'd faced down meaner threats before, with bigger weapons. She could tell by his face that he was confident he could talk this kid down.
He tried, and, oh, he was good. She still didn't know what he said, all sound coming to her blurred and wilted, just varying tones and ripples. But his face, lightly charming and intensely watchful, told Aurora that George was working his magic, that silver tongue of his performing to turn the tide. She had almost believed, like the street thugs holding her arms, that he'd succeeded.
When the situation devolved, it devolved so quickly, Aurora lost sight of the man who shot George. But when he turned to look at her, cobalt eyes blazing and certain, Aurora nearly retched.
It was Nikolai.
George crumpled, blood pumping through his hand-tailored suit from just under his ribcage. Aurora somehow managed to rip free of what was restraining her, and ran to her mentor. Her father. He was wheezing like he did when his allergies to cottonwood acted up during the summer, and his hand blindly grasped for hers. Just as he said her name, another gunshot whiplashed through the air.
The blinding sunburst of pain, a fatal destruction of her kidney, radiated across her entire core. By the time Aurora managed to press her hand to the wound and push herself upright, George was already gone. She'd been robbed of whatever last thing he'd wanted to tell her.
With her breath heaving in and out of her lungs like a gale, Aurora turned to Nikolai with as much fury as she could muster, her system already edging towards a crash.
"How dare you? How dare you? Nikolai, why?"
The beautiful, tall young Russian stepped closer and knelt, threading his fingers into her hair lovingly.
"Because, moya zolotaya devochka. I love you," he murmured, disturbingly sincere as he left her bleeding on the floor and stood. She shuddered as the pain ripped through her like thick, tearing teeth, made worse by his old endearment – my golden girl. He nodded towards shadowy figures stationed by the door, and they pivoted to escort more people into the room. When the weak light caught them, Aurora's mouth went dry as bone, her breath completely halting in shocked horror.
Chandler and Kendra were ushered into the room like refugees about to be executed. Aurora frantically tried to scramble to her feet, but she couldn't even get to her knees before the pain drove her to the floorboards, the weight of nightmares pressing against her shoulder blades like cold hands. Nikolai stood just out of reach, but close enough for her to see the deadly intent in his sapphire irises. As they caught sight of the situation – Nikolai standing with a gun in his hand, George dead on the floor, and Aurora lying next to him bleeding – both stiffened. Chandler ranged himself in front of his wife, and it was only then that Aurora caught sight of the swaddled bundle in her best friend's arms.
"You don't need to do this," Chandler murmured, reassuring and strong despite the pistol aimed at his breastbone. He held his arms out slightly, more to defend his wife and child than convince Nikolai that he wasn't a threat.
"Please," the father whispered. "Spare them."
Nikolai tilted his head, then shook it.
"No. Nikolai, no!" Aurora screamed, straining against a weight that seemed to pin her to the floor. But it didn't matter. Easily, he pulled the trigger, Chandler fighting the collapse every moment as his lungs flooded with blood, his wife clutching at his arm, going down to her knees beside him. Aurora felt the tears tearing through her chest, the air reeking of harsh cordite and coppery blood. Kendra squeezed her eyes closed, holding her silent baby closer to her chest in instinctive protection as Chandler's eyes closed. Then she straightened her spine, her eyes clear and cool, grief already eating away at the beauty of her face as her husband bled out beside her.
Kendra knew, with the clarity of a survivor, that there would be no escape for herself, or her child. She glanced down at Chandler, his gilded hair flecked with blood, and closed her eyes as tears trailed down her cheeks. When she opened them again, she looked at Aurora, and her gaze softened with an indescribable pain and regret. One last time, her eyelids drifted down, and Kendra curled her body around her babe in an age-old gesture of shielding, one of her palms pressed to her husband's cooling cheeks.
"I'm begging you. For the love of God, don't do this!" But Aurora's anguished cries didn't halt the young man, nor did her frenzied struggled to interfere. Kendra fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and Aurora's tormented sobs filled the air in the shot's echo. Agony and pain welled like oil through her blood, and she glowered up at Nikolai, a man she'd once trusted with her very body, her cheeks wet with tears and blood.
"Why are you doing this?" she rasped. Nikolai checked his clip before answering, apparently satisfied with the remaining number of rounds.
"Oh, Arishka. You asked me to. You asked me to set you free. And that's what I'm doing."
The use of his diminutive from of her old cover, the only name Nikolai had ever known her by, in such a warm, easy voice made Aurora's lungs feel like they were collapsing. He nodded to someone she couldn't see, and she nearly blacked out when Suzaku was dragged into the room.
He took one look at the carnage, and, with a heinous fury lighting his green eyes, lunged for Nikolai with a warrior's snarl. He was faster than the Russian, and stronger, but Nikolai was an expert gunman, managing to twist his wrist enough to gain minor control over its direction. Aurora helplessly screamed as Suzaku went down, his knee shattered by Nikolai's bullet.
The older man whipped the butt of his pistol across Suzaku's jaw, and he hit the ground hard, his skull bouncing against the floor. Aurora dug her fingers into the wood, attempting to drag herself over to him, but could hardly worm her way six inches. Suzaku's eyes fluttered open, meeting hers for the briefest of moments before Nikolai planted a bullet in his brain.
Aurora didn't know if she then screamed, cried, begged. It was a safe assumption, but a vicious vacuum in her brain, in her heart and soul erupted as the fog of death crept over the green of Suzaku's eyes. It felt like her entire body was scorched, burned hollow by a loss she simply couldn't compute. All she could hear was the splash of the tears dripping off her chin against the floor.
Then, another noise penetrated the haze of her destruction.
It was weak, tentative. The soft wail of a baby. Aurora realized that Kendra and Chandler's child was still alive the same exact moment Nikolai did. The rage and misery and helplessness united within her to spark a final fight. She lunged upwards against the weight dragging her down, hooking her arm over Nikolai's, yanking his gun away from the squirming bundle tucked between corpses. The edge of the fabric had fallen away at Kendra's collapse, revealing pale, achingly soft skin and eyes already turning gold, dark hair tipped with chestnut. The baby's cries gained strength, a lusty demand for life that gave Aurora the will for a final bargain.
"No! No, Kolen'ka," she tried, softening her voice after her loud, desperate plea, reaching for the old pet name she'd used to murmur to him as they would drift off to sleep. Aurora tightened her grip on his wrist, swaying on her knees as blood soaked her clothes to her skin, her shoulders bowing under a weight that seemed to press down on her bones. "Leave the child. End me. Set me free. Please." The words staggered out of her, husky and broken with tears. But the way she tilted her head, so that the muzzle of Nikolai's pistol pressed against her temple was fatally eloquent.
Nikolai knelt, rubbing his cheek against hers, smearing the tears. "Alright, krasavitsa. My beautiful girl. Because you asked. Because this is what you wanted."
"Yes," Aurora whispered, desperate to save the infant, the only remnant left of those she held dear, her eyes drifting close at the click of the hammer. In the dark of her mind, in that final moment, the image of Suzaku standing in the sun filled her brain. The last thing she heard was the crying of Kendra and Chandler's baby before Nikolai pulled the trigger.
Aurora awoke like a crashing missile, her eyes flashing open blindly as she silently convulsed. Her breath was racing like she'd just surfaced from being underwater for minutes, her system oxygen-starved and bucking like a horse. She struggled her way free of the sheets, back to that hateful sensation of being trapped with no way to escape. Once she managed to sit up, Aurora pressed her face into her hands, trying to hold back the tidal wave surging up through her throat like vomit, tiny, thready whimpers seeping through the barrier of flesh.
Ban was standing, having been chased off the bed by her thrashing, his ears flat against his skull and eyes dark with worry and fear. She could hardly see him in the gloom, just a worried shadow, whining in time with her shuddering breaths.
The darkness of the night felt like it was pressing down on her, a liquid weight that seeped into her lungs. Eventually, she just couldn't stand it. Standing, tripping and fighting her way out of her room and into the hallway, she stumbled into the door frame with uncharacteristic clumsiness. Her breath was stuttering in half-formed sobs, her fingers ineffectively pressing against her lips in an attempt to silence them. Aurora ran down the hall, swinging around the railing, Ban following her with a terrified trumpeting. She was too fast to notice the way Suzaku's bedroom door was slightly open, the moon glowing on empty sheets.
She nearly broke her neck going down the stairs, twice. Tears streamed down her face, hiccupping and weeping, as she raced through the hallway and into the kitchen. The only thing getting through the haze of pain and fear and helpless anger was a single thought: 'I have to get outside. I can't stay in my own head.'
Suzaku hadn't been able to sleep, not with Kendra's news bouncing around his head. He was so many things, he couldn't pick a single emotion to quantify. Happy, and scared, for Kendra, excited for Aurora, proud for for many different feelings to simply fall asleep to the pounding of them.
So he'd snuck downstairs after Aurora had gone to bed, warming a cup of hot chocolate from the batch Aurora had made from Nutella and milk. He sipped away at it, sketching in his notebook to the faint light of a couple candles she left scattered around the kitchen. He didn't usually notice them – they were just there, on the periphery of his vision. But now, he rather enjoyed it, stroking his pencil over paper to the shifting light of flame.
Since Kendra was on his mind, he drew her. With his limited knowledge, he drew her through the stages of pregnancy, slight and hardly obvious as she was now, all the way to heavy and round, ripe like a pagan goddess. He'd just finished the rough-ins of Kendra holding her new baby in her arms, nuzzling cheek to cheek, looking up with the secret warmth of a mother with her new child, all the mystery and wonder in her world, when Aurora raced past.
Her hair was loose and ragged, inarticulate sobs bleeding from her into the quiet air. Ban trailed after her, as agitated and upset as Suzaku had ever seen the dog. She was banging through the back door and into the gardens before he could even push back from the table.
"Aurora?" he murmured, the surprise leeching the volume from his voice. Standing cautiously, he walked to the door, bracing his hand on the jamb as he slowly leaned forward, catching sight of Aurora just within the faint rim of light spilling from the kitchen. She was facing away from the house, crying into her hands with a soul-wrenching depth. Bannock joined her, his sounds somewhere between mournful howls and frightened cries. Shocked into silence, it took Suzaku a moment to gather himself, to think beyond the pain echoing from the gardens.
He repeated her name, slightly louder this time. Suzaku could see little beyond Aurora's silhouette, but it was apparent the way she struggled to gather herself, swiping her hands along her cheeks before turning to face him, the hand on her jaunty hip and the quirked smile somehow disturbing when paired jarringly with a shattered agony in her eyes. It kept him on the step, unsure of how to help, afraid to make whatever was tearing her apart that much worse.
"Sorry, Suzaku," she tried, her voice cracked and choked. Trying to swallow several times, Aurora made one more attempt to sound normal, to sound fine. "I just, uh, just needed some air. I…" she trailed off, her lips quivering as tears again flooded her eyes, her gaze frantically flicking away from his. Ban had fallen quiet as she'd spoken, but now that she was again losing control of whatever grief was ripping through her, he loosed a howl that sent shivers down Suzaku's spine, lonely and primal and wolf-like.
Tears slipped down her cheeks, and Suzaku had to watch as she physically folded in on herself, her shoulders drawing in, her hands going up to her mouth as if she could somehow staunch this outburst of pain. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore.
"It's cold outside. Why don't you come back in?"
It was cool at best; both of them were perfectly comfortable in t-shirts. Although her feet and the hems of her pants were wet with dew. But it didn't matter. Aurora needed an excuse to come back inside, and it was the best Suzaku could think of.
When she finally looked at him again, for some reason reluctant to meet his gaze, she nodded, the physical movement somehow helping to choke back the tears. As she stumbled in after him, hiccupping and fragile, Suzaku glanced frantically around the kitchen. When nothing leapt out to offer its aid in dealing with a traumatized Aurora, he ended up just gesturing lamely towards the table. Aurora managed a watery gurgle of assent as she all but fell into her usual chair, Suzaku's eyes widening in alarm at the state of her.
Something had happened, something monumental to degrade her to this point. Completely at a loss as to how to deal with the distraught woman, Suzaku slowly sat down across from her, watching as she battled to control the tears still welling in her eyes. She laced her fingers together in front of her, bravely settling her face into neutral lines. Even if he hadn't known her as well as he was starting to, it would have been glaringly apparent that something was extremely wrong.
"…You OK?" he eventually tried, even though the evidence was obviously to the contrary. Despite that, Aurora attempted a smile that came across more pained than reassuring.
"Yep." She then promptly dropped her face into her hands and burst into tears. Shell-shocked by this storm of emotion, Suzaku blinked in a flurry, recoiling slightly at her uninhibited show of pain. Even when he'd lost Euphie or killed Lelouch, he'd never cried so freely and fiercely, always moving through the pain, functioning and speaking despite the hot ball of lead in his chest. But Aurora made no such attempt at control.
She wept like a child, relinquishing herself to the full grip of her grief. Suzaku was somehow both envious and frightened of it, and her. How in the world could he stop such a storm? Should he even try?
He himself never went that far – it scared him, the enormity of the pain waiting to be unleashed, a well inside him that he feared never ended. Finally, at a loss, he quietly stood, neither Aurora or Ban, still crying and pacing, paying him much mind. He headed to the stove and embarked on a task he'd seen countless times but had never actually attempted.
He made Aurora tea.
Ignoring the hairs standing up on the back of his neck at the heart-wrenching sobbing behind him, he focused with a desperate, deadly precision on measuring out the tea leaves from the pretty blue and silver tin and heating the water. As it began to boil, he surreptitiously looked over his shoulder, noticing the way Aurora ineffectively knuckled away her tears. Plucking up the box of tissue from the downstairs bathroom, he deposited it at her elbow. When she made no move to use his offering, Suzaku pursed his lips, utterly at a loss and deeply worried.
The tea kettle shrieked, saving him from agonizing over his uselessness. Pouring the completed drink into one of the mugs she favored, Suzaku gingerly placed it in front of Aurora, wondering if it would be as worthless as the tissues. Sitting quietly and eyeing her more closely than he usually allowed himself to, he was immediately relieved when she scented the tendrils of steam curling into the air. The wisps twirled as she unfolded her hands slowly, the familiar, soothing scent slowing the run-away train of her torment.
Seeing her eyes peeking through her fingers, wet like stones by the sea and rimmed with achingly sad red, Suzaku was nonetheless relieved. For in that expression of question and curiosity, he saw her returning. It was one of Suzaku's own deepest fears – that his agony would overtake and consume him, leaving him insane and wrecked in the aftermath. But Aurora seemed to have avoided that, sniffling and huffing as she slowly, wonderingly, cupped her hands around the mug.
They still shook a little, he saw as she sighed hugely. She took a sip of tea, blew her nose on one of the tissues she seemed to finally notice, and sighed deeply. Suzaku swallowed, eventually voicing his concern.
"Did something happen?" He spoke hesitantly, unsure if the wrong word from him would send her tumbling back into tears. There was something about a female crying that made Suzaku's stomach shrink into a tight golf ball and left him feeling like an inadequate bastard.
"Just a bad dream," Aurora replied, her voice husky from weeping and her eyes boring into her tea like she was grading his brewing skills. She had apparently deemed it passable when she took another deep sip, probably trying to settle her heaving stomach with the herbal brew. Suzaku intimately knew what that felt like; being so hollowed out and haggard, trapped with the feeling that your body was trying to core itself, cut out the rotten parts in a last desperate act of self-preservation, like hacking off a limb pinned under rock. Something in the air – maybe it was Ban's trembling whines, just under auditory levels, more physical than sound. Maybe it was the way tremors still ran across Aurora's muscles like the shudder of tree branches in the wind. Or maybe it was the hollows under her eyes, thick gouges taken from the porcelain of her skin. But Suzaku couldn't quite let it go, no matter how much it killed him to push and prod.
"Do you… want to talk about it?" Part of him wanted her to say no. Vehemently. How could he help her when he couldn't even help himself? It almost felt like he was betraying his own code by asking her to do something he himself couldn't do.
But he wanted to know, wanted to do anything to lessen the inhuman grief and shame in her eyes. It was an old instinct, so ignored that he almost didn't know what it felt like anymore. To sacrifice himself, his feelings and fears, for another.
"No," she said with a small, broken laugh, lacing her fingers tight enough around the mug to leave them bleached sticks of bone. Suzaku blinked a little, surprised at her denial. He'd made the offer with the expectation that she would take it, since she was so adamant about the healing power of sharing your burden.
"Were you sketching?" she asked instead, a subject change that caught Suzaku a little off guard. Aurora had always been open and honest; seeing her deflect so completely was somewhat strange. At first, he wondered if he could steer her back to what was so upsetting, or if he even should. But the faint light of interest in her eyes as she tried to subtly look at Suzaku's sketchbook made him pause.
He didn't display his sketches, ever. Suzaku was aware that Aurora had seen them from time to time just by spending time around him, but she never asked, and he never offered. But… The fingers that had instinctively extended to flip the cover closed hesitated, then gently nudged the sketchbook towards her. If it could help, Suzaku reasoned with himself even as his stomach lurched, then it would be fine.
"Are you sure?" Aurora asked, her gaze widening in surprise. He wasn't really, but the battered look in her eyes and the hoarse edge to her words steeled his resolve. So Suzaku just nodded, and a tremulous smile spread across her face, a weak shadow of her normal expression. It hit Suzaku like a punch to the gut, and he suppressed the urge to shoot out his hand. Not to stop her tentative reach for the sketchbook – to take her hand, to let her know, in a way he couldn't express, that he ached because she'd been hurt, and would do anything he could to chase the ghosts from her eyes.
Carefully, she set her tea aside, away from the book she slid in front of her. It was still open to the sketch of Kendra in the early stages, looking slim and confident and extremely clever with her newly added jacket. Aurora's mouth tilted up a little higher, her eyes a little clearer as she huffed a soft laugh through her nose.
"This is lovely. It's so Kendra – looking like a tough genius out to save the world and kick some ass."
Since that was a simple, accurate summary, Suzaku just smiled a little in response and nodded. Now he understood her long periods of silence when she was trying to drag something out of him. It could be effective, but required patience. He suddenly appreciated how much Aurora had.
One by one, she flipped through the pages, careful to keep her fingers on the edges of the pages and away from the soft graphite. Aurora had praise for his skill and some small, positive reaction for each sketch. Besides occasionally thanking her, Suzaku watched in silence. She laughed out loud at the drawing of Kendra with her arms folded above her slightly rounded stomach, her eyebrows raised imperiously, the expression of chilly temper aimed at the viewer.
"God, been on the receiving end of that look a few times," Aurora chuckled. She hummed softly at the image of Kendra loosely sprawled in an office chair, her face exhausted and soft as she rubbed the side of her big belly, like she was comforting her restless babe after a long day. The second to last picture had taken Suzaku half an hour just to rough in – it was Kendra and Chandler, Kendra heavily pregnant, the two of them cuddled together in a field of rippling meadow grass. Kendra covered Chandler's hands on her belly with her own, their heads tipped together, their lashes lowered.
Aurora sighed, propping her chin on her palm as she gazed at the picture. Suzaku refused to acknowledge that the inspiration for this drawing came from a flash of fantasy he had thought he'd buried with Euphie. He reminded himself to just enjoy Aurora's pleasure in the picture, her disproportionately glowing phrase. She looked at this one for a long time, her fingers slowly running along the edges of the paper like she was controlling the urge to touch the pencil strokes.
Finally, she turned to the last drawing, the rough, hazy sketch of Kendra holding her newborn. Her breath stuttering slightly, Aurora quickly looked away from the picture, her eyes glimmering with fresh tears. Cursing his stupid idea mentally, Suzaku reached out his hand to close the sketchbook, completely at a loss as to what had upset her and desperate to stop the reason.
But Aurora looked back and held out her hand to stop him. With a deep, shuddering breath, she dropped her gaze and looked at the picture. Tears trembled on her lashes and her lips pressed together hard enough to whiten the flesh around them. But she looked. And saw.
With almost exaggerated care, Aurora closed the sketchbook, handing it back to Suzaku like it was encrusted in diamonds.
"It's beautiful," she managed to whisper. Once she'd relinquished the book, Aurora tipped her head back, blinking furiously as she tried to stem the tears. Swallowing like there was mud in her throat, she finally straightened, taking a sip of tea. Suzaku set his sketchpad aside, getting the sense that Aurora was bracing herself for something. She ran her finger along the rim of the mug, shoving her hair away from her face impatiently. Finally, her silvered, red-rimmed eyes rose to his.
"Do you mind if I tell you now?"
Her voice was so quiet, Suzaku thought. He was so used to her power and vibrancy, seeing her shaken and pale was a shock. And an uncertain Aurora felt almost alien. Shrugging off his more solitary inclinations, Suzaku held her gaze, stretching out his hand. He still wanted to take hold of those delicate fingers, but he restrained himself, instead laying his hand on the table in an unspoken, untouched gesture of support that she'd once given him.
"What happened?" he asked quietly.
So that dream was actually pretty disturbing to write. But it definitely served its purpose, and I'll be glad to actually explain what the heck was going on there next chapter. Because this kind of makes you think you know Nikolai. But you really don't know him at all.
Theories are always welcome. I'd love to see what you guys think is going on there.
If I butchered the Russian, please let me know! I will fix it ASAP.
As always, reviews are very much appreciated.
Hope you like it!
Love, Tango