A plea began inside of her; the only problem was she didn’t know what she was pleading for at the moment… a true death to free her from this relentless pain, or eternal life.
The heat pierced her heart; her non-beating heart. She’d never experienced anything like this, never expected to hear the silence of the vital organ that had once pulsated so fluidly within her. She hadn’t realized how much of a constant part of her it had been until she was blanketed by the heavy cloak of silence that followed its cessation.
Tendrils of heat brushed against the organ as gentle and quiet as a butterfly’s wings. The heat retreated for a moment before surging into it once more. It slipped inside and began to sluggishly spread throughout. She didn’t know what the heat was, but she pictured Braith’s blood flowing in to fill the spaces that her blood had left behind. Pictured it filling her cells, rehydrating them with his power; his life. She tried to keep that image in her mind; it was far more pleasant than the uncertainty threatening to consume her.
The heat filled her deadened heart again; her fingers flickered as she felt a heaving inside her chest before it seeped out again. Hope swelled within her. She had moved, she’d moved! It was only a small bit of progress but at least it was something different, it was something more than this hideous nothing.
The heat began to increase; her body was on fire as it prickled through her extremities. She lurched, her body jerked as warmth slammed into her heart once more, but it didn’t beat again and she knew that it would remain still forever. The tingling, prickling sensation in her fingers and toes started to worsen as it spread into her torso. A scream welled inside of her, but her mouth wouldn’t open to release the agony that was consuming her from the inside out.
Braith’s fingers brushed her face as he leaned over her. Her skin felt as if it had been scrubbed away to expose her nerve endings. His silky touch was more than she could stand. She couldn’t cringe away from the contact though, couldn’t pull away, as her body still wasn’t hers. It was this fleshy shell that had become her coffin.
“Aria?”
Just when she thought she couldn’t take anymore, her body broke free of its paralysis. Braith leaned over her as she opened her mouth and the scream she had been unable to release for so long, ripped free of her in an unending echo that left her throat ravaged and her body drained as she fell lifelessly back to the bed.
Braith reached for her but she moved away from him, unable to bear his touch on her brutalized skin. She curled into the fetal position, but even that was almost too much to bear. Her body shook and shivered, she was hot, she was cold, she was dying, she was living, and she was doing it all too fast. Braith’s hand fell back to his side; hopelessness filled his gaze as her teeth began to chatter.
She yearned to tell him that she would be alright, but she wasn’t going to lie, she wasn’t alright, and the mere idea of moving was more than she could handle right now. Every muscle in her body screamed, her bones felt as if they were being shattered into a million little pieces. Everything inside of her felt as if it were changing, and somehow rearranging.
What had she done?
The thought was fleeting. It didn’t matter, it was done. There was no turning back, and no matter how badly this hurt, she wouldn’t have changed it. She forced herself to open her hand toward him. Seeming to sense that she couldn’t stand much of his touch, he simply placed two of his fingers lightly into her palm. The small connection helped to ease her slightly. She kept her eyes focused on him as she struggled to simply survive her own death.
***
“You look like shit.”
Braith could barely lift his head to look at Jack. He felt beaten and drained in ways he hadn’t thought possible. He hated himself, he hated this whole awful mess, and he wished he’d never agreed to this. She’d told him it was his decision to make, and though he’d been terrified she would die, petrified of losing her, there had been another part so entirely enthralled with the prospect of having her by his side forever that he’d talked himself into believing that this would be ok, that they could get through this.
Now, he knew that he’d been completely wrong. He’d do anything to take this from her, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even touch her without causing her to moan or scream. He’d seen a lot of wretchedness and death in his extensive life, but he’d never experienced anything like this. Even the one attempt at the change he’d witnessed was nothing compared to this, but then that person hadn’t been Aria, and he hadn’t cared about what they’d endured, or whether they would survive.
Aria was the strongest person he knew, and she was falling apart before him, swamped within the nightmare he’d created for her. He’d never hated himself more, he didn’t have a clue how to make it better, and at the moment he would have willingly offered up his own life to go back in time and decide against doing this. What had he been thinking?
He hadn’t, and now she was the one paying for his lack of good judgment. Ashby had once said that eventually he would end up changing her no matter what, that he wouldn’t be able to resist. He didn’t believe that was true, he believed he could have refrained from doing so. However, he couldn’t deny the fact that when she’d agreed to this, a part of him, the darkest and most primeval part had thrilled at the prospect and wouldn’t have been stopped by anything, or anyone.
It was a piece of himself he didn’t like, but over the past few months he’d come to accept that there was no denying it, or the fact that the person that brought it out, and kept it under control the most, was Aria.
“How bad is it Braith?”
He tiredly ran a hand through his sweaty, tangled hair. His muscles were twisted from being tensed at her side all night, he was exhausted from lack of sleep, and yet it should be worse, he should be even more miserable. It was nothing compared to what she was going through. He was barely able to hold Jack’s gaze for more than a moment. “Bad, real bad.”
Xavier stood behind Jack, his head bowed and his hands enfolded in his voluminous cloak. Jack placed a jug of blood on the kitchen table. “Did you get any sleep?”
Braith shook his head. “No.”
“Did she?”
“She’s sleeping now, but not well.”
“You should take a break. Why don’t you let us watch over her while you take a shower, maybe a nap?”
“No.”
“Braith…”