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Heartbeats (1c/1d)
Date: 2012-07-15 06:36 pm (UTC)Another gunshot; she flinches. The distant repercussions of a bullet leaving a chamber remind her far too much of the one that found its way into her head. She lay in the dark then, too; every regret she’d ever had playing on a constant loop as she tightrope-walked the line of unconscious.
Her head feels far too light. Once, when she was very young, her father told her that people float away when they die. ‘Up into the sky,’ he said. God no longer exists to her, but the concept of being swept away by an unseen force suddenly doesn’t seem as improbable as it once did.
The thought ties her stomach into knots. Burying her face in the Legionary’s chest, she wraps her arms around his torso as if it will somehow secure her to the world.
Deep in the recesses of her mind, a tiny voice is articulating its disgust. ‘Pathetic,’ it cries, and she quashes it, because she is drowning. Asphyxiation’s thin tendrils are slowly constricting her lungs, and all the oxygen in the world won’t silence the phantoms encircling her head like Nightstalkers around a Brahmin calf.
“Sic erit; haeserunt tenues in corde sagittae,” Vulpes murmurs into the Courier’s hair, rubbing slow, soothing circles into her back. It’s an old trick he learned growing up; one that his tribe used to calm a spooked Brahmin. Grown men would hold out their hands and coo double Dutch until the fear dissipated from the animal’s eyes. It seems to work: little-by-little, her breathing is evening out.
Inhaling, he is met with the faint tang of apples and peppermint and a hundred other things that don’t fit into his decidedly square world. He supposes that the little round peg called Wren doesn’t either; yet she is currently nestled in his arms regardless.
He holds her until she stops shaking.
-
‘Sanctuary’ is the term to float into her mind. Of course it’s wrong: she knows she shouldn’t feel safe when the hands offering comfort could just as easily snap her neck. But it’s difficult to see him as a heartless murderer when she can hear the organ beating steadily under the thin material of his shirt.
Soft Latin settles around her shoulders: an intangible guardian against the bony fingers of silence. Most of the meaning eludes her – something about horses and bulls – but the mellifluous flow of the syllables is reassuring nonetheless.
Warmth is creeping into her bones; the threads loosening their grip and slowly unwinding. She can breathe again.
-
Eventually, he pulls away. The Courier starts at the sudden movement, before fixing him with a questioning stare. Slender fingers brush dark hair out of brown eyes too dark and too large for the pale face they inhabit. “Are you going to go back to your own bed now?”
It is a few seconds before she replies.
“Do I have to?” Her tone is light; as if they are two acquaintances conversing about the weather.
“Wren, I can’t feel my arm.”
“I’m still cold,” she says simply, pressing a palm to his bicep to prove her point. After a few moments, he relents with a sigh.
“Fine. Bring your bedroll over; they aren’t made for two.”
A small noise of acknowledgement is made before she rolls onto her back. Several seconds pass without action.
“Wren.”
“I’m working up the energy to move.”
The corners of his lips twitch into an almost imperceptible smile before he gives her a friendly – if a little harder than strictly necessary – shove in the right direction.
“I’m going, I’m going!” She grimaces as she stands; joints audibly cracking and popping as she stretches. “Bloody freezing,” she mutters, stalking across the room.
“I thought you said it was cold in Scotland,” Vulpes remarks, propping himself up on an elbow.
“It is,” she shifts the mattress across the earthen floor “–but we usually had more than a paper-thin blanket at night.”