life in death was she. [nel + murdoch]

[Nel Sayo]

the nightmare Life-in-Death was she, who thicks man's blood with cold. --coleridge 40th Day of Spring, 510 A.V. In dreams... Fingers clawed into the dirt, gripping, trying to grasp at handfuls of earth to slow their progress. Legs thrashed across the ground as they dragged her; knees scraped and she tried to pry the fist from her hair, to no avail. Frantic, she grabbed a rock from the mud, lurching to smash it into the nearest assailant she could reach. Someone smacked it from her frozen fingers and kicked her. Tears blurred her vision; tears of pain and anguish, the world gone a-tilt through shadows and light. Her limbs ached, every inch of her skin burned with that particular, scorching marriage of shame and agony, bones creaking beneath beaten muscles. Clumps of her long, dark hair littered the road as they jerked her, from toes to knees to her belly, towing her along like a sack of turnips. In the distance, the warm tangerine flicker of firelight rose. A stench clogged her throat, spreading through her sinuses and thickening beneath her eyes, the spiky scent of burnt things. Skin, clothes, garbage. The pyre into which a hundred thousand dead hopes had been tossed to flare and ash, centuries worth of kindling piled high enough to breathe against the sky. Soot caught on a spry winter wind, painting across her bare flesh in streaks of black to compliment the blue and violet of fresh bruises; she knew, dimly, that she should have been cold. Snow churned through the dirt. The light of the bonfire kissed the world with an ocher tone, its rising warmth a blanket of acrid smoke and pressing bodies as the townsfolk gathered to watch. Thick knuckles yielded their grip on her hair, a brief second of relief, and then hands were hauling her bodily into the air. Shouts, cat-calls, the rumble of voices underneath the pop and wheeze of the fire. Accusations and cheers, a few gasps swallowed as quickly as they were realized. Nobody came forward to intervene, though she wept and begged, her voice raw for screaming. She couldn't fight back; she hadn't the strength even to flail. Felt sharply the spill of her own blood thickening and icing stiffly against her thighs, her face, as the wind snapped it to freezing. They raised her, and she could see the stars. When they hurled her into the flames, she let out a bone-chilling wail that shook them all through the veins as it died, swallowed by the crackle and roar of the Slag Heap as it consumed her.

[Murdoch]

40th Day of Spring, 510 A.V.
In waking...

"Nel!" Doc had her by the shoulders, had dragged her upright when he couldn't shake her awake.

It was just a few minutes before dawn, not quite light outside so much as it was less dark. Murdoch had been sleeping rather peacefully, his head pillowed on Nel's shoulder as it usually was, an arm twined around her waist and his hand resting on the smooth, cool scales that traversed the length of her thigh. That was before she'd started thrashing about, first whimpering and then outright weeping as some nightmare assaulted her.

He'd tried waking her gently, afraid she might lash out - as he did when the worst of the nightmares assaulted him. They'd fought about that once. Well, they'd fought about nearly everything once. These last three weeks had been tumultuous and terrifying in turns, and some of their problems had been worked out, and some had just been ignored in favor of falling into bed together. It was easier to understand each other there, easier to forget the myriad ways they weren't compatible when their bodies so easily connected.

Nel's intuition had been mostly silent the last fortnight, and he'd almost forgotten that it even existed, pushing it to the back of his thoughts with a great many others concerning the little Konti who was slowly carving out a place for herself in his life. But when a touch, and then a shake, and then a harder shake failed to bring her out of it, and she lay in his arms sobbing and crying out for help, he began to really panic.

When she let out that horrible, heart-wrenching wail, as if the gods themselves were flaying her alive, he bolted across the room and grabbed up the bucket with what was left of yesterday's water. He grabbed her arm with one hand and hauled her back into a sitting position, and then just dashed the water in her face with the other, dropping the bucket to the floor immediately as he steadied her. "Nel!" he said again, and found his breath freezing for a moment with worry and fear.

[Nel Sayo]

She came awake with a jerk, coughing, either on the water or imaginary smoke.

And she was still fighting, as consciousness burst through the nightmare; a thrash of her legs to kick at him and the desperate flail of her arms to push him away. She gulped down mouthfuls of air, her lungs greedy for it, and as her mind wound down to wakefulness, she began to understand where and who she was, and that she was safe.

Her hands went to her face first, cheeks reddened and tear-stained, then to her hair, slick and wet from the water. Eyes round and wide, pale and blue, blinked furiously; she touched her arms, her thighs. Checked, no bruises. No blood. Everything hurt, though, an unrelenting ache lived in her bones like she'd pounded them into a form they did not naturally fit, and they were groaning against each other.

The drowsy gray of pre-dawn light creeping into the room shook her completely out of the dream, and her shoulders sank a little. And she began to tremble, both as her mind quaked in shock and her body recognized the water and the cool air of the morning.

"I'm -- soaking wet," she mumbled, looking up at Murdoch, at last, clarity in her eyes, though fear remained, skirting the edges of her expression.

[Murdoch]

He let her fight him, took her kicks without fighting back, though she got a glancing shot off to his ribs that made him wince. When she finally looked up at him, though, there was genuine concern in his eyes - which might have been surprising a few weeks ago. He reached up to smooth her hair away from her face, uncaring of the mess he'd created in the middle of his bed.

"You were screaming," he said quietly. "I couldn't get you to wake up. I've never seen you like that before. What were you dreaming about?" he asked, something incredulous in his voice, as if he hadn't suspected her past to be so full of horrors that she'd have a dream like that. Him, sure, but his past was grisly. She was too open and friendly to be haunted like that.

[Nel Sayo]

Nel had lived through untold horrors, but most of them when she was young enough that she could ignore those flickering memories when they came upon her, or shove them to the periphery where they could only do so much harm. More plentiful were the good memories, fortunately, the ones that involved sea and sunshine and the occasional adventure.

She shook her head a little, wrapping her arms about herself, the posture more defensive than she ever was, typically, and especially with him, over the past few weeks.

"Nothing," she muttered, looking away from the concern in his eyes, and to the mess of pooling water and twisted sheets they'd made of the bed. "It's everywhere, the linens'll get cold."

Her toes reached towards the floor as she slung her legs over the side of the bed, one trembling limb at a time.

"Sorry," she added, a bit guiltily.

[Murdoch]

She was shaking, fear still gripping her, and his brows drew together when she became defensive. Instead of respecting her space, which was really more than anyone could expect of Murdoch, he gently looped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap. It was her favorite place, he knew, this tiny girl who loved to snuggle up and blossomed under the tiniest affection. He'd used it to his advantage time and time again, and was unashamed of it.

"You're trembling," he said lowly, "and you were crying and yelling in your sleep, Nel. It's not nothing, and who gives a shyke about the linens? It's not as if either of us is going to sleep again tonight." Truth, that, for whether she told him or not, he was awake now. He'd hang them out the window once he knew what had driven her to such fits.

[Nel Sayo]

She sighed a little when he gathered her into his arms; she knew what he was doing, but always let him do it. This morning was no exception, and she curled up against him without a struggle, pressing her cheek to his collar bone, her toes propped against his thigh.

"I'm shivering," she corrected, almost a grumble. "I'm cold and wet."

She didn't doubt that she'd been yelling, or crying. Imagined it was fortunate she hadn't been doing more; screaming, fighting, clawing his eyes out while he slept. Didn't dream these sorts of dreams often; the last one, well. She clenched her eyes shut against the memory, against the sudden image of Syon's face twisted with concern, the same concern she'd seen flickering in Murdoch's eyes. Concern, hovering, that wake up wake up about the eyes and a stop what's happening about the mouth. Shifting, she twisted a little so that she could bury her face in his shoulder. He was warm.

Her fingers twitched across her thighs and went still. Like she could still feel the ice freezing over her skin, but it was gone.

"So I had a nightmare," she murmured. "So what. You have nightmares all the time."

[Murdoch]

"Yeah, but you don't," he said gruffly, wrapping his arms around her to try and keep her warm. He let her shrink against him, staring at the top of her head with a frown. "And you certainly don't get all surly about things. That's my job," he chuckled, pressing a kiss to her hair.

But he sighed, because if she didn't want to talk about it he wasn't gonna drag it out of her. She'd been good about not questioning the dark memories that haunted his dreams as well as his waking moments. Just dealt with it when he clawed at her in his sleep, or grabbed her too tightly when something set him off and he lost that charming composure that was all most people saw.

"I'll take care of the linens," he murmured. "You have to go over to the gadget shop today, don't you?"

[Nel Sayo]

"Well I do get them sometimes," she muttered, rubbing her cheek ponderously against his skin. Straightening a little, she leaned back so that she could look up at him. A few shakey fingertips wound up to tuck the damp spill of pale hair behind her ear. "Just not all the time. Mostly never, but sometimes."

Mostly never. Only when she did have them, they always had a certain tone to them, a certain shade, the kind of thing a girl could get lost in. Or had already been lost to, thrashing about in someone else's body, screaming with someone else's voice. Before the Mariner sank, Nel had managed to realize, she'd been in Rezar's skin, fighting back the water even as it throttled him and dragged him down.

If only she'd said something when Syon had woken her. If only she'd warned them that the ship would sink, that a storm would come, that they'd all be lashed about and swept into the sea.

A flinch touched her eyes, and she looked away again.

"They were burning me alive," she whispered, after a moment.

[Murdoch]

He stiffened at those words, flinching as some awful expression crossed his face and the hand that had been resting lightly on her shoulder suddenly curled and dug into her flesh enough to leave a mark.

"What?" he hissed, turning her in his lap and staring at her. That awfulness twisted and became recognition and horror and, underneath it all, a cold fury.