You Gotta Fight For Your Right to...stay alive? (Nel + Doc)

[Murdoch]

Doc just stared at her, unsure what exactly was going on. The chill of her ghostly hands over his made the hair along his arms stand straight up, and he had to force himself not to flinch instinctively away from her.

"What..." he croaked, and stopped to give a short cough to clear his throat. "What the hell am I even doing here? I mean, why did Johnny Cockshyke bring me here in the first place? Waste of money," he muttered, trying to get his brain to work. The pain was making everything foggy, and now that his anger was seeping away he was finding it hard to focus. "What the hell... what am I supposed to do next? I mean, how does this end?" he asked, muddy eyes staring at her a moment. "I have to... I can't stay here. There's nothing for me here. I have to get home," he groaned, and tried to force himself up.

[Liminal]

"Home?" She looked at Murdoch as if she didn't understand what he was saying. "I own you. I bought you. You belong to me, and your home is where my home is. We don't have to stay, obviously -- we were planning on leaving, weren't we, so long ago? But we're together now, you see?"

Her feelings, it was clear, had only grown deeper, as pacing in a circle will wear out a carpet. That last day with Murdoch and its violent aftermath were her world, her life, her reason for staying in this plane of existence. She had him back, and she was going to stay with him. No question.

[Murdoch]

A low grumble of laughter poured out of him, sharp and bitter, as he threw his legs over the side of the bed. "You own me, eh? Is that what we've come to, sweetheart? Watch me bleed a while, throw some money on the dresser, and suddenly I've got to jump at your every whim? Spare me."

He hauled himself to his feet, hissing and then groaning at the pain that exploded in his chest, and he had to close his eyes and lean against the wall as a wave of dizziness overtook him. This wasn't happening. It just wasn't. Of all the petched up nonsense that could happen to one gods-be-damned person, this simply couldn't be his life. He had to do something. He had to get out of this.

"Ydratha," he ground out between his teeth. "I'm almost thirty, and you're dead. I'm not sure what exactly you think is gonna happen here. Picnics and long walks on the beach? Holding hands... no, wait, that won't work," he said cruelly. She had to understand that he wasn't the same person. Plus, Doc got mean when he was scared. As simple as that. Hazel eyes popped open, and he sneered over at her. "What the hell do you want from me anyway? Why are you even here? Did you just miss the bright light or something? Petch, there's nothing in the world could've made me stay in this shykehole a moment longer than I had to. And I'm not staying now. Chain me up if you want to, wouldn't be the first time I've had irons on my wrists," he said desperately, though the mere thought of that made his hands twitch for a knife.

[Liminal]

Ydretha didn't take any of the bait in Murdoch's words. Instead, she sat -- if that was the right word for it -- on the bed, and looked over at Murdoch with the saddest of eyes. She shrugged, her out-of-focus hands turned up toward the ceiling.

"I wasn't ready to go." She seemed almost surprised by the brevity of her own statement, but accepted it. "I loved you, Murdoch. I love you. How does that translate to the current situation? I don't know. Yes, you're older. Yes, I'm a ghost. Yes, that's complicated and unhappy. But does it mean that I don't still love you? No, it doesn't."

She looked up at the ceiling, though what she was looking at was anyone's guess. "The world is hard and ugly, Murdoch. When you've been raped and then burned alive, you've earned the right to say that. But you and I had something that was beautiful. Why would I want to go anywhere else, anywhen else, when I'd found one beautiful thing?"

[Murdoch]

"Because it's not beautiful to me," he said, too loudly, his mind splintering underneath the weight of what had happened here. Calm, he'd felt before, the madness burned out of him by Leo's magic in the dark cellars of Syliras, but it was quickly draining away from him beneath pain and the horror of what she was recalling. "You've sat here reliving what we had and what's been done to you, never changing, and I'm sorry for that. But I have done and seen too much since then to go back. Do you know what happened while you were burning alive? I was slitting my traitorous brother's throat, and weeping for having to do it. Even knowing what he did to you," he said, something catching in his throat, and he didn't understand what was happening until he felt the wetness on his face. "Even then, I wept, because he was my brother. And I killed him, and I've lived with that and with your death and with everything else, and finally, finally I managed to find some peace. I was happy, you stupid petching child. I loved again, and screwed it up and fixed it again, and it's her I love. Not this... this memory of you. And you can call me a slave if you like, you can have Johnny's bully-boys clap me in irons, you can haunt me the rest of my miserable life, but that won't change. And if you love me," he said, spitting the word at her as he scrubbed at his stubbled face with the back of his hand, "you wouldn't want to make me miserable. So either let me go, let this pathetic shadow of an existence go, or stop claiming that it's love you feel for me. Because you can't have it both ways, sweetheart."

[Liminal]

Something changed in Ydretha's face as Murdoch spoke, though it was hard to say what exactly the new expression meant. She ran one hand through her translucent hair, a habitual gesture uninfluenced by the fact that she no longer possessed a physical body. Then she stood, walked over to Murdoch, and stood perhaps three feet away from him.

"Look at me," she said, the old beauty of her voice still present behind the waves of sorrow. "Look at me, not as a ghost, not as a child, not as some reminder of the world you've left behind, but as a woman who was your friend, who loved you and loves you. Look me in the eyes and tell me to go. Tell me that you no longer love me, that you have no interest in my friendship, that your feelings are as dead as my body -- though not my heart! Never my heart!"

Her gaze never wavered, though her voice did, ever so slightly. "Look me in the eyes and say it. Say it, and I grant you your freedom, your ability to walk away from this building and this town, away from me and my love and anything and everything that represents to you. Say it, and I'll return first to Dira and then to Lhex, trying to find some other place and life and time that won't be wrapped in sadness and shot through with fire. Say it, and everything that is over will be over, and everything that is to come will come. But, by the time we shared, by the love we gave, by the blighted fire on which I died, look me in the eyes when you tell me."

[Murdoch]

It was the gesture that undid him, that sweet twist of fingers through her hair that had so fascinated him when he was a boy. How many times had his own hands followed after hers just to feel the silk of her hair? How many lifetimes had it been since he even remembered that?

He'd squeezed his eyes shut against it, and so when she asked him to look at her it was doubly hard for him to manage even that. He stood with his back against the wall, his heart pounding against his broken rib and his breath coming too harsh. Damage, so much damage, and so much of it unseen.

He opened his eyes, but he was looking down, not at the ghost. At his hands, cut and scarred. At the ebony nails that his fingers ended in, evidence of the corruption he'd suffered. He wondered idly if his broken rib was as black as his nails, if the pretty girl who'd sewed him up had gasped to see it and wondered what sort of evil lay within him. Even he couldn't have said. Finally, finally he forced his gaze upward.

Meeting her eyes was more painful than the wounds of his body. By all the bloody gods, she still looked fifteen. But he did as she asked, and he let himself hope for one blinding moment - to wonder what it would be like to have her with him again.

A hand lifted, black fingernails sucking at the candlelight as he reached up to thread his fingers through her hair. Only he couldn't - they passed through her as if she wasn't even there, and the blow of that nearly killed him.

"Ydratha," he breathed, and there was despair in his voice.

He swallowed, tasting blood, and could not have said whether it came from his lungs or his shredded heart. But he looked her in the eyes. He gave her that. "I can't... there is a part of me that will always love you," he admitted, for it was true, always had been true. "But I can't love what you are now and live. Don't you see?" he whispered. "I can't spend my life at your side. Perhaps we will be friends for a little while - but what happens when you see me with Nel? Because I love her too, and what's more I love her now, not a lifetime ago. Do you think you can watch me spend my life with her and not hate me? Do you think I can look at you every day and not know that what you are now is my fault? I hated myself for half my life because of your death, and if I had to look upon you for the rest of it I think it might actually kill me. Whatever you loved in me, whatever you love now in me, would be destroyed by that guilt." He swallowed again, and had to fight not to cough. "I... I cannot tell you that my feelings for you are dead. But I have mourned you, and found a way to live beyond it. I love you," he murmured, his hands falling to his sides as he held her gaze and hoped she would see the truth in it, "and still you have to go."

His breath caught, and this time he did cough, and had to press a palm against his chest to keep from falling to his knees at the pain that exploded through his body, but he held on through sheer, stubborn willpower. A few moments passed before he was able to raise his head again and palm the tears away from his eyes to look at her again. "I've heard tell that Dira makes her home on an island in the Suvan Sea. If you wish it, I will make the journey with you there. But I cannot live my life with you, dearest. If I do, you will be a ghost and I will be a walking corpse."

[Liminal]

There was an agonizing silence after Murdoch finished speaking. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds, but it seemed to stretch out over geologic ages.

"I have spent half a lifetime in death trying to find you," she said at last. "And you have spent half a lifetime trying to find life." Her voice was sorrowful but gentle, without anger.

"Dreams don't always come true." Her slim shoulders rose, then fell again. "Not even those that are the most beautiful. The Valterrian itself started as a love story, after all."

She looked at Murdoch's face, taking in both the familiar features and the scars it had acquired in the years since last they had seen each other. "I love you, Murdoch. I love you, and I've loved you, and I'll always love you. I love you enough to...to say goodbye."

Now she looked at her hands, pale and shimmering. "I can find Dira on my own -- I won't put you through the months of a goodbye that it would take us to get there together. Both of us, maybe, need for that not to happen. It breaks my heart to have found you only to lose you again, but it wouldn't break it any less to be with you only to watch you die from the inside,"

Her head rose again. "Remember, my love. Remember the time we shared, and remember it with joy and not sorrow. Remember me with kindness and peace. I had little to give and less time in which to give it, but everything I had was yours." A small smile crossed her face, and for an instant, she seemed almost to become again the girl Murdoch had known so long ago. "There will be another life for me, and another life for you, and if Lhex willls it, our paths may cross again. And even if we don't remember then, this lifetime will still be a part of our souls."

A look of intense concentration crossed her face. And then, in a quick motion, she tilted her head and kissed him.

She kissed him, and for one brief moment, Murdoch could feel Ydratha's lips on his, feel her hand in his hair and her arm on his waist. It was just as it had been so long ago, in a world that was full of possibility instead of regret.

Finally, she pulled away, and her whole body seemed fainter. A look of exhaustion took her over, but her eyes were shining. "Goodbye, my love, my friend, my darling." She held the gaze for one moment more, and then turned away toward the door.

[Murdoch]

The second Ydratha's lips touched his, Murdoch descended into madness.

Dreams and memories and nightmares and desperate fantasies crystallized and became real in that awful, incredible moment. One arm curled around her waist and his other hand reached up to clasp the side of her face as he kissed her back - and had she still been alive, the madness and heartbreak of his every move would have hurt her, for he was incapable of being gentle. She was here and she was in his arms and it was everything, everything he'd prayed for in the lonely nights of his long life.

When she pulled away and said her goodbye, he tried to grab onto her, hold her closer, tangle his hands in her hair so that she would always be there, but she faded and became as insubstantial as she'd been before. "No," he growled, his face twisting into something unrecognizable to the girl who had only seen the hopeful child in him. "No, nonono!" It was all he was able to say for a moment as he fell to his knees, grabbing at her legs and waist and screaming at the futility of it as his hands passed through the spectre of her. Harsh sobs shuddered out of him, and as she turned for the door he lost all power over himself and began begging: incoherent pleas that she stay, that she become real again, promises of devotion and bribes of gold and jewels and anything she could possibly want if she would just be real.

As the insanity tore through him, he felt his black bones throbbing deep within him, as if giving his madness a rhythm to play to.

Had Ydratha doubted him when he told her he could not be at her side and live, the sobbing, begging wreck that she suddenly found at her feet was all the convincing she might need. She would drive him utterly mad, for poor Murdoch was already halfway there despite his charming smile and clever hands.

[Liminal]

In contrast to Murdoch's sobbing, pleading hysteria, Ydratha was eerily calm. She looked down at him, her eyes still desperately sad, but not reproachful.

"My love, I can't be any more real than I am now," she said. "Two seconds of corporeality tires me for days. We have to part again, this time for the rest of this life. But at the same time, my love is yours, and is always with you. Always."

"May Lhex someday see fit for us to meet again," she said. "I love you." And then she was turning away again, and nothing Murdoch could do or say would make her stay. A moment later, she was gone, and Murdoch was alone again.

None of Tall Johnny's people would stop Murdoch when he chose to take his leave. Ydratha had freed him, and it was bad form to enslave someone twice on the same day. But this day, this place, this conversation -- good luck for Murdoch trying to leave that behind.