Just Another Bar Brawl

[Tinnok]

She didn’t have much time to register that hunger in his eyes before his lips were crushing hers, her fingers nearly letting the bottle drop in order to get a tighter hold of him, body sliding comfortably against his, head tilting to get a better angle of his mouth. His heat felt good on her exposed flesh, his body firm all over, and she let out a little gasp of air as he rubbed against her, sending a fiery heat through her loins.

When he spoke, sounding as breathless as she felt, her head simply nodded, one hand splayed upon his chest. A niggling at the back of her mind reminded her of something, was trying to warn her there was a reason she never woke up happy after dreams, that wasn’t how the depths of her subconscious worked. That little niggle, didn’t seem to effect her dream self, however. Within that dream the wound in her back was already healing, and it was only his hardness and those intense green eyes that was making her breathing ragged, not cracked ribs.

Moving somewhere, suddenly started seeming like a lot of effort, so before they left her leg rose up at the knee and circled around his back, fitting her nether regions nicely against his as she grabbed his head firmly in both hands, much like she had that nameless fellow she had knocked unconscious, except this was just another breath stealing kiss, a bit gentler, her lips forming around his, teeth nipping at his bottom lip before her tongue slid inside his mouth like a serpent and swirled around his for a moment before drawing back triumphantly, taking a forceful step back lest she not have the strength to after another moment, and clearing her throat in order to make sure her voice wouldn’t come out half a squeal when she spoke.

“Then lead the way my bloody knight." And she flipped the bottle in her hand like one of her daggers and followed him onto the dirty streets, not even sparing a glance back at the armament she had left in the booth. They were both relatively filthy, alcohol and blood stained, but those details were very trivial compared to his arms, the veing she could see standing out on his neck, and that growl she had heard escape his lips back in the bar. The idea that it was all her and her actions that had brought on such male behavior only spurned her onward, feeling an uncontrollable heat building down below.

[Nathaniel Ankah]

He should have seen it coming. The whispers and tugs at his mind, the nameles warnings that tried to pull him back from his lust-drunk scrambling. Something was just... wrong, and Nate ignored nigh-on two decades of Sun berth street savvy in factor of the carnal promise in those yellow eyes.

The noise should have been the sign.

They reeled and staggered through the streets to his house, holding each other up and giggling as they passed the bottle back and forth. They barely got half a street each time before one or both grabbed the other and pulled them into can alcove or doorway, stealing another long, wet kiss, or letting hands rove and explore wantonly.

But never too far. Temptation. Restraint. The maddening patience that would make it all the sweeter.

Then they burst through his front door in a tangle of legs and groping hands, glued at the lips. Gods, this was so far beyond "I want her". Nate's hands were not just of lust as they swept over her body peeling off leather and cloth. As he carried her to his bed and kissed down her body, his eyes shone with something mayhap no other male hadooked at her with.

Reverance. She was everything he could want. Almost too perfect, how she fought and looked and kissed and touched him.

Another sign. But by then, it was too late

-and the cold gust on his cheek ruined him.

His eyes glazed over above the waiting female. Stark confusion and muddled thoughts, then as he turned... and saw the open door to Kayleah's room... she saw something not even No-Face's efforts could have provoked.

Fear. Pure, childish, mindless fear.

"No..." His voice was small and broken. "Not tonight.... not again..."

Nathaniel got up to his feet in a jerk, walking like a doomed man to the doorway. His soul screeched and begged for him to stop, to not face this sight a second time, but the dream was fast turning against his wishes.

The noise. Their noises. They would have woken her and she would have marched out in a fury, but... nothing. Not a peep. Why would that be?

Nate pushed the door open with years already leaking from his eyes, and his breath was vomited out in a gasped sob.

"Nate... where... where were you... I needed you... son..."

Shattered spindles for legs. Face swollen and bloodied, beauty battered from it by Savage hands. Shining waste pooled around her, staining her, one gnarled hand reaching pitifully for him.

Accusing him.

"You... You weren't here..."

An animal howl of sheer, shattering anguish seemed to blow the room to shreds, but Tinnok was not spared as both of them remembered the first rules of your worst nightmares.

They always begin as your wildest dreams.

The shadows gathered beyond her at the end of the bed, ignored by Nate, slumped to his knees and sobbing into his hands. Before her eyes they seemed to congeal andcshift into something ever-shiftinf. Flesh and ink and rotted skin and leather clothes and-

The tattoo of Myri's eye at it's forehead. The black eyes that were now swirling voids, dripping venom and contempt. The shadows snarled and the figure spoke with that choice she could not forget and perhaps had longed for above all others.

But never like this. Never these words. Not this hate.

"Whore... Monster... Traitor... What. Have. You. DONE...?!"

[Tinnok]

Something about the level of her happiness then in this man's arms should have been the deadest of give aways. Never had a man looked at her so eagerly, it was not only that he wanted her, he seemed to need her, with her limited and corrupted experience with men she hadn ever experienced such magnetism before. And she knew she needed him as well. Her fingers lifted up to caress Nate's face when she felt that chill wind. The wind of a changing dream. His warmth was gone, bemoaned noises of utter distress and a witless fear marring those deep green eyes. She took in only a snippet of the disfigured woman before her own nightmares were pulled to the forefront.

They started with the freshest wound: Rarik. The blackness shifted and roiled around her, forming the cute young boy. She had been so lost as a child, but when her mother had shoved the little boy, wrapped in swaddling clothes in her arms, and his deep brown eyes had stared into her yellow one's, and giggled, she somehow knew she was saved. He was the only one that had ever dared call her eyes pretty, and in fact was the only many to this day who had done such a thing. He would compare them to Syna, and everytime Tinnok would bat away the compliment or scold him for comparing a mortal to a Brilliant Goddess, but secretly she loved the compliment, and he knew it just as well as she.

But the entity that formed before her was the older, warier brother. The brother who knew she had killed her own kind in cold blood. His brown eyes were empty black holes, and his mouth twisted in disgust the same way it had when she had dropped down from her tree to face him...to say goodbye.

"I should have killed you. I could have. One whistle and my fang would have been happy to erase you from the earth. Where do you think your soul would go, Tin? Dira would probably throw it away, leave it in the void."

"I had a choice, between Myri and Caiyha...the choice wasn't easy." She said, each word slow, each word painful with the truth.

"Yes it was you petching Skurak. You never loved me, you tricked me like every other Dhani does, and I will hate you till the end of my days." The smoke evaporated then, and Tinnok was left kneeling on the ground, water forming around the corners of her eyes. Rarik, little, sweet Rarik, grown up into a fine handsome man, one with a black pit in his heart and memories where she had been...

"Whore... Monster... Traitor... What. Have. You. DONE...?!"

Her head raised slowly, wearily, then her yellows eyes snapped open wide to see the grimacing and twisted mirror image of Eagle. It was certainly a nightmare she had had more than once, but a much more confrontational...violent one. She closed her eyes, willing it go away, Nate's pained cry echoing in her ears. She recalled what the Dhani had said not too long ago, even he had judged her for killing her Myrian bretheren, and she recalled the words her mind had thought then, and her head snapped up. What had she said, she had had enough hate? Well...she had a special vault she had kept for just such a reunion, and she felt it spill out of her chest, rising into her throat.

"Don't. You. Dare." Her face pressed up against the shadowy mass.

"Forsaking Myri was the hardest thing I have ever done. To think an entire life I lived, striving to be something other than what they all assumed I was came crashing down in the span of a tick? Hate me you petching coward, hate me all you like, it'll be no more than I hate myself for choosing a Dhani over those who raised me. But it was my true Mother, or Myri and her children, who turned a blind eye, who saw only my blood and nothing else. I am both, and I am neither, and I was just pretending to be the Myrian I thought I had to be. Caiyha's gift has never failed me, the jungle has never seen me as anything other than what I am, culling the weak, rewarding the strong. So I will not walk a fake road any longer, down a path I don't belong, and you can petching stay in whatever barbarian city you crawled off to after you left me like a dying animal in the middle of the FUCKING WOODS."

She didn't care about the shadowed visage of Eagle anymore, she wanted to make sure Nate was alright, that whatever pain he was suffering...like she had, was gone, maybe some how she could alleviate it, but first this petching shadow, which she continued to stare down into its empty sockets.

[Nathaniel Ankah]

The mind rebels against thee in Nysel's realm, but you are still the master of it. The will, the spark of life and ego that drives your every action, it can permeate even that distorted and disingenuous domain. But the strain... gods, the strain...

The world that had seemed so solid and hopeful under Nate's feet and within his eager hands became a sloshing pit of pain and loss. The ground seemed to recoil under him and the boards cracked and groaned. The female before him seemed rise under some ungodly power, cracked bones snapping and jerking, battered face with eyes wide beyond the ken of medicine and logic.

"You... abandoned me! I, who loved you! The only one who loved you!"

He felt so small. Six-foot-and-five, sixteen stone, hard eyes and leathery skin... but Nate felt like it was all just swallowing him up; like the room had grown teeth and appetites and whispered for him, and all he could do was sob and shake his head and wish it to go away-

This has happened already. You're remembering it... so it isn't real.

Like a drowning man lashing out at driftwood, Nate clung to that thought. Even as snot and tears marred his face, he gripped his temples and focused... but on what? Where? All was chaos here, filtered through the sum of his fears and guilt and self-hatred.

So focus on yourself, my boy. You are the anchor. Your will. Come, now... I raised you better than this.

It was her. Not the angry, shrieking mutant before him, all bile and recrimination dressed in his darkest shame. It was the voice Nate remembered when he'd been scolded for fighting, or tore his clothes up, or stole dinner because, well, why not?

It was the voice that told him he was better than his fears and his doubts. The voice that always believed in Nathaniel of the west lands, who took the name Ankah, for Kayleah Ankah, who loved him as her son.

If I can believe so much in you, boy... I know that you can. Now get up.

"You... You're not... here."

The shade seemed truck dumb for an incredulous moment. Slowly, Nate turned his eyes up... and steel shone in the green orbs that time. Again she buffeted him with her pain and her sorrow and her grief, and the sight... gods, it was physical. It tore at him, ripped the breath from his lungs and as she wailed in his face-

-Nate reached out to cup her bloodied cheek. Just as he had done years before... and he knew now that it was years before. It wasn't 509. It was 514. Time had passed; he had grown. New pages had been written in his book, and this was not the tragic end this place painted it to be.

"I will never forget what happened that night," he whispered to the shade, and insanely enough, he thought he felt some tremor of real sorrow in it's eyes. "But you forgave me, Kay... and I forgave myself. Because I learned from what I did, and did not do. I cannot live in this place forever."

Nathaniel rose to his feet and the floor under his boots seemed solid. He breathed in deep and the red, wiggling nightmares at the edges of his vision faded. He looked down in sadness and stony regret. He knew this would not be the last time he would have this dream; many a time he had succumbed to bawling blackness in this place... but not tonight.

Because of Kay. Because of himself, when he had the strength and the will and the reason she always knew he had.

And maybe... just possibly... because of someone else.

He turned at the roared words of outrage and his jaw dropped again. Something vast and black and evil enough to make No-Face look like a handmaiden of Cheva was menacing his female.

Nate felt a smile just prick the corners of his lips. Beasts from the blackness loom over her, and she was staring it down and throwing back its evil words. Nate's hand slid to his side... and he smiled softly. But darkly. Oh, so darkly...

His mace was back. He didn't remember picking it up, but... there it was.

"This is my mind." He said, sparing the phantom of crippled Kay one last look. "And I decide what happens here. Go back where you belong."

In a burst and swirl of nameless, shimmering light, she did just that, and Nate turned back to the... "matter at hand". His own nightmare would return, just as they always did, when life battered him down and weakened the walls within his soul. As long as he had doubts and regrets, he would have to live with them.

Nate couldn't defeat his own mind, not once and for all. But hers? Well...

The shadow screeched something in a language that sounded like chittering bats and snarling wolves, one cloudy hand of fanged fog lashing out to pin the female to the wall.

"I DEFENDED YOU! Time and again, I put my name, my body, my works before our peers, for you! I LOVED YOU... and now you spit on that. Were I to return, I would kill you... and I would not spare a tear for the shame that you have made me feel, for the one male that ever saw you as anything but a mon-"

"OI, UGLY?!"

Whatever the fuck it was, it turned incredulously to find some interloper in it's private torture chamber for the skurak. Nathaniel Ankah hefted his mace from hand to hand and spat to the side, chin jutted up and eyes shining again.

And shooting to her gaze, just long enough for her to see that fire had returned. A wry smile accompanied it, followed by a wink, that seemed to say "I can see you have this handled, but just in case you don't...".

"Youse wanna try that with me? Cuz I don't think it's working, peewee."

[Tinnok]

Tinnok had come to terms with the reality that she would most likely, never see Eagle again. It panged her, but with fear and anxiety she ahd always wondered what the meeting would be like. Embracing him, taking in his scent and then telling him the truth, what she was, what she had become. In truth part of her did expect these words that were so viciously thrown at her, viscous tendrils of smoke and darkness coming with them, it was only what she deserved.

But she also deserved so much more, and that was standing behind the shadowy mass, mace in hand, green eyes shining.

"You're not real, not him." She said, her voice growling out the Myrian. Her lips curled upwards. "And you, or him wouldn't kill me. I'm stronger now, stronger because of my sins, of what I've done, what I've learned from the Myrians, and the Dhani I have met. I will pay for what I've done everyday, and I don't need some petching ugly look alike telling me what I already know."

She got off her knees, drawing one of the remaining daggers off her belt and wound her arm back, swiping it viciously across the shade's neck, the black shadowy material screaming at her, curses, insults, promises of vengeance, its inky body evaporating and sending pangs through her stomach and chest, making her reel for a second, half toppling.

Before she even had a chance to catch herself he was there, arms wrapped around her, staring down at her.

"Thank you." She said, both words heavy and thick with genuine emotion, trying to convey so much more than two single words. Her yellow eyes peered into his, arms twining around his neck, studying his slightly older features, the new scars, the weary lines under his eyes, missing none of, and loving all of it. Maybe none of this was real, maybe all of it was. What she knew was that she was here now, with him, the man she had only just met, and they had both filled an entire bar with bodies, fought the worst of their demons, and were suddenly, once again, wrapped up inexorably in one another's embrace.