The bed under his back wasn't his. It belonged to dead girl. She had been so silent in his sleep.. all he could see was a crimson wash that dripped dripped dripped.....
It was nice to wake up and actually smell her though. There was something about Lina Inverse that demanded attention. Every aspect of her from sight to scent seemed to whisper "Try and ignore me. Just try." Hard to focus on anything now that she was gone. Funny; she was the binding glue in his life, he supposed, and now her absence left him with a handful of broken and cracked shards that had once been a whole life.
He blinked a few times and sat up, the time table anyone's guess, and looked around the long-empty bedroom. In the moonlight everything was silver, and that was a good color for Lina. It seemed to gather and pool in the eyes of countless baby pictures and icons from her childhood so that a hundred of the small eyes looked out at him from the course of a life cut down. Their mouths laughed or sulked -- lived in a frozen past, but the gazes were eternally constant and silent on his form. Watching. Waiting. Seeking. An end was looming on the horizon in a jarring blur of unreal motion, so all he could do was wait with Lina, and pretend the gaze was real.
A sobbing was heard as Zelgadis Greywers turned in his bed. Almost silent, and ghostly, and the cadence was wrong, like it was being smothered as it happened. Blearily he sat up, bare chested, and padded silently to his door, pressing one long sensitive ear to it to hear what he could. The sobbing grew no louder; instead it seemed to drift away and then fade out until unnerved silence was all his ears could record. Quietly he eased his door opened and peeked out into the hallway, brushed the strands of wired hair from his eyes as he did so. Nothing. Silence. The quiet of a sleeping house. But why did the whole place seem more like it was holding it's breath?
The hallway was deep and dark and empty.. the shadows seemed to wreathe about in themselves in a cobwebbing, strands of the darkness seemed to move just out of his focus and goosebumps sprung up at the thought of these wisps touching his skin. Clammy fear made him feel vaguely greasy as he tried sternly to kill his sudden irrational terror. It was like trying to subdue something large. No matter his grip, it seemed to flail and struggle, it was a scream trapped low in his belly. Tension seemed to build it's self in an endless act of bigger and bigger and bigger, each swallowing up the old pressure to replace it with new. He kept waiting for something in his head to pop and the walls to bleed or something. Every situation seemed to take everyone lower than the alleged bottom any more, and even an innocent house was untrust-worthy.
Two things to break the silence; two things to fracture his nerves. A large black fluffy cat darting between his legs, staring reproachfully up at him with luminous yellow disdain, and the sudden "Zelgadis-san!" hissed in his ears. Oh dear God, his heart was thumping with such force it was acutely painful.
"Yes.. Amelia?" He was trying not to gulp air and betray his tension. "Gourry-san's gone!" The deep blue wept down her cheeks and for a heart stopping moment Zelgadis was terrified at the true meaning of "gone". Behind the tiny princess he ran, throwing open the door to be confronted with a hundred grim red eyes that looked in defiance at him. It's too late, they whispered to him. He's come to me. The bed was rumpled and empty. Empty. Gone. Oh thank God.
"Luna. Where is Luna?"
"She's gone too! I ran to get her!!!" Zel looked to the window, and just saw the top of a blond head swallowed up by the greedy horizon. "Damn.. I'll bet she's with him. Come on Amelia! We can still catch them!!!!" Still shirtless, he dragged her behind him easily, her pale legs scissoring frantically beneath the split hem of her night shirt, trying to keep up.
Out into the freezing air they burst, lungs full of the bitter cold, the wet mist beautiful to look at but painful to inhale, wet and clinging to their cheeks. The snow burned painfully under Amelia's bare feet as they raced up the hill, the spidery finger of approaching dawn turning the horizon a gory red. No more portents, Amelia thought. Please...
Harsh their breath sounded in the unborn day, and the snow was the grunt of exertion, the hem of fabric quickly turning damp and desperate for warmth as it clung to their legs. The top of the rise burst into a shadowed valley still sleeping and unaware of the desperation in the not-quite-morning air. Together they stood, hand in hand, and stared down at the last sight of the Swordsman. Everything was dark and silent and frozen, and Zel's thoughts focused on the flash of false gold that he had seen from the window. Oh God above.. where had they gone..?
"Can you see them?" Amelia's voice was thready and concerned in the chilling air, her inhalation a jarring draw, and he looked at her. Zelgadis' sight fell on a young woman, barefoot in the snow, concern for her friends turning her cheeks pink, and concern for her friend turning her lips blue. "Oh damn Amelia, I'm sorry!! I didn't -- I -- It was stupid of me. You're freezing."
She looked to him in perplexion, worry for a lonely man far out weighing cold feet. Her feet had been cold before and she'd been fine. Let the flowers see to themselves; she was not one to wilt. "Where could they go?!" Jerky and rushed her panicked gaze swooped from valley to the mountain range, to the earth behind them, so recently trod.
They were gone.
"Zelgadis-san.. what do we do?!" she looked to him for the calm guidance he normally displayed and was stunned to a sick feeling in her stomach at his unmasked dread. "Should we try and track them then? The snow is easy to -- "
"No, Amelia. We have to get you back in the house before you get frostbite. I'd like to change into warmer clothes as well."
"But Zelgadis-san!! We can't just -- just -- leave Gourry-san!"
"Amelia. I need you. I need you to help me for a moment." He had a look on his face that was painful to see; the uncertainty of a strong man is hard to face. It's too raw and too intense, and as bold as he is. Intrusive.
"What can I do?"
He took a deep breath and looked to the horizon, sharpened eyes peeling away the landscape in search of clues on the missing friend. "I need to you to feel. Just.. close your eyes and .. feel. Anything at all."
Hands beneath her chin, large blue eyes shut out the world to open uncertain Astral colored orbs, to see what she could see. It was hard to focus these eyes; how do you focus a dream? And the colors had a tendency to run together or show in reverse; distracting and confusing the Seer further. How Rezo-sama had lived like this Amelia did not know. Was this sight better than none? It was sad, to imagine a life trapped in here.
There was thread of pale gold running along the trail ahead.... Like a lock of Gourry-san's hair, and she followed, it pulling it in her mind. Over the hill that was still a hill no matter the living things that squirmed in it, down into the plunge of the chilly valley. There, far away in a night-grasped wood.. in a temple that fisted around everyone in a patch of midnight that had never feared the sun.. there he stood, Amelia could see him, or what was left of him, the ebb of his Astral life leaking away in a burn to the heavens. It was blue, blue for tears, and then a flash of red emerged, and Lina's ghostly visage looked at her, no color any were except in the bleed of her murdered eyes. She stared into Amelia, deeply, deeply, looking for something and then she opened her ruined mouth.
"AMELIA. GO AWAY." All the poor girl could do was scream and back away, flailing at that sight, until she remembered to open her eyes, and found Zelgadis clutching her with a drawn, white face. He held her tight against his hard chest, and asked in a ragged whisp of voice, "What did you see?"
"I saw Gourry-san. He's with Luna-san. And Lina-san's there too. We have to go home, I want to go home now, right now!!" Paranoid terror had her firmly gripped, and her feet were blue. Zelgadis felt the tear run down himself, stay and help, take Amelia home.. he tamped the urge to yell at her for confusing him and clouding his sight like that; for just a moment anger flared in him and then -- silence. He pulled her closer, thinking about red robes and avoiding bloodied destinies.
"Gourry-san is in trouble. But we can't help."
"What do you mean, in trouble?"
"No one can help. All there is is red to pull him down. Oh God. I want to go. I want to go right now." She had pressed her fist to her lips and was now chewing on her knuckles, not seeing anything but that destroyed visage, clinging in deathly possession to her lover.
But she just stood there, until Zelgadis just scooped her up into a round little ball, and packed her silently back into the house. Her legs hung over his arm, and she turned her face into his shoulder until they entered the house.
"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too fondly, To be fearful of the night...."
-- Sarah Williams, 'The Old Astronomer to His Pupil'
This chapter is for Timmy-chan, on Death's lap purring.