He'd taken a breath, just a gasp of astonishment, lips parting to warn as his vision shook, wobbled...and then was eclipsed by blackness. He didn't even feel himself hit the floor...there was just the sensation of falling...
---------
...and then Sharra Eldwaithe opened his eyes.
It was murky, this place that he'd found himself in, and he thought he was sitting, the cushions beneath his fingertips filled him with trepidation, as memories of his aunt's cushions welled up to satisfy his mind's inquiry. He had been sat upon the stool in the living room like a child, and his aunts were both standing above him, looks of supreme disapproval, judgement displayed in their gazes. It wouldn't have been so terrible, but betwixt them stood another figure, darker than the others. There was blue fabric wrapped about her, bringing out the deep pools of her eyes as her full lips beneath them pressed into a somber frown, pain and wrath melded into one terrible emotion. Yaya...
"We've talked..." Spoke Arynn, the tallest of the three, "and Sharra, your...behavior of late. You've been cowardly and uncaring, and...your aunt and I think it best..." There was no wavering in her words, merely dramatic pauses, during the last, she looked over towards her sister.
Olivia's usual bright smile was gone today, and the boil couldn't help but cringe when her eyes, as bright and acidic as his own, turned upon him with vicious rebuke. "We think it best you leave for a while. You've done more harm than good. You're supposed to be a man now, a true monster, now aren't you?" It was accusing, the words given a dark sarcasm that lanced across the very core of Sharra's being.
His breaths came shakily, and he found he was gripping that cushion, eyes wide as shock and grief rippled through him. Jack help him, this couldn't be happening, he hardly knew what he might do, if he couldn't stay here, couldn't go to school, couldn't do anything. Useless on his own...falling and there wasn't a hand to pull him back up."I haven't...I...I've been trying very hard since I came back...we survived, I fought...we..." The words tumbled uselessly from his lips, hoping the lump that had arisen in his throat would not turn to something traitorous and humiliating.
He'd written them a letter...He'd told them of Halloween's triumph. Staring at the two of them, he feebly shook his head, posture braced as though expecting some sort of physical blow. Then again, Hadiyya...she was surely next, and Sharra was not at all sure that she would not have more than simply barbed statements.
And then she slapped him. Ducking his head for only a moment with the force of the blow, the demon quickly looked back up at her, expression filled with sorrow, as the twosome shared a moment, where each felt justified in their sense of betrayal. "Yaya...I thought we'd be all right." It was just a whisper, tremulous in its utterance, a wish and a desire that things would be different. He'd begged her forgiveness...and there had been tears, anger...and passion, a sweet affection that had refused to die. Or at least...at least he'd thought that to be true.
"How can we ever be all right?" She snapped, the djinn's beautiful features fierce, unmarred by tears and righteous in her indignation. "Because you were too afraid to be there. To be here." There was a swift jab of her finger to the space next to her. "And I'm beyond that now. You sicken me. We all want you out...so leave!"
Sharra rose from his seat, a trembling that refused to be quelled rising up 'twixt his shoulder blades, the Nergal side of him stirred to action with the turbulence within him. "I will but...if you...if you need me..." Each word felt as though a knife had been lanced across open nerves, the youth trying desperately to steady them and failing in the most abysmal of ways.
"We won't." And he heard the rush of water swelling towards him from her fingertips, and he never felt the blow...merely the darkness as it swallowed him up.
------
He was standing now...no...running.
The fog swirled about him, the tendrils of it brushing his limbs, disfiguring the world about him in its murky embrace. This was a place that the youngest Eldwaithe child was altogether too familiar with. He could feel sweat running down his body, chest heaving as though he'd been sprinting through the Insanity for some time, adrenaline surging through his very being, fueling him for some desperate purpose, though what it was, he no longer knew.
And then Sharra fell.
His foot caught at something, and he came down with a terrible 'thunk' sort of sound, hands barely catching the worst of it as he then sprang back up into a crouching position, turning rapidly to see what it was he'd stumbled over...emotions still reeling from the nightmare of minutes before. His fingertips touched skin, cool and unmoving, and the boil stiffened as the fog swept back like a curtain to display the scene before him.
It was, naturally, Yaya that his eyes found first.
She lay lifeless...sprawled as though she had been shoved to the ground, blood pooling stickily 'neath her tousled garment, the blue of her wrap darkened with the liquid it had absorbed. The ghoul's gaze was unseeing, expression captured in a moment of terror that had surely been in place seconds before she'd been cut down. Sharra's hand, the fingers visibly shaking, went to touch the djinn's own, as though the gesture could miraculously breathe life back into her limbs.
A quick, horrified glance at his surroundings told him what he already knew. That his aunts had met similar fates. Beyond them, in the shadows of the fog, were other bodies...ebon and gold....the tiny one there...Jack help him...the Nergal couldn't bring himself to look at them, not yet.
On his knees, the teen's lithe body hunched over them, he felt all the rage and grief cyclone upwards, and come thundering back down to crush them, as his eyes stared at the scene before him, though in a terrible, distant sense, he no longer truly saw his surroundings. "No...this...this cannot..." Whispers came numbly from his lips, as the Fog once more encircled him, an old, insidious friend.
'This...this is your fault, Sharra... You ran away from them like a coward, and then you weren't here to protect them. What good are you, child, what good are you really?'
A growl came shuddering down from low in the Nergal's throat, eyes flaring a hue of blinding green for a moment, as his head snapped up to scan the fathomless darkness about him. "I did not run!" He hissed, anger coming up to eclipse the emotions, the thoughts and the knowledge that threatened to break him.
'They turned you away...and it seems that just now you've left them all to die.'
Sharra's fangs were bared in a snarl, the spines along his arm shifting, flickering as his true form begged for release. "But they ALWAYS had my loyalty! I LOVE THEM." He waved a hand at the tragedy about him, his fallen loved ones. "And had I been here I WOULD HAVE PROTECTED THEM! I was not given that chance this time. And I WILL NOT give up! NOT YET!" It was practically screamed, as he hunched defensively, as though to shield those lost from any further tragedy.
And then Yaya's hand dissipated 'neath his own, and he felt all the adrenaline seep from him, as the bodies faded away...and once more Sharra Eldwaithe felt the swell of darkness.
-----------
Sharra was lying down. He was unaware as to how he'd gotten there, blurred memory taking a moment to helpfully supply the pieces. Perhaps...
Sitting upright, a motion that caused his head to spin, the boil gasped softly, scanning the room for Moira, Lumikki. Had that...had that been the exam? Heh. He rather felt like he'd just been through a battle, minus all the aches and bruises.
So no one was dead...
Ok. He could live with that.
Tilting his head towards the shaken Kumiho, he smiled wanly, "Pretty sure that was our exam, or something like it." The Nergal murmured, rather subdued as he contemplated what he'd witnessed, even if it had been the side effect of a rather potent bit of plant.
Sosiqui
This...this was crazy-awesome, Sosi. <3 Thankee!
