emptynight | Hiding from the aftermath

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Current Location: Dru and Merrick's Room

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Hiding from the aftermath

It had been late, almost sunrise, when Thomas made it back indoors, arms stiff with exertion. He headed upstairs with every intention of cleaning the guns and then collapsing in bed, but the note on his bed changed his plans. The gym bag went under the bed and the kukri went in his hand. Leaving his clothes in yet another pile on the floor, he headed across the hall.

When he entered, Merrick's side of the room was empty, but Dru was simply lying in her bed, looking like she wanted to curl up into herself. Setting the kukri on the bedside table, Thomas lifted the sheets and slid between them, joining her. He didn't say anything, just in case sound caused her more pain, and wrapped his arms around her, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder.

*****

When Thomas' consciousness resurfaced from the dark warm depths of sleep, he wasn't quite sure where he was or how long he'd been out. Then the fog cleared. Dru's room. She'd asked for him. The argument with Edward last night. Muttering a string of explitives in his head, Thomas curled back deeper into the sheets, his arm tightening involuntarily around Dru as he did so.

((Tag Dru!))

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Drusilla wasn't sure what she felt. But she felt it all at once. Tons of tiny little emotions, that she normally kept hidden. Except from Thomas. It was useless, and she didn't try. She just felt them. What use was there in keeping secrets when you may never share them with anyone?

"It is twisty isn't it? We have all been bent and molded to wills that are not out own. There is no fault in being afraid. I am afraid, and it makes me stronger. To know what I can lose makes me stronger, and I don't think they understand how much we-" Drusilla quieted. Maybe she shouldn't talk about this. Maybe she should just sleep. Take what time she had in his arms and cherish it. Push things away.

"There is no shame in being afraid. How silly we'd be, if we feared nothing. How dead."

Emotions rose from Dru like a swarm of fireflies, ethereal little specks of warmth that died away too quickly for him to identify. Her words soothed him somehow, and his hand stroked her hair. The gauze was peeling away from his palm and Thomas took a moment to remove it, revealing tender but whole skin, before he resumed stroking her hair, feeling every strand against the new, sensitive skin.

"You're right, Dru," he said, kissing the top of her head. He gave a soft laugh. "You are always right, lovely Drusilla. I should listen to you more."

He pulled her to him and closed his eyes for a moment, feeling skin and warmth against him. The calm from last night was growing, with a steady resolve her quiet words gave him. "I didn't want Edward or Lacci to know I was afraid," he admitted. "That someone shouldn't be, should have answers and know what to do and where to go and how many guns to bring."

"You will always know how many guns to bring, but I will not always know the answers. Sometimes I am wrong, and that is when I am most afraid. I am always right, until I am wrong." She didn't want to move. Why did she had to start the night? Couldn't they remain here forever, wrapped in arms and legs? He was so warm. Thomas was so beautifully warm. And he had come to her when she asked, and stayed with her through the day. She had been afraid he wouldn't, though she wasn't sure why.

"Thank you for staying with me. I felt alone, and I knew you would smell of guns and night air."

Maybe it was because he seemed so far. The brightest star was still so very far from where she was now. The bandage he removed from his hand. There were so many questions she had for him. So many things she wanted to ask, and none of them were easy or not painful.

"Would you," she started, but didn't quite know how to finish. There were a few questions she wanted to ask above all. They piled up in her mind, and she found one she thought was the easiest for her to take. Her fingers followed the curve of his hip, and she spoke slowly wanting the knowledge but understanding she may not get it, "What hurts you so? Your hand? I kissed you once, and tasted ashes. Are they the same?"

"I don't--" The urge to deny, to ignore the question with a play at ignorance, was instinctive, but Thomas caught himself, sinking into deep, uncomfortable thought as he contemplated the answer. Had it been the same, that night when She had offered to leave? He new the answer now, as much as he wanted not to. He had known the answer then, too, and it had been his own fear, his denial of that knowledge that led them to Zero.

Her touch had burned that night, burned but not burned, when she had offered to leave, had offered to sacrifice what was dear to her heart out of love. Was that the difference, that sacrifice had been offered but not taken, that kept his skin whole at her touch? That was a question he honestly did not know the answer to.

Unconsciously, Thomas clung to Dru. One hand tightening in her hair, his legs tangling and hooking around hers, his free arm pulling her to him with a force that bruised, as if trying to pull her into himself.

"The same but different," he answered. Why he found it hard to tell Dru now when he'd already admitted it to Edward, Thomas wasn't certain. Perhaps it was some old fashioned self-preservation that kept him from telling one woman about another, or the simple fear that he didn't want to admit there was some part of him he couldn't give her. That Thomas didn't think himself capable of giving as much of himself to Dru as she had given him. The words would not come, and he was left with only the inadequate, incomplete truth, spoken again with regret and apology that he couldn't give her more, "It was the same, but different."

The silence lingered. In it, Drusilla knew she consciously understood. Had always really understood from the moment Justine had shown herself in dreams and visions. Thomas' shining beauty. The one she understood she could not replace. She understood, but it still hurt. It even hurt less than it might have hurt another woman, but it still hurt.

And just because it did hurt didn't mean she could just stop, or downgrade her feelings to match. Drusilla would take whatever part or piece he could give her, and she knew there was nothing wrong with it. It was just the way things had worked out for her.

Why Drusilla was reminded of the Judge at this time bothered her. But his words came to her mind unbidden. Drusilla reeked of humanity. Her doey eyes and small full lips. Her hands dancing over flesh. Her cheeks resting against his chest. The only thing that stopped her from feeling human now, was her heart. Never had she missed her heartbeat, until now.

"I know." Drusilla wanted to say that she always knew, but she didn't. She wanted to say that different was okay. Something else that told him how much she understood. Accepted. "It is different, but no less."

His words had hurt; he had felt the tiny little flinch in body or spirit, he wasn't sure which, and Thomas kissed her hair, feeling multiple layers of guilt that any licensed therapist would say were ridiculous. Guilt for telling the truth, guilt for not feeling guilty about Justine always being first and foremost in his heart, guilt for wanting to feel guilty about Justine. If he delved into it too much he was going to turn into Edward, certainly. But then her words had lessened some of the guilt at least, her understanding absolving him somewhat.

"Thank you," he whispered. Drusilla was pressed so close to him that Thomas thought he could sense every emotional nuance as she felt them. His hand ran through her hair idly as thoughts and memories chased themselves through his mind, finally coalescing into a single question, one he'd been wanting to ask since he'd read the translated journal. "Dru, can I ask you something?"

Already she wanted to tell him that it wasn't his fault. She understood everything. Most of all she wanted him to know something she assumed he did. That everyone he cared about, automatically became someone she cared about. Anything they needed, she would do.

She loved Thomas. It couldn't be avoided.

It was useless, Drusilla realized, to hide the fear she felt when he spoke next. So she just let it happen, but she didn't let it consume her. There were no secrets. Not from Thomas, not from Edward, and not from Lacrimosa. They way he felt, and the way they lay felt so very right to her. One question, would not spoil it.

she pulled back just a bit, so that she could look into his eyes. There was a trepidation there, but there was also honesty, love, kindness. "Of course Thomas. You can ask of me whatever you like."

When he looked at her with so much in her eyes, and so much more in her touch, Thomas couldn't help but run his hand over her cheek, following the curve of her jaw as if memorizing the look and feel of the face beneath his hand. "With everything we found out..." 'Everything they've done to you' remained unspoken.

"Even with all the things changing, that we can't fix... The way you are now, the way you're going to be... Are you happy, Dru?"

It was an honest, simple question. There were no elaborate promises behind it, just the simple question, with an equally simple understanding behind it that if the answer was no, they would move mountains and storm the very gates of Heaven to change it.

It felt like he was touching her for the last time. It was a horrible for the briefest of moments. It struck the type of terror in her that even demons could not. Then it was gone, and was replaced by warmth. Blotted out by affection and longing.

There was relief when he did ask, and her body settled. Drusilla calmed, and almost produced a sad sort of smile. "I am not happy, and yet I feel I should be. I am changed so greatly, and yet I feel nothing at all. What does it mean except that I could be alone again? What use is it if-" She wavered there, and her fears lay plainly before Thomas, as they had been laid before Edward. It did not get better the second time.

"Infinite power has limits my love. Infinite loneliness does not."

Her answer struck a deep chord within Thomas, and its echoes reverberated through him, mind, body, and soul. Knowing that his was only a shadow of what she could feel made it worse. Still, that wasn't something they could fix, teeth bared and guns blazing. It was simply a fact of life (or unlife), and Thomas closed his eyes, wishing he could will it away.

He'd always been a romantic, try as he might to deny it even to himself.

"It means that you're not alone now," he said simply. Woefully inadequate but whatever little light they had in the darkness was better than none at all, even if it reminded them how dark it was without. "That now you have me, and Edward, and Lacrimosa by your side. For now, for as long as we can." He ran a thumb over her cheeks, catching tears that weren't there.

"Even one star shining faintly is better than night without it, isn't it?"

Now. Now, was everyone's word. Drusilla don't fear. You are not alone now. Drusilla had never lived in the now. It was hard when you knew the future. She lived for then more then she lived for anything. It made her want to wrap around him and turn away at the same time. A night without stars.

Her entire body stiffened. She had Seen a night like that. A night in which all the stars blotted out, and nothing shined right. All the colors were faded grey. It was cold, and she would have died to have warmth. Warmth that could never come. The vision racked through her again, and she saw past him, into a void of nothing. The path wasn't clear, everything seemed a lie and a truth.

Gasping was not something she normally did, but she did it until she thought her lungs would burst. Drusilla hadn't realized how hard she had been holding onto Thomas, until it all started to fade away. Her nails dug into flesh. When the feeling of blades and darkness faded, she looked stricken. Aloft in emptiness.

He would say something, but she couldn't stand to hear it. So she kissed him, because at that moment he was all that she could see.

((Visions of Desquish))

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Hiding from the aftermath

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