mm_j (mm_j) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2009-07-22 18:04:00 |
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Current mood: | crushed |
Current music: | Nine Inch Nails- "Something I can Never Have" |
Entry tags: | niles, npc |
Niles and Ghost! of Julia, Apt. 9183, Late Wednesday Evening.
Two weeks, or almost. He could go out again if he wanted, and if he picked anyone up he'd just have to go back to their place.
He still glared a little at the thought of having to act like a monk in his own home but everything had a price. He liked this place. He wanted to stay. He'd do what he could to make his time here tolerable, including practicing the discretion he should have shown from the beginning. He'd been too alone, too transient for far too long to remember what it was like to have that many pile ups in one place. He was on everyone's radar now, and he had to be careful.
He glanced at Lola who was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him get ready with a curious expression on her face and grinned. "What do you think, pretty girl? Think you can live without me for a few hours if I promise to come back?"
Lola meowed sweetly and he petted her head as he stepped into his closet to select a shirt for the evening. He selected a solid black Diesel button-down and a standard pair of well-fitting wrecked jeans, feeling confident. He dressed right there in his walk-in closet and emerged to find Lola's tail hanging out from beneath one of his pillows.
"What is it, baby?" he asked, feeling the temperature in the room starting to drop. Then, he heard it.
Niles?
The voice was feminine, but far away sounding and a little distorted, like it was coming over a radio with a bad signal. He looked around the room and took a step in the direction of the living room.
Niles?
It was closer now, definately in the room, not as distorted but not clear. He shook his head, walking to the dresser to pick up his phone. Had he left it on somehow? Where else could it be coming from?
He heard Lola make a distressed noise and he looked at her in the mirror in enough time to see her tail disappear under his pillow. A chill shot up his spine, and his breath appeared in the mirror as a could of smoky fog. It suddenly felt like a freezer in there. It also suddenly smelled overwhelmingly of lavender and vanilla.
Niles!
It was no longer distorted, no longer far away. It was right behind him and achingly familiar. It was the voice he heard in his sleep, the one he'd adored his entire life, the one that'd ripped his heart out and made him do anything to please the woman it belonged to when it had the weepy tenor that it carried right now... But that woman was dead.
He turned slowly to face the voice behind him and staggered back so hard his shoulders smacked into the dresser behind him, sending everything on it falling to the floor.
Julia. His beautiful, sweet, dead Julia, was standing in front of him looking just as beautiful as she had the last time he'd seen her alive, wearing a white dress she'd teased him would be her wedding dress one day.
But that day had never come because he hadn't been there to protect her.
"Oh God," he gasped out, his mind reeling and trying to make sense of it all. It felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest and cut into tiny pieces while he watched.
You didn't come for me, Niles. You didn't come back.
Big, wet tears were pouring from her sad eyes, as brilliant and achingly blue as any ocean he'd ever seen, and he gasped again. "Tried. Tried. Tried, but I couldn't..." he explained frantically, his heart skipping beats right and left and his breath coming in hard gasps.
You said you'd come back and you never did. Why wouldn't you come for me? Oh God, I just want to go home. You promised! Please take me home, Niles. I'm so scared...
She was pleading with him, frantic and he reached toward her, shaking all over and a sob building in his chest. "I'll go. We'll go wherever you want," he promised mindlessly, aching to take her in his arms, believe the past four years of his life had just been a dream or some sort of horrible misunderstanding, and do what he could to make it up to her. He reached, but when he touched what should have been a silky lock of light blonde hair, there was a blinding flash and she screamed as if in intense pain. He leaped back again, both from the brightness and the sound, covering his face with both hands.
When the room quieted and there was no bright light shining orange and yellow through his eyelids, he dropped his hands. There was nothing. Her hair was gone. She was gone, and in her place, a sopping wet puddle that smelled of the sea on the floor. All breath left his body and he fell forward to his knees on the floor, his hands bracing themselves as his head hung low over the puddle.
A broken sob tore from his body, sounding like the half-strangled scream of someone who was forced to watch their own heart being cut out. He collapsed onto the puddle, turning his face into the spot where his Julia had been, dampening his face with the water since he couldn't seem to dampen them with tears.
The water smelled of sea and of spices, of lavendar and vanilla and the only place he'd ever really called home.
Home.
His face contorted and while his body shook with sobs and anguish, there were no tears to add to the puddle beneath him.