shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2012-10-30 10:46:00 |
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Current mood: | weird |
no kindness done, (YYH/The Silver Wolf, Regeane, Kurama)
Title: no kindness done
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: YuYuHakusho/The Silver Wolf
Pairing/characters: Regeane, Kurama
Rating: teen for angst
Warnings: lots of implied death and despair
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Kurama and Regeane, the price you pay for miracles
The minute they plunge through the cool mirrored pool into the place between, with its towering watery trees and cool air, Regeane feels the man in her teeth begin to struggle.
He's strong, but the wolf is stronger for the moment, and she drops him and plants a paw on his chest. The thick knotted roots that sink into the still water provide a latticework and for a moment the wolf and the woman are in flux, wavering, deciding. He collects himself and heaves beneath her, his equilibrium regained, and Regeane is woman when she plunges toward the water, catching herself ungently on a tange of roots.
She feels him in the trees the way she'd feel an elk in the breeze, but this place is too old for that. When it offers peace, it offers peace. Regeane is on her feet again and far away before he can pick another tactic and still take advantage of her nearness. "Stop!" she cries. She doesn't have the heart for fighting. Not now.
"I need to go back," he says, terrifyingly composed and gauging her in a swift glance. Regeane is just as muddy, bloody and torn as he is, her wounds closed but still leaving gory handprints all over her.
"We can't," Regeane says. She is exhausted and on the edge of endurance; she no longer even knows if the words are true. "You barely survived the first time," she adds, and it is true, it is as true as the fact that she barely survived, that the black storm swallowed the gray wolf and she never saw Matrona fall. It felt to her like the black swarm of insects at the tomb, and yet...more. Unfathomable evil.
If the bear has something to do with this, she will hunt him and she will find a way to rip the ages out of him, to close her teeth on his incorporeal throat and gouge his will to survive from -
Her thoughts clear. Chiara is still alive, and the bear would not dare. This is something else.
"Where are we?" the fox asks. She smells their musk all over him and yet not, wet earth and verdant air and yet not. He's a riot to the wolf and wounded, afraid, terribly alone the wolf doesn't like it. Regeane fights down the rising instinct to plunge into the pool or attempt to navigate the otherworldly forest, to flee and lick her wounds in private. The woman clears her throat, blinks her eyes, stays in the moment.
"It's a...place," she says finally. "A place of transition." Exhausted she offers doggedly, "I can take you somewhere else."
"A place of my request?" His eyes are not trusting, but they are opaque; even in the shredded clothing, his flesh raw, he now stands collectedly as though he's ready for anything, as though he isn't as desperate as she.
"I..." Regeane stops speaking and approaches the water. She kneels before it and looks into its shining depths; Maeniel's image does not appear, nor Gavin's, nor Matrona. Lucilla's also remains beyond her grasp, and then Regeane cannot continue. She is too heartsick.
The man has come up behind her. "Think of the place," she says only.
The water turns murky, dark. Regeane's throat goes dry. "I don't think we can pass there," she whispers. Behind her, his indrawn breath is subtle but sharp.
The water remains dark, but every so often it shifts shade. Regeane suspects he is going through multiple locations and her heart grows heavier. She stares into the trees at the other side of the water and determinedly does not wonder what she'll see if she tries.
It doesn't matter. She can't return home.
Finally something appears in the water. Grey walls, a square building, a desolate yard filled with weeds. It must have been built to house many people, but it's not empty and its windows are barred. Regeane glances over her shoulder and sees the fox close his eyes briefly, his jaw tensing. When she looks back there's a girl in one of the windows, brown hair and dark eyes, a solemn and unflinching face staring out over devastated ground.
"Take my hand," Regeane says, and the fox looks at her. There is still no trust between them, and why should there be? Regeane is too drained to do anything but wait, and at last he does. She grips him tight, her strong fingers clamping around his wrist, and leaps forward.
As the world in the water rises to meet her she thinks, Chiara. She should have looked for Chiara. If anyone could do anything, that evil spirit would have kept his wife safe.
And at the same time she's grateful she doesn't know, didn't look, slipped up. If she didn't see it in the water, there's still hope.
Something of her world could be left.