More to Offer [Finished]

[The Jenn]

Graveyards had always been places of fear and anxiety for him, at first because they were mysterious and sinister, and then because he had far too many connections to the deaths of others to be near graves in good conscience. Now, though, the smooth serenity afforded his mind by its cocoon in the embrace of the cloak's consciousness removed that fear and replaced it with an odd sense of comfort and familiarity. He wasn't really afraid of anything anymore, related to the dead and dying or otherwise. There was simply no need. He understood so much more now, it just seemed pointless to feel fear. Or anxiety. Or anything, really. He didn't need to feel. He just needed to let the cloak do its work and float along for the ride.

Lingering around graveyards also offered other advantages. The mind-numbing bursts of pleasure that he could previously only experience while resurrecting a fallen soul now came much more readily. Funerals were wonderful things, the dead finally at rest and his mind in a delightful haze of incoherence. He didn't have to be too close, especially since there no need to alarm the mourners with his presence.

He was detached from the world around him and he loved it. He had never been so free, so happy as he felt in the safety of his new role. He had so little to do, and most of it seemed as natural as breathing, following the cloak's unspoken instructions as they guided him throughout his days. At the core of his being, the feline was a terribly selfish person, and the way things were now... he wouldn't trade it for anything. Only one thing marred his serenity and ambivalence every so often.

...Rhiannon. His beautiful lady, strong and broken and loving him despite everything he had done. It was that love that continued to draw him from the protective shell of his mind and the cloak's magic, that pull that made him aware of himself as more than a reaper. She made him aware of himself as "Lior", her lover, father of her child. She and Kieran, their hold over him was powerful.

Unfortunately for them, the cloak's had more to offer.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Sleepy. Her mind was a blurred haze, each scene blurring into one another, the edges indistinguishable. Rhiannon didn't know where one day ended and the next began, and she'd found that it was easier that way. She wanted to lay down and close her eyes, but something inside of her egged her on, drove her through the headstones. Some were crumbling. Some were new, shiny, marble-and-brass monuments.

Monuments to Death.

She could see the snowy-white figure sitting there. It made her hesitate. One paw hovered for a moment before it found solid ground beneath it. Unlike in her dreams, it stayed steady, held her weight. It brought her a step closer to the feline. He looked like he was waiting.

Was he waiting for her?

When she was a few steps from him, she paused a moment, lifting her head. She knew her fur wasn't nearly as sleek as it usually was, she knew that there were tangles in her hair that hadn't been there before... Would he mind? Or would he still look upon her with that gaze, with love in his eyes? It was that love that drove her here, that kept her following him. It tore at her heart, made her weak-legged all while it drove her to keep stepping. But it had been so long, so long since she'd last seen it... All that she'd seen had been the empty, cold stare of The Cloak, of Death...

She wanted her Lior back.

A quiet noise bubbled up from the coyote-hybrid's throat, somewhere between a whimper and a whine. Her nose found his hand, pressed into it, the pink tongue slipping out to kiss his palm. "Lior,[/b]" Rhiannon whimpered, looking up at him. She studied his face for a moment, waiting. Would she find him there today? Or would she be forced to wait once more, slipping behind him, Death's own Shadow?

Time would tell.

[The Jenn]

Lior would never wait for Rhi again, not in the way that she wanted him to. The only waiting he would do was for the day of her death. Her second death. Then he would be there... waiting to help her move on. But even then, it wouldn't really be him. Not the him she wanted. Not her Lior.

He didn't really belong to her anymore. He hadn't for some time. He just hadn't realized it.

The painful sound that caught in her throat drew his head up, gaze initially dull and incurious as he caught sight of her looking up at him. Ah yes. There she was.

Soothing his mind, the cloak formed a barrier between his mind and true self-awareness, the cocoon he had taken shelter in for quite some time now. Some part of him still snaked forward with a tendril of worry, seeing the tangled hair, exhausted eyes, and pained expression. She would see a flicker of something in his eyes, just for a moment, before it disappeared. From past experience, she would know that was the only sign of potential recognition that she would get. If she didn't act on it, nothing would be forthcoming.

"Hello, Rhiannon." They were the only words to leave his lips until she spoke once more. He knew why she came for him. The cloak saw her as a potential threat to his peace of mind, but felt no need to act on it beyond holding him safely at a distance from her, the world, everything.

[carcinoGeneticist]

The woman had grown used to the way their interactions usually went. As much as she wanted to stay as close as possible, this new Lior didn't seem to want that, and so she attempted to approach him much less.

The other thing that kept her away was the pain. Every time he looked at her with his face, his sweet and familiar face, and those hollow-empty eyes, it broke her just a little bit more. Keeping her distance was a sort of protective measure, something designed to shelter her from her own pain, much as the cloak was busily doing for Lior. It kept her from the truth of things, the truth that in some way, he didn't want her anymore. If she accepted that fact, she'd have to accept that he wouldn't want her following him.

She'd have to accept that she had no where else to go, a desperate bubbling thought in her chest that made her shake and cry at night. She had nothing left to herself, only the remnants of her lover.

So when she saw the brief flash of recognition, of worry, she leapt for it as if it was a liferaft, something to anchor her thoughts. It was a small thing, but something that sent hope shooting through her body.

She smiled at him, her tail starting to wag slowly from where it was tucked.

"I brought - I brought us a chicken to share,[/b]" she said, words sounding too-quick, too-eager. Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, gone unused for so long. It was like a stranger's voice. She picked up the bag from where she'd let it rest, setting it beside him and nudging it forward with her snout. The scent of it made her mouth water. She hadn't been eating a lot. Food was forgotten most of the time, the needs of her body seeming less important than the needs of her heart.

She smiled at him again, hopeful. The chicken... She'd gone to the same market she used to get them from, the snack she'd so often brought back to the apartment. Something for them to share while they discussed what was to come. How many times had she let it go cold, too focused on snuggling close to the cat, licking the worry from his face, wagging her tail when he gave her the smile that was just for her? "Would.. would you like me to stay here tonight? With you?[/b]"

Oh, there it was. There was the question she was so afraid to ask, terrified of the let-down of his refusal. It seemed now as if he gained more pleasure out of the sight of a corpse than he did out of her own smile.

[The Jenn]

When in this state, Lior is able to view situations from all angles and is now able to sense what it is that drives people to say or do what they do. He can evaluate a person without judgment and see what and why they really mean by their actions. He feels himself to be an impartial judge. There is only room in his heart for two people now: he must decide who is placed there, after the slots are filled, he will simply look upon all other life as means to the end and regard it impartially. The people placed in the slots, however, will remain able to pull him to his former self once a week if they really try and will be able to coax a new ability from him. They will be able to coax him into a state of awareness that allows the cloak to gain its own self for a small while; it will then go off for up to one hour, once a week and see if it can locate viable and plausible soul orbs to be harvested. While out, it also casts a spell of absolute darkness for five feet around it that nothing can penetrate except for Lior himself.


The sight of her, tail slowly wagging and face so painfully hopeful, stirred something in the back of his mind. She had a place in his heart, this woman. The cloak fought it, not because of any animosity or jealousy, but simply to protect him. Sometimes, like now, things still made it through. The scent of the chicken permeating the air, combined with the look on her face and the memories it conjured in the back of his mind, had him swimming to the surface of his own mind.

Him. Lior. He blinked, eyes suddenly seeming more alive than they had a second ago, posture shifting into one with its shoulders relaxing forward, his arms tucking in, a more natural pose for the bipedal feline. He glanced around, knowing where he was and what surrounded him but still feeling as though it should be new to him. The world... it all felt so strange now. It wasn't really his anymore, this world. He straddled the line, living somewhere in between.

As her question slowly sank in, he returned his gaze to her hesitantly. At the same time, as had happened before when she managed to get through to him, the cloak slid slowly off of him, pooling on the floor until it suddenly rose. The area went dark, as if someone had covered their head in an impenetrable veil of shadow, and then reappeared just as suddenly when the cloak floated away. A field of darkness... he didn't know what others saw, whether it was the same as him or different. He'd never bothered to ask.

His eyes found hers and one side of his mouth twitched upward, a pathetic attempt at a smile he didn't have the heart to mean. "I haven't... eaten in a little while," he said in lame response to her first question. The second he couldn't answer, not yet. The words weren't coming easily to his mind.

He could feel the meaning behind it all. He knew why she asked and knew what it meant. The cloak granted him that, before its departure. It had seen through the gesture as clearly as a Spade saw through the evening gloom. These kinds of choices, conversations, feelings, these were the things it shielded him from. He didn't like them. He didn't want to feel them. Not anymore. He was just too much of a coward to tell her that just yet, with a bag of chicken cooling on the ground and her eyes so painfully hopeful.

As he sat down, eyes moving from her to the bag of food, he clutched at his knees nervously. The words left him in a nerveless whisper. "...you wouldn't be staying with me, you know. We're... together now."

[carcinoGeneticist]

The long pauses were the hardest to deal with. With the offer hanging in the air, the invitation that felt more like her attempting to push herself back into his life, Rhiannon felt raw and naked. She felt... exposed. She wasn't used to feeling this way, weak and frightened, but she didn't know where she was without Lior. He was all she had left.

But there it was, the spark in his eyes. They gleamed like gold when he was there, the Lior she knew and loved. That spark... That was all it took for her walls to come down around her, all the protective measures meaning nothing at all when it came to the power that he still had over her.

She was his, more than she'd ever really cared to admit. As the cloak pulled away from him, her ears went erect. This had happened once before, the last time she'd seen the Lior that she knew, the Lior that she loved. Seeing him without the cloak... It was memories for her. Memories of when they'd first known each other, of the times she'd wake up entangled with him from the few times they'd made love, when he'd taken off the cloak... They were the memories of when he'd fully been hers.

Her tail wagged faster, now, more eager and more nervous, sending dust into the air around her. "Me, either,[/b]" she said, a little rush of excitement in the form of a soft laugh accompanying the words. For someone as observant as Rhiannon, she missed important things, seeing only what she'd wanted to see - his half-hearted smile had seemed as bright to her as any of the ones he'd given her while she'd been pregnant. She'd reached out her hand and he'd taken it, the first steps towards building a bridge. "This should do the trick.[/b]" It always had before, hadn't it?

As she hurriedly set about unwrapping the treat, her hopes carryied her higher than her wings ever could. Once she was ready to eat, she'd move closer, and perhaps he'd fold his arms around her and press her body against his... She was so wrapped up in her own desires, her own needs, that she almost didn't hear his next words.

But she did. They fell on her, thick and sticky in the air, inescapable. They were a brick, a noose, a kick to the gut.

She looked up at him slowly, expression one of confusion. He was here now, wasn't he? He was here, sitting beside her, smiling at her... Wasn't he? The cloak had peeled itself off like some other creature and left, and his eyes... Before, hadn't he been thrilled to see her?

"I don't understand,[/b]" she said in a voice thick with bewilderment, sitting back. The world was... it was spinning all around her feet, like in her dreams. It was like she was standing on blocks of ice floating in a pond, and every wrong move sent her legs sprawling out in all different directions. "What... what do you mean?[/b]" She wanted to believe that what he meant was that she was with him, that they were together, but... That didn't make sense with the words he'd said before.

Which left only the cloak. It was as if it was another woman, another lover, one who's touch he valued more than her own. The world seemed a very long way away to Rhiannon's senses, the chicken forgotten.

She stepped towards him and whimpered, hoping he'd touch her cheek, fluff her hair, hold her, do anything to assure her that she'd misunderstood. "What about.. us? What about me?" she asked him then, in a very small voice.

[The Jenn]

Lior stared at her, a tightness building in his chest as the chicken lay forgotten on the ground, ready to be eaten by a man with little appetite - for food, anyway - and a woman more starved for affection than sustenance. The way her tail slowly stilled its wag, her voice thickened with emotion and then thinned into a dry, tinny whimper of itself, it made him feel so... it made him feel. He didn't like that. Not anymore. It was too painful. He knew about another way to live, now, a way without pain, and in his selfishness he preferred it to this emotional dance of love.

He didn't want to confront her, didn't want to confront this, but she kept pushing at it, pushing at him, bringing him out of his peace and his disconnection. She wanted answers only he could give, and he didn't want to give them. There didn't seem to be any more avoiding it, however.

"You... I love you, Rhi," he said in a strained voice. He was still looking down, heard the shifting of her step and his eyes darted nervously towards her. She wanted things from him, things he had been happy to give before, when she was all he thought he had in the world and he hadn't understood the gift that accompanied his curse. Now she wasn't all, though. There was something else.

And it was better than her.

"If I didn't love you, I wouldn't... be here right now. Talking to you. But I don't... we can't keep doing this. You pull me out of it, you and Kieran. But sometimes I don't want you to. I... Rhi, you don't understand." He licked his lips nervously. "There's us. But there's also this cloak, this curse. It keeps me safe, Rhi. Safe like I've never been before." Safer than you could ever keep me, were the words hanging unspoken in the air.

[carcinoGeneticist]

When he said the words, her heart leapt into her throat, thick and sweet. Before, it would have delighted her to no end to hear him say such a thing, but now.. Now there was something else in his voice, in his words. It was the but, the other step. He hadn't said it, but the strained note in his voice seemed to scream it at her as loud as anything she'd ever heard. It was too big for her to ignore, unlike the smile he'd given earlier.

She knew it was coming, and so she waited, terror and hope in her yellow eyes, her shoulders hunching forward as if to protect herself from a blow. As his words fell onto her, she began to shake, a fine tremor that became a full-bodied quiver.

No.

This couldn't be happening. He loved her, but... Was he... To her ears it sounded as if he was leaving her, telling her to walk away and never look back. The woman sat down heavily, her legs no longer able to support the weight of her body, and she stared up at him. It didn't... It didn't make sense. She'd made the decision that before, had escaped her - she'd chosen him, decided to leave her lover, her children and her title in favor of the little he could give her. Some part of her screamed at the injustice, howling that she should be the one to leave him, and that just hurt more.

She didn't want to leave him, couldn't ever dream of it. Though in all the time she'd been following him this had only been the second time she'd gotten through to the Lior she loved, it had been worth it. It had sustaned her, made the pains of being away from her family worthwhile. Even when it wasn't him, she'd been able to watch from a distance and pretend. That had been all she'd needed.

Rhiannon wasn't ready to let go.

The tears came unbidden to her eyes and she choked back a violent sob, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes tightly as her stomach lurched. When she looked back up at him, she dropped to the ground and scooted close to his feet on her belly, tail between her legs, as submissive as Rhiannon Amhiann would ever be. The unspoken words were impossible to ignore, and the flashes of memory pained her as they went through her mind.

- she saw him cuddled next to her, the flash of a smile on his face when he first saw her without her mask, his words - "You are beautiful[/color]"

--- The tears on her face when she'd brought herself home again, the fear that he'd turn his back on her for leaving him, and then the feel of him holding onto her and kissing her cheek, the sting of tears. "Please don't leave," he'd said, an insistance that it was fine, seeming to tell her that as long as she was there, it was fine ---

In the Hearts court, his bipedal arms wrapping around her for the first time, her face buried in the soft white fur, the world around her forgotten in his touch and his words. "I love you, Rhi."[/i]

For a moment, her vision went dim, and she wavered, as if she was about to fall. This couldn't happen. "Please, Lior, I...[/b]" her words stuck in her throat, dry and harsh. "I need you. Why...?[/b]"

There was no point to the question. She knew the answer. He loved her, but she wasn't enough.

[The Jenn]

Lior wasn't sure what to do or say in response to that, the utter submission in the gesture as she crawled towards him on her belly. Her sob, the broken and pathetic and pleading expression on her face, it tore at his heart in ways that physically hurt him to admit. He loved this woman, loved her more than he had ever loved anyone in his life. He'd given up so much for her...

...but really, he hadn't. He'd never given up anything for her, from the first when he'd taken her thumb joint to the time and attention he'd stolen from her rightful Queen during the beginning of their relationship. He had given up 'freedom' he'd never had to begin with when he joined the Courts and gave in to Xiven's demands. He'd given up some measure of his sanity, but not for her. Not even because of her. He was probably more stable than she was, at this point. He had given up nothing for her. He just couldn't see that.

"It's too late," he whispered, giving his head the barest shake as he finally met her eyes. That was a lie, even if he didn't know it. This had been a long time in coming. It was too late from the beginning. "I don't... need you anymore, Rhi. I love you. But I don't need you. And I don't need our love." The words left his mouth haltingly. He meant every one of them, but they weren't easy ones to admit. Not with that look on her face, the tilt of her ears, the desperation in her gaze. "I think... you should go. It'll be back soon, and then I'll be gone, and I know you don't want to talk to us like that." Cruel. So, so cruel.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Would her words reach him as they once had? It seemed for so long that all Lior had needed was Rhiannon's love, the knowledge that she was his, was enough for him. It was enough for him to stand up to the difficulty of having terribly mutated children, to do what was needed to live a normal life without them, to return to the childhood home he'd spent so long avoiding...

At his words, she flinched away from him, as if he'd lashed out and kicked her hard.

She lay on the ground like that for a long time, just staring at him without understanding, without recognition. The things he was saying, his expression, none of it matched. It was as if the cloak was still in control, still moving him through the motions of his life but without the emotion. She knew that it wasn't, though. This was Lior, through and through, without the cloak even around his neck. He'd met her eyes, and she told herself that she could see the pain there. She could tell that there was emotion, more than there had ever been when he'd been under the cloak's so-called protection.

He's just trying to make it easy for you to walk away, a protective part of her brain whispered. He doesn't mean it. He just doesn't want you to get hurt. He never has, he loves you too much. How could he ask you to leave? For a moment that was long enough for her to smile at him, the softness returning to her gaze, she believed it. It was a bright promise, something she could assure him wasn't needed, and she'd laugh and he'd smile and it would be as if none of this had ever happened.

But then she knew the truth. He was done with her.

"How can you say that? Y-you don't mean it,[/b]" she said, the words tight in her throat, catching on a sob. "No, no, Lior, I... I can't... I can't leave you. Not.. Not after everything... I left you once, I'll never make that mistake again. You're all I have left.[/b]" The words tasted bitter with the truth behind them. She looked at him, something that had been in her expression before utterly gone as her mind crumbled. It couldn't comprehend what was happening.

She crept forward again, kissing his toes, looking at him.

"Stay with me, Lior, please. Please."