Loathing (Closed)

[carcinoGeneticist]

The screams had been impossible to ignore. Once she'd realized exactly who was doing the screaming, she'd raced through the court at her top speed, Apocalypse dropping the things he was carrying for her in an attempt to keep up.

She'd frozen in the doorway. It all happened in slow motion. She could see the layout of the bloody chamber in an instant: A crumpled Highland form that had to belong to Pravus, bloodied and unmoving. Lior, folded into a ball and mewling pitifully. Xiven, her childhood friend and Queen, kicking the figure of the man. She could see every kick, flinched from it as if it was her body that was taking the damage, wishing almost that it was. She could hear the cracking sound of her Lior's head ecchoing for what seemed to be an eternity in her mind. But it happened too fast for her to react with anything more than a terribly pained scream.

Xiven was still kicking, but she ignored it, running blindly to the white figure that was hers, completely ignoring the other body in the room. Her body flew through the air, coming between Xiven's foot and Lior's body, her momentum changing in an instant as the feline slammed her foot into Rhiannon's ribs. It drove the air from her lungs, but she didn't notice. It hurt, but she didn't care.

She dragged herself back to her feet, staring down at the Highlander's still form, sides heaving with the effort to breathe.

Then she screamed.

It was a sound of pure anguish, unimaginable loss.

Rhiannon crumpled beside Lior, pulling his still-warm form into her arms, nosing at his face and neck as she continued to sob. He was so limp, so terribly limp.. She pressed her head against his chest, and whined, the sound that had pulled him from his depressions so many times... but there was no response. She wasn't even aware of Xiven sitting there. The woman didn't exist in her little world of pain.

[Kari Muffin]

Xiven continued to cry. She couldn't see, she could only hear. Another scream.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh God, if there was one, why had Rhi slipped her mind? Oh God. This couldn't get any worse, this couldn't get any worse. It could, and it was going to, wasn't it?

She choked on words, and sobbed, no, she couldn't say anything while her entire world fell apart. One more thing Lior had taken from her, and now she wasn't going to get it back. Her entire world was going to shatter, it probably already had and she was crying to hard to notice.

Why was everything falling apart?


--

Peaches had heard yelling, screaming, and other commotions while in the middle of reading. Normally she would be all too curious and drop what she was doing, however nothing interesting happened in the palace anymore.

And then she actually listened. She heard a high pitched scream on the wind. Her head shot up and she dropped her book. No, it couldn't be, could it? She hesitated a little while longer, listening and waiting. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard another scream, they were only getting louder.

She set out in a full run, and came upon the scene entirely too late to be any use at all. Pravus was in a puddle of blood, Lior was curled up while Rhi was over him. And her daughter was sitting there in the middle of it all crying.

Her daughter had cried very few times in her life, and if she did cry it was in the privacy of her own room. This was clearly a bad sign, if the gore wasn't a tip off, along with the wails of anguish.

She stood there awkwardly, silently, hoping that someone would say something coherent so she wouldn't have to speak.

[carcinoGeneticist]

It was too loud in the hallway, the narrow corridor too small to contain all the anguish that filled it. Rhiannon's ears flattened against her head and she choked on another sob, one that was so deep it made her gut ache. She pressed Lior closer to herself, awkwardly folding his wings in so that they didn't get between them, wishing more than anything else that she could find it in herself to make the change to biped once more, to have arms that could cradle and caress, stroke his face..

But she couldn't. Her mind was everywhere, scattered.

She spread her wings much in the way that a bird of prey would to cover their prey, but for her, it was a way to hide her grief from the world. She didn't want... the other to look at them. She didn't want anyone to see them. It was a private moment, her mourning, and so she wrapped them up in a blanket of her own making.

"Lior,[/b]" she whimpered, her voice muffled by the way she pressed her face against his neck, unsteady with her hiccoughing sobs. "Wake up, Lior. You have to wake up. I.. I can't do it without you. Please.[/b]" she pressed her snout to his cheek, watching his head loll lifelessly on his neck. She whined again, licking his cheek, his nose, his mouth, small and urgent kisses. Maybe he just needed to be jolted awake? Maybe he had just passed out?

Nothing. No movement. She thought her heart would beat itself right out of her chest and climb into his own, where it would bring him back. He'd saved her before, why.. why was she so unable to do the same for him? Her head spun.

"You have to wake up, Lior, please..." she whimpered again, a hint of panic creeping into her tone. "I love you. Y-you can't go,"

[The Jenn]

Throughout this period, Lior's cloak had been slowly and systematically subsuming his mind, taking up permanent residence in his consciousness and moving the rest of him, the Lior that had existed to begin with, somewhere safe and cocooned and far away from the chaos of the conscious mind. There he was safe, protected, and free from his troubles. He reveled in it, that blissful release. Finally his cloak had granted him something more clearly blessing than curse. Finally it had given him a gift that he could appreciate without reservation.

Slowly, his body began to breathe again in a more noticeable fashion, the lungs accepting air in normal doses and the body firming with awareness. Eyes opened, bright gold and yet dull as an old penny when you looked at them, cold and detached. The presence that presented itself was calm and eerily serene. Slowly, he turned his head to look at the woman cradling him, and then made to sit up. "I haven't gone yet," he said in an eerily high-pitched voice when compared to normal, one that Rhi would recognize as belonging to his 'other self', the reaper that took over when death called it into ascendance.

[Kari Muffin]

Peaches watched as the Bog Dweller used her wings to hide Lior before turning to look at her daughter sobbing and drowning in her own tears. She had to do something about it, because clearly no one else was going to comfort Xiven.

The woman quietly walked over to her daughter, completely ignoring dead Pravus. She had known that one day it would end, and she was hoping it wouldn't be so soon. But right now she had to ignore the grief to help her daughter. She quietly knelt down besides her and reached out with gloved hands, prying her daughter's apart. "Xiven, you need to get up."

Xiven could feel her mother pull at her hands. She had hoped, deep down, that Rhi would have at least said something to her. But no. Of course she wouldn't. Rhi had never really loved her. She had only made a promise when they were children, why did she expect a promise from childhood to translate so clearly as love. Why had she been so damn stupid? She let her mother part her hands, and looked at her through watery eyes.

Peaches opened her mouth to say comforting words, but jumped instead. The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end when she heard a horrible chilling voice and feeling. Her head snapped around to locate the voice as she moved closer to her daughter.

Xiven's fur stood on end. What was that? She tried to wipe away all the tears, but her eyes were still burning, making it difficult to see.

[carcinoGeneticist]

There was movement under her probing snout.

Rhiannon's entire body tensed and she stared with wide eyes at the feline, her mouth hanging open ever so slightly. The muscles under his skin, insubstantial as they were, had the familiar tenseness of life. It wasn't the mockery gifted by rigor mortis, no, it was the sort of control only a live body had. And.. he was breathing. It was enough to start her tears flowing again, but this time, they were of relief. He'd heard her, he'd somehow come back...

But when she looked into his eyes, her world shattered all over again. The fur on her neck and back stood completely rigid, and she whined urgently. This was not right. There was a memory tugging at her, something she'd seen before, an alleyway spattered with blood - the blood a man who'd tried to rob her, and then, a crimson spray that belonged to her.

And it's found you.

The words were different now, but the voice and expression were the same. Rhiannon pushed herself away, untangling herself from what both was and wasn't her Lior, moving towards Xiven and Peaches as she did. "No, no,[/b]" she whined, her expression somewhat crazed as she searched for something of Lior in the man. The markings were the same, the build.. Everything was the same, but in the same instant, it was different. "You're not.. You're not Lior. Where is he?![/b]"

[The Jenn]

"Oh, he's fine," Lior said softly, his wispy voice drawing out the words in strange ways. He continued to look at her with those blank, even eyes. "I can see that you care for him. Don't worry. He's safe. Nothing will ever bother him again."

Slowly the feline stood, taking a moment to actually test out the limbs and torso of the body as if he were trying on a new suit and testing its fit. The cloak had only ever taken control when it had somewhere to be, a purpose in store, and no time to waste on the feel of the body around him. He'd never considered how his own body felt on his soul before. It was comfortable and familiar, but at the same time, very odd. Huh.

Furred fingers smoothed over the feathers of his cloak and he nodded to himself. "Well. I should be off, then," he said absently. "I have a job to do."

[Kari Muffin]

Peaches suddenly wrapped her arms around her daughter out of sheer horror at what was happening and what was going on with Lior who didn't seem to be proper Lior. Either way Peaches was terrified and clinging to her daughter, angst forgotten for fear.

Xiven's fur stood on end, her eyes were still burning as she tried to blink out an image. What was going on? Lior was standing up. But he... but he had been. The words coming out of Lior where clearly not his, but he was clearly Lior. Her mother's sudden hug surprised her, and she reached up to pull away her mother's tight grip.

This really was happening, wasn't it?

Shit. It really was.

"Li...or?" she asked in a cough. What job was he talking about? Really, what the hell was going on? Her father really was dead, Lior was not right, and Rhi was terrified. How had this all happened?

[carcinoGeneticist]

The thing that was not-quite Lior opened its mouth and spoke in a voice that both was and wasn't his. Rhiannon's emotions didn't know how to react, torn from one extreme to another. Xiven speaking broke her out of her mental haze and her head whipped back, staring at the feline for a long, silent second.

But there was no recognition in her expression, as if she was staring at a complete stranger. Like the man standing across the hall from her wasn't Lior, this black-and-purple, bloodstained woman wasn't Xiven. Couldn't be Xiven. Her Queen, her lover, the person who held half of her heart.. It wasn't possible for that person to have so thouroughly destroyed the only part of Rhiannon that wasn't hers.

Trapped between two faces that should have been familiar, but weren't, something in Rhiannon's fragile mind snapped.

She stood, shaking, and took a step towards the thing that was not-Lior. "No,[/b]" she said, shaking her head vaguely. "No, you can't go. Not yet. You love me,[/b]" she said, as if love was reason enough for this... creature to stay. "Let me go with you.[/b]"

Apocalypse stood at one end of the hallway, watching the scene unfold with a completely blank expression, normally vivid orange-red eyes dull. What was his summoner doing...? From the looks of it, she was planning to leave. Without him.

[The Jenn]

When she spoke, Lior's head tilted slightly to the side and he regarded Xiven and Peaches without a noticeable change in expression. It remained a neutral, detached, ambivalent face, blood remaining on the fur from wounds that had since healed over. "Technically, but no," he responded in a disinterested tone of voice. "He is elsewhere. Safe. Your pain and your anger cannot upset him there. You may call me by that name, however, if you wish. I am an embodiment of something greater than 'Lior', but I am wearing his form, and so it is appropriate.""

The wings settled themselves under and around the cloak as they needed. He shifted restlessly, turning once more to look at the woman whose tone and bearing had changed. "I will not stop you from following me, but it would be preferable if you did not try to rouse him. He does love you. He may come back for you, if anyone. One other, perhaps. It is in his best interest to remain dormant and protected, however. You should not come, but I will not stop you."

He turned and slowly began walking towards the stairs that led down.