Juliet's Surrender [Juliet's Tryst #2]

---DREAM 2---

She was barefoot again. The sky was a blinding shade of gray, the sun still shining full tilt upon the ground yet the clouds smelled of rain. This time, she knew she was dreaming and that it wasn't her own. There was nothing mistaking the heady pressing of another presence inside of her brain. It was intimate, but not soft. In front of her, nothing but rolling green heels. Her feet started to walk. 

Her voice disappeared into the breeze when she called for her wife. She felt foolish for even trying. This was different from last time. Last time, there had been a dark urge fufilled. She was disappointed that it was calmer. More measured. Truly in control, this inner sanctum of their conjoined minds commanded Juliet's soul fully.

A dark gothic manor appeared in the distance, and as soon she set eyes on it, the heavens began to weep. It had three towers, dotted with large glistening windows. As she drew closer, mist turned to droplets, and droplets turned to sheets of rain. Even though it was a dream, she was shivering with cold. Her teeth chattered violently and her joints screamed from the pain of enduring shaking muscles. Warmth was not a kindness anyone deserved here. When she drew closer, she realized that the whole front courtyard was nothing but roses. Big, angry roses that curled into each other and threw out thorns with vicious abandon. Juliet stood at the edge of the garden, surveying her bare feet and the lack of a path through. A small light flickered into existence in a window on the second floor. The face was unmistakable, the triangular chin and the clenched jaw that was visible even from the vantage point. She was dressed clothes so dark that moment the candle's weak light was absorbed by the fabric.

I don't see you like that, Juliet thought to herself. This isn't you. The darkness. The foreboding. This attempt to create a monster out of herself. As she took the first step through the roses, she knew that any pretense between them was lost. She kept her face still, swallowing her pained grunts and tucking them away into a safe pocket of her stomach. Now was not the time to show weakness, or fear. No matter how it clawed at her throat. Or glistened through the blood on the bottom of her feet. 

There was little reprieve. Only a couple of times did she manage to step square on a flower to avoid pain. It was a sick little game, as she felt Dee's eyes following her. Watching her struggle and being the cause of it. Finally, by the time the rosebushes were almost slippery with her blood, she reached the door. It opened for her slowly. Inside, there was nothing but darkness. Something whispered to her, barely audible. As she strained to hear, a candle spontaneously appeared at her feet. It reflected a reddish glow. 

A piano playing melancholy tune, notes coming in and out of her hearing. Oh, Gninluck, I cannot fathom life without my love. There was only darkness, and each step she took. She imagined the floor would give way under her, but it only creaked. She imagined creatures coming out from the ether, but there was only the soft piano and endless darkness. Playing tunes from their wedding day, each spun to a mournful degree. Suddenly, like a stage light turning on, a window appeared, casting a gray glow upon the end of a corridor. A large portrait, a woman with icy blue eyes and pale alabaster skin. Golden tresses elegantly pulled in waves around her face. A small smile, one that spoke of sadness. Juliet recoiled, recognizing herself as one does a ghost. 

"We weren't happy in this universe," Dee's voice was at her ear. "I was a woman masquerading as a man, and left to die in war. You were an heiress and fell in love with me, and tried to protect me with your money and your doctors, but alas. It was not to be. Gunshot to the chest."

Juliet could feel it, that while this was a dream, it was also real. A projection of a separate reality. 

"How are you doing this?" A whisper of a breeze, the rain fell. She turned to find emptiness. 

"That's a secret I'm afraid you're going to have to come to find out." The voice was deeper, more masculine, but purred in a feminine rage.

"You know I can't do that," Juliet whispered. 

"We were cruel to each-other. I took many lovers, and you punished each that I took. We were madly, desperately in love and at each turn punished the other for being so."

That she felt too. This place was haunted by ferocious longing, as if that which filled it had been gone for a long time. Time was no balm for that sort of pain. Juliet stepped even closer to inspect the brush marks, and when she lifted a hand to it, she felt a tingling. A familiarity.

"This painting, I commissioned on my deathbed to be sent to you. I used your money for this instead of accepting the potentially life-saving work of the doctor-barber-surgeon. But I have a feeling that I understood it was the end anyways, knowing the human medicines of the time. It was earnest, and a final attempt at true connection. No more pretending I did not love you like you loved me."

The tears were silent as Juliet couldn't stop her hand from following the edges of her own tresses on the painting. The strokes were delicate and precise.

"Why are you showing this to me?"  Haven't I cried enough for you?

"You grew the roses. Tending to them from mere seedlings. Mourning me. Then you jumped upon them, dying a slow and painful death, bleeding out alone. You cried my name for hours, Diana, Diana, Diana."

Juliet closed her eyes, and for a flash, she could remember. The delirium of thinking that their bond could heal all, and all it did was bring merciful death. 

"Stop this," she whispered. "This isn't us."

"We are a statistical anomaly. We exist in more than half of the known universes, you know the only other thread that exists in just as many? Life itself. Life happens, then we do. Sometimes happy. Sometimes like this. But our universe is the only one where I am not a human."

A darkly gloved thumb gently ran across Juliet's quivering bottom lip. Then it was unfair. This was unfair then. They could have been... normal. 

"You're so afraid, my love," Dee said, hand gently guiding her face up.

"I would hardly call getting pregnant by an alien being afraid," she snipped. 

"Then why do you run from me?"  The look on Dee's face was so earnest, almost as if she was speaking to another person. Someone unmoored by the responsibility of her station, someone who had let their guard down. Someone human. Juliet rested her cheek in the open palm of her lover, just for a moment only residing there, in the haunted and cursed place that longed for the to be re-united. And she was afraid. She was afraid of many things, death, childbirth, destruction. But most of all, she was afraid for Dee, something she felt as such an absurd fear that buried it deep. If she could... save the world, then she could save Dee from ever being harmed by humans. And humans being harmed by Dee. 

"You're a dictator, I can't condone that," she finally whispered. "I have to stop you."

"You know, that you left eye twitches ever so slightly when you lie? It's something I noticed way back at our night in that posh club. When you tried one of the drinks, and made a big show of  liking it. So eager to please, but I saw it. That twitch."

"Baby, I can't," Juliet whispered. Dee had never been so gentle with her, not in words or in touch. It wasn't something she knew she needed until now.

"I just want the truth,"  her thumb caressed Juliet's eyebrow, and she let out an involuntary hum of pleasure. To be touched so softly be Dee was a heaven she had been denying herself out of... fear. 

"I'm afraid I'm not enough, not for you, not for the world, not for the child. I had to get away to prove to myself that I was worth something. But now I'm here, and I have... nothing." Nothing useful. A burgeoning belly. A world on the brink of war. Just a woman. Just a woman. A lost stupid small pregnant woman.

Instead of any sort of remark, Dee wrapped her arms around her and hugged her tightly, and they did not let go. 

Happy Halloween!!