*COMPLETE* "People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that in the end we will do what is right. We can't let them down. We can't let Ben win."
Decisions made on top of the lonely, wind-swept cliff of Lethinor reverberate around the five...
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"What happened?" Lei demands as she brushes past him, her eyes trained on the winding staircase. "What did he say?"
She doesn't answer, propelling herself forward by sheer will, pushing up step by step with gritted teeth, unyielding resolve.
"Allayria," he says and she hates the sound of her name, the sound of it uttered alone, because it sounds like the plea given amongst smoke and ash, a broken promise of wonder and disbelief. She shakes it off with an irritated twitch because she can't stop now, she can't steep on this, not here, in this hall. Not in front of him.
A hand grabs hold of her wrist but she yanks it out of his grip.
"What happened?" he repeats and she can hear the low alarm beneath his tone, the cautiousness, the wariness.
"He doesn't know anything," she responds, not looking back at him.
"What did he do?"
"He's hog-tied like a pig for eating," she snaps. "What do you think he can do?"
When his hand touches her arm again it's with force, shoving her forward so she stumbles a bit on the steps. She feels another shove, another prod meant to irritate her, to make her angry enough so she can turn back, take it out on him, because that's what they do with these things now, but she just staggers forward still.
His voice has dropped to a whisper and the unease isn't hiding anymore when he asks his final question:
"Did he hurt you?"
Oh, but this is too much to bear.
"There's nothing left to hurt," she lies, her voice flat and sharp—a warning, a signal to stop.
"He couldn't kill you then," he says in that maddeningly soft voice, "and he can't kill you now."
And it all comes out like vomit, pulling and pushing at her so when she twists around to look at him, twists around to unload all the terrible things she's kept stitched up inside, her nails scratch along her collarbones, her skin crawling underneath it all.
"He did kill me," she hisses, unable to keep it in, unable to let him of all people think that somehow she was victorious in this, that somehow the awfulness of what Ben did has been diverted. "I died. I was dead. Ruben told me. I was dead in the water, with all the bones and flies and those slimy, fleshy things, and I just laid there and rotted for days. Like a corpse."
And a shudder crawls through her, bringing up all the secret worries, the hidden suspicions that have gone dormant and unsaid.
"Maybe I'm still rotting," she says, manic and unable to hold it back now as her fingers spasm around her throat. "Maybe I'm still turning foul—"
"No," he says, and Lei, who recoils at a touch on the shoulder, an impersonal pat on the back, holds her face, thumbs pressed against her cheeks so she has to stop and look at him. "You're not dead. You're not a corpse. There's blood flowing in the veins beneath this skin, a heart drumming in your chest."
He grips her hand, laying it on his chest, above the persistent thud of his own.
"You are alive as much as I am alive," he says, fastidious and steadfast, fixed and believing in all the things that cannot be proven. "And as long as I am alive, you'll stay alive."
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A/N: Surprise posting! Sometimes you got to just TREAT YO SELF. (Automatic brownie points for those who get the reference.)
Anyway, remember when these two wanted to kill each other? Me too.
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Chapter notes: Ruben retells what happened on Lethinor in the "The Thing in the Water" chapter of Partisan and Allayria first deals with it in "Bones and Rot."
