magic_fratboy | Never an honest word... (rp for dealing

Current Mood: curious

Entry tags:

Never an honest word... (rp for dealing_death)

He was learning, very quickly, to find some means of drawing when the darkness descended.

Tonight, thankfully, he was at home with oils and canvas, painting freehand with no charcoal or pencil to guide him. Through the haze over his vision, a vivid storm of reds, blacks, and oranges was coming to life. Piece by piece, he was assembling fragments of a larger picture he couldn't describe or even quite make out, but it was right there at the edges of his awareness.

Without knowing what was to come, he could already tell there was a storm brewing.

When the fog lifted and he could clearly see the monstrosity on the canvas, he worked on adding his own touches in hopes that he could do something with the piece. Sell it, give it away, excise the cancer he'd just put down in oils and hope it didn't come to pass. He rarely understood his visions, and this was no exception.

This vision, this malestrom of fire and brimstone...he didn't want to understand it.

He was just thinking of altering the picture, knowing he never would, when her voice reached him. As he toyed with tubes of green and gray to soften the edges of the smoke in the painting, he heard shouting in the other room and frowned. Glancing up, he stared at the image...

...the dark, slender shadow at the center of a firestorm that seemed to coalesce into two hellish points of red...

Shrugging it off, he dropped the paint and headed for the guest room/home office. "Selene? Baby, everything okay?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In the guest room she paced. Far too angry for the confines of the tiny space. Against her ear she held the phone with one hand while the other clenched in a tight fist, a manifestation of her rage.

When he entered the room she was at the tale end of her rant.

"Damn it Tristan!" She bellowed. At first she had tried to keep the yelling to a minimum. To keep from alerting Tommy to what was going on. "You will fix this...." Seeing Tommy at the door she sighed. "Tomorrow." The phone vibrated with the Prince's laughter as he explained for the hundredth time that it was just a joke. "Fucking hilarious! I am in stitches.....yes...fine...." She growled and hung up once he gave her a time.

Holding the phone a little too tightly in her hand Selene took a deep, cleansing breath. "Fine." The word sounded as tense as she looked. Another deep breath. Do not take it out on him she told herself. When she opened her eyes she smiled at Tommy. The smell of paint hung in the air and stained his fingers. "What did you paint?"

Likely another of the visions he was not pleased with having.

He didn't answer, frozen by a vision of her humming with tension and fury that made her nothing short of glorious...but the edge he saw cut him in a way he didn't think he was capable of being hurt. Something in her manner, something in her energy...

Someone hurt her. We can fix this.

He barely heard the voice over the sound of blood pounding in his ears...or maybe it was the sound of some distant drum, calling him to battle. The thought was strange, but he was too angry to acknowledge it.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice too quiet, face too unreadable. "What's the problem?"

"It is ridiculous." The word poured from her mouth riddled with her anger and frustration. He may not have even noticed what the problem is. She had.

Selene had tried, in every language she knew, to say the word married. She couldn't. It was a simple word. She had heard other people say it. Congratulating them on getting married yet when she tried to say it, nothing came.

"Absolutely ridiculous." Her fingers raked through the long hair hanging around her face.

"I have forgotten a word." Was made to forget. She thought loudly. "It was erased from my mind."

We are hitched. Wed. Marry. Marriage. Those were all fine. When she went to say 'We are married' or 'I am married' it came out as 'We ar m-m-m----'.

Catherine. It was the first name that came to his mind, knowing what she meant to Selene and what blackness was living inside of her. Yet even if it wasn't...

There was something about the very idea that her mind had been violated that drove him to the brink of madness. Whoever did it, however it happened...

Shutting his eyes, he let his mind brush hers. It was a touch, a bare caress...but he didn't need much more. She was struggling for it, searching for it, that very word...

A soft, choked snort bubbled in his throat with the force of the rage threatening him. Turning away suddenly, he caught himself on the back of the sofa and nearly doubled over, body singing with tension. He was shaking, seeing red, the same red he'd been painting...

The world shifted under his feet as he sank into darkness.

* * * * *

Abruptly the muscled shoulders relaxed, the back straightened, and he turned to face her once again.

Instead of Tommy's warm brown eyes, however, hellish red depths locked with hers.

"A name." he bit off, his voice detached and flat. "Give it to me so I can kill him."

"Wh--what!?" She stammered out completely taken off guard by his lifeless tone and the glean of fire in his eyes. "Tommy...he did not mean any harm. A ridiculous prank is all."

He could not kill Tristan. It would mean war for her and the Coven she rules.

Once she had seen his eyes like this, when he fought the Darkness in the alley. She was not prepared for it to look her in the face in the sanctity of their home. Selene swallowed hard visibly shaken by the tension between them. "It is nothing. I will fix it."

"You will do nothing and like it."

He advanced on her then, a slow measured step forward as his gaze bore into hers. There was no recognition there, not the kind she was used to...but at the same time there was heat, passion, and even love.

"He loves you." he observed, detached as he tilted his head curiously. "You do not understand how valuable and how dangerous that makes you. What you will do is give me his name and stay out of my way. If you do not, I promise you...everyone will die. Including Tommy Karras."

"Tommy..." She growled out as he moved forward. He wasn't the man she knew and loved. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

Then he started talking like Tommy was not there and her heart beat faster. If he wanted to scare her into submitting...well clearly he had no idea who he had m-- DAMN IT! She couldn't even think the word. "I will not." She said confidently as she met the hellfire in his eyes.

She met him half way, refusing to cower. Her Tommy was in there, beyond whatever this was. "You are not Tommy, you have no right to defend me. Or make demands of me." If whatever this was, was not her husband, she would fight against it.

The laugh that rose from his throat was strangely distorted...disconnected, aloof, but not cold, not quite. Reaching out, he ran his hand through her hair...and the touch was familiar. Warm, gentle, and unquestionably that of the man she had married.

"That is the ultimate problem." he explained quietly, still not smiling, scarlet eyes softer somehow. "Because I am Tommy...but he is no longer the only one in the room."

The noise that came from him, that laugh, it made her stomach twist in knots. His touch did not cause her to recoil. Instead she tilted into it.

Confusion floated through her eyes and features. Even though she did her best to remain confident and unafraid. Inside she was scared. Only because she had no idea of what was going on.

"I fail to see the problem. Aside from your temper." Stubborn as ever she could not bring herself to back down. "No, he is not. I am here as well." Her arms folded over her chest, chin jutting out in defiance. "His wife, your wife, what ever....this is." She waved an angry hand in front of him.

She could deal with Tristan. Make certain he knew this was not acceptable. No matter if they on good terms or not this was his one and only chance. Or she might have to go back to wanting to kill him.

Leaving him standing there she walked in a circle around him, appraising Tommy with the careful eye of a hunter.

"This is what he is afraid of?" She was sure there were many questions she could ask, after all he knew everything, did he not? What she was more interested in was why this had manifested. "Why?"

"He does not know I exist." he replied, watching her without moving as she circled him. "Not in this manner. Every avatar has a dark side...unlike humans, their darker natures can kill them. Still, they are mortal and flawed." He paused, jaw clenching with tension.

"He has three sets to contend with, and all the power of the gods to give them life. That is what I am."

"A god?" Standing before him again with a hand on her hip, head tilted to the side she quirked a brow. When his jaw clenched she reached out and stepped closer to him. The tips of her fingers touched the tight muscle bunching along sharp line of his jaw. "Why now?"

Was this Tommy's way of dealing with his anger? Or his subconscious breaking free to protect her? Maybe she had nothing to do with it at all. Was this just an excuse for this dark side to leak out and stretch his legs in the skin of her sweet, soft spoken husband?

Her hand did not draw back, instead she brushed it through his hair, moving it away from his face. He was dangerous to her and that, that did not scare her.

Letting him rush off to kill Tristan scared her. The consequences of allowing that were too great. Standing in the presence of his rage manifested in this dangerously frightening side of his personality was....

It really should not be so thrilling......

"That is how I started." he replied, watching her keenly as she moved closer, head moving into her touch in a familiar gesture unconnected to the alien expression she stared into.

"Rage is an instrument of the Darkness." he went on, running his fingers through her hair again. "Bloodlust...it can kill. So his power draws him inward to heal. That's when we come out." He paused, tilting his head again. "Consider me...a convergence of the men he has been. All the worst of them wrapped into one. I have been all three, I know all they know."

He paused, leaning in to whisper in her ear. "And the one who took this word from you is not the first your husband has wanted to kill."

Bloodlust. Something she knew a thing or two about. More then she would like to admit. Catching the fingers that ran through her hair in her own she drew him closer. "Then you know that I need no one to kill for me." Or because of her. Selene would never put him in harms way, not for her sake, not over something so foolish. "You had no chance of leaving this apartment so long as I was here."

Of course that was not truth, she knew how very capable he was. If Tommy wanted he could breeze right past her and there was nothing she could do about it.

"The first he has wanted to kill in my defense." She would have to do something about that. They needed to talk. For now that did not matter, somehow she had to calm him down so this would dissipate.

The way he touched her was all Tommy. How he looked at her was strange and foreign. Now that he was not trying to force his way out of the apartment to kill Tristan the fear she had felt melted away.

Taking him by the hand she lead him to the kitchen sink. There was a part of her that liked this dark, violent side of him, she is a monster after all. His rage connected to that darker spirit lurking within her. Warm water poured from the tap and she eased his paint stained hands under the spray, then lathered them with soap. Methodically she rubbed and massaged his skin, washing away the remnants of paint from his hands. While she did this she spoke. "If you know all they know then tell me, why me? Why has he chosen me?"

He knew everything yet it was the only thing she wanted to know. Even now as his wedding band twisted under her fingers as she rinsed the bubbled away, she did not understand why he loved her as much as he did. His love for her made her valuable and dangerous and she wanted to know why.

In a gesture that was purely Tommy, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the sink as he let her wash the paint from his hands, and in another gesture that was unfamiliar, but not malicious, he tipped his head to rest it against her arm as she did.

"You are wrong. Catherine...oh, he would want to kill her a great deal more if she were not a woman." he mused. "And if she were not rooted so deeply in your mind..."

He trailed off, lifting his head from her arm and watching as she gently cleaned his hands, wiping the suds away from his wedding band. It was a long moment before he answered.

"He did not choose you. He had no choice. Avatars love easily, if he did not love you it would be another. You are a killer, Selene. You are a monster...yet once you were human, and in six hundred years you have made many choices. The one you made, the one that made you his, was the choice to keep your human heart. Dead things cannot smile, evil things cannot love. You do this and more, not because it is your nature as it is with humans. You do this because you choose to. Everything you feel, you have fought for, and that is why he is here. He loves you for many reasons...but the choice? It was never his. It was yours the first time you resisted the call of Darkness."

There was a muted chuckle as she shook her head. "Catherine is no threat to me. He does not see that. What Tristan has done...." Long before he decided to be a trickster and removed that word from her head, was far, far worse. Did he see that? Did he know? "I can handle them." Until he said that....

"Rooted in my mind?" Between her dark eyes her brows pinched tightly together. Was that why she felt like she and Catherine were such great friends? Had she made her feel like that?

With a soft towel in her hands she took her time drying his. "I....see." Setting the cloth aside she leaned against the counter.

He ignored her remark about Catherine, and made no comment on the name she had offered up, only filed it away for later.

Instead, he watched her with those dispassionate red eyes, curious and disconnected at the same time.

"You do not. And it is better that you do not." he replied. "You only think you face great wars every day, that you dance with devils and yearn to fly with angels...this war we fight transcends good and evil. We are where both began, we are beyond it. Good and evil do not exist without my children and the shadows they hunt. In this game, you are all players...we are the field you play on."

He paused, sighing as he moved to kiss the top of her head, another gesture that was Tommy's, yet not at the same time. "We pray you never truly get to see."

When his lips brushed her hair she let him but she did not linger. She ducked her head away from the touch, closing her eyes she pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Then fight your war and I will fight mine." She muttered, sounding a little more hurt then she wanted. Even if it was pointless to do so, Selene knew nothing else.

At least his anger had settled and they were speaking about something else. She was not afraid to truly see what he spoke of. If he wanted to keep it from her fine. Lifting her head she opened her eyes and just looked at him. Then with a sigh she walked out of the kitchen.

He laughed, then, and it wasn't a pleasant sound.

"You really are a fool if you think that is possible." he bit off, following her out of the kitchen. "Another war is going on, this one for your soul. Catherine, Tristan, your coven...even your own mother. You have taken great strides in accepting our love, but you have a long way to go."

Catching her arm, he spun her to face him, pulling her flush against his body. The part of him that was still Tommy Karras warmed, thrilling at the feel of her as he always did. It colored his expression as he sneered down at her.

"You are so ready to fight the world alone, to believe you are unworthy...you, who could destroy the entire human race simply by dying. You may not want to be royalty, you may want to be left to your battles, Selene, but you must realize that any who lay hands on you lay hands on your husband as well. Consider that when you are struck, when you are manipulated...and if you do not want to see what we are capable of, you will strike down your enemies with the same fury you will reserve for those who would harm your husband."

She felt a rush of heat as her body was pulled in against his. It was uncontrollable. Angry or not she could not stop the instant reaction she had to being so close to him. Color pooled in her eyes and cheeks as her lips parted to breath out headily against his skin.

"No one has killed me yet." Selene snapped in an almost snotty tone. "It is not so simple. You make it sound so easy." She growled at him her dark eyes beginning to churn with her frustration. "Striking them down would mean fighting a fight I have no hope of winning. I use them, they use me. It is just the way things are."

And she had no idea how to break that cycle. Selene could physically kill each and every one of them. With ease. What she could not defend herself against was the mental intrusion. Hostility against any of them could mean she was turned into a lap dog for her enemies.

"Choose your words carefully." he shot back peevishly, hands moving to cradle her head with Tommy's gentle touch and an alien anger burning in hellish red eyes. "For hope is the one thing you have for always. Mark my words, if they are not shown the price of trifling with my children...I will show them. They play power games with you, but that stops now. Now, Selene, you will play the games because you have the power. You use them, they use you? Use someone else for a change. Use your husband."

“It was a joke.” She whispered to him as her somber dark eyes were trapped by the hellfire in his eyes. “He meant no harm.” This time, she thought. This time he meant no harm but Tristan was a very great threat. Tommy would have every reason to want to rid the world of his presence. After all he had found a way to tear Selene away from a relationship six hundred years in the making. Held in his hands she trembled.

“I took off Catherine’s necklace for you, it kept me safe from their manipulations and I took it off. Do you not see that I do trust you, I draw strength from having you beside me…I never would have taken it off if I didn’t.”

She would not use him to fight her fights. The very idea of it made her eyes fill with shame. That was not why she was with him; she had no use for his power. All Selene wanted from Tommy was his love. Her head dropped and she took a deep breath. “You want a name, fine, Tristan Gray. Go on then. Go….use your power…give into rage…kill him.”

She took a step back breaking the contact between them. Now it was her turn to be angry.

“Or trust me, have faith in me, that is the power I need.” Selene shot him a look that was filled with hurt and anger before storming off to their bedroom. She did not have the heart to tell him to just leave her alone, so she did what she always does. She just walked away.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Never an honest word... (rp for dealing_death)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject