veturius | (no subject)

I don't know what time it is when I ease myself out of bed. Raven's still asleep so I move as soundlessly as I can out of the room. I don't know what's woken me up but I don't want to disturb her after everything else I've done to cause her problems. So, I tug on a shirt and pad my way into the living room. The sun is just starting to rise and I stand in front of the window, letting the chill of the morning wake me up.

Stretching, I close my eyes and stand there, waiting for something. I don't know what. When I open my eyes, Demetrius is there in front of me. Demetrius who I buried a few months ago. Demetrius who died at my hands. He's just standing there, staring at me and the chill from the morning doesn't compare to the cold steel that's running through my veins right now.

"I'm sorry."

It's the only thing I can think to say. Demetrius is one piece though his eyes are dark, hollow. Accusing. I swallow and step forward, reaching for my friend but my hand passes right through him. It hurts more than it should. I know he is dead and I know he will continue to be dead but I can't help but wish he wasn't.

"Demetrius, please..."

Demetrius still doesn't move. He stares at me and I turn away, hiding my face in my hands and stifling any sort of strangled moan or sounds of pain that want to slip out of me. When I pull my hands away, Demetrius is gone and I'm alone.

I don't know how I feel about that.

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She chews on her lip, wondering whether it's worth asking anybody at all. She doesn't want to force him to talk to anyone if he doesn't want to, and she can understand that this isn't the most enjoyable subject to bring up to just anyone. The last thing she wants to do is make things worse for him, and if stirring up the poison in his blood does that, she doesn't know if or how magic could stop it.

"So how can I help?" she asks gently, ducking her head and lifting his chin a little so she can look at him properly. This is so out of her realm of expertise that she feels completely useless, and that's not a feeling Raven does well with. She can usually fix any problem she sets her mind to, but she doesn't know how to handle visions of dead people and a mysterious poison in his blood.

All she knows is that this is clearly putting him through hell, and she'll do anything she can to make it easier for him.

"I don't know if there is anything short of me dying that will solve this," I tell her with a shake of his head. There is no cure for the nightweed and the only thing that kept him sane back home had been the tellis extract. With that nowhere in sight, he's not sure what can be done, if anything.

"I'm not asking you to kill me before you start thinking that I'm not...that all right," I say hurriedly, shaking my head and meeting her eyes. "This is something I'll just have to live with, I think."

Maybe, since my access to the Waiting Place is cut off, I'll only see Demetrius. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't happen often. "Distraction, I think, is what helped back home. If I didn't think about it, I didn't have seizures that sent me to -- to the Waiting Place."

At least she doesn't have to worry about him taking that particular solution too far. She'd been about to protest when he first said the words, not because she seriously thinks he would hurt himself to make the visions stop, but because it wasn't a thing she wanted to even entertain the idea of.

It doesn't seem fair that it's just something he has to live with, but she's at a loss for how to argue. She doesn't know how to fix this, and it's not like she doesn't know a thing or two about just having to live with things. Abby hadn't been able to fix the damage to her spine, and the doctors in this place can't, either. It's just something she has to deal with for the rest of her life.

Distraction, she supposes, she can do. If it's all that she can offer, she'll be on hand to distract him whenever he wants. "Okay, distractions then," she agrees, nodding. It's the same way she keeps her attention off the pain that comes back some days, and she's found Elias to be a hell of a distraction herself. She leans up to kiss him, pressing her lips against his as though that will be distraction enough, like she can shut Demetrius out if he's standing anywhere in this room right now.

Well, I can't argue with that as a method of distraction. It certainly scatters all other thoughts that are in my head, filling me up with warmth and something very close to an emotion that scares me. I tamp down on it, push it aside or else I'm going to say something embarrassing and I don't know if either of us is ready for something like that. This still feels new, fragile, like I could ruin it at any moment.

I'm loathe to pull away from her lips but I find I have to breathe. I don't plan on taking too long away from her proximity though since it's one of the few things that makes me feel normal.

"That's a better distraction than I had back in Serra," I say, quiet amusement in my voice. "We typically either were fighting someone else, each other, or running from someone. This is better."

She knows exactly what that feels like, remembers it well, but that's not a place she wants to revisit right now. She's spent more time fighting or running than she ever wants to do again in her life, and at this hour of the morning, still in the t-shirt she wears to bed in Elias's little apartment, it's the last thing she wants to be thinking about.

"Yeah well, there was no me in Serra," she retorts, pressing another soft kiss to his lips. Maybe she doesn't know how to make Demetrius disappear or stop the poison that's running through his veins, but if this is a way that she can help, she's not about to say no. Kissing him still feels a little like stealing almost, small moments snatched up and tucked away to remember later.

She doesn't know why exactly she keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe after everything that happened she'll spend the rest of the foreseeable future this way, but she doesn't want to dwell on it. What matters is that they're both here, so she runs her hands over her arms to steady them both, presses another kiss to his jaw. "This is definitely better."

"You would have been the center of attention in Serra," I told her, whispering the words against her lips and feeling my own mouth pull into a smile. Helene certainly would have either loved her or felt threatened by her. I don't know how Laia would react but I try not to think of Laia and Raven in the same span of time. It feels like cheating of a sort and I don't want Raven to think that I'm ever thinking of anyone but her when I'm with her.

"They wouldn't have known what to do with you," I tell her, reaching to cradle her cheeks again. I remember doing this back during the Purge, back when I'd been hallucinating badly while I implored her to leave me alone, get somewhere safe. "I wouldn't have known what to do with you."

I still barely knew sometimes. But, she was gracious and smart enough to take the lead and I wasn't so dumb that I couldn't follow her. I brush my thumbs along her cheeks, pushing hair behind her ears and turning my face to try and kiss her again, kiss her properly.

"I -- " The words try to, once again, spill from my lips but I stop them by kissing her again and again, mapping her face with my fingers and lips.

People back home hadn't known what to do with her either, she muses. She'd been more headstrong than they'd ever counted on when they tried to tell her she couldn't join Zero-G, and then she'd run rings around all of them. They hadn't expected her to fly a dropship to Earth either, but she'd done that, too. The Grounders definitely hadn't known how to handle her, but all of that is behind her now.

"You would have worked it out," she says, laughing a little against his lips. He cradles her face and Raven's hands curl around his neck, holding him against her. Like this it's easy to pretend like nothing else exists, not the poison that won't let him go or the things in either of their pasts that threaten to bubble over.

There's something he stops himself from saying and she wants to know what it is, but for the moment she's distracted. He keeps kissing her like she's some kind of lifeline, and Raven falls into it, the unasked question dying on her lips before she can even think of asking it. "You worked out what to do with me here," she points out, kissing him again to make her case. Maybe he'd spent a long time trying to push her away, but it hadn't taken him all that long to figure out that it was never going to work on her.

"I think you underestimate my abilities with women," I tell her, shaking my head. The smile stays on my face and I keep my eyes shut, breathing her in, feeling her warm skin beneath my hands, the wisps of her hair tickling my knuckles. There is nothing else like this in my world. There is nothing else this precious and I'm so worried that something will ruin it. Whether it be me or something from my world, the fear will not relent though I've been able to control it for awhile now.

I just wish it would go away.

"But, I'm glad you're not in Serra," I tell her fiercely, punctuating the statement with a kiss, harder and deeper. I don't tell her why, don't want to bring my mother into this conversation but I don't want her there. If anyone were to know what she is to me, it would mean certain death for her. No. It's safer to have this cocoon of safety here.

My hands move from her face down her back, the line of her spine until I can get a hand underneath the thin tee shirt she's wearing and onto her back proper. I splay my fingers out and try and bring her closer to me.