Location: Infirmary - PRCUDance Monkey #4.004: Rare Birds
The night had gone by slowly for the couple as they tried their best to recover from the events of the last day. Haven remained in a state of shock for most the night as her mind grappled with the complicated emotions that kept her from sleep. She sat crisscrossed in the bed they gave her. It was hard to get comfortable in a place so similar to her nightmares. The room reminded her of the trial, and thus reminded her of the fate she’d somehow escaped. The IV placed in her arm, meant to provide hydration, only made her discomfort worse. She found herself absentmindedly scratching at the bandage they’d taped over it too many times to count. It was a wonder that she hadn’t ripped it out of her arm yet.
Her wings had been dislocated from the sockets that sat in the center of her back, courtesy of the gurney and its impact with the concrete walls of the lab. The relaxants they’d given her to deal with the pain of repositioning the joints had also fortunately eased her terror of allowing anyone wearing a lab coat to get near the sensitive limbs, let alone touch them. She tried to think of it as a blessing that she hardly remembered the ordeal besides Rory’s concerned face as he held her hand beside her.
Yet as the relaxants wore off, Haven found herself caught between restlessness and exhaustion. She fidgeted with the strings of her jacket as she tried to stay awake. She’d refused to change out of her clothes, if only to remain in control of one thing on her body, and she’d also kept Rory from leaving to gather new ones. He’d offered the shirt he brought in his duffle bag but she also couldn’t bear to tear holes in it for her wings either. Her damp socks, of course, had been removed and swapped with a warm pair of grippies courtesy of the nurses.
When her exhaustion eventually claimed her, it was a fitful rest filled with what she had seen within the lab. Horrific images of the students whose fate had been worse than her own. Their bodies marred by Daedalus’s artful display of cruelty. She awoke nauseous only to find relief in a nearby trash bin. She didn’t return to sleep afterwards. Instead, she watched Rory nod off once more after he woke to her movements. His gentle breathing soothed her from his place on the couch he’d pulled up beside the bed.
By the time the morning crew came to check in, Haven came close to begging for a break from the white walls of the room. Their sympathy was written clearly on their face as they allowed her to take her morning in the courtyard, but only after she’d had her breakfast and a protein shake to double her nutrition intake. It hadn’t taken her long to eat. She found herself starving after going a day without food. The breakfast smelling and tasting better than it ever had before.
The morning light of the infirmary’s courtyard soon greeted Haven and Rory as they stepped out of the sliding glass doors together. The warmth warmed Haven’s skin and feathers, the color of the garden at the yard’s center providing instant relief from the white halls within the building. Haven released a breath in a relieved sigh, before she turned her head to her tall companion to watch as he picked up the IV pole that was near empty beside them. She offered him a grateful, yet tired smile before the pair made their way onto the grass.
She moved to sit in the sun, close by the tree that took up the center of the courtyard. She skipped the bench for obvious reasons, but mostly to allow her wings to soak up the rays that had just begun to fill the square space in between the buildings.
Rory carefully set up Haven’s IV drip, making sure to avoid any tangles and securing the legs to avoid it toppling. His hands still faintly shook, which caused him to clench them into fists to steady them again. When he was confident it was secure, he lowered himself down into the grass. He had changed while Haven had slept, slipping into an old t-shirt and shorts he had hurriedly packed for Haven the day before. He wished he had remembered to grab one of her shirts from the laundry. Now, though, he just sat awkwardly quiet in the grass. His nervous eyes remained fixed on Haven, as if she was going to disappear at any second. But any thoughts he had remained to himself, stirring around in his mind like a whirlwind.
Haven took to removing the infirmary’s slippers first, and then the socks. She dug her feet into the grass unashamedly. The feeling of its cool strands between her toes set her at ease, the connection to the earth providing solace. She stretched her wings out beside her, and when the pressure in the middle of her back prevented her from pushing them further, she allowed them to slump into the grass as well. Her head tilted back to catch the sun on her face as her eyes closed. The warm and cold mixture of the green below and the sun above made her feel like she was in her own personal spa.
“You should try it,” Haven murmured before she looked at Rory. Her toes wiggled in the grass. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the look in his eyes. Among the grief she felt for the missing students there was a special place for Rory. A piece of her that yearned to settle the anxiousness that made his hands shake each time he used them. He’d always been thoughtful, and maybe a bit socially anxious, but she’d never seen him so unsettled as this. Her eyes softened as her hand reached for him.
“I’m here, Rory. Be here with me.”Rory nodded shakily, seeming to snap awake from a daydream. He scooted a little closer, removing his own waterlogged sneakers and socks before lying down in the grass next to Haven. He laid on his side, grasping her hand with one of his as he took a couple breaths. He had a million things coursing through his mind, a hundred questions he wanted to ask, and dozens of answers he needed. He knew what she was trying to do.
”I’m here… trying to be, I guess.” Failing was a more accurate word, but she didn’t need to be worrying about him.
”How are your wings? Better than last night?”Haven pressed her lips together for a moment as she tried to simplify the state of her wings into a few words. She could let all of her emotions pour out of her, uncap the well of grief and fear and anger that lingered in her chest, and break down here in the courtyard. She chose to save that for later, when she’d sorted out the good emotions and the bad, and when she would be able to control the words that came out of her mouth.
“They’re still sore… and I’m not sure how long it will be until I can fly again.” A muscle in her neck ticked as the statement seemed to crush her heart. Her eyes fell to where their fingers intertwined.
“But they feel better already. I can rest them while I spend time with you.” Her eyes returned to his blues. Her heart felt lighter when she looked at him, as if none of it really mattered if she had him by her side. He held the entire sky in his gaze and she thought she could get lost in it without moving a feather.
“I’m… lucky to have you, Rory. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”The last person she had expected to see, much less the pair of them, was Haven with Rory as a literal shadow that fretted over her condition with a keen eye that only one of affectionate embellishments could maintain. They are the representative of serenity that flitted by on the dregs of pain and heartache, the completion of one, of unity, glimmering in the intimacy that surrounded them in the lamplight of what Amma could assume was one thing: love.
A curious thing, a thing of dejected blue eyes and quivering lips as she recalled, a thing of smiling praise and delicate touches; a line of insanity and hopeless wonder to the means of the heart undone that was drawn unto the earth before her. A shadow of the unknown that fell away to the beast that recognized the bonding of her spirit now conceding to her blossoming humanity of feeling something yonder the chasm of endless fury and depravity she harbors.
She doesn’t like it. It frustrates her beyond measure, it compounds the decision she has made and the freedom slowly spooling away from her grasp every day the sun rises and falls. She wishes she could take it back, she wishes she could return to a night of flame wherein she had lashed out against hopes and dreams and could-be’s, she wishes sometimes and wonders aloud the what-ifs that fell to the intricacies of fate and destiny therein that still chained her to shadow and ruin.
Her hands won’t stop shaking now,
not since she had seen him, and she can’t figure out why.
Amma watches them for only a few seconds longer, the warmth of the sun bidden to her rather subdued impression, hair braided over her shoulder donned in a blue-gray blouse, shadows marked unto the hallows of her striking stare and exhaustion wreathed through her eyes lost in a muted shade of blue. She wants to know, she has to ask. She’s afraid of the answers.
But. “Haven,” she mutters, approaching them both with a soft gait, intentional and with purpose, arms crossed as she studies them, lashes panned down low on her gaze that slid over Haven first, from wing to foot, and then to Rory, the last conversation they had pulled to the forefront of her mind.
“Rory…” she rejoins, lips drawn down, brows lowered.
“How-” Amma finally relinquished her gaze, opting instead to glance towards the dog wood tree she had claimed of late as her area of rest and contemplation.
“I would ask: how are you doing.” She confessess, shoulders drawn up tight.
“But, I already know.”Haven heard the soft steps of the woman with two names before she heard her own name uttered. The tone suggested a familiarity that Haven had not heard before. She looked between Rory’s eyes, feeling like there was more to say between them, but unable to do it in front of an audience she turned her head to greet a darker shade of blue. Eyes that seemed to look into her soul and not just at her recovering condition.
As if Amma had been in this state of mind before, but to a more horrific degree of anguish.
Amma’s words were almost lost to Haven. Her mind was occupied by another’s voice. His frightening tone, the possessive words he spoke, and his enraged expression echoed in her mind and rattled her present comfort. Her hand tightened around Rory’s as she grounded herself with his touch. Her toes curled in the grass. She blinked as she registered what had been said at present. Amma could understand her now. Maybe she could help sort out the emotions that Haven couldn’t understand. Her grip softened, swallowing against the lump that had formed in her throat, and she simply gave Amma a nod.
“It was hard to sleep last night.” She murmured, glancing Rory’s way.
“Rory kept me company, thankfully.”He gave Haven’s hand a slight squeeze at her words, shooting Amma a sharp glance. But even that softened, as he remembered what she had done the day before. He looked between the two women for a moment, before silently slipping a hand out of Haven’s grasp so he could rise to his feet. He brushed the dirt and grass off his butt, muttering,
”I’ll… be over there if you need me.” He nodded to one of the benches on the other side of the courtyard, and meandered his way over. He gave Amma a wide berth, unconsciously scratching at the faint lines on his arms.
Haven was confused at first, but soon offered a nod of understanding. Her eyes followed him as he walked away. Drawn to the way he scratched at the remains of the trial’s harm, she reminded herself of how she felt when she first saw them. How she had wondered if certain arcs of silver and scarlet had been the cause. She still didn’t know how to comprehend that her saviour had been his aggressor on the same day. Especially now that she and Amma were more alike than they had ever been before.
She turned her gaze toward the woman in question, her eyes ablaze with the embers of anger briefly before they were doused by the understanding that Amma was no creature of malice. When Amma revealed her past in the trial, Haven had imagined masked figures standing over her youthful form as they inflicted their methods upon her. Yet now… all she saw was the grin of a monster looming over her. A terrifying sight contrasting the soothing motions of his hand as it caressed her face. Haven now knew how it felt to be at the hands of someone without mercy. She felt the fear and anger settled deep within her chest and worried how easily it could consume her. A feeling she thought Amma carried with her with each step, ready to lash out at anyone who might inflict pain once more. She couldn’t imagine Rory dealing the first blow, but she wondered if the trial’s tricks had played him right into Amma’s hand at her worst moment.
“Sit with me.” Her tone was soft, devoid of any demand or force behind it. She hoped that since Amma approached there would be no cold shoulder given to her empathy again. Maybe Amma had just as many questions as Haven did, and that would be her reason to stay.
Witnessing the two of them together, in such synchronzation, in such harmony, it bade Amma’s gaze to soften, just so, a barely there shimmer of silver within a sea of writhing blue- calmed before the storm looming before her, on the words unspoken betwixt them that would bloom to the surface as soon as the inquiries were lain bare. She knew it, as did Haven, from the way her eyes of greens and browns banked deep with an inner sanctum of fury at the hopelessness of cruelty that saw her taken from the arms of the man she cared for.
Was this too a form of love that Aurora so proudly championed? Emotions fitted so carefully to their delicate touches and words, from the softness of Rory’s voice and the breadth of his glare that too yielded to her presence on mute understanding and acceptance. She held her breath all the more, refusing to break her glance, noting those faint scars and did not balk at the sudden swathe of guilt that churned through her breast.
Damn them all for this wretched heart pumping away yonder bone and blood; the void of self stricken anew with the coming dawn.
Her brow lowered, lashes too that fluttered on the coolness of her words before she deigned to sit with her, the grass cool whilst the sun ran over her pale figure, legs adorned in black stretched out before her before tucked and crossed, her weight positioned forward, hands upon the seat of her lap and clutched, the insist tremble lanced through her scarred palms that fought to conceal. A weakness she’d rather not spare, not when she was uncertain of its peculiar cause. For that, Amma is silent, head canted to one side and plait slid over her shoulder as she regarded Haven with near detachment, until she breathed in deep and finally said:
“I’m sure you have questions. Or rather, answers now to things you should’ve never known.”Haven seemed to mirror Amma’s movements as she adjusted her legs to accommodate her new companion, crisscrossing them while her back remained straight so that she wouldn’t have to shift her sore wings behind her. A heaviness returned to her chest with Amma’s words, her shoulders slumping forwards ever so subtly. Her eyes turned to the grass before her, where her feet had made an indent in the green. The stalks were already beginning to pop back into their upright place. Soon there wouldn’t be a trace of her left there. She pulled at a strand of grass beside her. It plucked out of the ground easily, leaving her to play with it between her fingers as she mulled over her next words carefully. She didn’t dare bring anything forth that might upset them both when Amma had just sat down. She had something she needed to say before they went into the deep waters of their anguish.
“I… need to thank you again. You really helped the team last night.” She glanced into those deep blue eyes, somehow finding it difficult to withstand that piercing gaze. Still, she pushed through her inhibitions, and made sure each emotion that drove her next words out of her lips was clearly shown in the forest lain within her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” her voice wavered, but she recovered its strength quickly,
“that no one was there to save you from him.”If she’d been more inclined, Haven would have reached for Amma’s hand. Yet she had too many questions overwhelming her thoughts. She worried that they would all come spilling out of her at once if she crossed through that cautious space between them. She wanted to respect Amma’s past, especially when the matter concerned something so terrifying. She needed to choose her words carefully this time because it was nothing like the trial, and she certainly didn’t feel as brave as she had been before.
Amma is quiet, if only for a moment, her eyes locked onto Haven’s, refusing to budge as she simply said:
“I don’t… Remember. Most of it.” She’s not even sure who he is, the name spoken to her before that she could not place and the following ache in her head that left her without the effort and want to try and decipher why.
“Maybe that’s for the best, but sometimes I-” She pauses, finally releasing her gaze and looking heavenward, where the sun bathes them both in darling rays of light.
“I see and feel them. I remember the dark most of all. I remember every. Single. Injection.” Her nails spear through her palms there, clenched tight into trembling fists.
“I don’t remember how I got out. But I did. And so did you.” Amma’s eyes carefully find Rory in the distance, every gesture attuned to Haven in such a way that for the first time she feels…
“We both made promises. I told him I would make sure he was able to fulfill his. Nothing more.”Her tanned hand clenched the grass between her knuckles once again as Amma offered more moments of heartache. The muscles in her back tensed, and she winced at the discomfort at the center. The discomfort of knowing nothing about what might have been done in that lab before her team found her. Her wings remained, so that had to be a reason to believe that he’d been interrupted before he could harm her, right?
She watched the tremors in Amma’s fist and remembered how her own had shaken that way. Both women shared the crescent moon shapes on their palms now. Haven’s would heal, thankfully, but Amma was less fortunate. She’d been fighting for control for so long now.
We got out. Haven thought as her eyes were drawn to Amma’s expression. She noticed where the haunted eyes were looking. There was no doubt Rory watched the pair with an anxious gaze. Her heart felt heavier with Amma’s words, as she realized that Rory must have mentioned his promise to Amma. It ached as she thought of how worried he must have been. How his hands hadn’t stopped shaking since he first unbuckled one of those straps. Tears began to prick at the edges of her vision, but she closed her eyes until the feeling subsided. She plucked another piece of grass from beside her and pressed it between her thumb and pointer. Her next words came unfiltered and raw.
“There was a moment that I believed Daedalus. He said that he wasn’t going to let me go. I’m scared that he’ll come back.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell Rory this, even though she knew that she should. He’d never let her out of his sight again. Her breath hitched as she felt panic creeping up her spine, but she soothed it with a small breath. Amma needed to know too-
“He was furious that they saved you from him. You’re the only one who’s ever escaped him, until now.” Her eyes were pained as she looked at Amma again, a question lingering on her tongue for a moment before it also spilled from her lips.
“I want to know… Did he take anything from you?”She tries, she really does, but Amma cannot contain the sputtering of red that descends with the utterance of that name. It begins as scarlet fragments bidden through her fists that slowly churn up her arms, every muscle strained and tensed and bunched beneath her inked skin as her gaze immediately snaps towards Haven aglow with tremors that wreck through her body.
“They took everything from me.” Feathering edges of black bloom with the harsh admission, her voice clipped and raw, dragged through hell and back as she struggles to contain herself, to maintain control despite what yearns to be unleashed.
“They’ll never let you go, even now. I dream, I see, and I feel it every single night. The only time I didn’t…” Amma pauses, contemplating the confession of her dreamless sleep, the quiet comforts given from the unexpected peace she had found in the ward.
“The only thing I know is that I will get it all back. One day.” “I have to.”The hairs on Haven’s arms and neck stood tall with the intensity of Amma’s awakened vengeance. She didn’t feel fear, or the usual instinctive urge to defend or flee. Her jaw clenched as she tried to sort through the range of emotions that surged through her, but the soreness left by the gag had her relaxing it, her hand bitterly reaching up to rub at the joint beneath her cheekbone. She looked away from the glowing eyes as she realized that her fear of what happened to her outweighed her anger. As if she was disappointing Amma for allowing her resolve to become so thin. She felt shame for it, and that shame turned into grief, which then became a quiet fury for her lost courage. Her brows furrowed as she felt all of it at once, her mind a storm that shook the trees that stood at her core. Each moment from the day before striking her like lightning, and the many conflicting words spoken to her echoing like thunder.
Rory had watched carefully from his bench on the other side of the courtyard. He didn’t have a clue what they were saying, merely watching Haven’s fingers pluck at grass. Until the flash of red. His heart leapt in his throat as his body reacted on instinct, bolting to his feet and taking a massive bound forward, before immediately slowing himself to a softer, slower pace. His fists shook, knuckles white as he grasped for some semblance of control and understanding. His body remained tense, ready to sprint at a moment’s notice if needed.
A frustrated sigh escaped Haven, and she released the piece of grass in her other hand to bring both palms to her face. She ran them up her cheeks and temples, and pushed them up into her hair as she tried to release her stress with the soothing motion.
“I can’t get ahold of myself.” She muttered, admitting her frustrations. Her hands fell into her lap, where they wrung themselves together. The errant hairs around her face slid back into place by her cheeks.
“I feel your rage, and your need for vengeance. I’ve always felt angry, ever since I was taken from my mother.” “But now I feel so much more. I’m shaken.”Her anger surged again as she remembered the piece of information that Daedalus had given her. She looked into Amma’s eyes, a glimmer of doubt in her expression before she spoke.
“Someone told him about me. This “she” sold me out. I want to know who it was, so that I can make sure she doesn’t send any more of us his way. I won’t forget the students he had with him. I don’t want to forget their faces, and I don’t want more of us to suffer like that.” “Do you have any idea who it could be? Torres? Another member of the Foundation?” “I don’t know, Haven.” The words uttered are not easy, the manic tendrils of her powers wreathed through the plaited strands of her hair before looping around her throat, her own frustrations bleeding outward into silver edged coils of manifest in the realization she simply couldn’t remember.
“There are figments, memories maybe, things I see when I dream. Things I see even now.” Her trembling hands were held before her, scarred palms up, the mutilated lines of heart and fate and reason sheered through over and over, every link of scars on her fingers bidden to shake, and the scar on her chest, it burns in memorium, as if a warning for venturing so deep.
“I do not know if you would call that cruelty, or kindness. Or perhaps misplaced justice for all the things I have done.” Amma’s powers surge and boil, the world trembling at her disturbances once more, waves of crimson spilling over her quivering palms as if leagues of blood undone.
“For all that I have yet to do. This role I play.” “What could you have possibly done to deserve the role you say you have?” Haven asked in quiet frustration. She regarded Amma carefully, as if these questions would break the dam to a tortured soul.
“Is your role to avenge your stolen life? To avenge the lives that he has taken?” “Are you ever going to be free of it?” “No.” A fissure within splinters far and wide, a chasm of the unknown that spindles forth wisps of black that waver onto the abyss of her sudden emotions. Laden with fear and anger that gutters out the blue of her eyes into a void of nihilism.
“I killed them. But it wasn’t my fault.” Her breath hitches, her lashes peel wide before manic coils of scarlet whisk themselves across the grass at their feet, blades sundered unto nothing as if they never existed, dirt and roots spun away into nothing but ashen remains.
“They made me do it - I -” Amma’s body lurches forward, arms coiled around her middle, a tremor worked through her entire body as the world at her terrible domination shudders and screams, a halo of destruction surrounding her as she struggles to breathe.
“Mend, instead of sunder.” She pleads, her knees drawn up to her chest where she winds her arms tight, reigning herself to the reality under the sun above.
“You really ask too many questions.” There is laughter there, though small and forlorn, but falling from her lips none the less in dejected intontations.
Haven’s eyes widened a fraction with Amma’s sudden confession. Her instincts recognized the anguish that left a line of ashen grass stalks between them. An almost animalistic need to strike whatever may have caused such pain. Yet as Amma broke in front of her, desperate to catch her breath, Haven felt her heart constrict. Her hand lifted from her lap, reaching towards Amma to place it on her shoulder. Upon reaching the outer edges of the lines of protection she felt the arcs nip at her fingers like a warning. She drew her hand back as she understood it and empathized with it. Perhaps Amma didn't like to be touched either.
The half-hearted joke then caught Haven off guard. A repetition from the trial, and yet its delivery this time seemed to break the tension in Haven’s muscles. A moment passed, and suddenly she was laughing too. A near-hysterical, sorrowful laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. The kind that brought little tears to her eyes. Small beads of amusement and heartache.
“I really do.” She agreed as the heaviness in her chest lightened. She may not have gotten the answers she wanted, as usual, but she now knew that there was someone near her that understood the turmoil within better than she ever could.
“Sorry, Amma.”It starts small, nothing more than a flex in her jaw, a softness to her features that edges into something delicate and perhaps saddened, but suddenly Amma smiles too. A truly lighted simper that blooms across her face at the laughter that fills the tense air betwixt them that was filled to the brim with understanding; a shared pain and fear; one edged in darkness and sorrow with touches of laden fury. Her power still warped and fizzled through her usual sphere of influence, but Amma did her best to contain those tendrils of crimson from reaching out to Haven, her wings familiar to their grace as the world quieted and stilled- for just a moment.
“Sometimes it gets easier. Most of the time it doesn’t, you won’t ever feel safe, maybe not for a while. But if we find them, I promise I’ll destroy them too.” A small tear escaped down Haven’s cheek as her laughter subsided. The motions brought a soreness to her back and jaw, but the moment she shared was worth the pain. The tear was wiped away with the back of her hand, soon lost to the lush and decayed grass between them. A small sniffle accompanied the nod she gave as she acknowledged Amma’s words. They sunk into her chest, and eased the hopelessness that had made its nest within it.
“Thanks. I’ll have your back for that too.” A small dimple formed where one side of her lips turned upwards. A touch of amusement in her eyes as she also repeated a phrase spoken in the trial.
“As I told you then, Haven, I don’t need anyone.” But where malice might’ve reigned, a sort of sadness eclipsed her words, weighted through her sudden whispers as she contemplated the truth of their conversation and the consideration she held for returning to The Foundation. Would they try to stop her? Would Haven, or Katja? Lorcán, maybe? Would Gil? She wonders then, would they care.
And above all else, why did she?
Amma quiets for a moment, gazing off into the distance before she slowly rises up to her full height, mindful of Haven near her and the deadend grass at her feet. She regarded Rory carefully, gesturing off handedly before she offered Haven another smile, not quite as delicate, but there as a slight lift of her lips before she said:
“It helps to not be alone. He is incredibly protective of you.”She leaves the two of them in the gardens, admiring the comfort selflessly given, the ease in which they fitted as a singular construct of both heart and home. Loneliness did not bedevil her existence, but Amma cannot help but wonder if there was actually something she was missing in her life.
And if she even deserved it, for everything she had done. For everything she had yet to do.
3x Thank
1x Thank
