Blood and Water - part 1 of 3
by Eildon Rhymer
On a world of masks and lies, the lone survivor of a disaster seeks revenge on his enemies.
Genre: Gen. Angst. Whump
Spoilers: Brief reference to the second season episode Conversion, but nothing else.
This is a hard one to summarise without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that it is rather darker and angstier than my previous fic, Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, where the h/c was very much tempered with humour. (And, yes, I know I've added something of a spoiler to the summary, but I felt that I had to give readers at least some clue. It's a hard line to walk - between giving away spoilers, and leaving people with no indications at all about the story's content.)
(Rating changed to T on request, because of some violent imagery.)
Part one
He was grubbing for roots when he saw it. His fingers were muddy to the knuckles, dirt driven deep behind his broken nails. Beneath the earth, the roots were white and unhealthy-looking. He always felt queasy when he ate them. The alternative was worse.
He had six already, crammed into the pouch at his belt. His fingers had just encountered the seventh when a flash of movement caught his eye.
He dropped down, roots forgotten, and wriggled forward on his stomach. His heart was beating fast, his breath making the brown needles quiver in front of his face. The creature was close – far closer than he liked. He should have noticed it earlier. He should have been prepared. Without taking his eyes off it, he reached backwards for sweet comfort of his spear. His left hand closed around a rock, small enough to grip, but large enough to kill with.
The creature had taken human form, its foulness wrapped in the innocent hide of one his own kind. He knew it could not be human, though, for all humans were dead. He was the last one left. Anyone who came on two legs was his enemy - they had to be. He could not see its face, to see if it wore a face that he knew. The first one had come wearing the face of his cousin, and the second his oldest friend. He dreaded seeing his father, or, worse still, his wife. When he slept, he woke screaming from dreams of his cousin's shattered face, of blood dripping from his hands.
This one, though, he would not kill. It had been the shock, that first time. Something inside his mind had snapped, and he had returned to awareness hours later with a dim memory of screaming, of hands clawing, of a rock coming down again and again and again and again. This time, he was prepared. This time, he would be patient. This time, he would get answers.
It showed no signs of knowing that he was there. It was poised on the edge of the brackish water, as if debating whether to cross. As he watched, it crouched down, dipping the tips of two fingers into the water. Then it snatched them back abruptly, and raised them to its face. It almost put them into its mouth, then thought better of it.
So the water hurts your kind as well, he thought. Minor pain was all it was – not pleasant, but endurable. The spring in his cave was fresher, though still not pure. His body had not been free from aches since… since it had happened. There were worse pains, though, than pains of the flesh.
The creature had withdrawn from the water. It turned around in a full circle, clearly seeking a different way out. Anticipating the movement, he pressed himself down as flat as he could. When he raised his head again, the creature was facing away from him again. He had not been spotted. Or maybe he had been spotted, and this was all a trap.
If he had been spotted, then he had nothing to lose. If this was his time to die, he would at least take one of them with him.
Hefting the rock and spear, he rose quietly to his feet, keeping his upper body hunched over. This was his home ground now, although not by choice, and he knew how to move silently, and he knew how to hunt. The creature wore clothes of black and grey, hard to see against the blighted trees and dark ground, but its flesh was fairer than his own – a smear of white in the forest. If it ran, he would find it.
It started to walk, following the edge of the river. When it started talking, he froze, but it was still facing away from him. "Come in?" it was saying. "Anyone?" Then it cursed, and he knew it had been trying to contact others of its kind, but had been unsuccessful.
He had to strike now. The creature's step was unsteady, and it did not walk completely upright. Hurt, he realised, or sick. The world was full of poisons. It should have known that; its kind had created the world this way, after all. He had grown used to it over the years, but had been crippled by it for days at the start. That was the closest he had ever come to dying. When he had awakened and seen what sort of a world he now lived in, he had wished that the poisons had taken him for good.
It was armed. He did not recognise the large, dark object it held in its hands, but he had known enough warriors to recognise the way a man held a weapon. Not that it made the slightest bit of difference. All weapons gave way to surprise.
He was almost upon it. Dulled by poisons, the creature did not hear him. He raised the rock, brought it down, and…
Blood. Red on black. Red on white. A hand. A cry. Colours swirled and melted. The harsh scream of a bird, and a woman's face beneath his own. Death from the sky, and colours, always colours. Red of blood and black of ashes and the white, the white of death. Motes of death in the evening sun, and green of death in the morning.
He blinked. The rock slowly slipped free from his hand, and fell heavily into the mud. The creature was down. How long had it been? Memory had taken him – memory, and… and sometimes his brain didn't work as well as it should. Sometimes his mind… went places. Sometimes he knew that he was not entirely sane.
But for now there was work to do. The creature had fallen on its side, as if it had heard him coming at the last minute, and had been turning round to fight him. The blood was… No, he would not look at the blood. He had to secure the creature.
Spear in his hand, rock at his feet. Water stood brown and brackish, and dead needles lay thickly on the floor. The air was full of poison. His life was shreds and ashes. If he killed... Oh, but his hands ached with the urge to kill. A spear through the throat. A knife in the eye. Smash all its ribs, and the treacherous, lying face. Tear apart this human casing that the creature had no right to wear. Show the truth within. Show. Reveal. Get revenge. Live. Live.
"No," he moaned, letting the spear fall. He could not kill it. He must not kill it.
He crouched down beside it, and fought a fresh battle. A trap! gibbered the part of his mind was still afraid. Not really down. He looked for its eyelids flickering. He looked for its body twitching, for its right hand tensing, ready to grab. He looked. He looked. Bit his lip. Nothing.
He had lived through the end of his world; he could not be afraid of this. He rolled the creature onto its back, and its head flopped back into the mud. Its limbs were slack. Moving fast now, he ripped the weapon away from its body, unhooking it from the place where it was held. Another unfamiliar weapon was strapped to its thigh, and there was a knife on its belt; that, at least, he recognised. He took them all, piling them out of its reach.
Its upper body was covered with a sleeveless jacket. Pressing it firmly, he found that it was as solid as boiled leather. Removing that was harder, but he managed it, and wriggled into it himself. It was covered with cunning pouches, and he rummaged around them, looking for anything useful. In the third one, he found a roll of white fabric. He tested its strength, and found that it would serve.
His head was throbbing now; even after so much time, his body could not take too long outside. Moving as swiftly as he could, he bound the creature's hands behind its back, and lashed its ankles together.
All that was left to do was to drag it to his cave. Furious, he had killed the first one far too quickly. The second had lasted longer, but still had died too soon. He would not make the same mistake again.
No, this one he would keep. This time he would get answers. Even a creature as foul as this could be forced to speak with slow and subtle pain. Even a creature like this could be forced to give him what he wanted, if the alternative was worse than death.
He would make it long for death, and then, only then, long days afterwards, would he grant it the sweetness of its desire.
The journey home was almost beyond enduring. The poisons seeped into him with every rasping breath. He staggered backwards, bent almost double as he dragged his prisoner, his hands struggling to keep their grip on its body. He had to stop every few steps and straighten up, gasping. Acrid sweat trickled down his brow, stinging his eyes. Sometimes his prisoner's bound hands caught on roots or stones, and the body was jolted out of his hands. Soon his own shoulders were screaming. Pain lanced up and down his back, and his throat felt as if he had been burnt with the passage of acid.
Kill it, urged the blood pulsing in his head. Kill it. Kill it now. He bit his lip, and moaned his denial. No. No. Must be strong.
The ground started to rise, and his body became one red and searing mass of pain. Stopping half way up the hill, he let his captive fall on an irregular patch of ground that sloped more sharply than the rest of the hill. The creature rolled over half onto its front, its head lolling. Its bound hands had borne the brunt of the journey. They were scoured and dirty, with poisoned mud packed into the deeper cuts. The white bindings had turned a dirty black mingled with red. Red. He watched it, his muscles screaming. Red and black. Black and red.
A bird cried far above – a speck of black against the muddy sky. No birds came to rest in these trees now. He sometimes wondered where they flew to, and where they roosted in the solitary nights. The whole world was broken and gone; there was nowhere safe to rest. If I had the wings of an eagle… But there was nowhere to fly to. Even if he had wings, there was nothing left.
Pressing his lips together, he reached for his prisoner, ready to resume his climb. He would take it by the legs, and drag it face down. Let that handsome, treacherous face become as raw and bloody as the creature's hands. Slew off the mask of skin, and show the truth that lay within. Then he thought of soft mud clogging up the nose, soft mud sliding down the throat, clogging up the lungs. No, he would not give this creature the gentle escape of suffocation. He would drag it back alive, no matter what the cost.
Taking a deep breath, he reached towards its body again. His hand had almost reached it when he saw movement. Its fingers stirred; its head moved minutely. He recoiled, heart pounding furiously in his ears. "Not yet! Not yet!" he shrieked. Its movements became more pronounced. He could not see its face, but he saw the tension that suddenly appeared right across its body. It was awake. It was planning something. It was readying itself…
"No!" He lashed out with his foot, and caught it on the side of its head, hard enough to cause it to roll over twice, further down the hill. It moaned, and the tension left it, but he kicked it again, this time in the stomach, and again, and again… Flashes of white and red. Blood and mud; red and black. And redness, redness surging…
With a cry, he wrenched himself away, raking a hand through his tangled hair. No. No. The redness faded, and slowly he could see again. "Mustn't… kill," he rasped. "Must… try…" He raked at his hair again, fingers scraping across his inflamed scalp, and again, gouging chewed nails across his brow, pressing thumb and finger deep into his closed eyes.
He did not know how long had passed. The light had not changed, and the creature was still unconscious, but the air felt a little colder, as if night had come one stride closer than it had been before, like in the game of Footsteps he had played as a child – striding forward when his back was turned.
The last of the trembling was almost gone from his hands. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he grabbed his prisoner again, and began to drag it up the final slopes of the hill.
Home had never seemed to sweet. The darkness of the cave entrance enfolded him, but by then he was so far gone in effort that he barely noticed it. He dragged his prisoner for three steps, four steps, five steps longer than he needed to. It was only on the sixth step that he realised he was home. He let the prisoner fall, then collapsed beside it, breathless with exhaustion.
He could have slept, then; perhaps he did. When he opened his eyes again, the prisoner was still where he had left it. Their faces were not far away. The faint light from the entrance showed him a pale face, marked with dirt and stubble. Its hair was dark, matted with mud and something darker. Its eyes… No, he did not know what its eyes were like. This whole face was only a seeming – a mask over the hideous reality beneath it. And he had remained too close, lulled by exhaustion into… into what? Into seeing a fellowship?
He scrabbled across the cave, to crouch far enough away to be safe from any sudden waking. Unbidden, his own hands rose to his face, feeling the lean shape of it, feeling the matted beard where once there had been clean-shaven flesh. His skin was darker, but his hair was the same colour as the creature's. When he looked at his image in the sullen stream, his eyes were the same colour as the brackish water. But then, when he touched the water, his image dissolved into shards of broken things, and then whirled away to nothing.
"It is all lies." His voice came out more ragged than he would have liked. "I know what you really are."
He had to secure his prisoner, but there was nothing to tie it to. A determined enemy could crawl away even with hands and feet bound. No, he would have to remain permanently vigilant, and secure the prisoner with intimidation and brute force. Perhaps the head injury was enough to keep it docile.
Crouching on the ground, balancing himself with one hand splayed on the ground, he reached for his knife. The creature's weapons he had been forced to leave beside the water, and his own spear with it. The knife would have to be enough.
A sound reached his ears, and he realised that it was his own breathing: in, and out; in, and out. Then something about his perception changed, and he heard the creature's breathing, interlocking with his own: out when he breathed in; in when he breathed out.
Time passed. His legs grew stiff, but he was scared to shift position. He was suddenly intensely certain that his movement would cause the creature to wake; that his inattention would cause the creature to attack.
So it was that he heard the moment when the creature's breathing changed. So it was that he was ready, instantly alert, when the creature's eyes fluttered open. He was ready for the truth that was the groan of pain, although that did not come. He was ready for the lies that were words, issuing from the creature's lips.
For a moment, the words did not come, either. The creature was silent. Its eyes found him, focused sluggishly, then moved on. They found the cave entrance, and narrowed even at that faint light. He could not see its hands, but he saw the movement of its shoulders that showed it was testing its bonds, and he saw, too, the subtle movement of its ankles as it sought the truth there. When it struggled to drag itself into a clumsy sitting position, he did not stop it. It knew he had a knife. He would strike when he had to.
It opened its mouth as if to speak, then winced, and moistened its lips instead. He knew suddenly that he could not let the creature speak the first words. He was the one in control, and the creature was nothing at all.
"You won't escape," he told it. His voice was rusty from too many years of solitude. "You will tell me what I need to know, and then I will kill you."
End of part one