2021-03-12: Bloodstained Memories, Part 3
- Log: Bloodstained Memories, Part 3
- Cast: Riley Arwell, Xander Lovell
- Where: Cereza
- Date: March 12, 2021
- Summary: One year ago, everything went wrong.
CW: This one's heavier on the bloodshed. Doomed Hometown levels of death take place, even if a good portion is left to implication. This log also depicts how Xander lost his eye in case anyone's got eye injury related sensitivities.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
"The Cleansing is complete. The Fangs may now be extracted safely." The priest of Granas stands before them, his kindly visage turning solemn. "Young man, please step forward. You have been brave to seek out the light of Granas instead of following the path of Darkness. I will do my best to make this as painless as possible. If you have any final words, you may speak them now."
Riley freezes, eyes wide.
Final words?
His mind spins over the text he and Xander read together all those weeks ago, trying to remember the passage that gave them assurance that there was a way out of this. There must be a misunderstanding -- they can find it and show him. It said...!
A safe extraction...
...did it ever say whose safety? Didn't it? It must have. He couldn't have just assumed...
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Final words.
Where Riley freezes, Xander moves. He puts himself between Riley and the priest, arm out as if to keep Riley back from him, as if Riley saying anything at all might be horribly misconstrued as permission to continue.
"That's not safely!" he says, voice rising and cold spreading through him.
The texts never said this. He would have known if it said this. He never, ever would have suggested this if it said this...! Even storybooks never said -- No. Those did. Just not in so many words. Evil never survives. The heroes slay monsters because they must, and then everyone is safe. A happy ending, because no one ever mourns a monster.
Death or Darkness... those can't be the only options...!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
The priest starts with surprise and dismay as it dawns on him that the two of them never understood the purpose of the ritual. He looks to Xander first.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't realize that you thought there was a way to save him. Valmar has insinuated itself deep into his soul, and his life is already lost. All we can control now is whether that happens before the destruction of the Fangs can be realized. I can give you both a little more time if you need it, but the Cleansing will only last a few hours at most..."
Riley finally manages to get some words out. "But isn't that why we did all this? To cleanse the evil out of my soul?!"
"The purpose of the ritual is a safe--" the priest locks eyes uneasily with Xander, remembering his earlier retort, and starts again. "Normally, when a Part loses its host, it will seek a new one, infecting whoever is nearest. This ritual allows the Part to be secured without simply moving its curse to another. I truly am sorry. But this is the only way."
Riley feels as though he's drowning in those words. There was never a way to get his life back? All of this was just because he's become so toxic that he'll be a danger to other people even when he's dead?
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander shakes his head. Once, then twice. He moves closer to the priest. "Please," he pleads. "Please, there has to be another option."
But he already knows he's begging for a hope the church isn't going to give him. His mind races. Were there other stories? Were there ever any other options? Is there another ending that's possible?
Time. If they need it. That's all they can offer them?! He hasn't had enough time. There isn't enough time now. There's never going to be enough time!
He reaches back, grabbing hold of Riley's arm, his whole body tense and his grip shaken.
"...A moment then, if you would," he says, as carefully and calmly as he can force himself to. He leads Riley away. Away away. His heart beats quicker and quicker, on guard for how the priests might react when they realize that unless they interfere, Xander is going to take Riley outside the church and never stop.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Despite the priest's best efforts to frame the situation kindly, Riley is a danger to the world, now, and leaving the church is not quite so easy as just walking out the door.
But Xander is determined enough to manage to push past the resistance.
Riley is quiet and passive during their flight from the church, and then the city, letting himself be led, and even running alongside when needed. But he keeps looking back over his shoulder, as if at something he left behind, his mind still trying to process the choice he didn't get to make.
They manage to find a stone ruin some distance away; the walls and ceiling of the building are partially crumbled, but sufficient to provide some shelter while they plan their next move.
As they stop, Riley sinks to his knees, staring at the floor.
All those dreams about what "tomorrow" might be like are gone now. There isn't a future. There was never a future. But they didn't stay and finish the ritual. Of course they didn't. It was terrifying. He wasn't ready.
But they didn't finish it, and now he's still here. For what? What else is left...?
"Why did we run?" he asks, softly.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander releases Riley's hand only once they're in the ruins, and he's reasonably sure no one's managed to follow them this far. "I -- I broke his nose," Xander stammers in bewildered panic. He's never had to attack another person before, only monsters. People were so much more fragile than monsters. Staff, right to the face. Blood everywhere. "I threw a potion at him," he reminds himself aloud. "But that's not going to heal right. Someone needs to realign it. I should realign it?" No, no he should not go back for any reason but especially not realigning the enemy's nose! "That is going to be a very crooked nose." Xander grips into his scalp, trying to calm his rapid breathing.
"Riley," he says in sudden, sharp awareness. "Oh, Granas--" The interjection comes out in reflex, but he corrects himself immediately. "Fuck Granas!" Overcorrection. Xander flushes at his own foul language, fumbling further. "Sorry -- I mean -- Riley -- are you okay?" He sinks down to the ground with Riley and tries to grab him by the shoulders as if to steady him. "Did they get you? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Why did we run?"
Xander stares back at him. "Because they were going to kill you!"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Because they were going to kill you!
"He said I was already dead. It's that or killing people. Or helping end the world." Riley looks back at Xander, his expression turbulent.
"Shouldn't I have just stayed and tried to go through with it? I..." his voice breaks. "I can't have anything else. It was nice to have some time to think that I could, but... I think I was just kidding myself."
But it would be crazy to go back there and offer himself as a sacrifice. There might not even be time. How long were they running? It's only good for a few hours...
But if he wanted to defy that fate, how much longer should he try to live? And how could he end it safely when it was time? Is he going to have to crawl away somewhere far from humanity to face the end alone and hope no one ever finds him? The thought makes him feel like he's falling into a dark hole.
He crosses his arms in front of himself, hands tightening. There's time now. He's still safe to others now. But does he have the courage?
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"You're not dead!" Xander snaps back, trying to raise his voice, but it mostly cracks for the effort. "And you haven't killed anyone!" His fingers sink in tighter in desperation, gaze on Riley urgently.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have -- I should have known -- I --" Breathe, Xander. He pinches his eyes shut a moment. "We'll look elsewhere. I'll get back to the library -- no, a bigger one, maybe somewhere in Guild Galad -- there's got to be another way. There has to be."
His gaze dips to the ground as he tries to think, but his head is swimming too much with the horror of it all. This can't be right. They can't just kill an innocent person -- kill Riley -- and say it was all for the best...!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
"What other way? Do you think the church just kills people because they can't be bothered to find another way?"
If there was a solution, are the two of them supposed to somehow find it when even the Church of Granas couldn't?
He leans forward, curling in on himself. Evil. Corrupted. Something woven too deep into his soul to ever extract. It was never his fault, and he doesn't feel like he deserves it. But that doesn't mean it can ever be undone. Sometimes things just... happen to people. Not everyone gets to have a long, happy life. Can he accept that he's not one of them?
He hasn't killed anyone. He's still himself. If that matters to him, if he wants his life to be something he can be proud of, he has to let go.
He takes a deep breath, and then another.
What's still left undone? He can think of one thing.
He finally uncurls, looking at Xander with a greediness he never permitted himself before, trying to etch his face into his heart. This time apart -- what a waste. Why did he have to leave? He could have stayed and had these three years with him. Never stumbled across the Fangs. Maybe he would have wished for more, but he would have been luckier than he knew.
He reaches for Xander, placing his hands alongside his face.
"I need to tell you something. I'm pretty sure you already know -- and maybe you don't want to hear me say it, but can you humor me since I'm cursed and everything's falling apart?"
He smiles, pained.
"I've been in love with you, like, forever. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is." He leans forward quickly, pressing his lips to Xander's.
Maybe that's too greedy. But if he's going to give up his life to keep his soul clean, he ought to be allowed to do something wrong.
Then he tries to place his dagger in Xander's hands. "Could you help me finish it? I'd rather it was you than some stranger."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander stares back at Riley, tense, desperate, and unable to find an answer. The more Riley seems to withdraw on himself, the more a lump rises in Xander's through. He tries to will his eyes not to blur. "Riley," he says, almost inaudibly soft. How can he keep Riley from losing hope? It feels dangerously like Riley's already drifting away to somewhere Xander won't be able to reach.
When Riley starts to uncurl, Xander dares think it might be some determination returning to him.
That's not what it is.
The words wash over him, and for a moment, he's not sure he heard them. He stares, unblinking and unable to breathe until the undeniable reality of Riley's lips against his own. If only everything could have stopped right there. But it doesn't. Xander makes the smallest, terrified noise once Riley pulls away. His heart swells the same moment it breaks, and it isn't just Xander's chest that hurts, but all of him, and he chokes out half of a sob that could have been tears of joy on a different day in a different life.
"You -- I'm -- I'm so stupid -- I thought --" Xander sets his jaw, the tears spilling freely down his face. "I thought... you were really joking..."
Why does it feel obvious now? Every moment replays in Xander's mind. All the times he could have said something, and the look on Riley's face the day he left now in painful, crystal clarity with its true meaning. It's not three wasted years. It's more than that. It's dozens, hundreds of wasted little moments that it's beginning to look like they'll never get the chance to get back.
He looks to the dagger Riley's forced into his hands with numb horror. "I can't -- Please." Xander drops his arms to the side, squeezing the dagger just so Riley can't take it back, and presses his hand over his own face. "Please," he chokes. "Give me more time. Let me try to save you."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
I thought... you were really joking...
Riley watches Xander's face crumple and the tears roll down, a dull shock settling in. He thought -- well, that Xander might heroically endure the unwanted affection for the sake of an old friend.
But what is this? What is this?
"Are you saying you felt the same way?" he asks, in a near whisper.
At least a part of him should be happy. Maybe it is. It must be.
He he knows he didn't want Xander to stoically endure it while he poured his heart out to him.
But he's feeling too many things at once. The strongest is the sense of loss, that he should find this out now, when he's already at the end of stumbling down the wrong path and wrecking his life, when there's no time for it to be anything but a string of missed chances and regrets.
Something like humiliation rises up, like the universe is having a huge laugh at his expense.
Give me more time. Let me try to save you.
"How long do you think I can do this?" he says, still just above a whisper at first, but rising quickly, until he's almost shouting. "I don't have another adventure in me -- I can't make myself hope for that much longer. This is hard, Xander, it's hard to be like this--..."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"Are you saying you felt the same way?"
At first, Xander can only close his eyes and nod, his throat caught with a sharp lump he can't speak past. He tries, and his shuddering breath breaks the words into pained utterances before he finally finds his voice. "Ever since we were kids, I always --" His breath hitches with another sob.
"I know it's hard." Does he really? He's not the one who has to suffer it. "I know, but you're still here. I can --" What can he do? None of the medicines worked. Not a single one helped anything. His best friend -- the man he loves -- is dying and he can't do anything. "I --"
Xander hurls the dagger into the ground, and his own voice raises to match Riley's growing volume.
"I barely made it these last few years without you! Now you want me to lose you forever?!"
It's a scream as much, if not more, for the universe as it is for Riley.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
I barely made it these last few years without you!
"What do you mean?! Why are you telling me now when I'm falling apart?! I asked you to come, I asked you! Now everything's over and you're acting like it can be the start?"
Riley claws his hands in his hair, finding new flowers growing there and angrily ripping them away.
"How long do you think I can try to stay with you without losing control? I almost killed you yesterday. And there were a dozen more times when I wanted to. We aren't going to be able to stay together and play house! If we don't do this now, it's going to be later and if it's later I'll end up doing something horrible and I'm going to be alone..."
He grabs for the dagger on the floor. "I can do it myself if you won't, just... keep me company and stop making it harder."
But his hands shake while he tries to work up the courage; that's easier said than done.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"I told you why I couldn't go! I didn't realize you were going to leave either way!"
It's easier to find his voice if he yells.
"But you didn't kill me. You won't! I know you won't!"
Maybe that is a stupid thought. A silly bit of romantic faith. But it's true, isn't it? All the evil, and Riley hadn't done it. Didn't that mean something? Wasn't that hope? He can't do this. He can't watch this. He can't lose Riley again. At least before, he could pretend Riley was living happily somewhere. But this is too much.
Riley doesn't deserve this, and there's so much more Xander didn't get to say.
Xander dives at Riley, trying to grab hold of him in a struggle to get the dagger back.
"Just stop!"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
I told you why I couldn't go! I didn't realize you were going to leave either way!
"Like I was supposed to stay after you rejected me?! How sad would that be?!" Even though he spent the past few weeks wishing he'd done exactly that. And, of course, Xander never did reject him, and he should know that now. But Riley lived with that emotional reality long enough that the idea that Xander never knew hasn't quite become real for him. He's still just angry at the past, for how close it was to turning out just as he'd always wanted, only to become a nightmare instead. And now all that anger is pouring out onto Xander.
But you didn't kill me. You won't! I know you won't!
Riley stares at him as they struggle for the knife, anger roiling with despair. "You have no idea what I'd do! You have no idea what it's like to be always on the edge of-- of being a fucking monster! If I kill someone else, what then? Are you still going to be able to look at me? Are you going to forgive me and pretend it's all still okay? What if I--"
Riley is the one who wins the struggle with the dagger, and the blade comes free. In a mad moment -- to make a fucking point -- he follows through on the momentum as it jerks loose, and plunges it into Xander's eye.
It's so absurd -- so terrible, so disproportionate and permanent that he starts to laugh. Everything he always wanted to be between them and he broke it, just like it was nothing.
"Can you still forgive me for that? Do you still want to keep me with you as long as you can?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"I didn't -- I wasn't rejecting you! I knew I should have chased after you! But you didn't even say goodbye!"
Anger surges because it has to. Because Xander will fall apart without any energy left if it leaves him. If Riley could shut up and listen, if they could take a moment to think...!
The next moment blurs together with shock and pain.
There's no scream when it happens. No sudden shout or outburst. No yell. Their collective shouting match is shattered by a deafeningly quiet, pitiful whimper as Xander staggers from Riley. He presses the heel of his hand to his eye as blood spills down the entire left side of his face, hotter than tears, but still mixing with their salt as it hits his lip. It's not black. He thinks, dully, that everything should look black. But it's red and colorful and throbbing in his skull to the beat of his rapid heart.
Xander stares into nothing, face contorted with pain, because he has an eye that can no longer focus without another pulsing spike through his skull. Every fallen tear that persists is a new, foreign agony.
And for all of Riley's questions, Xander's voice fails to form a response besides his broken, hoarse utterances, droplets of his blood starting to hit the ground.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Oh no. Xander. For all that Riley has been turning violent images around in his mind these months, grappling with them and obsessing over them, they became an abstraction to him. Over familiar and never actually real.
He forgot how it would hurt, and go on hurting, and now what can he do, what has he done? He wants to gather him up in his arms and try to comfort him, even though he's the one who did it, and, oh, Granas, the Fangs want more, the fangs want him to finish it.
He staggers backward a step, dropping the bloody dagger and putting his head in his hands, feeling the scope of the gulf he's opened up between them now. He'll never be trusted by Xander again, never be loved by him. It was too late for them to start, but he wasn't completely out of time. He never even took a moment to feel it. To look into Xander's eyes and know that he loved him.
Now he's lost him. Ruined everything and become a monster to him and it wasn't even Valmar that did it.
But it's your fault. It's your fault for pretending you understood and it could all be okay when it was only a matter of time before you really saw.
The rationalizations whirl. He had to show him. He had to show him, but what did it accomplish, he's not going to understand, he's just going to fear him, hate him, pull away, leave him alone, and Riley can't lose him.
He didn't want this. He didn't want to tear a rift between them, he wanted them to be closer, to not be torn into two different categories, victim and monster.
Be here. See this. Don't be soft and innocent and apart from me and turn away in disgust when it's too much.
There is something building within him, a dark resonance with that desire.
He can quiet the voices telling him to make Xander a sacrifice and pull him in, somehow. Make him a part of this. Share his corruption and pollute them both and then Xander can't run away and judge him from somewhere distant and safe, he'll have to understand, he'll have to forgive him.
He reaches for Xander with enough force to knock them both to the ground, fresh blooms bursting from his skin as the stems run riot and spread, entwining them both in a mass of tightening thorns.
He pulls him close in a possessive grip.
"If you want to be with me, then be with me," he whispers, his voice harsh and strained.
There's another kiss, then. But this one draws blood.
And something deep within them connects, opening the door for the corruption of Valmar to spread.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Staying upright is a struggle. Xander feels the world trying to drop away, and all his feelings at war for his attention. A little voice tries to say that maybe his gruesome injury should be his first priority. Another screams that Riley still has that dagger and is going to kill him. But when Xander finally managed to make his good eye focus on Riley and all the dangers he presents, he sees regret.
His chest hurts more than his eye, and he doesn't know what that cold, empty ache means anymore. He doesn't know what anything means. What it's supposed to mean. What he wants it to mean. The moment could have been eons, staring back at Riley in one-eyed horror and uncertainty.
But then the world moves. Riley moves.
Xander calls out in panic, and thrashes out blindly with only adrenaline to guide the empty syringe he claims as a weapon. It's as ineffective and useless as Xander's been, but he tries to sink it into Riley's flesh all the same as if it might buy him a shred of hope toward a future that's anything but this spiraling, out of control misery.
He hits the ground instead, struggling until the thorny growths choke the fight out of him. Xander's eye stays locked on Riley in that terrible, tender moment. Maybe once, Xander imagined Riley saying something like that to him. Maybe even now, he still wants to hear it. Let go, and pretend there's a life waiting for them where they aren't torn apart by Valmar or Granas or their own fears.
Maybe that's why, despite the pain of the kiss, Xander presses back into it. It's the last thing he'd get to do before plunging into darkness.
The nightmare surrounds him. Savage, carnivorous plants bite into his flesh. They cage him from the inside out, writhing through his insides. It was like waking up, or falling asleep -- he wasn't sure which. He's alone for a surreal moment except for the constant reminder of Riley in every throb of his missing eye. Blood. He felt the demand deep in his soul. This withered garden of agony needs blood. Valmar needs blood.
He snaps back to reality, throat dry and brambles coiling around his limbs. Blossoms spring from the wound of his eye, feeding on the freely available blood. Xander brings his hand over his mouth, squeezing his fingers over his flesh. His tongue squirms and cuts itself on a fang. Of all things, he thinks back to the priest of Granas and the bloodied mess that broken nose had made. There could have been so much more.
Nausea rises in Xander's throat as his entire body shakes with new bloodlust.
He feels Riley against him still, but the entangled prison isn't Riley's alone to command anymore. Xander kicks and shoves, snapping the stems and vines to scramble away. He fights to breathe with what feels like ivy in his lungs.
How...? How was Riley enduring this until now...? Xander can't --
He covers his mouth to cough, grabbing onto the ruin walls for support as blood splatters between his fingers.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Something eases for Riley as the curse takes hold in Xander, a part of his burden shared. And he reels. It really happened. Something like this should be impossible, shouldn't it? He can't believe the world ignored everything else he wanted and then fulfilled this evil, crazy wish.
He pulls away slightly and exhales, the world seeming to move in slow motion. Xander is so close. Xander is in agony, but the sight of him is different now, just as he'd dreamed it could be, safe and unpolluted by horrible impulses and intrusions.
He can take all the time in the world to soak up the sight of him. He never has to hurt him again. He can relax and watch him writhe in the suffering he already caused.
The thought brings out a hopeless laugh in him.
The relief he's feeling is real, but so stupid. How could he have possibly thought this would make anything better? He was planning his own death moments ago for lack of other options. He brought Xander into that?!
What is he going to do, what are they going to do? How can Riley protect him from the same despair he was feeling, when all Riley had to contend with was his own dashed hopes, not a raw betrayal and a ragged hole in his eye.
He watches as Xander pulls away, words dying on his lips.
"I... I'm sorry... I shouldn't have--.. That was..." his hand reaches out, but Xander has already scrambled away, and Riley stops short, not even rising from the floor to move closer to him. Wouldn't his touch be a threat, now? Why would Xander want his support, his protection? Is he crazy? Dragging Xander into this nightmare was never going to make Xander forgive him.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander isn't sure if he's retching with blood or merely coughing more of it up. His balance falters, and he claws his fingers into stone hard enough to rub the skin off in red streaks. Valmar will take his blood, but it doesn't satisfy the craving boiling inside Xander's body. It doesn't dull this new, sickening thirst.
It doesn't dull the pain in his eye, either. Xander hisses another broken, agonized sound, ripping out a flower from his eye only for another to begin blossoming in its place.
Delayed and dazed, he finally looks back at Riley. The image of him is blurred by bloodied tears, wavering with dizziness. But what will he see once his sight clears into focus? Riley, broken and hopeless? Riley, manic and ready to strike him again? Riley, who might look better in a pool of blood like the priests would have?
Xander can't stop shaking. He can't, right now, handle the sight of any of those.
He can't even handle himself.
"Why?" is all Xander manages to say, quiet, but sharp as the word cracks. He lurches back, then stumbles into a run. All he wants right now for the overwhelming crash to stop, to keep this dire shift in reality from leaping into a new one as all the others have, and maybe it will if he just gets away.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Why?
Riley is pinned by the word. There were reasons, but they were wild and irrational and none of them could ever possibly be good enough. There's no apology big enough, no fix, no excuse, no cure.
"I don't know," he whispers.
And Xander runs. What else was he going to do? That outcome was fixed the moment Riley put a fucking dagger in his eye. Maybe Xander can find a future -- Riley hopes to Granas he still wants one -- but it's not going to be with him.
He lets himself sink fully to the floor, his body still ringed in the vines he created in his outburst, and his own pain catching up to him, the bite of the thorns mingling with the ache in his heart.
He lets Xander go, retreating into the haze and letting his tears fall.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
He shouldn't have run off, but that's the clarity of thought that only came once Xander was alone with himself to have it. Breathe. It hurts. But breathe. Maybe now that the affliction has Xander, there's still hope -- because Xander does understand. He feels the symptoms himself. That's a tool, he decides. He can make this work. Dull this pain, this hunger, and think.
Operating on instinct, he finds his way back to Cereza. It's as good a start as any. Clean himself up. Get into his father's old notes. No -- his mother's. Father's knowledge is solid, but cultivated throughout generations in Cereza. Mother's studies encompass ideas from as far as beyond the sea. He'll break into her study and apologize later.
It's not over. He can still fix this, no matter how many tomes and scrolls and layers of parchment he has to search through. Wait -- his eye -- he should take care of that first --
"Xander? Are you all right?"
His father's voice is steady and warm, even through its rising panic. That brings the lump back into Xander's throat stronger than any anger could have. Xander's tried so hard to be responsible. To be independent. To make his parents proud and show he could manage the clinic on his own after they retired. But Xander hears that voice, and all he wants to do is cry into his father's chest like he used to when he skinned his knee -- or when he had his heart broken. His heart's broken now, all over again. Maybe, childish as it is, he deserves to feel safe if only for a few precious moments. Safe, protected, warm.
Warm, like fresh blood flowing from open veins.
...
...
...
Some time after Xander's fled, Riley finds a window of respite from the pain and bloodlust that had been ravaging his body these past few months.
Gorged on sacrifice, the Fangs of Valmar are sated.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Without any hopes for the future, Riley is without any real sense of time. He cries until the ruminations start to flow together and lose their meaning. The tears stop, though the blood goes on flowing.
Then he stares at the ceiling, numb. It's a few minutes, a few hours, maybe even longer than that. It doesn't matter. He has no plans, except maybe to face his unfinished business with the dagger. But it's easier not to even think of that, not to face life or death or any of his terrible choices.
The shift is sudden. His muscles relax as his back and limbs come to rest more fully upon the floor, the brambles in his skin melting away. His breath comes full and easy for the first time in ages. The pain in his body subsides, like a quiet miracle.
And the bloodlust falls away, too, so fully and completely that he's staggered by the scope of how deeply it had settled into him until it was the invisible backdrop to everything. It's so different to be without it.
He just breathes for a few moments, feeling wonderful in spite of everything, his eyes wide and stunned.
His first thought is of Xander's promises to save him before Riley tore everything to shreds. Did he find a way to break the curse?
There's a flutter in his chest at the thought, but no -- his tongue finds one of the fangs, still there.
And when he searches his sensations, what isn't gone is the strange, frightening aura of wrongness that's been with him since he absorbed the fangs. A deep, dark reservoir of something inviting him to tap into it for power. He hadn't dared. And as the months passed, he could feel it growing with the hunger.
It's still there. But ...quieter.
Did Xander tap into it?
He bolts upright from the floor.
Did Xander feed the Fangs?
He gathers up his dagger from the floor and rushes out.
He might have been able to track Xander, but he doesn't slow down to try, rushing toward Cereza on instinct simply because that's the very worst place he could be. If he's anywhere else, there will be time to try to pick up the pieces later.
But if Xander unleashed that power at home, if he fed the Fangs at home... then Riley can't reach him fast enough.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
At glance, it's as if Riley hadn't been back to Cereza in centuries rather than days. Flowering thorns crawl over every home and building, the town 'reclaimed' by an unholy mockery of nature. Some housing collapsed from the squeezing death grip of the vines, and others from fires that have already been smothered out by the dark overgrowth.
He only has to take two steps past the gate to trip over a corpse.
Blood soaks into the dusty roads of his hometown, splattered so far it even reaches the old, worn letters of the general store sign that sit above its open down. Blood leads into it -- or from it -- the trail, and all its bodies with it, weaving from each building to the next. Should he dare look inside, he'll only find more bodies with familiar faces bathed in bloodshed.
This wasn't just a slaughter. It was a hunt -- exhaustive and meticulous.
There's only one survivor at the center of town, knelt and slumped. Xander's once white shirt is splashed in deep red, and his long, dark hair is sticky and matted with blood. The ingrown flowers and brambles have left his pale flesh in peace, but some of the blood staining his cheeks might still be his own. The eye Riley sunk a dagger into has only become more grisly from its neglect.
His remaining eye mirrors the lifeless gaze of the dead that surround him.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Even the worst images Riley could conjure up during his pursuit don't come close to the scale of the carnage that he finds when he enters Cereza. The horror mixes strangely with how light his body feels, making it feel as if he can't really be there, that it must be some nightmare or illusion.
He never had a chance to try to catch up with anyone when he came to see Xander here before, sneaking in and out of the town by night to avoid attracting fearful attention. Now, there are reunions every few steps. Shopkeepers who always had a kind word for him, old friends and their families. They're not much for conversation as their eyes stare up at the sky. He winds his arms tightly around himself as it sinks in that it's everyone, it's everywhere. He's too late and whatever happened here kept going until he ran out of bodies to sacrifice. Is Audrey still working at the clock shop? Is she like this, too? He doesn't want to see, and there isn't time.
He needs to find Xander. He forces himself to pick up his pace, making his way to the clinic with his heart and stomach lurching inside him. He doesn't find Xander there, but what he does find makes it difficult to go on again.
By the time he comes upon Xander in the square, his steps have taken on a stumbling quality, he feels dizzy from the weight of it all. He set this in motion. He chose this.
"Xander...?" It's soft, hesitant, afraid. He's motionless, blood covered, with an empty gaze. Is he another one of the dead? No, he can't be...
Riley kneels in front of him and reaches for his shoulders, no longer holding himself back from touching him, because it would be mad not to try to comfort him with everyone else he could have counted on lying dead.
It seems that Valmar grants wishes, but only the evil ones you should never have held in your heart.
There's no one else to help Xander now, so it's all right for Riley to offer himself. All it cost was everything.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Riley's grip at least finds warmth in Xander's body. The most subtle, shallow breaths escape past Xander's lips. He's alive, if only in the most generous definition of the word. He doesn't recoil from Riley's voice or try to slip away his touch.
He merely stares forward, as if Riley weren't there at all.
As if nothing was.
Everyone is gone, their blood drying against his skin.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley calls Xander's name again, holds him. Asks him questions and offers him tearful apologies. But his voice doesn't seem to reach him. Will it ever? Or is he still alone after all...?
For now, at least, that's the reality. Alone with the dead, and with Xander unreachable. He retreated into self pity before, and he ended up hurting Xander and abandoning him to face the worst moments of his life without support. It's his fault this happened, but he can't let that paralyze him again. This time he has to be stronger.
Xander's injury. That's something immediate, an emergency he needs to focus on now. He tries to think back to their days of adventuring, the times Xander was the one who was hurt and had to instruct him. He takes him back to the clinic and tends to the eye as best he can, cleaning it and applying dressings.
From there, he'll need rest. But Riley doesn't want Xander to come back to himself and wake up to find the untended corpses of his parents nearby.
Someone needs to bury them. He's never buried anyone, and the thought of putting his second family in the ground is almost too painful to bear, but who else is going to do it? There's no one but Riley.
So he learns. And he cleans away the blood that was left where they fell, and it's all terrible, nauseating work, but it makes him feel a little bit better after he's done, as if the act made it all just a little less senseless.
And as the days begin to pass, that becomes his purpose. He cares for Xander, making sure he stays fed and clean and trying to coax him back to himself with songs and jokes and reassuring words. And with the rest of his time, he buries the dead, moving methodically from site to site. Laying them to rest and trying to find words of goodbye to honor them as best he can. As the days drag on, this task becomes more grisly and overwhelming. There are so many. They never end.
He finds himself bitterly calling on Valmar to solve the problem it caused, and finds another prayer selectively answered. The ritual tool that he's given makes the work much easier, though it seems to give off waves of morbid dread. That doesn't bother him too much. It isn't like he isn't steeped enough in that already.
Then, one day, it's finally done, the victims of the slaughter all in the ground. It's disorienting to be without the task, as grisly as it was. It gave him a sense of momentum, and a reason not to be quite so afraid that Xander would never return to himself. After all, he was trying to finish that first, wasn't he? So Xander wouldn't have to see...?
When he returns from the day's burials, he finds himself idly talking to Xander without much hope of a real response, which has become a habit for him. The most he ever gets are... outbursts. Tears, or anger and despair, always brief before he retreats again.
"Well, I've finally met everyone in town, if you want to call it that... You can feel free to come back now if you like." A weak smile. That joke hasn't gotten any funnier with time. He sits beside him, feeling the usual sadness when confronted by his glassy stare and wanting to pretend it away. "I don't know why I've been scrambling so hard to clean up. I mean, it needs to be done, but... I guess maybe I've been hoping you won't remember it and I can tell you it was a natural disaster."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander was gone to the world, willing himself to cease to exist within in. A shell doesn't have to reconcile who he is with what he's done. A shadow doesn't have to remember. Every moment awake was a nightmare, but every moment asleep threatened to bring clarity to the atrocities he committed with his own hands.
But even in the darkness he's sunken into, there's always a presence beside him. Whenever Xander caught a taste of that affection, it clawed against his every sense of what was just and right. Stab out his other eye instead. He deserved that. But every soft touch, every little song, every attempt to care for him drilled its way into Xander's heart like a thorn that forced the pain of living back into him.
And that's why, sometimes, Riley would get a sign of life in the form of a wail or a violent rejection of food by hurling it into a wall. Then Xander would cry until he was empty and disappear into himself again.
What meals would any of the townsfolk enjoy ever again? What comfort? What jokes and joy could reach them?
Why was Xander being given any of it in their place?! He'd failed to save Riley. He'd been misguided by stupid, naive beliefs in happy endings and failed to understand the hopelessness until it was too late. He'd murdered everyone they grew up alongside, people who helped them become who they were today, including his own parents...!
Xander speaks up, and for once, it isn't a terrible outburst. It isn't a shouting or snapping, or a mindless, feral scream. Yet.
It's a voice hoarse and softened by his exhaustion and weakness.
"...Then why are you still here?"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Words! Riley jumps at the realization and startles himself off the bed they're sitting on, picking himself off the floor quickly and reaching to take Xander's face in his hands like he can hold him there and prevent him from fleeing.
"Xander, you heard me? Please stay, I'm so sorry for everything, I just want you back, I don't know what I can do to make up for anything but please just be here and talk to me for a little while..."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
The touch hurts for how wrong it is. The excitement in Riley's voice grates in Xander's ears. Why. Why why why why?!
I just want you back.
How could he possibly?!
His lips twist in a snarl, one of his fangs showing for the effort, as he tries to shove Riley away.
"There's nothing to say!"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
There's nothing to say!
Riley backs up as Xander throws him off, not able to keep the pain out of his expression even though he should have known it would be like this.
He's the only one left, it's true. But that doesn't mean Xander has to want his presence. He's well within his rights to throw him out.
At least he's here. Awake and lucid, with life in his face. At least he got to see that again. "Right. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. I just... do you want me to leave you alone? For a while?"
He's not prepared to leave Xander alone forever. Not emotionally, and not while he's been phasing in and out of awareness. Riley needs to know he's going to stay present and look after himself if Riley doesn't.
He backs toward the door to demonstrate that he's willing to leave if commanded.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander grits his teeth at Riley's reaction, forcing himself into a growl. "Just get away from me...!"
Don't acknowledge him. Don't see that he exists like this, in this state, knowing what he did!
But his anger falters when Riley offers to leave and begins to back away. That's what should happen. That's everything Xander deserves -- that's what he just said. But the threat of it turns him cold and hollow with panic. Even if Riley leaves, Xander keeps existing, alone with what he's done.
"Wh...Where the fuck do you think you're going?!"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Wh...Where the fuck do you think you're going?!
Riley freezes. "Probably the kitchen? Should I stay instead?" He hesitates for a moment, not sure what to do with the mixed signals, and then grabs a chair and puts it in the doorway in the hopes of following Xander's requests to leave and stay at the same time. He sits in the chair and gives Xander a hopeful smile with kind of a question mark in it.
He turns the handful of precious, irritable words he's received over in his mind, trying to make a map of what could be going on with Xander. Nothing to say. Get away from me. Where do you think you're going... Well, he shouldn't be alone right now, probably. Even if he wants to be. Or... half wants to be. But Granas, what words could make it even the smallest bit better, even if he wanted to hear anything from Riley?
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander watches Riley, breath caught in his throat. What is he expecting? What is he hoping for? What does he even want?!
He rakes his fingers through his hair, clawing into his own skull with a choked, shrill sound in his throat before he gasps out another agonized wail and sinks off his seat to his knees.
He wants none of this to have happened! He wants everything the way it was before! He wants three years ago, asking Riley to stay out of boyish love and not pathetic desperation!
It's exactly the kind of thing he typically does right before he finds a way to cease acknowledging his own existence. But after it's over, he trembles, still here and digging his nails harder into his scalp.
It's with the smallest of voices that he manages to speak.
"How can you even look at me?"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Xander wails and seems to withdraw again. Riley holds his breath, wondering if there was a way to get Xander to stay and he failed the test. But then he speaks again.
How can you even look at me?
It feels wrong to hang back while Xander claws at himself, but he feels like he promised...
He finds himself coming over to him anyway, trying to gently pull his hands away and hold them in his own. His response is soft. "What do you mean? I did this to you."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander persists with reflexive resistance to keep clawing at his skull until he finally relents to Riley's grip, blood under his fingernails. He doesn't pull away, looking up at Riley with a searching gaze. For all the pain of that touch, the absence of it hurts even more.
"You resisted. For so long. But I--"
Had not even lasted a day before killed everyone living in Cereza.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley makes a little noise of dismay when he finds that Xander clawed himself bloody before he intervened. He tries to gather Xander in his arms.
"It isn't a test anyone can pass, it's an evil curse and I forced it on you and I left you to deal with it all on your own."
In Riley's mind, his own ability to resist was always just about to fail, it was only a matter of when he let his guard down at the wrong time. And all that succeeding ever did for him was making life wither away until it wasn't worth living.
"And I stabbed you in your eye," he adds, perhaps trying to tempt Xander to turn some of that judgement outward.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander's out of strength again. Short bursts, and then they're gone. But this time his mind is woefully still here. He slumps against Riley, undeserving, but desperate for it. He's not ready to blame everything on curses and evil. He killed his parents. He can't remember it. He just knows that he did.
And -- oh, no. Audrey. Did he...?
He's too afraid to ask. He's too afraid to think of it further. No matter how Xander spins it, he can't find a way to fault Riley in this. Riley never did this. Riley never would have done this.
Xander did this.
Then Riley tries to tempt him with what he can blame him for.
It works.
"Yeah, you did!" Xander doesn't push away so much as grabbing hold of Riley tighter to shake him. "What the hell, Riley!" He places one hand over it, breathing out a hiss. "...It's gone, isn't it?"
There might've been, at one point, some hope of recovery with the right treatment, even with the cursed flowers. But if it ever existed, that window has long passed.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley lets himself be shaken, making a strange face as a quiet sense of victory at the successful distraction wars with the still-raw regret and shame at having actually done such a thing with his own hands.
...It's gone, isn't it?
Riley sucks in a breath. He hasn't got any medical training to know what he was looking at with the bloody mess, but he knows it was bad enough that he set his hopes at making sure it didn't take Xander with it rather than trying to heal it. "It's... it's still in your head but I don't think it's an eye anymore."
He flinches at having to say it out loud. "I'm sorry."
There's enough he's done wrong by Xander that his mistakes will never not be raw and terrible enough to overshadow anything and everything else.
But for now, all they have is one another. All Xander has is the person who betrayed him. What does he need Riley to be?
"...You still look really good with one eye."
...An idiot? Does he need him to be a total dumbass? Might as well try it and find out.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Another apology about the eye. Riley had apologized then, too, right after it happened. How long ago was it? It feels like it's been a lifetime.
A missing eye. Another adjustment, but it's a droplet in the sea of misery he has to contend with. Everything that happened. And...
Everything that's going to happen.
A realization sinks in, sick and heavy. But Xander swallows down that bitter pill. All he wanted was a chance for a future with Riley. Now that future is all he has. Whatever he deserves, whatever's happened... he already knows he won't let that go.
Not now. Not after all this. He wasn't strong enough to do it. He'll never be.
He doesn't want to be.
Xander grunts and looks away. "That's fortunate for you, since you're the one who's going to have to look at it."
Maybe a total dumbass is exactly what he needs.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Despite the brusqueness of the response, Riley perks up a little. It's a hint that Xander wants him to stay in his life. That he's contemplating the future in some small way. It seems their roles have reversed and now Riley is the one afraid Xander might want to give up and want to fast track to the ending.
"Do I get to go on looking at your eye?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"You'd better," Xander snaps, eyeing him with, well, the one single eye he has left. "And you'd better not stab this one out either."
Was he not, moments ago, contemplating that's exactly what Riley should do?
There was a lot that should have happened. There's a lot more that shouldn't have happened. The world does not work on should, and Xander's lost the energy to pretend he can begin to enforce it.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
And you'd better not stab this one out either.
"I promise I'm done," Riley says with a slightly uncertain smile, still kind of trying this mood out and not sure if it's going to terribly backfire.
"You can stab one of mine to make it even if you want," he offers brightly, pointing at the one he has apparently decided he's willing to part with.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It's Xander's turn to take Riley by the face, and maybe, in its own way, it's an apology for having violently shoved Riley away before. He'd been starved for such touch and threw it out because he thought he deserved to starve. Maybe he does.
...But he doesn't want to.
He brushes the bangs carefully from Riley's chosen eye with his thumb, his touch tender and careful despite the unsettlingly serious way he seems to be considering this.
"I'll think about it."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is both nervous and enthusiastic about the intimate consideration of his offered eye, giving him a warm but nervous smile during the inspection.
"It's all yours whenever you want it. Just let me know."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander's gaze doesn't waver.
"Along with the rest of you."
It isn't a question.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley's heart lifts. "That too," he says, his eyes prickling.
He was afraid to hope that Xander would still somehow want him. Is it horrible to be happy about that when it's happening at the cost of everyone they grew up with? But he's been choked with sadness and solitude for a long time, now. He can't help but grasp at this.
A beat passes. "...wait. For stabbing?" He doesn't think Xander really intends to stab him but maybe it was just meant as a threat...
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
For the first time since they learned the terrible truth behind the ritual, Xander smiles, if only barely. Not like he used to. Maybe it's the somber mood that he has to fight against to make it. Maybe it's a covered eye and the brow to go with that obscures it. Maybe it's the fangs.
But there's no denying its sinister edge, even with Xander's thumb ready to brush away any tears that might slip free from those prickling eyes.
"That too."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
"Whatever you want!" Riley responds with a too-quick laugh.
This... this is different. But it's Xander. Xander smiling and teasing, not wailing and curling in on himself to lock away reality.
They never made it to a place in their relationship before where Xander might have smiled at him wickedly. It's hard to tell if the old Xander had that in him somewhere too.
Is this a new Xander? What are they doing with themselves now? He didn't have to think about that before. The symptoms haven't been back, but it's not like the Blood Garden is fully fed. So what is this? A... vacation? How long will it last?
"Do you think you're up to... well, anything? A meal? A walk? I... ..." what if he ruins everything if he touches it again? "I buried everyone, so it's safe to walk around without..." he can't find any good way for that sentence to end.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander's expression darkens with the question. He looks away.
"I don't want to be here," he says, quiet, like the statement itself is a betrayal. Maybe it is. But the guilt is still raw. There's still a tremble in his hands that he tries to bite down. He still wants to scream. The difference is now he can hold it back.
If he goes out there and sees their home empty, maybe he won't. Maybe he breaks apart all over again. Maybe he loses his nerve to take Riley and go on.
"We're leaving."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley looks uncertain. Is Xander healed enough to travel? And he's barely moved since he... withdrew. He's probably weakened himself a bit. Starting out with a stroll to test the waters seemed wiser, even if the long term plan would be to get away from the site of the terrible thing that happened.
"I think you're still recovering, but... if you want to leave, let's try it." Maybe, for practical purposes, it would be good to leave sooner rather than later. It's been lucky that no one has come to Cereza from outside since the incident, and that luck may not hold.
"Can you make sure we have any medical things you'll need? Is there... anywhere in particular you want to go?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It isn't wrong to doubt Xander's capability. Shock and emotional stress have ravaged him. But he doesn't want to know what happens if he lets himself linger.
"I'll --" He swallows. "-- grab what I can."
His father always kept spare supplies. Thinking of it makes his eye hot. Is he going to break down from that before he can get anywhere?
"Then we'll leave. I'll be fine."
But as to the where...
"...It doesn't matter. We'll end up where we end up."