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**if you listen to the songs, don't listen to this one until near the end. It makes sense then**
Thank you for your patience! Enjoy the read! ~Sonny Mae
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Chapter 30
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Butcher wants to leave the burrow but it's impossible. The snowstorm strikes with a vengeance, trapping us in the hole. A wall of snow four feet high guards the door and climbs. He packs up everything anyway, keeping one eye on the entrance.
I think he still believes a mother Fynx is on her way. Even if she were, there's no way she could dig through all this snow.
Since living in the burrow means also being trapped with Butcher, I'm constantly tormented. I've sunken into muteness and my hands are forever shaking. At first I didn't believe I could become more of a shell of the girl I once was, but now I see it's true.
And this time, there's no one to save me.
Oh God...
There's absolutely no one... I am left to him.
The cursed.
It has come to the point where my mind flees my body and I pretend all that happens, happens to another girl. Some helpless waif who lives without a backbone. She is the one who cries, the one who pleads for mercy. Not me.
Not. Me.
The past thirty-five days march by as if on a movie reel. I think of how much I've overcome, how much I've encountered. I was strong, brave—I never believed I could be brave. I'd nearly became the woman I never thought I could be. I mistakenly believed myself to be weak, a feeble child constantly falling. But now I see the truth...but now it's too late. I took that cursed hand on the embankment, I trusted a man who doesn't know what trust is.
I should have fallen back, I should have taken my chances with nature. Now I'm held in the clutches of the god of pain.
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It's night.
My eyes flutter when a coldness rushes up my spine. It's an intuitive sense. I've learned to heed it and many times it's saved my life.
The den envelopes the night. All is pitch black, I cannot see even my hand before my face. I breathe. Carefully.
Silence.
Not all silence is good.
Something rustles over. I sit up, brushing back tangled ringlets.
And then I see it.
Two clear eyes glow in the darkness before me. My brows wrinkle with confusion. It's too early for thinking straight. Did Butcher actually set the baby Fynx free? Has it returned? The bloody knife meant nothing?
A vicious snarl erupts with volcanic intensity and there's the hiss of a body flying through the air. The clear eyes reflect the barest light, and because of them I can see blood red gums and rows of spiked fangs. Saliva spills out in long strings and the breath smells like nothing less than pure agony.
The weight of a car hastily crushes my chest, pinning me to the floor. White fangs lunge for my exposed jugular, snapping savagely. The weight of the beast prevents me from crying out, desperate wheezes are all that make it free. My ears explode with feral growls and blood-hungry yowls.
Butcher was right. The mother Fynx would come. Hell has nothing that can stop it, not even mountains of snow.
"Come with me!" something cries. Perhaps the voice comes from the dripping fangs, the frenzied yowls. I don't know, but Xaro, as always in my darkest moments, feels very near.
"Death is coming! You know you can't escape it. Though, do you even want to? There's nothing left for you here! The Raider will drown you with sins and the end of this war is worse than anything you've ever imagined. Come with me! Come with me to meet your Hades!"
Why do they ask? They know I have no choice.
The game's already over. The Fynx even now sinks its daggers into my flesh. My eyes bulge as pain envelopes every core.
Without warning, a black shadow springs on the terrible creature. The crushing weight skids off my chest. I gasp for air like a dying fish whilst facing the awful blackness next to me, straining to see.
A deadly skirmish ensues. I only get wind of the noise of the battle, but that is enough to let me know the struggle turns gory. The Fynx continues cracking blood-thirsty jaws, yowling wickedly like an infuriated cat. A human groans and yells too. My face turns white hearing them.
The Raider attempts to fight a fiend larger than a small boulder, with jaws that could clamp straight through steel. And in the dark. In absolute darkness!
As the battle crashes and rolls throughout the hole, slamming into the walls, I scamper for the fire hearth, trying to make sense of it all.
Why put your life on the line? It was different outrunning the shadows, both of our lives were endangered and the rescue was convenient. This time there's no possible way of escape, even a death soldier couldn't defeat a Fynx. They are too large, too endowed with supernatural and vicious strength to overcome. Butcher would know this better than anyone.
Although, he likely jumped in the battle with fate because he feared for himself. But if he only cared for his life he could have aimed one of his precious guns when it came for him. There would have been plenty of time for strategy—heck, he could have started down the shaft at the end of the burrow.
He's going to die.
Oh! I don't understand!
He tumbled into the mix because somehow saving himself wasn't enough. This has to be so! Why else would he do it? To keep me alive so he could finish the revenge he started? Revenge isn't that potent. Even if it was, he would know jumping in the midst of things would cost him his life—no one can kill a Fynx. There's a reason they're in this hell.
Blood streams from the incisions at my neck. At first I think it spills on the floor too, but there's too much of it to be mine. It's smeared everywhere, splattering on the walls. I have to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from gagging.
At the fire hearth I dig for matches. Butcher always leaves them here. Horror floods when I realize the struggle smacked them into oblivion. Fire was the only viable weapon against the Fynx. Now this slaughter is doomed to happen in consuming blackness where only the Fynx will have an advantage.
But the slaughter doesn't have to include me.
If I continue straight I can make it to the shaft, even in the dark. I wouldn't be wrong for it. In fact, perhaps fate dealt the born killer this hand purposefully. Your sins will surely find you out, they say. Someone with that much innocent blood on their hands deserves to die this way. I would even call it justice.
For now, I ignore my screaming conscious. I remind it of what Butcher has done to me, this night even! His life is worth nothing. I can't believe I pity him—there's a pile of dead that celebrate this addition to the tombs.
He's a murderer!
A mass murderer!
I imagine white hands reaching out to me, begging me to let death run its course so that they may finally rest in peace, so that they may finally have their due justice. Right now their killer still lives.
The gassy sound of Fynx jaws tearing into a body reaches me. An agonized cry envelopes the room—it could shatter glass. It sounds as if it comes from the very pits of tormented hell. Blood splashes and spatters my exposed back. The ugly scrabble continues, but now someone moans fitfully.
That would've been me...if, he hadn't...
No! To the shaft.
Suddenly, the fight rolls my way. I'm swept up into Hades. The Fynx releases its current, moaning victim to launch for me. I wonder why until I realize the scent of the pup must still cover me. The mother seeks revenge.
I duck and scramble across the floor. The Fynx pounds after me, I hear the dirt churning up from the floor. The snarls are diabolical. Xaro laughs. I look back, if only to accept my fate. There's no getting away with this creature's speed.
The Fynx leaps.
And is knocked off course once more. Butcher and the fiend slam into the burrow wall with an appalling crunch.
For the next seconds I'm too shocked to move. Strangely enough, I think of my surrogate mother.
"Nebula, I don't understand!"
"There are things in this world we will never understand. People always have two faces—there's no way you can truly know what side is real. But, eventually, we must decide which side to believe."
The born killer?
The sacrifice?
Which...?
I've decided. I pick myself up and bolt for the shaft.
He's a monster.
A freak of nature.
Frankenstein's creature.
I'm doing Mother Earth a favor by allowing her shame to die. His sins are as numerous as the stars, and so are his kills. I've seen the bodies hanging.
In my dash for freedom I stumble. My foot collides with a metal object sent askew by the battle.
"Who are you?" Nebula asks. "What side of your face do you choose? We always judge others, but what of ourselves?"
"But he ruined me," I whisper to the dark.
Who are you?
I swallow hard.
Reaching down, I let the metal fill my fist. In a million years I never thought I would receive this answer. Is this Xaro's ex machina--to let me find the only weapon that can end another's pain? But it isn't that simple--he deserves this sort of end... Doesn't he? Doesn't he! The pain he wrought on fellow humanity returned for the kill. Who am I to stop it? My heart burns and tears swallow my cheeks. Who am I? Who am I going to be?
Why would he do this!
Why?
Forgiveness.
Is that what he wants? Perhaps that is what this Raider secretly desires...forgiveness. But he doesn't know how to get it...and he knows of no one who will offer it.
They say black hearts seek warmth in twisted ways. That they search the ends of the earth for eyes that may believe them when they say, "I'm sorry." When those fated eyes fill once more with hatred and turn their backs in contempt, the dark hearts finally fall into the hell they've been running from their whole life.
The tears run faster.
Butcher saw my eyes. I remember now.
"So that every day I can actually make sure you have a reason for that hatred and superiority in your eyes when you look at me!"
They couldn't save him. Little did he know what troubles they'd beheld.
Who am I going to be?
He would die for me.
Hypocrisy.
Judgment.
The god of pain.
Death soldiers.
The battle is at its peak. Everywhere I step is sticky with crimson. I don't even know where to aim in the blackness. I barely know how to shoot! The gun trembles viciously, clacking like the wheels of a train in my hands. I point it towards the ugly snarling coming from the right.
"Please don't be him," I mumble.
For a second I think about if it were. I would be free—I could run off into the snow and finally be unchained!
Stop it!
I release the trigger. The kickback comes back hard. Tears collecting at my chin shake onto my breasts.
Please.
Please.
Silence.
The snarling stops.
I take a step in advance, barely trusting myself to breathe. My foot smashes down on the lost matches. Unknowing of what else to do, I scramble to the hearth and light a fire. A small glow of orange grows. By the time it fills the room Butcher is already standing on the other side flames, staring at me.
For some reason I can't look at him.
His labored breaths hug the room. Droplets of sweat and sweet blood dribble from bulging, exhausted muscles onto the dirt. My tears slip off my breasts down the front of my tunic.
We stand in silence for some time.
"Why?" he eventually whispers. It is a hoarse, wounded sound—the whisper.
I lift my head. A deep gash at his left shoulder froths with blood. The clothing and skin there hangs down in tatters. There's another deep wound at his thigh that cries crimson in waterfalls. Around his throat rest bloody gouges. Butcher winces with every breath.
I burst into tears.
"I don't know."
"Please..." his voice is so soft. I've never heard it this way before. It feels as if the world flipped upside down. "Tell me why?"
I glance at his face. His eyes are shiny, behind the sheen something far away and faint glows. I'm tempted to reach out and beckon it to come forth—whatever hides there has been repressed for so long.
"You look for forgiveness...don't you?" Tears fall. "You want to escape from this way... You hunted for someone that could save you. That stuff about misery and making me pay was a lie...you secretly thought I could save you. I don't know why, because I can't. The forgiveness you need comes from others and—."
"No, you can," he says. He approaches me, staring imploringly. I'm so shocked my heart beats double time. I have never witnessed anything like this in my life. Overwhelmed, I get the skittish desire to bolt.
"I've done a number of wrongs to you," Butcher whispers, now standing before me. At this admittance I sob anew. The recent, ugly past plays out between us. I can't bear to watch it go by.
"I am sorry." I swear the deep voice wobbles. "I am so sorry."
"Why? Why did you?"
"As a Recreant, all I've ever known is pain."
"That's no excuse. You've done something wrong to be where you are."
"Recreants take the punishments for their parents crimes from their birth--nothing of their own doing. I learned their pain from the beginning. I am forever cursed to pass it on, unless..."
Lips tremble. Tears streak. I shudder.
I feel my hand being taken. Startled, I watch limply as Butcher presses it to his chest. Something thumps there, something hot.
"Forgive me," his voice drops. It strikes my soul.
The heart beats faster, in time with the drip of tears.
A heart for a human.
He's trying to show me he's human.
Will I believe him?
Time passes by.
I can't.
To set this Raider free of his descent into a maddened, hellish world I've never known, I need to. There have likely been others he has hoped would grant him freedom from the clutches of eternal pain. Like mine, their consciences were seized with doubt and judgment. He has been left to haunt the earth, pleading with any promising pair of eyes that appeared as if they could forgive.
Perhaps that's why he spared my life in the gas station so long ago.
He saw.
He hoped.
But what he's done, I can't forgive him for. I was dragged into his sin without mercy. An "I'm sorry" barely covers the still bleeding wounds. I'm still shattered into a million pieces, my bones across the stars.
But for his sake, so that he finally may be free, I speak the words.
"I forgive you," I whisper.
Someday I might actually be able to. But not now. Not for a long time.
A shocked gasp escapes me when he drops before me on his knees, as if I'm his savior. "I never thought anyone could. I thought I was forever lost."
I can't bear to tell him he still is. Instead, I let him hold me. I cry into his midnight hair as he clings to me, wondering why I suddenly feel so old. I've learned too much about this terrible world. Too much.
More than some much older than me ever will.
Author's Note:
I don't know why, but I just want to cry for them both.
Please listen to the song, it fits so perfectly!
WHAT THE HEECCCKKK!!! WE ARE BARELY SHY OF 9,000 READS?! YA'LL WHAT THE HECCK!! YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST. I LOVE EVERY ONE OF YOU AND FEEL FREE TO HIT ME UP FOR ANYTHING, I LOVE TALKING TO YOU GUYS.
Mwah!
Sonny Mae