there is pain and then there is a void and then there is the listless in between, the shifting of too-bright lights and the flashing of faces. someone checking her vitals and a constant beep beep beep that never stops and she wants it to stop, but it's not even hers. there is someone else - a lot of someone else's - and she does not know where fernando is. 

is it his heart monitor she's hearing? even if it's not, imagining so makes it more tolerable to listen to. 

on the surface is where her thoughts are too muddy and them being too muddy makes her want to dive back under. but it's been a few days and she needs weaning off the morphine. 

her face is cracked. her skin is sallow, mottled with gray, peeling spots. her eyes are still bloodshot and puffy and her midsection is wrapped.

she blinks slowly at the man beside her bed. it takes a moment to register. and when it does, she drifts a hand out with a sigh, nose scrunching when she sees the state of her flesh. 

a cough, voice still rasped from her screams, and now her disuse - "you gave me superpowers."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

"oh, alex, i was magnificent," she says dreamily, palm sliding against his, thumb tracing circles on the underside of his wrist. her eyes are molten gold, lost in the reverance she has always had for flame. she runs her tongue along her teeth and hums in the back of her throat, reminiscent of lyune's cadence of contentment.

"all the rest of it is gone. everything is gone, but i did it. i saved him."

she looks down at their joined hands and she marvels at the touch, at the warmth that shivers up her arm. "and i don't think king can forgive me, but i can finally forgive myself."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

he would have thought her glorious. oh, she must have been glorious - all of her blood igniting at once, fury giving way to unadulterated resolve in the penultimate climax. she'd stumbled from her baptism on weak knees, but she had done it. and how could he not know why?

her laugh is a terrible, hacking thing. "because i hate him," she croaks and she wets her throat with a swallow, "but not the most. never the most. and now? now i know i'm strong enough to save me."

her eyes are shining with a desperate triumph. her free hand grasps the rectangle that makes all the hurt go away. it recedes, back into the waiting depths, lecherous monster that it is. 

warmth lingers on her palm. she squeezes and she says, "hate is so close to love, alex, don't you think?"

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

she would have done it without him. hell, she hadn't even known the suit could connect with lyune as it had. and she's still not entirely sure it was alex at all.

copper rings of salt. they are born of the sea.

his question slips under the void, lost to her fluttering heartbeat, the curl of her smile when he kisses her knuckles. he's so tender in all the ways she has never deserved; now, there is no room for guilt. morphine drips, drips, drips.

"i think i'm someone else. i met a witch. the ocean told me there are answers and i feel them out there, waiting." her throat rasps. she stutters into another series of coughs and looks haphazardly around for water, forgetting what it is she's looking for only seconds later.

"i think my mother was a dragon."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

her lips fold over the rim as her fingers fold over his. hand over hand, an addict to the warmth ringing down her arms from his touch. when she's drunk her fill, she still cradles him closer.

"have i not earned it?" she whispers vehemently.

the silver puncture wounds, all but faded scars, on her neck tingle. she shivers. and she tugs the empty cardboard cup from him and tosses it to the side, taking his hand in hers, returning that lovingly gentle kiss with a press of her own lips to his knuckles. teeth graze his knucklebone and tears well up in her eyes, slipping down her cheeks.

"have i not earned my joy?"

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

closer and closer and closer still. their voices drop, circling their penance. he obliges her, but he cannot absolve her. she has already done as much, she tells herself, but she is still aching all over and protecting the man who hurt her so terribly drove away the one she loves. 

she cannot lose alex too. 

"forgive him," she says. "forgive him when i can't. he hurt me, alex, but i let him do it. i asked him to do it. what fault had he in that?"

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

"you don't know," she says with a rough shake of her head. silver tresses spill over her shoulders, onto the hospital gown; the bangs around her lovely face stick to her clammy, mottled skin. "how can you tell me it's his fault when you don't know, alex?"

he doesn't know the way she degraded herself like a fucking animal for a taste of that power. he doesn't know that without him, she went mad without purpose. he doesn't know the absence of her grief at his own damn funeral, too full of her own pain to care about the living or the dead. 

she grits her teeth and she jerks forward and all of her body complains. one hand untangles from his to cup his cheek, to hold him closer, and her lips press against the other, brows furrowing and tears slipping messily over her nose. 

"i have saved myself in saving him," she says against his skin.

ALEXANDER STONE

☉