The Rabbit Dies Pt. 06

"Claire," Amaru whispers. Strained, the voice comes strained and hurt and harsh and my soul is on fire.

He's up against the wall, skeleton hands of bleached bone holding him down, holding him still. A dark man with tapered ears hums to himself in the blue light of an open book. He holds up a hand, a finger and I do not wait. I stalk towards him, the music making each step and earthquake.

"I admired the enthusiasm," he hums, "But stay there and your rather handsome friend gets to keep living. And please stop stomping. Its unbecoming."

I do not stop. He does not look up from the book. I spin once, twice, and let the hammer fly from my hand. For a glorious moment it flies through the air, with the black-green smoke swirling around it with the notes and the rhythm of the thunder clouds of music.

It hits the man's hip and he crumples to the floor. Something snaps and breaks and that is the way the world should be. The book goes skidding across the stone, blue light spilling from the ink. I do not stop moving, even as the hands tighten and squeeze around Amaru's neck. He struggles and thrashes against the lock and I have my hammer again.

The man coughs and sputters and I make sure to stomp on his ribs as I walk over him and rearm myself. I want to stop and crush him a bit more, but later, I will do that in a second.

I hammer against the hands, letting them turn to powder against the hammer. Neck's first, then chest. He needs to breathe. As the hands come away, he uses his own grip to tear them free until he is coughing and sputtering against the basement floor. The man with the book does much the same, with less success. There simply isn't enough strength in his legs left to get him upright. But he moves to the book and we can't have that. I stalk towards him, raising my hammer. He finally looks to me and I see that his eyes are completely black.

"Wait, wait, wait," he stammers, "My name is Edgar. I was hired to do this. We can come to terms. We can work this out."

"I don't want to," I say and I bring the hammer down on his chest with a crack of bone and a hollow gurgle that bounces from the stone. I set my hammer at my waist and let out the breath that had settled in my chest when I kicked down the first door.

---

Amaru is good at applying bandages. He is very good at it, putting down just the right level of tightness to keep them in place, but also giving me enough room to breathe unimpeded. And we make him shirtless again in order to heal my wounds and that's always nice.

He's lapsed into silence, though. I enjoy the silence, the moments of nothing said and nothing needed to be said. This is not that. This is a silence coalesced around a word that needs to be said. I'm not sure what it is and I am being tended to medically at the moment. That is a good excuse to not say anything and just let the moment continue to linger, let the silence continue on without a care in the world, even though it feeds the growing hole in my stomach that needs a word.

"Try not to move too much," he says, "Don't want those bandages coming off."

Just to prove a point, I take my arms and send them long in front of my body. It feels good. Really good, to slowly let the muscles wind down. It's getting close to morning and I will take every bit of good feeling I can get. Amaru's still silent. Someone should really be out here to fix all this up. Not me. I've done enough. Annette has a body to deal with and Amaru just finished his medical applications. So, all three of us are out.

I sigh and roll over onto my back.

"What's wrong Ammy," I say, "You've been pretty quiet."

"Nothing," he says. I want to hit him. I know enough about people to know that nothing is ever not wrong, but when they say that it either means keep pushing or stop. And I am not sure which would be better.

He waits a good long moment before deciding. I just wish he would hurry up and get on with it. Nothing good ever comes with dragging something like this out. Better to just get it over with. But he's thinking and that's something that always takes time to do right. I tend not to, and things get done much quicker.

"You killed someone," he says.

"I did."

"And you don't seem all that sorry about it."

"I'm not."

"But you killed someone."

He shakes his head.

"Yes, I killed someone. And I don't feel all that bad about it. Sure, he was trying to kill you, or hurt you, or do something. But that doesn't make it right. At the end of it all, a man is dead. That has to count for something. Amaru, it's not good that I can do that. That I can look at a man pleading on the floor and just decide 'no.' That I can look at that and still swing. And it's not a good thing that you can't. Or at least, you don't know. And you don't need to know. I walked this path and found that somewhere deep in me, I can do that. I can swing the hammer."

"But how did you know? When you first did it? I just don't understand."

"And that's part of you. And I like you. I didn't know when I first started. I just signed up for a fight and they gave me a hammer. I took to it well enough, and if the answer to that question was no, then I wouldn't be here. Then someone who can answer yes would have killed me and that would be that."

"Seems like a really stupid way to find out that question."

"It was. I was a really stupid person. But I'm not talking about that. What do you think?"

"About what?"

"About the fact that I can answer the question with a confident yes."

"I knew it. I knew that you killed people. You talked about it. But I never saw it. I never realized that it ended quite like that. I always thought it would be, I don't know, grander? It was just kind of over."

"It's not. It's just over."

He pulls me in close, so close that I can hear his heartbeat in his lips, the breath flowing out from his chest. I can feel the tremble in his voice through my soul.

"I'm scared of you. I'm really scared of you."

I can't breathe. The bandages are loose and I can't breathe. I should be able to breathe, but I can't. Those words, those words took my breath away.

"I don't get it. I was right there with him when he started reading from that book and I couldn't do anything. I was him draw up the bodies and separate the flesh from the bones and I couldn't stop him. When he finally noticed me, I couldn't do anything. And then you just burst in and ended it in a moment. How? I don't understand."

"Amaru." I let the name hang in my lips for a moment. Amaru. It trails off, the last vowel hanging there after the crest of the m. It's a smooth name, soft and round and I like saying it, even if it's only in my mind. Amaru.

"Amaru, you can't do that. There are people who can. Like me. Like Annette. Are you scared of Annette?"

"Sometimes. This isn't my world. I know soft red lights and stages and hot tea brought to me whenever I want."

"Do you want to go? You don't have to come with me on this."

He shifts and sprawls out on the floor with me. The sky is lightening. No clouds this time, and the orange-purple haze starts filtering up through the horizon.

"I don't want to go. I don't know how I feel. I'm just scared that the women I love are like that and I'm not."

And my breath is gone again. The bandages are too tight, too close to my chest. Hot, it's hot and I can't breathe and I don't want to be here anymore. I need to leave, to keep walking to keep the road moving beneath my feet alone.

Instead, I move a little closer to him and he lets me move as close as I want. He's still cold, the off blue skin of his still inheriting the chill of the earth. It feels nice against my back. The cuts are starting to swell and ache. They will scar, probably. Something that deep always has to scar. It's the rule.

"I don't want you to go," I say, "I'm glad we're finally like this. All of us."

I let my hand start to trace the muscles in his chest and he lets me. Broad and strong, and he is still unblooded. He shouldn't be. He shouldn't be like me. I kiss him softly on the cheek and he lets me. He looks down and kisses me too and lets the taste linger. His hand goes to my back and I gasp. Sensitive, all still raw and open.

"I don't like that you got hurt," he says, "I should have stopped it. If I could do that, then-"

"Stop. Amaru, I get hurt. We all get hurt. All the murder in the world won't make me not get hurt. It's what I'm good at. And you crossing a line that you aren't made to cross wouldn't keep me from that. It would just hurt me more, because then you'd be in pain. If seeing it is making you this upset, then doing it would break you. I'm the only one that can do that."

And I get a deep chuckle in his heart for that and I am alright again. He can smile and that's all I need. I take my lips to his collar. He needs to be shirtless forever, just so I can do this.

The bandages allow me to haul myself up and onto him. We may end up staying here an extra day for it, but it will be good for me. And I can scare off anything that gets too close. I can keep them all safe. And they can make me feel better afterwards.

In the glowing twilight of early morning, I can hear someone start to play the strings. A funeral song, slow and dirging, endless march into the mist, endless soft melancholy thought the air. Annette, of course it is Annette. I do not know anyone else who plays this well this close to me. It's calming, letting the sadness and the sorrow with the hollow hunger and the incessant need.

He's cautious again. Afraid that I might hurt him and that he might hurt me. I let my arms cross over his chest and just listen to his body. His heartbeat is getting faster as everything starts up again. He traces the lines on my back, the cuts and gashes through the thin cotton. It feels good. Still sensitive and raw, but I expect it now and that's more than enough to dull the sensation and let it chill through my skin. He slowly pours more and more strength in the motions, tracing the outlines of the open wounds, then moving lower and lower, settling in the small of my back. I shift my legs a bit and feel the outline in his trousers slowly grow as his hands descend a bit more.

He's getting hard, snaking down his leg. I trace the growth with my leg, kneading the fabric and the shape. His grip keeps getting tighter and tighter, the need overpowering whatever is distracting in the mind. It doesn't matter what I am. I am here and I am willing and that is enough. It has to be enough.

He slides my own trousers down over the swell of my hips and I kick them away. Annoying things, really. They have their purpose, but I wish they didn't. My stomach core twitches and starts its own preparations. All it takes is a touch, all it takes is a little bit of will imparted into me and it starts the raw hunger once again. Never sated, never satisfied. The meandering lullaby of strings, though, keeps it nice and distracted. Manageable even, in the glowing twilight of morning. I kiss his collar and his chest, his neck and his cheek as his hips and his hands start their own process of getting everything open and bare. The floor shudders a bit under the work.

He is free and eager and warm, parting my thighs to stand tall. I smile. I can't help by smile when I trace the outline with every bit of contact. Mine, that is mine and it will be inside of me soon. My palms still tinge from my hammer as they reached down to caress the length. Heavy, so wonderfully heavy and warm, traced with hard veins and swelling heartbeats.

I make him part me slowly. Slow, so sluggish and lethargic. I've had enough excitement for the night, morning, day, whatever time it is, and I just want something soft and cool and expansive. Tired, so tired. My arms hurt as I push myself up and away. Not a good angle lying down and we can figure out something better once he is actually inside me and moving. But for now, he has to content himself to taking his hands to my hips and my bandaged chest. He tries to force me down, just a bit faster. But I drag it out, letting every glorious inch of ground gained in his conquest feel like a league. I open for him just as slowly, the twitches and pulls in my core wrapping around him with lazy acceptance. I don't want anything difficult or rough.

I sway my hips once I reach halfway down him and he grunts and tries to raise his hips to continue the journey. I do not let him. I sigh though, as he rattles within me, hitting corners and pockets of sharp lightning inside me, that storm up to my skull and shiver the skin. As much as the sheer size of him does most of the work, there is skill behind it. He knows, through practice and honed craft how to rock and thrust and push against a woman, and it's just better. A sizeable thing is nice, a skilled thing is nice, but both, both combined in me is perfect. I continued my descent with whimpers and moans that I exaggerate just for him. Not that much though. I don't have to, really.

Our hips meet and I just sit there on him for a long moment, letting the length of flesh fill me and spread me and open me. The music, the wonderful music fills my mind again and there are no words to go with it. There doesn't need to be. There is just the sound as I rise again and leave that terribly wonderful hollow in my core where Amaru should be. But he has to leave that amazing place so that he can return. And he can only return if he leaves first. I get halfway again before I need to go back down. I have less to go as he bucks and thrashes again and I don't want to put in the strength to make him still. I don't want him still.

But he is gentle, taking the motions together to make it slow and calming and enough to bring me down from the fight. It's a cold and gentle place he finds within me, exploring and probing it, letting it expand until it takes over my entire core, my entire being as it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. My mind is the windswept tundra and ice capped mountains and it is glorious. Numb, comfortably numb against the pain and it is what I need.

It builds in waves lapping at the shore, taking more and more of them out to sea. My breath catches and I steady out the pace, iron out the wrinkles and the kinks, finally letting him have some amount of control within me. He tenses and freezes for a moment, before pouring himself into the motion just the same.

"Amaru," I say to him.

"Claire," he says to me. I like hearing my name, even when the inflection feels stiff. It eases the cold clench in my stomach just a bit as he soothes it all away. I start to twitch again once he moans and whines with the meandering strings in the air.

The chill finally gives way to a sea of warmth within as he finishes with me. My own knot does not break. The temperatures swirl but do not mix. Hot and cold, I am hot and cold and all sorts of wonderful things happen to my body. I can feel the sunrise through the cloth and the gauze and it soothes the cuts, knitting the skin back together in itching threads. Good. It is good to press myself into him as he finishes. No more strength left in me. Everything collapses onto him and I do not want to move. He deflates slowly, just as slowly as he started. I kiss his collar again, feel the bone beneath my lips and work my way back up to his lips. He returns the gesture and traces the lines of red in my flesh. His hands find mine and they keep tracing. I move to interlock our fingers and he does not meet them.

---

"To answer your question," Warren says, "You stopped walking. If you kept on keeping on, then none of this would have happened and you wouldn't have to lovely little Amaru choked out against the skeleton wall. But you did stop and now here we are. In the daytime no less. You have no idea how hard it is for me to show up int the daytime. Thank you for that."

I want to throw something at him, but nothing huckable is in reach.

My chest is still covered and I am still in the ramshackle thing that might meet the loosest definitions of a house if it came to it. And he is right. I can see daylight seep into the cracks of the walls that refuse to obey the laws of gravity. I am alone, face down on the floor, with neither one of my companions within reach. I do not sit up. I simply roll over onto my back and look at Warren. He has his back propped up against a wall, looking through the open doorway to the scant clouds covering the sky. I can't see the sun from here, but I do glimpse golden leaves drifting past the opening.

"I apologize for the inconvenience," I say with the least amount of meaning I can impart to the words.

"Oh, don't beat yourself up over it. Mr. Rattlebones out there already did a good enough job of that. And some sunshine is good for me. Might even get tan. I think I can get tan. Pretty sure. Mostly sure. Kinda sure. Want a puff? Might help with the pain."

"I'm actually doing alright at the moment. Amaru has good hands. What are you even doing anyway? We're on our way to the thing. You don't need to watch over us like a mother hen."

"I know. I trust you. Well, not Annette, but she's also not one of mine, so I feel that's warranted. But I wanted to check in, see how life's treating you. Checking the vibe so to speak."

"Things are fine. You can go."

"If someone tells me everything's fine, that immediately means things aren't fine."

"Then things are good."

"Good try, but that's not going to work on me. You said it. You can't unsay it. So out with it. You have to talk to me. Well, you don't have to, but it makes this entire little relationship work."

"I'm worried about Amaru."

"About or for?"

"Both, I guess. He's really not taking that whole ordeal well. And his heart wasn't in the makeup."

"Getting that close to death either really ratchets the whole thing up or takes it down to the bottom of the world. But what did you expect? Guy's never been to war. And frankly, good for him. I've been to a war and it was terrible."

"What war was that?"

"One where a bunch of people fought over a line on a map. To be fair, I think there was a river involved and those are important, I think. But love can bloom anywhere, even on a battlefield So, there I was. And it sucked."

"Kind of made that my whole gimmick though. The Burrowmaiden of the Battlefield. And now Amaru's scared of me for it."

"And that's the issue. And do you think he's wrong for being afraid of you?"

"Not in the slightest. He saw me just cave in a man's rib cage. I just got so used to that I forgot that's not a normal thing people do."

"But it's a normal thing for you to do. And now you have to work it out and find out how to move forward. Or not. And that's the end of my little advice bit. But there's a postscript, and that's keep talking with him. Can't move forward without talking."

"And then I guess it's my turn. What the hell are we doing out here?"

"Going to the Lilac Frontier. You figured that out on your own. Didn't need to ask me at all for that one. But I guess it's nice to confirm you're on the right track. Makes sense. I get that. Sometimes I ask for directions to places I've already been just to be sure."

"Now who's not talking?"

He sighs and the world sighs with him. I stretch.

"Fair. That's fair. Now that there's actual stakes in all this, that's fair. Just give me a second. This is the first time I've told anyone about it. Well, anyone not in the same situation."

He takes a long drag of his pipe and lets the golden smoke flow past his lips. He finally breaks his gaze from the sky.

"You're going to the Frontier to kill me."