Nexus-Sages: February Writing Prompt

[heirtothedragonsfire]

His long, slender fingers twitched in limp half-gestures, half-wants, as they hung over the edge of the bed. The orb of light that hung beside her watchful position glowed with a pale blue light that made his skin a stark white, as though he were a corpse that had crawled out of the river Styx. Silence pressed against her eardrums so that each small rustling deafened her. The covers rose and fell with the rapid breathing that came after each round as he tried desperately to recover, and his dull eyes flitted from place to place, widening, watering... and then going distant again.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and looked away. It was easier when she looked away.

"Make it stop."

Looking back again she saw his face turned to her, muscles pulling it into various pained expressions, each one worse than the last.

"Please." He inhaled shakily, lips trembling. "Isidor. Is." He whispered her name. Pleaded. Desperate. "Make it stop."

No words could have been more horrible to hear. His face contorted in an expression of abject misery, breaking her heart as he mumbled through a slow trickling of tears.

"Please..."

She sat there. Helpless. There was nothing she could do. Didn't he know that there was nothing she could do? That request... That terrible, terrible request... There was only one way she knew to fulfil it, and she refused to believe that he would ask for that. Not him. Not the boy who saw life as a dream. Never.

"Make it stop."

Her hands flitted up to press fingers lightly against his lips. She realised she was trembling and crying, but she didn't feel any of it. She was as empty as he was, and as numb.

Forcing her lips into a mockery of a smile, she took his hand and held it tight. "You're going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright."

It didn't matter how much time passed after that moment. It didn't matter that they survived and moved on from it. It didn't matter how happy they were, or how bright the day. She saw it, glimpsed it as he turned in half-light, or when he drifted off into his own thoughts. Some days it was all she could see. The day they found a way out, she vowed never to let that happen again. She would never be helpless like that again; and the pale boy, desperate, defeated, and begging for peace, would remain silent, a mere memory of a nightmare.