Anywhere But Home|tag: lucy/complete

[ricketts]

www.polyvore.com/anywhere_but_home/set?id=23291662]when asked who made it show, the truth, he gives into most

Henry was terribly perturbed in his appearance - a something, that betokened some absolute change of outlook, of attitude. He paced the room, uneasy and anxious, for he knew in what it lay. Every short-stride, Colonel shrank back from him and barked in a sort of dog-cowed. He had the listless, indifferent air of one who lets himself be drifted here and there rather than of one who moved securely along, strong enough to hold his own way in spite of any opposing elements.

Careful there, Jekyll. You're startin' to look a bit crazy ...

'Fuck off!'

These days of solitude, in which he come been face to face with his own life and his prospects, had suddenly, roughly, pitilessly graven on his face the lines that with other men successive experiences accumulate there gently and almost insensibly. He had taken a sudden leap into despair, keeping himself in his apartment day upon day - to the point where he looked near ill. His heart smote for having even ever looked at Hank; it reproached him with having known something like normalcy in those days, and his old sense of troubled, anxious responsibility came back. It was his fault, he killed Hank ...

.. We, killed him. Don't take all th' credit, mate. And once again, Edward Hyde was weighing on his every thought.

Henry turned on the electric light in his bathroom, stood in the doorway and looked around himself with a sense of someone unable to find their way. Under the drawn blinds, it was a bright starlit night. None of it was possible - he had had every kind of treatment under the sun. Medication plans, psychotherapy, limit setting, reality testing ... the list went on forever. One of the most difficult tasks of a patient was not to regret who he was. A mind that was disciplined to determine quickly and to abide by its determination was one of the most valuable instruments of human equipment, something every doctor aspired after for their patients. But it had certainly needed some work on Henry's part.

But it didn't work, did it? You's still loopy.

'Stop it, you're not real!' He cried, furiously turning the tap on the bathtub during the short period that elapsed. Cold water shot straight down. 'Not real, not real ... none o' its real!'

He turned on his dog, who had followed him at a safe distance. Still whining and barking. The awful fever that prostrated him, it made him unable to resume his ordinary life, his ordinary patience and understanding. Every bark was like a demurring voice of opposition, and it only heightened his frustration. 'You can shut it too, fuckin' animal!'

Then, not unwillingly, he climbed into the tub. The water was biting and painful, it made his teeth grit as he lowered, soaking through his pyjamas pants and plainly worn shirt - clothes he had been wearing for days no less. In his ordinary state of health he would have been alive to the proverbial drawbacks of an ice bath, but in his present state of weakness and depression he felt he could not be alone, and in his secret heart it was almost a relief to feel the pain, it was a relief to feel anything away from memories and associations. It had been in one of these moments of insight, of revelation almost, that suddenly, like a blinding flash of light shows us in pitiless details the conditions that surround us, that with intense self-pity he had said to himself that there was actually no one in this whole world with whom he was entitled to come first. Henry's solicitude certainly went far to persuade him of the contrary; but in his secret soul he bitterly resented the fact that now, he had not won. He would never win.

Oi, what are ye' doin'?

Gripping the handlesides hard, he lowered himself more down. A tear trembling in his eye, not just from the cold thrill.

'Ey! I said, what th' fuck are ye' doin?

'I'm stoppin' it. Fer good.' Heavily occupied within his own acts, Henry looked down on the rising water in fear, but yet managed to understand the needs. He needed to detach his attitudes, and just how he felt, and think of all the people that would live now, embodied in all their visable form. In each detail, it would be the kindest thing he would ever do, and with this in mind, he shut his eyes and took the plunge. Even colder it was, underneith.

Hyde kept talking to him, though. Telling him he was being stupid, that he hadn't the guts to do it. With skillful management, Henry ignored him and lay very lightly to the tub's base, still holding the handles. There was a great stirring of aggitation and anxiety within him, fuelled only by Hyde's taunts. Calling to mind the instances of stupid persons who had launched out wildly then been overtaken by ruin. In the powerless end, Hyde did eventually fall silent - as everthing went black and Henry's hands fell away from the bars. Colonel kept barking, and the taps kept running, even as the water overflowed onto the tiled floor.


(Cheveeeelleeee! Why must you rule me.)

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

www.polyvore.com/anywhere_but_home/set?id=22119032]And all the roads that lead you there were winding

There had been a burden of guilt casting haunting shadows over Kitty lately. She had been committed to the streets and under Spider’s resolute control for a little over two years now, but never had she felt the weight of that distressing truth so heavily as she had these past days. Likely due to the even more potent truth that, as good fortune had shined upon her even infinitesimally, she could now stake the claim that her solitude had been pleasantly broken upon by others. Friends, she’d even venture to say.

An indisputably anomalous collection of them, but each one had steadily and unwittingly restored her once withering spirit, had bandaged the wounds that had bled despair and solitudinous neglect. So evocative were the effects of affable humanity upon her that this time, faced with the looming mirror of introspection her companions collectively formed, she couldn’t turn her gaze away. Astounded was she by the successive realization that some propitious fragment of her did not want to. Ridiculously exposed as she felt whenever in their company, she relished the liberation that tinged the mystifying air, freed from the professional mask that always shrouded her face. It was that freedom that she grieved for and that same freedom she had been kept from by her gripping servitude. Reason enough to be wounded by the piercing agony of guilt.

With what Kitty had just learned from the receptionist of the housing, it did not seem like her guilt was going to be dissuaded anytime soon. Intensified, more like, for it appeared that Henry had been less than himself lately. Chiding herself for her unpremeditated neglect of him, she moved into the elevator of the apartment building with a sort of disquieting air about her, far from the beauty in repose.

As the elevator ascended to the significantly familiar floor of the building, her mind was consumed by thoughts of her close friend. They’d been close friends for some time now, but even still she found herself cringing away from the label. Closeness had always evoked the impression of imagined suffocation, of being smothered by senses of security that were likelier false than veritable. That impression hadn’t stuck with Jane and neither Henry, it seemed.

The connection with him was the one she considered dangerous, however, simply because he’d been the first man to challenge the stigma of men in her life and thus had been the first man to ever succeed. For reasons beyond her paled comprehension, he had not cast her aside and let that fateful night in which he’d saved her fade away into oblivion. He could have by all means just as easily forgotten her, as usual cases dictated and had been etched tirelessly into the confines of her mind, but he hadn’t and no one was more appreciative of that than she. Against her better judgment and the nagging presentiment that threatened her firm resolve, she had allowed him to catch more than a mere glimpse of her true self. The quandary being she herself was not all that definite about how much of her was true. There was no one to whom Kitty could seek guidance from in that pursuit, no one that sincerely knew her. If no one knew who she was, how was she supposed to? Somehow, Henry had managed to see through the façade and actually see the person she did not know. The accomplishing of that feat was less of a mystery if she justly contemplated it.

Kitty had not held any fanciful wishes of their paths ever crossing after that rainy and turbulent night, so to say that she was staggered when they’d bumped into each other again, by thankfully less dramatic means, was an understatement. The cursory conversation they’d partaken in under the dim illumination of streetlights had apparently been enough to convince both that the other’s company could undoubtedly be enjoyed and that despite the defects of the lives they led, more so Kitty than him, very little harm would come to either if they decided to meet up again. And meet up again they did. Between visits to his home, bonding with his beloved pet, and congregating for the purpose of an innocent night of casual drinking and general silliness, she had grown more fond of him than she was comfortable admitting. Amongst the startlingly vast similarities they had come to discover, there did exist the differences. Few and far between, but glaring nonetheless, the most conspicuous of them being the jarring realization that she was actually the stronger of the two. Not in relation to physical might, of course, but stronger where it counted. She talked slightly louder and walked slightly prouder than he did and the vigor he lacked in his personality had made itself known the last night they’d met for a drink, prior to Spider deciding to hijack her life yet again and cause her to temporarily lose contact with those nearest and dearest to her.

Once she’d reached the fourth floor of the building and the elevator doors pushed apart, Kitty was stirred from her state of idle and mild contemplation by the flurry of recognizable barking that wound its way through the hallway. Her brows furrowed with the tenseness of confusion at the sound as it reverberated more frenzied than anything and unlike the barks of greeting Colonel was prone to taking to. Strange, that, and she quickened her stride towards Henry’s apartment with the task of unsettling the feeling of diminutive but still accounted for unease. Unfounded unease most likely, though something inside of her niggled at her not to disregard the sentiment. As she continued further down the hall, she caught through her peripherals that several doors of the other tenants were open and as she passed, Kitty noted that a number of tenants themselves were posted by their doors and wearing a combination of perturbed expressions and curious countenances. The disconcertion flooding her was encouraged by the peculiar scene and what she displayed clearly dictated her puzzlement with the situation. Something was clearly wrong.

As she finally reached Henry’s door, Colonel’s barking had intensified so that the sounds coming from him were raw and noticeably raspy. Then his whines would grow fainter as he momentarily padded away deeper into the home, though still audible, before the volume of them would intensify again as he returned back to the door. With gnawing anxiety, she rapped on the door apprehensively, taking care to treat her voice louder so as to hopefully catch Henry’s ear. “Henry?” she asked through a haze of building trepidation.

“He ain’t answerin’,” an unfamiliar voice chimed in, the man it belonged to having stepped out of his own apartment. Her hand poised to knock again, she paused and turned her head in the man’s direction, the worry lines creasing her features and the look in her eyes evidently questioning. The unspoken message seemed to translate as he dove into an ambiguous attempt at a clarification.

“Been weird all week, him. Just came home one day, yammerin’ and, from the damn racket he was makin’, sounded like he was tossin’ the place too. Same goes for tonight, but the place got creepily hushed a lil’ too quickly. Before that yappin’ dog of his started up, anyhow.”

Struggling to uphold the composure she prided herself with, Kitty faced him more directly and glanced him with something akin to reprimand. “This has been going on the entire week and not one of you took the fucking time to check on him?” The tone of her voice matched the comingled ire and dread in her eyes as they briefly flitted over to the peering tenants from their posts by their individual apartments.

Henry’s neighbor held his hands up defensively and remarked, “Whoa there, gal. Don’t get all huffy with me. He stays outta our business, we stay outta his. When his is not in the paper, anyways. Also, like I just told ya’, he ain’t answerin’.”

Now in a raging state of alarm, she disregarded that last statement for the moment and opted to knock for a second time. With each knock that went unacknowledged, the dread within her compounded and her persistent knocking twisted into pounding and desperate pleas. “HENRY! IT’S KITTY, OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!” When still no reply came other than the cries of the troubled animal housed within, she resorted to attempting to force her way inside. Ineffective, yet again. At that particular juncture, the physical might she lacked would have been far preferred over the stronger character she possessed.

Inwardly, and somewhat outwardly, she tried to still the chaos that warring emotions were creating and hit upon a level-headed enough condition to find some sort of solution. Kitty needed to get inside of that apartment and see for herself that Henry was safe and sound. The gears in her head began to turn, despite the opposing fear that threatened to claim her, and she abruptly halted her door bashing and reached atop the door frame, balancing on her tippy-toes and feeling for a spare key. No such luck. If worse came to worse, she would have to high-tail it back downstairs and retrieve a spare from the receptionist. Cursing under her breath and in her frustration, she lashed out at the artificial plant perched on the right side of the door, sending it tumbling over with one deft kick. Her gaze falling towards the floor, a flash of optimism sparked as the spare key came into view, having been concealed underneath the plant. Praising her own rash actions and turn of luck, she wasted no time in basking in the moment before she retrieved the key, fitted it into the lock, and pushed the door open, vigilant to avoid colliding into Colonel. The scene before her looked like the results of ransacking.

Stepping further into his home, she haphazardly reached behind her and slammed the door shut on the neighbor who, under the spell of his own nagging curiosity, had taken to peering into the mess himself. Colonel assailed Kitty with what seemed like insistent barking before sprinting off towards the direction of the bathroom, quieting down long enough for her to notice the whirring of the bathroom light and the sounds of running water. Quick to put two-and-two together, she rushed through the disorder of the living room and followed after Colonel, the carpeting directly in front of the bathroom waterlogged. The sight that greeted her was one she had resolutely refused outright to accept when it had nudged her earlier. Henry, dearest Henry, looked positively drowned as his motionless body lay in the tub, engulfed by the still surging water of the running faucet. Kitty blanched.

“Oh god,” she exclaimed softly, the confidence in her voice thieved from her by a nightmare she’d yet to live. He appeared irrevocably dead. He couldn’t be dead. She’d been killed once before when the twisting metal and crushing glass of the accident had robbed her of her identity. If Henry was dead, as the cynicism in her was keen on consenting to, she had tremendous confidence that the damage inflicted upon her would be fatal. The loss of someone that she had just gained. A cruel stab of fate that viciously penetrated and twisted itself deeper, causing Kitty agony that far surpassed the torment she had ever been subjected to. Only this wasn’t fate’s handy work. He had let himself drift into the cold embrace of death by his own will and that truth was considerably damaging all by itself.

Panic stole over actions as she raced to his side, ceasing the wretched running water with a sharp twisting of the knob. Her arms delved into the icy depths of the tub, wrapping around his torso, and utilizing the adrenaline surging through her to fish him out with definitive struggle. Corseted top now thoroughly soaked and the flowing cardigan she wore sagging with dampness, she set him down on the glossy wet tile with as much care as she could manage which in reality was not much. He was frail and looked ailing in appearances, another new development she’d noticed. Whatever trauma had occurred, it had been serious enough to render him stupid enough to give preferentiality to mortality.

Deathly chilled he was also, fostering the notion that perhaps she had already lost him. Her recollection saved her from undertaking such destructive thoughts, however, as she recalled that the water had been running glacial anyway and was likely the culprit for his frosty condition. Hopeful, Kit. You have to remain hopeful. You’re no help to anyone, least of all him, if you give in just as easily.

With this mantra echoing in her frazzled head, she sprang to action and made to relocate him as far from the pooling wetness as possible. Hooking her arms in his underarms and standing in a half-hunched manner, Kitty dragged him out of the bathroom and into the living room, finally resting him on the dry carpet. Intent on stirring him for the dark’s cold grip, she fell to her knees, not bothering to check for a pulse as she wanted to keep her blind faith intact. He’d saved her before. For her to fail him now was defeat of the most punishing variety.

How to go about saving a life, though, when she was the one in need of saving? Unfamiliar territory. Ground never treaded before, thus posing an even greater risk of loss because she simply had no tracks to follow. It was probably the wiser choice to alert those best fit to the task of reviving a life and not leaving it to one so severely inexperienced that the thought was depressingly discouraging. Even with that reality staring at her unfalteringly, she undertook the duty with set determination.

Using the exceedingly limited knowledge she had at her disposal, she took his pallid face in her trembling hands, pinching his nostrils shut with one hand while cupping his chin with the other, and lowered her mouth to his. Exhaling haltingly into him the shreds of life she wanted to see reanimate him once again. His lips were cold, frigid, and his mouth remained unmoving. Whimpering feebly against his lips, she tried to squelch the unbridled emotions that begged to take the form of piteous tears. A failure in that task as well, for the hot trail of tears spilled from her eyes, no matter how tightly she squeezed them shut. They scalded her and in her hopeless desperation, imagined and yet wholly existent pain was the last thing she needed. The warm dampness of her cheek touched upon his own as she lost herself in the bleakness. Her cheek pressed firmly against his as the tears weakened her fortitude, she suffered alone and always alone.

“Breathe for me, Henry,” she uttered into his ear, her voice trembling and falling like the delicate leaves of the autumnal season. He remained unresponsive and she pulled away, looking upon him with blurred vision. It was mystifying how even in the fell clutch of ruin, he was still so painfully and incomprehensively beautiful. Pain, pain, pain. Sentiments to live by.

LIVE. That singular word was what awakened the strength and hope she urgently needed. Kitty would save her goodbyes for when his time really came. Now was NOT that time.

With a newfound strength of mind, she rose to a kneeling position, her knees rubbed raw by the carpet and already bearing the marks. Damning tears still flowing freely, much as she tried to blink them away, she laid her hands, one overlapping the other, on his ribcage in a vague approximation of what next to try.

“Please don’t slip away,” she managed to squeak out, biting her quivering lip to muffle another cry, before pressing firmly down on his chest in rapid succession. Clinging onto hope like that was all that kept her breathing.



(Because Chevelle is God? *awaits to be struck by lightning for blasphemous comment* Duuuuuddde, I am seriously f***ing sorry about this damn novella of a post. Believe it or not, this is actually the edited version of it. Had I left it how it originally was, it would have punched in at around 3,049 words. O.O I didn’t, though, because then I would have nothing to write for other posts. I lost a SERIOUS amount of steam mid-way through to the end. If you find that I’m repeating myself like crazy in this post, know that it’s because my vocabulary only extends so far and not far enough for this long azz shizz. >> Unnecessary details and cheesiness ran rampant here, thus making the majority of this post unnecessary and cheesy. *le sigh* Also, Colonel is apparently Lassie reincarnated. -.-)

[ricketts]

Life had dealt but bleakly with Henry Jekyll; he had always been in the shadow: small wonder then if his nature was blighted and his view of life soured. His sheer power of sympathy might enable him to get nearer to many people, but still he inevitably reckoned up the balance, after the fashion of a kind, seeing only one side of the scale and not knowing what was in the other, and as he did so, felt the feeling of impotent misery, of rebellion against his own destiny. Powerless to resist.

Loosely and limply, his body dropped heavily onto the floor once dragged from the tub. Thoroughly drenched, a dark, damp patch quickly grew on the carpet; a deathly chill swathing about him. However, he was intermittently unconscious, forgetting everything and no part of him any longer aware of what suffering meaning. The silent martyr, and now the constant object of care and solicitude and pity. Yes, pity - that was the worst of it. Applied unconcernedly to him without realising all that it meant of tragedy, of startled, growing dread, followed by hopeless and despairing effort to keep him alive. Calling all courage to help, she - Henry's saviour, made up her mind bravely, to sketch his destiny from another point of view, and yet to make a success of the picture.

The battle had to be fought out alone. Unceasing, strenuous effort seemed to be going to waste, as Henry was showing practically no signs of being alive. For illusions, if they lasted, formed as good a basis for life as reality, and in the apartment, whether by imagination or not, the equipoise of life had been most skilfully adjusted.

As far as the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation went, no luck. Despite every effort, Henry remained unresponsive. Head rested on the carpet, looking straight with closed eyes, having nothing of boldness in it. But, through what looked to be a hopeless calamity, there was an appeal within the desperate pumps to his chest. In some strange manner unexplained and unjustified, the fingers of one of his hands began to jerk spasmodically - a response, if but a small one. The more force applied, the furthur up the movements travelled - up his hand, his arm .. all the way to his eyebrows. Midnight, with darkness, and without stars. Midnight, and the sky above them all, the canopy, burned with a cold yet lustrous black, while across it slowly flitted a few wandering clouds of darkest grey, deepening, as they sailed along. The open window let in a lengthwise chill, and with it a broad stream of falling moonlight.

Something like life awakened within, and absolute silence prevailed. Until, that is, his chest broke the deathlike stillness and fell. A sort of wild, continuous, gasping howl filled the air, as though bursting from a company of the condemned immured in an eternal prison, instead of from a pair of aching lungs. His entire body broke into a violent shake, and he turned upon his side - choking and coughing with great force. Taking in and out intense breaths.

I said ye' couldn't fucking do it.

Drowsed between times, Henry opened his eyes - hurting with the moonbeams, the first light he had seen since. Having some part of him all the while aware of his discomfort, he was suddenly conscious of the city again, as of some single great creature resting fitfully in the dark outside his windows. It lay all round about, in the damp cover of its night cloud of smoke, and tried to keep quiet for a few hours after midnight, but was too powerful a growing thing ever to lie altogether still. It was to be a long moment before the coughing and hacking would stop, and even then, when he seemed more restive, he made no intention of appearing to his cursed saviour in the light of appreciation. Instead, Henry made short, stretching sobs. In spite of his weakness, agony made his voice strident, and upon this stimulation, he withered where he lay and wept for his damned life.

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

In arduous desperation and increasingly wounded confidence, Kitty labored to resurrect the spirit that withered within the encasing of a frail and deathly form. The sheer drudgery she needed to overcome was a task that worn her and intensified the fatalistic ire raging inside of her. It would have been a blatant untruth to confess only to panic and consuming fear. Amidst the tempest of warring emotions, there also persisted the sliver of indignation.

It likely was bad form to feel that Henry’s attempted suicide seemed to her an offense of a definitive disregard. True, she hadn’t the slightest inkling of what would stir such an emotional upheaval in him. Hank flitted into her mind for the briefest of moments, but was shooed away by her albeit limited reasoning. Since the night they’d first met, under the unfortunate state of affairs that had been dealt to both, he had not seemed as devastated by the loss of him. Not compared to the despondence he had initially ensnared himself in, anyway. Henry wasn’t one to share his inner turmoil haphazardly, that she knew. When he thought her attention wavered and his expressions went unnoticed, her consideration of him actually deepened. She noticed the subtly withdrawn bowing of his head and the gaze that faltered when a personal inquiry was made of him. Kitty could not harbor a grudge against him for that, since in her own way, she upheld that similar safeguard. It was a defense mechanism she knew all too well and although it being practiced on her should have troubled her greatly, it didn’t as much as it probably should have. It was a matter of easing comfort into their individual situations where there was originally none to be taken as sanctuary. Vulnerability was a disquieting notion, one that she was sure neither wanted to embrace. As circumstances now scribed, however, that inclination of theirs would have to be dispelled immediately. Uncharacteristic of her, she still mused as if she wasn’t losing him with every second that flaked away. Kitty was losing a battle she’d never fought before, fighting a war she’d never waged. Still, Kitty did not relent in her ministrations. Even as her strength of will and steadfast determination was bombarded by looming defeat.

It was crippling, the dread was. Reminiscent of a blade dragging across her flesh continually, jagged and piercing, slicing deeper and deeper with each frantic movement of her hands. Not for the first time that night, she found herself repentant about just how profoundly she had allowed her connection with him to develop. If Kitty had been one of a colder heart and a detached mind, this predicament would not have affected her as intensely as it currently was. It was an envy that betrayed her virtues and surrendered her stoicism. To her, those that excelled in distancing themselves from others were rarely susceptible to damage triggered by anyone but themselves. It was a solitude that she begrudged. If current situations painted enough of a picture, it was fairly simple to discern that she had fallen prey to the trappings of closeness and connection. Attachment. That’s what it was all whittled down to. Dismaying attachment.

Barely conscious of the nightly world that existed beyond the reticence and overcast grim of theirs, she pleaded for the silence to be broken by a voice other than her own. She searched for the semblance of life that scrounged up enough hope to retain the last shreds of resilience that threatened to die away with him. Her searching wasn’t for naught, for once.

The spasmodic disturbances that quaked beneath her palms only registered when they had built up in greater frequency and dissettled the placement of her hands. The hacking coughs and reanimation of his body stilled her entirely and she watched through a fort of fog as he quickened to life. For a fleeting instant, one which passed with the fretfulness of her state of disorder, the act of breathing had been forgotten by her, almost as if he’d stolen her breaths to revive himself. In that moment where his violent coughing and hacking twisted into agonizing sobs that echoed all-encompassing sorrow, she was thrust out of her domineering catatonia.

Henry was alive. Kitty had saved someone from the clutches of death, only all too aware of the struggle he had put up to remain in total darkness. The light of the living world was much too bright for his eyes to bear and he seemed to recoil from the luminosity. Although a sense of relief did drive her to clamber towards his trembling body with a renewed confidence, her being was struck with the commiseration impelled by his pitiful cries. They rose and fell with haunting magnitude, like blood-letting knives carving into her soul, fracturing it.

Kitty, in all her empathy, curled one hand about the nape of Henry’s neck and raised him into a sitting position, her other arm situated along his shoulder blades and pressing him firmly against her own body. She clung to him tightly, even as his vague resistance was perceived, the tears that her eyes wept trailing expressively down her cheeks. Propping her chin on his shoulder, she breathed into the cluster of sopping wet tendrils of his hair, “I . . . I thought I’d lost you.”


(Listen to this. Love it. OR ELSE . . . I’ll get back to you on the “or else”. )

[ricketts]

Henry seemed to not be paying attention. Not to anything suggested by the efforts of the young woman, and appeared to be unaware that there should have been some connection between what she was doing and what he was doing; but he may have listened to other voices, other than his own. For his expression was of high agony; every cry afflicted with extreme distress. Through the execution of unseen manoeuvres, Henry - pale with pain, was helped into the protection of arms.

He had wanted to die that night. Taking the unspeakable privilege of leaving life swiftly and painlessly without knowing that the moment had come; wanting to pass unconsciously into that awful gulf, without having had to stand for a moment shuddering on the brink. But none of these he had been called upon to endure: even while those around him were looking at the beautiful aspect of life that they presented themselves. The darkness fell, leaving them the memory only of that bright image. A few moments set by, before he became dimly conscious of a choked little figure holding him. As he came back, Henry weakly attempted to resist before he was actually in the presence of what he had done. That was the thing which gave an edge to every action, to each fresh development of existence.

' ... K .. K, Ki ... '

But even that mitigation, for so much as it might be worth, was denied to him. And he sat there - stunned, shivvering and breathless, trying to face the fact that seemed almost incredible to a man of what seemed to him his aptitudes and capacity, the awful fact that he had not the strength to accomplish something worth accomplishing for once in life. There was no saving him. He did not state this pitiless truth to himself explicitly, but it was beginning to loom from behind a veil, and he would be forced to look at it. Henry could not start anything fresh. He had not the requisite impulse. He could have continued, he could not begin; the theatre of his actions.

For a moment, Henry's breaking head sunk against Kitty and his hand clung to whatever it could, clenching hard for all it was worth and wailing hard. Indeed, he had fallen where he had fell. Then he remembered how, in the space of seconds, she had pulled him back to this life at her own undertaking. A light played about his face, a whole dawn of realization as the weeping filled into shaking, short breaths. 'No ... ' His head rose, looking her wild eyed. It began to shake side-to-side, more vigourously with the seconds. 'No, no! Fuckin' ... oh god, no .. '

It was difficult to judge any course of conduct entirely on its own merits, when it had a reflex action on Henry; bursting into an entirely unconscious strength. Oblivious to himself, he grabbed her arms and dutifully shook her. 'Why th' fuck would you ... god, what have you done?!'

Shamefaced, he released her and shrank back. A profound silence reigned, with Henry so strangely gritting his teeth against any bitter things. Drawing his hands to his face, he cowered and wailed behind it, trembling with a sinking dread at his heart. It was an entirely new sensation to remember, whether he yet realized or not, suddenly that this was a thing which concerned somebody else as well as it did himself.

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

(Slight god-modding. Hopefully not enough to irk you a lil’. :3)


It was the composition of inveigled desolation that riled her fragility and long neglected kindliness. The art of falling apart at the seams was one mastered by the few and the disheartened, practiced with the anguish of the hand applying it. Kitty had not known this verity of Henry until he’d been on his last thread.

She had hastened to his aid with all of the urgency his situation prompted and endured the dread that hung on the pitiless silence of his deathly repose. She had worked on him with the budding ache within her chest steering her towards resignation and consequent defeat. She had returned him to the living world and welcomed his return with a desperate embrace. Fraught with ailments, the most notable dwelling within her heart. He was not aware that lingering on the chasm of death as he had been had almost killed that wretched beating of life inside of her. Faced with loss of a greater magnitude than she could ever fully comprehend, Kitty now knew that her sin could never be caring too little, but too much.

Ensnared in the moment of encircling anguish, she allowed him to cling to her, even if the force behind his grasp proved slightly discomforting. He wailed continually and the sorrow clawing its way out of his throat rendered his voice gravelly and raw. Why was it so debilitating to subject her ears to his afflicted cries and feel his distress through his frenzied clutch? Once again, the answer was that she cared too much. A transient moment it came to be when Henry broke from his tormented stupor and proceeded to quite literally lose all sense of self and being. A countenance of comingled shock and bewilderment seized her and Kitty could only stare with the visage of bemusement acting as the expression of words that failed to form. He was hysterical, seemingly possessed by the notion that she had thieved his chance at cowardly redemption, that her saintly act was in reality an act of barbarism and cruelty. Kitty was cruel because she’d let her compassion for him override his own desires to culminate his evident suffering.

So stunned was she that when he finally released her from his bruising hold, she staggered backwards and just barely managed to catch herself before her back collided with the carpeting. He continued to unravel before her, rebuffing the salvaging she had done with his crazed ramblings and his bitter expressions. He was not the only one whose ire was mounting.

Kitty should have been sympathetic to his condition. She was, but it was tainted by her rage. She was a fantastically flawed human being, that much was known to both, but if he honestly expected her to regret saving him and flee with her tail between her legs after being slighted by him, then so was scribed the reemergence of being strangers. She could fight when there was something worth fighting for. Righteous anger coagulated and fell, taking the form of tears, and she wiped them away with equal amount of resentment. Kitty had committed more than several errors in her life, most realized only after she had to bear the consequences of her lapsed judgment. Her fury would be purged by self-inflicted reprimand since more often than not she was in agreement that whatever her offense, it probably merited chastisement. However, this supposed “error” was not an error at all, yet she was still being spurned by Henry. Incensed as she was, she grumbled, “Corrected your stupid mistake, that’s what I’ve done.” It fell on ears solely attentive to the voice of its possessor.

Sidling closer to his trembling form, she yanked the hands he was attempting to muffle his world with away from his face, and delivered a resounding slap. Trying to console him with meager condolences and hushed words would be in vain. In order to free Henry from the mania he seemed so entrapped by, she needed to break through with every ounce of strength she possessed. The suddenness of an unprompted slap was enough to stun anyone, at least momentarily, and a moment was all that she needed.

One hand undertook the task of pinning his hands to his lap while the other cupped his chin and forced her steely gaze upon his own frail one, smeared black streaking her cheeks and the unbridled irritation evident in her features casting the image of formidability. If she had any say in the matter, something she clearly intended to have, he would listen. “Henry! I want you to look at me and listen. Shut up and listen closely to what I am about to tell you,” she asserted firmly, the sharp tone of her voice reminiscent of a dagger stroke.

“Why did I save your life? Because I’m a selfish human being, that’s why. I need you around, Henry. I refuse to let you end your life and ruin mine in the process,” Kitty spoke, the honesty brandishing her voice and loaning it the edge required. “Did you get that? I hope so because I’m not gonna be repeating it anytime soon.” Identifying the slight resistance beginning to build up again and the almost horse-like attempts to remove her hand from his face, she intensified her grip and muttered a simple yet commanding “calm down”.

“So go ahead. Be angry at me for deciding to save your life. Just be aware that I know my decision was the right one to make, even if you don’t agree. Be a fucking idiot. Try and kill yourself again and, even knowing how you’d react and that you’d hate me afterwards, guess what I would do?” Kitty leveled her earnest stare on his glassy eyes, eyes that threatened to stray from her own, and perceived the quaking his body was wrought with. Tragic tears quivered and fell from paled eyes of blue, ringed with grief. Had she been just a tad weaker, she would have faltered.

Instead, Kitty told him candidly, “I’d save you again.”



(Can you tell how inept I am at consoling people? Hope the slap wasn't too over the top.)

[ricketts]

The whole air was full of the odour of musk, as from the unseen presence of some musk-breathing insect or animal. The shadows were deep and mysterious, the rays of light which pierced the parapeting walls, already touched by the finger of autumn, seemed like shafts of moonlight shining through the apartment windows.

Aahahahahahahahahaaaaa ... !

Started by the laughter, the overwhelmed young man looked wildly about the room with an infinite weariness, barely ever keeping his eyes on Kitty even as she spoke to him. There was no safety, at least that was the feeling that dominated his heart. Home was not safe anymore, he felt that conviction - dragging hard on his chains. An inexpressible sense of discontent, of discomfort, of solitude and emptiness, no doubt, the result of the oppressing changes. It was just this, that he was entering upon a new phase of life. He slipped into an odd breathing track - holding his breath, until his chest was fit to burst, and then either hissing it through his teeth or choking it out in a weakly produced cry. Tortured by aspirations of a killer, and abhorring pain both by nature and the calamitous event, he was vulnerable on every side, accessible to pain at every point.

There was no trying again, Hyde had that much right. Henry simply wasn't brave enough for it again. It was gone, dead without him. Another knot in the chain thread of shattered hopes. Who could hope to break this chain? Kitty was definately trying, slapping him within an inch of sense and holding his face. He clenched his teeth and bit his lips to keep back the sobs, shaking his head with weak protest and the hand that remained forced to his lap under her wholly grip fidgeting and writhing. Not for long though, it took just seconds for him to submit to her commanding influence. Henry had closed his eyes, as if to resign himself more wholly to the pains that penetrated to the most hidden fibre of his being. There was no winning.

Henry tried at tiny intervals to argue back with her, but it was like struggling against a fierce gust of wind. 'No, but ... I, .. no I know that! I .. jus' .... '

Then he opened his eyes back up, breathing deep but tremulously. His hands unfastened from around one another, and tensed on his lap. His very skin chilled through - on his palms, on each finger, all round his wrist, on every vein, in every pore.

The first thing he saw was a mist of tears before Kitty's eyes. Such an unlooked-for sign of melting, it gave him a kind of shock as if in one lightning flash he had witnessed the upheaval, the convulsion of his whole life. Henry bowed his head, shamefaced and lip-quivering, almost to his chest in silence. Deeply wounded by both their feelings of selfishness and such overwhelming pain, he pulled his hands from his lap and, with a nervous tremor, clasped them around Kitty's wrist that held his chin. So hurt, yet so profoundly touched.

'Please ... don't .... '

He pleased against her tears, with emotion that was sincere. Even if his desire to live was not.

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

The catalyst for the collective damage done and the ensuing anguish shared by both had, in actuality, been their own obliviousness.

Kitty, in all of her subdued expressions of adoration and affection, had failed to take note of Henry’s escalating frailty. She’d been aware of its presence, but not that it had been withering him so intensely and with such a vengeance. Discount stifled them into the falsified refuge they had built over their hearts but the words that had not traipsed past their lips and instead festered within them in turn feasted on their insides. Reminiscent of a malignant cancer growing and growing deep inside; gnawing, feasting, never becoming appeased by the amount of pretenses the owners ingested in order to forget its existence.

His obliviousness manifested in the startling disregard that his subsistence affected someone other than himself and that the sudden smothering of his life deeply wounded flesh that was not his. It was selfish for her to want to keep him grounded in the living world when he clearly dissented and it was selfish for him to close the eyes to any remonstration that could be riled from others. So incredibly flawed, failing to take into account the sentiments of the other. What should have acted as a telling precursor was unobserved by eyes blinded by a miasma of tears.

Kitty had not been plagued by affecting calamities of this magnitude before and thus possessed only a shred of comprehension. Grief morphed into tears, driven to solicitude and frustration by the nuisance those drops of sorrow caused her. She never shed a tear of a piteous nature for herself, even whilst in the throes of torment’s fell clutch. The gravity that her being was so thoroughly shaken by Henry’s gripping dejection that it beseeched actual sullen tears from her did not go without its merited scrutiny.

He was such a piteous creature, swathed in his apparent self-abhorrence and what appeared to her as shame scribed onto his grim features. She’d caught his meager attempts at argumentative rebuffs and had stricken them from her mind with rapidity that surprised even herself. If he was making his best efforts to convince her of the callousness of the act she had committed, it would be a lengthy battle in which he would eventually surface as the defeated one. Kitty was unyielding in her conviction that his was a life worth preserving. Not a canvas of virtuosic brilliance, to be sure, but lavished with brush strokes of a subdued enchantment nonetheless.

Henry moved his hands from her grasp and she let them slip willingly. She hadn’t been restraining them as much as she could have and it was with justifiable reason. Kitty was not about to leave him to whatever lamentations might encircle him anytime soon, but if he preferred for her touch to subsist, she’d allow him that courtesy. The tremulous grip on her wrist drove her out of her head, however, as did his submissive plea. Confusion flickered over her countenance minutely before she gave vent to a weary sigh and ventured a supposition in relation to his meaning.

“Don’t what, Henry?” she queried, the edge of her commanding tone having dulled considerably. “Don’t lecture? Don’t cry? Don’t care?” She spoke with all of the incredulity she attributed true value to. Apparently, he did not know her at all. “You say that as if I have any choice in the matter.”

Her voice was tame now, gentle to avoid aggravating an already vexed Henry, but also to emphasize the sincerity of what she spoke. He was no longer hysterical, though far from stable, so he warranted a sympathetic shoulder now. Lifting her other hand to his face, Kitty hesitated for a brief moment, debating internally whether her continued touch would be received in a comforting light or be shunned into darkness. The undertaking of it nevertheless revealed the conclusion she had forged.

With temperate fingers, she brushed strands of damp tresses from his face, light touches skimming along his wintry flesh with all the tenderness she would time and time again fail to verbalize. She felt him react to her soft caress and caught that his eyes were trained on her again, but paid him no mind for that fleeting juncture. The thin and elongated blemish that refused to fade from his forehead caught her stare and drew her fingers to it. Kitty remembered him telling her about it, or rather the little that he knew about it, and she transiently trailed her fingers along the length of it, almost as if trying to will the understated scar away with her touch. Figuring that she had unnerved him enough, Kitty relented and removed the hand that had been cupping his chin from his clutch, his hands ghosting across her own as she slid it away.

Both hands now a comfortable distance from him and her eyes observing how he seemed to be disappearing into himself, she resolved for one last utterance. “At least do me a favor, yeah?”

Pausing before she uttered it and trying and failing to muffle the feebleness in her voice, she flashed him one sad smile. “Don’t hide from me.”

That mist coagulated and fell in drops, but she let them run. After all, she was asking him not to hide. Veiling what scarred her cheeks and stung her eyes counted as a contradiction. Kitty needed to practice what she preached, even if every fiber of her being protested.



(I need some mashed ‘taters for this cheese. >> Shaddup and gimme a break. This is my first time ever writing fluffy angst and you know it. Also, dunno if making a reference to that Hyde scene with Harry and Ophelia is okay with you. Here's hoping it is. :3)

[ricketts]

(I suppose this is the breaker, um .. HAI BREAKER! If theses any problems with the placements, lemme know.)


It was a while before Henry was in a state of being.

Neither noted the silence which fell between them, a silence which spoke more than language could have done, for language had become, between them, an unnecessary thing. There was still no spoken word as sat side by side on the sofa. Henry's head was bent, hands placed around a cup of hot water he had yet to sip. His face washed out, eyes darkened, his mouth drawn; regarding steadily the tangled thoughts that worked in his brain.

They had talked, complained, screamed, cried, reasoned, and all the way through Hyde's fierce laughter refused to be muted. The night was passing slowly, every hour, and in these few hours his troubles were practically read. Poor, God-given Kitty, who he had put through a hurricane of moods. When her anger faded, she would be near bursting in tears, then next she would be speaking to him so kindly as never done before. She was the charge, so there was no need for Henry to do anything but walk on, trying to remember where he was, and what course of conduct he had to pursue; trying above all to repress these alternate storms of anger and lulls of despair, and deport himself not like a passionate child, but an absent man - a man who had, after all, been wronged grieviously in life.

After what seemed a creeping length of time, Henry glanced toward Kitty. His manner was so solemn, free from bitterness or anger - that had gone long ago, and his passion was quelled. All the energy he had was spent, he was drained grey.

'Y'know if y' had to choose,' He said, blank and quiet. ' .. Would you say y' were good or evil?'

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

(No complaints here. ^^ This was all I could scrounge up from a brain still in essay-mode. You know the drill. >>)


What a grave understatement it would come to be if she admitted that the night’s events had not panned out as she had initially anticipated. Kitty had expected a quiet night lulled further into tranquility by the simple pleasure of staying in, perhaps indulging in the bit of cinema Henry brought home with him from his work every now and again, as they had other nights. No doubt it might have seemed to others a monotonous and dull plan for her evening, especially for one whose life was anything but. Truth was that far preferred was a slower pace of life and the contentment it derived than the pace she had grown accustomed to. Every other aspect of her life moved with greater rapidity than she would ever be able to match, not that she was keen on doing so in the first place.

However, the night had veered in another direction entirely and Kitty was left stricken by the suddenness of it all. Forced to adapt to a situation she did not fully comprehend, it would be easily justifiable to say that she was out of her element and likely Henry as well. A torrential downpour of gripping emotions, each more intense than the last, had laid siege to the household and its occupants, wearing them down to the fragile states they now adopted. In the throes of distressing conflict, they had both been ridiculously exposed to the other; Henry through his anguished ramblings and Kitty through the grief that fell from her eyes. It was said that allowing oneself to purge their woes through crying was a sort of elixir to the soul. Why was it, then, that Kitty instead felt a surge of upset when she actually did partake in that purging? Tears felt foreign on her cheeks and her ruffled serenity spoke of that effect clearly.

Diminutive wonder then that as soon as Henry’s state of mind was rendered tame again, she made it a point to quell her tears. There was something akin to extreme vulnerability about the entire ordeal and it was not particularly welcomed with open arms. Consumed by musings of a melancholic contemplative nature, his voice breaking upon the silence forged between them roused her from her meditative state, albeit with a tinge of puzzlement.

Her gaze was fixated on the movement of her right hand as her fingers alternated between plucking at the material of the couch and drumming against the half-concealed bareness of her thigh in a manner of unrest. In a sign of weary acknowledgement, she ventured a response to his admittedly loaded question, running her other hand through her hair.

“At first, I didn’t think there was a middle ground,” she responded, the command in her tone having been shed long before and been replaced with fragility. “I used to think that in the world I knew, it was easier by far by the way things were to remain good and evil than try to be evil and good. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Maybe it’s not as simple as slotting people into categories of good and evil. Maybe it isn’t so black and white. More like shades of grey with different intensities,” Kitty mused, her words rounding off with an air of wistfulness and her fidgeting having been stilled. “I’m not sure of a whole lot, but I’m sure that many of the things that I do to earn my lot in life would make me a slightly darker shade of grey than normal.”

Pausing to let the honesty edge into her voice, she continued, “I mean, you can dress it up anyway you like by saying that there isn’t a choice for me. That it’s either you do what Spider tells you or you don’t wake up the next day. If I wake the next day though, that was a conscious decision of my own, wasn’t it? There’s a choice involved there. A shitty one, but one any way you slice it and that’s what gives me my shade.”

Thinking that enough of a conclusionary statement, she opted to broach the subject he had been avoiding and she had been tip-toeing. Kitty shifted about until she slantly faced him, trailing her eyes back to his own wavering stare. “Now, I get that you asked that because, according to your definition, you think you wouldn’t entirely fit into the description of ‘good’. What I don’t get is why you’d have any reason to think that.”

She wore a countenance woven with threads of sincere empathy, a semblance of a plea stitched onto it that she gave voice to. “Talk to me, Henry. I can’t even begin to try and help you if I don’t know what the problem is.”



(Lucy=chatterbox. -.- And abiding by an OOC law that's already been scrapped FTW! )

[ricketts]

Henry was at a loss to understand this sudden volubility. These frivolous things were uttered by the same voice which, over the coarse of the night, had stirred his soul to its very depths; they were coming from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth of that human flower of the soul rendered divine by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. Just what then was the true essence of this woman?

Had Kitty perception and consciousness of her manifold changes, or was she impenetrable to herself and shut from her own mystery? In her expression, her manifestation of herself, how much was artificial and how much spontaneous? The desire to fathom this secret - and that was what it was now, an awful secret, pierced him even through the vague feeling of depression experienced by the proximity of the woman who he was beginning to rely. But his wretched habit of staying quiet for ever saw him losing sight of himself, and every time he yielded to Edward Hyde's pull he was punished.

Would it not have been better to abandon himself? Henry answered this by huddling closer around the cup he was holding, and sinking his head grimly.

In advance, Henry had been looking at her in a detached way, as though estimating the value of a what she was saying. Not words he would have chosen, and at any other time he would have disagreed with her. At any other time, he would have told her just how capable she was of eliciting wonder, just what an admirable, beautiful person she was. How much it stung him to hear her talk of herself like that. However, all that came from him was an indifferent mutter.

'S'pose so.'

Instinctively, he employed this language of wounded sentiment to cloak his really strong emotion, and he felt himself caught by his own voice. as in a net and drawn forcibly out whatever life was left in him. The corners of his mouth drooped wearily as he prepared for his reply, 'Theres lots o' reasons, Kitty. More then I can count.'

He turned his head away, drew his arms closer around himself, and dealt a a reflex shiver caused by the cold in his skin. 'Ye' deserve some explanation, I jus' .. really .... really can't, I mean, me heads all over the fuckin' place. Don't know what I'm thinkin', what I'm doin' half the time. It doesn't make sense, I know, an' m' sorry.'

Looking somewhat preoccupied, Henry exhaled a breathy 'ha' and repeated, 'M' sorry.'



(Once again thank you, Rasputin plus random ass Star Wars video, for the museymuse ^^)

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

That fragmented part of herself, the part that treated the world and its dealings with cold cynicism, knew it was coming; knew that that blinds adorning Henry’s soul would be shut to Kitty’s prying eyes. She’d caught a glimpse of naked emotion amidst the anguished cries that had clawed their way out of his throat and the unadulterated despair that had leaked from those eyes of his. Was she allowed more than a glimpse, more than an obscurity further diluted by the eschewing of illumination? Henry revealed the answer to that inquiry and that inquiry only in his lack of elucidation. To say it just merely stung, stung even more.

By this point in their camaraderie, she should’ve had at least a definitive drawing of the man before her, at least captured a hint of what composed him. She only had an indistinct outline, a drawing without shading, to show for their time spent together and that vexed her more than she’d readily admit with words alone. It had been a poignant moment in their friendship when Kitty had bared her troubles to him. The only secrets she kept from Henry were the ones that were kept from herself as well. There was absolutely nothing to be done about that, at least not while she remained in the darkness that obliviousness swathed her in, but what she had revealed to him she felt supplied him with enough to conceive a sufficient painting of her essence itself.

In truth, she did not perceive herself now as much of a mystery. Her story began with a man, like many that existed before him, catching the vulnerability of an unfortunate girl and touching upon her frailty with expert cunning. He, along with the impending wretched experiences that were to be had, had worn her down into the malleable matter best suited for manipulation. Years flitted by and a prolonged familiarity with abuse, strenuously executed both physically and mentally, had molded her into the jaded beauty she was now. Fairly simple to grasp, but that was merely the paint-by-numbers version she preferred to purport. As she had just told Henry only moments before, things were never that black and white.

Only after he denied her another glance of what she’d learned were unmasked sentiments, it occurred to her that not everyone was forthcoming with their truths, with their mysteries. No one was keen on vulnerability, but some were more resolute in avoiding it altogether than others.

Given his response, she was justifiably incensed. She faced him more directly, narrowing her eyes the way she did when she felt she was being taken for a fool. She hadn’t expected ever directing that sort of burning reprimand at him, of all people, but circumstances were subject to change and she’d venture to say that his suicidal episode had certainly altered the circumstances considerably.

A voice, edged with the upset coursing through her, articulated the offense she felt. “Don’t use the word ‘can’t’, Henry. That’s a cop out and you know it. You can. You just won’t.”

Sighing exasperatedly, she shut her eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of her nose, chasing away the hurt suffered by one with a realization of a prominent disconnect with someone else that had been assumed otherwise. “You’re one big fucking mystery, you know that? Most of the time, I don’t even know what to make of you.”

A hint of irritation colored her words and rightfully so. Puzzling over explanations for his kindness, for his sincerity, for the splendor of his being that separated him from the norm. Henry was way out on the fringe somewhere and Kitty could do nothing but watch as he retreated further into himself.

With him, she was learning. A student of life learning how to trust, how to live again. She learned more about herself during the time spent with him than she ever had those years under Spider’s behest. With Spider, she recognized her flaws. With Henry, she recognized her virtues. Kitty was grateful for the contrast, but couldn’t help but feel the lack of reciprocity. Just what impact could she be having on his life, on him even, if she wasn’t allowed to dwell where he kept himself hidden? All that she knew was that a reason existed for this intense emotional defense of his and the inability to arrive at a conclusion in regards to what it was frustrated her even more.

She could see he was hurting; could read it plainly on his expression and hear it clearly in his voice, a voice that betokened the notion of a seemingly amputated spirit. No prosthetic existed for that and that realization dawned on her simultaneously with the realization that she was being rather harsh with him. Assailing him with semi-accusations and wounding him with judgment she swore she’d never pass. She was irritated, yes, but more so hurt than anything. She hurt because the knowledge of Henry in his disconsolate state, so ensnared by the overcast nature of his dilemma that he had attempted to put an end to it all, wounded her just as deeply. All Kitty wanted was an explanation, not to be employed for means of passing judgment, but to attempt to guide the shine back into his eyes. Eyes of such disarming beauty, it seemed almost criminal to cloud them over with the gloom of depression. Like destroying something beautiful. She yearned to restore, not perpetuate the withering that defiled that beauty.

Sidling ever closer to him, she once again tried to break through the barrier he upheld. “Why are you so alone in this?” Noting that he wasn’t even leveling his gaze on her own, she reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder, giving a temperate squeeze in requesting for acknowledgment.

“Why do you think that letting someone in would be the be-all and end-all of you? It doesn’t have to be that way,” she reasoned, hand resting still on his shoulder and her thumb slipping into a caressing motion against the fabric of the robe, intending to instill some semblance of comfort.

Briefly, she slipped into an air of half-hearted amusement, uttering a small and breathy laugh, and commented, “Funny how it was actually you that taught me that.”



( Because I’m lame and not nearly as random as you, this gave me muse. I realize there are different interpretations of this song, but I subscribe to the “complicated relationship/dude in distress” interpretation not just ‘cause it fits this pairing, but because I think it fits the actual song/video the best. ^^)

[ricketts]

In silence, Henry held the same belief, though he reasoned, it would disturb Kitty far worse to know the truth. Probably far more that it did himself, but for very different reasons. For Edward Hyde was not only bent upon seeing his revenge, but was stirring another trouble for Henry, a trouble which he felt had already slept too long.

He bent his head, quivering from head to foot, before the power of this hidden man, who seemed uncanny in his knowledge. Already Henry realized the charm of her companionship as well as the adoring humility with which her eyes shone into his and the unquestioning way she placed herself. Afterward, he regarded her steadily in return. The gray gleam in his eyes a bit brighter, the lines of his mouth harder. Whatever his grave faults, for the minute he seemed, indeed, a boy again, coming to this sure haven of comfort, to the place where he had never been criticised or told that he was wrong.

'It always 'as been like that, though.' Henry responded with a serious note to his voice. 'Just, I've never let anyone get close. Didn't know any people in Ireland, barely know anyone in th' city .. 'cept Hank o' course, and he weren't even me dad for fuck's sakes .. ' The last past hard come from the impulse of the moment, to which he blinked hard and took a breath.

It was doubtless, the bond in suffering, Henry read the lines of concern with a face saddened and gray. 'What 'm tryin' to say is, I've never spoken to anyone,' But the smile, so peculiarly his own, filled with a slow-sweetness, came to his lips at its close. 'Not like how I am wit' you right now, Kitty.'

[LUCY "KITTY" HARRIS]

(Italics were used in describing the dream. Just wanted to mention that to avoid confusion. ^^)


There was a dream, recurrent and static, that had tucked her away most nights. A dream whose significance she could not neglect, but whose meaning had been self-effacingly interpreted.

It always unfailingly began in the same manner; seemingly directly after a sort of transitional phase, one that she never beheld but knew, without applying any mental operations, had occurred. Simplistic in its nature, the dream found her settled on an unfamiliar shore, a canvas of undiluted and magnificent blue spanning the length of her view. The sun overhead, stark against skies of a pastel blue, caught the trail of her umber hair as it rode along the wind akin to the glide of a bird’s wing. Salt moisture from the constant breeze of the sea touched upon her face, the surf whispering against the glistening and warm sand, lending the scene an air of serenity. Kitty sat on the sand, which she imagined some higher being mindlessly traced her name on over and over again, and allowed the tide to kiss her toes. The tide moved coolly, rising and consoling her heart with a demonstrative embrace. The seascape defined majestic and, with her heart swollen with euphoria, she tore her reverent gaze from the vista and looked about for someone, anyone, to share such a moment with.

There was no one. Further inspection revealed an inferior strip of beach, rather a pathetically small deserted isle, bordered by only vast depths and lengths of ocean. This awareness banished the contentment from her face and stole the colors of her environs in tandem. A hideous darkened gray suddenly overtook the skies above and violent, whipping winds began lashing at her body, her cries for help muffled by the shrieking of the wind. The tide that just moments ago had been playfully taking her in then swiftly engulfed her, crushing her ribs and life into millions of irretrievable pieces.

That was when she awoke barely registering that the dread she experienced was simply a nightmare concocted by her restless mind. Kitty experienced the dream she had repeatedly in which she was seduced by a placidly translucent body of water and then a sudden mood swing which turned the aqueous beauty into Pandora and every woman of the like combined.

The recollection of that dream had been spurred by Henry’s revelation. The admittance of his untruth, under what appeared to her a slip of the tongue, cast a darkness over him and as she regarded him, sullen in manner, recognized in his shadow the horrors of the wave that had killed her in her sleep for the last two years.

Baring a visage that plainly told of her chastisement, she nearly voiced that reprimand but stopped just short of doing so once his next words finally resounded. A miasma had been cleared, an understanding reached. Henry trembled with fright at the thought of granting someone the closeness so tenaciously sought, as she did. For the first time that night, there was an uncovered truth too harsh to face alone. Solitude suffocated you eventually. Like a mask worn too long, stifling either your breath or the spirit of the person behind it. From what he had revealed, Kitty gathered that his intent was to illustrate that she wasn’t as much of a stranger to him as this night had led her to believe. It was a pleasant notion, no matter her hesitance to fully accept it, and caused an accommodating smile befitting the surge of appreciation she felt.

“Ditto there,” she admitted, oddly at ease with that bit of honesty. “Look, not everything that I’ve said might have meant anything to you, but I hope that if you get anything out of tonight, it’s the fact that you aren’t as alone as you think you are.” She glanced with a singular thought, one that had been omitted from her statement, but could still be discerned from her stare.

“I’m here for you.” Said wordlessly and translated through a look alone.

A bit negligent she felt when the trembling of his form was taken notice of, previously overlooked by the heaving of encapsulating thoughts that had held her attention at bay. Pressing the back of her hand against his cheek, she noted with a slight concern in her tone and features that his flesh was still terribly chilled.

“You’re freezing, Henry.” With a tame diffidence, she took his hand in hers, warmed minutely by the contact his hand had made with the hot mug. Her eyes remained trained on their hands, all cares and worries strewn to the wind and without a thought. Her fingers unconsciously caressed his palm in a moment characterized by naked tenderness, further sweetened by her adoring smile and the subsequent interlacing of their fingers. They stayed like that for a moment, two people so lost in affecting care that the consciousness of the demonstrations of adoration they currently applied was delayed.

Kitty’s eyes flitted back to Henry’s face thereafter with a realizing stare. The ghostly light of the moon hit upon his perpetually saddened face with complimentary effect, engraving an impression of an ethereal entity being what she had the fortune to look upon. Her only reaction to such tragic beauty was scribed by the meeting of their lips.

Her hand slid from his cheek and was buried in his dark tresses as she leaned forward and planted the gentlest kiss upon his lips, much gentler than anyone would give a girl of the night credit for. She held it there, her eyes closed to any heartache and disturbances that had even the slimmest of chances of being presented, losing all sense of being in the rapture. Her mind flitted back to her dream and connected with the euphoria initially felt by her that was caused by the sea’s caress. It was that same sentiment that she had felt the yearning to share and was silenced by the nightmare her dream morphed into; that same sentiment she wanted to preserve long after the dream had ebbed away.

Time ceased for her for a moment and when it began ticking away once more, she had since then pulled away only slightly, her forehead resting against his and herself a little breathless, lips tingling with the lingering sensation of her own on his. She had kissed him and what startled her more was not the awareness of what she had done, but that there wasn’t a semblance of regret to be expressed.



(It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? Well, there you go. We’ve edged the epic plot even further now.)

[ricketts]

Henry said no more. His whole soul was weighed down by hopeless depression. The first impulse of revolt over, the childish weakness of his nature almost led him to give way to more tears. He felt he wanted to cast himself at her feet, to humble himself, to beg and entreat, to move this woman by the truth, and if only not send her running. One such terrible trapper.

He felt giddy and confused; a strong sensation of cold seemed to grip from his hands, to the back of his head and penetrate to the roots of his hair. However, his aspect visable changed as he felt Kitty take his hand. For the moment, he was no longer restrained by Hyde's complete dominion over him, and his energies returned to their original state of disorder. He passed a look down at their hands, his fingers and palm relaxed, with incredible composure. The habit of duplicity undermined his conscience, but one instinct remained alive, implacably alive in him - the alleviation in all this, that made the pain more bearable.

Kitty, with her back to the light which shadowered part of her, but seemed to heighten every visable beauty, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Carried back from his reveries, Henry was very conscious when she pressed her lips to his. His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently tempered steel, hung as if at the side of a paralysed man. At length, above the storm of realized rapture there seemed floating an audible voice, just as if the mind of him was always thinking of her. Only, at this time, there was no jeering laughter. It spoke with the wondrous communication that happened in dreams, or waking. A communication which appeared impossible, but credible to those who had ever felt any strong human attachment, especially that one which for the sake of its object seemed able to cross the bounds of distance, time, life, or eternity.

He went on with ever-increasing fervour, until she broke it and inclined her forehead onto his own. Henry's eyes ceased to close, and he gazed low, ears filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to carry away part of life's being - as if something sonorous had escaped from his very brain and was spreading away in waves of sound till it filled the whole air about them.

Henry responded after a moment or two, only by quietly exhaling a breath he had been holding, and closing his finger's between hers.