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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Isla refuses to let Finley tell the story his way. She knows how it really goes. She enlists some scientific help to make sure of it. 3400~ words. Personal Plot. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: The Bride Will Fall
Natalyah will know what to do, that’s what Isla tells herself again as she bangs on the door so hard that it stings her hand, beats in time with her heart in her ears, bang, bang, bang, bang. Everything is so loud, and so quiet, because it’s nighttime and everyone’s in their houses, and Isla should be in the townhouse, because Lee should be in the townhouse, and everything keeps coming back to that, until her head is spinning with it, and her hands are spinning with it, over and over each other.
“Isla?” Natalyah opens the door, floating, frowning in concern. “What is it? What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“Lee didn’t get the book!” Isla blurts out, because it’s the most important thing to say. But Natalyah doesn’t understand.
“What?”
Isla tries to order the story in her head again. It has an order, a beginning, and a middle, and an end, and that’s how it all goes, and how she ends up here, at Natalyah’s door. “There was a book sale today for a new Riri Robinson, and I love her, and I’ve read everything by her, and I wanted this one on the first day, but I wasn’t going to be able to make the book sale and family dinner, but Lee’s older and he’s allowed to skip things, because he lives in the city, and he said he’d get it for me and not tell Avrenne about it, and then send it by mail to the house, but I was waiting and waiting, and it didn’t arrive, and I got very angry with him for lying about it, which is what I thought happened at first, and I came all the way here, because I have my hearthstone to here, to be mad about him with it for forgetting, except he hasn’t come back to the townhouse, and no one’s seen him, and that’s not right, that’s not how this is supposed to go, and there’s something terribly wrong.”
Isla gasps for breath, and Natalayh puts a hand on her shoulder, a storm on her face now.
“He’s a grown man, Isla. If he’s not at home, maybe he’s out with someone,” she says tartly, and Isla knows what she means.
“Ew. But, no, I know him, Natalyah. He doesn’t. I mean, he would, ew, but not when it would mean I’d know, and this would mean I’d know, because he missed the book. He’d have made sure about the book, so I wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t ever, ever, ever come looking for him,” Isla says, and she’s absolutely certain of it. “You have to believe me, please. Please, please, please. There’s something wrong. And I don’t know anyone else who might be able to find him.”
Natalyah listens to her, really does listen. “All right. That’s a reason to think about at least,” she says. “So, we’ll find him.” It sounds like a threat. Good. Lee should feel threatened. How dare he disappear on Isla like this, making her worry, making all this happen. If he is with someone, Isla is going to make sure she bursts in on them and tells the person every embarrassing story about Lee she can think of, for hours and hours. Like that one time that… that… she can’t think of any right now, but that’s only because she can’t think past the sound of her heart in her ears still banging around and that’s Lee’s fault.
Natalyah floats back into the house, picking up a coat, and then closing the door, locking it behind her. “Where do you know for certain he was last?”
“The townhouse!” Isla answers immediately.
But Natalyah grimaces. “We’ll start there then,” she says, and transforms into a worgen with the most incredible speed, starting off down the street quickly.
“That’s bad? Why is it bad?” Isla asks, jogging to keep pace.
“It’s in the middle of the city, and your ward-brother doesn’t really have a strong scent. I have no idea if I’ll be able to follow him through the city well enough,” Natalyah answers honestly.
“Oh, no.” Isla twists and twists her hands trying to wring out the helplessness and fear into them.
“We’ll have to see when I get there. And the sooner we do that, the better,” Natalyah adds. And then she gestures as a golden feather appears from the Light outside of Time and Space into existence on the cobblestones. “Time to start seeing how your feather practice has been going.”
Natalyah is a real detective. She says that the smell of paint is a better indicator of Lee than any of his own scent, and she stops and asks the guards if they saw a man like him, and she knows where all the guards are and who would be on shift long enough to answer. The trail they follow goes out of the city, and everything gets so quiet when they step outside of it, because now Natalyah has no one to ask anything, and there aren’t other people all around talking, and the forest is so dark off the main road.
Isla carries the lantern, and it’s a very important job. No one ever lets Isla carry the important thing, because they always think she’ll trip with it or knock it over or forget she’s carrying it, but she won’t, not at all this time, and she’ll show that to Lee when they catch up to him. It’ll all show him right, how Isla had to come out with a lantern for him, and if he’d only just done what he said he was going to, then she wouldn’t have had to do so.
Because of course he’s all right. He has to be all right. It’s just that he got caught up in his painting or thinking too hard about something, or he left off painting to go out dancing with all his stupid new friends and their parties that he always goes to and never takes Isla and never tells her about anything anymore. Maybe he is out on some liaison, a romantic interlude and they’re about to interrupt some terribly improper meeting, and if they do and Isla ruins it for him forever, that will also serve him right!
Isla shivers against the wind, as she tries to keep pace with Natalyah. It feels ever so strange to not be touching the ground, but the hovering has made it easier not to trip on anything as they run or dash or something through the air. She wants to grab onto Natalyah, let her pull Isla along, but she’s not sure she can or should, and Natalyah doesn’t stop long enough for Isla to ask. There’s a faint sound of a river or brook, the whispering rushes of it, and it would be nice if it wasn’t so dark outside and making it sound ominous. It’d be a good thing to remember for the next story. How creepy the water has become, a black rippling thing making strange whispers at her around the edges of her sight.
Natalyah freezes – and Isla almost runs into her. Natalyah has her arm out, as if she was going to stop Isla no matter what, and she sniffs in sharp stings.
“What is – ” Isla starts to say.
“Listen to me, because I’m not going to repeat this,” Natalyah says sharply, turning her head to stare at Isla. For a moment, her eyes were gold, but now they’re not. Isla thinks they were gold. It was so quick. “You’re going to stay behind me, and you’re going to keep a shield up constantly, do you understand?”
Isla’s world shivers with her. “I – ” If she says she doesn’t, if she tries to stop Natalyah, she knows Natalyah will leave her there and go on without her. Nothing ever stops Natalyah when she decides what to do. “Yes.” Obediently, she concentrates, thinks of the stories about knights and their shields, and of a group of magical paladins all grouping around her, forming a tight circle, and the Shield forms.
But she can’t be silent, and Natalyah knows that, too, she must. “What is it?”
“I smell blood,” Natalyah answers, because she is always so honest with Isla, more than most grown ups ever are. “A lot of it. And paint.”
Isla clasps a hand over her mouth to keep from making more noise, and hits herself in the chest with the lantern. “I – I’m fine,” she whispers around her hand. Natalyah can hear her.
“Let’s go.” Natalyah drops from her floating down onto the ground, and runs so fast that even with her feathers, Isla can’t keep up, but she can still see the worgen shape enough to follow. They climb up a rolling hill, and that’s when Isla sees everything first as odd shapes.
Natalyah is crouched over one of them. A long shadow on the grass, a fallen log. The glow of the Light begins to form over Natalyah, and Isla runs so fast in the air that her legs spin under her, the lantern growing closer and closer until it finally spills over them both.
It isn’t like he’s asleep. It’s nothing at all like him asleep. When she saw him before, it was almost like that, but not this time. He’s so pale. Even after that one spring when he caught bronchitis and stayed inside through the early summer so much that he lost some of his tan, he was never this pale. Even the warm lantern and Natalyah’s Light can’t take away how grey he is. There’s something wrong with his eyes. She can’t bear to look at them.
He’s dead.
But Natalyah will fix it. Isla shudders as the tears blur everything, and she huddles against Natalyah, waiting because that’s all she needs to do. Wait and then Lee will open his eyes again and everything will go back to normal again.
That’s how the story will go. Natalyah will cast the resurrection, and Lee will open his eyes and be cross with Isla because she’s out so late and caught him here, and she’ll scold him for forgetting her book, and he’ll be horribly overbearing and say something ridiculous, and she’ll kick him in the shins, over and over, and hit him with the lantern, and he’ll dodge it as he yells at her for not taking good care of the lantern, and he’ll be alive and she’ll be so angry at him.
Natalyah makes a frustrated sound, and the Light grows dim. The hill is quiet except for the scattered whispering of the far away water and the shifting restless movement of Isla’s dress.
Lee doesn’t open his eyes all the way. They’re still like that. All wrong.
“Why isn’t he opening his eyes?” Isla asks.
Natalyah’s shoulders are hunched, and she curls her hands into fists.
“I don’t – but, you have to… you have to make him open his eyes properly,” Isla insists. That’s how the story has to go. It has to go like that, because if it doesn’t, then that will mean –
“I can’t,” Natalyah growls, but she grabs Isla, takes the lantern from her, and stares at her so intently that Isla wants to look away. “I can’t resurrect him, Isla.”
Isla shakes her head. “No. No!”
That’s not how the story goes.
“You remember what I told you about how this works. It isn’t a logical application of force like in physics or mathematics, where it’s only about power or expertise. There’s an emotional aspect that comes from the soul itself. I can’t resurrect him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t come back.” Natalyah presses Isla’s hand on Lee’s unmoving chest. “Don’t listen to what I can do, don’t let anything in your mind tell you that you can’t do this. Belief. Conviction. It matters. Tell the story, Isla. Remember, a resurrection is like a reaching. You have to call him back. A tether, a line, a story – you reach for him, and don’t let him say he can’t. You tell him that he can.”
He’s so cold, and wet. It’s blood on her hand, from where it soaked into his suit that something cut open. He’ll hate that. He likes his suits and this was one of his favorites. Isla can always tell which ones he really likes.
A story.
Isla calls the Light in a desperate plea, and tries to push it into Lee, but she can feel how much it resists.
“It’s not a healing. A tether, Isla. Reach, don’t push,” Natalyah orders.
Isla closes her eyes because she can’t reach for Lee and stare at his body. There are a hundred thousand memories of Lee reaching for her in her head. She knows what his hand feels like, how he’s taken hers thousands and thousands of times, and she tries to reach for it, with her hand on his bloodied chest, cold and unmoving.
That’s not right. She can’t think of him like that. He’s not dead on a hill in the grass.
He’s in his room. He’s shut the door to her because he always tries to lock her out whenever he’s in a mood. Like after Avrenne heard the news about that horrid Mr. Green and decided to remarry, but before they knew it would be wonderful Siamus. Lee was so angry, and he slammed the door to his room, in a way that he never did, and Sophie was annoyed, but Isla snuck up to it.
He didn’t lock it and she was able to open it. That’s all she had to do – turn the handle and it is so cold in his room, freezing and grey, everything so grey and too quiet. But Lee is in there. Lee is in here again. Angry and sad, trying to shut Isla out because he doesn’t want to tell her anything, doesn’t think she’ll understand, but he can’t stop her from walking in just because the rules tell her that she can’t. They’re only made up rules, and she doesn’t care how cold it is. She’s going to get to his hand, and pull him back out, and he’s going to have to stop being like this.
Her breath feels wrong, but she can see him, turned away from her, standing with his head in his hand the way he sometimes does when he doesn’t want to feel something, and every step feels like lead on her feet, rocks that stick to the bottom of her shoes, but she keeps going. It’s only his room in the old Stormwind house, and Lee’s only in a mood, and she has to reach his hand. She has to tell him to come out of his room, and apologize to everyone.
Isla?
Lee’s head moves up. She gets her fingers around his hand. She’s holding her breath against a terrible feeling.
He starts to look at her. Everything wobbles. It’s not his room.
It’s his room. That’s what this is. She forces it back, makes the Light show the room, pushes the grey away from them both. Curls her hand around Lee’s, every single movement taking so much energy she can hardly hold onto him.
The grey pushes back, surges forward. Overwhelms them both.
“Lee!” Isla shouts on her last gasp of air.
His hand grips onto hers, tries to protect her from the grey.
Lee makes a pained sound, and the chest under her hand lifts up. Isla opens her eyes. He’s breathing. He’s alive. New blood pumps weakly out from the wound on his chest, and he groans.
Natalyah’s Light blooms around Lee, a sudden inward rush of healing that has Lee seize up in shock. Some people find Natalyah’s Light to be intense. Too bad!
Isla throws herself onto him, and he makes another oof. She hits him with both fists because she doesn’t have the lantern, but she’s mad enough that it doesn’t matter. He probably wishes she was throwing a lantern at him.
“Isla?” Lee whispers, and she hates how he sounds. He never sounds so weak and confused, like he doesn’t know what’s going on, like he’s been badly hurt, because he’s not supposed to be the one who gets hurt, he’s always supposed to be perfectly fine and sure and ordering people around stupidly.
“What were you thinking?” Isla demands. “You forgot my book! You weren’t at home! You can’t just go off and do things like this, Lee!”
“I’m sorry.” He holds her gently, which is worse of all, like he’s having trouble finding strength in his arms. His right arm seizes up suddenly for a moment, reaches for something, and then he relaxes, and puts his arm back around Isla. “Glycerin.” It’s barely a whisper.
“What?” Isla asks, but Lee shakes his head. He never tells her anything.
“What happened?” Natalyah asks tartly.
Lee startles – he hadn’t realized Natalyah was there, and Lee always notices those things. He gently pushes Isla off, and Isla hits him harder in retaliation. Lee grunts. But he doesn’t scold her.
“Miss Kensington-Whit.” He breathes out, and starts to try to sit up. Isla whacks him again. He ignores it, catching her hand against his chest as he finishes sitting up. “I was painting,” he says and his voice sounds raspy. “There was a woman. She attacked me. I got in a lucky hit. But then I…”
“Yes, we know what happened to you,” Natalyah finishes. She looks around the hill, and Isla looks, too. Near Lee is another body, a woman that Isla hasn’t seen before. “She just attacked you? Out of nowhere?”
“I couldn’t tell you what she was thinking,” Lee says, and he releases Isla’s hand, rubs at his chest, and pushes up to a stand, so Isla rises back up, too. She’s lost the levitating at some point, and the grass feels uncomfortable wet and cold in her house slippers and she doesn’t want to think about what’s made the grass so wet. Lee brushes a hand through his hair. It smears blood through it, leaving a smudge on his forehead. “You need to get out of here. Get back to the city. I’ll handle this.”
Natalyah also rises up, levitating herself, and as a worgen, she’s taller and bigger than Lee. “I don’t take orders from you,” she growls. “And you just died, so if you think you can handle this by yourself, obviously you’re wrong.”
Lee’s expression flattens for a moment, and then he pulls on that smile he wears all the time now. “I apologize. Forgive me for my shortness, Miss Kensington-Whit. Of course, I don’t mean to order you about. I meant it as an imploring. Isla is not safe out here. My concern is for her. If you would see her back to the townhouse, I would be most grateful. I will accompany you to the city gate, until I find the Guard. I will inform them of the situation, and let them proceed accordingly. That is how I mean to handle this, if you will assist me.”
Natalyah bristles, but she looks over at Isla, and Isla knows that she’s the reason why Natalyah sighs.
“I can help! Why can’t we all tell the guards, and then all to the townhouse?” Isla asks.
But it’s Natalyah who shakes her head. “Because he’ll have to bring them back out here, and if there is something going on, then we’ll be in the thick of it. You’re not ready for that yet, Isla. If something happened to you, it would be terrible, and it would be our fault for letting it happen,” she says. Isla deflates. Natalyah is the worst person to argue with because she never backs down once her mind is made up, just like Avrenne will get like, and Isla knows that tone from training.
Lee bows to her, all formal again. “You have my thanks, Miss Kensington-Whit,” he says.
Natalyah snaps, and shows him her teeth. “I didn’t do any of it for you,” she snarls and Isla’s struck by the venom in it, like Natalyah hates Lee for something, and it stings something in Isla’s heart.
He’s still smiling. “All the same.” Lee gives Isla one of his Looks, and she hates it, but she would hate it so much more if he wasn’t looking at her at all, if he wasn’t looking at anything anymore. “Isla, mind Miss Kensington-Whit. Go home. I will meet you there at the townhouse. We’ll talk about this later.”
“You better,” Isla tells him. “Or I’m coming into your room and getting you, and nothing will stop me!”
Because that is how the story goes.