Last Resort

[elainsie]

Accalia shook her head savagely at his words, the abrupt movement almost bringing about whiplash, her dark eyes glistening although as of yet she managed to still the flow. "I can't leave though, this is what I am trying to say." her voice was low and quiet. "For as long as you keep getting hurt, whether by your own hand or Dharth's, I can't walk away with a clear conscience, can't just push away the thought and continue on with my own life as nothing amiss was going on. And the one time I tried to do so it seems I inflicted perhaps a greater pain," she looked up at him from under lowered lashes, her lips pressed tightly together.

The jade rider shuffled further up the cot so she now sat between his legs, that she could reach out to K'dran and remove a hand that concealed his face, holding the cool, pale hand between her own tanned ones. "I know you're sorry, but it's not all your fault. I am partly to blame too. If I had left earlier then perhaps things would never have gone this far. If I had chosen to ignore Dharth when I was first pregnant, to force you to leave me alone and let me raise the twins alone, neither of us would have been dragged so far along this path against our will and Dharth would never have developed such an intense jealousy towards the twins." She took a deep breath, tracing the lines on his palm with a finger of her own. "But none of that happened, you are who you are, and despite myself I care for you. Too much so." Her eyes flicked up to his face, and she realised the man had began to cry.

"Oh K'dran, please don't cry, please." She clambered over his left leg, entwining herself around the blackrider, although the narrow bed could hardly accomodate both their lanky frames. Accalia brushed his hair back as if she was soothing one of the twins, trying to think of any words of comfort to give him but failing uttery.

"I'm sorry for what I said before, I truly am. I was so angry, so hurt that you would use the twins and myself as a reason to end your life that I did not really think just how hurtful the words were that I flung at you. Did not realise you cared quite so much for them to have such an effect."

She continued stroking his hair with the one hand, the other laying idle between them. "Tell me what you want from me K'dran, tell me what you really want me to do, and I'll do it. If you really think it's best I leave, if that will make Dharth happier and hence less likely to do so, then I will force myself to transfer. But it's your choice. Do you really want me to leave?" She tilted his head so he had no choice but to meet her almond-shaped eyes, so that she could see whether he meant whatever he next said.

[Desert]

Dharth rolled his eyes, head tilted to one side in exasperation. If there was one thing that he considered as unbearably sappy and ridiculous, it was tearful sessions like this. In his opinion, only young children had any right to cry, and it was merely because they didn't have the wit or the inclination to control themselves. Grown adults with any amount of maturity and decency should not do something so monumentally foolish as to broadcast to the world their moments of weakness.

Adding to his scorn of the display, it bothered the big black that the two riders seemed to be making up their little spat, instead of pushing each other away as they ought. Why did these humans always insist upon complicating things? It was always to their own detriment that they entered into close bonds with one another. He'd thought that K'dran had been shown the error of his ways, but apparently he was overestimating his rider a lot lately. Dharth rumbled a low growl in the back of his throat, his former bad mood beginning to resurface, staining the calm colors of his eyes with an irritated scarlet.

What Dharth couldn't see was that, if K'dran and Accalia had gone their separate ways, it would have made life much harder for both black and rider than it needed to be. K'dran would have returned to his misanthropic apath, yes, but it would have been tainted by depression. That depression would, of course, aggravate Dharth; after all, K'dran should not show anything foolish like regret over the intentional breaking off of a friendship. Dharth would be driven to distraction by his rider's moping, and try to snap K'dran out of his funk with his usual methods. And, as illustrated by recent events, it wouldn't take very much at all to break the donkey's back.


Hearing Accalia's protest, her claim that she was as much to blame, made it worse. K'dran shook his head slightly; she was wrong about having had the chance earlier to stop something like this from happening. There was nothing she could have done once Dharth had decided to meddle. If she had, it would have meant death. The black behemoth would have slain her for daring to defy him. She was right in a way that, if Dharth had killed her, things wouldn't have gotten this far. But he would not have allowed her to ostracize K'dran and live, had he maintained that fixation. And if K'dran had reacted the way Dharth had predicted, by continuing to resent his forced involvement, then Dharth most certainly would have pursued his fixation. It was K'dran's unexpected reaction that had diminished Dharth's interest.

It wasn't even jealousy that caused Dharth to want the deaths of Accalia and her daughters. K'dran knew that it was frustration at his plot having strayed from its original path that had enraged the big black. To be jealous required caring about the object that was coveted by the other party: Dharth only cared about K'dran because the man was his link to life, and beyond that function, Dharth cared nothing about his rider. Familiarity, in his case, truly did breed contempt.

K'dran was surprised when he suddenly felt Accalia's arms encircle his shuddering upper body. Her fingers combing through his hair, her voice begging him not to cry, nearly broke what was left of his control. K'dran's arms seemed to move of their own accord as they clung back, hands balling into fists around wads of her shirt, his face buried in Accalia's shoulder. After that initial shock, instinct once more took over, and he began to regain some control over the sobs that shook his frame and hitched his breath.

Juno temporarily detached herself from K'dran's neck, though it was only to shift so that she could curl her tail around Accalia's neck while still keeping the rest of her body wound around the blackrider. The little spring knew, both from the way K'dran's shaking tapered off and from the disgruntlement she could sense vaguely from Dharth, that perhaps things would begin to make sense again. Now Accalia had tried to help and it seemed to work. Dharth was always upset when something happened to K'dran that Juno perceived as a good thing.

Accalia's hand, much surer than his at the moment, forced him to meet the jaderider's dark gaze. K'dran swallowed around the stubborn constriction of his throat. "It would be best for everyone concerned if you left. Dharth would be much less discontent with you if you were no longer here to corrupt my thinking, and that would put me at ease too, at least in one way, since you'd be farther away from his sphere of influence." The blackrider took a deep breath to compose himself; the tears had ceased to flow down his cheeks and his breath only hitched occasionally, but he didn't pull away from the embrace. "And purely intellectually, that's what I want you to do. Emotionally, of course, that's the last thing I want. I can tell myself it's for the best until kingdom come, but that won't fool my conscience for a moment. I'd miss you terribly. And that would just irk Dharth, and by now we both know how Dharth reacts when my new sentimentality irritates him."

ooc; and of course Melpomene flees at the very mention of fluff. ¬_¬[/color][/size]

[elainsie]

Relieved that he had not rejected her gesture, had not pushed her away in her attempt to comfort him, Accalia tightened her hold on the blackrider, a gentle smile lingering on her face. It was rather odd, for her, to be in such a position with another adult and had it been anyone other than K'dran she would have felt unbearably awkward. But they had been through enough over the past year that her inhibitions around him had dissipated, such a contrast to the embarassed, stammering girl she had been around him befor Rownith's flight.

It had been instinct that had made her reach out for him, to cradle him as if he was a small child, and it seemed finally some action of hers went a ways to alleviating what must have been welling up within him for quite some time. She felt the shuddering against her lessen, heard K'dran's breath return to a more even pattern. Shifting her hand from his hair to his back, she rubbed it in wide circles between his shoulder blades, feeling the tension within him disperse.

As he spoke she kept her mouth firmly shut, wanting him to voice his views without any influence from herself. Whatever his decision it had to come from him, not her and certainly not Dharth. It seemed that no matter what either of them did Dharth would be displeased, so the black could just deal with the outcome.

That he had not pulled away from the circle of her arms, that his warm body was still pressed close to her own, gave her a better indication of what K'dran wanted than the words he spoke, even if it was the more rational, more reasonable route of action. However her smile widened when he made the emotional concession, even though the words themselves took her slightly by surprise. It was perhaps the most sincere thing K'dran had ever said to her, and she had to turn her head to brush aaway a few stray tears, not wanting K'dran to feel such feminine folly.

"I don't care what Dharth thinks anymore, I always seem to be putting a foot wrong in his grand schemes anyway. I only care what you think, what you want. And if that's having me stay, I certainly will not be making any protest," the words were spoken softly however a knock at the door interrupted anything Accalia may have been about to add. "And that must be the Healer come to check on his patient." Accalia untangled herself from K'dran, tucking the blankets around him, before unlocking the door and opening it for the MasterHealer.

"Can I come into my infirmary now?" The Healer asked, but his smile showed that he meant no ill by the words.

"Of course, and thank you. I will take the twins back to my weyr, they will probably need to be fed and changed by now, but if I can get someone to watch over them I'll be back later K'dran." Accalia stood back from the doorway to let the Healer enter, before making her way out of the room, collecting the twins from their apprentice babysitters on the way out of the Healers quarters.