Hellboy II - Nuada/Nuala - "each dying song"
Title: each dying song
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Rating: PG13
Characters: Nuada, Nuala
Summary: She cannot bear to sleep and dream.
She dreams of war.
She dreams of the fires that burn outside her window, and the cries that echo into the night. She dreams of the blood that ran red over her own hands, the scars that they have suffered together.
She does not call to him, but he hears her anyway.
These are not the quiet nights, when he sits in her window sill and they know each beat of each other's heart, too languid to remark upon it, too comfortable in the silence. Each pulse of his drives away her nightmares at times, bringing to her a tenuous but treasured peace.
Not so now.
There is nothing of peace in her. Her heart is tumultuous; her heart is a stone. Her eyes are burning from their overflowing, and yet she cannot recall when she wept. Stumbling amongst the corpses of her people, perhaps, watching the devastation in the earth, hearing each ravaged, trembling song of life as it began to die.
The beauty of the world seems lost to her now, desperately out of reach. The sky was choked with ash, and Nuala went walking.
Wounds had been torn in the earth, from catapults and hooves and the impact of dying bodies; not humans, their frail flesh so full of greed, but the trolls and the last gods and the remnants of the great that rallied to their offense. The very air was like a charnel house, and she drowned in it as she picked her way through the blood soaked fields.
And so he finds her with her skirts still muddy and her weapon in her hands; she is silent, strangled by the weight of the things she has seen. And he is as bloodied and weary as she.
He lays his sword at her feet without words.
And she is not so grown up after all, not so far from the comfort children yearn for. Nuala leans forward and rests her forehead against his shoulder, and it echoes through them both.
"Sister," he says softly. "You don't sleep."
"I cannot," she says, equally soft, hands pressed to her knees. Once a thought could lay their hearts bare to each other, and she realizes she has not lost the knack between one heartbeat and the next, her fear as naked to him as her still white hands. I am afraid I will awaken and nothing will be left alive.
The weight of her own despair is like ash in her mouth. He is not like their mother, to lull her to sleep with gentle song, nor their father, whose presence once seemed mighty enough to give effortless comfort. But he is still her brother, the final half of her heart, and he lifts her, careful on bruises that throb in his own flesh, and takes her to the bed, tucked into the wall, lowering her among the softness of it.
"Sleep," he says when her hand curls over his. "I will wake you if I am called away."
If he is called away, the battle has begun again, and awake she will not be left to face devastation she could have fought against. Nuala is as satisfied as she can be.
She still holds on, all though the night. Later her own fingers ache, but he said nothing, and never let go.
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Rating: PG13
Characters: Nuada, Nuala
Summary: She cannot bear to sleep and dream.
She dreams of war.
She dreams of the fires that burn outside her window, and the cries that echo into the night. She dreams of the blood that ran red over her own hands, the scars that they have suffered together.
She does not call to him, but he hears her anyway.
These are not the quiet nights, when he sits in her window sill and they know each beat of each other's heart, too languid to remark upon it, too comfortable in the silence. Each pulse of his drives away her nightmares at times, bringing to her a tenuous but treasured peace.
Not so now.
There is nothing of peace in her. Her heart is tumultuous; her heart is a stone. Her eyes are burning from their overflowing, and yet she cannot recall when she wept. Stumbling amongst the corpses of her people, perhaps, watching the devastation in the earth, hearing each ravaged, trembling song of life as it began to die.
The beauty of the world seems lost to her now, desperately out of reach. The sky was choked with ash, and Nuala went walking.
Wounds had been torn in the earth, from catapults and hooves and the impact of dying bodies; not humans, their frail flesh so full of greed, but the trolls and the last gods and the remnants of the great that rallied to their offense. The very air was like a charnel house, and she drowned in it as she picked her way through the blood soaked fields.
And so he finds her with her skirts still muddy and her weapon in her hands; she is silent, strangled by the weight of the things she has seen. And he is as bloodied and weary as she.
He lays his sword at her feet without words.
And she is not so grown up after all, not so far from the comfort children yearn for. Nuala leans forward and rests her forehead against his shoulder, and it echoes through them both.
"Sister," he says softly. "You don't sleep."
"I cannot," she says, equally soft, hands pressed to her knees. Once a thought could lay their hearts bare to each other, and she realizes she has not lost the knack between one heartbeat and the next, her fear as naked to him as her still white hands. I am afraid I will awaken and nothing will be left alive.
The weight of her own despair is like ash in her mouth. He is not like their mother, to lull her to sleep with gentle song, nor their father, whose presence once seemed mighty enough to give effortless comfort. But he is still her brother, the final half of her heart, and he lifts her, careful on bruises that throb in his own flesh, and takes her to the bed, tucked into the wall, lowering her among the softness of it.
"Sleep," he says when her hand curls over his. "I will wake you if I am called away."
If he is called away, the battle has begun again, and awake she will not be left to face devastation she could have fought against. Nuala is as satisfied as she can be.
She still holds on, all though the night. Later her own fingers ache, but he said nothing, and never let go.
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