Mona Lisa Darkening m-4

by Sunny

  "Regain. Not heal her?" Dontaine asked.

  "I do not know if that would be possible, but perhaps the other healers there have more knowledge than I."

  "When do we leave?"

  "Right away," Hannah said, rising. "I'll phone them, let them know we're coming."

  There was a heavy, painful silence after she left.

  " 'S okay… didn't know," I said, my words slurring as I rushed to reassure him.

  "It's not okay!"

  "If not you… then Amber."

  "But it was me. Oh, Goddess. It was me!"

  I reached for his hand clumsily. Felt a faint dim spark when I touched him. "You made me… feel beautiful."

  Tears rolled down. "I'm sorry. So sorry."

  "Me, too," I rasped as strength left me. as my heart slowed and stuttered. "That I wasted… so much time."

  My vision faded.

  Sound stretched out. receded from me as I was pulled back down into a tunnel of silence, into that void of nothingness.

  Then sharp pain flashed through my chest, a lightning bolt of sizzling agony. Blurred images of Dontaine's face… silver eyes… other faces gathered around. Raised voices as I flowed in and out of consciousness. Words floating to me… She's dying… The plane… Too late… Hannah touching me, collapsing to the floor. My body straining for each breath, each laboring heartbeat.

  My brother's voice, "Let me help. I have some healing ability." Rousing panic as I fought to speak, to mutter, "No!" Relief as I saw Chami hold him back — Thaddeus's protector, someone to look after him when I was gone.

  But who will look after Dontaine? I wondered. Absolve him of a guilt that should not be his to bear? That I regretted the most.

  I was dying, I realized vaguely, and found the process immensely painful. Not the physical aspects, though that was no picnic. More the mental anguish it caused the others, and how my death would hurt them, all of them — Amber, Gryphon, Halcyon. Dante — Nolan's son.

  "Hannah?" I managed to whisper. A weak sound, one I barely heard myself.

  "She's okay," Rosemary reassured me. "Just fainted."

  The crowd around me shifted, parted, and I saw a face… two faces in the doorway that made me seriously wonder if I hadn't died already, passed into death without being aware of it. Either that or I was hallucinating. I blinked and saw them still — a gray gargoyle and a ghost I never expected to see again: Gordane carrying Mona Louisa in his arms, saying, "Let me through," and, "Do not touch me. Not unless you wish to be turned to stone."

  Mona Louisa looked as bad as I felt — weak, faint, dying.

  "You real?" I asked.

  "Yes, we're real," Gordane said. He knelt next to me, Mona Louisa cradled in his arms.

  "How… cross gate?"

  "I brought her another way when she collapsed and continued to fade in substance, even with my continued touch. I knew that only you could help her."

  Even in my confusion and disbelief, I saw how carefully Gordane held her, with a tenderness that was surprising. And how trustingly she lay in his massive arms, her fingers, so slim and fragile in comparison, delicately holding his thick wrist. Her eyes looked at me through half-closed lids.

  "You're both dying," Gordane rumbled.

  I wanted to argue that Mona Louisa was already technically dead, but didn't bother wasting my energy or breath.

  "You must combine together again," Gordane said urgently.

  "How?" I whispered. I felt a tug of awareness, a pull toward her, but didn't know if I could do that, merge us back into one. I looked at her, wan, waning, just like me. "You agree… to this?"

  Her ice blue eyes glinted at me. She may have been fading in body, in strength, but her personality was yet strong. "Yes," she whispered.

  The last time I did this, I had sucked her essence into me through my mouth. I tried to do that now. But I had lost my ability to do otherworldly things. All I drew in now was breath.

  "Can't," I gasped. "Not… working."

  "Shift her over. Give me some room," Gordane said to someone over my head.

  Dontaine slid his arms beneath me, moving me to the center of the bed, and Gordane laid Mona Louisa gently on the bed beside me. As soon as he lifted his hands away from her, she started fading, losing substance right before our eyes.

  "Touch her!" Gordane barked. "Touch each other."

  We were already instinctively reaching for each other. The moment our hands touched, something clicked wide in me and in her. Some force reached out and pulled her to me like a magnet. Not physically — she didn't move. But parts of her began to disappear: her hair, the side of her body that was farthest away from me. Not fading away but rather being absorbed into me. Flowing her into me through our connecting hands.

  "Never thought I'd be so glad to see you again," Mona Louisa whispered with a mocking smile, her usual cynical self. But the look in her eyes when she turned to look at Gordane was new, different — softness and yearning… filled with regret. "Farewell," she whispered. Then the rest of her flowed into me like a fine mist, like a wonderful healing balm slathered on my invisible wound, and that deep inner ache disappeared.

  I was healed. I was well. I could feel everyone's presence. And I was so incredibly tired, as if my body had just run a marathon, and maybe it had, the equivalent of one, at least, in its efforts to hold me to life. Now that my body didn't have to fight so hard anymore for each breath, each heartbeat, all my strained and fatigued muscles suddenly relaxed.

  "She's okay, Gordane," I said, my voice no longer weak. "We're okay… just really, really tired. Sleep now," I muttered. And did just that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I awoke the next evening to find Amber, Dontaine, and surprisingly, Gordane seated in three chairs arrayed around the bed. I found them a most lovely sight.

  I was alive and well, and spent the next ten minutes reassuring Dontaine and Amber of that. Someone, probably Dontaine, has dressed me in one of the comfortable T-shirts I usually wore to bed, for which I was immensely grateful. My modest tendencies were back in full force, it seemed.

  The men were fine until I held out my hand to Gordane, who had been sitting quietly, watching us. He stood and walked to me, or tried to. Dontaine and Amber were suddenly in front of me, two solid barriers of flesh, barring his way. They both jumped when I slid out of the bed and pinched them. "Stop it, you guys. He won't hurt me. He saved my life, remember?"

  They grudgingly moved aside and let Gordane through. Tensed when I reached out and grasped his hand. Relaxed when nothing bad happened.

  "Why did you stay?" I asked.

  "To make sure you were well," Gordane replied.

  "I'm well." I waited expectantly, a slight smile on my face.

  "And Mona Louisa?" he finally asked.

  "She's well, too. You care about her."

  "She was the only one who never truly feared my touch," he said sadly.

  My fingers wrapped around his wrist, in a familiar-unfamiliar way. "You haven't lost her. Not completely. She's still here, inside me, a part of me." I'd come to peace with that. It was much better than being dead.

  Gordane never did tell me how he'd bypassed the gate and made his way to this realm. Mona Louisa could not have come through that way; he had to have found mother way.

  "It's a secret," he said, with a roguish gargoyle grin.

  I told him not to be a stranger, to visit me, since he so obviously could. And to watch over Miles for us.

  "Us?" Dontaine asked, after Amber escorted Gordane out of the room.

  "Yes. Both Mona Louisa and I. We intermingled. Even after her demon essence was ripped out of me, there were still bits and pieces of our personality left in each other. She was softer, did you see?"

  "And what did you gain from her?"

  "You. When I was the most broken, the most weak, the most undeserving of you, my heart said I want you, and I reached out and grabbed you instead of pushing you away. I acted selfishly."

  His hands reached ou
t, cradled my face. "It's not selfish to reach out for love. It's more selfish to push it away because of fear of getting hurt again."

  "You know me so well," I said in a soft whisper.

  "As you do I. You're the only one who ever looked deeper, beyond the surface beauty. The only one who gave me a chance to show you who I truly am — not just a pretty face, or the possessor of a rare talent and fertile bloodline. You expected more of me, and because you did, you made me more." He suddenly faltered. "But perhaps you're right. Perhaps it was selfish… me wanting you, pursuing you like that. I almost killed you."

  "Odd circumstances," I said dismissively. "We usually gain strength from sex, not lose it."

  "It was never just sex for you," Dontaine murmured tenderly. "It was making love. Your heart was fully engaged."

  "I love you," I said, feeling a thrilling, intimate connection with this dazzlingly handsome man. No longer did I feel undeserving of him, or fear the pain of his loss. No longer would I try to skim lightly on the surface of life, withholding my feelings, walled up by fear. Life and love were precious, to be grabbed by both hands and a glad heart.

  "If you run from me now," I told him, "you won't get far. I'll chase after you."

  "Would you?" Dontaine smiled.

  "Count on it. I died three times, if you count life by the definition of a beating heart. Two of those times, you brought me back, you wouldn't let me go. You're stuck with me now."

  He crushed me to him, and I held him just as tight. I had died three times — I was through running away from love.

  I wrapped my mind around the idea of being more selfish, and thought, I can live with that.

  Yes. I could most definitely live with that.

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  Document creation date: 26 November 2009

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