ORIGIN

"Speech"

Her breath caught in her throat when he whispered that so calmly through the bond. "How can you say I'm being drastic-? She's a demon, a plague that sickens anything she touches, and I need to-"

I need to die, I need to die, I need to die. She thought over and over, unbidden, and she clenched her teeth and tossed her head. "Don't you understand? I can't bear to see you get hurt. And no matter what I try, she always gets out."

Death is the only way - but is this me thinking this, or is this her? She felt her talons on her neck and shivered. Am I the star that's fallen from the sky away from her sisters, laying there in the dust, watching what I've lost? Is my only option to gutter out?

She looked at him now, her expression so full of grief and the death of hope. "Please, please, tell me you can fix me and I'll stay. I want to stay so badly that I feel like I can't breathe without you, but I can't."

She tilted her had away from him and shuddered, thinking about leaving everyone and keeping them safe and being alone and homeless again and forever wandering, forever feeling sick inside, and her light started to flicker and lose its strength. She was so tired already.

Belladonna just smiled, her talons clicking together, and her arm slithered around Clover's neck into a slick embrace, smothering her, staining her with her suffocating oil. She would be patient, and she would poison her slowly, and if she waited long enough, there would be no coming back for dear little Clover.

To her, she said softly, "It's okay to give up. I mean, you don't want me to have control, do you? You don't want to sleep and give in to me. But you can't keep this up forever, you know you can't, and I will always be waiting for the day you fail. All it takes is, what, perhaps five minutes? Look, your light is failing, and I'm not taking advantage now....but I could. I could. One day no matter how much you try, your body and your magick will let you down because you've been awake too long, and that's okay."

As she hugged her tighter and tighter, she cooed to her and petted her head, staining it as she sat on the throne and started to cry, and she moved her head to rest against her chest and shushed her, making slithery soothing sounds.

"Remember how good it was to sleep? To not worry about anything?" She whispered. "I can give that to you, that peace."

"What a fool,"

Clover was growing weaker, and she could feel it, the light around her body growing thinner by the second, and Belladonna used this to extend her influence and block any feelings the cat was giving to her through the bond. Isolate her, make her feel alone, break her.

On the throne they were both temporarily sharing, she settled more comfortably with her arms around the poor doe, and she sighed a little. "See? He won't even say anything to you. He can't save you, and he knows it. See how the silence stretches and he can't think of anything to comfort you."

Then she turned and the body they shared moved towards Bartos, her slithery, cold voice a twisted form of Clover's. "She's crying in here and you won't even say anything. Some husband you turned out to be, leaving her alone when she needed you most. And, yes, to answer your question, your selfishness is making her weaker. You can't hide from it, Bartos, or is your cowardice set in your nature by now?"

She walked in a slow half circle around him, her voice sliding over his back with her shadows, running its fingers through his fur, till she was behind him now. "At this point she's so weak and so tired there's nothing keeping me from taking us both and walking away, because she doesn't want to fight me leaving you. You've taken everything she ever wanted and she never raised her voice and you've been killing her with your silence."

To Clover, she petted her head and said in a hushed voice, "I'll take you to sleep, Clover. That's what you want, isn't it? I'll take you far away so you can just sleep."

"I hate him for you, Clover,"

He pushed as much warmth and love as he could towards her, but he could feel that bond slowly tightening. He had staved off every attempt at unraveling thus far and he didn't know if it was for better or for worse, if doing so would condemn him to his connection with the demon, and he knew that she used it when she could. She took advantage of the feelings that bled through the connection whether or not they had been intended, the thoughts and memories that would sprawl between them as they each delved into their safe spaces or one another's, seeking to comfort their counterpart, or reach out. The demon exploited them, and then just as quickly, she blocked it off, leaving Bartos faced up against a barren wall.

When he realized that nothing he felt could get through, he lowered his eyes, inviting the demon to come to him. He had been made vulnerable, leaving his end of the tunnel unguarded. But she played the fool, paving over it with brick and leaving him free to venture where he could. Perhaps, to fool him into security, where he could lower his guard in realizing that she had closed the connection. And maybe he did lower his guard, inviting the demon into his mind as well, and she pissed her opportunity away by turning her body and speaking into the open air. His blue eyes snapped back to her, and the slight furrow of his brow betrayed some emotion; scrutiny, caution? But he wouldn't scowl, he wouldn't sneer, he wouldn't let the hurt thread its way through his creases. Never to her.

Instead he listened. He received the demon's criticism with empty patience, and he knew - she would know, too - that it chipped away at his heart, like it always did. His fragile, hungry heart, yearning so deeply to fix her and be everything that she needed. He wouldn't deny this weakness, but he couldn't let it take control of him. Not again. Not where it would count most. She wove around him and Bartos hesitated, allowing her the advantage, for now. From behind she spun sweet, sickly truths of his selfishness. Of the way he choked her out and suffocated her, never giving her the chance to breathe in the thing she needed the most, and she was right - how she was right, how terrible he had been.

But when she fell quiet, he allowed the quiet to fester. Speak what ills she may, the cat only wanted her to grow restless. And then he finally sucked in a breath through his nose, he raised his head if only a little, and his eyes still peered out to the rolling warrens, ready. He stretched anticipation thin until the fear he grappled with subdued, and confidence bled a thick, even and hushed observation from his lips. "I feel sorry for you."

He spoke, exposed, antagonizing.

Come on and try it. Eat me alive.

Belladonna stopped in her pettings and her slick embrace and she turned and looked at Bartos and barely held back a wordless snarl, a twisting of the pretty doe's face; she swallowed the rising of rage inside, the sea that screamed for payback. She reached out and ran a taloned claw down one of the monsters in the sea, Clover blind to her tears, and she soothed it, hushed it, told it the cat's come-uppance would arrive in due time.

She was furious, and she wanted to rip into him, but she had the upper hand. Giving into her anger here would be giving him the advantage, and her pride would never allow it. He wanted her to dance a certain way, but his tune wasn't strong enough, and she may be a rat, but he was no pied piper.

"Look, Clover, that's all he has to say. He's trying to insult me, the poor little love, instead of trying to save you, or beg for you to stay, or anything at all of substance. So pale and pathetic." She cooed to her, and Clover shuddered, blinded by her shivering grief and self-hatred.

To Bartos, she brandished her sword and slashed back at him in calculated movements. "Congratulations, Bartos," She said dryly. "'Comfort your wife' says the villain, and what does the hero do, he insults the villain. The villain lays down an exact plan to vanquish them, and what does the hero do, he says, 'My, do I feel sorry for you." She spat and snarled at him. "How brave of you."

"You waste our time. You're only pushing her farther away with your silence and your weak insults. She needs you, your support, and here you are trying to bait me into fighting you and gaining more control of our body with my anger.

I know what you're up to, clever little cat, and it's exactly the opposite of what she needs. You trying to goad me instead of trying to comfort her." She shook her head and chuckled sadly. "You can feel sorry all you want, and I hope those feelings of pity keep you warm on those cold nights, because I'm taking your lonely crying wife and taking her far away from you. It's obvious from your silence you could care less."

It was actually quite fun to be 'reasonably' angry like this. It was a fresh pace, for her, playing the righteous valkyrie. And it was deliciously fun having Clover sit next to her and watch the exchange with a sullen, set mouth and tense muscles instead of fighting her for once in her bloody existence.

"For the cave's sake, how can I possibly say this any louder; She thinks you don't love her. You're killing her with your own hands, Bartos."

She shook her head and started to walk away from him, making a disgusting sound.

"I can't break this bond between them,"

He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and though she denied that he had managed to goad her, in angrily arguing she had proved he had succeeded in doing just that. It would only serve to prove his point. He just hoped that it didn't backfire and cause anybody's untimely end. He listened patiently as she spewed poison at him, and her words dug into him - truly, they did, and he languished at the thought of throwing his darling doe to the wolves. How deeply he had wanted to cave in to her whims and comfort Clover. But doing so would only be abiding by her demon's desires, and he would not feed the evil. He had to extinguish it. If anything, he had to weaken it.

So as she walked away, the cat raised his eyes, watching her. "I feel sorry for you, Clover." He spoke again. His voice louder, harder. That cobalt blue gaze had steeled with the resolve his mission had granted him. "Is it guilt that's done this to you? Is this how you justify what you've done?" His brow furrowed, as if he couldn't make sense of it, but he did. He understood it all too well. "You've made this demon so that it can take the blame, for everything. But you don't... you don't have to." Would she believe him, or would she use the demon to fight him further? Some part of him felt the demon would only lash out at these claims. She was, after all, no longer sound of mind. There was nothing to say she'd believe him, or even listen to him in the first place.

"I forgive you. We all do. I know this isn't you... but the longer you let your guilt control you... the more people you hurt. And I know... I know that isn't what you want." Bartos' firm voice lifted, crossing the air, and he hoped that his words would sink into her. Even if they just barely scratched the surface now, he hoped they would dig in. He hoped they would burrow beneath her skin. He hoped they would poison the demon, because he knew that no matter what she called herself, she was still Clover. And he knew that this wasn't what she wanted.

Belladonna stopped in her tracks when Bartos continued and invoked Clover's name. She couldn't help it, she had to listen, just for the sake of causing her head-mate unending untimely pain, even as the white doe stood beside her and let her do this. For once they weren't fighting each other, for once their feet were in perfect agreement, even if their reasons were different and on opposite sides of the chess board.

But as Bartos kept talking, Belladonna started to frown, and Clover sucked a breath between her teeth. He was calling the two of them the same person, and they both reacted in perfect tandem, and when they spoke, everything seemed to blur and the ground beneath them shifted.

"You're Wrong." They both said, one with snarling animalistic refusal, one with pure and unending horror. "You don't understand anything at all."

She reeled back to Bartos, a dark look on her face. "You really think I would do these things, Bartos?" She said, her voice mingling and swaying back and forth like a river mixing with a surging oil spill. "You think she's capable of murder and driving gems to suicide?" "You think guilt is keeping me from accepting the atrocities this body commits?"

She took in a shuddering breath. "I didn't start becoming this- this monster until Vazi forcefully infected me with it - with her. She is all of his filth imparted into me through days of torture and failed spells and his cave-forsaken kiss I can't let myself forget a-and you think she's just s-some-" Her voice was breaking. "Some figment of my imagination? Some scapegoat I put all the blame on while I try to murder my Pounce?"

She was crying openly now, and she gasped, shivering, then she bared her teeth and growled, "She is everything I'm not and never will be."

"Wrong wrong wrong wrong,"

She shuddered, and it wrenched his heart. Of course he had considered that he could be wrong. Of course there were consequences if this didn't work the way he'd hoped. He didn't expect it to be flawless. He didn't expect to come out of this unscathed. And yet, he still found himself stung and reeling as she denied everything that he had said. His own heart felt like it was splitting in two, how could he do this to her, how could he cause her this pain?

But he wouldn't stand by and feed her demon, no. It was what the demon had wanted all along, was for him to kiss her wounds and heal her until her body was well enough to be thrown into chaos again. Or maybe she had wanted to lull him into a sense of security. He wouldn't let it happen. His rational mind screamed that there was something he could do. There was a way to fix this, there always was a way. He would find it. He would save her, even if it meant saving her from herself.

"Listen to yourself." He insisted, taking a step closer. "If she isn't you, why do you call yourself the monster? You deny that you would do those things, but you have. And I know you didn't want to, and maybe you don't want to believe that you did those things with Hasira. All of his hatred turned you into something you never wanted to be." He had no idea if he was right, but it was the only way it made sense to him. Clover never would have wanted to do those things. Clover never would have allowed herself to be the one succumbing to his torture, letting him in, accepting his hatred.

So she had to make somebody else do it instead.

"You said yourself that you can't forget what he's done. But that's what she is!" He sought her gaze, pleading. "She's you not forgetting. You have to... you have to let it go. Please, Clover. You have to understand." Everything he wanted was for her to forget what happened, to move past it. To accept that it had happened and bury it. "You here now. You're home. You're with me. And I love you, Clover. I always have, I always will, through all of this. He isn't here anymore. I am."

"Speech"

She listened to him with shock painted clear on her face, as plain as day, tears running down her face, and her lips were quivering as she took in silent gulps of air. He wasn't listening to anything she was saying, he didn't understand what had happened to her in those blank, emotionless days of spell-caused hell when all she wanted was to feel something, anything, so desperate that she reached for Vazi. He was so adamant that he was right, that she was just cracked in the head and avoiding her own self-hatred that he wasn't using the link that laid between them to see for himself.

They weren't the same person.

"You think that me...not forgetting...his actions towards me...is enough for me to go out and find gems to kill, maim, torture, pry open and break? That I am capable of such things? Me?" Clover said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Do you really know me so little, Bartos? That some days of hell can make me into the complete opposite of myself?"

"You don't understand because you weren't there" The words came out strangled and bitter. "You left me all alone with him and he caught me and I was naive and foolish and thought - I thought-" Her body wracked with sudden shivers. "He tricked me into thinking if we understood each other then I could just leave, but he was trying to own me, and the link backfired, the spell backfired, and I lost everything."

She closed her eyes tight. "I wasn't anyone anymore, I lost my emotions, I lost my drive, my stories, my love, my everything, and I tried to use the spell, the link, again, and I was just- I was so alone, because you had run away from me and left me for dead, and I reached for Vazi and his hatred seeped into my empty shell. That's who Belladonna is, Bartos. She's the link we have, physical and real and she won't leave me alone."

Clover stared at the ground. "And she's right. When you say you love me, I can't believe you anymore." She looked up at him, her eye empty and lost. "You've done nothing to save me when I'm drowning and all you've done is to try to convince me I'm crazy."

A pause, and then a shuddering breath. "You've kept me from my children, left me alone, never gone looking for me, never stopped me, never offered a word of support besides these empty words of love."

"You're a liar, Bartos."