Ch43

She ducked beneath the window’s ledge and straightened into a new, red morning sun. But that heat that met her in the early hour was smothering and unnatural. Caustic.

It was like Oblitus.

She sat their chocolate and coffee upon the sill and approached her friend with caution.

He swayed in the wind like a dead leaf clinging to a branch. His shirt was heavy with soaked, sweaty patches and burn holes, smoke peeling from them like bullet wounds.

Nor rounded his great shoulder to find his chest was swelling and falling so slowly, it seemed lifeless. He held onto a cigarette that had long since burned out. His blood-stained eye paced the horizon in a zombified trance, searching a far-off plane, unable to see Nor or the world around him. His ashen hair was scattered about as though he’d clawed through it for answers all evening.

It was unsettling to be unseen by those kind eyes.

Her arms longed to embrace him, but something stopped her. A strange, screeching scraped and clawed at the glass of his body, like scratching insects. This quiet was not their usual shared quiet. This was new. Violent.

Something had come in the night for him.

“Dex?” she whispered.

The wind blew between them, carrying a strange burning aroma. It was an essence of smoke, charred wood. Of hot hair. Melting flesh.

Fire.

Norah shivered, feeling alone and scared even with Dexteras beside her.

“Dex…”

A pulsing muscle rolled in his jawbone as though her words raked at the tender flesh of his eardrums. His teeth ground.

“Dex.”

He swiveled on his heel and closed the space between them in a single step. His approach pressed her against the chimney brick, forcing the wind from her chest. An outpouring of heat radiated from him and smothered her still, though he never touched her.

His face was inches from hers, fingers rapping at his sides like insect legs. It seemed they wished to grab her but shook with refusal. Pallid hair clung to his face in wet, matted curls. He trembled like a terrified dog, incisors bared. All the while, his wide eyes paced through a fog, beyond her, through her.

It was as though he were sleepwalking.

“Dex…” she whispered up at him, hands hovering above his hot shoulders. She worried that waking would send him into a panic.

As the sun’s sharp rays captured his leaking irises, she understood what gripped him so. For beneath the burst blood vessels were flickers of unfitting gold.

“Don’t…” he grumbled. Whomever he spoke to was worlds away. “Don’t t-t-touch her….”

“Dex, it’s me, I’m here…” she whispered.

“I’ll kill you,” he muttered, “I’ll kill you…” he whimpered, voice separated like crumbling stone. “No…” he begged. “No, no, NO!” he screamed in her face. Norah pressed herself back against the brick, yet still, he never touched her.

“Dex, I’m here,” she mourned, hands yearning to touch his chest. “I’m okay, I’m….”

“No, no, no, Norah…” he muttered, eyes crazed and angry. Tears rolled down his handsome cheeks, sizzling and evaporating before reaching his beard. His eyes were wide and strange, bloody and gold with fear, like shaved metal trapped in resin.

He began to snarl Latin curses, baring his fists, mumbling with wild fervor.

“Dex, Dex!” she said. “It’s me. I’m here. I’m not hurt.”

“Give her back. Give her back to me,” he groaned.

“Dex…” She couldn’t bear it any longer and touched his scruff cheek, hot like a cast iron pan.

He trembled still, and his eyes rolled back into his skull, the marbled whites flickering.

Nor gasped.

“Hello, Norah Kestrel…” mouthed his cracked lips, but the voice, the gesture, was not his own. This wasn’t Dexteras. He sucked his teeth and raised a tall brow. His once gorgeous eyes gave a metallic shine of violence. “Do you see what he is now?”

Nor straightened. “You,” she snarled.

Solus stole Dex’s lip to smile a devilish grin, an unsettling twist of her friend’s soft features.

But in a blink, Dex’s swimming blue pools returned to her and widened with horror.

“NO!” he screamed, still unfocused and far-off. “You get away from her!” he barked, punching the brick on either side of Norah’s head.

She yelped and drew herself inwards. The concrete dust wafted into her eyes.

The cry awoke Dex to his senses, and his eyes paced and focused on her wounded features.

As soon as he registered what he’d done, he wilted and retreated, burying his palms into his eyes.

“No, no, no, no,” he moaned. “Love, it was a n-n-nightmare, it wasn’t…” He moaned into his hands. “Norah, leave, please. P-Please,” he begged, backing away in fear.

“Hey, it’s okay. I know, I know, Dex,” she said, reaching her fingers to touch him. Radiating fever echoed from his collar, leaving both of their necks to glisten.

She paced between his glassy stare, seeking cerulean in the dirtied color palette of his irises. He returned to her in flashes, a war of gold and ocean gray. Colors evolving from medallion to rainstorm.

“You can do this,” she whispered. “You’re here with me,” she tried. Though any human ear would strain to hear her through the cutting gales of the rooftop, Dex always would.

“I can’t Nor, please go!” he demanded, hot tears ruining his anger while still, he clutched his face.

But his shoulders slumped, and his chin fell to his chest. And once more, dissociation shivered through his old bones.

Golden fire exploded where blue once swam, and Solus returned to her friend’s wide eyeballs, hissing venomous threats. They no longer attempted to feign as Dexteras. Their voice was now many woven into one, as though an army screamed from within her poor friend’s chest.

“This is what happens to my kind when they’re without a Purpose, Norah Kestrel,” they said in a distorted choir. “Your Dexteras is not here. He’s a shell that’s as easily abandoned as it’s occupied. If I so wished, I could break him like kindling with a whisper,” they threatened, rolling his crackling neck bones.

She bent backward from the sick body, infested with legions of voices. She worried about the impact it was having on her friend. He was soaked in sweat, blue veins straining at his throat and forehead.

“You are making him weaaaakkkkk,” Solus teased from within, the pale, dead eyes widening upon her. “I am the only one who can grant him Purpose again, and you are the only one standing in the way of that. But he won’t abandon you, even to save himself.”

“You’re the one breaking him!” snapped Norah, despite her inward doubt. “I need you to get the fuck away from my house, Solus. Now.”

To her surprise, they did not bother with snide retorts or alluring hisses. Solus gave a final, daring brow and a restorative blink. Within it, metallic melted to blue, and his once scowling wrinkles softened. Sharp wolfish features rounded with Dex’s soft, sad ones.

He stumbled backward, eyes blinking against hot tears.

A cool, morning breeze rushed through him like a cleansing wind. With it, a bouquet of charcoal smoke ribbons peeled from his chest and faded into the skies. Dex swayed and collapsed against the chimney bricks, soaking its porous rock with sweat. His limbs buckled, and his chin fell against his chest, wet hair curtaining his features.

Norah drew cool air into her pounding heart until it unclenched, wiping her face with a sleeve. Finding no further scent of Solus, she approached Dexteras with care.

“Hey,” she said softly, crouching before him. She touched the peak of his massive shoulder, which sweltered like fire. She wasn’t sure how his brain hadn’t melted to slush.

“I was going to hurt you, Norah…” he croaked, driving his nails into his scalp. “I’ve been having s-s-so many nightmares about it, and today I…I almost…” He rubbed his forehead as though it housed demons.

He hacked until final bits of black smoke sputtered from his lips, leaving him to gasp and settle his forehead against the red brick. His eyes fell glassy for a moment, shiny with bad dreams and visions. He clenched them shut and shook his head.

Finally, he shoved onto his legs, wobbling like hot noodles. His layers and skin were sticky and damp with sweat. Steam rolled off of him as he stumbled into the fresh morning.

“I-I need to get away, Norah. I need to go.”

A cold weight plummeted in her gut. “Dex, no, please, I’m really-”

But he took her hands into his and knelt before her on creaking knees.

“P-Please let me go, love,” he implored, holding her fingers in his. Violet rimmed his eyelids, and his iris still bled with a violent streak of red. “You need to let me go.”

“That wasn’t you,” said Nor. “They want you by yourself, they’re trying to scare you into being alone.” Her old friend was stuck in a complex Cycle of Abuse, one she’d seen ensnare her clients and her parents.

“But that doesn’t matter, amica mea,” Dex insisted, gazing up at her with his pale and aging face. “Nothing else matters to me but keeping you s-s-safe. Please.” It was strange and heartbreaking to be begged for mercy by someone so much wiser and older than she, someone so fierce and fearless.

He had the right to process on his own, to navigate his pain without her, and to be trusted as the professional of his needs. And after surviving her childhood, Norah held autonomy and independence as sacred, holy ground.

“Okay,” she whispered. It was the most difficult word she’d ever spoken.

With a tight squeeze of her fingers, Dex released a held breath and spun to retreat through the window.

“But hey…”

He stopped, head bent beneath the sill to reveal a bloodied eye.

“I love you. So we’re not done yet.”

He considered a reply but instead turned and was gone.