Monday January 5th 2015

Laying on the bed, Cesare listened to the silence. Every silence is special, woven with fey threads noises can't express, the shy tides of life unseen by the accepted and loved. The Serpens Lacum was old, its stones carried the murmuring truths of the mountains that had birthed them. Gargoyles whispered their litany of madness on streams of water, insanity poisoning each rain fall. Shadows ghosted between the floors, keeping their silent communion, going about the tasks of the forgotten. Cesare was a connoisseur of silence, marking out the times of safety in its dark communion.

He'd slept naked without the concealing clothes he’d worn when Greg was his roommate. Having the room to himself was the best part of being back in the dorm. That it was a gift born from rejection put an ironic edge to the feeling. He didn't need them, didn't want them, there was no place in his day for their petty needs.

Getting out of bed, he centered himself, the Ujjayi breathing second nature by now. Heat swirled to life, spilling into his body, loosening stiff muscles. When the time came, he started. Flowing from posture to posture his mind sunk into body. Stillness like ice across a silent pond, thoughts contorted into poses, muscles stretching as they welcomed the new day. Each pose was more than a physical thing; they were mental constructs his conciousness poured into.

Folding himself into a meditative pose, Cesare's consciousness detached from the meat. The trance saturated his thoughts, slowing them until they crept along in dying trains of nonsense. Leaving the useless cage of could and might behind, he dove into the darkness of the abyss. The Kundalini waited, napping amid golden scales under the red sun of his Root Chakra.

After a time less than a second and longer than an hour, he rose from the stillness. This early in the morning the bathroom was empty. Taking advantage of the privacy, Cesare pulled off his shirt, needing to see how bad Hog had fucked him up. Most of the damage was taken care of with antibacterial ointment, the longer scraps from his slide across the concrete bandaged with torn towels and duct tape.

His steps faltered as he reached the great doors of the Serpens Lacum. Was he supposed to meet the girls at the Vulpes or would they catch him at breakfast? He’d thought things would go back to the way they were before Winter Break.

He could wait at the Vulpes, find a nice place on the steps to hang until they showed. But Cesare faltered on the image of an endless line of girls flinching away from him. The girls had stood by him but that didn’t mean they wanted a stray dog with shit stained paws waiting for them or the ridicule having him there would bring. It would kill him if he saw shame in their eyes when they came out.

It was the coward’s way, but that didn’t stop him from deciding to wait at the cafeteria. Even as he decided, he froze on the threshold of the Serpens Lacum door. At the bottom of the stairs, standing beside opposite pillars, the girls glared at each other across a no-man's-land of a few feet. Neither had noticed him, giving him a chance to look them over in an unguarded moment.

They were wearing the school uniform, a dark blue skirt and jacket with a white dress shirt. Straining, the buttons struggled to contain Anastasia’s voluptuous breasts, the skirt failing to do her ass justice. Her beauty was overshadowed by her strength, the core of steel that faced the world with tortured flesh open for all to see. She was breathtaking.

Alexandra's ever-present braid flowed down the hardened planes of her back, stopping at the top of her skirt. Enormously muscled legs, chiseled from pain and dedication showed themselves below the blue skirt, failing to diminish an ass sculpted by a lifetime of punishing exercise. Stretching tight across her chest, the jacket strained to contain her massive shoulders. Darts of golden light flashed from the polished sword cross and the ring she wore on her left ring finger.

Cesare hadn’t been sure she’d wear it for the school to see. It wasn’t much, just two steel nails he’d cut the heads off and sharpened into razor points. He’d polished them for hours to get the coating off until they gleamed like silver. A surge of pride washed over him as he watched her rub her fingers along the razor edges of the ring. He wasn’t the only one to notice the ring, Anastasia’s eyes seemed pulled to it.

The deliberate scuffing of his boots brought the titans to whip around to face him. Anger eased out of their faces as they focused on him. Anastasia moved to his side as he hit the landing, it was the most natural thing in the world to wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her into his side. Snaking a hand around his waist, she settled into his side with easy familiarity. They’d had months to work up to being this casual with each other

Alexandra fell into step beside him. “I didn’t get a chance to ask about your face. You get jumped?”

Cesare knew it would come up; you couldn’t miss the swelling from Hogs punches. But if he opened that part of his life, they’d get the whole sordid mess from him. Shrugging, he gave the vampire a lopsided smile. “Sorta.”

Careful never to push into areas he didn’t want her, Alexandra let it go. A life lived with barbed secrets and hooked lies had taught her to walk careful around another’s private pains.

“What are we working on?” Cesare asked.

Taking his lead, the girls launched into what they’d planned. He’d been a fool to think anything would change, but he’d never had luck trusting. Listening to the two talk about the merits of different study habits brought a tight smile to his face. He never should've doubted them.

Only a few kids were in the cafeteria, taking coffee black and checking the homework assigned over Winter Break. The scattered kids looked up as the trio entered the room. Their faces ran the gambit, fear, interest, awe, disgust, uncertainty. No one was sure what to make of them. All anyone knew was they were dangerous.

Cesare had his black tea with a load of sugar, Alexandra warmed her hands with a cup of herbal tea, and Anastasia had coffee with her cream. There was no other way to put it, she filled her cup with cream before touching the coffee pot. He wasn’t one to talk with his two heaping spoons of sugar.

It was as if Winter Break never happened. So much so that when Anastasia pressed into his side, he didn’t give it a thought even as her hand caressed up his leg and settled high on his thigh with a squeeze of appreciation. His own arm went around her waist, resting on her hip as she leaned into him.

His need to catch Elizabeth before class had him cutting the study session short. It wasn’t something he could put off, not after how they’d ended it. And not after he’d been such an asshole.

Walking through the hallway’s kids parted for the three of them. It wasn’t planned but grown out of a refusal to be divided, even if it was only breaking formation to let someone come between them. The attack on Anastasia proved one savage truth to Cesare. His friends were only safe when he was next to them.

Cesare let go of Anastasia as they reached Miss Raven's room. Unwilling to let him go, she frowned up at him. “I need to talk to her alone.” The frown transformed into a scowl, her eyes flashing dangerously.

She’d been there when Elizabeth’s words broke him. Anastasia was the one to hold him, blind eyes watching as her gentle hands ran through his hair in a vain attempt to comfort. Unable to see his tears, she’d felt the growing wetness bloom on her pajamas as her fingers traced the lines of pain on his face.

There was no way Cesare would forgive anyone that hurt her. Looking into her eyes, he knew with bone deep surety Anastasia would never forgive Elizabeth. No matter the teacher’s reasons, no matter her excuses, Anastasia would hold her hate until the seas dried and the sky burned.

She didn’t want to let him go. Didn’t want to see him go in there without her. It was all in her eyes and the way she tightened her arm around him. Searching his face, she slowly let him go. Not because she agreed, but because he felt it was something he had to do.

Turning from Anastasia, he met Alexandra’s eyes. The vampire didn’t want him to go but wouldn't challenge him. Alexandra believed in him in a way Anastasia never would, that no one ever would. She believed he knew what he was doing, and that it wasn’t her place to stop him. Support and help, follow or lead, all of that and more, but not stop.

Passing the vampire with a smile of thanks, he opened the door and walked into another world. A wicked wind washed over him, the hair on his arms and neck rising under it malicious caress. Fey things watched and judged, the lethal reality more than a feeling, its truth woven in dimension warping runes. The wards standing sentinel on her sanctuary were a blade pressed into the back of Cesare’s neck, waiting only for her thought to cut him down.

The smell of broken loam and fresh rain weighed down every breath, thick and damp with the heart's blood of healthy plants. An electric dancing along the skin spoke of lightning hungry to ground. A stormy night, clouds rushing by overhead, wind biting at the soft parts of the soul, the taste of viciousness in the air. Mother nature sheathed in the crone's face, clothed in the bones of the young, the reaper of the sick, devourer of the old. This was Elizabeth’s sanctuary, bound to her by chains of blood birthed insanity, barbed hooks quenched in old malice. The beings she worshipped were closer here, ancient eyes steeped in cruelty peering through shifting veils of reality.

Eldritch runes turned with alien purpose along the branches, glittering with iridescent traceries of madness. Key holes into the other, windows of forgotten places abandoned by man and monster, dimensions anathema to life, where things of twisted beauty ruled. Pinpricks in reality, the holes lived in a way beyond mans ken, existing as lacerations in the strings of existence.

Glaring down from on high, dozens of eyes reflected shared disgust. He was carrion gone past its due, less than rotten meat marbled with maggots. While he had Anastasia and Alexandra, Elizabeth had her conspiracy of ravens.

She faced the windows and the dusky campus with her back to him. The click of the door sealing them into her sanctuary the only sound to dare the fey land. This was her world and rules bent and warped to her needs. Here, she was the one true god, and she was wrathful.

Her black dress shimmered under its covering of crocheted trees, wasp waist cinched tight, drawing the eye to her ample ass. Changing from fresh blood to black under the light, her blouse was a shifting thing of slaughter. Drowning the light in its depths, the silky hair he’d dreamed of for so long was a stain of ink down her back. Captivating, beautiful, she was a vision of lush womanhood, forever out of reach.

“I’ll never know if what you said to Sarah was the truth. I’ll never know if I’m more than convenient.” The words hung in the air on hooks of tortured intensity, bloody as butchered meat.

Elizabeth’s arms tightened around herself, the instinctive movement of the broken. As if with sheer physical strength, she could hold the breaking pieces together or make herself small enough to hide from the agony that ripped through her.

“What I did was worse.” She turned at his words, her face an agonized thing of regret and despair. He’d done that to her, for no reason other than that he could. “I said what I did to hurt. What you did was out of desperation, mine was a child's spite. I was wrong, and I don't know how to make it right.”

Silent tears ran down his face. It was a slight movement, the barest opening of his arms. No one could say afterwards who moved, only that they were suddenly holding each other. Each realizing how close they'd come to losing something treasured.

Elizabeth was solid and soft in his arms, with a body made for long hugs. It was more than softness untouched by hard days, it was the way she welcomed him in a way no woman had. His hand ran down her back in an unconscious need to soothe the pain he'd birthed with gleeful abandon. Her own arms tightened around him as she clutched him to her, unwilling to let him go.

The last two weeks had been hell. She'd known he'd come back, if not for her than for the others, but reason carried no weight with the heart. A part of her had known with the unshakable confidence of the damaged that he’d never come back. That she'd shattered something precious to her.

Brushing her sable hair with a shaking hand, his words were a broken whisper. “I’ll do better, my raven. I’ll do better.”

Fisting her hands in his jacket, anger and relief savaged each other for dominance in her voice. “I’m not interested in my pound of flesh. I don’t want to fight about who screwed up worse. I just want my friend back.”

Cesare set a feather light kiss on her night black hair. “I’m here.” He couldn’t take back the damage he’d done, and forgiveness was a grace he didn’t even offer himself. The only thing he could do was promise he wouldn’t make the same mistake again and be thankful she was more forgiving than him.

Yet, despite the words, something had shifted between them. You can't undo pain. She’d carved her name into his soul and he’d returned the favor with relish. What they had before was gone, they’d killed it. That border land they'd danced on was now a wasteland of the dead. What they would make of it now was anyone’s guess.

Elizabeth pulled back, hands slowly un-fisting from his jacket. Watching him with watery eyes, a brittle tension bled out of her face and body. Sighing, she stepped away with a smile. “Well, I know the others are waiting. You might as well open the door.”

Cesare ruthlessly cut down the feeling of abandonment as his hands slid off her hips. It was the price of what he’d done, small touches and light flirtations buried along with the image of him as a good man. “It took a little doing to get them to wait.”

Her smile twisted, anger lighting eyes before she caught herself. “Can’t blame them for being protective, not with your track record.” She turned back to her desk, a glint of light falling on the purple ring.

“You like it?” Cesare asked, unwilling to let the moment go.

Hands coming together, she hid the ring, not to conceal, but the instinctive need to protect the treasured. Face turned away as she walked to her desk, her words were soft. “I love it.” The hours he’d spent in the dark of night smoothing it to buttery softness, were a small price for those three words. It wasn’t much, just a piece of wood, but he’d hoped she’d like it.

---

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