Villian Enthusiast

If Dawnbreaker isn’t careful, history is doomed to repeat itself. If he cannot find a way to exorcise Zayne and all of his self-sacrificing pursuits, they’ll both lose you. Again. Like they did atop the Tower of Thorns. Like they did underneath the Sacred Tree.

Those memories tend to bring Zayne to the surface, so he does what he can to avoid them. Dawnbreaker isn’t interested in Zayne’s judgements or opinions, and he certainly doesn’t want to feel Zayne’s pain—Zayne has a lot of that since his repressed disposition prevents him from soothing any of his aches, too restrained, even, to get himself off to the thought of you beneath him, soft and gentle and oh-so willing…

Anyway, it isn’t hard for Dawnbreaker to anchor himself to this reality. It is, after all, so different from his own. All it takes is a quick look around the room, at the warm yellow sun streaming in through the wall to ceiling windows, at the pillowy tuffs of smoke that billow from his freshly brewed cup of coffee, at the buttery croissant he intends to eat alongside the drink, and he calms his beating heart enough to push Zayne down, down, down, and away.

(See, doctor? He is capable of repressing things too).

Or, rather, Dawnbreaker is capable at suppressing things. Because, there’s a difference, isn’t there? Between the two. Zayne is a victim of his mind’s ability to ignore and disregard his wants, to passively reject his feelings and his needs. Dawnbreaker’s suppression of Zayne is an active process—and a tiresome one at that—a skill that takes days, weeks, months to master.

It’s lonely sequestered away in Zayne’s home, something Dawnbreaker thought he’d grown accustomed to after all those years spent holed up in his dilapidating apartment, where the only voices he ever heard were those from the old tv. It’s your fault, he knows, that he no longer enjoys his solitude. You are a hair’s breath away from him, yet still out of reach and it’s killing him slowly, each second without you an indescribable agony.

A few of Zayne’s colleagues check in from time to time. Some woman named Yvonne texts to ask him how he’s doing, and some man named Greyson texts him patient updates—the grouchy man in room 101 continues to improve, and in room 102, the little girl Zayne operated on died suddenly in her sleep—but Dawnbreaker leaves them on read. It isn’t their company or companionship he’s seeking; it’s yours.

Though his self-imposed isolation comes at a price, it does have its perks. The biggest, of course, is that he’s free to daydream about how he’s finally going to do it. About how he’ll finally steal you away from everyone that threatens his ability to have you. There’s that coworker of yours that the good doctor never seemed to like, and your adoptive brother who’s love for you always felt a bit more than familial…

He thinks he’ll have to kill them, but he’s wrong.

The day you show up at his doorstep is a surprise, albeit a welcome one. Saves him the trouble of having to hunt you down—though a sick, twisted part of him thinks he would have enjoyed that, him a cat, you a mouse, a near capture, a futile escape. Your eyes widen in surprise when he opens the door. Your shoulders sag with relief.

The anger comes next, rolls in loud and angry like a great tumultuous storm. The look you flash him is a lightning strike. The words that spill from your lips crack like thunder. You were worried. (Obviously). You called him. (He knows). Rage soon fills the entrance to the house, thick, tangible, perhaps enough to tear it down.

Maybe he should interrupt you, but he doesn’t, he can’t, eyes drawn to your each and every tic. The way your nostrils flare as you suck down lungfuls of oxygen. The way your fingers twitch before clenching into fists. The way your tongue kisses the tips of your teeth as you say his name over and over. Zayne. Zayne. Zayne.

(His calves tense once it’s out of your mouth, as if they mean to move back, to move away. As if he’s going to withdraw into the house that isn’t fully his—into the house that is somehow too big and too small all at once—and leave you there on the front porch step, billowing and blowing at the door in your face).

“Would you like to come in?” he asks, struggling to keep a smile off his face, lest he scare you away, lest you sense that the man before you isn’t your doctor Zayne, but a different man entirely.

You cry then, anger giving way to something else, and he takes the opportunity to reach out and touch. A thumb first, on your cheek, now wet with the salt of your tears. A hand next, on the scruff of your neck, which he uses to coax your forehead against him once he’s closed the gap between you.

Easily and willingly. That’s how you fold yourself into him. Shaking arms around his waist. Shuddering chest against his own. He pets at your head wordlessly as you empty yourself of your sadness, knowing full well the worst of it is yet to come.

Because you think he’s your Zayne, you allow him to guide you into the living room where he plops you down on the sofa with a soft blanket and a snowman plushie that—thanks to Zayne’s memories—he happens to know you like.

He’d like to brew you some of that jasmine tea you bought with Zayne at the farmers market when he was still around, but you don’t seem ready to part yet. A shy hand catches the back of his pants, and he knows the minute he looks down as your glassy eyes that he isn’t ready to either. Not now. Not when he finally has you.

The cushions sigh as he settles next to you, a fingertips length apart, not yet bold enough to initiate contact again though he really, really wants to. It wouldn’t seem out of character—Zayne was always so affectionate with you—but, despite the shared memories, he’s worried that he will act in a way that shatters this precious illusion (because that’s all this is really, a false reality where his hands save lives instead of end them). What if he touches you somewhere wrong, and you know that he’s not him? Will you wait patiently for him to explain? Could he possibly even put into words what it’s like miss someone he’s never even met?

It's probably better to just rip off the Band-Aid, to tell you the truth about who he is now instead of later. Prolonging the lie will only make this worse for you. And for him, probably, since he has no intentions of letting you go no matter how much you beg. Or fight. Knowing what he does about you, it’ll probably be a fight. Which is fine. He’s prepared for that.  

Because Zayne’s place is nice. Spacious. There’s a basement he’s fixed up with some bondage equipment—jute ropes, mostly, to minimize chafing, though there’s also some duct tape and cold, metal cuffs—if he needs it, but he really, truly, hopes he won’t. He also hopes he won’t need any of the sedatives he stockpiled from the hospital right before Zayne quit, but only time will tell.

All thoughts of locking you away bleed from him as you fold yourself against him, limbs sprawling across the couch, head coming to rest in his lap. All thoughts of confessing bleed from him too. He deserves this, doesn’t he? A bit of calm before the storm. Where’s the harm in letting you believe he is someone else, if only until tomorrow? Besides, he is technically still Zayne, just a Zayne that doesn’t meet you when he needs to, a Zayne who doesn’t learn, then, the threat his Evol poses, who doesn’t injure you in childhood or become a surgeon.

Which, whatever, he’s meeting you now.

It's late enough that you drift off to sleep, lulled by the steady hand rubbing soothing circles into your back. There’s a serenity to you now that your dreams have found you, all the rage from earlier nothing more than a specter to haunt him, to remind him of what’s to come. Green eyes glide across your face, savoring the gentle curve of your lips, slightly parted, the corners just a touch wet as you exhale and drool. He wants to remember how you look without defenses, how loose your body can become in the presence of someone you trust your full self with; he isn’t sure when he’ll get to see it again.

There is no rest for him this night. Sleep is unwanted and dreams unwelcome. Because there’s a chance, still—even if just a teensy, tiny, small one—that Zayne’s mind will switch back the moment he slips unconscious, that he will lose you mere moments after meeting you. And, well, that’s a risk for another sunrise. Not this one. No, this dawn is his to break.  

Which he does. The inky midnight sky splits open as the birds outside begin to sing, darkness retreating, chased back by muted morning colors. Pink and orange hues burst into the room, and Dawnbreaker suddenly wishes he’d had the foresight to close the shades. As beautiful as you look awash with the shades of dawn, it’s only a matter of time before the sun wakes you and ruins his ruse.

His disguise unravels slowly over the course of the day as you pick and prod at the threads of it. Memories of you and Zayne are woven throughout him, but a memory is just that, a thing of the past, something that sets up the future the way a playwright does a scene; there is stage direction, dialogue, but a bad actor will still fail to sell the fantasy if he does not understand the person he’s meant to embody.   

So, slowly, he comes undone. Stitch by agonizing stitch.

The morning passes largely without incident. Breakfast is homemade pancakes, garnished with a river of fresh maple syrup and dollops of whipped cream. The food is mouthwateringly sweet—just how the doctor liked it. By the time the last of the batter hits the griddle, flour dusts his hair, fine and pure like snow—Zayne once froze the rain for you, turning fat, wet droplets into cold, powdery flakes. There is laughter in your throat as you tousle his hair, just like then, like when you said those vows.

It's easy, then, to act like Zayne. It’s easy to flash you a warm smile, to offer you bite after bite of the warm, sugary dough that’s been grilled by him to a golden perfection. The food, cut by his hand. The pieces, speared on his fork. You, insisting, rather vehemently, that the pancakes on his plate are somehow better than the ones on yours.

The hard part comes later, after the food has been eaten, after the dishes are washed and dried and put away. When your mirth begins to fade and your questions begin. You want to know where he’s been these past few weeks (here, he’ll tell you, which isn’t a lie), and what made him quit his job at the hospital (he had too; another honest answer—Dawnbreaker doesn’t know the first thing about treating protocore syndrome), and, worst of all, why didn’t he return your calls?

He isn’t sure what gives it away—what he says or doesn’t say that finally tips you off—only that your eyes begin to wander off into the distance, staring at something that isn’t there, teeth worrying at the inside of your cheek.

At some point, your questions begin to change. You ask him things you believe only the real Zayne can answer, as if testing a potential theory. Like the name of Doctor Noah’s fox. Like the passcode to his phone. Like his favorite sweet. Movie. Color. Show.

Each correct answer is met with squinted eyes and furrowed brows, lips pursing, face scrunching, as if you’re sucking on something sour, tonguing it back and forth between the inside of your teeth.

He knows when the question you need to ask finds you. It’s your eyes that betray you; they widen as the rest of your features relax. They steal scrutinizing glances at him too, when you think he isn’t looking, as if your vision alone could uncover the truth. As if staring at something long enough will reveal its true nature.

“Zayne,” you say, voice carefully neutral, though it wobbles with the ghost of some painful emotion. “Will you make me a seal with your Evol? Like you did when we were kids. Right before you left.”

And, Dawnbreaker is not so different than Zayne; they both find it so hard to deny you.

The seal he creates is an exact replica in every way but the one that counts. It’s small. Palm sized. Round like a ball. Two little flippers and a cute little tail. It is the very seal that your Zayne made you all those years ago.

Except for the fact that it is, of course, pitch fucking back.

You stare at the onyx offering, for a while, remembering, maybe, the first time Zayne made the seals for you—white, fluffy—how you tossed them, thinking the seals were snowballs. How he remade them for you years later after meeting you again.

When your eyes finally slide from the seal to him, they are brimming with tears. A few fall despite your attempts to blink them away, throat bobbing as you swallow down your cries, and this contained reaction startles him more than yesterday’s anger. Where is the sound of your fury? Where has all your thunder gone?

“Is he dead?” you ask, once some time has passed, voice steady despite the way your lower lip trembles.  

“No,” he replies. “But you can’t see him.”

The argument he expects never comes. A heavy silence fills the room as you quietly consider him, as if looking for the place this Zayne ends and yours begins. Deep beneath his ribs, his heart begins to hammer. It isn’t that he’s worried you’ll find any such seam, but that any moment now the fight he’s been anticipating will start.

“We’ve met before,” you finally say, locking eyes with him. There’s a challenge in them, even now, even rimmed with grief, you are daring him to lie to you, to deny who he is.

“We have.”

“You handle the Alterum.”

“I do.”

The tears you’ve been battling back surge forth, spilling down your cheeks. Your gaze slides away from him then, to that troublesome thing off in the distance, and he finds himself wishing he could read your thoughts. Is there anything you’d like to ask him, now you know the truth? Don’t you want to know why he’s taken possession of the doctor? Or what he plans to with the body now that he has? Are you worried, maybe, that he has plans to kill you?

The quiet begins to unsettle him.

“Are you afraid?” he eventually asks.

There’s a strange smile on your face when you respond, “Not of you.”

Whatever it is you're afraid of, you keep to yourself. A secret. Perhaps the only one you are able to keep.

“I understand if you don’t want to talk-”

“You’re right,” you cut in, standing up, as if to leave, “I don’t.”

“You can’t leave,” he says, his voice just firm enough to stop you in your tracks.

“You’ll stop me?”

“I will.”

Your head cocks as you consider him, likely contemplating your odds. You’re a formidable Hunter. Skilled enough to take down high ranked Wanders, often without aid. But are you strong enough to beat him? Are you faster than his ice? Could you raise a hand against a body you know so intimately?

A deep inhale followed by an exacerbated exhale; it seems you’ve decided you don’t like your odds.

“I’m tired,” you tell him, before slinking off to the guest room—you usually share Zayne’s bed when you stay over, but it’s fine; he will wear away at your resolve one day at a time. And, anyway, when you do join him in bed, he hopes you do so enthusiastically. That your legs spread without coaxing. That, when he gets his fingers in your cunt, they’ll come away undeniably wet…

Only, you don’t warm up to him. You stay, sure. You don’t run. Don’t hide. Don’t fight. You don’t do much of anything, really, especially those first few days. The words you do exchange with him are clipped, curt, like it physically pains you to communicate with him. When you glance his way, it’s to snarl at him, teeth bared, hackles raised, like some feral fucking beast. You swat away his peace offerings, claw at him when he offers comfort. It’s not like he plans to harm you—well, he’ll declaw you, perhaps, if needed—so why do you resist his every effort to bond?

House rules are devised as needed. There aren’t very many; he does want you happy after all. You’re not permitted to leave the house and you are not, under any circumstance, allowed to ask after the heart surgeon. The first rule he establishes day one. The second comes later, after you ask one too many questions about your doctor and absolutely none about him.

(Aren’t you even a little bit interested in getting to know him? Curious, maybe, what life was like for him in his world? About the cracking grey walls he called home? Don’t you want know why he worked so hard to hop realities? Shouldn't intrigue have trumped anger by now)?

The first rule you tolerate with a stubborn sort of grace, eyes frequently sliding to the door, then the windows, as you no doubt think about making an escape. He wonders sometimes why you don’t ever make a break for it; it's clear you want to. Perhaps you truly don’t think you could best him in a fight. Or maybe you’re just too scared to try.

It could be the consequences he’s laid out for you should you attempt to run are enough to thwart your attempts. He shows you the changes he’s made to Zayne’s basement. The jute ropes and handcuffs and tape. (You’ve seen the ropes before, he knows, the surgeon was quite adept at tying knots). The paddles too, are likely familiar to you, though the doctor did always prefer his hand.

The second rule seems to challenge you on a cellular level. Usually, he chooses not to energize the unwanted questions; he’ll simply ignore you until you ask about something else. If you insist on disrespecting the rather reasonable boundary, he’ll remind you what happens to girls who don’t mind their manners: a spanking, over his knee, under the clothes. One lash for each word spoken out of term—a game he knows for certain you’ve enjoyed playing with Zayne—should the warning go unheeded.

Your cheeks heat at the implication, and you learn to bite your tongue, though selfishly he hopes one day you’ll grow bold enough to truly violate the rule. He longs to get his hands on you, and while he’d prefer his touch be gentle, caressing, he’ll settle for a few quick swats on the butt…

You are allowed your own room—once he removes the lock, of course—as long as you leave the door ajar while you're in there. The hinges are old and rusted, the floorboards worn and creaky, so he’ll know if you attempt to sneak out after hours.

Which, eventually, you do.

Late one night, he wakes to the sound of you shuffling around the kitchen, to the opening and closing of doors and the soft pitter-patter of anxious footsteps. You’re leaving him. After weeks of good behavior. Fuck, you’re leaving him? You've finally given up on your medic of the arctic and are slinking away, out into the night? The Zayne from this universe might respect your wishes, but he doesn't. He can’t. He isn't letting you go again. Not now. Not ever.

With a hammering heart, he bolts out of bed and rushes to meet you. Your eyes widen in surprise as he comes barreling out of the room, body encased in a thick sheen of black ice. The dark icicles shoot violently towards you, pinning you against the wall by the fabric of your pajamas before wrapping around your wrists, your ankles, your waist. 

Dawnbreaker is breathing hard by the time he’s close enough to touch you, sweating despite the ice crystals he wears like a second skin. There's a biting word on his tongue, a threat he's ready to lash out with, but it dies in his throat when he sees the salty tears you've silently begun to cry. 

"I-I couldn't sleep," you croak. "I was just getting some water."

Dawnbreaker takes a step back and feels it, the distinct sting of broken glass piercing skin. You must have dropped the cup when he charged at you earlier. 

"Are you hurt?" he asks, trying to lock eyes with you. 

You shake your head, eyes fixed on the floor.

Slowly, Dawnbreaker releases the crystals holding you. You sway on your feet once they fully recede, knees weak, legs unsteady; he stabilizes you with an arm around your waist. You flinch at the contact, and he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that one bit. All he wants is to take care of you, yet all he seems capable of doing is causing you pain. 

"I'm sorry," he says, tucking two fingers under your chin, guiding your gaze towards what he hopes is his own reassuring one. "I didn't mean to frighten you." 

For a moment, it looks like you might reply, but then your lower lip begins to tremble and the sobs you've been quietly holding back break free. He folds your head against his shoulder and rubs a soothing palm down your back. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. And he is. Gods he is. What were you thinking in the brief moments before the sharp tip of his ice pinned your nightgown against the wall? Did it reminder you of that incident? The one from way back when… "Everything will be alright. Please don't cry." 

After a few minutes, the worst of the tears subside. He brushes a few lingering ones away with the pads of his thumb. You're still shaking, skittish, so he says what he thinks you need to hear, "I'd never hurt you." 

You blink at him, then a new expression flicks across your face. So, you were thinking about it then.

"Not again anyway," he adds, softening his voice. "What happened back then...I was a different man. That isn't me anymore. You make me want to be better, to do better. We're good for each other. I know it."

He looks at you eagerly, waiting for your response. 

"I'm so tired," is your only reply; the three words would wound him if you didn't also look it—puffy, purple bags under your dull eyes, drooping lids you fight to keep open. His apology, it seems, and your acknowledgement of it, will have to wait until morning.

With a hand on the small of your back, he guides you to his room, ignoring the trail of bloody footprints he leaves in his wake. He curries you to bed—to his bed—and is pleased, despite the events leading to this, that you fuss less than usual as he tucks you into it.

Tempted as he is to crawl in after you, to coil himself around your soft, sleepy form, he instead sits at the foot of the mattress watching, waiting, for you to drift peacefully off. But sleep doesn't come easy to you any more, not like it did that first night. Now, you toss and turn as he stares at you, agitatedly, likely, by the events from a few moments prior. 

Eventually, he lays a comforting hand on your calf. You stiffen, but don't shake him off. 

"Would you like me to help you sleep?" he asks, inching his fingers further along your leg.

You sit up, yanking yourself from his grasp. He almost regrets speaking to you.

Almost.

"I'd sleep easier if you'd stop fucking gawking at me," you spit. "Go eye fuck something else."

He smiles, not sweetly, when he says, "I know what the good doctor used to prescribe you. Not a pill but rather..." he's close enough now that he could kiss you, if he wanted. His hand finds the sensitive groove of your hip. Your breath hitches but you don't push him off. Feeling bold he adds, "I'm just as gifted with my fingers as the surgeon. Perhaps-"

"No," you say, but it doesn't sound quite like you mean it. The word comes out breathy, light, without vitriol he’s grown accustom to.

Dawnbreaker backs off anyway. He has no intentions of forcing you, though he does trace his index finger down the exposed skin of your thigh as he pulls away, "If you change your mind..."

You start sleeping in his room exclusively after that. He tells you it's to avoid another misunderstanding, but the truth is, he just likes having you close, feeling the warmth of your body, just inches away from his own. The softness of your breaths lull him into a sleep so deep not even his nightmares can find him. There’s no bodies. No blood. No Zayne.

Dawnbreaker gets used to having you close. Too used to it. A few weeks into the arrangement he comes to his senses already upright in bed, lips pressed against your own, a palm on your breast. His body freezes momentarily, and that's all the time you need to pull away, eyes glistening with tears you try to blink back. 

He reaches for you as you roll off of him, despite knowing what this is, despite understanding what that was. Not an attempt to seduce him awake, but a shameless effort to reach that oh-so-fucking-precious doctor of yours. An anger pools low and hot in his belly as he watches your body stumble out the door.

Anger is an emotion Dawnbreaker is familiar with, though it's admittedly one he struggles to control. The trouble isn't the anger itself, but, rather, all the adrenaline that accompanies it. Something about that pesky little neurotransmitter makes him vicious, makes him mean. So, in lieu of several calming breaths, he throws off the covers to storm after you, ranting and raving about your disobedience and disrespect.

He finds you curled against the corner of the bathroom, head in hands, the heels of your palms jammed into your eyeballs as you will the tears to stop coming, and as much as he'd like to keep berating you, the site of your body wracked with sobs temporarily quells his anger. He drops beside you, loops his arms around you, coos that everything is going to be alright. That he can take care of you. That eventually the place will feel like home.

Exhaustion soon lulls you to sleep, but Dawnbreaker lays awake that night shaken by the incident. He was so sure he had the doctor under strict lock and key, yet someone you were able to reach him while he slept.

"How'd you do it?" he asks you the next morning, voice calm but firm.

"Do what?" you throw back, playing coy.

"How did you reach Zayne?"

For a second he isn't sure you'll answer him, but you eventually confess, "My Evol. I resonated with you last night while you slept. He must have felt it somehow. It must have brought him to the surface."

And, fuck, how could he have been so stupid? Why has he never considered this before? In the past, you’ve been able to help Zayne suppress him with your power. His mind drifts again to Zayne’s basement and the sedatives he's ferried away in case of an emergency like this.

He waits for you to look him in the eye before saying, "Pull a stunt like that again and I will break your fucking wrists,” tone conversational despite the threat. 

Instead of cowering, your eyes harden. When you look away, it’s to roll them.

“Am I understood?” he asks.

“You don’t realize how fitfully you sleep,” you tell him.

“Pardon?”

You huff now, clearly irritated, “You were having a nightmare. A pretty bad one too. The black ice started creeping up your body. I wasn’t trying to reach Zayne; I was trying to stop you from killing us both. His reemergence was a side effect.”

And that’s…you…you were trying to protect him?

“You kissed him,” he says, voice harsh, accusatory.

“Can you really blame me for wanting to say good-bye?” Then, mistaking his silence as anger, you add, “Punish me if you want. I don’t care anymore. Lock me up. Beat me. There’s no pain you can inflict on me that’ll hurt any worse than losing him does.”

“This pain you feel over the loss of the medic will pass,” he offers you. The words are meant as an olive branch, an acknowledgement of your pain and how it—like all pain—will ease as your life with him grows around it. Then, remembering something Zayne once told you, “You’ll grow accustom to the sorrow.”

"I hate you.” 

Even if that were true, he's not sure he'd care. All that matters to him is that you are safe. Well fed. Warm. And you are all of these things when he's with you. You are safe when he’s with you. Protected from Astra and fate and everything that has ever threatened you and your relationship with him.

“I love you,” he replies, and your eyes grow cartoonishly wide. “Affection, I admit, is a stranger to me, but I am certain that is what I feel for you. Love. Pure and unconditional.”

“Did I die in your reality?”

Finally—the question he’s been waiting for. The door he needed you to open. The chance he needs to explain to you why he travelled across all of space and time to meet you. You’ll understand, surely, where he’s coming from, why he’s done what he has, once he shares with you the extent of his loneliness.

“Worse,” he says, “you don’t exist at all.”

The empathy he expects doesn’t come. You actually look angrier than ever, which is unexpected and, frankly, rude. He’s opening his heart and mind to you. Trying to connect on a deep, meaningful level. And, how do you reward his efforts? With the world’s most scathing glare?

He lets it slide, figuring you just need some time to digest, but days pass and your behavior towards him only worsens. You interact with him, sure, but only when absolutely necessary. You don’t talk to him. Don’t look at him. And you definitely don’t touch him.

And, okay, Dawnbreaker is a patient man, but even he has his limits. Do you not understand what an undertaking it was for him to get himself here with you? Do you not fucking get how difficult it was to traverse all the universes—known and unknown—to share his life with yours? Nearly six months of cohabitation, and you remain as incorrigible as ever. Still such a feral little thing. All teeth, no heart.

It's like you want to find his limit. Like you want to force his hand. He watches you dump the tea he makes you down the drain and trash all the dinners he prepares. He bites he tongue when you refuse to hold yours, offers his rotational platitudes in his efforts to reassure you. Even as your aggression begins to escalate, he stays he hand. Let’s you push and shove him. Let’s you bat away his fingers. Let’s you fight your way out of his bed.

Then, you find his limit, on the cutting edge of a knife.

The blade is stuck in the meat of his stomach, pressing up against his bottommost rib. There’s pain, of course, but it’s distant, sharpest in his heart, where the weapon doesn’t even reach.

His Evol reacts to his emotions. Black ice threads its way around you before he even can even think about the consequences of that. You scream, maybe, he isn’t sure. He can’t hear much over the rush of blood in his ears. Like he’s holding a shell up to them. Like he’s being held underwater. Like he’s about to drown.

This is unexpected. Not something he thought you capable of. He thought you loved Zayne too much to risk killing him. When did you start to value your own freedom more than the body of your beloved? He tries to remember when your anger first became violent. Tries to remember if any of your past behaviors have alluded to this. Looks for warning signs he may have missed.

There’s a needle in his hand he doesn’t remember grabbing. There’s blood covering his hands. In a brief moment of panic, he thinks maybe he’s killed you, but then the room comes into view and he realizes the only blood on him is his own. The needle in his hand is stitching up his torn flesh. The blade didn’t hit anything vital. The wound feels deadly all the same.

The human body can go several days without food or water before it starts to die. The stomach cramps and the lips chap, but there’s no real risk if he releases you from your icy prison within, say forty-eight hours? He could do it; he could leave you suspended in the kitchen like a piece of horribly beautiful decor and let you think about what you’ve done, but that isn’t how he wants to handle this. That isn’t how he wants to handle you.

Instead, he carries you kicking and screaming into the basement, uses the jute rope to tie your wrists together—a double column, he’s been practicing—and secure you to the bed. He’s angry, yes, but not enough to hurt you. He never wants to hurt you. Not ever again. That isn’t what this is. That isn’t what he’s doing. This is behavioral modification. This is a course correction, the removal of an unwanted behavior, something he can achieve that with a carrot just as much a stick.

“I love you,” he tells you as he hikes up your nightgown—you’ve been free to dress yourself these past few months, but you’ve had to choose from clothing he’s preselected. Your panties are blue, cotton, also preselected by him. He fingers the lacey trim, thinks about how you’d look in the matching garters that he knows are collecting dust upstairs, “and I forgive you.”

“Zayne,” you scream, and he isn’t sure, really, if you’re begging him to stop or begging him to take over, if you’re hoping to placate Dawnbreaker or hoping to bring forth the medic, but it doesn’t matter. It’s been weeks since he’s last felt your Zayne stir within him.  No more muscle spasms. No more unexplainable changes in breath. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this. Please.”

“Shh,” he coos as he places a chaste kiss between your shoulder blades. His fingers dip beneath the soft fabric of your panties. His palm presses gently against your sex. “I know you’re scared. I am too, but I promise you it’s going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry,” you sob as you thrash against your bindings. He wishes you’d stop pulling at them. Jute is forgiving only to an extent. You’ll rub your wrists raw if you continue straining against the tie. “I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“I know you won’t,” he says, petting at your scalp soothingly with his free hand. “Because I’m going to show you how good your life will be with me. I’ve had lots of time to study you. Where you’re sensitive. How you like to be touched. I was waiting until you asked me to show you, but even my patience has its limits. I think it’s best we get this out of the way.”

He seats himself between your thighs, uses his own to butterfly you open. They’re thick—his thighs—due to all the years the doctor spent running, building up his stamina and endurance for long surgeries, strengthening the muscles of his legs.

The fingers not currently buried beneath your panties ghost lightly down your spine. He watches the skin their pimple as you arch away from his touch.

“You’re so beautiful,” he mumbles, tracing another path across your body, mapping out all of its valleys and dips. Back up the spine this time, fingertips grazing each and every notch. Then down once more. He presses his palm firmly into your lower back to deepen the arch that’s already forming. “Think you can stay like this for me?”

“Get the fuck off of me,” you shout as you attempt to fight your way out of his lap.

Dawnbreaker likes the sound of swears in your mouth even less than he does the look of kitchen knives in your hand. The words are unattractive. Unbecoming. He’s certain you can behave better than this. In fact, he’s seen it.

There’s no doubt as he stretches himself out across the expanse of your back, dwarfing your trembling form beneath him, that he can help you remember your manners. It’s just a matter of reinforcement. He cups your jaw between his pointer finger and thumb, forces you to look him in the eyes as he admonishes you.

“I would prefer to keep this experience collaborative, but if your combativeness persists, I can always retrieve a gag. The spider one perhaps, so I can watch you drool.”

(There’s a memory Zayne would sometimes revisit—when he still had control of his body that is. You kneeling on a pillow. Your head on his lap. A gag tucked securely beneath your teeth, preventing you from distracting the good doctor from his work.

A minute passes. Then another. Eventually Zayne’s finishes his task. He thumbs at your temple to get your attention. Waits for you to sit up. To consent. Then he slips his untucked cock into your mouth and lets you warm it for him).

Dawnbreaker likes this memory almost as much as his other half. He could never understand it, could never understand how you could trust someone so completely with yourself—what if Zayne had taken advantage of you or done something you didn't want? What he can understand, however, is the doctor’s adoration of your submission. How it left him off balance. How it always sent an ungodly amount of blood rushing from his head to his cock…

Another time, maybe. Dawnbreaker has the rest of his life to help you relearn obedience. Tonight’s goal is pleasure—his and yours—and he doesn’t need cheap trick or props to get you off.

“Let me do this for you,” he says, letting the tips of his fingers trace the outline of your lips. You aren’t wet, which he’s anticipated. It could take time even then for your body to slick up. “Let me do this for us.”

He pulls his fingers from the heat of your panties to slip them into his mouth. Next time, he’ll have you lube his fingers for him, worshiping the lithe digits with your pink little tongue, but at present he doesn’t trust you not to bite. After the stunt you pulled in the kitchen, he really would have to punish you then. His mercy, like his patience, has its limits, and you’ve just about found the edge of his.

“Like this, yes?” he asks, as he slowly sinks a finger into you. The question is rhetorical. He knows how much you enjoyed having the doctor’s fingers inside you. You liked it almost as much as if not more than the man’s cock.

“No,” you whine, though your thrashing has significantly subsided. Even your sobs are quieter, less violent than before. “Please, please, I’ve learned my lesson. I shouldn’t have stabbed you. I’m sorry. It was a minor lapse in judgement. It won’t happen again.”

Dawnbreaker sinks a second finger inside you. He kisses the shell of your ear.

“I’ve already told you I believe you,” he soothes as he begins to work his fingers against you. This part is trickier. The medic’s memories alone won’t help him find what he needs. “And I meant what I said about not hurting you. That isn’t what this is.”

“This does hurt,” you insist, unable to prevent yourself from squirming beneath him. A lie, he knows. This doesn’t—no—this can’t possibly hurt you. Both his fingers were wet enough to slip into you without any resistance. Pain isn’t the source of your writhing. “You’re hurting me.”

“I’m not,” he says, settling his stomach against your back, pressing you down into the mattress to further limit your protests. He sinks the two fingers in deeper, nearly to the knuckle as he continues to pump the pads of his fingertips against you. “I happen to know how much you enjoy this. I know it’s new for me, but I’m a quick learner. Though this would be easier with your help.”

A noise—an ugly noise—escapes you, deep, throaty, like a scoff. The sound tears through him like a bullet, the pain of it worse than the throbbing in his side. All of your squirming has aggravated the injury. Several stitches have torn lose.

Dawnbreaker snakes his other arm under your tummy, hugging you to his chest. In a matter of minutes, the rest of this fight will bleed from you. The energy you have to resist him is limited. Much of it has already been depleted trying to break free of the restraints. He continues to stroke you experimentally as he waits for the remainder of your adrenaline to wear off.

“Easy,” he coos, nosing at the crook of your neck. A bit of sweat has begun to pool around your nape. His tongue is licking at the salt of it before he can even think resist the impulse. “Just relax for me, yeah? You can cry if you need, I know this is overwhelming. I promise I’m going to make all the hurt go away.”

“Zayne, please,” you beg, voice desperate and raw. “I don’t want this. Not right now. Can we please talk about it first?”

Another dirty lie. Dawnbreaker can feel how wet you’re getting for him as he works your cunt. Arousal—your arousal—is beginning to trickle down his fingers, seeping into the fabric of the sheets.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” he muses as he starts to steadily grind the heel of his palm against your clit. “Can’t you feel how wet you’re getting? Can’t you see how much you need this? I bet it’s why you acted out earlier. Too much pent-up libidinous frustration. But, don’t worry; I won’t let it get this bad again.”

The fingers drumming against you are picking up speed. He wants you to hear the squelch of them against your walls—undeniable, audible proof of your desire. And not desire for the doctor, then, there, but rather, desire for him. Here. Now.

You're getting close; he can feel it. Your whole body begins to shiver as your orgasm builds. A twitch in your calves. A tensing of the thighs. Then the walls of your pussy begin to spasm, squishing and squeezing the fingers he's stuffed there.

Your breath hitches, but it’s controlled, too controlled, like you’re counting the moments between each bout of air. One last protest, perhaps. One final act of rebellion. Hoping—and vainly, might he add—to that your breath work may prevent the inevitable. That you can box breathe your climax away.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

He finds it then—the spot he’s been looking for—the one he needs to bully to send you teetering over the edge. He knows he’s found it because you jolt as if electrocuted when his fingertips press against it, the two digits working in tandem with the pressure his heel has on your clit.

There’s a brief moment where your laboring breath hitches, and your whole body pulls tight, and he knows, then, despite your lack of communication that he’s succeeded, that he’s made you cum, that his fingers—his, not the doctor’s, not the medic’s, his, his, his—have wrung hard earned pleasure from you.

And, here’s the thing, Dawnbreaker knows, realistically, that orgasms last only a couple of seconds—about ten if the surgeon did his research right. It’s just, he thought, especially after all this time, after all these months spent patiently waiting, that is, he thought, well, he just expected something a bit more than gratifying than this.

“Feeling better?” he asks as he buries his face in the crook of your neck. He sucks the skin there into his mouth, worries at the top layer with the tips of his teeth.

Pressed this close, he can feel the rhythm of your heart against his chest. It’s rapid, rabbit like. Almost as fast as his own. If he closes his eyes, lets the world fade away, will it feel as though they’re beating as one?

“Fuck you,” you sob, jostling your shoulder in an effort to relieve yourself of his incisors. “I hate you. I fucking hate you. I shouldn’t have aimed so slow. I should have gone for the neck!”

So no, then, you aren’t feeling better. There’s a restlessness to you still, the low burning embers of a fight.

You’ve resumed your kicking, not that there’s any strength to it. Still, there’s pain in his side where the wound has torn back open. There’s a wetness to you not entirely born from your arousal. Some of his blood trickles out of his wound, spills onto your dimpling skin. Maybe if he waits long enough to tend to it, the platelets will change you at the molecular level, making you unequivocally, undeniable his.

“You’re so disobedient today,” he says. Your pussy clamps around him as the words register. Deny it if you want, but he feels your walls constrict around him, feels your cunt beg him for more, more, more. “It’s almost like you want me to punish you.”

And, there's a novel thought. One that's never occurred to him before. Maybe it’s easier for you this way. Perhaps you need to make this hard. That way, you can pretend you don’t like him as much as you did your doctor. If you act out, if you force his hand, your belief that he's a time-traveling savage can persist.

“One more, I think,” he says, pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss against the bruise he's sucked into your clavicle. “And if you’re good for me perhaps after I’ll reward you with my cock.”

Is his desire to get you off again selfish? Perhaps. But after the life he's lead, the people he's killed, why shouldn't he finally prioritize his own pleasure? And, anyway, you'll enjoy a second climax too. He knows you always do. See, there’s a space in your mind where your thoughts can’t reach you; the troublesome things drift away like leaves down a stream. He's seen it in the part of his consciousness that is neither his nor the other’s. The old Zayne. His dexterous fingers. You floating up, up, then away.

This is where Dawnbreaker wants you now. Weightless, untethered, body free from the burden of its physical form. Gods what a site you made for your love sick doctor in those moments. How he'd dote on you in that catatonic state! The memories blend together in his head, snapshots with their subject just out of focus. Warm baths. Soothing music. You, sitting there. Doe-eyed. Doll-like. Eucalypts lotion slicking your skin.

A disembodied noise brings Dawnbreaker back to present; the sound, he realizes, is coming from you. A strained whine that starts in the back of your throat and unfurls itself against your teeth. It’s a sound born from pleasure, from him and his love and his absentmindedly renewed efforts to make good on his promise to you. One more. Yes, that should do it. One more, then he give you his cock.

“What’s the matter,” he hums, teasing your entrance with a third finger. Your orgasm has left you wet, pliable; it doesn’t take much coaxing for your walls to swallow it up alongside the others. “Two aren’t enough for your greedy little pussy? Your eager cunt needs more?”

“Zayne,” you hiccup, and again he isn’t sure which Zayne you’re asking for. If it’s him you want or the other. Your hands are balled into fists, nails biting into the flesh of your palm, skin of your knuckles pulled tight. “Please, I can’t. I can’t.”

“Come now, we both know that’s a lie,” he tuts, dropping a hand to your swelling clit. He toys with it experimentally, touch teasing and light. “I believe your record is five. The night you came back from that business trip. Do you remember? There were some breaks of course, your doctor wasn’t cruel. He knew exactly how much your poor pussy could take. And because of that, so do I.”

“Hurts,” you sob.

The overstimulation or the memory, he wonders. The answer is likely both.

“It won’t for long,” he tells you. “You’re just getting close again. No need to ask this time either. When you’re ready, just let go.”

There’s some half-hearted bucking, a brief clawing at the air, then your walls are contracting violently around him once more. This orgasm is longer, louder, more intense than your first. He watches in awe as your body gets taut, tauter, and tauter still. Abs straining. Glutes flexing. Everything, all across you stiff and rigid like a bowstring before its arrow is loosed.

Then, you're squirting. Hard. All over his fingers, his wrist, his clothes. A concentrated torrent of semi opaque, glossy juices, unlike anything he's dreamed possible, soaks him, and Dawnbreaker is ecstatic, elated that his three fingers alone were enough to do this to you. That some simply heavy petting was all it took to get you off.

“That’s it,” he smiles, nuzzling your cheek. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Feels right. No different than when you were with him. Nothing you haven’t experienced before.”

“You aren’t him,” you cry, the words angry and raw. “You’ll never be him, and you can’t replace him. My feelings for you are different than they were for him because you’re a different version of him, someone else’s version of him.”

“You’re right about that,” he concedes, pressing a kiss against your temple in apology, still three fingers deep in your ruined cunt. “I know I’m not him. But I need you more than he does. If either of you could see the city I lived in, I think you’d both agree.”

Though your crying persists, you don’t argue with him.

“I know you miss him,” he says, hands traveling down his body to relieve himself of his slacks, “and I know it’s a painful loss, but we can make this work. I can make this good for both of us. I promise.”

You wince as a hand find your ass. He kneads your right cheek with it while the other works his cock, spreading his pre down the length of his shaft, lubing himself up for you.

Not that you need the additional lubrication. Your cunt’s a dripping, drooling mess after the two consecutive orgasms he’s wrung out of you. It's gaping too, from the stretch of his three fingers, and, Astra forgive him, but with an invitation like that, how could he resist a sneak peak inside?

Your walls are puffy, swollen, pumping like a heart. The poor thing is practicaly begging for his cock, for the weight of something solid, thick, anything to soothe the lecherous ache. He stares at your twitching hole as he slowly strokes himself, top to bottom, gathering and redistributing any premature spend already leaking from his painfully hard tip.

“Don’t resist,” he says as he slips his cock between the fat of your thighs. “His cock, my cock, they’re one and the same. This isn’t anything you haven’t had before.”

The first time Danwbreaker let himself explore this body, he was surprised how similar it was to his own. Same haunted green eyes. Same pale forearm scars. Same thick, uncut cock. The only real difference was the trimmed pubic region. Doctor Zayne manscaped ritualistically, something Dawnbreaker hasn’t kept up with. The hairs grew back dark and wavy, erasing the last physical reminder that this body isn't really his own.

Dawnbreaker takes a moment worship this new body, enjoying the glide of his member against your slippery folds—pausing periodically to tap his tip against your sensitive clit, rejoicing when your hips jerk in response. The sensation is unlike anything he’s ever felt before, something he doesn’t have the words to describe. Overwhelming. Underwhelming. Both, somehow, together, all at once. A precipice of pleasure. The beginnings of a tumultuous storm.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he tells you, lining himself up with your entrance. You’re protesting still, despite his request for compliance, desperate pleas muffled by the pillow your face is pressed against. A symphony of snuffed out 'stop’s' and 'no’s.' It makes him wish he’d chosen a different position for your first time together. It makes him wish he could see your face. Cheeks flush with color. Eyes webbed with red.

He curls himself around you as he feeds you the beginnings of his cock. Your cunt welcomes him eagerly, swallowing him up inch by agonizing inch. He keeps his descent slow, steady, letting your pussy appreciate the entirety of his girth, then, finally the entirety of his length.

He lays like that for a moment, tip kissing your cervix, hips pressed against your ass, savoring the way your walls begin to milk him, clenching deliciously around his straining cock.

With the wound in his side, it's a challenge to actually fuck you. Even with all the endorphins coursing through him, there’s a lingering pain where his flesh is parted, one that can’t be ignored. He needs to finds a rhythm that satisfies his cock without aggravating his injury further. Which, fine, he supposes there's really no need to rush things. There’s pleasure enough simply filling you up this wholly, this completely. He ruts cautiously into you, pace languid and relaxed.

“That’s it,” he pants as your hips begin to buck against him. How the good doctor ever got any work done with you around is beyond him. All he seems capable of thinking of now that he's had you like this is how he can keep you on his cock. “Such a good girl. Taking me so well.”

You whine out another series of protests that he quiets with a hand on your breast and a playful nip at your ear. Your breath catches when his teeth graze against the cartilage, and it takes everything in him not to follow the action with a bite.

Even at the leisurely pace he sets, his orgasm builds quickly. It starts as a fluttering in his stomach, graduates to a tightening of his sac. He’s cum before of course, down the drain or into his hand when he doesn’t have the foresight to get himself to the shower before his apex, but none of that compares to this. His hands, skilled and warm as they are, have nothing against the heat and grip of your pussy. It’s the perfect receptacle for all his love.

“I’m close, beloved,” he tells you, fingers seeking out your sensitive clit once more. “Think you can cum with me?”

Your head shakes weakly against the creaking mattress. He trains his eyes on what he can see of your face. Your eyes are squeezed shut, hidden behind the thickness of your lashes, glistening with tears. Your mouth hangs loosely open, lips glossy with an ungodly amount of spit. What the mattress is unable to soak up pools around your jaw.

“Next time will be easier,” he promises you, placing another placating kiss against your crown; the texture of your hair tickles his lips. “We can even forgo the rope, if you’d like. As long as we understand each other that is.”

He’s rolling your clit between two of his fingers now, touch feather-light. There’s no need for him to treat the nerve bundle roughly. He doubts it’ll take much coaxing for it to send another wave of electrifying pleasure burning though your veins. You're sensitive enough a simple tweak of the nipple might do it. Maybe he'll experiment with that another night.

You scream as your third orgasm slams into you, body convulsing and contorting as your release rips violently through you, building then crashing like a great ocean wave.

His own orgasm is every bit as violent as your own. Rope after rope of seemingly scorching hot cum burst forth from him as he fucks himself to completion, spraying your insides white. There’s a ringing in his ears when its over as if his brain has a short-circuit, like cumming has emptied him of all life.

He’d like to stay like this a while, notched to the root inside you, letting your overstimulated walls feel it when he finally begins to deflate, but a noise from you has his systems rebooting, it signals his brain to come back online.

“Mercy,” you choak, as he gently strokes your ribs. “Mercy, Zayne, please, please. Mercy. Mercy.”

And, fuck. That word. Dawnbreaker knows that word. It’s your safe one, established by Zayne the day you expressed an interest in blindfolds and paddles. The good doctor wouldn't even entertain the idea of that stuff without a safe word in place, insisting it was a necessary precaution for that sort of play. Neither of you ever need it, of course, but he made you repeat it each session just in case.

“Mercy,” you sob again, only this time it sounds like you’re having trouble getting the word out. He feels your body hiccup as it tries to suck down air.

He pulls out of you immediately, begins the work necessary to unbind your wrists. The involuntary spasming of your body makes it hard for him to keep his grip on the rope. It takes him several minutes to get the bindings undone.

“It’s alright,” he tells you, taking your right palm in between his fingers, massaging circulation back into the cold limb. “Poor thing. You were so good for me. So very good.”

It didn’t usually take long for the doctor to help reregulate you when you got worked up like this. But, then, you'd never gotten this worked up after sex. Usually you're spacey, boneless, all smiles and batted lashes in the aftermath. This is new. This is scary. He scrolls through all the memories he’s logged of Zayne placating you, trying to remember the strategies he used to help you calm.

He pulls you up and into his lap for a reassuring embrace, presses a kiss against the top of your head, but the startling sounds you've begun to make—harsh, wheezy—don’t stop. He rubs his hands up and down your arms soothingly, trying to help you ground, hoping you can't feel the way his own heart rate has spiked alongside yours.

“Tell me what you need, sweet girl,” he all but begs. He’s startled to hear a slight tremble in his voice. He doesn’t want you to know how much your panicked state is affecting him.

“C-can’t,” you sob loudly, violently. “Can’t-”

“Can’t what? Can’t tell me?”

“Can’t breathe,” you wail, fingers clawing at your throat, “Can’t breathe.”

Fuck, Dawnbreaker thinks. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

What he says is, “Together, yeah? Let’s try to breathe together. I’ll count the seconds for you.”

And Dawnbreaker tries, really, he does, to help you breathe in for a count of four, but the words are either lost to the fog of your mind or you're simply too far gone already to obey him.

There has to be something else he can do, something else he can try. There’s a memory—the doctors—he has of you waking up from a nightmare in a state not unlike this. The doctor used his Evol to cover his hands in a thin sheen of ice and press them against your head.

He does that now, lets the blackened ice engulf him, presses his covered palms against your perspiring neck. The cold is supposed to shock the system. It allegedly can deactivate your fight or flight.

Your hands drop from your throat to your chest; they press over your heart, and Dawnbreaker realizes then, that he’s made a critical error in his efforts to connect with you tonight, that’s he’s forgotten something crucial about your body and the organ that keeps your blood pumping, about the syndrome caused by the Aether Core fragment housed behind your ribs. Arrythmia. Murmurs. Symptoms Dawnbreaker doesn’t fully understand.

“Shit,” he swears aloud, unable now to keep the panic from his voice. He can feel the power of your Evol around him, reacting to the intensity of your feelings like his own did earlier. He presses a finger against the pulse point on your neck in an effort to establish its current rate.

“Z-z,” you wheeze. “Zzzzz-.”

You can’t get the word out but he knows what you’re asking for, knows what you want to say.

“Hush now,” he says. “Don’t talk. Just focus on your breath.”

He drops a hand to your belly, just above the diaphragm to monitor the intensity of your body’s spasming.

There’s a position, right, one that helps with this sort of thing? Sitting upright with your head between your knees. After your grandmother died, your grieving heart needed extra help to keep you going. Zayne wanted you to speak with a professional about it, and when you wouldn’t he did research of his own.

Dawnbreaker maneuvers your body like that now, pulling your calves up and against your thighs, dropping your chin against your chest. It's important that he himself remains calm while you're in crisis, so he tries—unsuccessfully—to ignore the worsening discoloration of your lips.

“Try to take tiny sips of air. Keep your breaths shallow for now. You can deepen them once you have better control over everything again.”

You’re trying—maybe, he really can’t be sure—but the air you manage to take in is too quickly dispelled. He doubts much of it is getting to your brain. If this persists much longer, you could incur serious damage to your faculties and cognitions. He needs a plan, a good one, and he needs it now.

And, Dawnbreaker knows, realistically, what it is he has to do, knows who amongst you has the knowledge to treat your heart. And it isn’t him, not in this life anyway. If he wants to save you, he's going to have to let you go.

Because, it wouldn’t be right, would it, to hold onto this reality a bit longer on the off chance your condition naturally subsides? That’s not what all this was for, not why he came all this way. His presence here was supposed to protect you both from harm; instead, it's only perpetuated it.

Problem is, he’s never tried to summon Zayne before. He’s only ever tried to tamp him down. Is the doctor still in him somewhere, simmering beneath Dawnbreaker’s level of consciousness, waiting restlessly to resurface? What will that mean for him, if Zayne retakes control? Will he ever see you again? Does he have the strength to fight his way back?

There's no time for these questions. Each moment he spends in quiet contemplation is another you go without air. He either lets Zayne take over or he’s as good as killed you. Your life, your death, they're both quite literally in his trembling, bloodied hands.

Dawnbreaker turns inward in search of the doctor, hoping the man can feel his surrender and submission. Please, he begs—no, prays—silently, we need you; she needs you. Can the doctor hear him? Will he respond? Dawnbreaker feels his pointer finger twitch against your shaking shoulder, wonders if that’s his doing or the other’s.

He clutches you tightly as he wills the world to fade away, repeating his silent prayer to a man who may not answer, to a man who may no longer be there. Dawnbreaker sucks in a deep, steadying breath of his own, fills the inside of his nose with the softness of your scent; it's subtle, sweet, like jasmine, though rationally he knows this isn't possible, that what he's smelling isn't truly there.

Be safe, he wills you as he forces himself to let go of his senses; his hearing first, so he need not hear your cries. Soon they'll quiet, as if occurring somewhere off in the distance, intense, but varying, synthesized like white noise.

I’m sorry, he thinks. A useless confession. Unspoken words stuck behind clamped lips.

And, now he's crying; now tears of his own have begun to fall. The wet droplets have the edges of his vision blurring. Soon he won't see anything at all. Too late, he realizes that this may be his final glimpse of you. His eyes seek out your features, but they're obscured and undefined.

There's the scent of jasmine again, as his grip on this reality loosens, as the physical world fades from view. There's a gasp—yours, he hopes, for it's muffled, disembodied—then there's nothing. A darkness. A coldness. Like he's buried under snow.