DARK FEATHERS TEASER 3
・@screechinginthevoid another little teaser for Dark Feathers, more centered around reader and Crowdad's relationship. A lot of hurt comfort and some angst in this and more so focused on Death in particular・
There again is that horrible feeling that swells in your chest. A dark and growing pit of utter anguish and betrayal. Your fingers close around the feather and pull it close to your heart, hoping that maybe, you can reach out to Dust. That you can find him and therefore, Death.
You miss them. You need your Horsemen to save you. But they’re not here this time to do that. You find yourself back in that attic, huddled up with your books and graphic novels, dreaming of your adventurous escape away from a life you now consider distant and not yours.
Legs beginning to quiver, trembling from the loss of will to keep standing, you fight in vain to hold yourself strong.
“You’re stronger than this,” you keep muttering yourself in a whispered mantra. “Be stronger than this. Be stronger… strong—stronger…”
The feather in your grasp bristles, a sudden death coming over it and like ashes of its remains, it disintegrates before your very eyes. Vivid and sharply cutting into and out of your vision, you see him. Tall pale standing alongside his steed, a hand clasped around the elongated hilt of harvester as it too stands beside him.
Tears fall steadily down your cheeks and you cannot bring yourself to keep them caged any longer. Your chest feels as if it’s ready to burst from the onslaught of how much you want to scream.
Please…
Please… come back to me…
Your chest feels as if it’s ready to burst from the onslaught of how much you want to scream.
Come back to me…
Please?
You want to scream out to him. As a mirror shatters into a thousand, useless shards, the vision is lost and the sound finally breaks free; but you’re too late.
“PLEASE!”
Your breath becomes raggedly and tight in your lungs, forcing you to whimper and gasp aloud. Your strength is defeated yet again and you fall forward, catching yourself with the grazing of your palms against the ground.
When you raise your head to stare upwards, the moon glowers at you with that similar pale and you want to scream out in anger, to curse it for taunting you so. The bellow of a frosty wind blows through, reminding you of him as you think you can smell the faintest catch of his scent.
“Why… does everyone leave me behind like this?”
“I never did,” says your father from behind. The croak of his octave evidently giving away just how tired he had become these past few centuries alone. Your head turns rapidly, a short gasp in your throat as you’re caught red-handed.
But he doesn’t look down on you with that iron glare, reprimanding you in your grief. His gaze is soft to regard with sympathy, the way his long, ratty and white brows slope down and the creased wrinkle softening in his features. Despite his age, he bends down low and takes hold of your hand that you reach out towards him, only to reconsider and instead throw yourself at him to embrace him.
His hands move to catch you and take hold, never once faltering and giving you a chance to think he’ll leave you. Not here, not now — not ever.
“Hush,” he croones lowly as you begin to tremble, crying, “Hush now, my child… I’m here.”
To know that your father is here, right before your very eyes where you’re able to see, touch and know he’s really here is comforting enough. He banishes the horrors of your nightmares and of your sorrows. Just a little, he manages to make that void disappear and make you forget all but the time when it was just the two of you. There were no Horsemen, none of these… feelings that made your heart beat faster and your stomach turn and flutter. It was just you and your father, attending the quietness of the archives together as you learn all there is about inscribing and learning how to communicate with the crows.
As his hand moves in slow strokes to run through your hair, he remembers the evenings where you would be face down in an opened tome, breath silent and peaceful and sound asleep. He’d brush the strays of your hair from your face, gentle as to not wake you. How lucky he was to have you as his heir; his darling child. How honoured he feels every waking moment when he hears your voice call him ‘Dad’ not as a formality, but because he is the father you needed in your life. Someone you could count on to protect you no matter what, to cheer you up and to assure you that all would be well.
Your shuddering begins to wane and your cries grow quiet after sometime, reduced into a muted choir of sniffles and stuttered breaths. His hand continues to brush and comb through your hair with tender abandon, the act second nature to him by now. With a final prod that lifts a frame of hair out of your eyes, your gaze meets his and that warm, wrinkled smile.
“I know you are young and still in love,” he begins, his hand held under your chin and thumb wiping a stray tear, “But never forget that first and most, I will be the one who loves you through. I am the one who will never turn on you.”
You pull yourself closer to him again and your hands hold tightly to him. He chuckles at this, noting just how badly you needed the closeness of someone you love; someone you can trust.
And you do. Your father has never once turned his back on you.
“I’m sorry I didn’t see it before, Dad.” Your sigh is remorseful. You’d been so consumed in the blindness of your love that you forgot that your father had been there all along. Watchful over you but silent, like a ghost in the background, awaiting only for when he saw that when all else failed you, you needed him to raise you back up.
“Love is… dangerous in the way it causes such blindness. But despite the storm in your eyes, I knew that the blizzard would blow over soon and you would see me again.”
Your eyes momentarily meet and the ever faint glisten in his eyes is a secret. You don’t bring any notice to it, but you acknowledge that on the inside, he encounters a battle all his own as he too does battle with the amulet’s influence. But by bit, your father grows weary and a piece of his sanity is stolen.
“I see you, Dad. You’re the one that’s here for me now.”
There is a gnawing fear that he too will become lost to you, but with hope, you cling to him like nothing else in this life can keep you afloat. He tuts at you with a shake of his head, pulling you once more into his arms.
“I always shall be, child. Always.”
In the muffle of his cloaked robes, a smile befalls over your lips as you’re held close, so secure and safe. Not another thought turns back towards the shadow of your past whilst you’re here. Your father is all you need in the end. You see that now as he beckons you to follow with him, together you walk out of the aviary and bid the crows a farewell as they all filter out through the aviary’s top and into the realm’s night to scourge secrets.
You feel that the world is finally coming back into order. The world as you know it. The one where it’s just you and him. But like everything good in your life, it comes to a swift execution. Your father stumbles forward slightly and with a shocked gasp, caught unawares, you steep yourself to catch hold of him and to support him.
“Dad,” you say, eyes tracing him worriedly but he only brushes off your concern with a forced, tired smile that reaches his eyes too harshly. The look of an elderly man who disintegrates before your eyes like the feather in your palms.
“I am… fine.” His attempt to assure you does little to actually succeed but nevertheless, you help him back through the winding corridors, retreating inside the walls of your dark castle, surrounded by the force of your solitude.
Death paces the balance of Harvest in his grip with a feverish irate, impatience pronounced in every passing pat that meets his shoulder. He’s stared on for what feels like eons towards the icy fortress, locked inside the lover he left behind.
