The anger left a foul taste in her mouth. Her throat burned as if she had swallowed acid, though anything to do with the man from Orre made acid seem like an enjoyable cup of wine. The curses and profanities she could have said still hung at the roof of her mouth, laced and ready to fire with a tongue dipped in venom.
It was probably right of John to have taken her away to cool off but...hate ran deep. She could stay away and ignore it all but the moment that the bastard crossed her mind, she was brought right back to that night he scorned her. She had given herself a day and perhaps push past it. She would return to him the better man, poised and proper, keeping her end of the deal. He was the uncivilized savage. Not her.
Truth was, she couldn’t get past it. She didn’t want to help him any longer. She could care less about what he wanted or what he hoped to accomplish or the kid he had lost. Bitterness and anger wanted the child dead in some sick satisfaction for everything he had done. However cruel and impulsive,it was too much. Loss won in the end. That she would even think like that dug its guilt-riddled claws deep into the gaping, bleeding hole in her heart. Not even Erimos deserved the feeling, as much as she despised him. She would justify it. That child was her ticket to never having to deal with the man again.
Selfish as she made it, Margra was a woman of her word.
The sky was still dark when she came to the medical tent. She prowled around the outside like a predator. She was here for one reason and one reason only. She picked a good time to come. Before dawn and after midnight, the majority of camp was sound asleep. Overworked medics would probably be passed out or too much of a zombie to notice her. The little pokemon nestled in her shirt didn’t stir either. Everything was going swell.
Margra avoided going through the regular entrances. The wide tent could accommodate many. Flaps ran alongside at measured intervals to move people and pokemon in and out with ease. She knew where he was-- in the corner where she had come in before. She lifted the canvas and there Erimos was, sleeping like a filthy pig. She instantly scowled, disdain written plainly over her face.
The lamps inside were all off with the exception of one at the other end. She was in enough shadow to do what she needed.Perfect.
Margra worked quickly. She wasn’t careful in her method; Erimos garnered no sympathy. She worked her arm under him so she could lift, wrapping the other around him to secure before pulling him out of his cot. He was as heavy as a pig too without the support it gave. Margra hissed softly,scrambling back as fast and far away as she could, toward the treeline. If not gravity that awoke him, then the dragging would, or perhaps the claws her hands had become to keep him in her grip.
If he awoke to pain, hurray. She hoped it hurt. She was going to throw him to the ground the moment he made a noise either way.
An evasive creature slumber could be. Days toiled on as years, lingering about purposefully to ridicule the Orrean as did the devil in her wicked craft. On the morn she would bring to him a meal, place it down with spite so that the metal dishes would clatter and the chipped cup filled with aged juice would run over the mouth. Never once had he offered his thanks, nor she to him a peaceful word.
Then one day the Rogue’s numbers ran thin, they’d left for a mission hours before Erimos stirred and came to seat himself upright, filled with mild curiosity at best. They did not clarify to him, the enemy, their great laid plans, for though his hands were incapable, he was still the poised fangs of a Seviper barreling down on a Zangoose, seeing them as merely another meal. And whilst the meal was kept far above any willful fingers, it did not take much to puzzle out their whereabouts and to put the final piece into place.
The content, however, remained a mystery which deserved some dawdling on, given there was only boredom to offer in that tent. Only she came to visit outside a doctor that would occasionally look him over, poking and prodding until they were satisfied; all business, except for that John fellah who would tell him stories about a girl he knew. Erimos was sketchy on the details and to be frank, it wasn’t worth the bother remembering.
The devil’s visits did not hold the some oomph as before. Color had drained from the harpy’s plumage, her vibrant touch-me-not tells to her poisonous claws had faded into lackluster monochromatic shades. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t put on a show and hold her guard before her as well as before, it was that now there were more visible chinks in the armor than before.
And finding the mark was all too easy. He’d bumbled upon it, let his tongue slip as a salted dagger beyond the threshold she’d erected so meticulously, only to have fall in her dread. Dennis had died—how he had was beyond the Orrean’s knowing and perhaps beyond his sympathy, if not for one detail.
If their roles had been reversed, if only for that moment in time, his hands would have flown about Margra’s throat and squeezed until the last drop of life in her eyes winked out,. If there was at least one thing the man understood, it was the damnable frustration that loss brought upon man’s shoulders and Kanto and Johto’s struggle was more than willing to provide this in droves.
These thoughts were the last to occupy Erimos before he tucked his head down for the night, capturing sleep in the late morning—only to be woken up what felt like moments later.
The shoddy cot gives away underneath the man, his stomach fluttering as though he were falling through space. A jolt spikes through his stomach, ringing through him with wakening alarm—as soon as protest slips through his teeth in a indistinguishable grumble, Erimos and the dirt are refamilarizing themselves with one another. Without even a glance the man is able to distinguish just who is responsible for this rude awakening, “Harpy.” Erimos doesn’t bother to mask the curl gnarling at his lip and the slits his eyes become, pointing at Margra, “What the hell is this shit all about?”
