They weren’t nice people.
They had taken her and her husband, all on the grounds of them being different! He had wings; she had a voice that could twist hearts and minds to her will. But it wasn’t just them that had been taken, no. These people had a career built on snatching and studying people like them. The different people. The people who didn’t quite fit in.
They had imprisoned them, yes, but more importantly, they had taken her husband, Kaz. They had imprisoned Kaz. They had mocked his appearance, fondled his wings, laughed at him and had even plucked a few feathers from his back! She knew it was a painful experience, and it had led to a few streaks of now-dried blood streaking his light blue shirt. Not that she could see it, as they were in two separate rooms. But she had heard the laughter, and later on, his little groans of pain.
These weren’t nice people, not in the slightest. And she knew how to stop them.
“Kaz,” she murmured, walking to the wall and leaning on it. She could hear his footsteps, faintly, and his wings scraping against the floor as he dragged them to the wall.
“Ci? You holding up?”
Cecilia sighed at the sound of his voice. At least he was alive and well!
“You have a window in there, right? Can you open it?”
A pause. More scraping.
“..Yes. I could. But once I get out, I’m not sure how to get back in to get you. Could you get keys or something?”
Now it was her turn to be silent. Yes..yes she could. Technically, she could get the keys very easily. It was a matter of singing to the right person, placing them under her control with a few bars of song. But she didn’t..she didn’t just want to get keys. She needed to stop these people from ever harming anyone else! She needed to stop them, permanently.
And she didn’t want Kaz to be a witness to that.
“Kaz...I’ll be fine. I need you to go. To be safe.” Cecilia touched the wall, running one dark palm down its smooth surface. It was painted a light green. “I know you want that, too.” She sighed, closing her eyes and forming a light, little hum in the back of her throat.
“..Ci?” Kaz’s voice was muffled behind the wall. Cecilia leaned against her own, resting her curls against the wall and humming a bit louder. She knew that Kaz could hear her: that was sort of the point, right now.
A song.
A song just for him.
She opened her mouth, allowing the hum to shift and morph into quiet words. But it wasn’t the words that mattered so much as the desire packed behind them. She could touch Kaz’s will, feel out his desires, just like any siren. But this song was different.
This time, it was different because her desires were woven into the song, as well. Her burning need for Kaz to be safe, to be well, to be far away from her when she bent the wills of these other men.
They weren’t nice people, and neither was she, without Kaz. And she didn’t want Kaz to see what kind of monster his wife really was.
So she sang. Her voice built, growing in strength as rhyming words came to her as easily as breathing. The other side of the wall remained silent, save for the occasional scrape of wingtips against the tiled floor.
“Cecilia-..” Kaz’s voice came to her suddenly. It was confused and tight, as if spoken between clenched teeth.
She pressed herself to the wall, fixing herself against its smooth, sturdy surface. Her voice throbbed with emotion and desire. Her eyes were screwed shut, her body trembling with effort as her rarely-used voice poured out of her mouth and filled the silence.
“Cecilia..no.” His movements were more jerky, faster, as if he were trying to get away from her voice. “..No, Ci. Ci..don’t...please...please-..”
Oh..how anguished he sounded! His mind was being pushed against, filled up and enveloped in her voice. Cecilia shut her eyes tightly against the wet streaks that threatened to spill onto her freckled cheeks. She couldn’t let her voice waver. She couldn’t let her song end and break the spell. Kaz had to /leave/, and so every bit of power within her was being directed to overcoming his desire to stay here, with her.
It was her voice against his love, and she had to be the winner.
Leave.
“Ci..Cecilia..stop..!”
Leave me.
“I can’t-...I won’t leave you!”
Fly away and keep yourself safe.
“I can’t...I can...can’t...I..I..”
His words dissolved, and she could feel his will slowly grinding down. It made her tremble, but she couldn’t stop her song now, even if she wanted to. Its power, so sparingly used, was overwhelming even herself! She was merely its vessel, and it pulled her along as she spun her song, washing over her like some great, uncontrollable current.
Kaz’s wings rustled from behind the wall. His words had stopped. His will and heart and desires..she could feel them sliding to her, aligning themselves with the message of her song.
Her husband..a slave of her voice. Cecilia shook, a combination of the weight of her own power, and the heaviness of the reality that Kaz was really, truly leaving her.
Isn’t that what she wanted, though?
She could hear the beat of his wings from behind the wall. There was a shattering of glass (how he broke the window, she didn’t know and didn’t want to find out).
Cecilia continued to sing, her voice dipping to a whisper, even when she knew the other room was empty. She sang past the knot in her throat, past the pounding of her heart and the throb in her head.
Footsteps rounded the bend, approaching her room from the outside. Her esteemed captors, she could only assume, coming to check on her and Kaz.
Well..Kaz was no longer here, and neither was the gentle Cecilia, the wife he had married.
These were not nice people, and neither was she.
Leave me, Kaz. And don’t come back.
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Kaz belongs to @supesofherown
