Survivor S Guilt

Participants:

D'lan.jpg

Date: 2011.08.02
Location: EW - Star Stones
Synopsis: Everything is not always as it seems.
Rating: PG
Logger: D'lan

There were those that would consider Wyncrath’s mindvoice to be akin to that of scales slithering over rock, or of the hiss associated with a tunnelsnake, sly and sneaky but all that D’lan heard was the soft rustle of Gather gowns and the whisper of a lover’s promise. Sweet solace in a sea of guilt.

The sultry southern breeze that stirred through the midnight sky across the Star Stones high above the Weyr, ruffled through the brownrider’s hair, gentle as a woman’s caress and he frowned against it, turned away from it and back into his self-imposed prison.

Sweet and bitter, light and dark, laughter and sorrow, life and death…His dwelling place the darker side of light, his demeanour a well crafted mirror of the opposite.

« It doesn’t have to be this way. » Wyncrath’s mental tones flowed in quiet susurration.

Turning his head fractionally in the direction of his somnolent brown, D’lan’s tone was leaden, “Doesn’t it?” They’d had this conversation a hundred times before.

« It wasn’t your fault. » The brown’s tones slipped in weaving about his rider’s mind like the silken touch of a woman’s perfumed ribbon, trying to distract his thoughts away from what ate him up inside.

Guilt rushed in, swallowed him up and then spat him out in a jumbled mess of self-loathing like so many glittering shards of mirror reflected back at him.

Silently D’lan took another long pull from the bottle in his hands and he pulled up an image and flung it at his brown in brutal response.

Riders, wingmates, members of the original thirty that had made up the renegade wing coughing, wracked with fever….dying. Sasha….

The former Reachian brownrider shuddered and a strangled sound caught in his throat washed away by a burning swallow of brandy.

“I’m the one that convinced her to start jumping back further,” D’lan finally responded through a jaw set tight.

« You did what you thought was right at the time. » Wyncrath sighed, mourning the losses anew.

“And others paid with their lives for it,” D’lan pointed out tersely and then in a gruff tone as he toyed listlessly with the half empty bottle of vintage liquor, added, “We should have died too.”

« It would have achieved nothing, » the brown noted.

For a time the brownrider was silent, his shadowed gaze sweeping along the lines of weyrs that dotted the bowl wall, lingering over those belonging to the renegade dragonriders that had already taken up residence at Eastern Weyr. Maura, P’sec, Ch’rii, even the young goldrider’s weyr and then he let out a heavy sigh.

“M’pret won’t talk to me,” the words came quietly spoken, sitting heavily on the night air between brownrider and dragon. “I think he knows.”

« No one knows. » Wyncrath stated shifting to nudge his muzzle against his brooding rider’s thigh. « They were too sick to notice. »

“Randi does.”

« Yeah. » The brown couldn’t deny that for little escaped the notice of the goldrider. « Perhaps we carry the cure. » He stated in a brush of unusual hopefulness meant to soothe his bonded.

“If we did don’t you think she would have figured that out by now?” Anger and frustration sliced D’lan’s tone cold.

« You should speak to her about it. » The brown suggested unfazed by the taut reply.

“No!”

« Perhaps Abydoth’s then? »

Wyncrath got shot a filthy look laced tightly together with chords of pain, regret and guilt that clouded his rider’s expression and darkened his soul rendering him nothing more than a hollow shell of the man he so skilfully portrayed to others.

“Just let it go, Wyn,” D’lan said in weary tone as he hauled himself unsteadily up to his feet.

« I will, when you do. »

Flames of another time, another place, another burden of guilt, flared and rushed in carrying with it the screams of others dying. The remembered stench of thick acrid smoke so strong D’lan almost choked on the memory but he paid his dragon’s statement no response as he withdrew further into himself, silent and shut off where even the wily brown was unable to reach until the next morning.


Theme Music: Linkin Park - Somewhere I Belong


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