H130, day 187, 10 AP (Hadrian, Wraith)

[exile]

With almost palpable relief, Hadrian stepped through the badly weathered wooden door of the Lost Keep Inn to find the common room once more abandoned. The thin tapers which had lit the room previously were now smothered in their holders, and the logs on the hearth had been allowed to burn down to a slow smolder in his absence for no patron was present to bother stoking them. Barren though it might be, the warm room was still a comforting sight to a weary sod. In fact Hadrian couldn’t think of a better place to call kip on this lonely occasion.

With as silent step as ever he could manage, the aasimar tread his away around the long unoccupied stools and scattered tables with their appearance of pitiful neglect to find the door to Wraith’s meager chambers. Meager was a relative term he conceded. It was leagues above the austere cell Hadrian maintained back at the Gatehouse.

Pushing open the door on thankfully well oiled hinges he peered in to the interior uncertainly. It was difficult to say with any certainty who appeared the more wan, the gaunt and haggard Wraith who appeared profoundly sad even in sleep or her unfortunate patient. In either event it was obvious that both occupants had long since passed into deepest slumber on their respective cots, and though Hadrian stepped lightly to avoid rousing them it was hardly necessary. Leaning his spear against the mantle piece, Hadrian set his remaining belongings on the ground beside the rocking chair. With a look of quiet deliberation, he cast off the wide-brimmed hat to reveal a dark mane of tousled locks as black as the feathers which adorned his weapon.

Hadrian seated himself on the ancient rocker and carefully extracted a battered tome from deep within his pack. The exterior of the book was unremarkable, bound in rich dark leathers bearing no stamp or filigree and tied simply with a tasseled cord of silver hue. Between the well worn covers however ran page after page of brilliant vellum marked on almost every inch with runes of a half-forgotten tongue scarce heard across the planes. And interspersed amidst the runes, blooming like arcane flowers in fields of impossible diversity, erupted spidery symbols and occult diagrams wrought in a most majestic hand.

With a delicate thrust of the fire poker that sent a cascade of sparks dancing up through the flue on the rising currents, Hadrian settled into his musings, quickly lost to other realms of possibility.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith stirs in her sleep, tossing and turning on the narrow cot as she dreams, until she almost rolls off the mattress, and finally flips over onto her side. Slender hands, still sheathed in supple black leather to her elbows, clutch the pillow in a feverish grip, and she curls into a tight ball on the mess of coarse blankets.

She looks so frail and pitiful, curled as she is and seeming so child-like; not unlike the sad, orphaned waifs of the Hive, wrenched from their parents by the cold hand of Death. Her pale lips move, but no sound comes out, and her face suddenly twists into an expression of anguish and torment.

The tiefling Dead starts to wail in her sleep, soft, keening, and mournful. It is a heart-wrenching sound of an innexpressible grief, wordlessly pouring out her sorrow for the loss of her beloved son.

A single word, a name, rises sharp and clear from the sad incoherent babblings: "Aerin", uttered with a keen edged, heartbroken cry, mere moments before the wretch known as Wraith awakens with a start. She sits upright in bed, drawing her thin legs tight against her narrow chest, and wraps her arms around her knees.

Rocking back and forth on the straw-packed mattress, Wraith starts to cry...

[Stix]

"Huh!" calls the nameless sod in the other bed, awakening with a start. He sits idly in the darkness, staring around at the walls before slumping onto his side and pulling a worn blanket over himself, curling into the fetal position and beginning to shake and whimper.

[exile]

All was not right in the dreams of the Dead, for Hadrian watched the poor woman twist about in her tortured slumber. What troubles you so? he wanted to ask, but could not find the heart to wake her. It seemed as though she hadn’t slept in years, and it hardly came as a surprise to him now that he had seen what cruelties she endured by night.

The first strangled utterance of the Dustman barely through her chewed, dry lips and the leaves of his dusty tome clapped shut to lie forgotten by his pack. Hadrian rose and crossed the scant few steps between them, to seat himself upon the foot of Wraith’s bed. Would she welcome his touch? Did she long for a shoulder to cry upon?

”Aerin,” rose the mournful cry.

’Aerin?’ he thought. ‘Now who was that?’

She was awake now, of that much he was sure. Gently he extended an ungloved hand towards her, to accept or deny as she wished. He wanted to raise her from her suffering but he feared to push too far too soon.

”Peace, sister,” his words were a balm to sooth even the deepest of cuts. “You are safe here. I swear to it.”

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Still sobbing pitifully, the weeping Dead's fast falling tears border on hysteria, or madness. Whatever demons have chased her from broken, fitfull sleep, whatever haunted memories have wrought such pain, her grief is very real, and terrible to behold.

Wracked by her amber lamentation, Wraith falls into Hadrian's arms, and weeps into the shoulder of his robes. Her thin hands lack any real strength - even then that has been diminished by lack of sleep - yet her fingers convulsively clench and unclench, knotted as they are in the soft, dark cloth.

Her tears, her sorrow bent body, are both warm, a stark contrast compared to the leather sheathed, enervated hands that clutch at his shoulders.

She remains this way for a while. It could be seconds, minutes, or even longer; it's hard to tell, not that time really means anything to her in this state, this shattered mindset.

She nuzzles his neck, unconsciously breathing in his scent, taking what little comfort she can from his closeness in her hour of anguish. His scent was fresh, and pure, like most other Aasimar, she supposed, not that any of his kind ever let her close enough to determine thus. He was the first.

Yet hidden beneath the warm, vital, soothing fragrance of his flesh, crept the faintest trace of blood, and battle, impressed upon his soul like a brand. Although she could've been mistaken.

"They... They took him from me. He's gone; my boy's gone..." The grief stricken tiefling blubbers through her helpless tears. She clings to him all the tighter, as a sudden paroxysm of anguish wracks her faded shell. "Why, Hadrian? Why does it hurt so much? Why do these wounds still haunt my flesh, my soul, when I'm supposed to feel nothing? I... am... dead; and the Dead don't feel..."

[exile]

Hadrian wrapped the sobbing woman in his arms compassionately. With reverent motion he raised a warm hand up to her pale cheeks to wipe away the unrelenting stream of tears.

So this was her terrible burden then. Aerin was a child, Wraith’s child. Stolen from her by some terrible fate. It was no great mystery why life had lost all meaning to her, why Death had such appeal. But who were They? Could the child still be alive?

He wondered if the poor woman even knew.

“It hurts because you are not yet dead, sister; because your heart still beats and you still draw breath.” He tread on careful ground here, offering what solace he could while trying not to offend the sensibilities of the Dustmen. “And with each beat and each breath your boy lives on in your thoughts. You can not will away such grief. But neither can you let it define you, sister.

“Whatever else you aspire to be on your path towards your True Death, you must be true to yourself. You are not yet ready to lay this pain to rest; there is no shame in that. Even amongst the Dead, releasing one’s passion can be the work of a lifetime.”

He held her close, and hoped that his words might find some fertile ground in which to take root.

"Huh!" calls the nameless sod in the other bed, awakening with a start. He sits idly in the darkness, staring around at the walls before slumping onto his side and pulling a worn blanket over himself, curling into the fetal position and beginning to shake and whimper.

Hadrian’s mournful gaze strayed to the patient. As much as he desired to help the poor sod, his first inclination was to remain at Wraith’s side. The realization of that instinct came to him with considerable shock. Hadrian had scare known the tiefling two hours but already he felt as though she were closer to him than most.

”Your ward stirs,” he offered simply, allowing Wraith the benefit of the decision.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith sobs uncontrollably for a moment longer, clinging feebly to the Cabalist as the unstemmed flow of tears spill down her cheeks, to stain his sombre robes.

Her thin arms slide around his neck, betraying her need to hold on for as long as she could - it seemed a lifetime had passed since she last felt the warmth and compassion of simplistic mortal contact; one of the many necesseties of life denied by the ascetic Dead.

A weak, shaky sigh, more a tormented whimper, slips unbidden from her chapped, scabby lips, and she nuzzles the gentle hand that caresses her cheek, and wipes her away her tears.

"Aye, perhaps I can't let this pain define me, but Aerin..." She moans lamentably. The amber dew of her sorrow gathers unshed along dusky sapphire eyelashes. "My boy was all I had left in this world. Now I have nothing. No home; the Takers were quick to reposses that from under my nose." Anger creeps into her voice, suffusing the dispair with bitterness as she speaks. She slips easily into her confession, offering up the pain of these dark, terrible secrets that have tormented her for so long, to the Aasimar Cabalist willing to listen, and comfort her.

"I have no family; the only mother and father I have ever known have since passed Beyond. Nor have I yet found my true father, a Fiend I know nothing of, save for his moniker. No friends; at least not the kind that truly care about me. And the only possessions I own, I carry upon my back." She heaves a truly despondant sigh, seeming to deflate before Hadrian's melancholy lapis gaze... If it's even possible for such a delicate and fragile, gaunt young woman to shrink even further into her bony shell.

Wraith lays her cheek upon Hadrian's breast, sighing miserably again as she listens to the steady drum-beat tempo of his heart, trying to garner what small comfort she can from the simple humane gesture."Thankyou Hadrian, for your kindness, and your willingness to listen, and comfort me in my time of need." The alto voice that murmurs these words is soft and shaky at best.
"Here, with you I have found a solace I never thought I could find with another. It's nice to know that some bashers still care..."

[exile]

The cataract of unheralded emotion had seemingly subsided into a dull and familiar ache for Wraith no longer shuddered uncontrollably in Hadrian’s arms. All that remained of her unveiling of the soul were the mark of her tears, the echo of a sigh, and the slightest tremor in her voice. Even Wraith’s red rimmed eyes betrayed nothing, for Hadrian suspected her amethyst gaze seldom expressed anything beyond her terrible heartbreak.

”The planes are vast, sister,” Hadrian replied gently. ”There are many who still care for their fellows. Unfortunately far too many of them live in fear, preyed upon by those who mistake empathy for weakness. You needn’t thank me for listening, sister. At best I would be remiss were I to pay no heed to your suffering. Worse, I would be guilty of blinding my own eyes; and that I find unconscionable.

“Though I wish it were otherwise, I can not return your child to you. I can however help you to look for him if you so desire it. In all the boundless planes there is someone who knows the dark of what happened to your boy, and together we can find them. As for your father, well think on it carefully. A fiend is still a fiend even if you count him kin. You may well not like what you find should you dig too deeply.”

Hadrian’s countenance was worn but friendly. A great fatigue had settled upon his shoulders and he worried what gloomy comings it foretold. But more so he felt sympathy for the woman he cradled, for she really was without anyone. In any other faction at least she would have found some shade of a friend, but the Dead were never friends; merely kindred spirits.

He would have to see what light he could cast from the lines of hungry mouths that flocked to the almshouse. If the boy was still in Sigil, it was a fair bet that one of them knew something…

“In any event, you can not further either end tonight. Let us see to your patient and then you would do well to take what ever respite you can find in what remains of the night.”

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith nods weakly, and heaves a feeble sigh, the last of her shuddering sobs having long since taken it's leave of her thin, grief wracked frame. And all that remained in its wake was the tell tale hollowness, an emptiness and fatigue left behind with the passage of strong emotion. Drying her eyes with shaking fingertips, she allows Hadrian to cradle her a moment longer, then finally withdraws from his comforting embrace.

"Aye, I know there's nothing that can be done tonight, but the grief still remains, gnawing away at my spirit like a cancer. I feel I must do something, and do something now, before all hope is lost, and this helplessness is crushing me." She sniffles, and stares down at her hands. Her fingers flex beneath the supple black leather. The dim realisation that she hasn't yet removed her gloves hits her, and she hesitates, before peeling them away. With a deliberate slowness that contrasts with her discordant feelings, she folds the gloves, placing them neatly at the foot of the bed, beside her corset.

The delicate skin beneath has been scoured by a lattice of surgical precision scars, many of them old and nearly faded with time. But the reality of their ugliness remains, a stark truth to overshadow her wilting beauty. No wonder she hides them so...

"Any way you can help me find my boy is greatly appreciated, Hadrian." She murmurs at length, glancing over at her patient occupying the other cot, for the first time seeing him since she woke up.

"I should lann you that I fear he has been abducted by an underground cult; within three weeks of his disappearance, the nursemaid I hired to care for him while I worked, turned up at the Mortuary, passed over by some bubber named Pharod. Her body... had been desecrated in a ritual to honor the Abyssal Lord, Graz'zt..."

Allowing time for the gravity of her words to sink in, Wraith shifts her weight and rises from the bed, pausing settling as comfortably as she can beside her patient. "Be still, cutter... You're safe here..." Her words are like the soft, maternal caress of a child's lullaby, gentle and soothing. Her cool hands go through the usual motions with meticulous care and a light touch, checking pulse, heart-rate, breathing, body temperature...

"My name is Uathach, and my companion here is Hadrian. We're here to help." She tucks the frayed covering closer around his shivering form, layering her own winter blanket over him, and pours a small amount of clean water from the unmarked flask into a chipped wooden cup, should he plead for a drink.

[Stix]

The delirious sod shudders at Wraith's voice and flinches at her touch, beginning to tear at his hair in his sleep. He pulls the blanket over his ears and makes thin, panicked whimpering sounds for a few seconds before sleep finally takes him again.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith sighs, withdrawing her touch so as not to distress the tormented man further, but she remains by her patient's side, should he awaken abruptly again.

"He's delirius, but at least he'll sleep awhile longer, and recover some vestige of strength." She murmurs in soft, sombre tones as drab and austere as their sparse surroundings. "I fear whatever trauma my patient has endured, may surpass the physical; he seems afflicted in mind and spirit. Whatever horrors he witnessed before, it still continues to haunt him now in sleep." Wraith looks away from the slumbering sod once more, her sober gaze seeking Hadrian's lapis orbs.

"If you could obtain some Krigalan Dayblossom come morn, it would help hasten my patient's recovery. Sadly, there's little I can offer in monetary recompense..."

[exile]

Hadrian sat in silence on the edge of Wraith’s cot, observing her careful ministrations. As quickly as the patient’s subconscious panic had emerged, it retreated once more into the inscrutable depths of his psyche.

“Do not concern yourself with remunerations, sister. I can not promise that I will find the herb you speak of, but if it is indeed available to procure then it will be yours.”

The aasimar rose to his feet with a weary effort, and quietly tread across the rough-grained floor boards towards the dying hearth. After a moment’s consideration he selected two silver bark logs from the woodpile and fed them to the sputtering flames. A host of brightly burning sparks flared to life and danced up the flue capriciously, casting back the shadows which smothered the room.

With a firm hand, Hadrian guided the battered rocking chair around to face the two beds. It was apparent that sleep would not find Wraith again for many hours, and the Bleaker was content to abandon his studies for the eve.

Hadrian fixed the heartbroken woman with a tired smile and clasped his slender fingers together upon his abdomen. For a while he could do no more than merely drink her in with his eyes.

”Tell me about your son," he said at last.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

"... My son?" She echoes slowly, as though the words weigh heavily upon her heart; and she has every reason to grieve, after all that has happened in the months gone by.

Her hands clench and unclench, and start to tremble visibly, before settling in her lap again. Her wan expression - her faded eyes at once misty and downcast - betrays a deep-seeded distress, desperation and despair, long since burned into her psyche. Though only a rare few, if any, would know the truth of the pain that clouds those violet eyes.

Wraith sucks in a slow breath, and releases it as a deep melancholy sigh. "As you may already know, tieflings such as I cannot bear children of our own, without dying in the process; but Aerin is as much my son as any babe that might pass from my loins." She grimaces and wraps her thin arms around herself as she says this, and sighs again. She does that a lot; sighing heavily, as though existence is a great burden in and of itself.

"I adopted him less than two years ago. It was a deep, rainy night - I still recall it clearly - when weariness, and lack of spare beds within the dormitories, forced me to trudge home from the Mortuary. I'd barely passed a few blocks from Ragpicker's Square, when a scuffle in a dark lane drew my attention. At first I ignored it, thinking it was just another fight between impoverished tenants and satreet-bound thugs. Until I heard a child's screaming over the racket, that is...

I slipped into the alleyway, creeping close to the wall..." She pauses for a moment to collect her thoughts, and to wipe a stray amber tear from the corner of her eye.

"There were bodies everywhere; mostly chaosmen, if their crazy garb and faction insignia were any indication, coming to a head with a rival gang. Though unfortunately, as these things go in the Hive, unwary sods from the surrounding shanties were swept up in the fighting. Two such victims were a half-elven couple, butchered as they struggled to escape with their family. A little boy, no older than 4 cycles, huddled over his mother and infant brother, sobbing..." Wraith hesitates in the telling again, wiping her eyes with shaking fingers.

"I-I couldn't just leave him there, I couldn't let him suffer the same fate as his parents, and if he did somehow manage to slip away and survive, the Bleakers - forgive me for saying thus - may've snapped him up, and taken him to the Orphanage. Or he would've been doomed to starvation and wandering the streets. The Hive is no place for a child.

So I did the only thing I could; I wrenched him from his dead mother's breast, bundled him up in my cloak, and carried the screaming child home. That night, and the first few months were a nightmare, as he fell ill, tried to run away and got lost on numerous occassions, and cried or woke screaming during the night. It wasn't until only a year ago when he began to accept me as his mother, though even now, he still grieves, and has woken up during the night.

In case you're wondering, as Aerin had no other next of kin on record, I filed for his adoption and it was approved a few months later. It seemed better than the alternatives." She frowns pensively, and chews her bottom lip, heedless of the thin rivulets of blood that seep from the tiny cuts.

She clasps her hands together, and stares down at them for a while, asa though the answers to all ofg her unspoken questions will be found there. "Unless there's more you'd like to know, Hadrian, I'd prefer to sit quietly for a while now." She murmurs softly.