Chapter 07
Dark, it was dark, Tina knew that without opening her eyes. She must have been in the middle of dreaming, a weird kind of dream, because the painful absence of noise and the feeling of floating could only be a dream.
She thought that she had found herself in Damon’s head again, but no, there was no heavy breathing, no pain, no trace of anything but calmness and silence.
Something touched her back and her eyes opened wide. She stared into the grey darkness, her heart thudding in her chest, but it didn’t slow down time. Yes, definitely dreaming.
She pushed her upper body forward; the space around her shifted, created small silver bubbles in the gel-like liquid that didn’t touch her skin, but held her captive nevertheless. She tried to look beyond the bubbles and their light, but no matter which direction she turned, she could only see darkness beyond, which gave her a feeling of floating in the infinity of space.
What’s going on?
Hands descended on her shoulders, the familiarity of touch and the warm wisps of affection that entered her mind almost overwhelmed her. She gasped.
The hands followed the line of her arms, from shoulder to her wrist, before they slid over her hands and fingers found the spaces between her fingers.
“Damon,” she breathed out as the hands guided her arms to wind around her body. She slumped back into a gentle embrace.
“Trinity.” The chin leaned on her shoulder and hot breath caressed her ear.
Like a kick against glass the name broke the blanket of calm that covered Tina.
“It’s Tina.”
“Tina,” Damon repeated and the echo of his words vibrated through the space and small bubbles created silver pearl necklaces, leading away from them. His arms loosened their grip. “Yes, I remember… she’s --” His voice broke. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Tina’s hand slipped from Damon’s and she turned in his embrace. In the silver light of the bubbles that grew with every movement and sound that they made, she could see the outlines of Damon’s face, the closed eyes and tensed line of his shoulders. She cupped his jaw, and had to swallow the lump in her throat. “She’s gone. I’m sorry. I miss her very much, too.” They all did; even though they hadn’t talked about it they held the loss inside them, nursing their sadness and pretending that they were okay. And they were, sort of, they had each other, the Dumes and her.
“What am I going to do now?”
What was she supposed to say to that? She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her temple against his jaw and held him while his fisted hands stiffly lay against his sides. The silver bubbles burst one by one and the darkness spread.
“She can’t be gone. She can’t.” New bubbles appeared as Damon’s body doubled over and forced Tina backwards. “What am I going to do now?”
“Damon?”
He pressed his forearms against his stomach, his fingers flexing. His body started to rock. “What am I going to do?”
“Damon?”
“She was my Beloved. She was all that I lived for. What am I going to do without her? I can’t become what I was before, I can’t...”
Her hands embraced Damon’s cheeks and she pressed her lips to the top of his head. For lack of better words she said, “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.” And she hoped that was true, that she would somehow be able to hush down the despair that she felt vibrating in Damon, the feeling so strong that she could almost touch it.
“It’s not going to be all right!” He slapped her hands away and lifted his head; he glared at her, his eyes changed colour, green became ruby-red, and they glowed in his face, burning, drilling holes in her. “You carry her mark, the mark of Beloved.” His jaw tensed. “But it’s not going to be all right! You are not her!” He slammed his hand against her navel.
She flew backward through the gel-like substance, thousands of bubbles marking the flailing of her arms and legs. Her eyes widened as his form became smaller and smaller. She reached out for him. “Damon!”
“You are not her!” Damon cried out before he raised his face up and, his arms tensed into an arch and his hands curled, he released a scream that pierced the space and created so many bubbles that their light looked like an explosion.
She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to hold at bay the hollowness that crashed down on her. She knew it so well, the blackness braided with sorrow and anger and everything in between. She had experienced it three times already, the last time a few months ago, but her feelings then couldn’t even compare with the intensity in which she was drowning now.
Tina.
She wanted to be there for him, she wanted to help him. “Damon.” Her voice was a soft whisper.
Tina, wake up.
But she didn’t want to wake up; she wanted to swim back to Damon and... to do what, wave a magic wand and make it all better?
Tina, wake up!
Something shook her and shook her and it wouldn’t stop. The world around her started to move away like the land seen from the train and the greyness changed into blackness, the gel around her thinned and thinned until it disappeared and she floated into emptiness. “No, let me be.” She swatted at the annoyance and her hands hit something solid.
The fingers wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her up. “Tina!”
“What?” She opened her eyes and glared at Muriel, who slowly released her.
“Are you okay?” Muriel climbed into the Sarniikzi.
She could still feel Damon's pain so clearly. She pulled her legs against her chest and her eyelids fluttered closed. And he had pushed her away. She fisted her hand. Why did that hurt so much? She knew that she had never been important to him; she knew that whenever he looked at her he saw Trinity, not her. Her nails dug into the softness of her palm. How Damon saw her shouldn't matter to her. It shouldn't! And she would make sure that it didn’t.
“Tina.” A hand touched her neck and slid over her shoulder and arm. “You had that nightmare again, didn’t you?”
She uncurled her hand. “Actually, no.”
“No? But you looked really troubled and... I thought you were with Damon.” Muriel pulled the sleeve of his soft cotton shirt over his hand, leaned over her and dabbed her cheeks with the fabric.
“I was with Damon, but it was different.” Tina touched her cheeks, which were still damp. She had cried? She frowned. But the wetness that slid down from the corners of her eyes told her she was still crying.
“Different?” He used the edge of his sleeve on her face again.
“Yeah, different.” She rested her fist on her knee and leaned her chin on it.
“Different how?” He sat down opposite her and tucked his legs under him.
She sighed before she spoke, “He was conscious and I wasn’t in his head -- I mean, I think I was in his head, but not like before. I didn’t feel the outside world through him, instead I was floating in this thick liquid, and he was there. I could see him and talk to him, and...”
“What?”
“He thought I was Trinity and he got upset when I told him that I was Tina.” Her eyes found Muriel’s. “And I could feel his pain and it was so strong, so raw. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Like she didn’t know how to deal with theirs. She snorted. She hadn’t even tried. Her hand slid over the padded surface until it bumped against Muriel’s and she curled her fingers around it. “I’m sorry for being so useless. I’m so used to dealing with things on my own and being on my own, that I have forgotten your feelings.” Actually she ignored their feelings; pretending that she was being considerate and waiting for them to speak up, deep down hoping that they wouldn't. It was time she stopped being so self-centred. “We haven’t even talked about Trinity and what her sacrifice meant for you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Yes there is.” She moved onto her knees and shifted closer to Muriel. “I know how it is when you lose somebody close to you.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Yes.” Tina nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I miss Trinity, I wish she was still there and I have this hole inside me whenever I remember her, but her disappearance hasn’t affected me as my grandmother’s death did.” She looked down at their hands. “Maybe it’s also because I have you now. You mean a lot to me and I want you to know, that anytime you need me, I will be there for you. If you need to talk or anything.”
“I know that.” His forehead wrinkled. “And I don’t exactly feel like I have lost Mom, because I have you.”
“As a substitute?” Tina's body stiffened.
“No, of course not. The moments spent with Trinity were special, but I don’t see you as her.” He squeezed her hand before he wiggled it out of her hold and rested his hands in his lap. “You have become something like a mother figure to me, somebody to cuddle me like Mom would, like Trinity would.”
“Come here.” Tina stretched out her arms and when Muriel shifted closer and leaned his head on her shoulder she wrapped them around him. “I like to cuddle you. You are a sweet boy.” And she loved him. She loved all of them. And she was sorry that they had lost the soul that was so precious to them. The hold of her arms tightened. They had spent so little time with Trinity; they had only started to get to know her... she bit her lip. There was nothing she could do about that now and she couldn’t be their mom, but... she would try to be a good ‘sister’ to them, giving them love and support and lots and lots of hugs and cuddles.
“A boy? You are aware that I’m older than you? Much, much older than you?”
Tina combed through Muriel’s hair. “But you don’t look like it. You should eat more if you want to grow up.”
“Who said that I wanted to grow up?” Muriel looked up at her, giving her a small smile.
She ruffled his hair and they stayed like that for a while before Muriel pushed himself away. “I think we should tell Uriel about your dream and how different it is.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“I’m not. I’m bringing this up because I think it’s important.”
“Why?”
“Because such a change in scenery might mean something.”
Tina frowned. “I don’t see how it could mean anything.”
Muriel’s eyes searched her face. “Why is it so hard for you to tell Uriel?”
“I just don’t see the point.”
“You’ve never told him anything about your nightmares. He has to learn everything from me or from Haniel. Why is that?”
“That’s not true.” She did talk with Uriel about her dreams. And about Damon. Didn’t she? There was that one time -- no, that was Haniel. She bit her lip. She did talk about them with Uriel, she was sure of that, she just couldn’t remember a specific example right now.
“It is true.” He tilted his head. “Could it be? You noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
Muriel stared at her for a moment before he shook his head. “Nothing, never mind.”
“Noticed what?”
“It’s just me being a know-it-all.” He scratched his neck and gave her a sour smile before he scrambled out of the steel case and went toward the room's door.
“Muriel!” Tina followed him. “Don’t start something without finishing it.”
“I didn’t start anything.” Muriel rushed through the door into the hallway.
“Muriel.” She slowed down time and caught his wrist, then let time come back to normal.
“That’s why I never play tag with you.” Muriel turned.
“Come on.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you if you tell me why you avoid talking about nightmares with him.”
“But I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” Muriel’s voice was soft, but firm.
“I don’t know.” Tina rubbed her temple. “I didn’t even know that I was doing that before you pointed it out.”
“Why are you two so loud?” A stern voice drew their gazes toward where, two steps away from them, Uriel leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms and scowled at them.
“Nothing.” Tina released Muriel.
“She was having that dream again, but in different surroundings and this time Damon was conscious,” Muriel said.
“Did you talk to him?” Uriel’s arms fell to his sides and he stepped closer to Tina.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
You see how you don't want to talk with him? Muriel's voice resonated in Tina's head.
“Didn’t he tell you where he is? Or maybe give you some clue?”
She narrowed her eyes at Muriel before she focused on Uriel. “It never came up. I don’t think he is even aware of anything that’s happening to him.”
“I see.”
“This is probably his way of protecting himself,” Muriel said.
“Probably.” Uriel ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes on Tina. “They are not helping, the dreams, are they? And they are making you drained and scared.” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Come.”
He pulled her into his room and sat her down in the swivel chair before the desk. Muriel followed them and leaned on the wall beside the desk.
“What are you doing?” Tina couldn’t help but ask while her gaze slid over the medical equipment that lay scattered on the desk’s surface. That wasn’t like Uriel, who usually had to have everything in perfect order.
From the drawer Uriel pulled a box and put it on the counter. “I did some research and I made this for you.” He rummaged through the box and pulled out a plastic bag with pink and white pills. “They should help you sleep and tone down the REM sleep.”
REM? Oh, yeah, the scientists associated that with dreaming. “But you said that pills don’t work on me anymore, and how could pills even tone down REM sleep?”
“These are special pills, made especially for you and for your sleep problems.” Uriel put the small bag into her hand.
Tina stared at the pink and white capsules. Just a few days earlier she would have been overjoyed at a ‘gift’ like that, but now... despite Damon being a jerk to her -- no, she couldn’t think like that, not when she knew how much pain he was in -- she wanted to be there for him. She couldn’t leave him there on his own. She crumpled the bag in her palm. “Is this what you wanted to give me the other night?”
“Yes.”
“So this is why you took my blood.”
“Hey, guys, where are you?” Haniel’s voice came from the hallway.
“In here,” Tina yelled.
Haniel peeked into the room before he strode into it. “Hey, have you seen the inner yard?”
“No. How could we when we are in here?” Muriel said.
“There are at least three buses of men and some vans. It seems that Irene’s blackmailing worked and she got what she wanted.” Haniel threw himself in an old-fashioned armchair that stood by the Sarniikzi.
“But unfortunately that means that that girl is running around, free as a bird, and will soon be on our heels again.” Uriel closed the box and put it back in the drawer.
“But we are leaving soon and she wouldn’t dare go to Prva’s estate.” Tina swung the chair around so that her back was to the desk.
“I don’t know.” Haniel turned sideways in the chair and threw his legs over the arm of the chair. “We also thought that she wouldn’t dare attack us in Damon’s territory, but she did.”
“She would be pretty stupid if she wanted to attack us or force her way into the Damned’s domain.” Uriel straightened and leaned his hips on the table. “We can’t harm her while we are here, but if she attacks us first outside the Lost’s territory there’s nothing stopping us.”
“But we wouldn’t harm her anyway, right? No matter how pesky that girl might become?” Tina’s gaze slid over the three of them and she scowled at the silence. “Right?”
“No, of course we won’t harm her,” Muriel said.
“If we are not forced to,” Haniel added.
“We might not even need to concern ourselves with her.” Uriel crossed his arms. “If she becomes a nuisance to the Damned, the Numuns will quickly get rid of her.”