A thin pale hand reached through the cell, outstretching, reaching, fingers clutching a small tail, the little creature shrieked and flailed before it was dropped into its iron prison, a beat of pause before a dark, predatory beak snapped upon the mouse. It's tiny shrieks falling on deaf ears until there was nothing but the ripping of flesh and fur. The pale hand withdrew.
Fen'nan watched the Calemberger Black Hawk tear into the mouse like it was nothing. She didn't know how Milo found it. Nonetheless where he'd found it tamed, or if he'd done it himself. But these questions were far from her mind as she marveled at the predatory birds sheer, brilliant, dark magnificence. The way it exerted it's force over the mouse so swiftly. Without thought, remorse.
"It's no' tae tastiest I know, but ye'll get out soon. Free...for awhile." She spoke aloud to the hawk, which made no gesture if it was listening or not, naturally. Focused on its now dead dinner. It seemed small in its cage. Trapped to eating what was given to him, unable to fly free, to hunt. Nostalgia washed over her, unwelcoming.
The Altalar's crimsons brows knit quietly. It was odd to be on the other side of the cage. Foreign and almost wrong, watching that hawk. A Blackhawk that meant so much to her but so little to anyone else. It brought echos of bitter, terrifying memories as she watched the bird move within its iron prison.
"You have stooped to talking to birds," a smooth, Ithanian voice spoke somewhere from behind and above her. She jumped a bit, glancing over her shoulder.
Venalaris's rotten face stared back at her, the decaying gray of his skin striking against the fancy black and gold robes he adorned, the cuffs of the sleeve stiffened at the edges with blood and dirt.
"And I'm talkin to dee-ad men again, so I'm a wee bit mad." She spoke simply. When she first saw him, she was terrified. He haunted her waking dreams. Felt him watching at the corner of her eyes where she stepped. Now she didn't mind. She didn't have the energy or time to deal with ghosts of the pasts or mad hallucinations. Or nightmares. More nightmares.
His gaunt face turned towards the cage, and she turned with him, eyeing the hawk. "A generous gift, to be sure. You have done the silly task of naming it, naturally." He assumed, as the dead Altalar stepped up beside her.
The young woman gave a small smile to the hawk, who now stared back at them with wary, cautious eyes, not sure what to make of them. Ready to snap at whoever. "Yes..." she said slowly, eyeing the bird. Her tone was full of love and pain, eyes flooded with bitter pains of long since past memories. "I named him Benjamin."
There was the beat of silence and she glanced to her right to see if he was even there anymore, only to find him peering down at her, his ice-blue gaze radiated of obvious disgust and disapproval, ironic considering the fatal stench of death and stale wine he carried.
"You've let yourself care. How naive."
She didn't respond, her jaw rolling and clenching, glancing back towards the bird. "I would rather care too much then no' care enough at all," she answered bluntly, but her voice betrayed her confidence, wavering. She wasn't sure.
"Liar," he hissed. She glanced down to the floor briefly, lips pressing thinly together. He saw right through her. He always did. Even dead.
"You play games beyond your capability, and now you are left the fool," he paused and gave her a thin, cold smile. "Do you enjoy having both men worship at your altar?"
"Shove it. Piss off wit ye. It's not like that. I dinnae mee-an—"
He held up his rotting, bejeweled hand and she found herself falling silent instinctively. She scowled as he cut in, smooth and calm as ever. "I don't care what you meant. It's what has been done. You resent all you've done and here you are, repeating the past. Think me the villain now? I do not drive your choices."
"I'm not a monst—"
"You are everything a monster. The things you seek to destroy, you are becoming."
He paused momentarily before in an almost elegant gesture, clenched his cold hand into a fist and began to slam his fist against the iron bars of the door. The Blackhawk shrieked inside angrily, it's black feathers flapping wildly. The shrieks grew with each pound and it sounded suddenly scarily like her own screams.
Milo's head slammed against iron bars in some haunting memory, replaying in her mind until it was all she could see. Fen'nan pressed her hand to her ears, eyes squeezing shut. Bang. Bang. Bang. He kept doing it until she was screaming too, somewhere with the bird. He did it until his hand cracked loudly and in her mind she could hear the sounds of ribs breaking under her hand as she shoved someone. Again and again. Cracks, bangs, and shrieks filled her ears.
Fen'nan didn't even realize she was screaming until she was on her knees on the floor, hands pressed to her eyes, somewhere during the noise she'd ended up on the floor on her knees, her screams dying away when Venalaris ceased his banging of the bars, leaving her in sudden sobs.
The dead man looked at her with both pity and revulsion.
"They're making you soft, you stupid child. Look at you. You are a weapon and weapons do not weep. Pull yourself together."
"Plee-ase. Plee-ase leave me," She half begged, her nails digging into her forehead, face still in her hands, her breaths came out unsteady.
"But I have a gift for you." He said, kneeling before the aggrieved redhead, his decaying hands reached into her pocket as she lifted her head from her hands to watch as he pulled a human heart from his pocket. It still beat in his lifeless hands, red, pink, gross and perfect.
He held it out to her and she took it, feeling it's warm, gushy sliminess in her fingers. She lifted her wet, blue-green eyes to him, confusion evident over her reddened, blotchy face.
But his decaying face smiled, mouth of yellowed, missing teeth filling her vision. He did not look at her but what was in her hands. "Ah, Sparrow! You are just like me after all. You better hide that heart."
She looked down, watching as the heart in her hands shriveled and sank, the color fading from it. Her expression turned to horror as she watched the heart go a perfect, inky black between her fingers.
Fen'nan screamed.
She screamed until she woke up, and then only, did she drag herself from her bed and move across the room, to that cage. The Black Hawk turned its beady gaze to her, staring and piercing into her soul as it stared through those iron bars. They stared at each other, until it ate at her blackened heart and soul with their silent exchange of a thousand words between them.
And only then did she allow herself to weep.
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