Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 137
137
Danado very nearly collapsed before he could take even a single step. Every second standing up was akin to torture. Already the sweat was standing out on his forehead, horribly cold against the chilling winds. The ground swayed beneath his crippled feet. Bursts of flame and drifts of snow seemed to double before his eyes, making him feel sick to his stomach. Escorting Renna all the way out here, over the hills and through the snow, had pretty much destroyed any progress he had made on his road to recovery, and now he was paying the price. His toes felt raw. Worse than raw. He could imagine them beneath his bandages as lumps of minced meat. The pain was just as bad as the night Dorin had first put blade to claw, that searing, unbearable pain. And even worse, the terrifying knowledge that they had only just begun, that there were still nineteen more to go.
This was the same. He had only stood up. He didn't know how far he had to go or how many steps it would take to get there.
But he did know where he was going. He knew exactly.
Danado took a long, shuddering breath, and began.
He put one foot forward. The act of pushing off as well as putting it back down again was a double stab of pain, shooting all the way up to his shins, it felt like.
He clenched his teeth and repeated the process, putting his other foot in front of the first.
The hardest part is over, he lied to himself, knowing full well that every step would only grow increasingly more painful. Just find the rhythm. Keep it going.
The snow crunched beneath his feet, but offered no relief. If anything, the cold only made the pain even worse, gifting it with jagged, saw-like teeth, gnawing straight down to the bone.
Chunks of firewood came sailing over the wall, streaming tails of smoke and flame. One crashed to the ground right in front of him and burst apart, sending red hot coals flying in all directions, but Danado couldn't stop. To stop would be to fall, and to fall would be to give up. He couldn't do that. He couldn't even allow himself the opportunity to give up, so he kept going, putting one foot in front of the other, again and again, walking over chunks of red hot coals, steaming and sizzling in the snow.
Sand shifting. Sharp pebbles grinding together. Dead twigs snapping. Shards of glass cracking. These were the sounds of his progress.
"Come on, Dan..." he whispered between sharp intakes of breath, staring straight ahead at the wall of fire, stretching up to the sky, tinting the blackness of the night a demonic orange, bespeckled with glowing embers riding currents of smoke. It was coming closer. One step at a time, he was forcing it closer.
All around him was terrible pain. Wolves and Foxes with broken arms and legs. Deep cuts and scratches. Terrible burns. Frostbite. They huddled together in groups, their arms covering their heads, trying to protect each other from a hail of fire, trying to protect the ones they love so much.
The numbing cold was giving way to the slow, baking heat of the fire. The smell of smoke was thick in the air, stinging his throat, burning his eyes, but he was getting close. If he could just keep going... If he could just...
"Daaaaaaan!"
That voice did what the burning coals and shards of broken glass could not. It stopped him dead in his tracks. The horror in that voice. So much fear, so much misery, all mixed together. It was the same. It was the same as the voices on the other side of the fire, but no one had noticed it yet because that voice was coming through the same smile that spread so much hope to those who would drown without it. That voice, that softly broken voice...
"Daaaan!" Layla came running up to him, carefully stepping around patches of scorched earth, absolutely shocked. "Dan, what are you doing!? Just -" Her hands went up to her head, but her eyes, which were practically bugging out of their sockets, went down to the ground.
Slightly confused, Danado turned his head to follow her gaze and saw that he had left a trail of bloody footprints all the way from the medical tent to where he now stood. They glowed in the firelight; shades of crimson wreathed in gold.
"Dan, by the - Come on, let me help you." She reached for his arm, but he pulled out of her reach. She tried once more, and again Danado pulled away. "What are you doing?"
Danado couldn't think up a lie quick enough, and even if he could, he didn't trust himself to speak. He couldn't even look her in the eye.
"Dan?"
He took another step towards the wall of fire, dragging his tattered bandages through the sand.
"Dan! Stop that!" Layla grabbed his arm and tried to hold him in place. "You're hurting yourself!"
Danado wrenched free and kept going, one tired step at a time, clenching his teeth against the pain, trying his very best to not cry out.
"What's gotten into you!?" Layla threw her arms around him, locking him in place. "By the gods, just stop!"
Danado did stop. Feeling her arms around him like this didn't feel good at all. An embrace from her was supposed to be warm, peaceful, happy. She radiated those feelings just like this towering wall of fire was radiating heat. But what he was feeling from her now was vastly different. This was cold and hard. He could feel her trembling against his back. Every breath was a quivering, hitching gasp of ice against his neck.
Being with her, talking with her, touching her, all those things used to make him feel like he was being filled up with something, like he was receiving some precious gift he had in no way earned. But now... her grip was like an iron shackle around his midsection.
"Let me help you back..." she whispered. "It's not safe here."
Danado did not answer.
"Dan? Why are you so quiet? Are you hurt?"
He could not answer.
"Dan, please, just talk to me! What's wrong?"
Why her? Why did it have to be her? Anyone else he could have pushed away...
"Dan, look at me."
Danado didn't want to look. He didn't want her to steal away the resolve he had so painstakingly scraped together. To look at her now would be the same as falling down. It would be to lie in the snow and never get up. If he surrendered, even just a little bit, she would be stuck with that dead, empty smile on her face for the rest of her life, a torturous mask with inward facing spikes, all to hide how she truly felt on the inside.
He knew that feeling so well. He knew it because he had lived it. The only difference was that he hadn't been strong enough to even try to put on a mask.
Layla's hand caressed the side of his face, and before he knew what was happening, or perhaps before he could convince himself to stop what was happening, she had already turned his head.
She was looking up at him with red, puffy eyes. Within them, Danado could see the reflected glow of the wall of fire, churning the darkness with its searing teeth of flame. He knew what lay beyond that line - both in the real world as well as the reflection inside her eyes, and they were the same. Outside the circle, and inside the circle.
They were both the same.
"Do you remember that promise you made?" she asked. "Behind Ander's house... under that hoary old oak tree?"
Lanterns, glowing cages of metal and glass, were crashing to the ground all around them in bursts of flame, but Danado did not see any of them. What he did see were the twinkling lights of Grovenglen, nestled way down deep in the valley below. Smoke rising from the chimneys. A few dark spots in the streets - the last straggling children being called in for supper before the darkness could come in full force.
Glass shattering, stones rolling across the ground, screams of pain and howls of anger were tearing through the air, but just as Danado did not see the bursts of light, so too did he not hear any of these sounds. What he heard was the chatter of many voices on the other side of Ander's house. So many new friends coming together, eating, drinking, talking, joking, even dancing. All to welcome them, to make them feel at home. But most of all, he heard the request of the strange young vixen with the exceptionally floofy tail, a promise made just as much for him as for her.
If the biggest sadsack Wolf to ever step foot in Grovenglen can smile, then surely it means there must be hope, right? There has to be.
Danado placed his hand over hers. "I promised..."
You'll smile for me again, won't you? If things look really bad, you'll smile again and make me feel better, right?
"... that I would smile for you."
She nodded, ash and snow drifting down onto her hair. "Can you do that for me now?" she asked - no, pleaded. "Can you keep your promise?"
She looked at him eagerly, expectantly, tears shining in her bloodshot eyes, on the verge of spilling over.
"Layla..."
A fake smile began to spread across her face, slowly contorting it into a hideous parody of who she actually was. Looking at that smile was like looking at a paper thin mask, just barely concealing all her pain, all her misery.
Danado pulled away from her touch, and simply said, "I can't."
Her smile wavered. Cracks appeared in the mask as if by magic. "Wh- What?"
"I can't smile for you, Layla. Not like this. It would be fake, just like the one you're giving me now. I can't do that to you."
Her lip quivered. The fire was like a pool of liquid gold in her eyes, but still her tears would not spill. "I don't mind..." she said, barely above a whisper. "I don't mind if it's fake. Just as long as it's there... Just as long as it's you... Can't you try for me, Dan? Can't you just try? Please...? I... I'm so scared, Dan... Please..."
Danado took her by the shoulders. "Layla. When I smile for you, it's going to be a real one. That's the only way for me to keep my promise. And when I do, I want you to give me a real smile back."
She took a quivering, hitching breath and finally, finally the tears began to stream down her face, carving clear tracks across her sooty cheeks. "Why?" she asked, the last remnants of her fake smile breaking apart. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because..." Danado squeezed her shoulders. "I don't want you to go through the same thing I did."
He leaned in close and kissed her on the mouth, erasing her fake smile forever.
She stiffened in his arms, but only for a moment, a moment in which nothing else existed, only the two of them. Her hands rose up against his back, pressing him closer, and now she was returning his kiss, standing on the tips of her toes, running her fingers through his hair. He could feel her heartbeat quicken against his chest, could feel the warmth of her breath against his lips, the desperation raging through her heart. But...
He couldn't help her. He knew that now. He couldn't return her smile, fake or otherwise.
He couldn't get her sister back.
But there was something he could do. Something that might make no difference at all in the end, but he had to try regardless. Everyone else was giving it their all. What kind of a Wolf would he be if he just stood by and did nothing?
What kind of a brother would he be?
In order to keep one promise, he would have to break another.
Danado slowly pulled back, breaking their kiss while he still had the strength. He looked at her, taking in her torn, sooty clothes, the scrapes, the bruises, the dishevelled hair, the streaks of dirt on her face, the tears running down her cheeks and the anguish contorting her features to the breaking point.
She reached for him again, desperate to find something to cling to, something to give her hope, even if only in the weakest of symbolic ways, but it was something he simply could not give her. What she needed was something more than a fake smile. She needed something real. What she needed was her sister by her side, safe and warm.
"I'm sorry, Layla," he said. "I am so, so sorry."
She looked at him, so confused. A single tear ran down the side of her face and gently curved around the corner of her mouth, a perfect little orb with all the fires of the world trapped inside. "Danado?"
He pushed out, hard. A blinding flash of pain tore through his fingers, but it paled in comparison to the pain he felt upon seeing her eyes widen in shocked disbelief as she crashed to the ground in a puff of ash and snow.
Before the dust could settle, before she could cry out, before she could even strike him down with a look of complete and utter betrayal, he tore his eyes away and sprinted for the wall of fire, his heart broken into a thousand pieces.
The moment his full weight came down on his first stride, an explosion of pain ripped through his foot. These were not just needles gouging their way through his flesh, but whole knives. He could feel the blood spurting out, forming a slick layer between the bandages and the stubs of his toes.
He stumbled and nearly fell, but somehow managed to keep going, running straight for the wall of fire in an agonising shamble. The hot air blowing in from the flames was like a giant's breath against his face.
"Danado!? Daaaan!" Layla's cries were even worse than the pain ripping through his feet, but he had to keep going. He couldn't stop.
He was doing this for her.
He kept putting one foot in front of the other, breathing through his clenched teeth in short, laboured hisses. The pain was so bad he could barely see. The world kept flashing in his eyes, going through rapid pulses of black and red filters. It felt like he was on the verge of passing out, but every step kept waking him up again like a slap in the face.
"Someone stop him!" Layla screamed. Her voice was right behind him. Gaining. "Daaan!"
Danado bit back the pain and squinted through the strobing flashes, at the wall of fire looming before him with its churning coils of light and shadow. There were shapes there, Wolves moving to block his path.
"Is that Danado?"
"Whoa, stop!"
Backlit by the flames, they were nothing more than hulking silhouettes. Moving shadows with deep, groaning voices and reaching arms.
"Hold it!"
Someone made a grab for him and Danado slapped his hand away, choking back his screams at the blazing iron rods pushing through his fingertips.
"He's gone crazy!"
Another shape, another shadow, a wall of flesh standing before the wall of fire. Danado lowered his head and elbowed him out of the way.
He was close now. So close. He could hear the flames crackling, could see the coals crumbling off the burning posts.
"Dan!"
A strong pair of arms grabbed him from behind, nearly lifting him right off his feet.
Sorrin? Is that -
No, not Sorrin. Nilia.
"By the Cora, what's gotten into you!?" she screamed against his ear as he struggled and thrashed, trying to break free. Her arm was like an iron bar against his throat, dragging him back from the flames.
"Nilia!" Danado had to shout to be heard above the thunderous pounding of the drums. They were so close now he could actually feel the vibrations surging through his crippled feet in agonising bursts. "You have to find Kiana! No matter what!"
"What the hell are you talking about!?" she shouted back, struggling to hold him in place. "No one's making it through this!"
She was right. He could see them beyond the flames. Hideous faces contorted by shimmering waves of heat, fusing with the fire and the freezing night air, screaming and snarling. Furious, monstrous faces, melting like bees wax before his eyes, becoming something different, something that only he could see.
"Nilia," Danado said, knowing that there would be no coming back from this, "when you see an opening, you take it. Don't stop to think about me. Just go. Just run. You have to find Kiana. You have to bring her back!"
"You're not making any sense, Dan! Just calm down and -"
Danado aimed for the thin strip of pillow casing tied around her arm and bit down as hard as he could. His teeth punctured the fabric as if it wasn't even there and sunk into her flesh. Blood spurted into his mouth, horribly bitter.
Nilia screamed, but wouldn't let go. If anything, she only tightened her grip.
Danado fought back by biting down even harder. He strained against her arm, scraping furrows in the dirt with his feet and tearing his bandages to shreds. The pain was so bad it drowned out everything else. It was just the pain, the flames, and the beating of the drums.
With one final scream, Nilia finally let go and staggered back, clutching her bleeding arm to her chest.
I'm sorry... I had to...
Danado stumbled forward, nearly falling face first into the wall of fire. He could feel the heat scorching his fur. Could smell the bitter tendrils of smoke rising up from his own body. Could see the gaping mouths on the other side, bottomless pits ringed with teeth.
"Daaan!"
Danado looked back. He couldn't help it.
Layla had caught up. She was right behind him, reaching for his hand, tears standing out on her face as lines of silver edged with dancing flames. Her fingertips brushed against his, a touch of indescribable pain, but not because of his missing claws.
It was because he knew this would be the very last time.
Danado closed his eyes and leapt for the wall of fire. He felt his stitches tearing loose, the scars splitting open, the skin, peeling back. The pain was everywhere.
"Danado! Noooo!!" Layla's voice, a shriek of pain and terror.
I'm sorry, Layla, but before I met you, I made a promise to stay the same. And the truth is, I've always been an incredibly stupid Wolf.
Burning embers rose up through blankets of smoke, churning the vapours into misty spirals. Flames licked at his body, but he barely felt any of it.
The pain in his heart was too great.
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