Build god, then we'll talk - Ever-

[rumour]

The buzz of the TV did little to drown out the sound of her raunchy neighbours, and picking up the remote she turned it off altogether, her fingers finding the off button after changing the channel twice accidentally. She really had no idea how the couple next door managed to do it. All day, every night – she could hear them banging away like there was no tomorrow. Or worse yet – like it was their sole duty to re-populate the earth. Of course, the far more likely answer to her question, especially given that she had never seen nor spoken to her horny neighbours, was that her neighbours were not the same constant couple, but rather the result of a seedy motel hiring out their rooms by the hour.

Instead Rumour lay on her back and ran her hand slowly across the bridge of her nose. The bump that had been there the last time she had broken her nose was even more prominent now, but without her vision she had no way of knowing just how bad it looked. She could ask, and had asked Ever, but his opinion was biased. She was beginning to think, what with everything she had put him through, he would still... love... her if she turned into a troll tomorrow.

Absently, Rumour brushed her fingers over her lips where his departing kiss still lingered from that morning. Damn work. Damn her blindness and her lack of schooling – her own inability to find work. Selling condoms in the red light district was starting to seem less of a joke and more like a plausible source of income recently. She hated this feeling of being nothing but a burden, useless. She hated that he denied it. But she was still living here... and she was still paying very little towards the rent of his room. The $500 dollars she had managed to draw from her father’s account was not stretching as far as she would have liked, and when she tried again the card had simply been eaten by the machine – Devlin Everley had apparently cottoned on to his daughters financial escapades.

Closing her eyes, Rumour chilled for a moment, allowing herself to relax for a little while and enjoy the solitude of the room. For a few moments she was able to sink into her mind and forget about the noises floating down from the room above, thumping through from the wall behind her. She was able to relax and think and it was with surprise she realised that for the first time in a long time, things didn’t seem all that complicated. She was happy, even. She’d run away... and she didn’t feel the need to go back. It was still there, a small gnawing guilt, but it was easier to ignore. It was easier to simply forget about... and she was happy where she was. She was happy not having to tread on eggshells around a father who could turn at any moment and leave her bleeding on the floor. She was happy with Ever.

She lay there for a little while and would have probably quite happily remained as such until Ever came home, but a loud thumping on their room door dragged her from the tranquil bliss of her mind. ”He’s not here!” she yelled from the bed, not bothering to open her eyes. There was no point – the banging at the door was never for her unless it was somehow pre-arranged.... and since deciding with Oregon that it would be better if they remained as friends, his spontaneous visits were rare. And besides – he’d yell. But despite yelling, the banging continued.

Frowning, Rumour stood, twisting her hair up into a pony tail as she crossed the space between the bed and door. It was a shame really that the girl didn’t have her sight. Being able to see through the doors small peephole would have been an advantage that could have drastically changed the course of events.

Opening the door, Rumour repeated what she had previously yelled. ”He’s not here... he’ll be -” She began to re-iterate with a somewhat bored expression taking over her features; features that twisted into pain as something cold slipping into her side and a hand clamped down over her mouth, muffling the whimper that escaped her lips. Pushed inside the room, she heard the door slam as she was thrown onto the bed, knife, for surely that was what it must have been, drawn from between her ribs and freeing the flow of crimson from her side.

The voice that hissed around the room made Rumour’s blood run cold as she backed up against the headboard, holding her side even as the blood escaped between her fingers, seeping through her clothes and onto the sheets beneath her.

“How dare you steal from me Rumour? Run from me when all i tried to do was save you?” Devlin Everley’s voice was quiet as he growled at her, and if nothing else this made the girl tremble in fear. “How dare you send someone to my home to threaten me?! To beat me?!” He was more dangerous when he was in control, and it seemed that finally, her worst fear was coming true. A fear that would soon be recognised in Devlins’ own words.

“I see now i made a mistake Rumour. I see now that there is no saving you – but i may yet rescue the young man whom you have ensnarled in your clutch. He need not suffer the same fate as you.. an eternity in the bowels of hell from which you sprung.” He hit her, hard across the face, a blow that sent her tumbling from the bed and to the floor, winding her already punctured lungs until she was sure she would drown from the lack of air. His footsteps followed her slowly around the bed, and she could hear the prayer the priest was muttering under his breath.

Clawing at the carpeted floor, Rumour tried to pull herself under the bed, kicking at his hands when they grasped her ankles, pulling her free of the furniture’s safety. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave the world she was beginning to slowly rediscover. She didn’t want to leave the man she believed she may actually love. Tears stained her cheeks as her father hauled her once more to her feet, his large hands wrapping around her throat and pinning her against the wall, cutting of the oxygen she was already fighting for, that leaked from her side with every small, gasping breath. Rumour clawed at his hands, nails dragging across his skin, fighting back for the first time in her life. She wanted to live this time. She was not resigned to death and fate now that it stared her in the eyes.

“I’m sorry Rumour. I tried to save you from yourself because you were mine. I tried to save you from the curse of your mothers flesh – but i see now that it was in vain. I am sorry that i was weak, and that you suffered so long in the world.” Her father... no. The priest whispered in her ear even as he slipped the knife one last time into her, pushing through the soft skin above her navel and up, slipping easily through undefended organs.

This time all the fight left her as she convulsed, dropping her hands from the priests and choking on the blood that surged upwards, leaking from the corner of her mouth. But still he pinned her. Still he held her against the wall by the hilt of his knife, even as Rumours blind eyes searched out in vain help that wouldn’t come this time. Then she knew. Then she knew that her father had finally done what he had always promised. She was dying.

“I am the willing hand of God. May he have mercy on your soul” he said once more, twisting the knife in her gut, tearing open the thin wound and allowing another flow of crimson free from her skin. Finally, he pulled the blade free, releasing her neck. Choking on her own blood, Rumour crumpled, slipping to the floor, and waited for death.

[Ever Goodman]

--working on a purdy header--

Damn work. Ever wet his lips with his tongue and squinted into the sky as the sun fled behind a dark cloud. He inwardly hoped that the disappearance of that glowing orb would coax the tears and lightening from the ominous haze; effectively ending their work day early so he could get back to the woman waiting for him at home.
Home.
Thanks to the lingering amnesia he really had no recollection of ever having somewhere to belong, but lately, with Rumour there it was beginning to feel more and more like it was exactly where he wanted to be. Where he -should- be.

It hadn’t exactly been a cake walk since that night the young woman had come to him on death’s doorstep… or more appropriately his door step, but it had begun to get a little bit easier each and every day.
Rumour had been furious about what he had done to her father after the incident, but she hadn’t left, and Ever was starting to believe she might actually stick around despite the threats and promises she had made regarding the elder man and any retaliation against him. The shift the young man had felt before was growing more intense; the bond getting so strong that he believed the tether which was wrapped around his heart could not be severed.
They were learning how to live and they were…they were happy.

Unfortunately the sun made its reappearance and the work day continued. Ever worked until his arms and chest were stiff and burning, and then he worked some more.
By the time the echoed siren had signaled the end of day the young man was worn out and covered with sweat, wanting nothing more than a shower, a cold one, and definitely some time wrapped up in Rumour’s arms. Definitely.

The jobsite was roughly a twenty minutes from the hotel on foot but it was closer to an hour later when Ever arrived at the room attempting to juggle several take-out cartons, a six-pack of beer and a couple of movies in his hands. He had stopped at the Japanese to-go place for food for him and his partner in crime, the beer was mainly for him since Rumour hardly ever drank, but the movies were a couple that she had mentioned before; films from her days when she had vision that had always made her smile.

Unable to get to the key with his hands so full of stuff Ever knocked on the door with his forehead a couple of times. When there came no answer he figured his flat mate was probably in the shower and so set the groceries down on the ground, finding the thin white badge in his back pocket he slid it in, waiting for the click of the unlock before bending to retrieve his things and shouldering his way in.

The first thing Ever noticed was the smell. The aroma of blood, hatred and tears was a physical manifestation so strong the young man was nearly knocked down by it. The hand holding the DVD cases lifted to his face to block out the deathly perfume, and he gagged once or twice before his mind began to try to make sense of it.

And then he saw her.

Dropping the groceries Ever leapt forward, falling onto the floor to cradle the crumpled and bleeding figure in his arms. Words were lost in loud moans of despair as the young man tried to smooth her hair out of her face and kiss the life back into her, alternating the feverish kisses and pleading requests for her to open her eyes with pressing trembling hands over the lethal holes in her belly.

“No, no, no, no….Rumour don’t…” he sobbed, unable to staunch the flow from her wounds and frantic that she was slipping further and further from the earth. “Oh god no!”
He shifted, lifting a scarlet smeared hand to absently cup her face, pressing his lips against hers and then the lids of her eyes; unable to fathom a light in the world without the glow from her crystalline eyes.
Ever’s heart; barely healed from the damage it had suffered before, exploded into a thousand splinters. The shards left in his chest cut into the deepest part of the man; eviscerating him; leaving holes in his body so that his soul bled out of him.

[rumour]

She didn’t know when he left.

The free flow of blood from her wounds stained the wall behind her, pooled around her hips and soaked through the thin fabric of her shorts, staining the light brown to a deep, dark brown despite her attempts to hold back the flow with the damn of her fingers, pressed to her stomach. As always when she was hurt, Rumours mind detached herself from its body, from the pain in her stomach, the pull of air from the wound in her side as she struggled to breathe, coughing blood into her splayed fingers. She saw herself in third person, heard herself as if from far away, and by the time the man stood over her finished his final prayer and turned on his heel, Rumour was already very far away.

Time meant nothing. She was dying, and she was dying slowly – she hadn’t the strength to move as the essence of her life pooled around her and stained the motel carpet, as it scented the air with its sickly sweet fragrance. Her fingers barely stemmed the river of crimson, and Rumour closed her eyes, slipping into a state of half consciousness, where the white fox danced in her head and before her lidded orbs, staring back at her eyes she felt she should recognise, eyes of blue, flecked with amber. Eyes that held intelligence far beyond the grasp of its four legged form. For once, this fox did not run, but sat. Waiting. Patient in its mission, and Rumour felt sure it was there to welcome her to the gates of purgatory, gates that, for now, lay just beyond her grasp.

It was a cruel irony that she did not slip past this boundary before Ever found her, that her grip on life, which she clung too by tooth and nail was not quite loosened by the time he slipped through the door and found her pale form.

Rumour, at first, did not even realise he was there. His voice was far away, a whisper to ears deafened by the thunder of quiet in which she found herself suddenly drowning. She heard him, but she did not recognise the voice that called out and begged to her, the hands that held her broken, damaged body and pressed a palmy, bloodied embrace to the skin of her cheek. But she came back, despite these things or because of these things, spurred on by the fervent, frantic lips that pressed against her own, determined to breathe air into a lung punctured by her father’s knife, refusing to inflate as it should.

Slowly, as if it was the single hardest feat in her life, Rumour opened her eyes. She was unable to speak for a moment, waiting for him to realise her eyes were open, that for the next few seconds at least, she was still there. Though who this was most unfair too, she was not sure. She who knew there was every chance she would never see or hear his voice again, or he, who was about to lose her, despite her assurances that it would never happen. And she hadn’t even told him yet, told him what she truly wanted too.

Told him that she had chosen him over her father, had finally found the strength to deny what she had always believed to be an inevitability of fate because she knew that she had him to fall back on, that he was not about to run away despite her frantic pushing, her threats and her promises. She wanted to tell him that he was the reason she had chosen life over fate - but fate it seemed had ignored her defiance, and found her despite her flight. Now... now she could not bring herself to drive in that singular knife, to hurt him in a way that would be so much more long lasting that her own fleeting pain. Not yet. She was not yet so selfish as to do that.

Lifting the hand that trailed on the floor, she found his arm and left her bloodied prints there, clinging weakly to the skin of his forearm. Forcing a blithe smile to her red stained lips Rumour mustered a few quiet and whispered words from her reluctant body. ”Hey you...”

[Ever Goodman]

Ever had no past that he could remember. He had no mother and father; no family or life long friends. He could not consider what his childhood must have been like, where all the scars had come from, and if, like the woman he held in his arms, he had escaped a life of pain that he didn’t want to remember. The young man had been discovering everything anew for the past few months. In some ways he thought himself pathetic. In others, it was a blessing.
That first drag from the smoke once he’d left the hospital had sent him into near orgasm. Watching the sky turn from black to blue and orange for his ‘first’ dawn and the initial bite of that steaming eggroll was heavenly. Gritty blues music to his ears had been like the stroke of sensual fingertips against his back.
The taste of Rumour’s lips and the feel of her body in his arms; the man savored those sensations like none other…

Ever didn’t remember much, but he remembered her. Every single detail about her.
In many ways Rumour had become the amnesiac’s family -and- his best friend. His partner in crime. The one who had the power to lift him up or lay him low with a simple smile. In a world full of strange faces and things he knew nothing about, Ever knew what it took to make her laugh, or how to hold her without hurting the ribs Devlin had broken again. His fingers moved instinctually to places that made the woman purr and his lips danced against hers in a perfect rhythm that never failed to raise goose bumps on her tawny skin as well as his.

All the important things. All the world that he knew.

And he was losing his whole world…
The stream from her wounds would not slow. His blurry, horrified eyes took in the way her skin had grown so pale and so cold. Despite the sticky fluid draining from her injury, Ever pulled her against his chest, rocking Rumour’s limp body as he whispered prayers to the woman and god or whomever would listen to his pleas. He just needed to get her warm. He could do that couldn’t he?
Her pain seemed his pain; watching the life drain out of her was torture for the young man. He felt as if his heart were being ripped from his chest as certainly as the young woman was being ripped from his life. Oh god, it hurt so bad.

She couldn’t leave yet…not without knowing how much she meant to him. There were so many things to tell her…things that he had yet to say. Rumour had to know that she was not that evil person her father had made her believe she was. She was breathtaking. Her heart was kind and warm even though it was broken. She was something to be respected and adored. She was love. His love.
He wept.

Ever didn’t realize the whispery voice was real until he felt the faint touch of her hand against his arm. Dark russet eyes flew open and he searched her pale gaze, shifting a little so that he could prop her up a little better. Rumour’s eyes were an abyss Ever had fallen into so many times before, but this time the sensation was cold and abandoned. Though her face was tilted towards his and the gaze directed to his own; he felt as if she were looking elsewhere. Perhaps into the light that would lead her from the hateful world.

“Rumour, hey baby…hold on. Just hold on to me. I’m gonna’ get you help Rumour. Don’t leave me…please.” Ever’s voice cracked as a sob tore through his chest. “Rumour stay with me. You’ll be okay. Just stay with me.”

[rumour]

This wasn’t fair.

In her twenty four years, Rumour had never complained that her life wasn’t fair. They dying girl had always found justification in her existence, in her father’s punishment. The equations themselves had always been simple, a drill driven into her head by her fathers persistence and her mother’s absence – the complete lack of anyone to tell her otherwise in the years she had been most impressionable. She was evil. What she was, was evil. But it had never been her outright fault that she bore the curse of her mother, but it had always been her burden to bare, and her fathers to cure.

Not once when she had fled to the beach in fear of a beating, not when she had returned home to nothing but pain and bruises nor when she laid in hospital hooked up to too many machines to count. Not even when the man she called father, whom she loved unconditionally, had stolen her sight and left her in a world of darkness did she ever scream to the gods or whomever listened that her life was unfair. That she did not deserve the hand she had been dealt.

Until now. This... this was not fair. She did not deserve this. This cruel twist of fate that had allowed her to be happy for once. That had shown the young woman who was currently wrapped in her lovers arms that happiness was not the days she had gotten by unscathed, the days spent on her rooftop smoking, but was something to truly rejoice, something that stirred feelings she had been too cowardly to name, that had given her a reason for living rather than simply existing. It was not fair that she should finally allow someone into her life; into her heart, to finally love someone and know love in return, to then be torn from it so quickly. Before she had had chance to begin to understand even a little of what was happening.

The person who had once said that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was wrong. Rumour would rather she had died before now. Before she had known Ever. Before she had been doomed to put them both through this, for this she was sure, was worse than the fox that awaited her in darkness, was worse than the pain of her life slipping away. Rumour did not care that she was dying. She cared that she was leaving.

A pained groan left her bloodied lips as he moved her, pulling her against his chest and lifting her up, one that ended in coughing; a moment spent trying to catch the breath that fled her body through her pierced skin. She could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth and grimaced, tightening her grip on his arm as if he was but an apparition sent to taunt her final moments, a singular cruelty she had to make sure was really there.

” I.. I... Sorr...y Ever” She murmured, her voice no louder than the whisper of leaves falling to their doom in the death of summer, but it made the words themselves no less poignant. He was promising her help if she could only wait. If she could only hang on. But she had already been trying for too long. Rumour Everley had no more strength left to give.

Before her grip on his arm loosened and her fingers fell limply to the floor, before the white fox and darkness claimed her, Rumour whispered three words to him. Three words he needed to hear – three words she should have said to him long before now. Before it had been too late.

”I love you.”

[Ever Goodman]

Ever was shaking his head in silent argument, wanting desperately to tell the repentant woman in his arms that she had no cause for the apology, that she had done nothing to deserve the cards that the dealer of Fate had given her, that the man that had christened her evil so long ago was the wicked one; the one that would pay for what he had done tonight. Though her eyes were sightless he needed to help her see all the things that she had been immune to; the way her smile had been the light that brought him back from the dusk of loneliness, that her touch his saving grace from despair, her laugh an inward caress to his soul that had made him feel more than half the man that had woken up in that hospital bed.

But he had no time. Ever could feel her slipping away from him. He could feel the miraculous silvery cord that was wrapped around his soul and attached to hers tugged so taunt that any moment it would snap; permanently separating the connection that had taken months to solidify. The moisture slipped down his cheeks like the crimson tears escaping her wounds. He was still trying frantically to stop the flow of blood, to push the entrails fleeing their bodily prison back into their home so that she would stay there, with him. But his attempts were futile. The damage was too severe.

Holding her as tightly, but as carefully as he could the young man was not prepared for the three words that fell from Rumour’s parted lips a moment before she left him.
Those three words might as well have been a corporal evisceration, for by the time the quiet confession had reached Ever’s ears, she was gone.
He choked on a sob; gently shaking her limp frame as if she were merely asleep and he could wake her. Desperate pleading was accompanied by feverish presses of his balmy lips to her wintery ones, as if he might be able to breathe the life back into her.
Moaning in agony, the young man clung to the lifeless woman and let his head fall back against the back of his neck; a desolate howl loosing from deep inside and echoing around the disheveled room.
The spiritual evisceration fairly killed him right then and there. His soul was slashed open and love and misery was pouring from the wounds. All the happiness and hope seeped out of him into an indistinguishable pool around the embracing pair.
There would be no light left in the world.

“No. no. no. no…” Finally the crumpled, desperate figure that was Ever stirred, not willing to give up so easily. The tiny spark of hope that remained in his chest flickered, and he shifted the body in his arms, pulling himself up to stand and taking her with him.
Laying the figure on the bed he frantically ripped at the material that clung to her ruby stained skin, tossing it away so that it would not encumber his attempt to revive her.

At first he gently pumped her chest and then breathed into her parted mouth; not really knowing where the movements were coming from but trusting in them all the same. When Rumour did not respond to the chest compressions and forced air to her lungs he became more violent, pounding on her chest in hopes that the aggressiveness would make her heart beat again.

God only knew how long the feverish attempt lasted. All Ever knew was that he had never given up on her before; he was not going to start now. But it was no use. He was covered in blood and sweat and struggling to breathe when he finally slumped across her unmoving body; weeping and cursing and begging for a miracle.

That’s when the sadness turned to rage, and the cold anguish inside of the man became a blaze; the anger surged through his veins and became an all consuming inferno.
Ever was no longer a man. He was no a lover or an amnesiac. He was vengeance incarnate.

Panting heavily Ever crawled off the bed and his empty onyx gaze traveled the length of the room. Blinking back the tears still making his sight hazy, he began to pace, pushing the hair out of his face and franticly searching for the mind he had lost somewhere in the panic. He was going to need his wits to find the man responsible for this; was going to need his head if he meant to make Devlin suffer like he made his daughter suffer.

Bending to pick the room key he had dropped before, his eyes lifted to the motionless figure on the bed and he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. For a moment the anger that had driven him fled, and he slumped against the wall; loosing himself in a convulsion of weeping once more.

[rumour]

It was dark.

But the dark was something Rumour was used too, something she had adapted herself too – what she wasn’t prepared for was the complete lack of anything else. No sound, no smell, no taste in the air she was sure she was breathing, yet she had no way of knowing for certain if that was in fact what she was doing. Was this death? Was this purgatory? Different to both heaven and hell because it was simply nothing? a universe devoid of sensory input? Was this what she deserved? An eternity of nothing, long enough to drive her crazy? To take away the last things she had to cling too, the small tendrils of conscious thought and the sweet sanity that allowed her to think straight?

But perhaps insanity in the void of this dark would be a blessing, compared to the alternative, compared to knowing every moment in it's emptiness. At least with insanity came some form of peace.

She had no idea how long she floated, sat, or lingered in the dark. It may have been mere seconds, but it could have been months. There was no way to tell the passage of time in this place, no way of knowing if the people she had left behind had forgotten about her yet, had moved on yet... if Ever had gotten his memory back and had remembered someone else, someone more important than her.

Floating in this darkness, It took her a long moment to realise that she was not in fact alone. The white fox from her dreams had returned, as real as if she was looking at it at the zoo, sat patiently and waiting for her attention. Slowly, her gaze turned to it, taking in it's slightly shimmering form... and Rumour screamed at it.

She screamed at it and she swore at it and she blamed it for everything that had ever gone wrong in her life. She blamed it for her mother’s abandonment and her father’s hatred, she blamed it for giving her a life of pain and misery, for making her evil when all she had ever wanted to be was good, when all she had ever wanted to do was make her father finally proud of her. She screamed at it for getting in her way, for being a part of her she had never wanted. She hated it for letting her have happiness, for the smallest period of time, and then for being the reason she was now here. For the reason she was dead and that happiness had been torn from her chest in the cruellest way possible. Rumour continued to scream and shout until she realised she could hear herself - she could see the hands clenched at her side if she only glanced down.

But most of all, she hated it for abandoning her. The one constant in her life that had been unchanging, but had abandoned her to fate and only ever taunted her in her dreams. And the fox sat there and took it all, staring at her steadily in the face, it’s large white tail occasionally swishing from one side to the other, but making no movement otherwise.

Eventually, Rumours anger simmered to despair and she sunk to her knees, crying and sobbing for the ache in her heart, for the man she loved, and the life she would never again have. Before she noticed it had moved, Rumour felt the fox’s head pushing itself along her arm, and once more she opened her eyes to stare at it. Slowly, she reached out to gingerly pet it’s head, and couldn’t help the smile at the warmth she felt there, at the way the fox nuzzled her hand back, and then hopped into her lap.

After a long moment, Rumour wrapped her arms around the fox and cried again, closing her eyes and ignoring the darkness of this world for the safety of her own, taking unexpected comfort from the closeness of the form pressed against her chest. She hated it. She hated this part of her, the part that had always been evil... but if nothing else in this place, it was all she had, and Rumour knew she couldn’t deny it any longer. It was not separate - the fox was as much a part of her as her hair or heart, and if nothing else, it would be company for eternity.

Maybe she could teach it tricks.

Back in the motel room, the motionless, pale form on the bed stirred. Slowly, colour crept back into Rumour’s cheeks as the blood seeping from her found slowed and finally stopped, the internal damage slowly stitching itself back together. Rolling onto her side, a small, quiet moan escaped her throat as she curled up, and then disappeared, leaving in her place the sleeping form of a small, white fox, lost amongst the bloodied sheets and clothes, fur stained red by the blood it lay in. The moan changed from the guttural sound of a girl in pain to the soft mewl of an injured animal, recovering from its wounds.

Slowly, Rumour opened her eyes, and for the first time in eight years, found that she could see... and panicked.

[Ever Goodman]

The emptiness was all consuming. As Ever slumped against the door frame he could feel nothing, could see nothing past the despair that had wrapped itself around him like a suffocating blanket. His chest burned with the need to breathe, but he could find no air; instead each intake was liquid misery into his lungs. Pulling him under. Drowning him. And sinking underneath that ocean of anguish was exactly what he wanted, for experiencing the true pain within him was far worse than darkness or death. It would eat away at all the happiness he had found with her; slowly devouring him little by little until he had no reason to exist… which is exactly what he had felt waking up alone in that hospital bed with no one to claim him and no where to go.

In the months that had passed since that day Ever had grown to like the person that he was now, giving up on the search for his past and enjoying the present. He had a decent job, a place to live, and someone with whom he could share his contentment and loneliness, his dreams and his fears. The present had been just that for the amnesiac; a gift. And one that he had clung to as if it had been as precious as life itself.

What would his life be now? The young man couldn’t fathom going back to that dark, lonely place again. He didn’t want to comprehend a place where he couldn’t feel the pressure of Rumour’s lips against his or the warmth of her retuned embrace when he had stolen a hug that she hadn’t been expecting.
Ever shuddered, bringing his hands up to rub his damp and swollen eyes. The sobs that had been wracking his body seemed to ebb as the anger that had once given him purpose took up a residence in his chest again as a dull heat. He needed to act and now. If he waited until the pain went away he would never go after the murderer, instead simply sinking down to the floor and closing his eyes and letting that devouring monster eat him alive. He would not have this. If she was gone then he would find another reason to survive; retribution.

The minute hand had been wrapped around his neck in the moments Ever had been mourning the loss, but when the sound of movement met his ears time seemed to start again. Fuzzy dark chocolate eyes lifted to the limp and bloody figure on the bed just as she rolled over and moaned, and as if his heart had stopped, it leapt into action once more. The thunderous pounding seemed to echo around the room as he stood upright in disbelief, taking a single step toward the mattress.

She was alive? But he had watched her die! He had felt the moment she had slipped from life and from him like a knife into his chest.
Disbelief turned to horror as he approached the bed in time to see the figure of his beloved transform into that of a small white creature. Unbidden, he stumbled backwards, tripping over a pair of sneakers that sent him sprawling on his ass on the floor.

“The fuck….” Ever mumbled, crab-crawling away from the bed like the animal upon it had wide glowing eyes and long, horrible blood-dripping fangs. “Rumour! What did you do with Rumour?!”
He was talking to the animal as if it could understand him, as if it could fathom just how bewildering the vision of human turning to animal had been for him. Ever crawled backwards until his shoulders hit the door and he glanced over his shoulder, half filled with the need to flee, but more desperate to figure out what the hell was going on.

Had the man understood what his dreams had been trying to tell him, that he hunted creatures like her in his life past, perhaps Ever would have been willing to accept that his dead friend had just transformed into a mythical, ethereal creature. But he had not heeded their elucidation; he had dismissed them just as one would do any normal nightmare. And so he was petrified, and utterly bemused.

[rumour]

Sight was disorientating. It was bright and it was loud and it was full of so much... well everything, she could hardly focus on one thing before another pulled her attention. Obvious, lumbering objects went missed as her eyes focused in on the little details across the room and lost herself within them. The pattern of the wallpaper was garish and stained with smoke, food, but perhaps most obviously, and most scarily, blood. It had been so long since Rumour had seen her own blood that now the sight made the fox girl sick, almost as much as the small fact she could see it. She was lost in the sensation, the new gateway into a world she had believed she would not experience for a long time to come.

She was scared. She was scared by the fact that she could see, terrified that only moments before she had been dead and drowning in the darkness of that fact, alone in her prison of darkness to contemplate everything she had had and everything she could never again have. But now here she was, in what she presumed was the same room, for the reeking smell of her blood and hate, of tears and sweat hung thickly in the air – Rumour was surprised in fact that she couldn’t see it all. In this world of new tings, this surprised her most.

Scrambling in the soaked bed sheets and torn cloth, the little white fox’s ears pricked at the sound of a voice she could not yet begin to process or make sense off, and she baulked at the man who was starting towards her, ignorant of her own senses and the small fact that the man was no stranger to her, but someone with whom she had begun to share her very essence. Fleeing the bombardment of sense she could not yet begin to understand or comprehend, the fox sought out the one thing it knew. Darkness. Leaping from the bed Rumour chased shadows, pausing a moment when she realised the floor was a long way off, that everything was bigger than it should be. A glance down confirmed her nightmares and she tripped, mewling in disgrace at the creature who’s form she had taken, the bloodied fur that encase her skin. No. This... this wasn’t right.

Chasing the darkness, the fox leapt under the bed and backed itself into a corner, crying softly at her own disgrace, her own wretched form, trembling at the man she could see from beneath the bed frame. Rumour was scared, confused and in pain, and she did not understand why this man, this stranger was demanding to know where she was. She was right here. She... she wasn’t her but she was here.

It was a slow moment that caused the realisation, seeing the confusion on the man’s face from where she crouched, shaking and wishing that she had truly been dead, for that was truly better than the form in which she was trapped. Slowly, cautiously, and ever wary of the things she had suspected he was capable of for a long while, Rumour crept forward on her belly, leaving the safety of the darkness a mere inch at a time, looking up with her blue orbs into the face of the man she was sure she knew – the features of a man she had traced with her fingers on countless occasions, committing them to memory less she ever forget.

No Stranger. It was Ever. Covered in her blood and looking as scared as she felt, she longed to go to him and wrap her arms around his neck, to feel the embrace she had been sure was long gone. But that was impossible in this form, this wretched form she had no idea how to escape. Pausing then, halfway out from under the bed, Rumour flattened her ears against her head and mewled softly, the large tongue she now possessed not quite far enough up the evolutionary scale to form the words she longed to say.

[Ever Goodman]

There were too many things roaring through Ever’s mind for him to focus on one of them in particular. The pain of Rumour’s death had left him weakened, the subsequent anger had seared him raw, confusion and disbelief left him unable to move. Ever shook his head in silent argument when the fox mewed from the bed; he wasn’t expecting the sound to tug at his heart as much as it did…this couldn’t be real.
Helplessly frozen; Ever watched in incredulity as the animal fled from the mattress, perceiving the wide, terrified coal black eyes and the trembling of its tiny frame. He felt for the creature and that only managed to distress him more, for Rumour had died and then vanished and he was crippled by the loss.

Panting in order to fill his lungs with much needed air, Ever pulled himself up again, stalking to the bed in a panic and anxiously fisting the blood stained covered. He tore them from the mattress, frantically seeking for the woman as if she were merely hidden within the material. He had seen the transformation with his own two eyes, but his brain refused to process the vision. It was like his dreams. Hazy, disorienting, unreal.
“Where is she?! Where is she?!” He begged as he searched, talking more to himself than the deities in order to make sense of it.

When he did not find her Ever ran wavering hands across his misty eyes and the slack mouth still gasping for breath.
The fox had gone beneath the bed…and the amnesiac was struck with the sudden thought that the beast could find his girl. It wasn’t in any way rational, but a woman disappearing and a fox taking her place was hardly sane either. And if such fantastical things were possible…perhaps Rumour still lived.

Dropping down and peering into the shadows beneath Ever reached under until he felt the soft down of the creature hiding there. He didn’t wish to hurt the little fox but he was desperate, catching a hold of the scruff at the nape of its neck and pulling it free from the darkness.

“Where is she?!” The man didn’t recognize the rough pitch of his voice. It was too empty. A stranger. “What the fuck is happening?!” He pleaded, and his words broke to match the rest of him.
“I love her damn it!” He shook the animal lightly, as if it could understand him; as if it would answer. “I need her. Give her back to me! Give her back!”