Work Text:
midnight sun
When one door shuts, another opens, and the click of the lock behind me echoes, reverberating here and now and then in a bell-chiming whisper; my head aches, throbbing at the temples and eyes - one light, one dark - blurred into a mess of smoke-grey and a psychedelic kaleidoscopic burst of colour: blue eyes, red eyes, and a cloud of breath that shivers in choked-gasp passionfruit-pink.
I blink and wipe at my eyes, the red of my sleeve already damp and the dark eye blinks just a fraction faster than the light.
There is salt on the air and blood on my hands - still, I have not yet been allowed to wash it off; evidence, they said, of my crimes - sticky now and embedded in the ridges and dips of fingertips and palms like a second skin, and I stagger, my breath rattling harsh in my throat and my head swaying, aching as I clutch at the wall, jagged-smooth stone all the way down
A blink, and -
Under my feet, the deck of the ship sways and swings from side to side and I lurch with it, rocking wildly across to slump against the mast; a hand tangles in a mess of ropes, rough-edged and scratching on my palms as I squeeze, searching for something intangible.
I breathe in a rattle as the wind stings my eyes, cold and bitter and fresh, and in my hands my wand twitches, a raw, unbridled power spiking down my arm like lightning in the sky, forked and fiery and shocking my heart; my heart -
My heart is still hammering, a humming-bird pulse, slowing off-beat, off-time, every now and then counting a beat silently before the next and the next-one-two - pause.
I stare, blind and all-seeing, out at the ocean, at its purple-black waves, silver crested and swallowing up the land with a humming, swishing tempo; beyond it, the red-orange sun, sitting low in the sky but always just out of reach of the water, made hazy by the faint mist rising and rolling in on the breeze, a shimmer of diamond droplets that shiver-melt on my fingertips.
The ship sways and I sway and the slow, rolling-rock of it lulls me into a silent, stirring calm; I blink and -
In my hand, power pools like water; it comes from me, roiling and thundering down from my head to my hands, from my soul to my hands with a splash like the sea, and with a slash and a wrench and the shuddering, skidding screech of the stone as the castle screams, I carve scars in the wall, cloak and wand and stone in an arc, with the midnight sun on my back and my shadow over the sign, my sign; their ignorance and my enlightenment and his-mine-their-our blood on the wall in dragging handprints which will stay, rust-red and freshly painted.
There is a laugh in the air, delirious and sour, my mouth is salt-bitter and the wind tugs at my hair, yellow-gold curls and free, finally free, and I sigh and blink and -
It is late; nearing midnight and my ship will sail at dawn.