mhalachai | FIC: Inevitable 64: No One's Home (AB/HP) PART TWO

Inevitable Sixty-Four: No One's Home (Part Two)
by Mhalachai
Disclaimer: Laurell K. Hamilton owns all things Anita Blake. J.K. Rowling owns all things Harry Potter. Only the story is my own.

Part One of this chapter

~~~~~~~

I stared up at the stone ceiling, sheet pulled up over my breasts. "I'm sorry," I said for the fifth time.

Jean-Claude rolled onto his side, looking down at me. "Ma petite, it is nothing to apologize about. It happens to everyone."

I closed my eyes. "Spare me the impotency speech, okay?" I snapped.

Jean-Claude sighed. "You have a lot on your mind," he said. "It is all right. Perhaps it is too soon."

"This isn't some kind of Olaf trauma," I said, flinging off the sheet and going to the bathroom. My silk robe was hanging on a hook, and I pulled it on. I didn't want to be naked right now, even around Jean-Claude. My return to the bed was much slower.

Jean-Claude had propped himself up against the headboard, sheet pooling in his lap. His cross-shaped burn scar seemed dark against his pale chest. He held out his hand to me, and reluctantly I climbed back onto the bed, letting him draw me against his chest. "Will you hear me out?" he whispered against my hair. I nodded. "You have healed physically, ma petite, but much happened to you."

"But I have to be fine!" I said. "Olaf's dead, he can't hurt me anymore."

Jean-Claude stroked my hair. "You are not the only one who was hurt, ma petite."

I toyed with the end of the robe sash. "Is this about Nathaniel?" I asked quietly.

"Oui." Jean-Claude's arms tightened around me.

"Do you know why he's acting like this?"

"Non," Jean-Claude confessed. "But it is different from his past reactions to traumatic situations."

I pushed away from Jean-Claude, sitting up. "You can't be serious!" I exclaimed. "That's because this is so different from anything else!"

"Nathaniel has had many bad things happen to him, ma petite, over many years. This is only the latest in a line of many horrific things."

I scrambled up off the bed, pacing across the floor because if I didn't move, I think I'd have exploded. "Don't you ever talk about him like that!" I hugged myself through the thin robe. "This isn't a fucking sliding scale of damage! You didn't see what happened to him, you can't compare this to anything!"

Jean-Claude slid out of the bed. He was naked, but it so didn't matter any more. "Ma petite, I apologize," he said.

I shook my head, hard and fast. "You can't talk about him like he's a robot, he's not. He's a human being, with feeling and all that shit and you can't expect him to be fine!"

Jean-Claude grabbed me as I passed him. I tried to twist away, but he would not let me go. "Ma petite, I am sorry."

I tried one more time to push away, then collapsed against him. "I don't know what I'm going to do," I said in a tiny voice. "I don't know how to help him."

Jean-Claude guided me back to the bed. He sat me down, then retrieved his own midnight-blue robe. Kneeling in front of me, he cupped my cheek in his hand. "It will need time," he said.

"How much time?"

"I do not know."

I touched the collar of his robe, so I didn't have to look into his eyes. "What if..." I swallowed and tried again. "What if I can't fix this? What if there's nothing I can do?"

Jean-Claude caught my hand. "I do not believe that is the case, ma petite." He turned my hand over and kissed my palm, right over the nail scar. "I believe that your heart is big enough--"

He was interrupted by a heavy knocking at the door. I turned around, frowning. "Who is it?" I asked Jean-Claude.

"It is Asher," Jean-Claude said, moving toward the door. He flung it open to reveal Asher on the other side. They bent their heads together for a moment, speaking softly in French. Before I could protest, Asher nodded and Jean-Claude closed the door.

"What's going on?" I demanded. "No one ever interrupts us unless it's a real emergency, what's wrong?"

Jean-Claude sat beside me on the bed. "Asher came to pass on a message."

"What message?"

"That Nathaniel is here," Jean-Claude said.

I shot to my feet. "What's wrong? Is he hurt? Where is he?" I asked on my way to the door.

"Anita, wait." Jean-Claude's voice froze me in place. Why was he using my name? He never did that unless there was a problem. "Nathaniel is with Jason. He did not ask for you."

I blinked at Jean-Claude, not understanding. "He wouldn't go to Jason if there was trouble," I said slowly.

"I do not believe he is in trouble," Jean-Claude said.

I pulled my robe tighter. "I'm going to go see why he's here."

"Ma petite, I believe this may be a bad idea."

I stopped for a moment to glare at him. "Don't tell me what to do," I said before I stormed out of the room.

The walk to Jason's room had never seemed so long. Questions bounced around in my head. What was wrong? Why hadn't Micah called me if there was a problem? Why had Nathaniel gone to Jason and not found me, if there was a problem?

Finally, I knocked on Jason's door. The movement swung the door inward, and I saw Nathaniel standing by the far wall, his back to me. Then Jason opened the door wider. "Hi," he said, rather grim.

I looked between him and Nathaniel. "Is something wrong?" I asked. "Nathaniel?"

Nathaniel's shoulders stiffened, then slowly he turned around, arms crossed over his chest. "No, nothing's wrong," he said flippantly, tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes. The stare he was giving me was cold, unlike anything I'd ever seen from him before. "Nothing at all."

"Oh." I clenched my fingers into my robe, anxiety gnawing at my stomach. "Okay." Nathaniel kept staring at me. Flustered, I stepped back. "Sorry." Another step, and I backed into Jean-Claude, who had apparently followed me. Suddenly, everyone's eyes on me felt like too much, and I pushed past Jean-Claude and sped down the hall.

Back in Jean-Claude's room, the claustrophobia didn't let up. I quickly turned on every light, but chasing the darkness away didn't help.

The door closed softly, and Jean-Claude walked towards me. "Ma petite--"

"Don't," I warned him. "Don't stand there and tell me that things are going to be all right, or he just needs time, okay? Things aren't going to be all right!"

I pushed my hair back with my left hand, the bones aching as I clenched my fist tight, trying hard not to panic with the walls pressing in at me.

"What would you have of me?" Jean-Claude asked after a few minutes.

"I don't know," I said, taking a deep breath. If I concentrated on breathing, then it wasn't quite so bad.

"Would you like to lie down?"

I shook my head. "I think I'd like to be alone for a while," I said, not able to look at him. "Maybe get some sleep."

"As you wish," Jean-Claude said, a trifle reluctantly. "Is there anything else you require?"

So many things, I wanted to say, but nothing Jean-Claude could give me. I shook my head again. He came over and kissed me on the cheek, running an hand down my back. Then he was gone.

The pressure eased a little once I was alone in the room. I crept over to the bed and climbed on top of the messy sheets. The air was chilly, but I didn't reach for the blanket. No blanket had been warm enough over the last week Micah had slept beside me like always, but without Nathaniel in my bed, I could never get warm enough to sleep.

Slowly, I pulled a pillow to my stomach and curled up around it. I hated feeling like this, lost and guilty and afraid. I hated to think about how much I needed Nathaniel. He'd slowly wormed his way into my life, making me depend on him and need him and finally love him. That was what was making all this so hard. I loved him, had spent most of my free time in his company for over a year, and now he was pushing me away.

That was the thing about love. When you loved someone, it wasn't candles and romance -- the other person had a piece of your soul, that they could use to hurt you with. There was no taking it back, no switch to throw or button to push to stop loving someone. They had you forever. Even if that love warped into hate, they still had you.

Did Nathaniel blame me for what happened? He hadn't said anything since that day in the hospital, but he'd been pushing me away, ignoring me. Before today, however, he had never been so cold towards me. Almost like he didn't care anymore.

Almost. When I closed my eyes, I could see the look of utter terror on his face when the doorbell rang. Was he flashing back to Olaf? What Olaf had done to him? Or how I hadn't been there to save him?

I curled up tighter around the pillow. I was so tired. Of feeling guilty, unable to help the man I loved. I was fine with everything else that happened with Olaf, I had to be. I'd been hurt before. My hands were healing, my side didn't ache any longer. And if my magic had been ripped away... I shook my head. Having my magic taken away had left me vulnerable, yes, but I'd faced bad guys before without my magic.

Would it even have helped? If I had been able to call upon my necromancy with Olaf, what would I have done? The magic I'd learned in New Mexico, from Itzpapalotl, Obsidian Butterfly, to drain a person's power, wouldn't have worked until Olaf was touching me, and by the time he'd have been touching me, I might have been too hurt to do anything.

There had to be some other way for me to use my magic to protect myself and Nathaniel. Something else I could have done. Something...

Chills prickled down my spine as an idea, a horrible idea, occurred to me. That magic I had sought from John Burke, Bokor Majeur, the kind Jean-Claude had flatly forbidden me from using... that I could have used. I could have done something to save Nathaniel, save myself.

No! I screamed in my head, burying my face in the pillow. I knew why I hadn't gone looking for more about Bokor Majeur; it was the same reason I'd let Zerbrowski keep me at the police station as Olaf's body was being cremated. I couldn't walk down that road. I wasn't evil. I wouldn't do evil things...

Not even to protect Nathaniel?

I tried to breathe around the pounding of my heart in my throat. I couldn't do that, I couldn't. Not even if Nathaniel hated me forever, I wouldn't open myself up to evil temptation like that.

I tried to banish those thoughts from my head. After a while, I could breathe again, but I didn't let go of my death-grip on the pillow.

As cold as I was, the dark edge of sleep was pulling at me. The thought of going to sleep by myself, all alone, hurt, but the only person I wanted to hold onto was currently in Jason's room, cold and untouchable.

Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow was another day, and I'd try again. Nathaniel might freak out at the sight of me, but I had to believe there was some part of him that still loved me.

"Tomorrow," I whispered, putting my cheek on top of the pillow.

Distantly, I thought I heard the door creak open. I didn't bother to roll over, hoping that whatever Jean-Claude wanted, he'd get it and leave quickly.

"Anita?"

It sounded like Nathaniel's voice. I opened my eyes and blinked. Had I been dreaming?

"Are.... are you awake?"

I rolled over. Nathaniel was standing just inside the door, staring at his shoes.

Ignoring the sudden surge of hope, I slowly sat up. "Yeah, I'm awake," I said. "What do you want?"

Nathaniel didn't say anything for so long that I slumped down on the bed, holding the pillow tight to my chest. Finally, he said, "Can I come in?"

I restrained myself from pointing out that he was already in the room. "If you want."

Carefully, Nathaniel closed the door, then shuffled across the floor to the bed. He sat on the very edge, as far away from me as he could.

I wanted to ask him why he was here, but I knew that if I opened my mouth right now, I'd say something unfortunate. So, I waited in that increasingly uncomfortable silence for him to speak.

This Nathaniel was a totally different person from the one I'd seen in Jason's room. That Nathaniel had been cold, distant. This Nathaniel was almost cowering, not looking at me. After a while, he balled the blanket up in his hand, then smoothed it down on the bed.

"Jason called Micah," he said eventually.

"Why would Jason call Micah?" I asked, frowning.

Nathaniel tried to make himself even smaller, curling up against the bedpost. "Because I took his car without asking?"

I restrained the urge to shake him, to get him talking faster. "Why did you do that?"

Nathaniel shrugged. "I don't know."

"You don't know why you took Micah's car, drove for forty-five minutes to the Circus, came down here and brushed me off?" I said, unable to keep quiet any longer.

Nathaniel balled his hand up in the blanket again, and didn't respond.

Tossing the pillow to one side, I crawled over the bed to Nathaniel's side. "Nathaniel, give me something," I said. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what you want from me!"

"You turned the radio on," he muttered.

I blinked at him. "What are you talking about?"

"In the car, today." Nathaniel pulled one leg up on the bed, putting his cheek against his knee. "You turned on the radio so you didn't have to talk to me. You never turn on the radio."

I buried my head in my hands. "You like the radio, that's why I turned it on!" I exclaimed. "Damn it, Nathaniel, I'm trying and I don't know what you think I did wrong!" I pushed my hair back. "Was that why you freaked out in the jeep today?"

Nathaniel shook his head.

"Was it those people in the store?"

Nathaniel hesitated, then nodded.

"Why are you paying any attention to them?" I asked. "They're not important."

"They probably saw the papers," Nathaniel said, pulling his other leg up to his chest.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Didn't you see it?" Nathaniel demanded, his voice ragged. "There was stuff in there about you and me. About what happened."

"The media writes stuff about me all the time," I said. "You ignore them, and they'll go away."

Nathaniel shook his head. "You don't get it," he said. He sounded so distraught that I reached out and touched him. His skin was oddly cool for a wereleopard.

He froze under my touch. "Nathaniel, it's okay, you can tell me," I coaxed. "Whatever you want to say, I'll listen."

He licked his lips, slowly lifting his head to meet my eyes. There was such pain on his face, and I didn't know what to do to make it go away. "The papers, they... they talked about me. About what happened."

"How did they find that stuff out?" I demanded. "Why would the cops--"

"It's not that," Nathaniel said in a rush. "I don't care about that, not really. But they knew who I was. They had a picture of me, from work, and they had where I worked and what I did for a living and my stage name--"

"Nathaniel, it's okay," I said, trying to hush him, but he shook his head.

"No, it's not!" He grabbed at his hair. "No one's going to want to see me strip after this! They don't want to know someone cut me up like that, that I couldn't even protect you! Stripping needs the fantasy, Anita, not this kind of shit!"

Once I untangled his hands from his hair, he clenched his fists and wrapped his arms around his legs. "Nathaniel, it's okay if you can't work there anymore."

"No, it's not!" Nathaniel looked at me beseechingly. "If I can't work, I can't make money, and I'm not going to have anywhere to go! I can't do anything else; no one's going to hire a sixth-grade dropout for anything!"

"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "Where are you going to go? You're not..." My insides clenched up nauseatingly as his words sunk in. "Are you leaving me?"

Nathaniel looked away.

I pushed myself back. This couldn't be happening, I told myself. Nathaniel couldn't be leaving. How was I going to handle things without him?

"Why?" I heard myself say. "Why do you have to leave?"

"You're not going to let me stay!" Nathaniel exploded, jumping up off the bed.

My jaw dropped and I stared at him, speechless for a moment. When I found my voice, I demanded, "When the hell did this become about me?"

"You can't let me stay!" Nathaniel shouted, his voice breaking. "You have to realize that all I do is put you in danger!"

"All you..." I stared at him for a long time, unable to speak. Then I got off the bed and walked across the room to the door. I threw the inner bolt, so no one could enter if they didn't have a key, turned around and pressed my back against the wall. "Nathaniel, I'm not going to make you leave," I said.

"You should." He swayed in place, then his knees gave out and he crumpled to the ground.

I ran across the room to him. He was shaking as I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight.

"Nathaniel, stop it," I ordered desperately. Slowly, he stopped shaking, and I pulled at him until he was sitting up. "Where did you get the idea that I was going to make you leave?"

He pressed his lips together, looking down. I touched his cheek gently, feeling the tiny prickles on his skin that told me he hadn't shaved today. "At first," Nathaniel said, "I thought it was your fault, you know, because you didn't know that you couldn't feel me after Olaf... after he got to me. You were supposed to know I was in trouble and not come in there."

"If I'd known you were in danger, I still would have gone in there," I said, shifting around to pull him against the front of my body. I rested my chin on his shoulder. "You cannot think that I'd have left you in there."

"But you should," he whispered. "You're supposed to be smarter than that."

I wrapped my arms around him. "I thought you were mad at me I didn't get there sooner."

"I was."

I frowned. "So you're mad that I came in to save you, and mad that I didn't get there sooner?"

"No!" Nathaniel looked down at his hand in his lap. The cut on his wrist had completely healed. "I'm not mad at you."

I stroked his too-short hair as something occurred to me. "Then who are you mad at?"

Nathaniel's shoulders slumped.

"Are you mad at yourself?" I asked gently.

He nodded, his breath coming out in a sob. I pulled him closer and stroked his back.

"Nathaniel, what happened wasn't your fault. Olaf did this, not you."

"I should have known better!" Slowly, he crumpled against me. "But I was stupid, and you almost got killed, like always. You always come to save me and you always get hurt. I can never save you, it's always someone else. Even Harry saved you, and he's halfway across the world!"

"Was this why you've been acting like this all week?"

Nathaniel slipped lower on my lap. My legs were starting to hurt from kneeling on the stone floor. "I thought, once you figured it out, that you'd tell me..." His voice broke again. "You haven't even tried to feed the ardeur off me since it happened."

"Jesus, Nathaniel, what happened to you was really traumatic! After something that horrible, the last thing you need is someone pressing you for sex!"

"Why not?" Nathaniel said tonelessly. "I'm used to it. But when you didn't.... That's sort of why I thought you were going to make me leave, because you didn't need me for that any more, you could find someone else. Once you figured out that you didn't need me, that I just made your life worse, I thought..."

"Come on." I urged him up, and pulled him over to the bed. He let me push him onto the covers, then laid on his side, not looking at anything. I crawled onto the bed so I could look at him. Our bodies weren't quite touching, but I reached over to touch his face with my fingertips. "I'm not going to figure anything out, because there's nothing for me to get," I told him. "I love you, Nathaniel, you, not just that we have sex or that you cook for me. What happened with Olaf wasn't something you did, you got caught up in my shit, like always." I ran my fingers through his hair, lighter than silk. "I thought you'd had enough of me," I said awkwardly as I smoothed his hair back. "That you were done with me."

He shook his head, his eyes so wide. "Never," he breathed.

Relief flooded through me, and I had to blink back tears. "Good, then," I said.

Nathaniel squirmed closer to me, putting his face against my chest and wrapping his arm around my waist. He was beginning to feel a little warmer as I held him. All I could think about was how close I'd come to losing him.

"You know, you can always do other stuff," I said. "Besides strip."

Nathaniel traced a pattern on my back, settling closer to me. "Like what? I can't do anything."

"What do you like to do?" I asked. "We can start there."

Nathaniel heaved a sigh, sending a shiver over my skin, and not from cold. "I thought about that, this afternoon." His arm tightened around me. "I didn't mean to hit the wall, it's just--"

"It's all right," I said, kissing the top of his head. "I know you'd never hurt me. It did scare me, though, after what you did with your hand." I ran my hand down the back of his head and nudged him slightly until he looked up at me. "Why did you do that?"

He rolled away from me and stared up at the ceiling. "I dunno."

I propped my head up on my arm and watched him. "You can tell me anything," I said. Belatedly, something occurred to me. "But only if you want," I said in a rush. "You don't have to, it's okay, whatever you want."

He nodded, worry lines easing away from around his mouth.

I tried to think of what else to say. "Did I tell you I talked to Harry this morning?"

Nathaniel frowned, then looked at me sideways. "No."

"It was after that thing with the board games," I told him. "He's worried about us. He said he's coming here for Christmas and he's got stuff to tell you."

"Did he say about what?" Nathaniel asked. I shook my head. "Probably girls."

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"He didn't tell you about it, and he tells you all the important magic stuff," Nathaniel explained. He lifted his hand up to the light and examined it. "When he was here, we talked about girls and stuff. Harry got kind of nervous talking about girls with Jason, because Jason's never serious, and Harry doesn't understand girls at all.."

"Oh." I wondered if I should tell Nathaniel the other thing that Harry had told me, him dreaming about me having sex with Nathaniel, when Nathaniel took a sudden deep breath and sat up.

"That's not all of it," he blurted out.

"Not all of what?" I asked as I pushed myself up. "Does this have to do with Harry?"

"No."

"Nathaniel?" I put my hand on his back.

"I've always known what I was, you know what I mean?" he said, picking at the blanket.

"No, I don't," I said slowly.

He spread his hands out on the blanket. "Even before Gabriel, I knew what I was and what I could do with my body, same with after Gabriel made me a wereleopard. I knew what I could do, and what I was."

"Nathaniel, you were a submissive with no safe word," I said, bending over him. "You didn't know when to say stop if someone was hurting you."

'That's not what I mean," he said urgently, and I shut my mouth. "When I was a street kid, I knew I was a street kid. When I was a wereleopard, I knew that too. But now I'm not."

"What do you mean?" I asked quietly.

With aching slowness, Nathaniel turned his head, peering out at me from behind a curtain of his hair. "I can't shift."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can't shift. I can't even be a wereleopard right anymore." He turned away from me and crumpled on the bed.

"Of course you still have to be able to shift," I said, putting my hand on his hip. "You can't lose your beast like that."

He mumbled into the blanket. I had to crawl over to him and ask him to repeat himself. "It hurt too much." He took hold of my hand and pressed it against his chest. "Everything else on that day, with the knives and the screwdriver and the glass, it hurt, you know, but it was just normal dying hurt. But what Richard did..." He wasn't crying, not really, but I almost wish he was, to let out that pain bottled up inside him. "It's never hurt like that to shift. It was like every single part of me was on fire and I thought I was going to die like that."

"That doesn't mean it's always going to be like that," I told him softly. "I was almost unconscious, Richard didn't know what he was doing, he was trying to save your life."

"I know." Nathaniel ran his tongue over his lower lip before he continued. "But I can't even feel my beast anymore. How am I supposed to know what I am if I can't do that? How can I be what you need if I can't be who I am?"

I curled up around Nathaniel's back, an echo of the way we'd slept for so many months, and kissed the back of his neck. "All I need you to be is you, not anyone else. I love you, not something that you are."

When Nathaniel didn't move, I sat up and touched Nathaniel's face until he was looking at me. "Do you want me to help you?" I asked.

The look of intense concentration on his face was almost too much. "How?" he asked in a tiny voice.

I made myself smile reassuringly. "Richard doesn't know you, doesn't know what it means to be a wereleopard. I do. We can see if I can help you shift."

Nathaniel was making some serious eye contact with me. "What if it doesn't work?"

I squeezed his arm. "Then we'll try again tomorrow."

I waited for what seemed like a very long time before Nathaniel nodded. "Okay."

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding, and smiled. "Come on, let's use the bathroom," I said.

Obediently, Nathaniel trailed after me into Jean-Claude's large bathroom. I grabbed a handful of towels and laid them out on the ground.

"What are you doing?" Nathaniel asked.

"I'm tired," I said. "I don't want to have to clean up all the liquid from when you shift into your leopard form. So, you change on the towels and no clean up. Simple."

"Oh."

I held out my hand to him. "Come on."

He took my hand, let me lead him onto the towels. I tried to help him undress, but he moved me away from him. He seemed to be struggling with himself. I wanted to help him, to make this easier for him, but some part of what we'd been through today made me stay where I was.

He undressed slowly, reluctantly. I hadn't seen him naked since before this whole thing began, but every removed article of clothing revealed a perfect, flawless body. In my head, I had a remembrance of his body, bloody and ripped up, and it took all my willpower to not to let that show on my face.

Once he was naked, he looked at me. "Now what?"

I bit my lip. Truth be told, I had no idea. "Try and shift?" I suggested. "I'll be right here if you need me."

Nathaniel closed his eyes, frowning in concentration. Then he opened his eyes and shook his head. "I can't do it," he said, shaking his head over and over. "It's going to hurt."

"I'm here," I said. I stepped onto the towels, having to look up a little to meet his haunted eyes. "I have an idea, okay?"

He nodded. I put my hands on his chest and closed my eyes, calling not to his beast, but to mine.

She was sluggish, tired and unhappy, but as I called to her, let her fill me up with a warm rush of fur in my body, I dropped all my mental barriers and reached out to Nathaniel along the marks. My beast knew Nathaniel, wanted to curl up with him, and when she found his marks closed, she was unhappy.

"Nathaniel, let me in," I muttered.

I felt his hesitation, the slow crumbling of his mental blocks. Instead of pushing my way in, I ran my power over him, letting him know I was there.

He took a deep breath, then let it go, everything crumbling, and my beast jumped in joyously, crashing into Nathaniel's beast. His back bowed and he fell back, his body shifting. Our minds touching, I felt the joy of the transformation, the freeness as he went from man to cat. He twisted midair, and when he landed, it was as a leopard.

He tossed his sleek black head back, stretching his jaw wide to reveal a mouthful of sharp teeth and a wet pink tongue. He sprang off the towels to my side, looking up at me with those grey leopard eyes. Through the marks, I could feel his delight that the transformation hadn't hurt, of being so close to me, of being alive. I sank to my knees and held out my arms, wrapping my arms around him as far as they would go.

He purred, a deep sound that went all the way through my bones. I hugged him tighter, and I started crying.

Nathaniel's astonishment was clear through the marks. I sat back and wiped my face with my hand. "So what if I'm crying?" I sniffled, then buried my face in my hands.

I'd almost lost Nathaniel. First to Olaf, then to his and my own growing fears. I sniffed hard and looked up, catching his head in my hands. Making eye contact with a huge leopard is difficult, but we managed.

"I'm always going to be there for you, do you understand?" I said. "I promise. Always."

He nodded. I stood up, and Nathaniel quickly darted to my side.

"Do you want to go hunting? I think I need to get some sleep," I said. "You could go find Jason and..." My voice trailed off as Nathaniel bounded over to the bed and jumped up, stretching out on it. "Or we could get some sleep."

I laid down next to Nathaniel without taking off my robe, cuddling next to him, so warm and alive. After a minute, I sat back up and leaned against him, instantly feeling a whole lot better.

"Let's do this for a while," I said drowsily. Nathaniel growled his agreement, dropping his head to his paws.

With the marks still wide open, I felt Nathaniel's worry and anxiety drain away, as much a response to his leopard as to what we had talked about. Just before I fell asleep, I murmured, "I love you."

Nathaniel's wash of emotion, of love, of home, followed me into sleep.

... to be continued

[Poll #708998]

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Angelo Badalamenti - Dance Of The Dream Man (Instru

Page 1 of 2 << [1] [2] >>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

From:

catherinecookmn.livejournal.com

Well, I can see why this took you so long! Trying to walk both Anita and Nathaniel back from the ledges you put them on must have been a chore and a half.

Honestly, I'm comfy with it now, but my initial reaction was that it seemed a bit forced (the reasons for Nathaniel's angst and the plot device of the car radio used to ensure his continuing angst). But I've personally freaked out much worse over far less (and did so last night, in fact), and humans tend not to make sense. So it's definitely your call, and please don't hurt me!!! (cowers in fear of author's wrath)

From:

catherinecookmn.livejournal.com

Oh, and I liked Harry's newfound assertiveness. He's going to call Anita, damn it, and if Dumbledore doesn't like it he can expel Harry. (I can just imagine Snape threatening -- again -- to expel Harry, only to be brought up short by the dead-tired, dead-serious Harry saying "Please do.")

mhalachai was here

FIC: Inevitable 64: No One's Home (AB/HP) PART TWO

Navigation

Links

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags