Ivan Press

[Hilary] Fri 11:19 pm

[1. On the most surface level, Hilary is just afterglowing from multiorgasmic hawtseckz and the hills are alive with all the fucks she does not give about Espiridion leaving her.
2. Just beneath that she's a little uneasy, but it's not clear if it's because she's being divorced, if she's not sure how Ivan is going to react, if she's worried about her Future... it's just a trace of discomfort.
3. Much deeper, she's pleased. It's possible she's not even entirely conscious of that, or understands herself why.
4. Waaay deeper, Hilary is on the verge of a conniption fit because Ivan's talking about things changing and even though he's not coming right out and mentioning it, that's where thoughts about Anton are buried. That's a powderkeg of emotions she is violently, hysterically resistant to opening up again.]

[Ivan] Moments ago, seconds ago, caught in those last lunatic moments of their --

not lovemaking; no. Not quite fucking either. Whatever it is they're doing, when they do what they do to each other. Whatever one calls something so mad, so destructive as what they do to each other, as though it's only by breaking each other down, shattering everything, everything, that they can possibly

connect

in any meaningful way.

Anyway. Moments ago: caught in those last lunatic moments: this very thought crossed his mind. God, he wished and hoped Espiridion would just leave her already, cast her aside and move on to the next purebred mate he can pretend to love and pretend to romance, pretend to care about because that's what good Silver Fangs do, just so he could have himself that heir that -- frankly -- Dion probably just pretends to everyone, himself included, that he desperately wants.

And then Hilary tells him: Espiridion is leaving me.


The jolt of that goes through him like electricity. He startles under her hands palpably. His first instinct is to pull away, because no, nononono, god no, that means she might cling to him, that means she might look to him, that means he's her only guardian left because he agreed to it, didn't he, thinking something like this would never come to pass, and --

he controls it. He shuts his eyes and turns his face to her skin and hides in her while she's telling her in that soft, uncaring voice of hers that Espiridion said it wasn't her fault. Said, essentially, what he'd said to Ivan via messenger: not your fault. Pure blood is not always clean blood.

She doesn't think she'll be mated again. Ivan lets out a vague noise, something between a scoff and a laugh, utterly humorless. His hand grips briefly at her back, hard enough to leave five pale marks where his fingers pulled that flush pink a moment later as blood returns. He bumps his brow against her shoulder. Bites at her skin, and then, because he doesn't know what else to do, pulls back and looks at her. Long and hard, studying her, trying to understand those conflicting, half-formed emotions in her.

Trying.


In the end, whatever he sees -- everything he sees -- doesn't ever process through his mind enough to turn into a response. Words. In the end he just wraps his arms tighter around her. It's something like a half-controlled collapse -- he goes to the side, brings her with him, and for a while it's an uncertain jumble of limbs and movement that eventually resolves.

And he's on his side, and she's on her side, and they're facing each other, and her thigh is still over his hip and he's still inside her,

hardening inside her as though none of his mind's reeling matters at all. As though all his body heard was no longer his, which by corollary must mean: yours.

He's quiet, though. He touches her face. He slapped her earlier; hit her in the face, and though it was not hard somehow that seems so much worse than anything else he's ever done to her. That's absurd, and he knows it. He's gentle now, though, touching her, stroking her face, silent.

There are no questions about what she'll do now. Whether she has money of her own. Whether Dion will be so generous as to leave her any. Whether he's going to send assassins in the night to make it look like suicide. Whether this means she really does belong to him now. Whether she has any family left. Whether she would like to belong to him, or not. Whether he could stand such a thing, or not.

None of that. This is what he says:

"Tell me about ... " your life sounds so trite. A pause, and then this instead, "Tell me what happened after your brother died, and your House fell. Tell me about ... dancing and Lausanne and your first mate and what happened after him. And how Dion came to be your second mate."

Fill in the blanks for me, he may as well say. Tell me about you.

[Hilary] The floors up here are light-colored, recycled bamboo. It's in keeping with the building's whole theme and purpose; it's ever so green, you see, it's ever so trendy. But there's an interesting, subtle springiness to them. Softer than the concrete that lines the floors of most of his penthouse. It doesn't rattle their joints when Ivan slides them downward to the side, their lower halves shifting to accomodate their new position without separating. The rain still patters, and the day stays gray; no sunlight breaks through just yet.

As he's gentle with her, stroking her hair and her cheek, Hilary's eyes fall closed. She revels in the affection like a cat being woken from a sun-soaking nap, leaning into his hand with wordless desire for more. Sinuously, she arches her back and presses against him as she feels him hardening again inside of her; she all but purrs for it. There's no signal that she's clinging to him suddenly, shaking with terror that she's abandoned, oh no, whatever will become of her if this strong, beautiful, rich young thing doesn't take care of her -- nothing like that.

Just that lust of hers, dark and seething and awakened now, wrapping around him and drawing him nearer, tipping him over her own personal event horizon.

She's also staying close to him. Not grabbing, not trembling anymore, but dwelling in all that warmth and affection he's giving her after fucking her as roughly, as brutally, as he just did. She all but nuzzles him, but not quite. He bites her; she shivers with pleasure. He stares at her, sees deeper than Hilary herself does, and cannot come up with any questions about the here, the now, the practical side of things. Though perhaps that informs what he does ask her about: knowing what she said about being poor once. Not ever hearing a word about her parents, though he's heard about her caregivers, about her brother.

He doesn't even know what happened to her caregivers.

Instead of shoving him away, Hilary simply gives a soft, gentle swivel of her hips, moving him inside of her as though she intends to just go ahead and fuck him again, work herself into yet another orgasm, nice and slow like they almost never have it. But she does begin to talk, instead, curling against his chest, tucking herself close to his warmth.

"After my brother died, my caregivers were my guardians, and held our family's holdings in trust til I was of age. If there were Garou that they answered to, I did not meet them, or don't remember it. I had tutors, but I don't remember where we lived. It was very nice, though. The house was very big, and we'd go to the ballet or theater on my birthdays. I learned English and French. I don't remember knowing many other children. I think, when I was young, I thought I was a princess or something." She says this without self-mockery; strangely, with all her rejection of them, Hilary does not seem to have much mockery in her for children. Children simply don't know any better; it isn't their fault if they think silly things. This, she forgives her younger self.

"I had always studied dance and as I got older, I was more demanding. I wanted to compete. We traveled. I met people my own age. I went to a finishing school for a year. I learned about the world. I know that when I was seventeen they began searching for a mate for me, but I was relatively uninvolved in the process. I met many Garou who were not suitable for one reason or another, or who found me unsuitable, or who died before any further steps could be taken."

Hilary takes a deep breath there, nuzzling under his chin, stroking his side with one warm, soft-fingered hand. "Things are fuzzy around then. That's when I went to culinary school in France. I think we were perhaps running out of my family's money; I was supposed to be in charge of it but I had a generous allowance and my caretakers just had me sign things sometimes. I know we let a few servants go; my life changed very little, but there were fewer people to do things. We changed our car, we moved. I went on dancing, and being introduced here and there. By the time I was twenty-five we were, I think, rather destitute. It was just my nanny Rose-Marie, and our man Arthur. They were very old then. She said very strange things, and would cry. Arthur had fits."

She doesn't say anything then. She was twenty-five, and somehow had managed to remain without a mate since coming anywhere near her majority. Hilary is quite still in his arms now, no longer nuzzling him, no longer lusting.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," she whispers. "I don't."

[Ivan] They lie on her bamboo floors, which has the slight springiness of a loamy forest floor thoroughly penetrated by the root systems of great trees. The rain falls outside. The light is grey, grey, grey, until even his golden skin looks simply fair. Their bodies are still joined. When she moves on him, his eyes close for a second; he looks rapt, wracked.

And they open when she speaks. That strange, surreal little autobiography. Like she moved through her life in half a dream. She danced and she existed, she thought she was a princess. She competed. She went to school. Little by little -- without her really even noticing it -- the wealth and excess of her childhood faded away. Piece by piece, like a dream dissolving to mist.

In the end, she was twenty-five. Still not mated. Two old servants, well into the curse of the Tribe by then. And she doesn't want to talk about it any more.


There's a gap in the story there. A span of nothing, like a bridge disappearing into mist. He knows what's on the other side: the Ahroun in the Loire Valley, the garden of france, an Athro at least, who swept her out of destitution back into a life of chateaux and riches. As if she really were a princess. As if she lived in a fairytale.

That ended, too. Less than two years after it began. And even that part of the story is a bare skeleton, a scaffold of delicate glass. Then another span of fog, and on the other end,

Espiridion, so rigid and absolute in his adherence to How Things Should Be.

And he calls himself a Galliard.


Hilary has stilled. He thinks she might be unhappy, or remembering something she doesn't want to. He thinks about those emotions in her, so far beneath the surface that she herself doesn't realize they're there. Linked to Anton. Linked to loss. He thinks of that and, for once, has the instinctive foresight not to dig. Not to dredge it all up. He lets it be. He wraps his arm a little tighter around her, draws her down against his smooth chest, holds her.

"Okay," he says quietly. "We don't have to talk about it."

[Hilary] The truth is, the places that Ivan would see as fog, as lost years, are the years Hilary remembers most vividly. She can recall in an eyeblink the exact light in those hospital hallways, the texture of a coffin, the sound of Arthur falling out of bed, the sound Rose-Marie made every time she coughed. She remembers perfectly the harshest realities she's ever known. There will never be a moment of her life when she escapes, completely, the smells that engulfed her as she watched the end of Emmerich's life.

It's the easy times, the wealthy times, that are hazy to her. Days and even years went by and very little changed for her. There are snippets of memory that still bring her pleasure: the way her body felt when she was dancing, the sound of applause. Her first mate listening as she told him that his servants taught her how to ride a horse so that she could go out into all his lands and find streams, meadows, copses of trees, and how he'd smile to hear it. She remembers that Glo-Worm doll that never, ever seemed to run out of batteries no matter how hard she would squeeze it, how many nights she'd hold onto it. But these are just... moments. Moments within spans of years that elude her when she tries to grasp them.

She doesn't want to talk about all those starkly lit, starkly remembered, painful, horrific moments. She retreats into the mists, the fog she exists in most of the time, and Ivan allows it. Because he was there at one of the other most real, most harrowing moments of Hilary's life. He watched how close she was to herself,

and how much it cost her to be there. How impossible it was for her to stay.

Don't let me hurt him.

And she was gone again. She retreated then; his questions take her by the hand and lead her towards moments in the past that were similar, and that is when she tugs back. No, she says, resisting his pull. And instead of losing his hold on her, Ivan simply stays in the fog with her. Right here.

Hilary exhales, relaxing, and rubs herself gently on his chest, but she's silent for a little while. "I have money," she says finally. "I put some away while I was married, and I even had some from when my first mate died squirreled away. And my second mate was very generous. I'll be staying here. He let me keep anything he gave me as a gift, though I'll sell two of the cars and probably some of the jewelry and art. I'll hire some of my own servants, get them their own place on this floor, perhaps. Unless I decide to get a house. But I do like this place."

Nevermind that this is where they brought Anton. That this is where he was taken away from her.

That this is the only place in the world, barring Ivan's car, where she was conscious while she held him.

Nevermind all that.

She sounds almost excited, all this fun buying and selling and hiring and leasing and so forth. "I'm going to keep the Jag," she purrs. "It's a better year-round car than the Maserati or the Ferrari." A beat. "Though I do like having a driver, and it's not really appropriate to sit up front with the driver, is it? But I like the Jaguar." She quiets then, brooding over this.

It's a very important question.

[Ivan] So that's where she retreats when life becomes too stark, too real for her. The empty, unimportant little details like whether or not she'll have money after her very civil divorce, whether she'll keep the Jaguar or the Maserati. Because to Ivan, who never lacked for a thing in his life and cannot possibly even imagine such a state, such things as money and possessions become strangely, ironically unimportant.

And Ivan would mock her for it, revile her for her cowardice, retreating from reality like that, if he didn't know how harshly reality intruded on her childhood. How at the age of four she went through reality more starkly and more brutally than anyone should ever have to.

And -- if he didn't know, didn't see himself, how she responded when reality was thrust upon her. When Anton was no longer an it, no longer an inconvenient parasite in her belly, but a wriggling, kicking, crying thing that every law of nature and genetics demands she love, protect, care for, shelter. When she gave him away, let Ivan take the boy away from her, far away and forever, because that alone was the single and greatest act of maternal devotion she could ever muster. He saw it then: reality intruding on her surreal, foggy life. He saw it then: how she responded, could not handle it, all but shattered under the load.

Ivan thinks to himself that she can't always be like this. She can't always shy away from what's hard and cruel and painful; not if she ever wants to connect with who she is. And he knows she wants that. She wants that because that's what she gets out of being with him, and she wants him so very badly. So she must want herself. Must want to be in her own skin, if only for a little while at a time.

Sometimes he thinks he should force her to look. Force her to see it, the ugly, the grey, the hard angles, the brutal truths. Sometimes he almost thinks if he did that, he could -- what?

Fix her. Heal her?

And sometimes he has the astuteness and the intelligence to realize he has no right. He, of all people, has absolutely no right. The most he can do is be there for her. Hold her when she chooses, of her own accord, to turn away from the soothing blankness she exists in so often -- to turn away from it, and to turn toward the terrifying, swallowing darkness of the world. And her memories. And her emotions, and her self, lost somewhere in that howling void.

That's all he can do for her. Everything else is on her.


So she talks about her cars. And he lets her. She says that she has money put away. She can continue to live more or less in this fashion. He wonders briefly if she'll keep going to her country clubs and yacht clubs and dinners and ballets. He wonders if she'll even still have a place there after the disgrace of her dead baby, her fled husband. He wonders, absurdly, if she'll change her name now. What was it she said her brother's name was? Something French. Something Belgian.

And he wonders if she knows that if she didn't have money, if she lost all status and respect in the human world and the Garou, if Dion takes everything with him when he leaves, Ivan would still buy her everything money could possibly buy. Everything she could possibly want. It's such a foolish sentiment, and he hates himself a little for harboring it. He thinks of all this while she's murmuring about Jaguars and Maseratis and Ferraris, and his hand moves gently on her back, and when he finally realizes she's fallen quiet, he stirs a little.

"Hilary," he says softly, "am I your only guardian now?"

[Hilary] There is no fixing her.

God only knows what became of her parents. Her brother's packmate, a Fang as well, frenzying to his death. Her last, most loyal caregivers growing old, going mad. Hilary herself broken, half by breeding and half by circumstance. Look at the best of them -- Dion, Adren now, well into his lightswitch madness between cold intellectualization and extreme obsession. Look at Katherine Bellamonte, ever so devoted to her pack and her duties, whose eyes gleam when she thinks of her power, her destiny. Ivan himself, still so young and so early in rank, who fucks this woman like he needs her, would buy her the world, who thinks he might be in love with her, and yet when the spectre of her clinging to him leaves an icy touch up his spine, he has to fight not to throw her from himself as fast as he can and run.

Pure blood is not always clean blood.


There is no way to heal Hilary, just as there's no way to make Katherine Bellamonte truly forsake power, no way to make Ivan suddenly a paragon of devotion and committment, no way to cure Micaela of her ennui, Tomas of his vengefulness. They all have only moments, sometimes long spans of time, but the madness always encroaches on them, overtakes them at their weakest.

Truth be told, Hilary is weak right now. Physically she's fine, though hormonally she's still recovering. Walls that shuddered and came down when her baby was born are being rebuilt, brick by brick. Stones that shattered are being sculpted out of nothing, left to dry and harden so that they can join the rest of the wall. It is slow work, and it is not easy.

It is something like putting back together a broken glass vase in the aftermath of an earthquake. Every time the ground tremors, all that careful work is undone. The cracks are always there.


She kisses him, softly now, but not his mouth. She kisses his neck and his chest, licks softly along his collarbone as she starts to gently, gently move herself on him again. It's a slowed-down imitation of fucking, a wet writhe where they lie on the floor. He could let it go on and there's no telling if she'd ever speed up, if she'd ever roll him under her and ride him, if she'd do anything but this forever and ever.

"Mmm," she breathes at his question, drawing her hands up and down his back, stroking his flank, laying her palm on his ribcage to feel the way he breathes. She lowers her head to his nipple. "I suppose so," she murmurs, taking it in her mouth to suckle at it softly. "Do you want to fuck on the couch now?" she asks, breezing past this little detail. She grinds down on him a little, gasping quietly. Her eyes lift up to his.

[Ivan] Undeniably, he responds when she moves on him like that. He came inside her and stayed inside her and he was hard again moments later, hard even though at that time sex was not at all on his conscious mind. Something closer to terror was. The thought that she might actually be his now, his ward, his responsibility, needful, dependent.

She isn't afraid, though. She isn't clinging to him, begging for him to take care of her, please take care of her, she doesn't know what she'd do without him. She doesn't do that, and that helps. And even though a moment ago he knew with unflinching absoluteness that if she asked him to, if she needed him to, he would take over where her mate

-- her ex-mate, one supposes --

left off and drown her in all the silks and ermines and diamonds and rubies she wanted -- it helps that she tells him she has her own money. She doesn't need him. He hates the thought of her not wanting him, growing tired of him, and simultaneously -- he can't stand the notion that she might need him.

They are so mad, one and all.

And still. She moves on him, and he responds. Her hand on his side feels the quiet little gasp he gives, the suck of breath in when she tongues his nipple. His hand cups over the back of her head. His cock pulses inside her once, the first time since they came all but simultaneously and fell apart into this sweaty, thoughtless tangle on the floor.

He doesn't agree, though. He doesn't take her to the couch, or the bed, or any of that. His hand on the back of her head becomes his hand on the side of her face, pushing her back a little, making her look at him the way she made him look at her while he was fucking her, hammering her, straining at her with everything he had.

"Hilary," her name, twice in a span of seconds, "how are you not afraid? Why aren't you ... bothered by all this?"

[Hilary] The same part of him that was terrified that she might become dependent on him was, simultaneously, the part aroused by the thought of mine, mine, all mine. The same part of Hilary that rejects being drawn into herself is the part of her that seeks connection and solidity by way of sex, and sex with him, though she doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to delve into all those things that make up her history, her heart. It's possible there's no amount of talking or dredging or crying that would make any of it any easier for her to bear.

She chooses the more pleasurable route to herself, a self that is pure and unhurt, a self that is shattered but ...okay. Somehow, okay.

Again, Hilary leans into Ivan's touch, craving and nuzzling. She isn't angry at him suddenly for denying her, for not taking the hint, for not just lifting her up and throwing her onto the couch, railing that cunt of hers again. Strangely, she seems content. She's never content. Not often, at least.

"Bothered by what?" she asks him after a moment, staring at him with a sort of childlike blankness to her eyes, confusion to her voice. "By the divorce?" She blinks once or twice, thoughtful, but shakes her head. "I'm just not. He hasn't hurt me. I doubt he will; there's no reason to. I'm making out like a bandit, Ivan. What is there to fear?"

[Ivan] What is there to fear? Ivan can't even put it into words. He just looks at her, troubled, his smooth brow furrowed with a frown. And all the while his hand is stroking her cheek, stroking backward along her cheekbone, across her temple, through her hair. Over and over, hypnotic; he himself only half-aware of it.

"I don't know," he says, hushed. "It just seems like ... everything's changed in an eyeblink. Society can be cruel; Garou society doubly so. They might shun you after word gets out. And even if not -- you have to take care of yourself now. Hire your own people, take care of your own finances and living situations and --

"I can't take care of you, Hilary." And there, that; maybe that's the root of it. Bursting out of him, a whispered, sudden confession. "I don't know how. I want to. I can't."

[Hilary] She ruffles at that, balking at him. Looks at him as though he's gone mad -- and in a way he has, all his fears and committment issues stirred up and bubbling to the surface. Hilary stares at him, no longer nuzzling him or reveling in his touch, and he's worrying about her being shunned and how she has to take care of herself now, and he can't, he can't,

and her expression changes to one of abject disgust. She rolls her eyes and breathes out a sound not terribly far from the one she exhaled when someone mentioned Katherine the other day. "Nom de dieu, Ivan, no one is asking you to."

[Ivan] "I know that," and for what it's worth, he does know that. She looks -- and sounds -- so disgusted by him right now. That stings too. Sometimes he hates how vulnerable he feels with her. When he says it again, it's a little different, "I know you aren't asking me to. It's just ...

"Everything's changed." And now he sounds maudlin. And he hates that too, hates it so much that he pulls away from her at last, draws himself out of her with a hissing inhale and sits up. He still hasn't made it in past the entryway. "You can't honestly tell me you don't realize that."

[Hilary] Maudlin, he thinks himself. Childish, bratty, morose, she thinks, adds to it, annoyed that he's always so bound and determined to bring everything up. Dredge up the past, ask questions about things that don't matter anymore. Why, he probably even reads more meaning than there is in how she wears her hair.

Her fingernails grab at him suddenly when he pushes away from her, draws his cock out of her. She gasps at the loss of him, her eyes wide and stark but not looking at him for a moment. That fades. So does her grip. She, lying on her side on the ground, a mess from fucking him, her slip somewhere under one knee, looks at him as he sits up and back from her.

"You keep saying that," she all but snaps, her voice tightly, but only barely, controlled. "What does it even mean?"

[Ivan] "You had a fucking child, Hilary." There's no 'but' here: he snaps at her -- a fast, vicious turn of his head and the words flying like a bite. "You had a fucking son, our son, and now he's growing up in Novgorod. That changed. Do you need more examples? Because I have plenty."

[Hilary] He doesn't get as far as his examples, or the claim of them. Ivan gets that one utterance out, that one reminder of what changed, what came of it, and she starts screaming.

It's not like the sounds she was making earlier when he was inside of her, slapping her, fucking her the way he hasn't in months, the way he couldn't, and she was coming so hard he covered her mouth with his palm. This isn't even human, the sounds she's making, the way she's lashing out. At first the words sound like words, some in English and some not,

stop

don't you

you can't

stop

don't

but soon enough it's just incoherent shrieking, and her hands and her feet slashing at him, trying to make him stop, trying to make him hurt. He mentions her fucking child and Hilary loses what semblance of control, of sanity, that she has been wearing for the last half-hour. Less time than that. Put quite simply, she throws a goddamn tantrum, to the point that her screaming seems like nothing more

than trying to drown him out.

[Ivan] And Ivan is just

stunned.

He's so stunned that for the first few seconds he can only stare at her. His head snaps around at that first shriek out of her mouth. He's never, never in his life heard her make a sound like that. Heard anyone make a sound like that. She's screaming at him, the words are distorted, her face looks distorted from her fury, her terror, the sheer insanity rupturing out of her now that he's torn that fragile lid off of whatever deep dark hole she's buried it all in. He barely even recognizes her.

Whatever he was going to say peters out around had a fucking son, our son, and -- because then she starts hitting him, and he puts an arm up out of instinctive self defense but she's not even targeting, she's just striking out at him, flailing and lashing out and,

god, still screaming, making those incoherent noises that have the neighbors looking at each other in mute dismay, wondering what the fuck was going on next door now,

and Ivan's trying to shut her up now, he's grabbing at those flashing clawed hands of hers, wrestling her back, whipping his face out of the way of her nails, wrestling her hands down and her arms to her side, clamping his arm around her, clamping her to his chest, clamping his hand over her face, over her mouth.

In the end he's not sure if he's trying to hold her or simply force her into submission. Either way his arms around her are hard and unbudging; he's holding her so tightly and he's covering her mouth the way he had before, covering those screams as though he could reseal the wound he'd torn open, shove it all back inside her, if he only held on tightly enough.

Saying, "Shhh. Shhh." Saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Jesus, shhh, I'm sorry."

[Hilary] How could she be so blithe. So unperturbed, so unafraid. How could she seem to not care, to behave as though nothing's changed when, just look at her, even her body is different.

Because of this.

Because when Ivan was gone and it was just Hilary and the empty bed, she made a sound of such profound pain that no one who heard it -- though no one did -- would have mistaken it for anything but wailing. It's the sound mothers who outlive their children make. Incomprehensible, unthinkable loss, visited upon the world as though the universe just felt the need to assert itself, remind these petty mortals who is boss, and how vulnerable they really are.

She pretends nothing has changed because what has changed is beyond the realm of what she can deal with, what she can live with. Thirty-plus years later and she can say that oh yes, she watched her brother die.

Two weeks after the fact, Ivan can't mention their child without this coming from the attempt. It's impossible even to tell if this is instinct or choice, it happened so quickly and was so unexpected. It's impossible to tell if this is punishment or simply beyond her control. It's also entirely possible that, with Hilary, it's a mixture of both:

I'll show you. Look what you did to me. Don't ever do that again.

as well as simply:

no. no. no. you can't. you can't do this to me. please don't.


He grabs her, stops her flailing arms and scratching hands, stops her from hurting herself -- and that is, he sees in an instant, a real danger, she's moments from smashing her head on the wall, the ground, anything to make her panic grind to a halt within blessed black oblivion. The neighbors don't hear much -- this is a penthouse, and it might not occupy the entire rooftop as his does, but it is made for luxury, and the walls are thick and the apartments separated. They didn't hear the fucking. They only dimly hear this, and only vaguely wonder, and the truth is: she doesn't have many neighbors. This building is, after all, so new it's not full yet.

But in any case: Ivan stops her. Shuts her up, locks her arms down, pins her to his chest so she'll stop. Her legs thrash, but it's not so much kicking as working against the ground, searching for purchase as though she might run away. Her back arches wildly, not so much trying to escape as just... move. Just break away, not from him but from what's erupting inside of her.

Ivan holds her tight, tight enough to subdue her, and her eyes roll up to stare at the ceiling, anything blank and empty and emotionless and far, far away from her. Her arching and writhing and kicking slows, and comes back in waves where she strains and then relaxes, til it becomes almost a ritual of wearing herself out. All the while she stares at the ceiling, not even blinking now, until

finally

she's just still. Every few moments a tight shake goes through her, a sudden jerk, but it always passes. The stifled, strangled noises in her throat sound more like choked off, swallowed sobs now, and there are indeed tears in her eyes, but now all he sees is that wild, endless stare, her cheeks drained of blood,

bottomless holes in a white face.

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't look at that face of hers, that mask of emptiness and insanity and the most harrowing losses a person could endure. Could imagine. He can't bear to. He wonders if that's ever been the case before -- a man who claims possibly to love a woman being unable to bear the sight of her face. A father being unable to bear the sight of the mother of his child's face. His ears are still ringing with those shrieks she let out when he was pulling her to him, not so much gathering her to him as simply clasping her to him -- the screams she let out right beside his ear even as she was scratching at him, scratching at herself, anything to make him stop, make it stop, just make it stop.

It stops. She stops, and he stops, and now he's holding on to her and fresh sweat has broken over him, his heart is pounding all over again, and it's all as much from horror as from the physical struggle of subduing her. He doesn't know where that strength came from. Even now he can still feel her arching and writhing, wearing herself out, wearing it all out until what remains is an empty, peaceful shell again.

He's never seen anyone behave like this before, ever. Sheltered, overprivileged boy that he is: a Silver Fang who's never seen real madness before. He doesn't know what to say, or what to do.

So he holds on to her. He waits and he waits.

[Hilary] His hand lingered over her mouth, clamped down harder than he even realized til he started to let go, for awhile. But she kept going progressively more limp, worn out from that eruption, which is not as bad as the first loss, but still bad enough that she doesn't want to feel it again. Ever again.

Hilary exhausts herself, and when Ivan lets go of her mouth, she's not making much of any sound. She's gradually going limp, and even when she does there are aftershocks, shudders of pain that, after awhile, go away as well. She sounds almost like she's choking back more screams, or sobs, or bile. She never lets her lips part again, as though

Ivan said shhh. Shhh.

He waits and he waits, and there's no telling how long it's been. She goes limp in his arms, staring upward like a corpse. Another jerk of her body, a sob that isn't. She breathes in deeply through flared nostrils, gives a slow shake of her head.

"You can't," Hilary whispers, her throat slightly raw. "Can't do that to me. ...gone," she says, a word missing there. "I don't..."

Her eyes finally close, too tired from staring, too burning. "...don't know what you want." Her throat moves, swallowing nothing. "I can't, though."