A Killer for a Lover

> It was beginning to set in, he could tell. She couldn't bear to stand, groveling on the floor amongst the corpses. Fixating her gaze on anything other than the illusions that surrounded her, the shadows that threatened to destroy her mind. As if there were any sanity left to take from her. She had warned him of this, of the coming fit that was just starting. There was nothing he could do but watch.
> "Stop staring at me!" Elvauni growled.
> He ripped his eyes away from her, trying to make it easier on her.
> "Stop staring at me!" She repeats.
> He furrows his brow in frustration, preparing to tell her he wasn't. But was silenced before he could make any sound.
> "Carver, stop staring...."
> In surprise, he twists his gaze to her again. Carver was long since dead, lifeless before she and him had ever met. Her palms are pressed to her eyes, she was trembling, her nails biting the skin above her brows. The hallucinations were threatening to break in.
> "Please stop.... I'm sorry...." Her voice was on the verge of breaking, hysteria on the rise.
> He had never seen her break before, never witnessed a sincere apology from her lips. It doesn't stop there. The poison continues to undo the seams of her mind. Spinning her into a progressive panic. He bends down to grab hold of her, to keep her from hurting herself in her struggles. Crying, screaming, gibberish pertaining to demons and victims of the past rising from their graves, even flashbacks of the treatment she had endured beneath the hands of slavers. All of her psychotic impulses pulsing within her brain came bleeding out at once, all the dark things that haunt her always, the regrets that she hides so well. Now they were all revealed, cast out before him like a flag of surrender. And he keeps hold of her through them all, pressing her close and binding her wrists to keep them safe, to keep her still.
> He loves her, that will not change. Beneath his skin, he's nearly as broken, as hopeless. This is hard to endure, but he will not turn his back. Or else, he fears, there will be no one to quiet his own darkness always vying to drown him. No one to understand. So he stays, faithful and true, if only because he knows what it's like to be so afraid, so damaged, so messed up.
> Eventually she quiets, the effects too much to handle. Her eyes roll back into her skull, and she passes is out in a flurry of terrifying lies and shaking breaths. This is not the first time she's suffered under the effects of tainted weapons in the grip of enemies due to him. Not the first time she's saved his life, taken a hit he can never repay. It may be her last....
> Each time, there was never a guarantee she would survive. Each time he held his breath. And each time, he was silently overwhelmed with relief when it passed. It had been a year since their night together, and nothing had changed. He wondered if anything ever would. He couldn't live without her but couldn't claim her either. Things were frozen, at a stand still between them. But, for now, that was enough.
> He braced her up as she gently thrashed on in her unawareness, plagued by nightmares. Fenris could only wait, bide his time....