The In-Between PV Marshal

It hadn’t been the blood, nor its copious measure tainting pure snow. It hadn’t been the ragged, agonizing cadence of her breath as she fought for life-giving air. It hadn’t even been the way color slowly drained from her cheeks, depicting her already fair complexion in a lurid hue, that disturbed him the most. It was the absence in her eyes, how they fogged with confusion when they searched his face, as if his features failed to register in her mind — as if she had never seen him before.
Moonlight shone upon his back while he leaned over her damaged form. Its presence graced their surroundings, reflecting silver off of white, and filling the night with its interpretation of celestial light; all save for Eve, whose portion of luminance was eclipsed by his frame. Likeness drawn in mere shadow across her searching gaze, he was naught but an outline, his definition drowned by a sterling glow.

It was only after he’d lifted her from the cold ground that she seemed to return to herself, evident in a cry of pain, followed by the whisper of his name. Both sounds made his heart ache.
Yet emotion had no place here, not now. The further he trekked, feet consumed by powder with every step, soles occasionally slipping on a hard surface beneath the snow, the more his concentration was demanded by fatiguing muscles. While the young man possessed no shortage of strength, and he’d found Evelynn to be rather lightweight, the act of carrying a person through a snowbound forest remained taxing. Before long, his arms began to burn, legs growing heavier with each step, until eventually all thoughts were consumed in the simple process of the next footfall. Even the pain seemed almost to subside as his body slowly accepted it as a constant, the need for relief buried beneath the necessity of getting the one in his arms to safety.

The sensation felt akin to being in a trance, one that stretched on indefinitely, much like the passing trees. Yet there was one thing that permeated the numbness; a scent. The sharp smell of ozone fought for prominence, but something much softer met his nose unmistakably. It was faint enough that he wouldn’t have caught it had her head not been resting against his collar, leaving him to breathe in the aroma of her hair products — of lavender and sweet vanilla.

For the slightest moment, one thought did break through the mental tunnel vision, a memory of those very scents filling a train compartment. He saw auburn hair and yearbooks. He remembered emotional anguish, and an overcorrection into boundless laughter. On that day the two of them had gotten closer than ever before, yet the moment had been polluted by disaster, just as this moment tonight, and just like any connection that tried to grow between them at any point.
Perhaps it had all been a sign — an outreach of fate to ensure their threads did not intertwine.
But regardless of fate and its stifling grip, he would not abandon her to its whims now.

Presently the sixth year’s limbs still screamed, arm like lead as he traced Evelynn’s wounds with his wand. He hadn’t noticed the way the girl’s hand rose in a brief attempt at warning, hadn’t even noticed the breathless way he spoke the spell’s incantation. Lungs heaved from exertion, each exhale outlined in the frigid air as he watched the final laceration stitch itself together before his eyes. Hazel irises lingered there for several seconds, tracing each new scar in an attempt to assure the job had been done correctly. His brow furrowed with the realization that her skin remained imperfect, marred by vicious receipts of a beast’s claws. In the heat of desperation, he’d forgotten that detail of Vulnera Sanentur.
The flash of apprehension was dispelled, however, when Evelynn’s lungs expanded in a deep inhale. Not the shallow, wheezing kind that she’d taken while he carried her through the woods, but a prolonged, reviving gulp of oxygen. Seeing the change, his gaze shifted to her face. Silence fell upon the scene as he simply watched her breath. He dared not speak, nor hope, as though fate might steal this miracle if he accepted its mercy.

Eve proceeded to cover the fresh, ugly scars, staining her clothing further with blood, as if there were any untouched fabric left. Even still, Marshal refused relief. It wasn’t until she finally spoke that the tension would be released.

“I must look a mess.”

The instant those words left her mouth, a burst of captive air escaped his own in the form of a single laugh, though its tone was more akin to a strangled sob. It was then he noticed that his entire body was shaking, near as violently as Evelynn’s had been before. From the cold? He’d go with that if questioned.
The comment prompted him to analyze her appearance. She was a bloody mess, it was true, but his attention did not end there. He observed her visage, from the regretful upturn of her lips, to the long, ginger hair that splayed wildly over the snow in all directions. A few strands lay loosely across her face, and his hand twitched forward as if to brush it away, but stopped as the moon peeked through cloud cover overhead, making the sweat on her forehead glisten beneath its light.
Yet again he watched, this time as the moon’s silver hand caressed her face, brushing her already pale skin with its ethereal tones. He’d tried to put it out of his mind for three years, even told himself it wasn’t true; yet he never once had been convinced she wasn’t beautiful.
“You look fine,” A small smile touched his lips, head shaking subtly from side to side. His eyes dropped to the ground, where he still knelt in crimson.

“That would make two times now… I hope I do not have to suffer another seven.”

When Marshal laughed then, it was a sound contrived of more than mere amusement at a joke. In that laugh was everything he had refused to feel since shoving his panic down near the Wampus. He’d done so out of responsibility, understanding that he was the only one standing between Eve and her demise. Now that it was over — now that she was safe — it all came flooding back. The same panic he’d experienced as a result of triggered trauma, fear of losing the one person whose image still guided him through such attacks, and the crushing weight of holding that life in his hands. Yet even those feelings were not enough, it seemed, as new ones made room for themselves, drawn this time from a different source of trauma. He saw the image of a young woman lying atop a bed of white, her breathing ragged and malformed; only the girl was not Eve, and the bed was not of snow, but a literal bed with white sheets. Tubes supplied the oxygen she vainly fought for, and her skin remained sickly pale.
The picture was so similar, yet this girl would not be healed with a few passes of a wand, nor did she possess nine lives.

The added emotions that accompanied the image made themselves newly bare, known as guilt, as regret, and as anger.
Each one was awful, overwhelming, and all converged into one breathless, overly sharp sound that was weakly disguised as mirth. It didn’t last long, but any emotionally competent witness would recognize it as something entirely different from laughter. Tears sprang to the boy’s eyes, overflowing immediately and carving a path down his cheeks.
In an attempt to gather himself, the Gryffindor coughed into his arm, using the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe the tears away, though it mostly accomplished smearing blood across his face. He felt a bit foolish, and knew the true motives behind the action would be poorly disguised had Eve been paying attention, but he was determined to focus on her recovery.

He cleared his throat. ”Maybe now we’re even for the whole… train incident back in the day,” The intent was to joke in return, but his voice was too unstable for the demands of humor. ”My debt is repayed… so you can stop putting yourself in mortal danger.”
The sting of salt still clawed at his eyes, but he could visit all of that another time. In fact, he was certain it had to be addressed, else he would dissolve. But not now.

The lion glanced at his hands, still shaking, and was struck by a thought. ”Oh, here.” Lifting his wand again, he whispered another spell. ”Caeruleus Inflamarae.” A blue flame emerged from his wand, then danced at its tip as he controlled its spread. He held the small source of warmth near Evelynn, though his gaze fell to her bloodied side. ”Sorry about the scars…”

@Evelynn Decipio

There were layers to the performance of any competent actor, bits and pieces of camouflage that made up a larger facade. The character they played might hold themselves a certain way, speak in a specific tone, or mold their face to hide the actor’s true visage underneath. These few tools in a performer's wide repertoire would be known, simply, as Posture, Voice, and Mask.

Marshal was no master of theater. He could not bend an audience to the whims of any portrayal he saw fit, nor conjure illusions of a person they wished to see; he was simply himself, that very reflection he encountered in the surface of any mirror. But then, could even a mirror be fooled? Could reflection be fallacy, the contours of his face indicative not of flesh, but of porcelain? Was there imperfection in the way he stood, as if it were not entirely natural?
If an actor remained in costume for too long, might he forget to recognize the curves of his own Mask?

The young man had grown so accustomed to the feel of his disguise, so comfortable in its embrace, that he had failed to recognize its existence; until it shattered like the glass that projected his false reflection. In the moment that awful, disproportionate laugh had erupted from his core, the actor had seen the bits and pieces of his facade litter the blood-stained snow. He’d understood that the character he’d played for so long was just that, and that underneath it all was the ten-year-old boy who had watched his sister slowly fade in the hospital — the same boy who had been sure he would die alone in the dark after the train exploded, and the same boy who had lashed out irrationally once upon a summer camp. If Marshal had looked in a mirror at that moment, he would have seen fear, innocence, and sadness, all compounded by a rage he could not yet explain.

Now he struggled to collect the fragments of his shattered costume, desperately replacing shards of porcelain in his Mask, even as his cracked Voice attempted to minimize the damage, its timber strained with a childlike quiver.
He could feel her scrutiny, the way her gaze bored through his newly formed cracks. He hated how the moon illuminated what he wished could remain in shadow, further amplifying the information she gleaned through inquisition. The boy — for that’s exactly what he was — felt naked, and utterly ashamed. This would be portrayed as his Posture, normally loose and confident, fell forward with slumped shoulders.

Still, he forged on as best he could with what remained. It was this resolve that conjured the bluebell flame. He saw Evelynn lean into the warmth it provided, while simultaneously dismissing his apology regarding the scars his spell had left across her torso.
Some part of him wanted to object when she turned the blame onto herself, yet he did not. The instability of his Voice could not be trusted, and frankly he didn’t believe she was wrong. Her confrontation with the Wampus had been brash, and they both had nearly paid the price. So he said nothing, only nodded, gaze finding the ground once more.

Silence would rule the stage for a beat, and he was content to allow it. Perhaps, in an extended moment of respite, the curtain could be drawn, the audience cut off from him while he repaired his costume properly. But intermission had not arrived, and the audience called to revisit a previous scene — to build upon it, though this extension was not in his script, his character not included.

”You did not really consider yourself indebted… did you?”

Brow furrowed in genuine confusion, the boy considered whether the question could be serious. Evelynn would not ask such a thing in jest, but surely she knew what she had done that day. Was it possible the details escaped her memory?
The notion was dismissed as she detailed her point of view regarding the scene, causing the actor to lift his head. Hazel eyes met those the color of an ocean storm, both pairs alive with a dancing flame. For a moment, the Mask shading the former fell apart entirely, and again he was that boy, certain he would die alone in the dark, until those eyes broke through with a rush of merciful sunlight. They encased him in a sanctuary that he only wished he could stay in forever, safe from the pain, protected against whatever had done this to him. (X)

”I was scared and alone,” he practically whispered.
”I’m here,” she’d said.
”You were there.”
”I’m not going anywhere,” she had promised.
”You were there…” he repeated. Until you weren’t.
The sun had breathed life into his frigid limbs with its warmth, and upon him it had shone, until a passing cloud deprived his skin of its rays. He’d looked for it with the cloud’s departure, only to find a total eclipse, where the moon had stoppered the sun’s light entirely. The boy had been cold and alone in the dark ever since.

But on that first day, ”What you did might seem like nothing to you, but to me it was everything. Thaddeus may have taken me to be healed, but it was you that saved me.”
Stripped of his charade, the actor stood on stage, Posture, Voice, and Mask thrown aside. Soon he would realize what he’d done and scramble for their protection. But in this one moment, the audience could see him clearly — he, the entertainer, and not the porcelain features on the floor.

@Evelynn Decipio

He saw it in the furrowing of her brow, heard it in the silence that clung to the spaces between his words. She had never understood his emotions, despite his ill-fated attempts to give them a voice. They could not be clearly stated, nor written out, for their color was not the black of ink, and not white as parchment. She could not read what she could not see, or empathize with what she had not felt. Perhaps he had been wrong to expect that of her. Perhaps the sloppiness of emotion was why he’d bandaged those lacerations with a porcelain mask.
She held his face in her gaze, scouring the exposed wounds for whatever answers she sought, but no light of recognition shone behind hooded eyes. Eventually she pulled them away, to the sky and its moon. Perhaps the answers were there after all.

“We should hurry on.”

The words dragged the air straight out of his lungs. He leaned back on his knees — long since numbed by the cold — buttocks pressing against his heels as he physically deflated. Gaze dropping to the crimson snow, he wondered if the ice in his chest was similarly stained by the blood coursing through his veins.
He didn’t register Evelynn’s movement until she began to stand. Snapping to attention, the sixth year lion shot to his own feet, a hand extended with the aim of steadying her ascent, yet the contact with her arm proved just as much for his benefit. This was the first he’d been aware that he could no longer feel his legs.

On she went, discussing their fellow students and their potential numbers as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. It was his turn to furrow a brow, as he regarded the young woman with a combination of anger and disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” he said breathlessly. Oh, but she was. Barely standing in the murky shadow of death, Evelynn Decipio intended to ‘shake it off’ and continue their trek through a frigid winter’s night. Injured, bloodstained, and soaked to the bone after conjuring the snow angel who — until moments before — had fully intended to leave with her soul in tow, this psychopath hadn’t given a thought to calling it quits. Rather, she chose to omit her own peril in a listing of every danger their juniors might face.

“Evelynn,” he said her name firmly, tone grounded in concern. It only deepened with her first jarring step, his hand refusing to relinquish her arm. “We are not continuing forward with you in this condition. You need to return to the castle and rest; maybe even have the nurse take a look at you.”
The set of his jaw was steel, even as he strove to ignore the look she’d thrown back to him. No amount of appeal from those features would sway him on this, not when they’d been so close to stilling forever. To risk anything further could only be seen as a plea for fate to finish the job it had left undone.

@Evelynn Decipio