shivers and terrors (pm to join)

[Xaver]

Xaver stared at her.
He knew Ginny was afraid of his twin, and hated him as much as he did.

"You.. met.."
His tones were octaves lower.
"With.. him."

His stomach suddenly churning, Xaver gripped the covers and swung his long legs over the edge of the bed, planting his feet onto the cool floor and rising. He went to the dresser, briefly touched the clock, then paced back to the bed, his ocean blue eyes ablaze as he moved about, not going anywhere for any particular reason. He could see her clearly through the dark, though also her slender features were graced with the light red hues glinting from the digital slashes reading out the ever lengthening seconds.

She met with Xences.
It was a breath of relief that she was there, with him now, seemingly unharmed..
Seemingly?

"Did he hurt you?"
His tones were still furious, but laced with a passion that betrayed his anger. An instinctive worry.
Care.

If he had put one hand.. And she.. Carrying their baby..
OH.

[Ginny Weasly]

"No."

Ginny shook her head, "Well, he grabbed my hair and touched my belly. But I think it was more like him trying to prove he's stronger than I."

She uncrossed her legs, pulling her knees up as far as her swollen stomach would allow, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin. She watched him, biting her lip. He was aggravated, rightfully so. She had, after all, done something extraordinarily stupid. She wondered, briefly, if the feeling of sickness had been more than just the revolting idea of Xences touching her.

Ginny felt guilty all over again.
"I need to tell you something...in exchange for what he told me, I had to give him something..."

[Xaver]

Xaver's pacing came to a stop at her side of the bed. He perched on the edge, setting one palm and leaning at an angle onto it. The very thought that she'd been around his brother upset him. The knowledge that Xences had even touched her, turned his stomach and left him decidedly sick.

It was very like his twin to do something like that. Frightening others was something he had always particularly excelled at - and he'd always loved it. It was a power trip, more than anything. And if there was anything in the world that Xences had ever been denied, that he'd ever so hungrily longed for, it was power.
And what else did men with power want?
More of it.
It was a drug, a fix, and Xences was so haply, shamelessly addicted, without even realizing that he'd succumbed to the very line of his existence - he was nothing more than a physical slave, to the craving.


Xaver crawled more fully onto the bed, shifting so that he could stretch his legs out before him, and sit back against the headboard, the solid wood cold and firm behind him. His gaze never left her, mulling over the information. Trying for cool and collected though he was far too shaken up to process it all and hold too complete a face. Not in front of Ginny, anyway.

"What did he want..?"

[Ginny Weasly]

"Your necklace."

She frowned, watching him nervously. Slowly, she shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Xav. I was worried about you. I know that doesn't excuse my foolishness."

Ginny sighed, closing her eyes and attempting to keep herself together. Stupid hormones making her so emotional. As if she wasn't emotional enough.
She opened them and looked at him, worriedly.

"Are you angry with me?"
She asked the question timidly. She didn't want him to be mad at her.

[Xaver]

"My necklace..?"
Xaver pulled a face, confused by that.

What could Xences want with his old necklace? He'd given it to Kylie, then Ginny, because he'd never been able to wear it. He was terribly allergic to gold, and both the chain and the pendant were full of it. It was a precious item, an orb around one of his eldest feathers that changed colors to the current state of his mood, no matter how far he was to it. That was the extent to which the orb reached, however - and it wasn't like Xences was so concerned with others' feelings...
Xaver had to wonder what his twin was up to...
Because there was no doubt; his brother was always up to something.

"Are you angry with me?"


Xaver blinked and looked back to Ginny, his head tilting slightly as he watched her, drawn up into herself and those eyes watching him, laced with guilt and pain and..
He sat up, drawing his legs under him as he scooted over to her. When he was sitting just before her, he reached out to her. He curled his fingers beneath her chin and gently tilted her head toward him, willing her to look more fully up at him.

"Furious.."
The seriousness of the word was lost in the affection of his gaze, then simply brushed aside as he leaned into her, and captured her lips for his own.

He leaned back after a moment, his hand still cupping her chin, and searched her gaze, his ocean blues traced with a protective worry.
"I would give up any sort of life here, to be with you for eternity."
The sharp angles and hard planes of his handsome features softened slightly, warming as he looked at her.
"I want you. I need you. I love you."
He drew his other hand to her face, cradling her cheeks.
"I can't lose you.. And that is all he desires."

[Ginny Weasly]

"I just don't understand it, Xav."

Ginny leaned into his hands, closing her eyes with pleasure at his touch. She opened them after a moment, meeting his eyes sadly.

"Nobody is born bad. Why does he hate you, and consequently me, so much?"
Her voice was laced with sadness, and she tightened her grip around herself.

"Why has he done the things he's done? What was so different between the two of you that you turned out so wonderful and he so...wrong?"

Ginny didn't know where these questions came from. The whole thing just bothered her. She had done plenty in her lifetime to warrant being hated. But all she had done for Xences' hate, it seemed, was love Xaver. She simply couldn't understand it.

"Xaver, I hate him."

[Xaver]

Xaver watched her for a moment, loving her reactions to him, before his hands slowly dropped to his own knees and his gaze grew both thoughtful, and haunted. He leaned into her and brushed another kiss over her lips before shifting back to sit against the headboard. He couldn't tell if it was the chill of the wood or his memories that brought an instantaneous shiver through him.

"He wasn't born bad."
His gaze lost in the pretty lines of her face, Xaver's own features pinched slightly as his thoughts wandered.
"We were both just kids, once.. He wasn't a bad kid. No worse than me. And the things he's done.."
Xaver's eyes flickered to hers, shadowing slightly.
"Some are no worse than things I, myself, have done."

He rubbed his jaw.
"My brother used to be my best friend. Nobody ever knew me better, until you. We began to know our differences and part ways, when our mother died. Then more, when I was announced as our father's successor, naturally because I'm just slightly older. He didn't like that."
Xaver's gaze was tired.
"There have been.. many things.. ..And he hates me so. I believe he snapped when he ordered Kylie to death. And since then, he's transferred his anger, and his hatred of me, onto you. To include you."

Xaver tilted his head slightly, so that it leaned against the headboard.
"I hate him for what he's done. For what he's become. But all this anger, all this pain.. It's just made me tired, over the years. Xences, however, has thrived on it."
He looked at her.
"He never let himself believe that there could be more. And now, for him, there is nothing more."

He folded his hands behind his head, ignoring the way his knuckles knotted painfully against the wood. His gaze dropped to his toes.
"I lost my real brother a long time ago. He left when my mother died, and he never came back."

[Ginny Weasly]

Ginny listened to him, her eyes seeming to look past him into something only she could see. She still looked sad, very sad. Finally, after he finished speaking, she met his eyes.

"How did your mother die, love?"
It was possible, that had their mother lived, Xences would not be as different as he was. It was possible he might have kept his sanity. It was also possible, that she would never have met Xaver.

Slight changes of the past that seemingly have little to do with the chain of reactions, can change everything in the future. Ginny knew this better than most, she had once been in charge of protecting the natural order of things in Time. It had been a job she had been allowed to leave, when her employers saw that her humanity would not stand for some things. Like harming children.
She never really could get over harming children.

She refocused on Xaver, waiting for his answer patiently. She didn't know much about Xaver's childhood. Only what he had chosen to tell her. And the little that Kylie had managed before Xences had ordered the little girls untimely death. Yes, she knew more about Xaver than almost anyone.
But she only knew what she had been told. And what she had been smart enough to pick up on.

[Xaver]

Xaver's gaze slowly flickered over to Ginny, before moving away, focusing on some odd shade in the distant wall as the warmth in his gaze subsided, his features hardening slightly. Not at her question - but at his own answer. His tongue stalled even as the memories flowed, as liquid and virile as the day he'd come to know them.
Burned into his mind.

"When Xences and I were kids, our homeland was at peace. We were always training, sure.. but 'twas more because of custom, than anything else. We were only teenagers when the riots started, and the unrest between the neighboring kingdom.. country.. reared its ugly head. Our people had always been intertwined, but there had always been an underlying race issue."
Xaver leaned more heavily onto his now aching knuckles.
"One night, my mother didn't return from her evening walk in the gardens. Xences and I went looking for her."

He paused, his gaze finally adverting, and rising to meet Ginny's. Seeking comfort in the warmth of her fiery soul.
Finding comfort in her gaze.

"Stripped, raped, and her wings shorn off flush with her back, she'd bled to death long before we found her."
Xaver's gaze dropped. He curled his fingers into the thick strands of his hair, fighting off the emotion that was clawing its own way up his throat.
"We never knew who did it."
His jaw was hard.
"But they all paid."

[Ginny Weasly]

Ginny had seen many terrible things in her life. Hearing about what had happened didn't shock her, what did was the fact that Xaver and Xences had been the ones to find their mother. Such things could never be erased from memory, and Ginny could tell how much it bothered Xaver.

"It's ok, baby." She said, unfolding her legs and crawling up beside him. She knelt on the bed slightly to the side of him and gently cupped his face, planting kisses all over his face.

Ginny pressed her forehead to his, meeting his blue eyes, "How come you never cry, honey?"

[Xaver]

Xaver had learned years, decades, centuries ago, that facts were facts. He couldn't change them. It was only in his power to write his own, and make his own choices - but it was his own burden to accept what was, and what is, and to understand it. Or to try to. Things couldn't be erased, and they shouldn't be forgotten.

Admitting and actually living with those things, was so very much harder.

Xaver trembled slightly beneath the warmth of her touch, her words smoothing over his tangled thoughts. Leaning into her hands, he embraced each of her feather-soft kisses.
Knowing them.
Loving them.
Drawing from them.
Even as he bit down on the tip of his tongue and subdued the instinct to rant. To rave, and scream, and make those responsible pay. Over, and over again. Pay for the loss of his mother. And brother. And sister.
Anger and hurt swelled within him, but he clamped down on the feelings, letting his arms fall from beneath his head, and settle over his thighs.

It wasn't okay. He wasn't okay.
There were open and unaddressed wounds in his soul that had bled, untended, for more years than he could even count.
And they still hurt, as wholly, and swiftly, as ever.

She pressed her forehead to his, and he had nowhere else to look but into the warm, honest depths of her gaze. A shiver reverberated through his lean form as every muscle poised to withdraw, self-defensive instincts jarring the urge to turn away, and conceal the vulnerability within him from her prying eyes. Every wall and defense he'd built to keep others out shuddered, as he made no move to look away from her.

"I.."
He drew a quiet, deep breath through parted lips. Knowing confusion. Guilt.
And shame.
"Was not supposed to."

[Ginny Weasly]

"Poor baby." Ginny whispered softly, her hands playing with his hair as she continued to look into his eyes. Those blue eyes that seemed to show his thoughts more effectively than if she were to read his mind.

She frowned, "Whomever taught you that crying is weakness was wrong, you know."
With that she bent her legs beneath her, sitting back on them and gasping one of his hands between her two smaller ones. She pulled his hand to her lips, kissing the top of it and still looking at him.

"I cry. Am I weak?"

[Xaver]

Xaver's heart lurched in the rock confines of his chest. He hadn't expected her sympathy.
Confusion, inquisitiveness, disgust even..
But not sympathy.

"My father raised us as he knew best..."
His low tones were suddenly not so shrouded.
"He knew soldiers. Not children."

Her lips brushed his hand, and his heart stirred in that familiar, alive ache.
He reached for her, wrapping one arm around her middle and the other beneath her thighs, pulling her to him effortlessly, and drawing her onto his lap and close. Cradling her within the circle of his arms, and holding on tight.

"You are not weak, dearest mine.."
The smile that tilted his lips was loving, and slightly tinged with sadness.
"And I adore you, that. You don't hide.. Where I just can't seem to stop.."

[Ginny Weasly]

"I hid for three years."

She pointed out the fact softly, smiling as he held her.
"I am tired of hiding, and I refuse to hide ever again. No one shall control me like that again."

It was hard to explain. But hiding meant that whomever she was hiding from controlled her. She hated that. She hated being told what to do.

Ginny's head lay on his chest, now, and she pushed away the thoughts as she felt a wave of tiredness and nausea drift over her. She still felt rather sick, but didn't want to show it.

"So what do you think about sending Cody to school?"
She changed the subject none too subtlety.

[Xaver]

She'd hid for three. He'd locked his soul away for more than three hundred.
And she'd only shied away, because he hadn't been there, for her...

She curled up against him then, and Xaver gazed down at the top of her head.
Was he truly so lucky, to have her? Her, and her forgiveness, and understanding, and more, love?
Xaver didn't think he'd ever understand it.

"So what do you think about sending Cody to school?"

Xaver looped his arms around her slender form, the inside of his forearm brushing the gentle rise of her swollen belly. Not perterbed, but finding her change of subject almost accommodating, he settled back into the headboard, snuggling down into the pillows with her, and allowing his dark eyes to finally close, and shut away that which haunted him, for another day.

"It might be good for him.. To understand... how do you call them? Mugglers?"
He peered down at her through one slightly opened eyelid.