pick a star :: on the dark horizon || calbraxas

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

C A L Y P S O

"PICK A STAR ON THE DARK HORIZON AND FOLLOW THE LIGHT. YOU'LL COME BACK WHEN IT'S OVER; NO NEED TO SAY GOODBYE."

it started out as a feeling
which then grew into a hope
which then turned into a quiet thought
which then turned into a quiet word

It began with a feeling, a twinge of something's different in my gut. In the midst of emotional turmoil, I hardly thought twice about throwing up in the morning. Not even when I checked, over and over again for months, for a drop of blood down there — and to find nothing. And all the same, denial. I always had a special talent for lying; it ran so deep, twisted its webs so thickly and tightly, that I could even lie to myself.

It didn't all unravel until there was a little bulge, just enough to be noticed, in my stomach. The clues could only lead to one conclusion — the morning sickness, the lack of a period, the bulge. I felt every loop and tangle untwist itself and split apart from its brothers; everything came undone and I knew, I knew there was only one answer.

Fuck, I hate the truth. It's an ugly, dark thing, stark as blood stains on a white tile floor. I hate it, but that doesn't mean I don't have to face it. It stares me in the eye, tears me open and peers right into my soul, if I have one at all. No matter how hard I try to look away, the truth holds me in a steel embrace; there is no escape.

For once, this is a situation I can't get myself out of, let alone ignore.

So I don't.

The house is quiet, too quiet — eerie — today. It is not unusual for it to feel this way, though there is definitely something more off than usual, or maybe it's just me. The house of the Delacroixs will never be as lively as it once was, with Percy running around on her daily adventures, throwing confetti or sliding down the railing of the stairs — because she's gone, I remind myself. And the empty space where she should be had turned thick and unbreathable, like tar. Sometimes it seeps into all of the air around me, and my movements become slow and heavy and my lungs labor for breath — or maybe that's just this feeling deep down that I can't shake.

That is what happens when people die. They leave behind rot and despair.

I have grown used to acting cold, like my chest is nothing but an empty, cavernous space. It is what carried me through all these years. It's why I was able to tear my assailant apart when I was fifteen and scrub up his blood afterwards, why I could warm beds for the sake of manipulation, why I could break skulls with bullets and walk away without looking back.

But I can't do that anymore. Not with Percy dead, not with all these chinks in my armor for Abra. I used to cover myself with steel so I could take knives in my back and bullets in my heart, but now it's all ragged and rusted and falling apart.
Now there's nothing left.

I walk from my room where I've been holed up for the last hour or two, watching the sun rise into the sky and eat away at the darkness of the dawn, and onto the balcony looking over the entry hall of the house. Even when I was sitting on my bed watching the sky, I was dressed and groomed, but I just needed to gather some piece of mind before really starting the day. (And yet it still feels like I have none.) Peering over the balcony, I can see the brilliant silver chandelier, black velvet rug extending from the door to the end of the entry room, but no Abra. He must be somewhere in the adjoining living and dining rooms — my hand curls into a nervous ball at the thought of seeking him out.

The moment I walk down the stairs, it hits me again, that sinking feeling in my stomach. Reluctant to face the confrontation I know I must have, I go slowly, running my hand along the dark blue paint on the walls and the other on the black railing. Abra is somewhere else downstairs, but I'm too damn nervous to directly approach him or look him in the eye, so I just call out, "Abra?" and I say the words that can never mean anything good.

"We need to talk."

and then that word grew louder and louder
'til it was a battle cry
i'll come back when you call me
no need to say goodbye

table by elegant

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

A B R A X A S ;

{ one look, and you could take me down
but i know that you'd be up for it }

Abraxas Morrigan would always be a creature forged from fractured light and lost souls: living and dead. He was a reaper. It was his job to come in the middle of the night and to take.

Hatred did not discriminate between the sinners and the saints, the good and the bad: it just happened. And like hatred, Abraxas would pull his knife across tender flesh or pump a skull full of lead, and he would do it with remorse.

Did that make him a monster? The killing, or the killing with no remorse? He was forged from fractured light and lost souls, but was he a monster?

No.

Not when she was there to help him see twilight's kind embrace.

He had witnessed her charm beggars and beaus, the dark and the light, the cold and the warm. (He had not yet seen her fail.)

In fact, according to Abraxas Morrigan, Calypso's biggest failure lived inside him. Cold hearts and cigarette smoke and bloody knuckles: not the ideal date, sure. The dreams kept them both up, and he would bury his face in her chest and:

"I'm sorry."

He was. For her past, for Percy, for what they had been through together, for him. He loved a dead girl and an alive girl, and they wore the same face. The first person to con her way inside the steel walls of his heart had gone and gotten herself killed, and he had sworn he would never love again.

But Calypso changed that.

If he had been fair, he would have let her go from the torture of holding his hand and keeping his secrets. But he loved her. He loved her, and he couldn't let that go again. Not when it was supposed to come around so rarely.

"I'm sorry." he would say.

"Don't be." she would reply.

---

The two of them needed their own house: that much was true. He knew Calypso was not keen on leaving the place behind, but it felt necessary. At any rate, they would have to do this alone, and away from the rest of the world.

So he did it without asking. At most, he would have a second home they could run away to when things got too hectic at the Delacroix house.

The new key felt heavy in his back pocket as he bounded up the front steps to the place of his dreams and nightmares. He had only just closed the door when he heard Calypso calling his name. He rounded a corner and tiptoed his way up to her, wrapping his hands around her midsection and kissing the nape of her neck.

"Hello, beautiful."

The early morning sun painted them both golden, but he could tell something was wrong with her. Her body language was different. She was rigid in his arms, as if she had some kind of deep dark secret that she had no choice to make apparent to Abraxas.

He carried on, his mind trying to figure out which terrifying thing she would say to him:

"I need you to leave."
"I can't love you anymore."
"You're a monster."

He hid his face in her hair.

"It's a beautiful morning."

Silently, he prayed it was nothing. He prayed she would scold him for forgetting to lock the door, or for leaving the pantry open. He prayed she would point her finger at him and raise her eyebrows in that positively adorable way only she could do, and he would say "I'm sorry," and she would roll her eyes and say, "Don't be."

But it didn't come. He waited and the silence was maddening, so he pulled away and cleared his throat.

"Did I do something?"

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

C A L Y P S O

"PICK A STAR ON THE DARK HORIZON AND FOLLOW THE LIGHT. YOU'LL COME BACK WHEN IT'S OVER; NO NEED TO SAY GOODBYE."

just because everything's changing
doesn't mean it's never been this way before
all you can do is try to know who your friends are
as you head off to the war

The sun is glaring down my back. It is too scorching today, and even though the house stands between me and the sun's blistering heat, it beats upon my back as if I'm standing out in the high fields of Nine.

(Or maybe that's just the fire that has erupted in my veins.)

I feel the heat of the sun and the anticipation, but the fire doesn't spread beyond my blood; my body is ice.

I have grown to abhor the sun. I could never hate sunsets, or how it paints the sky all my favorite colors, scarlet, gold, canary, pink, lavender. But the sun does not shine anymore; it glares. It glares at me with blinding and accusingly sharp eyes, and all I can think is Percy Percy Percy, and that she is gone because I didn't teach her well enough.

We would lay out in the fields when we were younger, both just little girls back at the church, and watch the sun sink below the horizon from the hills. I would tell her stories about how the sunset is a new end, and the sunrise is a new beginning.

But now I look at the sky, painted red by the sun, and all I can think about is her blood pooling out from beneath her body.

(Because I didn't teach her well enough.)

And it all just doesn't feel like a new beginning is on the way. It just feels like the end.

The sun bathes the house in light and shadow. Abra is drenched in pale gold, but the stairs behind me pour black over my body — he is light, I am darkness. There's something in the way the sun hits his eyes, how they glint like black jewels, that raises a riot of butterflies in my stomach, like the kind I used to get all the time when we first met.

There's a smile on his face, and I know with a sinking feeling that I'm about to shatter whatever bright, happy feeling he holds today.

I might be about to break more than just that; the thought makes my stomach turn.

"We need to talk," and I step out of the shadows to face him.

The words don't seem to hit him immediately. If I were in his shoes, I would have frozen up (like I am now) and folded my fingers into fists in anxiety. But "we need to talk" bounces right off of him and hits me in the face, and he just wraps his arms around me and pulls me close.

He is always so comfortably warm to combat the ice in my bones — he is fire, I am ice; he is summer, I am winter. If I could forget the problem at hand and lose myself in his arms and on his lips, I would, but that is how I got into the mess in the first place.

His lips burn against the skin on my neck. It makes my heart speed up a few beats, and the butterflies begin to wage war — I don't know if that's because of desire, or because I'm losing my mind trying to conjure up the right words to say. And he isn't helping my case much either; it's quite distracting when your boyfriend is kissing up your neck while you're trying to focus. (And this isn't the time or the place for that.)

"Hello beautiful," Abra says. "It's a beautiful morning."
But there is no response. With every second, my body turns more and more rigid, moving from ice to stone within a few moments.

That is when he finally seems to catch on. He pulls away from me, and with him, the warmth recedes and it's cold again, except for the spark of heat in my veins. "Did I do something?" he asks. There is a graveness in his voice when he speaks; I'm certain he can feel the tension emanating off of me.

"No it's —" I struggle for words "— it's not like that," I tell him.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

"I don't know if this is good or bad but . . . ."

And everything comes undone.

"Abraxas, I'm pregnant."

(And everything is fucked.)

pick a star on the dark horizon
and follow the light
you'll come back when it's over
no need to say goodbye

table by elegant

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

A B R A X A S ;

{ one look, and you could take me down
but i know that you'd be up for it }

"I'm pregnant."

His first reaction should have been shock, right? Or disappointment, or fear, or loathing. Three years ago, Abraxas Morrigan would have been escaping through an open window, because he was not father material-- he was barely human material. He had been a time bomb on his own, and he was fine as long as no one got close enough to get hurt when the explosion finally happened.

Now, he was different: older, wiser, in love, and he couldn't help himself from smiling.

"I'd say it was good. Wouldn't you?"

A thought hit him: What if she didn't want the baby? His eyes went from her hands hovering over her stomach to the floor. "Unless," he started, "Unless it isn't what you want?" He could see himself as a father then, but only if Calyspo saw herself as a mother. He was a lot of things, but he would never have pressured her to devote her life to someone else's if it was not what she wanted.

He gave her the choice, and he knew he would support her either way.

"I mean, it is scary. But if you're in it, I am too."

He imagined life with what was inside her if they decided to keep it, and he he saw himself holding a baby in the dead of night, rocking it to sleep in a warm room with a white crib. He saw them in their thirties, standing on their porch and watching their child walk home from school. He saw Calypso crying in a wedding that was not her own, tears of joy for her baby grown up.

He imagined life without the baby, and he saw the two of them dancing alone under the stars. He saw them drinking beer and playing board games, just the two of them, saw Calypso gray and old and still just as beautiful, her head on his chest as he took his last breath.

They were both lives he was more than happy to live, so long as Calypso was the one he was living them with.

"I love you, Calypso. No matter what."

Even if the sun fell out of the sky the next day, or the ground split and they both fell deep into the earth. Even if those lives he saw when he thought of his future never came true, and even if she told him she never wanted to see him again: He would always love her, his second chance at light.

And he would always love the baby that grew within her, even if after that night, it no longer belonged to the two of them.