Fantasy (2/3): Empty Space

Writers: Dana, Eimi
Date Posted: 4th April 2006

Characters: B'ram, Atreyn
Description: B'ram comes to Traelyn to forget Atreyn, but they both end up remembering so much more...
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 11, day 11 of Turn 3
Notes: 2 of 3
Mentions: Traelyn

B'ram

After one more strained, guttural groan, B'ram finally collapsed on top
of woman beneath him. The only sound that could be heard in the
Weyrwoman's weyr was that of both their breathing, fast and perfectly in
sync. She was warm and comfortable as his head rested against her
shoulder, his face buried in her neck. But it was all wrong. Despite
the languid feeling that melted his body and melded it perfectly to
hers, something about it just was not not as it should have been. She
was not Atreyn anymore. As his mind awaked from the blissful dream he
had allowed himself to fall into, he could no longer make himself
believe that the woman was anyone but Traelyn, and no matter how much he
tried to convince himself otherwise, she would never be the one that he
wanted.

With a painful groan that came straight from his wounded heart, he
summoned his strength and rolled off of her, and slipped into the cold,
lonely space beside her. He turned his back to her, not wanting to look
at her, not wanting to remember just how equisit the dream had been.
His arms wrapped around himself as he remembered a reality that was
colder than the empty space that surrounded him.

~~**~~**~~

Slowly Atreyn knelt in front of the bottom drawer of the dresser, her
eyes traveling over the wooden grooves. She reached out and up, running
the tip of a finger over the top side. It was blunt, not as sharp as
the other side. Atreyn bit her lip as she let her finger slide down the
indentation and away. She'd been drunk, and B'ram, laughing,
practically as drunk as she, had been carrying her in here. She'd been
holding the ale bottle - or had it been the wine bottle? - and when he'd
swung her around, glass had clashed against the wood, permanently
marring the dresser and splattering the rest of the alcohol all over
them. They had both thought that it was sharding hilarious at the time -
but _anything_ is sharding hilarious when you're sloppily drunk - and
both of them had been glad that it'd been the bottle and not her hand
that connected with the dresser.

The incident had been an ongoing joke between them - a shared memory
that never failed to make them laugh.

Until now.

Wincing, Atreyn shoved the thought aside and yanked open the drawer.
She stared down at the clothes folded neatly within for a moment before
grabbing as much as she could at a time and throwing them in one of the
few bags she'd brought with her. The uneasiness she'd been feeling ever
since she stepped back into this weyr was growing. She felt like an
intruder - a woman who had no right to be here.

**Girifith is still not back yet, right?**

}:No.:{ Onesanth's mental tone sounded troubled. Her lifemate had been
acting so strangely lately - especially when it concerned Girifith's
rider.

**It's better if we don't see Girifith _or_ his rider today, love.**
Atreyn knew that she couldn't take the twisted expression on his face,
or the wounded, angry look in his eyes...

Unbidden, a shiver ran down her spine, and she began stuffing her
clothes into the bag faster.

But B'ram was already there. He had left Girifith to drip-dry in the
sun as he ran up the stairs two at a time back to his weyr. The
brownrider had hoped that the exercise would make him feel better. The
sight that greeted him, though, made him feel worse. So very much
worse. There was Atreyn, acting more like a thief than as the woman who
had been his lover for turns as she stole away the last link he had to
her, the last of his hope that everything would be all right.

Something about the cowardly way she was sneaking around was so final.
Perhaps it had been childish, but he had hoped he would find her in his
room waiting to beg him to take her back. Maybe it had been naive for
him to believe that she would come back and tell him that it had all
just been a misunderstanding. And maybe he had just had to live for the
thought that the last two and a half turns meant as much to her as it
had to him. It was better than living in cold, lonely reality, after
all.

But now the hurtful truth was staring him in the face. Atreyn couldn't
even look him in the eye. It was over between them. Finished. Done.
She had moved on, and she was taking his hope and his dreams with her.
It twisted his insides into knots to watch her. Angry knots. Hateful
knots. Those emotions were much more comforting than the fear, the pain
and the soul-rendering grief that lay beneath them.

"Why don't you take all my marks while you're at it. You know where
they are," he growled.

She paled, inwardly shrinking from him even as she slowly raised her
eyes to his. Briefly. Then she looked back down and continued to shove
her things in the bag. "I don't want your marks, B'ram." Her voice was
very quiet.

"Then what are you doing slinking around my weyr like a criminal? Huh?"
He wanted to grab her to yank her around to look at him. But part of
him was afraid if he touched her he would fall to his knees and beg her
to not to go. "And just how much do you intend to take from me?"

That brought a slight snarl out of her, but she kept her eyes focused on
the task at hand. She couldn't look at him. Call it fear, guilt, or
sheer self-preservation...but she just couldn't. "I'm taking nothing
that wasn't already mine. _Mine_, B'ram. Unless you wanted to keep my
clothes?"

"We shared this weyr for more than two turns, Atreyn. It was all
_ours_. Everything that is in this weyr was yours!" He said with a
sardonic laugh. "Take it all! I don't want it anymore. Don't leave
anything that was _yours_ behind! Here, I'll even help you." He walked
over to the wall and tore the tapestry off of it with a audible rip,
balled it up and threw it on the bed. "Here you go. Do you remember
that? We bought that together when we went to that Gather up north. I
hated it, but you wanted it so bad so I bought it for you. There you
go. It's _yours_."

He walked back into the living area and pulled the large decorative
carving off the shelf. "Here," he said as he threw it on top of the
tapestry. "There is the carving we bought on our one turn anniversary.
Girifith and Onesanth curled up together. Why don't you have them paint
the brown a bronze and give it to U'falo. It might actually mean
something to him."

With a pained snarl she rose to her feet, her eyes stinging with tears.
_This_ was why she'd hoped to get out of here before he came back.
_This_ was why she'd been "slinking around the weyr like a criminal".
"Leave him _out_ of it, B'ram!"

"But he's part of it, Atreyn," B'ram said with a sweet smile as he
grabbed the pillows from the chair nearby. "Here, take these. I piled
these around you after you had to have your wisdom teeth taken out and
take the chair too. That's the chair I sat in while I spooned bowl
after bowl of mashed tubars with cheese into your mouth, because that's
all you wanted to eat for two days. Did U'falo do that for you?"

He stormed out to the sofa and ripped off the light blanket thrown over
the back. "Here, take this too. This was the blanket I wrapped you up
in when you had that nasty fever, and you woke me up in the middle of
the night curled around me shivering. I wrapped you up in this and held
you until your fever broke. And then we spent the rest of the night
talking until we both finally fell asleep exhausted. There, take it!"

B'ram turned hard and accusing eyes on the greenrider. "Did U'falo do
that for you? No, _I_ did that for you, Atreyn! _I_ did that. But you
don't remember that kind of thing, do you. You don't want to see that,
do you! Because all you want to see is what that bronzerider has that I
don't have! Well, I gave you everything I had, Atreyn. Go on, take my
life and give it to him. Its not mine anyway! It hasn't been mine
since the day I fell in love with you. Take it, take it all and leave
me alone! But have the decency to look me in the eye when you do it!"

Shaking hands grasped the bag full of her clothes, but she couldn't keep
her fingers still enough to tie the laces shut. Just as well. He'd see
them, and then he'd pounce on her weakness like a predator on prey.
Suppressing a shiver - she could feel his eyes on her - she then went
over to the bed, and tried not to think about anything as she grabbed
the tapestry. **Do, Atreyn. Just do. Don't think.** The greenrider
stared down at the figurine of the two mated dragons for a moment - but
whether it was for a long or short while, she didn't know. **Don't
think.**

Then Atreyn turned sharply on a heel, leaving it behind, and walked over
to him, her face twisted with conflicting emotions as she snatched the
blanket from his grasp. And then she lifted her glazed, dark eyes to
his.

As she looked at him he could feel his own eyes betray him. He couldn't
hide the hurt, the longing, the questions. Shards, what had he ever
done to deserve _this_? Couldn't they just start again? Wouldn't she
ever come to him? He would share her. He would! If it meant he could
see that special light in her eyes again, that light that had been only
his. But he knew she had already taken that piece of her away and given
it to someone else.

He couldn't look anymore. He just couldn't see the pity in those eyes.
His voice was choked as he whispered, "Now I will go. I'm going to go
get rip-roaring drunk, find a woman and stay the night with her. All
night. So you have one night to get everything out of here.
_Everything_. Because in the morning, when I come back, I swear on
scortching Faranth's First Egg if there is anything that has your
fingerprints on it I will bundle it all up and drop it scortching
/between/ forever."

The words slammed into her. They cut her more deeply than she would
have thought possible...because already she hurt too much. "Fine."
Then she said aloud to her dragon, "Onesanth, ask U'falo to come up
here. Please." Her quiet tone held a sharp edge to it, for it was meant
to cut him like he'd sharding cut her.

B'ram snorted. He knew she didn't have to say it aloud. He knew she
wanted to hurt him. But did she really believe she could hurt him worse
than he was already hurting? "Well, I guess that means its time for me
to go."

"Guess so." She took a step back away from him. Then another, her
anger fusing with the hurt, the guilt.

He couldn't wait to lose himself in alcohol, in lust, in clouds of
lethargy. But before he could do that, he had to stop by the
Headwoman's office. If it meant he would have to find a different girl
every evening until a weyr was ready for him, he would not spend one
more sharding night in the tomb he and Atreyn had once called a home.
He could just feel the bile rise in this throat as he pictured U'falo
walking around his room, his bathing chamber, his living area, defiling
everything that he had once considered inviolate before.

B'ram could just imagine what kinds of things Atreyn could get up to in
that room with the bronzerider, on his sofa, on his floor, on his bed.
The contempt she seemed to feel for him just reinforced images in his
mind of the kind of hateful, spiteful things she would do now when she
knew he wouldn't interrupt or stop her. Well, he would not spend
another night lying there alone in a bed built for two. There was just
too much empty space, and most of it was inside himself.

**She can't hurt you anymore,** he told himself over and over as he
turned and headed for the door. **She can't hurt you.**

~~**~~**~~

But she could, and she did. With just one look she had opened up the
deepest wounds in his heart. As he lay curled up on his side next to
Traelyn, still seeing Atreyn's eyes in his mind, he pulled his knees up
to his chest and sobbed silently in the dark.

Last updated on the April 6th 2006

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Fantasy (2/3): Empty Space