TBTT 21. In which he tastes her baked goods

[moonshadows]

The last time he’d been that vulnerable in her presence, he’d needed several days to recover enough to face her again. Yesterday was much worse than that first time, so she expected that it would be a while before he visited her next.

She was wrong.

After the unexpected delight of Grandma’s oatmeal-raisin cookies – still warm! – she’d settled down for a long night of music and trying to make sense of the broken chaos that was his mind. She’d snacked on cookies, identified the pieces that looked easiest to fix, gone to bed at an unholy hour of the morning, and slept until sometime in the afternoon. After an indulgent bath and a change into clean clothes, she was cheerfully raiding what was left of the cookies when from the door-

“You’ll spoil your appetite.”

She whirls at the deadpan delivery, sees him with his arms crossed, one human eyebrow arching slightly. “Illidan!” Her cheeks burn. “I mean…my Kal’shan.”

He frowns reflexively at the unexpected exclamation. Hearing his name from her lips hurts significantly less than he’d expected it would, most likely because of the obvious delight with which it was uttered. When was the last time anyone was delighted to see him? Absently, he forms his constant irritation into a mental fist and strikes the skeletal hope stirring in its grave. To his satisfaction, it collapses and remains silent. He does not need the complication of a hope that will only be crushed eventually anyway.

“No need to apologize,” he says as he shrugs out of the confinement of human form, “It is my name, after all.” He is pleased to see that she sheds her disguise just as quickly.

She turns back to the leftover baked goods, trying to get her blush under control. He doesn’t seem offended by her lack of formality, at least. Taking a deep breath, she turns back to him and offers him the cookie she’s holding.

“Try one! They’re good.” She demonstrates by taking a bite from the cookie in her other hand.

“But…” he trails off, one hand half outstretched for the cookie.

She shrugs. “I know we don’t need to eat food, but they’re tasty, and-“ she breaks off the sentence and gives him a look of wounded hope. “You have been eating something, right?”

He takes the cookie and bites into it, unwilling to disappoint her further by answering the question. This does not fool her, however.

“Kal’shan!” The indignant exasperation makes him smile around the mouthful of oatmeal and raisins. She scrambles for her cable and holds the nozzle out imperiously. “Drink.”

The cookie is better than he thought it would be. He chews lazily, amused by her attitude. She knows he could crush her if he so chose, and she still dares to tell him what he should do. Such impertinence would normally enrage him, and yet…there’s no hostility in it. As he’s debating whether or not he’ll give her the satisfaction, her expression softens to something more vulnerable.

“I drank for you,” she says softly, and his amusement vanishes.

Once again he relives those horrible moments: the realization that she wouldn’t get her blade up in time to block his strike, the metal falling from her grip even as his blade continued its path towards her midsection, the frantic effort to pull his blow. Knowing that he was going too fast, the blade was going to cut her – and then, like a miracle he was unworthy to receive, the only thing that saved her: her collapse away from his blade. The muffled sound of her body hitting the floor, the knowledge that there was no way he could have her cable brought to him without revealing anything. The light fixture sacrificed in desperation for its copper wire, the terror that not even that would revive her.

He swallows the suddenly-flavorless cookie and reaches for the cable. The electricity tastes of stale lemons and copper, but it satisfies a tiny fraction of the gnawing hunger that’s been with him for almost as long as he can remember, and her smile makes it taste sweeter. He hands the cable back after only a few seconds, but she looks satisfied. Perhaps she thinks that once he felt the energy streaming into him, he would not continue his self-imposed fast. If so, she is absolutely correct. He is already planning to acquire something he can use to drink in the energy his body has been craving. But in the meantime…

“Raise your arms,” he says in a tone that allows no argument. She complies, and he glares at each limb for several seconds. “Good. No trembling.”

Her look of confusion evaporates under the dawning of hope. “May I-“

His smirk cuts her words off mid-sentence. “You may.”

Yes, he thinks as he settles into an armless chair. This will be a fine test of exactly how valuable you are to me, my little tiger-by-the-tail. The glow of his eyes follows her from behind the cloth that veils them. She is just a cub, but even the young of such a great cats are often stronger and more dangerous than they are expected to be by those taken in by soft fur and playful innocence. He has seen her claws in action; he will not make the mistake of underestimating her.

It doesn’t take her long to return with a soft cloth and a bottle of oil that has a clean, slightly spicy scent. She pours a little oil onto the cloth, then pauses and searches his face for a long moment. No doubt she wonders if this is another trap; that thought gives him a pang of regret.

“It’s really okay?” she asks softly, the words threatening to turn his regret into full-fledged self-blame.

“It’s really okay,” he replies, his voice equally soft in the only apology he can bring himself to give.

He closes what passes for his eyes, swats away the fleeting wish that he still had something able to generate tears, and then his thoughts still as the cloth moves slowly up his right horn. The scent of the oil distracts him, and the soothing upwards stroke quiets everything but the awareness of how good this feels. She alternates her strokes, running the cloth first up one horn, then the other, and slowly, slowly, he falls into a sort of tracelike relaxation. It is like sleep, only better; there are no nightmares to worry at him. He forgets all the pain that being awake brings, forgets even the memory of that pain, forgets that there was ever anything but drifting in this silent corner of his own mind.