Harroje Me, It's Better That Way

**Disclaimer, read this chapter at your discretion**

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Her voice broke through the silence with a rhetorical question, "Why?" She pushed down on his shoulders and in both arms, they snapped under her force. 

Only when he fell to the floor in screams did he take notice of Ludus's condescending eyes. She bent down to his eye level, furthering the reality he was a kid now.

He crumbled at the imminent pain, crying out for numbness to his [Divinity].

Abiral began to spiral his gaze looking at the door he had once begun to peer open. Was she punishing him for wanting to revenge he had instinctively searched for?

It was as if his hearing had become amplified, and he could still hear the two voices shuffle from under the door.

Sophia's tone is unchanging, and the sick woman has hints of anxiousness.

Was she even trying to hide her unforgivable act?

He could feel the echoes of others on the floor, rumbling hard as if they were right next to him. Witnessing his embarrassment.

A shunning scene.

"You're disappointing me Abiral," Ludus cupped his cheeks squeezing his face together. Long streams of tears poured out of his eyes.

Her touch made his body fearful of her. 

'Is this the wrath of a [Divinity]?'

Her head tilted at his thought, "Not even close."

Abiral's broken bones began to pierce out of his skin, emerging—evolving. Symbols appeared on his body like the one from Home, illuminating the boy's body with a grotesque of a painter's strokes. 

He felt a pain from Ludus's fingers poking at his face like a cat's claws.

Her watch over Abiral defined him, his position, and his promise. It was apparent that she was fuming with him, and his performance.

It was as if she could rip out all his feathers and keep molding him until it was deemed perfect to her. 

His muffled screams started to bellow from his diaphragm. Abiral's mind felt overloaded and only wanted to appease the woman before him to end the pain. 

Ludus let go of her hold on his face and Abiral fell face-first into the-

'Water?'

He could hear steps being taken making the water's waves crash into his ears. 

"Abiral, you forget I made you."

His back pushed him further into the surface, his feet felt like he had been walking in snow for hours and had felt warmth after so long. 

Ready to break at the sudden change.

With these words his body had made a switch, he let out an ear-splitting sound, wide-eyed and growing in the shallow water. Unable to bring himself back up.

"And I can change you."

In between purgatory and short breaths, Abiral began to choke on the water. 

Within sudden flashes, his shoulder blades began to erupt making room for Ludus's creation. Moving and separating wind on its own, wings as a raven and ancient as the animals that roamed before man began to lift his crushing weight from the waters.

From boy to man, he felt like an imposter. 

Ludus approaches him again, uncaring of the damage she had done to him or how his arms flimsily fell to his sides. Arranging that he was still imperfect.

A grogginess escaped from Abiral's voice, "Why did you stop me? You said it you made me—whatever I do, was a judgment that derives from the creator."

Ludus struck him.

Abiral's wings extended out, a length farther from him. Unfurling like a quail bracing for impact in the sky.

"Choose your words carefully with me," he was taller than her, but her presence was immeasurable, "I like you better when you're listening."

This time he kept his mouth shut, his face softened at her and his arms began to gain mobility. 

She held him by the waist, "I didn't bring you here because you wanted revenge for the boy's form you've taken hold of. As I stated I brought you here because you're disappointing me."

Abiral's eyebrows furled closer together, he didn't want revenge, and seeking the woman was out of his control.

She taunted his confusion, "How? By how slow you're going."

She reached her hand out to his left wing, plucking out its feather with each part her hand trailed to, "You're fighting me and if you are struggling with the fact you coexist with a [Divinity], we'll be here for eons."

With her other hand, she pushed past the hair that was starting to curtain him from her.

"So many careless steps, you used to be an actor, yet you're not even playing this role right," Ludus's hair started to take color, from nothing to black like his. "The healing isn't working because you won't accept it," her breath slithered at the right side of his neck, "You haven't accepted me, Ely."

He was trying to resuscitate memory on his own, it had to be a natural course.

"And how do I do that?"

"Again, you should start with the act you're trying to play. Who's going to applause for second-rated acting? Get it in your head, Abiral. You are meant to be a killer, not a doormat."

He shrugged at his shoulders, emphasizing the defeat in his arms, "And how can I do that when I'm weak?"

Ludus shook her head, "Misunderstanding once again, who said you were weak?" Pointing her finger at herself.

There it was again, the defying tone in her voice that seemed to eradicate all of Abiral's consciousness. It made him want to believe in everything she said and become it.

The wings she made for him began to melt into the water coloring it into tar.

A lie.

"Want me to help you get it?" Ludus's voice had pitched down, and her eyes had nothing within them.

"Tamari?" In impulse, he had taken his hand to Ludus's cheek.

Her hair began to coil, and her clothes were makeshift into a blood-soiled wedding dress. Her voice grumbled into a low tone, that sounded like an off-brand scary auto-tune timbre that movie directors made for the cheap aliens in their movies. 

"Why don't you start by knowing who Abiral was and will be? The one you seem to have taken for granted."

Ludus's skin became peeling paint as she took hold of the color Tamari had. Memorizing all the lines of her face and fixating it upon herself. 

Flaunting off her sides, the corset Tamari had on that day—was hidden underneath. To have made herself more palatable for her husband to digest.

Ely had never highlighted the things he didn't like about her.

In return, her insecurities had taken hold. And somehow Ludus had even seen that, such a subliminal moment the two had shared, vaguely open.

'Damn shapeshifter,' he didn't know who to be in that moment

Abiral?

…Ely?

Looking at the form Ludus had taken before him; he was reminded of that cursed night. A lump hardened in his throat, yet he still couldn't find himself to be remorseful. As if he didn't care about the memoir of his acts.

He was more shaken by the sounds he could recall. The shaking screams which had seemed to pound at the door he had locked without looking back.

Detached by the effect Ludus was having on Abiral, she took his hand and faced it to hers—to Tamari's.

She flexed out her leg from the dress, ripping at the side to make room for long movements. 

The two began to sway.

Abiral was never a dancer, neither in this life nor the one he had before it. Yet with a [Divinity]—you're prone to picking up things at the moment.

Adapting to their pace.

He took the lead, throwing her above her while firming holding her in place with his hands on her waist. And like Tamari but sicklier, a twisted chuckle escaped from her raspy lungs.

Abiral waved her from side to side, twirling her—watching as Ludus's hair moved like his wife's had done. It made him forget how strange that woman was, how devoid she was in his last moments as a man, and the fear that was impelled into him back then.

At least now, none of that mattered now—not here.

Out of breath, he dropped her onto her bent leg, allowing her back to adjust and arch the way it needed so her hair couldn't be parched as it soaked.

The leg she had raised, reveal the blood that had been streaming down her legs since earlier. Smudging onto his pants and reminding him once again of what he had done to his short-lived life partner. 

Ludus's voice is what brought him back, "Forget about it, Abiral."

She took his free hand and brought it back to her lower back. A signal to raise her.

And he did.

The two faced one another again. In indifferent forms and yet the same.

One again.

His eyes didn't know where to look. Her black eyes still had some kind of emotion as she looked up at him, "Rid yourself of your own shadow, become the figure it's illuminating," she took his lowered head into her hands. 

The two shared a kiss.