Beyond Measure (private)
((ooc: After Fallon and Cyrus' party))
The night would soon be over, but Aishe could say with certainty that neither she nor Kem wanted it to end. Here they were though, and he was dropping her off at Liefde, polite as ever. She didn't like this formality between them, the distance they still maintained even though, in truth, they could hardly get closer.
Turning to him, before they actually entered the lobby of the tower, she slipped her fingers into his hand.
"You said, a while ago, that you would do anything."
She looked at him with a small smile as he glanced down at her. Tugging him with her into the lobby and towards the elevator she continued, "I sure hope you meant anything. You did, right? Anything?"
At his hesitation she fixed him with her solemn green gaze. "I have something for you, something you should see, that you might want."
He had to try though. It was a matter of principal.
"You know, when I said anything, I kind of thought more along the lines of taking a bullet for you."
Damn. She was still heading right for the elevator.
"Three bullets?"
*ding*
Shit.
"What about a stake through the heart?"
But really, it didn't matter what he said because his heart wasn't entirely in the protest and if she'd asked him to, he'd have jumped off the damn roof. So there they were, and the doors were sliding shut and she was reaching out to press a button...
"Thirty-one?! I know it's a high rise... but... thirty-one?"
The elevator began to rise and there was no more room for a smartassed remark of any kind, because he was busy gripping the rail inside and leaving his stomach behind in the lobby as they headed up, impossibly high.
As the elevator doors slid shut and Kem noticed the floor they were heading for, she finally laughed, having borne his protests in silence until then.
"If you recall, I was trying not to let you find me. Getting to higher ground seemed like a sure bet, wouldn't you think?"
She bit her lip when he sent a withering glance her way, trying not to burst out into giggles. Aishe knew Kem's fear of heights was a complete mystery to him. He had no idea what, if anything, in his life had caused it. It seemed completely random, and to him, completely insignificant in light of the deeper thoughts that generally occupied his mind... and yet this one was the one that most strongly effected his life.
Shaking her head, not wanting to derive humor from his discomfort, Aishe just hugged him instead, turning her head to rest her cheek against his chest.
Reluctant, as always, to disentangle himself from Aishe, nonetheless there was semi-solid ground outside the elevator doors and he made for it like a dehydrated nomad at an oasis. Thirty-one floors up they may be, but he'd take a real floor over a precarious elevator any day.
Traumatic rides over, he accompanied Aishe to her apartment wondering briefly what she could possibly have for him. She went straight for the bedroom and he remained in the living room, taking it in with curiosity.
The walls of her apartment were blank, boring, unappealing, so unlike her. There was really no sign that the place was inhabited at all, save for a book on the coffee table and blanket over the back of the couch.
"How long have you been here?"
Ugh... that sounded slightly critical. He hadn't intended that. He was just... surprised.
"I wasn't sure how long I'd be here... you know?"
There he was, being all polite and respectful again. "You can come in, you know. I'll need your help to move these later, anyway, if that's what you decide."
Kem poked his head in around the door, and she watched the expression on his face as he took in the sight in her bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment, there was no decoration here. Just what had been here when she'd arrived. A bed, a dresser, a closet... and everything she'd moved down to Nachton with, still packed in boxes.
Particularly, the four large trunks that now sat in the middle of the spacious bedroom. Aishe knelt behind them and indicated them with her hand.
"These are yours, as far as I'm concerned."
She sat and waited, slightly nervous, not at all sure how this would be received, certain it wasn't going to be any sort of joyous occasion by any stretch of the imagination.
Walking into the bedroom he stared with open curiosity at the four trunks. All right, he'd loaned her the occasional DVD but what the hell could she possibly have packed into four trunks of this size that belonged to him?
He sat down on the opposite side of the trunks as she was on, for some reason feeling a chill travel down his spine. Maybe he was picking something up from Aishe, but he didn't really get the impression that whatever was inside the trunks was going to be warm and fuzzy.
Kem opened the first trunk, revealing a pile of canvas bags, the kind archaeologists often put samples and artifacts into. They were carefully packed, separated with layers of foam to keep them from being damaged. Nothing extroardinary about them.
They were all labeled, and after a moment he found the one marked '1A.' Untying the top, he reached inside and froze. Psychometry took over, displaying for him, on the back of his eyes, however it could be described or placed, a map, a timeline, showing him the age and the location of the cool stone he'd just touched. Whatever it was had been in Egypt for a very long time. Almost as long as he'd been around. And it hadn't moved, not until it had been unearthed and brought to the US.
With a mechanical motion, Kem withdrew the stone from the bag and placed it in front of him on the floor. Aishe handed him the next bag, and he slid this stone, large and flat like the first, into place. And so they went, Kem knowing exactly what was on the stones, wanting to stop but unable to, placing each piece beside the last with shaking hands as if compelled somehow.
When they were done, they'd covered most of the bedroom floor, shoving the now empty trunks and a pile of bags and foam out of the way. Kem knelt unmoving on one side, Aishe on the other, oddly subdued, watching him carefully.
She must have smuggled an entire temple wall, Kem thought dumbly as he stared at it. He didn't know how, and wasn't sure he wanted to. But here it was. Every hieroglyph, every inch of his own history, laid out in faded red, yellow, blue, black; his shame laid out before him, his own name chiseled ritually away to signify denail of an afterlife.
Aishe had brought it all to him.
Finally, when the ticking of the clock on the nightstand by the bed became too loud to bear, she rose smoothly to her feet and moved around to where Kem still sat. Slipping her arms around him from behind, she knelt and brushed his hair away from his neck.
"Was I right to bring these here, Kiamhaat? It didn't seem right that they should go to a lab or a museum. And I didn't want to risk burying them back up for someone else to find. I've already got permission for you to store them here at Meridian if you like, or destroy them if that's what you prefer."
Transporting and 'losing' and entire shipment of artifacts had not been easy. Particularly because getting any item out of Egypt was difficult at best; impossible any other day. Aishe had had help, oddly enough, from a surprising source, and the trunks had all been 'lost' long before they'd even left Egypt in the first place.
She wanted his approval very much. She had so many questions for him, questions she was certain he would answer for her, and just for her, about his past, about the things that made him who he was now. She'd been privy through their bond to his deepest fears and worst memories, but nothing in great detail and few real answers had been provided.
He didn't have to flounder for long though, because jolting him back to the present were Aishe's arms, her warm body pressed up against him. Her voice, rich and husky in his ear, was easy to focus on and he pulled himself away from his memories completely, in time to bring his cold hands up and clasp her arms against him. He knew this was important to her; but he honestly wasn't sure how he felt about having them here.
"Thank you for bringing them," he managed. After a pause, he added, "You're right. I don't know what I'd have done if I foud them on display in a museum somewhere, written up in a textbook or something."
That thought was beyond comprehension. Personal feelings aside, Kem did not labor under the false belief that these stones wouldn't be an enormous find for some lucky scholar. What a slim coincidence for him, then, that not only was Aishe the one who found them, but that she cared more for his well-being than any prestige they might have brought her in the world of archaeologists.
He didn't know what else he could say to her. He knew she must have questions. Aishe always had questions. And Kem didn't want to spend what little was left of the night staring at the cool, unfeeling stones before them both. But he couldn't pull his eyes away.
She couldn't apologize for bringing these out now. When else would she have chosen to show him what was in the trunks? It was something to be done soon, to get out of the way and behind them as fast as possible.
It was difficult to know exactly what was going through his mind, even with her empathy and their bond. Aishe didn't know the entire story. She knew what was on the stones before them though, and she knew Kem.
Hugging him from behind she looked at the stones once more and then placed another kiss softly on his neck just below his ear.
"I know you didn't do it."
She backed away then, standing, and tugged on Kem's hand. Leading the way out to the living room, she figured he'd had enough time to stare at the stones and dwell on the past all alone.
He looked down at her, and then he shook his head.
"I didn't do it," he agreed. "But I might have."
It was, as he was learning again and again, natural to rest his arm around her, to pull her close and enjoy the feel of her cuddled up right there beside him. Her face turned up to his and he could see the questions coming, questions he knew she'd get around to asking sooner or later, and if anyone deserved to hear the answers it was Aishe.
He lifted his shoulder as he looked at her; his tacit way of telling her he didn't mind her asking. She should know. She should know everything that had ever happened if they were going to be together.
She waited until finally Kem began to speak, in his soft, deep voice, and his story came out in full. It was different, very different, from what was depicted on the stones that still lay on her bedroom floor, but she hadn't expected Kem's account and the accounts of those left living to be all that similar. Instead she nodded along. Kem's words were so very 'him' that she couldn't ever doubt for a moment that what had transpired so many years ago was exactly as he put it to her now.
Still, there was plenty she hadn't expected. That he'd been a father and a husband, she'd never guessed at. That his sister was actually the one who'd held the knife and killed Nekht... and she knew Kem well enough to understand just how badly it had effected him, that even now he felt the weight of having killed his own wife and child.
She shifted, lying across his lap so she could look up at his face while he spoke. As he finished the tale, or at least the start of it, she smiled.
"So you've brought these people with you for so many years," she said, "but it's time to let them go. No one could listen to what you've just told me and think, for a moment, that you're a bad person, or that you haven't done whatever penance you think you deserve."
Leaning up a bit, Aishe kissed him softly. "I won't tell you that what happened in the past doesn't matter anymore. I know you. I know it will always matter to you. And the people who made you what you are now will always be a part of you, but you can't let them hold you back forever, you know."
Her words made sense. Aishe always made sense. Following them, though, was another task altogther. Kem had realized several weeks ago, and maybe even before then, that it was time to lay his demons to rest. He very badly wanted to. It was the application that took some doing. Depression had been a longtime companion for him, and sometimes no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible to crawl out from the depths and shed himself of the weight of his own memories.
Aishe was hope for him, though. As difficult as it was sometimes to see any kind of silver lining, it was just as difficult to look at her and not feel as if there was something much better out there.
If her kiss was meant to take his mind off of it some, it did the trick. Her next words, spoken softly, were even more reassuring. He smiled at the black-haired woman in his arms, nodded, and bent his head to kiss her again.
"I can't promise much," he said when he pulled away. "Not as much as I want to. You don't know how badly I want to be done with my past, or at least be beyond it. I never manage to. Whatever is inside of me, it pulls me back down every time. I can try though."
Kem didn't know how to give Aishe any more than that. If, in several thousand years, he hadn't figured out how to get a handle on life (unlife, whatever) and get over his moody depressions and various other small (okay, not so small) issues, he wasn't sure how he was supposed to figure it out now. But for once he was willing to try, and that was a good deal more effort than he'd put into it in a very long time.
He was still afraid of letting her down, of not being able to be what she deserved. He had no idea how to go about making her life as joyful as it should be, but he couldn't push her away again.
Nor was she going to push to discuss anything else tonight. Small steps, for both of them. There was no hurry, and they would both be here years from now, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
Somehow they managed to kick off their shoes and eventually they migrated downward so they were lying on their sides on the couch, Kem flipping idly through the channels while he held her. The sunrise was drawing near, and she didn't want him to leave.
Aishe wriggled a bit closer, her head pillowed on Kem's bicep. [Stay today?] she asked almost hesitantly.
He chuckled and continued to flip through the channels, regardless of the fact that the remote was all the way across the room. It took them nearly ten minutes to find something to watch, owing to the fact that they kept somehow getting interrupted. Aishe's lips tended to get in the way a lot. Not that he was going out of his way to seek them out. Not at all. Not even remotely.
Ah hell, who was he kidding?
By the time they realized they were watching infomercials, they were both ready to admit the kissing was far more fun... so they did that, in various forms, until the windowshades were glowing with the light of the sun blocked well behind them, and for the first time, fell asleep wrapped up together.
((ooc: Aishe and Kem out like lights!))