Through Ages of Weary Fulfillment: Ch. 28

Failure of an Encounter

Notes:

Notes...notes...hmm...I have no notes :DDD

WAIT! No, I do! I amended the cage issue for this chapter, so now it seems more like the dangly cage. And as I was writing it, I realized the cage in S2 of WFS never actually swings or shifts, even when Artham is scooted all the way up to the bars on one side. So perhaps this doesn't swing either?? I don't know, but whatever the case, I did add swinging in^^

*****

A soft moan jolted Artham out of restless sleep and into numb reality. It was not numb for long, though, and the moment he saw Amrah dragging someone—-a child, my child, MY DAUGHTER, his mind screamed—he lept from where he had laid moments before and grabbed the bars of his cage. It swung, but that didn’t matter. Let it swing, he thought angrily.

“What did you do to her?” he cried, terrified his daughter was dead—murdered—and absolutely furious.

Amrah waved off his question in a way that made Artham want to break the bars of his cage and hurt her in some horrible inhumane way. “Hush now, Artham,” she replied patronizingly. “All I did was give her a bit of sleeping powder. She’ll be awake in an hour or so. And then you two can catch up for as long as you like.”

Smiling wickedly, she made her way toward his cage. When she stood directly in front of the door, she dropped his daughter onto the ground, seeming as though she enjoyed it.

It only made Artham’s blood boil more. “What are you doing?” he asked furiously as she pulled a keyring out of nowhere.

“As soon as this thing stops swinging, I’m letting you two catch up,” Amrah replied innocently. “There are just a few rules, Artham. When I open this door, you can’t rush out and scoop up your daughter, playing the hero of the story.”

“And, pray tell, why not?” he asked through gritted teeth.

Amrah looked at him half-lidded, her hands on her hips in an oddly teenage fashion. “Because then all my hard work at vengeance will have gone to waste.”

He returned the sarcastic stare, all the while keeping one eye on his unmoving, prayerfully asleep daughter. “What’s stopping me?”

Now Amrah smiled at him coolly, smugly. “If I see you move even a hair from the back of your cage, I’ll use the dagger hidden in the folds of my cloak to kill this girl, and then I’ll dump her body off this cliff onto the stone below. Now how would you like to see that, Artham Wingfeather, Throne Warden and Protector of the Innocent?”

Artham breathed out slowly, his nostrils flaring in fury. He wanted to scream or shout or sob more than anything else, but he couldn’t. All he could do was back away into his cage as far as he could and watch. 

He did so, and Amrah nodded matter-of-factly. She said nothing, though, until the majority of the swinging had subsided. “Good job. Now watch, Artham, as your one chance of tantalizing freedom dances before you temptingly.”

Clinging to the wall of bars pressing into his back as if life depended on it—his daughter’s did, that was certain—Artham watched in grief and fury as the escape opened so his daughter would pass through. It and Amrah taunted him mercilessly, and the worst was when she left the door wide open, wide enough to where he could leap forward and go through, but not without endangering his daughter. Instead of looking at the open door and freedom, he focused on his daughter’s sleeping face, her lovely face that looked a bit like Arundelle when she was little and a bit like him. The bit that looked like him was the scared, worried, anxious part. He didn’t want that for his daughter.

He wondered whose eyes she had, what she sounded like, what she loved, how she told stories, how she played, and all those musings, all the endless possibilities were enough to distract him until the cage door closed with a bang and the lock rattled. 

Those sounds, as well as the cage’s new motion as it tried adjusting to a second occupant, jerked his attention back toward Amrah, and he watched her, now both curious and angry. 

“Have fun with the reunion, Artham,” Amrah smirked, the pleased smile gone from her face. “And enjoy breathing while you can, because it won’t last much longer. Next time I come back…well, I’m sure you can guess what’s coming.”

“I won’t go down without a fight,” he breathed as she disappeared, her swishing black skirts making her nearly invisible in the darkness of the cave. “And I won’t be leaving you, either,” he added, crouching and positioning his daughter in a more natural way, one that had to be less uncomfortable than the unceremoniously dumped heap Amrah had chosen. Then he took his cloak and tucked it around her, bunching up part of it near her head and turning into a bit of a makeshift pillow. All the movement made the cage sway, but only a little.

Perhaps he imagined it, but the moment her head rested on the “pillow,” she seemed to relax and even smile a bit. 

“I love you,” Artham murmured as he watched her sleep, determined to stay awake until whatever Amrah had given her wore off. Even though he wanted to do something normal and fatherly, like pulling her into his arms or even just resting his hand on her head, he chose not to. Something told him that was a boundary, and he needed to be careful crossing it. 

“I will do anything for you,” he whispered instead. “I will keep you safe. I will protect you. I will never let evil harm you again. I will even die for you. You are my daughter, and you are precious to me.”

*****

When Ilana woke up, she had a dreadful headache, the likes of which she had not experienced before that moment in her very short life. She wasn’t sure if it was bad enough to where one was supposed to groan, and if it was, she had no clue how to make the appropriate groaning noise happen. 

As it was, her head throbbed when she tried turning to find a more comfortable position (her bed was terribly hard), and she groaned without even thinking about it. Several unexpected realizations dawned on her in just a few seconds; one: she must have rolled onto the floor in her sleep, because she knew her bed wasn’t as hard as whatever she laid on; two: when one actually needed to groan, one did it involuntarily; and three: someone unfamiliar was very, very near.

The latter of those three discoveries only occurred when she opened her eyes in the middle of considering the former two, specifically in the moment in which she saw a dark-haired man in a slightly dirty, burgundy shirt sitting just a few feet away from her. And he was smiling! Or doing something else with his face. And—she looked up—she was in a cage!

A flutter of panic entered her heart as a speck of a memory resurfaced, one of her mother, absolutely terrified and white with fear. The message was that her father was there, waiting for her, angry.

“Who are you?” she whispered anxiously, feeling her hand reach for a strand of hair to twirl of its own accord.

The man shook his head. “First, have some water,” he said softly, producing a canteen from his side of the cage and uncorking it. The floor and bars and…well, everything, shifted a bit with the movement, and Ilana realized they were in the hanging cage.  “I tried it; it’s safe,* I promise.”

He sounded rather nice and kind; perhaps he wasn’t her father at all and just an unfortunate prisoner her mother had trapped in Throg. And then, for whatever reason, her father had thrown her in a cage with a stranger, maybe to disorient or scare her. That must be it, she decided. He can’t be my father because he’s far too kind. 

This determined, Ilana reached for the canteen and took a small sip, surprised at how amazing it felt on her apparently dry throat. She took another drink, this one bigger, and felt her headache dissipating. “Thank you,” she said quietly, passing the canteen back to him. He nodded, corked it again, and placed it in between the two of them.

“So we can both drink if we get thirsty,” he explained in response to the look of intrigue on her face.

Ilana nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about sharing water with a stranger who was trapped and likely locked in a cage with her. Hopefully she wouldn’t be in the cage long enough to need to share water with him.

“Who are you?” she asked again, feeling no more confident and even more nervous than she had before. 

The man cocked his head, as if trying to find the right way to answer. “If you tell me your name…I’ll tell you who I am,” he told her quietly, his words and tone sincere and his blue eyes reflecting them.

Telling herself over and over again that he couldn’t be her father and that he was just another trapped prisoner, she replied, “I’m Ilana,” the strand of hair brushing her cheek. “What’s yours?”

Silent for a few minutes, the man stared at her, his gaze flickering over her face again and again, always resting on her eyes, always mouthing over and over again what looked like the word (rather, name) Ilana. Frankly, it was strange. And a bit disturbing. 

Finally the man blinked as if bringing everything back into focus after soul-searching thoughts. “Ilana,” he said, then laughed a bit. “It’s fitting, I suppose. Did you know your name means ‘tree’?”**

Ilana shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Mother might’ve told me a while ago.” 

Thinking about her mother made her scared. Her “monster of a father” had escaped from his cage, then threatened her mother, saying if “his daughter” wasn’t brought to him within the hour, he would kill them both. Had she seen him already, then? Had he knocked her out and thrown her in the cage out of anger? If so, why was this other man, who seemed kind, just a few feet away?

 “Are you going to tell me your name and who you are or not?” she finally asked, the words taking her mind off her thoughts.

The man nodded, breathed out slowly, and ran his hand through his hair before finally answering. “My name is Artham,” he said softly, the word sounding regal and familiar, like it had stepped out of one of her fantasy novels. Perhaps it had. “And I’m…I’m..Ilana, I know this may sound hard to believe but, I’m your father.”

Ilana stared at him, horror and disbelief and excitement and worry and fear and confusion bumping around in her stomach like clumsy flutterflies. “That can’t be,” she breathed, the first notes of real panic entering her heart.

“But it is,” the man—Artham—her father—countered. “I’m here for you.”

Shaking her head vigorously, Ilana backed up as far as she could but was stopped almost instantly; cells were only so wide, and the lurching of the cage at her movement sent another tremor of panic throughout her body. Fear choking her, it was almost impossible for her to force out. “Please, please don’t. We’ve done what you asked, just please don’t hurt us. Please, please, just leave us alone.”

The ma—Artham stared at her in what appeared to be confusion. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said, his tone incredulous. “Where would you ever get such a notion?”

Ilana shook her head, hugging herself tightly now, as if that would protect her. “Mother said you’re a monster and a coward and you hated me and left me to die and—”

“Mother?" he repeated, his brow furrowed. He shook his head, as if to rid himself of a bad memory. "Do you believe that?” Artham asked, now looking rather sad and even distressed. 

“Well what am I supposed to believe when you threaten to kill us if I don’t come to you and see you, you horrible and terrifying and awful monster! You hate me and her and us  and you’re a coward, and I hate you for it!” she shouted back, trying to find some way to keep him away from her. Just because he wasn’t coming toward her then didn’t mean he wouldn’t later. 

Something unexpected happened after she spoke. Artham backed away a bit and tears came into his eyes, then rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away, but that didn’t do much other than stall them briefly. Finally, he clutched his legs to his chest, occasional sounds of muffled crying coming from him.

Ilana could only stare. She hadn’t thought she could actually subdue the man with words. That hadn’t been the plan. In fact, she hadn’t had a plan. 

She glanced at the door of the dangling cell. She glanced back at Artham, upset in the corner. Would he come after her if she tried to escape back to her mother? Would he be angry and kill them both?

Ilana sighed. She would just have to wait until nightfall, and then maybe both she and her mother could escape from the dreadful place they were in, and her father would never bother them again. She couldn’t hold it all against him, though.

He was a madman, after all.

*****

Notes:

*Artham wanted to make sure Amrah didn't poison the water she brought in a canteen between when Ilana was brought there and when she woke up.

**Funnily enough, Ilana's name meaning tree and being so perfect was just as much of a surprise for me as it was for Artham. I chose her name a bit randomly (it's the name of a random character in Lost) without even bothering to look up the meaning, and then I decided to check as I was writing this chapter, to see if there was anything I could pull from. Lo and behold, the girl's name means tree, and it just so happens that her mother was a tree for a while and her father loves climbing and being in trees 🤣

So perhaps the amount of time it took Ilana to figure out Artham was her father was unrealistic. But maybe it wasn't. Who knows? Maybe the sleeping powder was having a negative effect on her cognitive reasoning or something.

And...also...Artham's reaction to what she said. Obviously, it doesn't make any sense to her, but we know that she's literally pushing every single rather raw button that he has. Which is quite sad 😭 Please let me know if it seems unreasonable, though.

Oh, and tell me if there are any canonical errors! Thank you^^