The pit | I fell in the pit

She asked him to look up, but his head felt as though it was weighed down by lead. Really though, he couldn't bear the kindness that he knew he'd find in her gaze. He didn't deserve it, not after what he'd done. Somehow, after all these years of trying to be right and good he'd ended up the exact opposite. Within, the lion prowled hungrily and his mind was not ignorant of how easy it would be to simply let it take control again. As the coat fluttered down, Remi looked up with shock in his tear-blurred gaze. For a moment he had thought she meant to jump down and was using her coat as some sort of landing pad. Fear and adrenaline coursed through his body and the lion fastidiously rushed to the forefront causing Remi's eyes to blaze gold and his teeth to expand into a snarl. That she didn't seem to be following was annoying to the lion who sulked backwards. Not wanting to get blood on her jacket, but also not wanting to cause offence by ignoring the sacrifice she'd made by taking off the coat, Remi leaned forward and gingerly picked it up. It smelled of warmth and of Vai, and Remi could feel something deep within himself clench and break. "It was her." Remi protested, although truthfully he knew that it couldn't have been. "Back from the dead I think .. this place it ..." Shaking his head and swallowing Remi tried to put words to what he had felt and seen that night, but found that he couldn't. "She asked me to come with her. We went into a marsh and she said that if we stayed there we could be together again." He knew how it sounded. Even at the time he knew how it had sounded, but even so his lip quivered and caused a fresh streak of blood to flow silently down, mixing with the rain and his tears. "She wanted me to die to be with her." Remi managed, knowing that he needed to say the words to Vai as much as to himself. "And then the lion came..and.." With a shaky breath and a sob he could not longer hold, Remi buried his face against Vai's jacket and against his cut-up knees. Squeezing his legs tightly, the image of his mother's sweet face and her kindly words replayed over and over in his mind, supplemented by flashes of passion and pleasure supplied by the lion who happily envisioned the scene as well. Specifically the bloodier bits. remi roar