"There are wounds that never
show on the body that
are deeper and more hurtful
than anything that bleeds."

~~Laurell K. Hamilton
- 'Mistral's Kiss'

****************

~Hatter~

I could feel Nova's warmth through the denim of my jeans, his temple resting lightly against the side of my thigh. It was a comforting reminder that I wasn't alone, not here in the tower as I watched the grounds or anywhere else. Something had shifted between us last night and, while it was only a fraction, it was impossible to ignore.

Nova needed someone, whether he knew it or not, and I wasn't entirely certain I was the right person for the job. But he had come to me, sought me out instead of finding some way to distract his mind from the chaos that lurked in the recesses of his mind. I wanted to be there for him, in whatever way he needed me to be, but I couldn't help but wonder if it would be enough.

My past continued to haunt me, every moment of everyday whether I was awake or asleep. It was a miracle I was even alive after that night but it was still questionable if my sanity had truly remained intact. Most that had suffered a loss such as mine would have died, wasted away to nothing or taken their own lives. But not me, no, I was cursed to walk this earth without him for all eternity.

"Can I ask you something?" Nova's question pulled me out of my thoughts and I welcomed the distraction.

I hummed in response, not trusting my voice not to crack, and waited.

After a moment of hesitation, he asked, "Why does everyone call you Hatter?"

A slow smile tilted the corner of my mouth, unsurprised by the inquiry. I thought it was a stupid nickname but it had kind of stuck when I was younger and I had eventually accepted it.

"Did you know that years ago hat makers tended to go insane due to long term exposure to mercury that they used in their trade?" I replied, keeping my eyes on the tree line instead of looking at Nova. "That's where the saying 'mad as a hatter' came from."

"That's interesting and all, but I'm not sure what you're getting at." Nova sounded genuinely confused and a glance at his face confirmed it.

A chuckle rumbled in my chest at the expression and I looked away before I followed through with my impulse to smooth the crease between his brows with my thumb. Biting the inside of my cheek, I braced my arms on the stone wall and surveyed the grounds once more as I shrugged.

"Without getting too specific, I'm a crazy motherfucker, Nova, always have been." My voice came across nonchalant but I could feel the tension in my body with each word. "Mix that with the fact that my last name is Hatman... well people seemed to find it fitting."

"Sounds like it was chosen by children." Nova's accuracy was a bit unnerving.

"Yep, but I don't think they perceived how accurate it truly would be." I refused to let my mind wander to the things I had done, pushing away the blood soaked memories.

"I don't think you're crazy," Nova practically whispered as if he was thinking aloud instead of to me.

"You don't know me very well." It had been intended as a simple observation but the words sounded harsher than they had in my head.

"It's not like you've made it particularly easy," Nova said dryly, raising his face to look at me, "but that doesn't make you crazy."

No, it makes me an asshole with walls you don't need to climb. I nearly voiced the thought but swallowed the words before they slipped free. I didn't want to start a conversation I wasn't ready to have and I didn't want to end up saying something that could hurt him.

Lately, it seemed that was all I was capable of doing. Nova put on a front, laughed everything off as if nothing could touch him, but it didn't fool me. He felt everything so much deeper and stronger than anyone I had ever met, and it had nothing to do with his empathic ability. It was one of the things that had drawn me to him in the beginning but it left his heart too fragile for the likes of me.

Nova shifted slightly, wrapping one arm loosely around my leg, his weight leaning more heavily as he relaxed against me. I could hear the nervous flutter of his heartbeat as if he expected me to push him away, but I didn't. There was no way that I could even though part of me screamed to keep him at arms length.

Guilt. That's what Ashira had called it. She had also said it was much more complicated than that but guilt was what it boiled down to. It ate at me like a flesh eating virus, leaving holes behind with every selfish moment, each stolen kiss. I couldn't give Nova everything but I was selfish and wanted whatever he was willing to give until there was nothing left inside of me.

"If you don't think it makes me crazy, then what does it make me?" I asked, curious about how he saw me.

Nova was quiet for a moment, his slim fingers absentmindedly tracing shapes on my leg. The sensation sent a thrill down my spine, my cock stirring in my jeans at the innocent touch and I fought the urge to shift on my feet. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea and stop, thinking that I didn't want him touching me.

"I think you're not as simple as you want the world to believe," he answered thoughtfully. "You're not shallow by any definition of the word and it would be a lot easier if I could just hate you."

My chest grew tight at the prospect of Nova ever hating me despite the fact that I agreed with him. If he could learn to hate me, his heart would be safe and none of this shit would be twisted up so bad between us any more. He should hate me after the way I've strung him along, pulled him close only to shove him away again.

It wasn't fair to him to be punished for my shortcomings and any decent man would have let him go, a clean break before things got too deep. But I never claimed to be a decent man.

"I don't want you to hate me."

I hadn't even realized I had spoken the words aloud until the heat from Nova's body left my leg and he was standing once more. His palm was warm against my cheek as he turned my face towards his, the ever darkening sky turning his eyes to midnight glass that threatened to swallow me whole.

"I've tried to hate you, Robbie." I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, savoring the sound of my name on his tongue. "I wanted to but I couldn't. I thought I could leave and the temptation would go away, but it didn't. I know whatever this is, you don't want to need it or feel it and neither do I, but we do."

I opened my eyes and searched his face, unable to deny his words. When I spoke, it came out on a tortured whisper. "How do we stop?"

Nova smiled, one tinged with sadness as his thumb caressed the skin beneath my eye as if wiping the ghost of the tears I would never let be seen.

"Baby boy, if I knew the answer to that, we would be having a very different conversation" His eyes flicked to my lips briefly before meeting mine again. "I can give you a choice though."

"A choice? What kind of choice?" The scent of Nova's arousal surrounded me, like vanilla musk and spring rain, which triggered my canines to extend to prick at my bottom lip. One taste and I wasn't sure I would ever be able to get enough.

His other hand came to rest on my chest while the other cupped the back of my neck. "A choice to let go and give in but -."

"No, I can't do that." I shook my head and stepped back just out of reach, his hands falling away to hang loose at his sides. "That's not a choice that's even a partially viable option, Nova."

"Do you ever just shut the fuck up and listen?!" he asked in clear exasperation. "Seriously, just listen before you shut me down."

Nova looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to strangle me or laugh but choosing to neither he stood there and waited. I almost told him to just let it go, I even opened my mouth to say as much but what came out wasn't that.

"Okay, I'm listening."

The tension noticeably dissolved from his body, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. Nova took a cautious step towards me with his hands raised slightly like he thought I might bolt or jump over the side of the tower. I mentally kicked myself for acting like I was a skittish teen about to go to first base.

"No strings, Robbie." Another small step.

Between him saying my name, the syllables in his voice, their own seduction, and his scent clouding my mind, I grew even harder as I watched his slow approach.

"No expectations." Another step until he was close enough for me to feel the heat of his body but still not touching me. "Just us and whatever we want."

Nova wasn't much shorter than I was which made it easier to hold his hope filled gaze while I stood frozen in place. I tried to wrap my mind around what he had just said, the offer so clear that there could be no mistaking what he was willing to give me. But I wasn't sure I could be that selfish even though my body was damn near begging me to be.

"I won't just break you, Nova," I finally told him, my voice low and filled with pain. "I will shatter you into so many pieces there won't be anything left."

I said it like it was a done deal, like it was what I planned to do all along. But I didn't want that for him and I would do anything to save him from such a fate.

"I'm not as fragile as you think I am, Hatter." The hope dimmed in his eyes as Nova took a step back but it didn't entirely disappear. He looked away towards where the sun had been, light streaks of pink slowly being swallowed and replaced by stars. "I meant it, though, I won't expect or promise anything. No strings."

I watched in torn silence as he made his way to the stairs that led back down into August's house. The urge to stop him made my fingers twitch but there wasn't anything I could say that would make him want to stay. At least nothing short of acceptance and I couldn't give him that, not when the risks to him were so high.

"I need to check on my mother but come find me whenever you make your decision." And then he slipped into the darkened stairs, leaving me feeling cold and lonelier than I had been in a long time.

I turned my attention back to the tree line, trying to force myself to focus on what I was supposed to be doing. Fantasising about ripping Nova's clothes off and defiling his body in all kinds of delicious ways was not what August had told me to do.

However, as I let myself drift back into the mindless concentration of being on watch, a sense of awareness prickled the back of my neck. The muscles in my back tensed, my canines fully extended and the tips of my fingers ached as my nails turned into claws. I hadn't heard a sound of anyone approaching or caught any foreign smells, but I knew in my bones that when I turned there would be someone... or something.

Prepared for a fight, I slowly turned to face the new intruder and was greeted by a flash of blinding light that dissipated almost instantly. Blinking rapidly to clear the spots from my vision, I was shocked to find a woman standing in front of me.

Her hair was long and flowing down her back, the snow white strands glinting with silver as the white dress that clung perfectly to her body fluttered gently in the early night breeze. Her skin was pale and smooth, completely free of marks or blemishes of any kind and her eyes were as dark as a stormy sky. A strange iridescence surrounded her, soft and as delicate as a rose petal, and her smile was warm and welcoming. This was no ordinary woman.

"Hello, Robbie." The woman's voice held a lilting quality, an ethereal way about it that I couldn't place and I had never laid eyes on her before. But I somehow got the feeling that I knew her.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" I asked warily.

Her smile widened. "I know everything about you, love. My name is Selene."

My eyes widened and I felt the color drain from my face as recognition washed over me. "You're the goddess of the moon."

All shifters and vampires, and any other nocturnal creatures were under her domain, her will was our legacy. If we prayed, it was to her. If we died, our souls were in her hands. Her love had given us life.

"I am and you, my dear, are stubborn and afraid."

"Excuse me?" I asked, taken aback as well as confused. "Why are you here?"

Selene sighed and looked sadly towards the now closed hatch in the floor that Nova had recently descended through.

"I came here to make sure you didn't do something brash," she said after a moment, meeting my dumbfounded expression. "Everything happens for a reason, you know."

I thought about the night my life had been destroyed, everything taken from me in the blink of an eye and a river of blood. With the memories vivid in my mind, I narrowed my eyes at her.

"So you're telling me that his death was necessary?!" I growled, dismissing the fact that a goddess was standing in front of me.

"You need to heal, Robbie. You can't even say his name, can you?" Her question was harsh but her tone wasn't, instead it seemed agonized and her eyes were filled with pain that mirrored my own. "You survived that night for a reason."

"To punish me for the lives that I took, the torture I reveled in? If that was the plan then I think you've succeeded." I deserved to suffer for the things I had done but that didn't mean I had to drag anyone else down with me. "I'll serve my penance but that doesn't explain what you're doing here."

"You aren't being punished, my boy. You've been given a second chance, a new life." Selene clasped my hand, warmth tingling from where our hands joined and up my arm. "Take the tools you've been given and heal. Open yourself to new possibilities that could mend the broken pieces. It's time to stop being afraid and time to embrace the wonders around you."

"I'm not afraid," I managed to say but her words resonated deep within me and my voice shook slightly. I didn't think she believed me either.

"I can't linger on this plane but think about what I've said." She placed a light kiss on my cheek and I closed my eyes as warmth trickled from my head to my feet. "Talk to him."

Light flashed behind my eyelids and when I opened them, Selene was gone and I was alone in the tower. I knew she had only meant to help, because she was said to be a kind and just deity, but after our conversation I felt more lost than ever before.

********************

A/N: Another Hatter POV. What do we think?

Thoughts? Questions? Errors?

Thanks for reading!❣

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~SM~