Like Sand through an Hourglass

AN: So, this is a fan fiction for the "Short Romance Contest" and honestly, my beta reader cried when they read this. So just to let you know, this is not a fluffy story. But anyways, I can't possibly be the only one who wanted to know what Darkstalker was thinking when Clearsight betrayed him, and I think it is a very underrated ship, no one really talks about it, so here it is:
DAY ONE: WHY DID YOU DO THIS? Clearsight… We could have been happy, we could have been like those visions we both saw. But you threw it all away, YOU KILLED OUR FUTURE. 
…
Please…
Please come back. I miss you.
DAY TWO:  Clearsight, I think you can come back now, I have learned my lesson. I know that what I did was wrong, but what you just did was also wrong. How could you leave the love of your life just trapped in a cave? Is that fair? 
Clearsight. I’m sorry. Please come back. You remember the dragonets we could have had? The life we could have lived together, should you really just throw it away? Can you really do that? 
DAY FOUR: … Please return to me…
DAY TWELVE: Do you… really think this… was… a good idea? Ha…ha… joke’s on you Fathom, I know you enchanted Clearsight. I know ALL your secrets. You… you were just jealous that me and Clearsight had what you and Indigo could NEVER have. DO YOU HEAR ME CLEARSIGHT? IT’S OK, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW, I CAN PROTECT YOU. 
P-please. 
DAY SIXTEEN: Wingbeats filled Darkstalker’s ears, almost drowning out all other noises, and thoughts. He had to get to Whiteout. She might be in danger. Faster. Faster. That train of thought kept circling; he flapped his wings to the thoughts. One word, one wing beat.
Hearing shouts, he glanced behind him, seeing two dragons following him—one a dark green and one black. His mind instinctively shouted ‘Clearsight.’ He missed a beat, slowing himself down. She seemed worried. Her thoughts were of blood and death and laughter. Part of him wanted to comfort her, but he knew that Whiteout was in danger, and his sister couldn’t wait. Clearsight might be able to. Please let her be able to.
It felt like his body was screaming, flying away from her. Then, Darkstalker saw them. Arctic, a white silhouette on the horizon, and Whiteout, fluttering slightly behind him. He quickly caught up to them, before thinking about what he was going to do. He heard his ‘father’ think something about enchanting Whiteout, but after that, it all seemed to descend into a red haze.
How could Arctic do this to his own dragonet? Whiteout, along with Clearsight was one of the only reasons  Darkstalker tried to be the best dragon he could be. Their opinions mattered. They were smart, kind and understanding—something no other dragon had ever tried to be with him. The others either saw him as a weapon or a threat, and now one of the most important dragons in his life was being threatened. So he responded.
With a roar, he lunged forward, about to attack, before a thud of claws hitting sand seemed to ring through the noise. Clearsight. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Darkstalker could hear her screaming in her head, and the horror coming from Fathom. He couldn’t let Clearsight know. So he broke the enchantment on Whiteout. Took her with him, and gave his father a look that said more than enough.
He couldn’t do that in front of Whiteout… or Clearsight.
What…? Was… that another timeline, where I didn’t… kill anyone? It seemed so happy. It seemed so… Perfect. 
DAY TWENTY:  You were my angel. Did you fall? Did someone clip your wings? If they did, I’ll make sure they never hurt anyone ever again. But it’s okay, I’m not an angel, so how could I expect you to be? It’s all okay. You can come back.
I won’t be mad. I am not mad anymore.
 DAY TWENTY- ONE: 
“I want you to know that this is absolutely the right way to go” Darkstalker started. As long as she didn’t notice that the edges of his wings were trembling he would be fine. Perfectly fine. Four years ago he had spared Arctic’s life, and that hadn’t been nearly as scary as this was.
Clearsight seemed to be confused about what he was trying to say. Apparently so was he.
“Don’t go all prophet on me when I say…” Darkstalker trailed off. Maybe this was a bad idea. He had never wanted anything so badly in his life. But what if she said no? How could he live with that?
He could still play this off, right? Pretend nothing happened, and maybe she would too.
“Before you try to act all cool, and like you never tried to ask anything, let me answer,” she said.
Darkstlker winced. He tried not to read her mind anymore, she hated it, but he wanted to right now. Was he breathing? He wasn’t. That was probably important. She was saying something, but he couldn’t quite tell what over the rushing in his ears.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay, I didn’t really… wait… what?”
She lightly touched the tip of her wing to his. “I said yes.”
Darkstalker began to laugh. “So, you know what I was going to ask, huh?”
“Yeah, I don’t need to see the future to know what you were going to ask-“ Clearsight started to laugh. “-Not since you were acting like a complete dork!”
Darkstalker smiled. “So, about dragonets… That will take a lot of planing.”
Clearsight leaned over on his side. “It will be worth it.”
Of course it will be Clearsight. You always had it right… everything. You really were my- wait… WHERE AM I? PLEASE, CLEARSIGHT! THIS CAN’T BE REAL. I-It can’t be real. 
DAY FIFTY-EIGHT: 
The small town Darkstalker and Clearsight had built on the edge of the Night kingdom was perfect. They had a small farm, and houses for everyone. It had taken a while, but even Indigo now trusted the new version of Darkstalker. In fact, she and Fathom lived over by the sea. They could tell they weren’t exactly welcome back in the kingdom of the Sea and seemed happy to find somewhere they belonged. In another house, he could hear Thoughtful and Whiteout obsessing over the new ‘Lord of the Shiny Jewellery’ scroll; his sister could be such a dork sometimes.
But in the house he was looking at, Clearsight and their three dragonets were waiting. As he walked in, six tiny wings wrapped around him with matching screams of “Dad!” With a smile, he turned around, looking for Clearsight, only to hear from the youngest of his dragonets that she was taking a nap. He frowned, knowing that ‘taking a nap’ was really her way of saying ‘recording timelines.’
“Don’t worry kids, I’m going to wake up mom.” This statement was met with three tiny cheers before he crept down the hall and into their bedroom.
Sure enough, Clearsight was on the floor, her talons dipped in ink and scratching at a scroll. Several others were spiralled out from where she sat, muttering.
“Clearsight? You really need to stop worrying about this. Please, just relax. We have our dragonets, and we have each other. Please, you are scaring me.”
She began to sob. “I-I’m sorry, its just, sometimes, the v-visions. Th-they get s-so bad. I can barely take it. What if they came true?” Clearsight seemed to collapse on herself. Darkstalker couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since she got some sleep.
He wrapped his wing around her. “Look, it was probably just a bad dream. Lets just get you some sleep, and I’ll clean up here. You will be fine, I promise.”
Big, fat tears rolled down her cheek. “I-I’m sorry.” She seemed to relax after saying that. Almost like it was screaming to get out.
“Its all okay, just go to sleep.”
She did fall asleep, it just took a long time. Darkstalker rolled up the scrolls and put them with the others. By now there was a decent pile of them on a shelf. Clearsight really did worry him sometimes. It was terrifying to think of how much she has improved, and how much she still had to go. Sometimes, Darkstalker thought that maybe she would have been better off without him, but he always knew he would not be better off without her.
DAY SIX HUNDRED AND TWELVE: 
Clearsight was sick. They had known it for a while. After the dragonets moved out and into the main city of the Night kingdom, she started showing signs. Of course, Darkstalker had tried his best to cure it. But it seemed nothing he enchanted could stop it. He tried to get medical help, but he wasn’t exactly popular among the dragons of Pyrrhia and no one seemed to care.
So here she was. Struggling to breathe and refusing to let Darkstalker make her immortal. Sure, he had thought about ignoring her wishes and just doing what was best for her, but he could never bring himself to do so. Clearsight would hate him if he did.
“Please… Clearsight… Just let me fix you.” Tears rolled down his cheek and hit the blanket she had buried herself under.
“No. I want to be able to die. Jus-“ She stopped talking and dissolved into a coughing fit. Once she calmed down, Clearsight tried again. “Just let me do this, okay?” She looked like she was closing her eyes.
“N-NO! Wait, please, you know what? I am very selfish, and I don’t care what you think anymore. Please, just hang on and I can heal you. Come on, Clearsight!”
Clearsight seemed to smile. “N-no.” He voice was almost nothing more than a slight rasp. “I love you, and-“ She started coughing again. This one seemed more violent then the last. “And thats why I can’t let you do that.”
That made no sense. Darkstalker voiced his opinion.
“Yes, it does make sense. You-“ She started coughing again, something started dribbling out of her mouth; was that blood? “You just have to think about it.”
“I will, just hang on, okay Clearsight? I will be right back with something to clean that up. So don’t move, okay?”
She started laughing, then the laughter turned into coughing. “Not a muscle.”
When he came back with a cloth, she was dead.
Please… Please no. I can’t… No, I have to finish this. I have to know the end. Everything… I must stay sane. I must stay sane. I… no no no. Clearsight.  CLEARSIGHT. Please come back. 
DAY ONE THOUSAND AND FORTY-TWO: I have to. I have to. I have to. 
At first he refused to accept it. Clearsight couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. But slowly, Darkstalker faced the truth. She wasn’t coming back. And without Clearsight, he didn’t want to live forever.
He had set the dragonets up with some money, Whiteout had a good job, and even Fathom seemed happy, as much as he could be.
He walked into the sunlit kitchen, where their dragonets used to play, and grabbed a small piece of cheese from a shelf. Crying, he said: “Enchant this piece of cheese to kill Darkstalker when consumed.” He almost laughed at the thought. After all he had done to protect himself, a piece of cheese would be what finally killed him.
He wrote down a note to mention his cause of death on his tombstone.
Darkstalker walked down the hallway for the last time. He’d had a good life. If Darkstalker could redo one thing, it might be to attempt to be a better father. He was not terrible, not by any stretch. But there was always room for improvement where it came to his dragonets. But they were strong; he knew they would be okay with this.
Briefly, he thought about using his power to travel back to when Clearsight and him first had dragonets, so they could live this forever. As he was reaching for a glass paper weight, he froze. No. Clearsight wouldn’t want that. He should be happy with the way things were, not want more. Darkstalker had lived a good life. He had dragonets, he had Clearsight, and Whiteout was happy. He could never take that away from them.
He wandered into his bed room, and sat down beside Clearsight’s body. Sighing, he lifted the cheese. “Well, heres to me and Clearsight, and… well… cheese.”
He ate the cheese.
DAY TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTY-TWO: I need something, anything. What if I could view timelines over again? What if I could see them again, like reading the same scroll? Maybe, that could help. 
All I can do is try. 
Wingbeats filled Darkstalker’s ears…
1993 YEARS LATER: Hope. There was a dragonet—I heard her. I can finally talk to someone, and maybe… just maybe I can get out. Maybe, I can see my Clearsight again. 
“I’m saying…” I try to be a bit firmer, but it’s difficult to project emotions that you don’t feel in your thoughts. It’s all I can do not to sound giddy, and besides, I’m out of practice. “Nice to meet you, Moon. My name is Darkstalker.” 
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Content (Pandora32)
Category:Fanfictions (Canon)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Genre (Romance)