"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Probably he should’ve been a little more straightforward with Roma in Ischia. Ah well. His family came first. No matter how glad he was to see her alive and well, she’d showed up in the middle of a crisis and he'd had important things to take care of, making sure his family was safe, that everyone made it safely across to their new (temporary?) island home. A race to the new island might’ve been fun any other day, but not while he was fretting over his family and trying to make sure everyone made it okay.
And really, they hadn’t. Kirby had scooped up Lacey and Reilly to drag them across the water, something that would’ve been pretty fuckin’ difficult if he’d just lit out with a smirk and chased after his friend. But when the dust settled, when everyone was safe and looked after, he went to find her. There was a rueful grin on his face when he came across her, more charm than apology. He wasn't really sorry, so no sense wasting breath saying otherwise.
“Looks like you beat me pretty soundly,” he said with an amused twinkle in his eyes. “Those wings of yours, guess it was inevitable.” His grin softened into a welcoming smile as he added, “How have you been, Rom? It's been too long.” Granted, he didn't know exactly how long it had been on her end. But enough had happened since the last time he’d seen her that it felt true enough anyhow.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize that he wasn’t right behind her. She can’t even really blame him for not following along. She had tried to inject some levity into something that was otherwise rather serious. But she knew that he had other things on his mind and wasn’t particularly upset when she realized he was not thinking so much about her as he was his family.
She didn’t blame him in the slightest
So when she didn’t hear the splashing of his hooves on the water she had banked, swooping up farther. She sees him waiting and so she hovers, making sure that he was okay, making sure he didn’t need her. At that she laughs, the sound swallowed whole by the wind that whipped around her, causing her to move forwards a bit. She hovers and she waits until she seems them step from the jungle. Ah, that makes sense.
She hovers a bit longer, watching Kerb’s body shift and blend until it’s something that they can ride on and then he starts across the water with them. She would have laughed had she the energy, instead she just felt extremely tired.
She tucks her wings, diving and swooping back towards the island. She watches over them until they touch the sandy shores of the new island and then watches a moment longer as they drift off in conversation. She lands after them, watching until they disappeared over the dunes and found herself drifting towards the paint chipped orca. She watches it, looks at it, follows the lines of the way it was drawn with her eyes.
She honestly, doesn’t know how long she stood there, not far from the original spot that he had first stepped on the shore when she hears the approach of another through the sand. She doesn’t turn to look until his voice breaks the quiet around her and she turns to him with a small smile. “Actually, you still won. Touched the sand first.” A small shrug, another small smile before her eyes turn back up to the painted picture. “It has been. Seems like every time I find myself back here the world falls apart.” A crooked smile.
Finally, she turns those golden eyes back onto his face. She traces the lines of his face with her eyes because it’s all she can do. Her smile mirrors his own, soft and welcoming. “I have missed you.” But other than that nothing more than a small shrug. “I’m fine. How have you been? How’s Kali? I miss her too.”
Kirby snorted softly. “Maybe you’re just lucky. You know, good timing and all. Or maybe the world falls apart a hell of a lot more often than it should.” Wasn’t it always, in some respects? It fell apart and they built it back up into something new. Just this last time they’d sorta fast forwarded through all the time they should’ve had to rebuild in between was all.
He glanced over at her, head tilted a little. “How long has it been, for you I mean? Kal and Kharon and I got ourselves caught up in a bit of a time jump, it seems. Lace and Reilly and Baddie too, just...a different one?” He shrugged. “Been a week since Taiga went to hell. Kali was there, right on the edge of things. Went to go visit her uncle and got caught in the crossfire. Kharon and I took her up the Mountain to try and give her a safe place to recover.”
He snorted, glancing toward the mainland and the Mountain in question, a landmark he could feel in his blood even if he couldn’t see it at the moment. “Six years went by. We left Kylin alone for a week, and she’s all fuckin’ grown up now, older than me and Lacey, way older than her twin brother or her baby sister. She’s got babies, too, two of ‘em. Just as old or older than her twin. I left my girl for a week, and she lived a whole life in the time I was gone, and I don’t know how to make it any better for her. Or for any of us.
“Kal’s a wreck, she went mute again. Hasn’t talked since we found out about Kylin and her kids, and then the fuckin’ plague hit on top of that. She’s basically just silent and clinging to whoever’s fussing over her at the time.” Seemed less fitful and restless with Kharon around, at least. Good thing Kharon didn’t seem to mind. He sighed and shook his head a little. “What about you? Fill me in.”
Six years. That was a long time to be gone. A long time to leave behind family, even if on accident. She knew he would never have left Kylin behind on purpose. Hell he hadn't even known he was leaving her behind. She couldn't imagine leaving for a week only to realize it had acrually been six years by the time you returned home. But then how long had she aged in that six years? It certainly had not been that long. Maybe three sumers since she had left.
"Three years since I went with Father and Mum." And the rest of the clan. "And Ty." A small sad smile curling her lips. "Although it feels like he has been wandering for far longer." She missed her brother, felt like she was missing a vital part of herself.
He tells her about Kali and her heart breaks, shattering into a thousand pieces in her chest for the sweet, inquistive, troublemaker. "Poor babe." She says softly, tearing her golden eye from him to gaze absentmindedly across the sands. "Do you think she would maybe be up for a visit?" Her question uncertain and so were her eyes when she looked back at him.
He wants to know what she's been up to and there is nothing that she can say for an answer. So she keeps it simple. A roll of her shoulders, a shrug. "Nothing."
She hadn't found anyone to love because her stupid traitorous heart got tripped up and entangled by him. No kids because she wasn't going to have them just to have them. She can't even say she has been with her friends. Ty, Kerb, and Kali were her only ones.
"How's Kylin doing with all this?" She asks after a minute. "It must have hurt her to think she had been left all alone and forgotten about for six years." Her golden eyes suddenly glittering with amusement. "Grandpa Kirby. What a nice sound." She teases.
Kirby grunted and nodded at her Ty comment. “Yeah, sometimes I think that kid’s been hell bent on wandering since the day he came out. Too big a story in him to settle and get stuck in a normal life.” A happy life. Could’ve been good, him and Ty. “Still miss that stupid bastard.” He was never very good at staying, though, was Ty.
“Kinda fucked up that time can do that, pass at such different rates for different people. Like you walk away for a month who knows how long it’s been.” He wondered if the same had happened to Ty. Maybe they were on the long road, and it had been days for him.
Or maybe it had been centuries.
“Might be. Mostly she just curls up quietly and cries and clings to whichever of us is watching her at the time. Fucking sucks how much she’s hurting, and I wish there were something I could do to fix it all. Just make it better, you know? I don’t know how to help her, how to make her feel safe when so much has happened. Maybe seeing a familiar face would help. I can go get her if you want me to.” If she was willing, anyhow.
“Kylin is...well that’s the thing, isn’t it? She doesn’t just think she was left alone. She was. I left her alone. We all left her alone. The fact that it was much shorter for all of us doesn’t change the effect. She was alone. For six years. Her whole family left her, and she grew up alone. Had babies with no one to turn to to help her figure shit out. No one to hold her when she was overwhelmed and just needed to cry it out for a minute. No one to take the kids for a day and give her a break. Our intentions don’t matter a whole lot in the face of that.” His poor baby girl, it broke his damn heart.
“And now that we’re back, and none of us are older, she’s even more alone. She’s older than I am, Rom. Let alone her twin, she’s old enough to be his mom. His damn grandma, almost. That’s...that’s a lot to deal with, you know? And I’ve got no idea how she’s doing, ‘cause why would she trust me enough to talk to me about it? I’m the one who left her, and took her brother and sister with me.”
“Oh Kerberos,” a soft breathy sigh of his name as she turns back to him. She closes the distance that she had put between them, trying so hard to keep her damn traitorous heart quiet. She presses herself against him in a hug, her lips pressing against his neck and lingering there before sliding down to the slant of his shoulder. She holds him, her heart aching for him, for Kylin, for his whole family.
“I’ll come visit Kali sometime. No need to move her.” Her voice soft, quiet against his skin, eyes closing briefly but unwilling to back away, to give him space unless he needed it. Unless he couldn’t handle the physical and needed to back away from her touch.
She would understand, but it would break her fucking heart. This was all she could give him, these short lingering touches and the opportunity to vent and rant and rave to her whenever he needed to. She blinks her eyes back open, sliding her chin until it rested along the slope of his back.
“Anyone that knows you, knows you wouldn’t have left anyone behind on purpose.” She says after a quiet moment. “She has to know that you love her, but she probably doesn’t understand what happened.” Roma hoped so anyways, she absolutely hoped that this was the truth. She can understand what the girl would be thinking. Was thinking about how she would feel if she had been left alone for so long. And hadn’t she stayed before? Lived a life without her family when they had left, escaped into the fog.
“Have you talked to her since you guys all got back?”
12-01-2018, 01:39 PM (This post was last modified: 12-01-2018, 01:40 PM by Kerberos.)
Huh. It was weird, how so much felt different. A couple of weeks ago, he wouldn’t have thought anything of a hug, or her lips on his neck, his shoulder. Or, well, years ago, for her. Not as many as it had been for Kylin, mind, but still years. There was this strange, uncomfortable sort of jarring sensation attached to the press of her lips against his skin that made him tilt his head and frown even as he hugged her back. Couldn’t quite figure out what it was, though, and with all of the complicated emotional shit going on lately he was hitting the point where it was all a little too overwhelmingly much for him to sort through.
“You should definitely come see her. I bet she’d like that. Or next time she’s snuggling me I can bring her to you, if you want. Being around people who are familiar, seeing faces she knows from before everything went to hell, I bet that’s helpful. Especially since we don’t know what happened to Ruan or anything, and she’s got friends I don’t know how to track down six years later, you know?”
He sighed and pulled back a little to look at her. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know if it’s that simple, you know? If it’s that objective. Kylin must’ve gone through a hell of a lot all on her own, and it’d be asking a lot to expect her to be that receptive to what sure as hell must feel like a shitty excuse for all the hurt she suffered. We’ve talked a little, and I’m not done trying to make things right.”
Another heavy sigh, and he shook his head and pulled back farther, his body too restless to stay still and linger in her offered embrace. He nodded his head forward and beckoned her along, giving into the need to move, to try and let the motion distract him while he sorted through the complicated mess that felt so impossible to untangle. “I just don’t know how much it helped, or how much I can really fix. And that sucks. What about you though, Rom? Tell me about the last...three years.” So fucking weird. And time was really starting to piss him off.
“I will.” She says, her voice soft, her eyes meeting his as he pulls back. As she lets him slide from her touch. The restless energy stirs in him and he starts to walk, beckoning her along. A small smile and a nod as she falls in step next to him. “Well, she knows you love her Kerb. That matters in the end. If I know you, you will figure out a way to make it right.” She tilts her head slightly. “Although, I don’t think making it right is the right choice of words. You may not be able to make it right, but you can make new memories. You can talk, you can be closer now than you ever were before and hope it’s enough….”
She turns to look at him a small smile curling her lips. “That’s probably not very helpful though is it?” She shakes her head, her hooves digging into the rocky sand as they moved through the sea grass. The cold wind from the ocean biting into her skin as a particularly hard blast came through. It tangled her mane into more knots, caused her eyes to narrow and she held her breath briefly until it past. She let her breath out into a huff once it had.
“There really isn’t much to tell.” A small roll of her shoulders in a shrug. “We left and I didn’t do much other than follow. I went out to look for Ty a couple of times, but I was never very efficient in tracking like he was.” And that broke her damn heart too didn’t it? Being unable to find her brother to be near him. Not being as close to him as she had been once. She doesn’t look at Kerberos when she talks of Ty, she looks ahead of them or off to the side. Blinking away that extra bit of moisture.
Knowing that she was so close to breaking all it would take is one overly gentle look from the man at her side for it to happen. So she doesn’t, she is careful, closing it up inside of her. She takes a deep breath until she feels like she is closer to normal before she looks at him. “I expect him to be found when he wants to be and not a damn minute before.” A smile. Neither of them deserved her slippery emotions right now, but especially not him who was still reeling from the magic of this place and Time.
“Other than that I’ve just been with the triplets and the parents. Sometimes wandering for a little while before coming back to them.”
