"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
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
She doesn’t really realize how much he has changed.
All she sees is the granite wall of him and it does not strike her that so much has changed in the months that they have known one another. He has not left yet and she does not feel that panic every morning when she does not immediately see him. He asks her questions and doesn’t shy away when she is honest with him. And when she feels that alien fear in her throat, he kisses her head.
She pulls into his side for a second, finds his throat and lingers there. Closes her eyes and finds her way down the sweep of his cheek until she can press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Her stomach tightens, feels that flutter in her chest, but she doesn’t linger on it.
She cherishes it, holds it close, and concentrates it on instead of the fear and the pain that flourishes in the back of her mind. She steps next to him as they walk into Loess and feels something like courage from the feel of the warmth next to her. “We should stick near the border,” she says softly, her sage eyes clearing as she glances up and looks to the darkened sky. “The dragons here don’t much like intruders.”
A brief frown as she cranes her neck to look into the shadows the crawl over the land.
“I can’t imagine that she would stay here,” she wonders, thinking maybe she is making such a thing up in her head. “Maybe she kept walking and found her way in the forest.”
She laughs lightly, thinking back to how she first met Beth.
“Maybe she knows how much her mother loves the forest now.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He feels that same surge of pride.
As she leans into him, kisses the edge of his mouth.
Because she had come to him in a panic and it would have been so easy for her fear to spiral into something darker. Something with teeth. Something that would destroy whatever it was that stood between it and her daughter. But he had coaxed out of her some rationality and she had allowed him to lend her some of his calm. They had set out with purpose instead, the two of them on a mission to locate their daughter. Rather than her charging through the forest, gnashing her teeth and spitting her venom, and him trailing helplessly after.
This is better, he thinks, because no good ever came from panic.
She speaks quietly and he has to lean his head in her direction to catch it. Dragons? Had he known there were dragons here? He has never ventured to the heart of the land, always skirted its borders in all of his wandering. He has always been gifted at walking the tight-ropes between lands for fear that he might be branded an interloper.
He merely nods his understanding. His sense of self-preservation has begun to restore itself now that he has a family and he has no desire to expose himself to dragons.
He cannot imagine their daughter staying here either, mercifully. The corners of his mouth lilt up in the beginnings of a grin and he nods. “She’s tough but I can’t imagine her trying to start a fight with a dragon just yet.”
She mentions her love of the forest and the smile remains, the expression soft as he studies her. “We’ll find her,” he says, though he doesn’t need to.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Maybe it could be like this forever, she thinks, as they press on through Loess—sticking to the borders. Maybe they would always be able to find themselves again in the center of it. Maybe his heart would not drag him outward and she would always be able to find the calm with his help. Maybe the rest of the ghosts that lurk outside their borders would not eventually rush in, crumbling their walls.
Maybe she would never have to face the fact that she has betrayed her sister.
Maybe Gospel really would love to care for her father.
Maybe it could be like this.
She so desperately wants to believe that is true that it almost feels like reality in her chest. She she desperately want to believe that they can find true happiness that she lets it sink in and stay.
They walk in silence for a little longer, their steps purposeful, and her eyes constantly roving for a sign of the serpent in the shadows. He tells her that they will find their daughter and she believes him. Believes that he will lead them together to their daughter. Believes that they will be happy.
The hope is a dangerous thing in her chest, she thinks.
“Do you remember how I said I think I was meant to find you?” she asks quietly as they walk and her chest constricts, her mouth goes dry, and she reminds herself that she has promised to not push him. Wishing she could take it back, she just frowns, feels him against her shoulder, grows quiet.
“It’s a funny thing to feel like something was planned,” she says simply.
She wishes she could bite her tongue off completely.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He remembers.
He remembers the way his mouth had lilted in a smirk.
He remembers how he’d said, ‘what took you so long?’
Had he actually confessed out loud that he’d wasted his youth chasing a love he’d never find or had he simply thought it? He’d wanted something worth remembering and fate had delivered but he cannot remember if he’d actually said the words out loud. He must have but he has no way of knowing for sure. He could ask but the thought of asking after the things he’d confessed is perhaps worse than the not knowing.
“I remember,” he answers, just as quiet.
He knows that she does not mean funny in the traditional sense. It’s nothing to laugh at. Because she had meant it then and he’d believed it, too. Peculiar, maybe. He had never believed in fate. He’d never had any reason to. But he’d allowed himself to think, in that moment, that she’d been made for him and him for her. Until the thought became bitter bile at the base of his throat and he’d been forced to come to terms with the fact that he had not been crafted for her and the best they could do was make due until their time ran out. Until she found the man who really had been made for her.
“I wonder who planned it,” he muses as they move quick and low. He knows he should continue, try to keep her from losing herself to whatever history she and this land share. “And if there is someone, I wonder if there’s any rhyme or reason to their designs.” It’s nonsense. He’s never thought about any of it for any real amount of time, but the most he can offer her is a tether so that she might weather the storm of her memories.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
There is a part of her, large and brutal and bruising, that had expected him to push back on her question. To either say nothing or withdraw or even walk away because she wishes she could walk away from her self. She wishes that she could be anywhere but where she is. She wishes that she could love with less need; she wishes that she could be calm and quiet and independent, her own ecosystem of want.
But he does nothing that she expects.
Instead, he is quiet and thoughtful and her heart leaps painfully in her throat like it is some sign that he may care about her the way that she cares about him. That his feelings have the same depth as her own and he too feels the way they can thrash around like angry oceans in your chest.
Does he bear the same scars as her?
Does it bite at the back of his throat too?
She presses her lips together to keep the questions from tumbling out and continues to walk the path of Loess as it curves against Hyaline. “I don’t know,” she finally says when she trusts that her voice will not tremble and that she will not shake with all the things she chokes back. “I have to think that there’s some reason for it,” this is said quietly and she doesn’t dare look at him when she says it.
“I have to think that there’s a reason I ran into you that day.”
She doesn’t tell him that she thinks she knows the reason. That she knows the rhyme behind it all. That the curve of his jaw is a map home to her now. That she dreams to the tempo of his heartbeat. She doesn’t tell him that he saved her life that day or that he saved all the days after it too. She just swallows and looks ahead, knowing that they will reach the forest soon and wishing it wasn’t in the middle of night.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It is not lost on him.
The way she averts her gaze.
How she takes great care to do it even.
Because he watches her closely, studies her when he should be scanning the gathering shadows around them in search of their daughter. She could be lurking there, tucked neatly behind any number of trees, watching them, waiting for them to notice her and cursing her when they don’t. But his eyes are on her alone. Because he loves her even if he doesn’t know the right way to do it and he wants to know what goes on inside of her head. What drives her to all that madness.
He considers her answer a long moment before he nods, conceding. Of course there must be a reason, he realizes. He is a simple man who has never had any real need for philosophy. He has certainly never discussed it but she has shown him so many parts of himself that he never knew existed and there is no reason that this should be any different. There is no reason she should not make him wonder about his own place in it all.
He pauses to collect his thoughts, tries to force them into patterns that make sense before he speaks. “I think you’re right,” he says and nods, shifting his focus to the path ahead of them, uncertain he wants to be able to gauge her reactions to the things he says. “If there were no reason for it, it wouldn’t be fate, would it?” he asks. He is desperately out of his depth and it shows in his lengthy pauses. “It would just be chance,” he answers his own rhetorical question. “I guess it’s up to us to determine what the reason is.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
She loathes her traitorous heart for the way that it pounds in her throat when he gives her the kind of answers that add kindle to the fire of her hope. She loathes the way that it is so quick to jump at the chance that he may feel the way that she does or at least be familiar with the feeling. That maybe he understands the dips and curves of it, the dangerous switchbacks, and the cliffside plunges of it.
Adna takes care to not reply immediately even though the answers fly to her lips.
Takes care to force herself to continue looking for her daughter—her heart at war with itself. She feels the same panic she has felt for hours now (although he has helped to dull the edges of it, reason with it until it is not gnashing its teeth so violently), but she also feels that desperate, aching need for him.
It takes everything within her to hold it back and let him have the lengthy pauses.
To give him the space to think even when their shoulders continue to brush against one another.
The word fate tangles into the hopeless romantic of her heart and she buries it deep, encapsulates it so that she can think on it later, can cling to it in the dark hours where she is alone. “I guess it is,” she finally answers because it’s the only thing that she trusts herself to say—but her tongue has always been as traitorous as her heart and as they come up on the end of Loess, she finds it betrays her once more.
“Although I’ve determined my reason a long time ago.”
She swallows hard, cursing herself, and presses forward into the night.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is oblivious to the crack in their foundation.
If it could even be considered something so minuscule.
It would perhaps be better described as a sink hole waiting to swallow them all.
But she has played her secret close to the chest. He has not had any reason to be suspicious. He has no idea that the ground he’s walking on is a minefield. When he glances at her and asks his question, it is innocent. He does not know that he’s walking into a pit of vipers.
Or perhaps he’s not. Perhaps her reason has nothing at all to do with the secret she has kept from him. Perhaps when he looks at her and says, “what is your reason?” Her answer will not shake the earth. It will not absolutely obliterate whatever equilibrium he has managed to maintain for these last few months.
Maybe they will go on walking, edging toward the forest, unperturbed and unfettered by the dragons and he will never know what she knows. Or, at the very least, he will go on living his life in absolute ignorance for a little while longer.
He wonders what his own reason might be but comes up with nothing. He has never been good at the intangibles. He has never known how to entertain philosophy and he, already out of his depth, is floundering now. If she asks him what he thinks, he will not be able to answer. But maybe he’ll promise to spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out. Or maybe he’ll just shrug and he won’t say anything at all.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Her secrets are a constant, boiling thing beneath the surface of her.
She fears them. Knows that one day they will be the ruin of her, but she cannot bring herself to face them—not yet. She cannot shove them into the light of day because then it may boil beneath the sun and she is not sure that they will ever recover. That she will ever recover, if she is being honest. Because how will he ever look at her the same when he knows what she has kept hidden beneath her tongue, behind her teeth?
But he asks her her reason and she feels her insides drop.
She feels the way that the vice tightens around her chest because she made herself a promise.
She made herself a promise and, here she is, willing to bend beneath the slightest pressure.
It is dark enough that there are moments when she can barely see him, and she wonders if that helps. She wonders if it is easier for her to betray her own self when he is nothing but a shadow by her side and the only sign she has that he is there at all is the steady fall of his feet on the hardened Loess ground.
Her mouth is dry and her fangs press against her lips and she shudders when she finally says:
“You.”
How could she ever explain to him how he became the reason for it all? How could she ever explain to him how columns within her shifted during that first meeting and he became the center of her gravity? How there is no rhyme or reason for it, but that the molecules of her life have rearranged around him?
She can’t and so she just exhales.
“I know what you’ll say. How I should save my heart.”
Another shaky breath.
“But it’s too late and that’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He doesn’t mean to, but he sighs.
It leaves him before he can stop it.
It leaves him before he’s even fully registered what she’s said.
You, she says.
And he exhales long and slow and briefly closes his eyes in surrender. He has done all he could do to protect her heart. Does that mean he’s no longer liable? He knows that, if worse comes to worst, he’ll still take the fall. The blame will still settle square on his incapable shoulders and he’ll have to carry it with him for the rest of his life. It will always be his fault. He should have done something more. Should have taken his patient smile, turned and left her there in the shadows. He should not have murmured hot and thick into the tangles of her mane, lost himself in the heat and the vibrance of her.
Maybe he deserves to take the blame.
He forces open his eyes, squinting into the ribbons of darkness unfurling before them. He has half a mind to shift the conversation back to their daughter. He wants to suggest that they split up, that they’ll cover more ground that way. Not because he wishes to be away from her but because the expectations are tightening a noose around his neck. Because he should say something but everything there is to say turns to dust in his mouth.
“Adna,” he says in that same quiet, patient way. “It’s your business what you do with your heart.” He drags in a shuddering breath and shakes his head. “I just need you to know that I will never be able to love you the way you deserve to be loved and it’s not your fault.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
