[private] you're not alone, I'm standing right beside you

[Agetta]

His kind words easily inspire a smile, though she feels that warmth again when their gazes catch - what she had felt when he had first looked at her and spoken her name like he had said it a thousand times before instead of just learning it earlier today. “You’re very kind to think so.” Not all of her children would agree, she was sure, but she appreciated the gesture anyway.

She listens with genuine interest as he answers her question and she enjoys the chance to learn him a little more. Each piece he gives her speaks further on his kindness, solidifying that impression in her mind. So when he mentions that one of the sons he birthed may not have cared for him, she shakes her head at the idea. “I don’t see how he couldn’t.” The words come from her easily as she stands beside him and there is an instinct to reach out to him again, to offer him whatever comfort a touch could. This time she refrains, thinking that she’s already imposed her presence on him enough today.

Then he is speaking of the water and that easy smile fades away. “Twice?” She repeats quietly, her midnight gaze moving from him out to the water. But she doesn’t see its loveliness for a few moments. Agetta frowns at the dazzling ocean and pictures what it would be like to be caught beneath its surface. Caught in the cold and the dark, away from all growing things and the natural order of decay. It felt like a lonely way to die to her, and she grieves for him - for the way he has experienced it more than once.

There is a memory she doesn't have, of a night where she had tried it and many other ways to cease living and been denied peace. The night she had met one of those sons he had birthed.

When her attention shifts back to him, the next words are practically blurted out, tossed at him. “I’m sorry I brought you to an island.” Maybe she could have brought Beyza to them on the mainland somehow - she doesn’t doubt her daughter would’ve somehow heard if Agetta had simply called out. As of yet, she has not come across a limit to Beyza’s powers. “I know you just said it’s lovely, and it is... I just -” She trails off, a small smile forming as she realizes she’s nervous and dangerously close to rambling. Worried that her concern might be overbearing, she forces her gaze to return to the changing sky and sea. “If you don’t want to stay any longer, I don’t blame you.” She had been glad he joined her as they moved down the beach, that he was standing beside her now, but maybe this was getting to be too much. Maybe had somewhere to be and she was keeping him - maybe there was even someone out there filled with worry, searching for him.

She hoped he had someone waiting. Everyone deserved that, didn’t they?

AGETTA

@garbage

[garbage]

he must be wicked to deserve such pain;

He has darkened the mood, with his talk of dying, and he almost wishes he could take it back. Maybe it’s too intimate, this, to speak of his deaths, these parts of him so private and public both. But he is weak, ever so, and so when she repeats the word - twice? - he offers his explanations, strange as they may be.
“Once was willing,” he says, “I was very old, and tired, so when someone I loved went into the ocean, it was an easy choice to follow.”
He does not go into the strange details, how Tabytha had been reanimated herself, and had returned to whence she came. He does not mention the children they left – abandoned – on the beach either.
“The second time...” he begins, “I didn’t have a choice. I was running. Being hunted. Yo-…someone tried to save me.”
He slipped. He shouldn’t have slipped. He is skirting too close to an edge, with this.

She is apologetic, then, though for no reason. He has no fear when he looks at the ocean, only joy that he is here with her, in this strange situation they have created.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says, talking too fast, and he touches her, trying to reassure her, or maybe he just wants to touch her and he will cling to any excuse he has to do so.
“I would have gone to hell and back to have my memories back,” he says, “a beautiful island and good company is a blessing, really.”
Almost flirting. But it’s the truth, too. Already that lost, memory-less part of himself has begun to feel distant, but he can recall well enough how strange it had been, how empty. This is better. It hurts, but it’s better. It hurts in a way that is familiar.
She is still offering a way out. Or maybe she’s just trying to get rid of him. She’s done her good deed – gone above and beyond – and maybe now she simply wants to extricate herself. And he should let her. He knows he should. He knows he cannot freeze this moment, this sunset, the way the changing light reflects on her pale coat.
“I’ll go soon,” he tells her, “but I’d like to see what it looks like when the sun goes down.”
He barely cares. What he really wants is a few more minutes with her, to extend this time, even if it will hurt all the worse when she finally, inevitably, leaves.

garbage

image credit

@Agetta

[Agetta]

She wonders what it must be like, to love someone so much you’d follow them into the ocean. There’s an ache in her heart born of never having the chance to experience something so strong. A solitary life was not a tragedy, and Agetta was sure she had made her peace with it a long time ago, but it would be nice, maybe, if one day she found more.

Her gaze sharpens on that slip - the soft, sad frown deepening into one of confusion. She’d almost forgotten how he had greeted her at the river, as though they had seen each other before that moment - and how he had been rude to her. There’s an uncomfortable prickling in the back of her mind and she is as near to scowling as she has ever been when she looks back at the ocean for a moment - unsure of how to phrase the question that she can feel building in her mind.

For now, she is distracted easily enough - first of the talk of death and then Garbage’s reassurances that he hadn’t been secretly dying to get away from the water this whole time. Agetta’s worries are not easily soothed away, but she finds reassurance in his words and the touch he offers - and she instinctively turns her head to brush a gentle touch against his dark skin in turn. Beyza could lock up memories but she cannot erase the muscle-memory that has Agetta trace lines of muscle under a dark coat without even thinking about it. Only, it is a bold action to do now and there is an embarrassed smile when she pulls back and turns her attention to the sea again.

“Well so long as you’re not being tortured by being here with me.” She replies with a grin, knowing her company is far too bland to be torturous. Except maybe through boredom for those who wished a more exciting life. She was content with hers, as shallow as it felt. Like she was only standing knee-deep in the ocean with the whole rest of it laying before her just out of reach.

Her eyes shine with the changing light as she stands next to him and watches the horizon. “It’s been a weird day. But a happy ending, at least.” With his memories being returned, with that wrong being fixed. “I’ll be sorry to see you go, Garbage. But I hope our paths will cross again.”

AGETTA

@garbage

[garbage]

he must be wicked to deserve such pain;

While the second drowning had been a mistake – he’d wanted very much to live, and to live with her – he would have followed her into the ocean, had she asked it of him. He would have followed her off a cliff, into the jaws of those monsters that had hunted them, into anywhere she led him.
(He would follow her still, if she started walking to the ocean, asked him to follow. He would die again beside her.)
But he doesn’t ponder on him much, because he is too focused on the way she traces his body for the moment that is too brief. Familiar as breathing. There’d been many days like that, where they’d wandered together, bodies touching, those too-brief and too-glorious days before the darkness had settled over them, before they’d known what it was like to be hunted.
(He’d give anything to have those days back. He’d die a thousand times to have them back.)

(He could tell her. He could whisper those things the magician said and hope to god they weren’t lies. But what would that do to her? He knows he is a burden, and though she once carried the weight of loving him, he does not want to ask that of her again. Does not want her saddled with it.)

“Yes,” he agrees, “I don’t think I’ve been this happy in quite some time.”
Not since the last time he was with her, before they heard the chuffing breaths of the monsters, before the world fell apart.
The sun sets fully now, the last strains of light on the water. He swallows. He knows he has to leave, that to continue this would overstay his welcome, even as she says I’ll be sorry to see you go.
“Agetta…” he begins and there is so much he wants to say and so much he cannot say, “thank you. I know myself again, and it’s…well, I’m glad for it.”
He touches her again and he hopes the desperation he feels isn’t palpable in his touch. He has never been much of a liar.
“I should go,” he says, “but I’ll see you again.”
He shouldn’t, of course. Could he bear the pain of seeing her again, like this?
Could he bear the pain of not seeing her?

He moves into the growing darkness, and the sound of waves grows fainter, until he cannot hear it at all.

garbage

image credit

@Agetta