with me for a lover, you don't need catastrophes; PHASE III

[Trekk]

This place is different from the others. Although each place is different in its own right (the gathering place, where they first get shoved through something they are not prepared for; outer space, where their legs flail and their lungs somehow continue to breathe air and everything is so terribly cold; the land of monsters, where he smelled the ocean and then there is only water and then it evaporated away into nothing), this place is eternally different.

The first thing he notices is the noise – the noise of radio static, the noise of endless chewing, the noise of the world coming to an end – and it sends shivers up his back. It’s a nails-on-chalkboard sound and his mind recoils from the awful sensation in his ears. Although he doesn’t know that the vibrations are the noises of langoliers chewing away at the corners of everything he’s known, he certainly understands it is a bad noise (it is the complete opposite of things alive; it is the dying of trees and smoking clearings and decaying bodies, not the twittering of birds and fresh springtime rains and warm nicker of a mother to her loving child).

And then he spots her. He’s used to the ripping sensation of passing through the wormhole by now and the aftereffects are muted by the chewing noise and the sight of her wide, surprised eyes and the god-forsaken look of death everywhere. But her gaze is what truly captures his attention – a gaze of surprise and doe-like shock and hesitancy that reminds him of his own heart’s startled gaze when he proposed they make a life together.

He knows why the dark god would send them after her, now.

Her, her, her.

Gail, Gail, Gail.

The others (the ones who made it through time and worlds and stars and monsters) pile out of the wormhole as well and the chestnut tobiano notices how his heart’s son made it out alive as well. Mentally relieved of caring for the boy, the winged stallion turns toward her now. She asks why and how she can’t go because they are supposed to die together and his heart aches for her. This place – the end of the world, the darkest of all darkness, the prologue and epilogue of destruction – is a place no one should want to stay and he wonders, now, just how much she trusts him to believe his word.

And then he thinks about just how much he trusts his lover to believe her word.

The first two step forward and try to encourage her to leave with them (the static noise is increasing and in the distance he spots what he thinks is a plume of dark ash – but it is really just the end of everything). Once they try – and once they succeed or fail or end up somewhere in between – he takes a careful step toward her. They are close, but not close enough that they are touching (Lord have mercy if the dark god spots him touching her and he is struck dead after all this time) and his heart is beating fast and slow at the same time.

“Gail.” He says her name like it is a delicate, expensive object (and it is). He caresses the word against his tongue, letting it dance out with all the tunes of he might say his spring goddess’ name (sweet, slow, gentle, careful). And yet he holds back just enough to give the impression that he isn’t saying her name for his own benefit, but rather for the one who had left her. “I wanted to die, once. More than once, actually.” The memories are still sharp, even though he forced the demons away a couple of years ago, and they stab at his heart and mind. “This is the end of the world, though. This is the end of everything. If you stay here, he’ll have to go on without you. You’re his heart, his soul, his body, and his spirit. If you stay here, you’ll take everything he is and wants to be and was with him.” He knows; he’s thought about it. Each loved one he has loved and lost has taken a piece out of him (Echion, even though he barely knew his mother; Pisto, with his teachings and fatherly love; Kagerou, with her second mother behaviors and how they curled close under the canopy of the Jungle and cried over broken hearts) and he knows – oh how he knows – the feeling of his heart breaking. He doesn’t want that for the dark god; he doesn’t want that for anyone.

“He sent us here because he couldn’t come himself. Something or someone wouldn’t let him. But he’s desperate enough to send a whole troop of bodies after you. And we all came willingly, because we want to help. We want to see you happy. We want to see him happy.” Happiness is a fragile, fleeting thing and when you come across it, you must grab it tight and never let go. “The world is ending, Gail, and he doesn’t want you to end with it.”

He doesn’t know what else to say, really, but he forces eye contact in the hopes that she will see everything he can’t say with words. How much he wants to see her continue to thrive. How awful this place is and how he cannot imagine how long she has been here. How broken his heart would be if she stayed. Shuffling his wings against his sides nervously, the winged stallion licks his lips slowly before saying, “Just try. And if you can’t move at all, at least you can die alone knowing that you’ve done the best you can. But don’t give up without knowing, Gail. That’s the worst possible torture.”

trekk.
he fell apart with
his broken heart.