At the water’s edge, the dark god had said, and in this, at least, he was honest.
Garbage had not fully allowed himself to hope – why should he trust such a god, anyway? – but he had listened and walked various water edges, looking, praying.
And then, like a vision, she comes from the water, onto the edge, dazed but there. He almost falls running to her, helpless in this moment to control himself, overcome with the desire to be closer to her, to touch her. His throat feels choked with apologies but before he reaches her she’s looking at him, speaking - tell me right now if you know who I am - and it is enough to knock a small bit of sense into him, so instead of throwing himself on the ground next to her he stands, close but not touching, and replies.
“You’re Agetta,” he says, then, in a clumsy attempt to undo the horrible words he’d spoken when he hadn’t known, when he’d washed up blank, an empty canvas, “and you’re everything to me.”
It’s too much, probably, to throw at her. Carnage told him the story gleefully enough and Garbage has not stopped imaging it, the horror of such a thing. She’s still recovering and she’s tired and wet from the river and here he is, trying helplessly to undo one of his worst mistakes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. This, at least, is familiar. He is very good at apologizing.
“I’m just so glad you’re back,” he says. His own knees are weak and shaking and he wonders if he will collapse soon enough on the rocks beside her from the sheer relief of this, but as long as it’s beside her, he thinks, he doesn’t mind at all.
@Agetta