"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
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
She doesn’t remember when she left Sylva.
What she remembers is that Brigade had left sometime before her.
She remembers realizing that there was nothing much left worth staying for.
She remembers that moment in the rain when he had found her, used a wing to protect her from the downpour. And he had something about her wanting for death and she’d said something like, ‘could being dead be any worse than this?’. She does not remember what he’d said then, if anything. She supposes now that it doesn’t matter.
She is uncertain now whether or not any of it had ever mattered.
She has spent the better part of the last few years interrogating all of the things that live in her chest and has decided that she no longer wants any of them. Least of all the heart. A troubled, foolish thing that yearns for things that she’ll never have and has no business wanting in the first place. But she has always been a stupid girl, Lilian. Her father had tried so hard to convince her otherwise. Clever girl, he said when she knew the answers to his simplest questions. She had not been clever then, merely good at remembering, and she is not clever now.
She wanders down to the edge of the river. Because she had found Velkan there once. And because she remembers, even still, how small she had felt when she’d skittered away from the cracking ice and collided with an immovable force.
She drags in a staggered breath as she ventures closer, dips her head for a drink, thinks about how fiercely she has wanted to fling herself into the current and let it carry her away. Because there has to be someplace better than this, she thinks. Some place where the heart does not ache and she does not have to think about what an insufferable fool she is and has always been.
But she does not surrender herself to the current. Merely turns her head at the sound of someone approaching. Her heart lurches and she exhales, “oh.”
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
He’s thought of her often—of the girl who seemed to hunger for death. It had infuriated him, mostly because it was easier to think of his own recklessness than it was to see it reflected back to him in the face of such an innocent, delicate face. It hadn’t made sense how she had so callously flung herself into danger at every moment’s notice. Whether it was stepping out onto the ice or into the storm.
So he thinks it is fitting that it was he, instead, who had been the one to meet his end.
He who, after all of his lecturing, had been the one with his throat ripped out.
He sighs when he sees her walking toward the river, her step nearly timid even though he can see the want that laces through her in the same movement—as though she could ever fully erase the desire to have the stones buried in her chest. Without thinking, he moves forward toward her, tucking his wings over his back and watching her with his stormy gaze, mouth pulled tight. “Still haven’t lost that horrible instinct of yours, I see,” his voice is dry, hoarse on the edges as he always went just too long without talking.
Rolling his eyes a little, he leans down to take a drink from the water that rises up to lap at them both, his throat cooling with it as he swallows. Without glancing back, he pulls his antlered head up and stares at the river—remembers what it was like to have it pull him under in the afterlife. “If you have to go, I can confidently say that drowning isn’t the way to do it,” a laugh with little humor follows.
“Although, I can’t say that I would have picked the wolves myself either.”
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
Had she thought of what she might say to him should she see him again?
No, because in order to do so she almost certainly would have to acknowledge that his leaving had hurt her. She had wasted entirely too much energy on introspection in her life and had not felt any overwhelming urge to put forth the effort recently. She did not want to think herself capable of pain anymore. She did not want to admit that she’d put enough stock in him to be disappointed when he’d left without a word.
It shouldn’t have mattered to her.
Because she hadn’t mattered to him.
And what difference did that make in the end?
He’d made her feel small and stupid and she’d found some comfort in that. Because she had so often felt too big for her skin. Restless in some peculiar way. And he had reminded her of her worth – which admittedly wasn’t much – but he’d also tried to save her from herself for reasons she had refused to dwell on.
He speaks and she visibly shrinks, receding into herself. Stupid girl, she thinks. But she merely studies him as he moves closer to the river’s edge. There is something about him that is different, heavier, but she does not ask what it is. She merely watches him, wishing that she could summon up a kind of rueful grin. Silly thing that she is, she wants to agree but doesn’t. She just shakes her head and wraps herself in silence.
He says strange things then. Things she can make neither heads nor tails of at first. She draws in a thin breath and inches away from the edge. What does he know of drowning, she wonders. And wolves? She swallows thickly, her brow darkening with her confusion. She tilts her ordinary head and narrows her gaze at what she can see of his profile from where she stands behind him.
“What?” she asks, quiet, the voice breaking clean down the middle. Her eyelids flutter heavy. “What does that mean, Brigade?”
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
Brigade has never been particularly forthcoming with his words, and he finds that it is a skill that has not flourished in the time after death. He has not grown more clever with the turns of phrase. He has not been able to suss out a way to communicate that does not leave others furious or disappointed or, like she looks at him now, confused. Perhaps someday he will learn how to talk with others without such negative consequences, but he knows he is not capable of it today—if anything, he’s only gotten worse.
His laugh is bitter as he shakes his dark head, antlers swinging slightly.
“I never know what I mean,” he confesses, even though it’s only a half truth. He usually knows exactly what he means to say—but he certainly wishes he had a heart that let him mean something else. A way for him to be softer and kinder, to be able to split himself open and share the good pieces first.
Instead he grows quiet and sullen, his stormy gaze moving to the water and watching it rage. “I suppose I mean that I am sorry for scolding you,” he finally manages after several minutes of silence—quiet enough that she may not hear if she wasn’t paying attention, but not so quiet that he could be accused of trying to obscure it. He rolls his shoulders again, uncomfortable with the personal nature of what comes next.
“It feels unfair to have yelled at you so often for trying to meet your death when I was the first to do it,” he gives a quirk of his wine red lips before shaking his head. “It’s not great—dying, you know.” He wishes he could find a way to be clearer, to get to the point, but he dances around the subject, unable to find a place to land. “But it’s also not the worst thing, I suppose.” He finally drags his eyes back to her.
“I still think you should try to avoid it, if you can.”
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
There is no mirth in the laughter, but it’s the first she’s ever heard it from him.
And so she treasures it all the same.
Even if the edges are sharp and tear at the meat of her heart.
She watches him, studies the way he studies the water. There is something different, she thinks, and wonders if the differences have anything to do with the cryptic things he’d murmured. But he apologizes and it sinks like a stone in the pit of her gut. Pulses at the very center of her. She finds the body wants to reject it as she feels some great urge to move away from it, remove herself from beneath the unbearable weight of it. She’s not sorry. Because it had been the first thing that had meant anything at all to her in so very long. She says nothing, though, just shakes her head.
Were she someone else, she might have laughed merrily. She might have reached out and touched him and assured him that he need not ever apologize to her. But she merely stands there, just as useless as she’s always been, staring hard at his profile.
He’d died. This much is quite suddenly very clear. Her vision strobes as the furrow in her brow deepens. Now, more than ever, she wants to reach for him. Wants to touch his shoulder to test it for warmth, just in case. She wonders, in some vague way, if this is merely a fever dream. But he turns to look at her and she does not loo away, just goes on looking at him with those wide, vulnerable eyes. She doesn’t register the quirk in his mouth, the stirrings of some rueful smile, because she cannot tear her gaze away from those eyes.
Not the worst thing, he says and her pulse spikes with hope. Hope that there is peace somewhere. Hope that maybe someday things won’t feel so heavy.
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
The conversation has quickly veered into darker territory than he has intended. He feels it resonate in him, the way that it echoes in his chest—leaving him feeling empty and unsure, grasping for the straws of his own control. Brigade has never enjoyed such deep conversations. Never enjoyed the sensation of pulling himself apart before someone else so they could see the darkest shadows of him.
She looks at him with her wide, blue eyes and his heart clenches in his chest.
No one should look at him like that.
He feels something like the weight of expectancy on the curve of his spine, pressing down firmly, and he nearly balks—almost turning and running back into the shadows—but he remains grounded. Cornered, he does the only thing that he knows: diverting the emotional connection into something physical. It’s an escape, he knows, but it is easier to navigate than the dark, tangled mess within him.
Easier than trying to suss out than trying to comprehend his own mind.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, his voice clipped, a rasp beginning to creep into the edge of it. He takes a step forward and pushes back the hair from her eyes, letting his mouth linger on her forehead. “I’m just glad that it was you who found me,” his voice is lower now, his stormy eyes intense as he finds her gaze, wondering how she will react to the shift—to the sudden intensity building.
Would she continue pushing for answers? For the truth of him?
Brigade nips lightly at the corner of her mouth.
“I’ve missed you.”
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
She has gotten all she will get out of him, she realizes.
So, she does not ask him for anything more.
And, not for the first time, she resents her weakness. Not for the first time, she wishes she were someone stronger. Someone capable of sidling up to him, forcing him to tell her what had happened. Someone capable of drawing out and vanquishing all the hurt. ‘Let me carry it,’ she wants to be able to say, ‘let me keep you safe.’ But, she cannot and she doesn’t know how to try.
He doesn’t want to talk about it, he says, and she sews her mouth up tight. Exhales an unsteady sigh through her nose as he moves toward her. But he touches her and arrests all of the air in her lungs, knocks the earth off its axis when he pushes the hair out of her eyes, when the mouth lingers there and the heat of his breath nearly takes her to her knees. The eyelids fall heavy closed and she sways almost imperceptibly.
A shudder steals down the length of her spine when he speaks and she forces her eyes open to meet his gaze. There is something different about those eyes that has nothing to do with the things he’s not telling her, she thinks. There are storms there, certainly, but the clouds take on a different shape.
And, because she wants so desperately to be someone else, she conjures up a stilted kind of smile. She draws in a thin breath and says, “I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner.” It comes out hoarse, raspy, straining against the pressure system building at the very center of her.
For the first time in such a long time, she exhales a breath of laughter. More surprised than mirthful but laughter all the same. She has never believed herself someone worth missing, certainly not by someone like him. The sound fades, though, and so does the faint outline of the smile she’d worn, as she searches his face before nodding with a kind of finality. “I missed you, too.”
