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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    long gone bitter truth
    #1
    J A R R I S

    He’d thought it was a dream.
    Initially.
    And then, as he swam back toward consciousness, he’d hoped it was a dream. Mumbled some muted plea before he dared open his eyes. But there had been a relentless pounding in his head and he had known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it had not been a dream.
    And when he’d finally forced open the eyes the vision had been obscured by tears. He’d gathered what little strength remained and pushed himself to his feet. Peered down at the place where the tears pooled at his feet, golden.

    He had staggered back to the meadow to find Plumeria. Panic had consumed him, become him, leeched into the marrow of his bones. Because he had watched her walk willingly into the monsters mouth. And he had followed her. Followed her because there was no life for him without her. And she was not where he left them sleeping in a glen and Dear was nowhere to be found either.

    Rife with terror, he’d scoured the meadow until he found her. Plumeria. And when he found her, he also found that he’d been gone for weeks. Or months. Long enough that Dear had grown old enough to wander away from her mother’s side.

    We have to go,” he’d said. And then he’d marched away from the meadow. Weeping his golden tears as they went. Until he couldn’t walk anymore. He’d caught wind of a land of ice and had entertained the idea of making a home there once. But the Tundra underground had swept him under, poured water into his lungs, killed him the first time. So, he marched to Tephra instead.

    As far away from the mountain as he could think to get.

    And it is only once they’ve arrived that he finally turns to her, Plumeria, and exhales a shuddering sigh.
    Were you there?” he asks, quiet. It is not a demand. It’s shaky. He doesn’t want to know, really. Doesn’t know if he can stomach it if she was. “The mountain,” he clarifies, those golden tears cutting rivers down his face, “were you there?

    i was ready to die for ya, baby
    doesn't mean i'm ready to stay



    @[Plumeria] @[Isilya]
    #2
    She was used to him leaving, but it never made it any easier. She was used to him coming back, too, though she never knew when that would be.

    When he had stolen away from her side that night, she had of course noticed, but she hadn’t stirred. She never asked him to stay, because she never wanted him to feel tethered to her. She loved everything that was wild about him, she loved that something so wayward and full of wanderlust could still make its way back to her, but it didn’t stop the ache in her chest. It had been so long since he had last left, and so she had been sure that he would return by morning. She had pulled Dear close to her and whispered soft reassurances in the little girl’s neck, that he would be back and not to worry. And when dawn spread across the sky, so did that longing emptiness bloom inside the cavity of her ribs.

    She waited, as she always did, but he didn’t come back.

    But even as the days bled into weeks, and the weeks into months, she couldn’t extinguish that faint flicker of hope, because she has waited longer, and she would wait forever.

    When he does return, she almost does not recognize him. There is a thorned crown above his head, and golden rivers that run down his cheeks, and all she can do is suck in a breath and ask, “What happened?” He doesn’t answer her then, though, and so she simply follows him. Away from the meadow, and she worries in the back of her mind that Dear will not be able to find them, but she follows him to this new jungle without argument.

    They arrive, and the confusion is clear on her face when he turns to her and asks her if she had been at the mountain. “The mountain? Why would I have gone to the mountain?” She stares at him, at his remarkably beautiful face, at the crown of the thorns and the golden tears, and she is afraid that her heart might break. She remembers when he had first come back, the last time, and how convinced he had been that she was a ghost. He is looking at her in a similar way; as though he doesn't know if she is real, as if his reality has again been shaken and foundation of it crumbled. She reaches forward, to touch her lips against his cheek, the gold now glittering across her copper lips as she asks him softly, “Jarris, what happened?”

    P L U M E R I A
    when all of the light is gone
    a single spark is all I need.
    #3
    J A R R I S

    There is a violent ache in the center of his chest.
    It throbs and pulses in time with his heartbeat.
    Arrests all the air in his lungs as studies her the best he can through the gold that seeps out of his eyes.
    It all hurts so much he can barely think beyond it.

    But he remembers the way it felt when the bones splintered and broke and then how, mercifully, death had taken him. He remembers, quite vividly, how desperately he’d called out to her. How the apologies had bled out of him but had meant nothing at all. How angry she had been.

    He looks at her now and all he can see is her confusion. Why would she have gone to the mountain? Because he had gone to the mountain and she was there and she was so angry.

    He shakes his head woefully. Closes his eyes but it does nothing to stem the flow of his tears. “I went to the mountain,” he murmurs, “you were there.

    Then there is silence. Deep, impenetrable silence. While he remembers how their daughter had disintegrated, how he had been forced to kill her. How she had not been in the sea of faces who’d jostled around him in that cavern. How he fears that she might really be dead.

    What happened?
    He opens his eyes. Studies her face the best he can. Feels the ache in his chest deepen, widen, until it is a yawning chasm. “I heard Kennice,” he begins and it comes out strangled. “I followed her voice to the mouth of a cave at the base of the mountain. And then.” The voice catches and he has to look away. Looks down again at the puddle of gold gathering at their feet. The gold on her lips.

    I had hoped it was just some awful dream.” He shifts his focus back up to her face then, the expression plaintive when he finally meets her eye again. “Is this a dream?

    i was ready to die for ya, baby
    doesn't mean i'm ready to stay
    #4
    It’s winter, but it feels considerably warmer here, and she thinks that maybe if he wasn’t standing before her with tears continuously streaming down his face that this place might feel like paradise. She thinks how if things were different she would teasingly remind him that this was nothing like the tundra, this place with its fragrant blossoms and hardened lava fields. She thinks how much Dear would like it, if she were here, and how maybe it was even beautiful enough to spark a different light back into Kensley.

    But it’s just the two of them – and it always comes back to that, to being just the two of them, no matter how many others twist and tangle themselves into their lives, and she hangs all her hope and sanity on that, on knowing that eventually it will be just them – and for a long while all she does is stare at him in silence when he speaks.

    And the silence stretches, and though she doesn’t speak, the silence is not quiet for her. It is filled with her racing mind, as she grasps and fumbles for a solution, for anything that could ease the insurmountable grief that seemed to have consumed him. She wants to find a logical explanation, but though she could reassure him that she had never been at the mountain, and that this, right now, was not a dream, she has no explanation for the crown of thorns and the gilded tears shimmering on his face.

    “Jarris,” she murmurs his name, the way she has a hundred times before, and she closes the space between them. She reaches up to almost touch a barbed point of a thorn, but instead she moves to let her lips trail down his face. “I wasn’t at the mountain, and this, right now, isn’t a dream.” Her jaw tightens with her own tears that throb at the back of her throat, because she hates seeing him like this. She hates seeing him confused, she hates that there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop the tears, and she hates that she can’t fix any of it. “And I’m sure Kennice is fine,” but she doesn’t sound as reassuring as she hoped.

    “Strange things happen at the mountain,” she says quietly, still searching for an explanation. “Maybe...maybe that night that you left, you were sleepwalking and just ended up there.” She trails off, knowing as she says it out loud how none of the puzzle pieces fit together. It didn’t make sense that she was real, now, but she hadn’t been real on the mountain. It didn’t make sense that parts of it could be a dream, when he came back physically changed.

    “I should have stopped you from leaving,” she whispers, her gaze cast to the ground when she remembers how she had felt him go and but said nothing, because she was always too afraid; afraid that asking him to stay would just make him want to leave.

    P L U M E R I A
    when all of the light is gone
    a single spark is all I need.
    #5
    J A R R I S

    The heartbeat is frenetic.
    Absolute chaos in his chest.

    Because the heart has closed itself in a fist and it shudders and spasms and he realizes then that it is the heart that chases those tears down his cheeks. And it feels like drowning. Like so many thousands of pounds of grief splintering the ribcage. But he is stronger than the son who found himself crippled by the pain. He does not bow beneath it, Jarris, but stands taller. Because the pain belongs to him, the pools of gold at his feet belong to him, the blood running in rivulets from all of the places the thorns bite into the tender flesh belongs to him.

    She says his name and the shape of it on her tongue is just as sweet as it’s always been. So much sweeter than it had been there so many hundreds of feet underground. It had been barbed there, clipped, as if it disgusted her just to have to say it. She says it now and it feels like coming home, just as it always has. He exhales the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, lets her pull her mouth down the length of his face.

    Loves her so much that it aches.

    She wasn’t there and the relief that surges through him is potent enough to be felt over the terrible sickness in his heart. But this isn’t a dream. She’s sure Kennice is fine but there’s no way for her to know that. His throat tightens, a vise that stifles his breath. He shakes his head. How it pains him to look her in the eye and tell her what he has to tell her.

    I killed her,” he whispers and does not allow himself to look away. “Plumeria, I killed her.” The voice shakes but he goes on looking at her, even as those tears cloud his vision, make it difficult for him to make out the shape of her face. He doesn’t have to see her clearly to know that face, though. Knows it better than any other, certainly. “Twice.

    She should have stopped him, should have stopped him from going to the mountain where so many strange things happened. He shakes his head a second time. He frowns pointedly and reaches out to kiss her head. “You couldn’t have stopped me,” he murmurs into the warmth of her skin. And what he doesn’t say hangs heavy in the air between them, you’ve never been able to stop me before.

    i was ready to die for ya, baby
    doesn't mean i'm ready to stay
    #6
    She has seen so many different sides of him, but she isn’t sure if she has seen this one.
    She can remember the way he would look at her when she was the one splintering apart in front of him, when they would both tremble with the ache of the pain inside their chests, because no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t keep them from falling apart. She can remember the way he would drag his lips across her neck and whisper his apologies and his love, when he would press kisses into her flesh like they could somehow act as a bandage to the wounds he unintentionally inflicted.

    But she has never seen him like this, when tears flow so freely down his cheeks and he chokes on his sorrow every time he speaks. And she can’t help but to feel that it is somehow her fault, because he was so sure she had been there, and the idea that any version of her – even one that was not real – had caused him any kind of pain was unbearable.

    “You didn’t kill her,” she says with more certainty than she actually feels, and she touches her lips again to his cheek. “I know you almost better than I know myself, and I know you would never kill our daughter.” She wants to be sure of that; she wants to believe unfailingly that the Jarris she has always known and loved would rather die himself than kill Kennice, or any of their children. “You didn’t kill her,” she repeats, softer this time, and she can’t quite hide the sadness in her brown eyes when she swallows hard and looks away from him, because she desperately needs what she says to be true.

    He kisses her head, though, and she releases a trembling sigh before dropping her head to curl against his chest. She listens to the steady thrum of his heart, and can feel the way hers flutters almost frantically, like it’s trying to catch up to him – always afraid of being left behind, of his heart going where hers cannot follow. “I always regret letting you leave,” and the words are spoken so quietly into his skin that she thinks the sound of their hearts might have drowned them out.

    P L U M E R I A
    when all of the light is gone
    a single spark is all I need.




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