a dream from which we cannot wake

Jude

In my head I am hunting for myself
but I come up empty again

He doesn't even know her name, and yet his chest tightens and his knees twitch beneath him in vain reflex as if trying to rise to chase after her the moment she turns and leaves. He isn't sure why it still hurts when she's so firmly a stranger to him. Jude wouldn't blame her for not actually coming back as insinuated - it's a good out from an encounter with an insane young man. But she does, and he must stare stupidly up at her from where he's sitting on the toppled box like a beggar might their first glimpse of an angel after a lifetime of unanswered prayers.

Taking the offered flask with trembling, swollen, bloodied hands, Jude's eyes never leave Noe's face. "Thank you," he whispers, voice small. It's a kindness he hadn't expected from her, and he automatically wonders if she's really a Torcher. Taking a series of small, slow sips so he doesn't upset his alcohol-filled stomach, Jude makes a small noise of relief as the swelling in his eye begins to go down immediately, allowing him full sight once more. The more he drinks the faster it will heal, but with the worst of the pain fading he feels he can wait long enough to answer her questions. It's the least he can do.

"It's a long story," he cautions on a bitter laugh, voice still quiet like the yelling from earlier had made him sheepish. Staring down at the shadowed opening of the flask, his thumb strokes the side of it for lack of a better outlet for his anxious energy. "My girlfriend told me she still had feelings for someone she'd been seeing before me. I asked for time and space, and left. Talked to both my parents, and found my brother too, who'd been missing a long time." If there was any blood left in his face, it's gone now, the streaks of dried blood even darker for how he pales. "A group of men tried to kill us, and he had to protect us. I watched people die for the first time." The alcohol roils in his stomach. The memory always makes him feel sick, but it's worse now when there's nothing but liquor in his body.

"I had to tell someone. And the person my girlfriend still liked, he was a soldier who'd helped me before so I - I told him. Made a mess of things." The flask sinks to hang between his thighs, and here the sniffles try to creep back into the undertone of his words, voice hoarse and thick with emotion. "It took so much time, and I never got to answer her letters. She thought I was gone, I guess. Or angrier at her than I was." His lips wobble remembering Soh's admissions, the anger and distrust in her eyes. "So I said we should break up, because...because I didn't want to keep holding her back." He couldn't have shouldered the weight of her anger, so maybe it was partially cowardice, but he hopes she's happier now that things are defined and all the stray threads have been snipped and discarded. Nice and neat - except for Jude.

"Um. And then I came home. And my dad, he - he was King here y'know. One of them." One swollen hand retrieves a crumpled letter and a small key ring from his pocket, setting them on his thigh to be seen in the torchlight. "He left his position. Closed up our old house. Left me a letter and keys to an apartment and...and left Torchline." Left me. The tears finally drip down, and he can only be grateful that this time they're silent. "Both of my moms are gone too and - and I've only got my brother left here. And I'd never had a drink more than one time so I thought maybe..." but it sounds stupid to say it out loud now, almost-sober and sitting bloodied and bruised in front of her. Except he can't stop now. "I thought if everyone else does it to stop feeling upset, maybe I could too. But it didn't - and I was so angry, and I'm never angry, so I - I punched a guy." Sheepishly, he gestures to his entire body now, though he can't quite manage a smile.

"And, well. Um. This." He takes another sip, head bowed and body curling inward, looking nothing like the riotous young man who had destroyed the outside of a clinic not long ago. "Sorry, I don't normally...talk...so much." But he feels so very alone, and he's desperate to talk to anyone, to get someone to stay.

the night is a cavern
I am underneath it, inside it, anything but free of it