JUDE
the light of dawn is coming
He sees it, but he can only bear to see it for a fleeting moment. It feels less like solidarity and more like reliving that loss all over again. Even her agreement is damning because his thoughts follow exactly the same path - there is no going back to that. She may not miss the parts he does, but it’s a kinder thing to not specify. Like covering someone’s eyes with one tender hand before suffocating them with the other.
An apology is even more unexpected. Jude bitterly wonders if she truly means everything. She’d come out of it all wounded but breathing, and he’s not sure he’s even properly alive in the here and now. Sohalia had been the event horizon in Jude’s life, and her apology feels as distant and beautifully damning as watching the sun collapse in on itself. Jude has wondered - often - whether his life would have taken a better path if he’d never met her. But knowing her was the only way he’d experienced friendship and love, so would it have been any happier? Maybe it was always going to be inevitable, this life that feels like an ending he keeps futilely erasing the final punctuation of.
“Me too.” And she can take from that what she will - what she hopefully needs - just as her own all-encompassing statement had done for Jude. Straightening and abandoning any pretense of continuing to search, Jude turns and faces her with hands limp against his thighs. No tension that would otherwise communicate any kind of strong emotion. “What do you want from here? What would be best for you?” Perhaps those answers would be contradictory - they both often want things that will only hurt them. “We don’t have to meet again, or say anything if we do. I can move back to Torchline when you finally go back to Stormbreak.” Surely she will, and Jude will leave without a word to contest their transfer of presence. “I don’t want to stay like this. Not knowing what to do, what we are, what to say. So just…tell me.” Please.
An apology is even more unexpected. Jude bitterly wonders if she truly means everything. She’d come out of it all wounded but breathing, and he’s not sure he’s even properly alive in the here and now. Sohalia had been the event horizon in Jude’s life, and her apology feels as distant and beautifully damning as watching the sun collapse in on itself. Jude has wondered - often - whether his life would have taken a better path if he’d never met her. But knowing her was the only way he’d experienced friendship and love, so would it have been any happier? Maybe it was always going to be inevitable, this life that feels like an ending he keeps futilely erasing the final punctuation of.
“Me too.” And she can take from that what she will - what she hopefully needs - just as her own all-encompassing statement had done for Jude. Straightening and abandoning any pretense of continuing to search, Jude turns and faces her with hands limp against his thighs. No tension that would otherwise communicate any kind of strong emotion. “What do you want from here? What would be best for you?” Perhaps those answers would be contradictory - they both often want things that will only hurt them. “We don’t have to meet again, or say anything if we do. I can move back to Torchline when you finally go back to Stormbreak.” Surely she will, and Jude will leave without a word to contest their transfer of presence. “I don’t want to stay like this. Not knowing what to do, what we are, what to say. So just…tell me.” Please.
ready to return everything the darkness stole
