You gotta take it as it goes, it doesn't get easier

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

She's asked him to meet her here, purposefully avoiding Meadowreach and all the memories it holds. She had made the trek to speak to Thorn, and that’d been enough of a stroll down dreary lane to make her high tail it out of the slopes that’d once been a place of solace. Neutral ground is what she needs now, especially for this conversation.

Crossing and uncrossing which leg over the other for the fifth time at least, Colt waits with all the patience of an animal at dinner time. Restless doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of her current state, and the little wicker chair attempting to contain her complains with every shift. She forgoes the coffee steaming in the cage of her hands, slouching back into the seat with another grumble of binding being tested and instead pulls out a cigarette from between her boot and pant leg.

Lifting her chin as she pulls on the lit stick, she tips her gaze up to the grey smear in the sky. It’s just lightening enough for the new day to see it properly, but whatever smattering of color the sun might be showing off is reduced to a muted, yellow-green glare. ”I hope it doesn’t scream today,” she mutters to herself around a curl of smoke. Across from her, a cup of tea for the Archon waits with her.

---

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

She’d reached out – and for Sunjata, well, there’s a certain feeling about the request that feels as much like a goodbye as her actually saying it aloud. And since the last time they’d seen each other, the Heartless had spent countless minutes going over everything they’d said to each other, wondering just how much of it had been true or anger and hurt, and wondering whether or not this conversation would go the same way.

And while he might not have a heart anymore, it didn’t prevent him from being fucking anxious about it, even if he felt like he shouldn’t be. He should be used to this. He should expect it. And yet the idea still hurts in the deep crevices and cracks of his hollow chest cavity.

New Haven is a welcome reprieve, at least, not without the ghosts of everywhere else. At least the city seemed vibrant and less likely to harbor the uncertainty settling in his chest as he slips through the building to see Colt’s golden crown of hair, smoke curling up from her and steam curling up from the cups sat in front of her.

He does hear her muttering as he approaches, the hEARs helping with that as he slides into the seat opposite of her and adjusts his shirt – a long sleeved shirt made up of a warm, dark burnt orange cotton. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it did, unfortunately.” He offers out, equally quiet as he snags a cigarette of his own and sparks it to life to drag quietly from it, before his steel gaze lifts to see her face and actually force himself to look at her. “Hey.” He says quietly in greeting, as neutral of a boon as he can manage.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

He doesn’t creep up, but the answer to the private conversation with herself is sudden and jolting enough that the chair threatens to upend her with the abrupt way she shifts in it. ”Sunjata!” It’s as much greeting as admonishment, and she’s immediately swallowing past a dry throat afterwards, her words suddenly spent.

Placing the cigarette in her mouth as a covenient excuse to buy a few seconds, for which he seems to do much the same as he busies lighting his, she settles back into the chair. No, that’s not quite right. Settled implies some degree of relaxation. Colt is perched, and though there’s no feathers that roll around her collar in moments like this, it doesn’t make her any less flighty.

”Thanks for coming,” she manages to get out with the smoke, eyes reaching for him across the table. She means it, because she wasn’t sure he’d show. Wouldn’t blame him, after how she’d left it, but even so there’s no apology braced behind her teeth. She’s grateful he helped in the ways he could that day, but the silence that’s stretched between them since has only helped solidify her mind. Maybe this would go differently if it hadn’t, hard to say, since this is where they ended up. She’d been wrong, in many ways, but that truth didn’t remove the other. She’d needed more than he’d been able, or maybe willing, to give. Maybe she always needed too much. Probably didn’t deserve it, but the scrape of its absence is still felt.

”The tea is for you,” she informs him with a tip of her head towards it. She’d have gotten him a coffee if she knew he liked them, but since she’s remembering the tea he provided last time they’d come together for work and figured that’s what he preferred. Just proof of how little she’s bothered to get to know him beyond the ways she’s needed him to serve her. Guess she did use people.

”I’m moving, Sunjata,” she tells him flatly, reaching for the warmth of her coffee to combat the chill that floods her at finally saying it with such totality.

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

A small smile that feels just as somber as this meeting does graces his face to hear her surprise. It’s there fleetingly and then gone, not unlike the smoke inhaled and subsequently exhaled, hanging briefly in the air before it dissipates. It’s awkward – almost as awkward as his conversation with Hotaru, though he’d had more stakes in that it seemed like.

And even still, it felt like he was failing over and over again. Failing everyone with the ease of him not being enough or focusing enough. So rather than sit there and talk, she’d asked him to meet, and he lights his cigarette and awaits the inevitable ball to drop – even if she holds off on it initially with the mention of the tea settled in front of him – gaze dropping down to it with a nod. “Thank you.” He murmurs, leaving the cigarette between his two fingers as he drags the cup closer and takes a sip of it – cooled enough now that it doesn’t burn down his throat.

He’s only just had enough time to swallow before the answer comes – something that has him internally clawing at himself to tell her all the things he needs to in order to make her stay. Like he even has the option to. Like her decision isn’t already made. He thinks about apologizing about the last time they’d spoken, of all the promises he’d made that he couldn’t keep – but he thinks that’ll just make things worse.

So he settles himself with a breath and a nod, his gaze dropping from her face to the cigarette with the ash that bunches at the tip of the cigarette. “I thought so.” He murmurs softly, quieter as he lets it settle like a stone in his gut. He’d seen the signs – the way that there had been no news about whether or not the ranch would be rebuilt, whatever next steps there were – because it wasn’t going to be here. “When do you leave?” He asks, forcing himself to look at her again as he drags from the cigarette, hoping the bit of nicotine might ease the flow.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

What’d been obvious to him had proven a surprise to her. She’s never been anywhere else, after all, not to live. That alone carries a terrifying reality to it, and what might seem simple to others, feels like she’s just stepped up to a cliff edge and reached out into the fog of the unknown. Her next stride could find footing, or could be further ruin. There’s something exciting to that.

Everything she’d ever had, all that she’d known, it’d been here. She had many reasons to stay, and she probably would have with some encouragement, or any tie that felt like it could hold the drift rising so fiercely in her. There’s no changing the loss, but she hadn’t realized the weight of the restraints to keep it; after wearing them so long, they’d blended in seamlessly with her skin. It could just be the way she’s had to shape the tragedy in order to survive it, frantically gathering all the little pieces of herself and pressing them back together, careless of the design.

The coffee does little to combat the cold that’s crept in on her sunshine. She would like to look away, but she doesn’t let herself stray further than the cut of his jaw, better kept now than last she’d had a house for them to stand in. She doesn’t pretend he’s better, not beyond being better at hiding it anyway. Same as she keeps trying to. ”I didn’t make the choice lightly,” she admits, feeling some need to defend against his easy acceptance, like his prediction is an attack about to land rather than the sullen acceptance of someone who’s done reaching out.

She’s had the explanation in her mind for a day now, worn smooth like a stone rolled repeatedly in water. Details to lay out for him, to prove she’s not reckless or foolish or spiteful, not this time. She hesitates though, wondering now if each reason she ticks off might not land like a cut rather than a dog-eared corner of her thoughts. Her fingers pull away from the coffee, one curling in her lap while the other offers her another drag.

”Couple days,” she answers, like it’s that simple. She fears it’s proving to be, when she seemed to want it otherwise. "I wanted to make sure I told you myself. You deserve that much." More, he deserves more, but she's grown thin on what she has to offer.

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

It’s something that Sunjata can’t relate to – the fact that she’d never lived anywhere else. That this would be a daunting and mortifying task. Sunjata had moved around frequently – but the one that had taken the cake was when he’d fallen into Caido from the beginning. One moment in Korofi, departing a room in a hotel he’d crashed in the night before, hungover and exhausted. The next moment, lost in the maze in the Grounds with no hopes of ever going back.

He’d managed to figure it out back then. Sunjata imagines that Colt will be able to figure it out too – because if nothing else, despite the fights and the arguments, she’d always be welcome back here if she needed a place to breathe. But he doesn’t know how to convey it, not initially, so he drags his cigarettes, hearing her admission that the choice wasn’t made lightly. They never really are, in his experience. “It’s a lot of work, yeah.” He murmurs quietly, trying to ease that acceptance for her, to make her think she doesn’t have to defend her decision.

Sunjata’s tired of trying to make people stay. He’s tired of giving pieces of himself up on the hopes that everyone he’s fractured himself into might remain just because he’d done that. But he also realizes if that was all he had to offer, it was a pretty shitty reason to keep people. Selfish of him as it was.

He drains another sip of the tea before replacing it with the cigarette, letting the smoke curl around his nose as he watches her, his jaw set tight. He shifts a little in his seat and nods, before his head tilts slightly. “Do I?” Deserve that much, given their argument. The thoughts of all of it linger still – the failures that continued to happen and would likely never seem to fucking end, he can’t help the way it feels like it splinters something in him. His gaze drops to the ash tray again as he reaches forward to knock some ash into it from the smoke between his fingers. “Where are you going?” He asks, trying to swallow his hurt.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

The question rings louder than he likely meant it. It drones through her, muffling everything else, leaving just its tone to slowly fade out into an eerie quiet. She looks down, half expecting a visible mark to be there, because her chest hurts. Absently, an arm lifts to fold across it, fingers hooking around her own shoulder. The pressure pushes back just right, and she settles beneath it. ”You always have.”

There’s more, perched on the tip of her lip, the shape of it even started, but she pulls the sound of it back down. The way she wishes this had gone different. The way she knows she hadn’t been fair. The way she doesn’t want this to ruin them for good. It feels like it’ll just drag over the scab, and she doesn’t have the courage to bleed in front of him again, not when the last time had gotten them both filthy with it.

It’s easier to focus on the things that are removed from them. Facts, rather than feelings, because those don’t lead her so astray. ”Hak Etme.” She sighs out of her nose, watching the shape of his expression as she flicks her own ash away. ”Think it can be made into something, with enough time and effort.” She’s thought the same before, about people, but she keeps getting proved wrong. Horses though, dogs, she’s done it with them, why not a desert.

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

Her honesty is the one thing that does break through to him, his scarred brows twitching closer together for a brief moment, letting it wash over him and all the knives and shards of glass inside him that have been stabbing him over and over again which each and every breath. He exhales, tension leaking out of him, his guard dropping just enough that he seems a little less rigid, less tense, less likely to snap or partial shift toward the dragon or the macaw in his skin. He remains just him, hearing her out.

It’s not an apology, nor is it an acceptance of an apology, but it’s a good start. A start that makes him think this isn’t going to be the continuation of the argument they’d had previously. He won’t complain about that turn of events. He’s already so tired of having to constantly prove himself to whomever he’d let down time and time again. “The desert?” He asks after a moment, like theres some other Hak Etme that she plans on turning somewhere liveable.

And as someone that has done what feels like the impossible, well, Sunjata downs the initial bitterness that spikes in him, like it’s some subconscious attack (a gift from his father, to read between the things said to hear criticisms unsaid), like he half expects her to try to make Hak Etme livable to prove to him that he’s not doing it right. But he swallows down those bitter thoughts like a terrible pill with the help of the tea in front of him before he finds it in him to speak.

“It takes a lot of work.” Not that he thinks she wouldn’t be dedicated for it, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart. “I wish you luck.” And he means it, in the little brief glimmer of his gaze as he looks back up at her and thinks about what that means for him, for King’s End as a whole. “Where your ranch… was.. Do you have plans for that?” He pauses, because if she’s leaving, he’s going to assume she doesn’t. “Would you be okay if eventually the land it’s on gets used?” Clarification, perhaps, that he doesn’t intend to touch it without her blessing.

But if she’s leaving it all behind anyway, well, he technically doesn’t need her permission. He could just do something with it one day. But as she’s offered him the bit of good will in this conversation, it’s the least he can do to offer her some of his own.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

She nods, the movement slight and subtle, but a confirmation just the same. She doesn’t have room for more, already bracing for what she expects to come. A laugh, biting and belittling, or well wishes painted on over contempt. She pulls in another breath through the cigarette, letting the smoke gather in her chest for a while, using the wreath of it like something that could steady the inevitable collapse of this. Her head cocks faintly to the side, waiting for it to land.

Instead, she blinks, and her eyes find the strength to rise from the cut of his jaw back to the steel of his gaze. She exhales a steady stream of surprise, as much at him as herself. When had she begun to expect anything less than his mercy? ”That’s what I’m counting on,” she extends softly, smile weak around the shape of it, like a joke she’s trying to make but can’t quite finish. The work, the impossibility of it, that’s half the call. Something for her to get lost in, something with far less ghosts in it.

Maybe it’s the crack of relief still crawling through her, tight edges slackening too quickly, or maybe it’s facing the fact that she’s not the only one moving on, and that she can’t stretch wide enough to keep a boot at both the end and the start. Whatever does it, the result’s the same, tears welling quick and unexpected in her eyes. They spill over immediately, forcing her to drop her look from him fully for the first time as she ducks beneath the curve of her hat and swipes them away.

”Yeah, it’s all yours,” she manages to get out, shaky as her teeth drag over the risk of a broken breath. She pauses a moment to rebuild something close enough to composure to count, and forces her gaze back up, chin angling like gravity alone would keep the sadness down. ”Do whatever you want with it.” The land took it back from her before this conversation, so it didn’t really belong to her any more anyway. Maybe it’d always been borrowed.

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees

SUNJATA

i was never the sharp knife, but i was never the dull mind
i was somewhere in between, a thorn, an acquiescent

She avoids his gaze, at least until he offers his well wishes – unsure how well she intends on taking them or how seriously she lets herself believe they are. But he means it – the honesty settles in the cracks of his accent, and as her gaze lifts to meet his, there’s nothing but the truth settled there in the shadowed stormy sea his own provide back. “I’m pretty sure you won’t have a shortage of it.” Especially with dealing with Hak Etme – the boneyard specifically a place he fully intends on never returning to.

That was the place where he’d been forever changed, back when he’d lost his first companion. Back when his soul had been shredded and he’d had to figure out how to pick up the pieces of it. Something he was still learning how to do – even more so, these days.

So instead, he focuses on the mention of her land – of something that he has a direct hold over that he isn’t sure whether or not she’d prefer he do something with it or leave it as is if she wanted the scarred reminder of it. So he sips from his tea while she takes her time, not pushy one way or another – it’s part of the grace they can give each other after their last meeting. And when the answer comes, he nods his head with a bit of his own understanding. “Thank you, Colt. For that and for telling me.” He offers quieter, because somehow it feels like a final goodbye even if it likely wouldn’t be. It feels like something fragile that’s about to break and there’s nothing they can do to prevent it.

so you said it was for me, when you tried to break me
well you can save your breath, i know, i'm not the kind you pray for

Tired of searching for someone that I used to be

Gratitude and luck, that’s what she’ll walk away with from this meeting. It’s not nothing, could certainly have been worse, things can always be worse. Still, it’s nothing she can curl into her hand and hold, and it’s a goodbye dressed in different letters in the end. She doesn’t know what she expected, finds sometimes it’s better not to, but this is what she has.

Something like a smile returns his words, and she leans forward to stub out her cigarette in her coffee, done with both. ”I’ll be seeing you then, Sunjata.” He hadn’t said she’d be welcome back, not outright, but in the spaces of the things he doesn’t say, she’s not afraid to reach out and grab hold of the feel of them. It’s nice to hear it, a reassurance, even if it has to be said several times over to stick. It’s not really his job to manage the way she feels though, even if she wishes he might, because doing it alone is so damn exhausting sometimes.

She leans up out of her seat, one hand holding her hat through the change, until she straightens. ”I’ll invite you over, once I’ve done it.” The best goodbye for now she can offer. Then, with a nod, she turns on her heel to depart, thumbs hooking into her belt loops as she heads into town to finalize more steps of departure.


[FIN]

Colt

Feels like I'm falling again but I'm already on my knees