(o) you're not the same, you died along the way

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

She curled in on herself, more and more with every did you know. They were slaps to the face, a punch in the gut one example after the other, and lit up her selfishness like lightning strikes on a storm-black night.
"I didn't know," she all but whispered, sick to the stomach with guilt. "How could I... I wasn't there. And you didn't tell me." A weak excuse; she could have tried to find out. Somewhere in the chaos between stepping back into Torchline, being sent packing and that argument by the lighthouse, she could have tried to learn something about what had happened in the year since she passed. Her only defense was the shock of transformation, the pain of rejection... temporary insanity, perhaps, but she wouldn't even try to offer those up.

This wasn't about earning forgiveness, anyway. She had no right to expect it.

"I am sorry," she said all the same. And found to her surprise, that she actually meant it. For so long, she had been completely numb to her own actions. Almost satisfied with the streak of cold brutality she had uncovered in herself, like it was some kind of accomplishment. Finally she had not been weak anymore - ha. What a masterpiece of a lie. "For not going to you directly. For dragging innocents into my own problems. I was wrong." She bit her lip, and rubbed her eyes with scarred hands, fingers still puckered and wax-like from too close proximity to fire. A mark of guilt, really. "If you allow it, once he wakes up... I'd like a chance to apologize to Nate, as well. Make it up to him, somehow. Though I can understand if either of you would rather I just stay away."

It may be difficult, considering the war. But if that's what they agreed on, she would steer clear.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“No, you didn’t know.” He agrees through grit teeth, hearing her weak excuse for what it was. “You weren’t here. How was I supposed to even try to tell you? I sought out Delphia. She yanked my soul around inside me and told me to forget everyone I ever loved in order to hear your last words.” This, he knows he’s told her before but some petty part within him wants her to understand. “And when you came back after everything had happened, after how we parted last, you want me to tell you everything that’s happened? That maybe if I had you’d have come to me first instead of taking it out on Nate?” He shakes his head, a little scoff of a sound leaving him as he runs a hand through his hair, snagging on the horn that curls through the dark waves of hair.

There’s another part of him that wants to tell her that she isn’t sorry, that he doesn’t believe her, that he’s spent too many times an inch away from death to have all his cylinders firing perfectly. “You should be.” He mutters instead, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “And yes, you were wrong.” Because not only had she endangered so many people with her recklessness, she’d proven exactly just what everyone had wanted him to do.

Be something else. Be someone else. To talk when he wasn’t ready to, to try and understand things he wasn’t ready to. As if he didn’t already have enough on his plate.

“You need to be the one to tell him what you did.” He decides after a long moment, wings flaring as he relinquishes the way he tried to close in on himself. “It’s not my sin to share.” Just as the clinic wasn’t his at all. And it isn’t going to be something he harbors close to his chest, a secret for him to tell when it isn’t his place.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

The mention of Delphia's name made her lip curl. "Believe me, I would like a very long and thorough discussion with her about that," she intoned, quiet and with a flash of anger passing by. "I never set any conditions. I hope you can believe that, if nothing else. All I wanted was for you to know that I - " But she broke off. Swallowed back words that no longer felt quite as true as they had once been. Besides, he already knew. She had delivered that message herself, no thanks to the demigod of Mort.

But with that came also the end to her justifications. The rest was simply bludgeoning, a rehashing of what-if's and maybe's that saw her wanting to fling her arms out in exasperation. Instead Maea only curled in tighter on herself, wishing she was a hundred miles away. The worst part wasn't even the pain. It was the realization of how diminished she had become in his eyes. Petty and pathetic, recklessly dumb, selfish - the list went on parade through her head as he spat her words back at her.

She bit down on the impulse to explain why she was telling him all of this. Maea realized that it didn't matter; he wouldn't care, either way.

"Of course," she replied, subdued. "I never meant for you to do that. I only wanted to give you the chance to determine when. So I don't do more harm. You know Nate better than I." Obviously. Whatever friendship that might have been budding between her and the blue-eyed man was probably long beyond salvaging at this point.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“I know.” Sunjata says quickly, waiting until she breaks off to swallow hard himself, hands trailing across his scarred face to his temple where he applies some pressure for the migraine that’s begun to start. “And I do believe that. Now. Because you’re this upset about it.” And he can see just how upset she is just in the same ways that he is, spewing words back and forth, arguments that go round and round in a circle again.

But he isn’t the same as he once was and all that fire he’d spouted have him closing off, softening, retaining his anger and frustration because he isn’t his father.

So he takes a few steadying breaths, drops his hand from his face, grabs the lantern and starts to decorate the paper he’d applied to the frame with little lines to keep the trinkets he intends to add into a straight line. A creative outlet instead of simply spurning and burning himself out.

He’s learning.

“He has a lot to hear about when he wakes up. I’m not sure how he’ll take it all but you can just… Send him a letter when he does wake up. See when he wants to meet, maybe.” He suggests, his voice accented and flat, long forgetting the banshee that stands in the corner of their quiet spot of the Oasis.

And suddenly, Sunjata wonders if perhaps the Oasis is simply cursed to him.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

She could only nod, because any words she tried to put on the storm within clogged up the throat and made her feel ill. Sick to the core, with what she had become. And the sad part was that it was really no one's fault but her own. Whatever darkness that touched her soul had curled up and festered where a spark once had resided, until it seemed that bitter ichor was all she consisted of, these days. A viper through and through.

The letter was a good idea. Something she ought to have thought of herself, though perhaps the lack of distance had ruled it out as an imposition on whoever had to deliver it.
"I will do that. Thank you."

She began to stir, then. Pushed up slightly, and peered over the edge to make sure the banshee had disappeared. Only when the forest edge was clear did she fully rise to her feet.
"I should leave you alone," she murmured. It was an offer, really, to remove herself - now that she had thoroughly spoiled the mood and ruined his day. "Sorry, for breaking the promise. About not talking of the past. I just... had to come clean." Before something, or someone else could use her secrets to sow seeds of mistrust.

It was enough if she did so on her own.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

It’s a tough situation – made only that much more difficult by those he had blamed for the fires, for lumping it all together with the main one that had targeted him mostly directly. But they had been flames that were placed when he wasn’t even there – burning the last few dregs of trust that he’d had with Torchline. It’s what drove him to ascend Nate into governing with him.

It’s what drove Safrin to pin that knife wedge between them. It’s what made him step down, leave, for the betterment of Torchline supposedly. And now he has to sit here, lines drawn, choosing the Ascended and giving up the one thing he’d wanted to keep safe during the war that looms on the horizon.

Perhaps Maea’s internal conflict stirs that unrest within him, that realization that: No, he doesn’t get to keep his husband safe in the war as he had wanted to do, as Frey had offered to do. Because the Voice needed him to make a difference in the upcoming war and Maea had simply drove her own knife in between the two Ascended when the true battle still lies ahead.

He finishes the lines, working out his frustration in the form of a feathering jaw, in the way he only glances up slightly as she agrees to his suggestion of a letter. “Mhm.” He offers, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He’s at a loss for words.

“If I’m being honest, I’m glad you did tell me.” He admits, focusing on the lantern as he starts to piece little red plates of metal and cherry wood in little details along the paper. “Can I ask you something before you go?” And he pauses, pinning the last piece of the first line of rope with the decorum on it to lift his shadowed steel to her pale face. “Is there anything else you begrudge me for that I should know about?”

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

Pausing as he spoke up, her gaze came to rest in the back of his shoulders. These wings were different from the ones he had gained when she still knew him well. A stray thought had her wondering if they were as sensitive as the bat ones. Whether a simple touch still was enough to set him aflame. Or whether these membranes were armored in more ways than with simple scales. There was no itch to reach out and try; and in a rare moment of clarity she was grateful for this unfeeling body of hers. Just imagine, how lost she would have been if she could still scent the fragrance of whiskey and smoke and ocean salt she once inhaled like a breath of life.

It was enough that her soul ached, from the question he asked her. "No," Maea sighed. "Everything else I begrudge myself for. That I couldn't be more open and sharing - if I was then none of this might have happened. If I wasnt jealous of Nate, if I never followed you into that argument... if I only stayed and tried to work things out instead of leaving for Halo. If only." She wrapped her arms around herself and smiled bitterly at the shadow of him cast on the grass. How she had been willing to beg, just to sit in his shadow.

"I don't even blame you for not being content with only me. I did, for a while, but over the years I have come to understand and accept that it's just not who you are. And just because I'm not able to share myself so freely... doesn't mean you should have to limit yourself. So. I suppose we were always doomed to split. We're just... too different."

It left only regret, really. Regret and sorrow and an aching void in her chest where a heart once had beat.

"I am glad that I won't have to fight you, though. I couldn't do that. Even now, I still - " She broke off. Bit her tongue. "You still mean something. I am sorry for all I've done that caused you harm, or pain. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted, or give you what you needed. That's all I ever really wanted. To be enough."

For a moment there was silence. A chance for him to respond, should he wish. Maea hoped her lapse would have gone unnoticed; it was pointless to discuss, anyway.

If he said nothing, she would simply leave. Flicker and be gone, just another banshee to wail her grief into the disquiet.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

It’s simply impossible for Sunjata to say nothing in the face of everything. But he can get his frustration out in a creative way rather than bottling it up. It’s what he does as he focuses on making those lines, of placing those strings of what look like scarlet scales all up and down the edges of the paper, little trinkets sprung throughout. He only pauses when he’s halfway done, plated armor of his dragon shift that mimic those little scales creep up his neck and shoulders like a turtleneck sweater. But instead of protecting him from the cold, it’s to protect him from the things she says, a reaction to often hard and difficult conversations.

“It’s not just that, Maea.” He rumbles quietly, working his jaw a fraction more before he sets the lantern down to look over at her, to her pale skin, pale eyes, ivory hair. “I’ve mostly only ever had a tendency of trying to become something else – whatever anyone wanted of me. I tried it with Phoebe. I tried it with you. I tried it with Safrin until I couldn’t stand it anymore. But I wasn’t ever going to fit those molds that everyone wanted me to be in. I could shave off pieces of myself to try and get the jagged edges to fit but they were never going to.”

And perhaps it’s difficult to hear, but this conversation has become something else entirely in comparison to what they’ve said before. “I’ve lost myself with trying to become something that I wasn’t. And despite all the jagged pieces and the terribly intricate key I actually am, Nate’s my lock. I think he always has been.” Nate had been the only one that could handle him, that could fit all the broken bits and pieces and never once asked him to be different. Even with Kamaria’s arrival, with their little break, Nate had known deep down that it was coming from a place with good intentions.

“It’s nothing on you or me at the end of the day. And it doesn’t mean that you didn’t mean anything to me. I still have your lantern, after all. I still lost my mind for months after you died. But I wasn’t going to ever be enough for you and still be myself. Just like you weren’t going to be enough for me without giving up who you are.” His accent’s grown thicker but he’s managed to work through his frustration, to get better at his wording, to try and get his feelings across and actually stick with them rather than letting himself constantly get stepped on, infantized in his response and reactions to things. It's what keeps him from accepting the apology for the moment - giving himself room to stop and think rather than gut react as he's so prone to doing.

He takes a deep breath, acknowledging the way she cuts herself off from sharing too much. “Aside from dealing with figuring out what’s real or not, when you came back, I think it surfaced a lot of memories and shit I went through after you died too and it was… Tough. And I was angry. And I’m sorry, too, that you didn’t think you mattered at all to me. You did, for what it’s worth.” To this he shrugs, unsure if she wishes to stay after that deluge of information, but he watches her with the stillness of his dragon shift, all sharp edges and jagged points of scales and horns and claws, waiting.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

His response came slowly at first, measured and thoughtful. Maea remained where she was and lightened quietly, her entire being still and focused on the thoughts he chose to offer her. In essence, it wasn't really anything different from what he had told her before. Just as her own words had been more of the same. And she didn't know why, but they resounded differently within her this time. Maybe it was his tone, for once entirely free of anger or resentment. Perhaps it was simply something in herself that finally listened.

Or maybe it was just that simple acknowledgement at the end that reset the bones of a break unable to heal on its own, as long as splinters kept cutting the wrong way. Selfish as it was, Maea needed to hear it, that she mattered. That hate and resentment wasn't everything she had left behind.

For a while she merely stood there and let his words sink in. Settle deep, even after he had grown silent. The ache they left was different, somehow. A little sweeter. Not as bitter. And although a dampness left an eerie sheen rimming her eyes, she... smiled. Sad and lonely and resigned, but relieved too. She let out a sigh and it turned into a breathless huff of laughter - just a beat, just two - and her hand came up to wiped the fluid from her cheek as it overflowed.

"Thank you. I think... I needed to hear that. I'm - I'm glad you finally found your right one. I'm glad you're getting him back. I - thank you."

Overwhelmed, she didn't quite know what to do with herself. Faux tears kept rising in her eyes and she wiped at them until both her hands and cheeks glistened with that opalescent shimmer. Not a trace of the impassive mask remained; an impulse har her hand reaching for the man by the water's edge, who had been the center of her world for so long. Just for a moment - then she caught herself and let it drop back to her side.

Because that was the essence of all this, wasn't it? He was not for her to lean on anymore. And she had to find a way to live with that.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t in a fit of anger or frustration this time but simply… A thought out response, one that has him focusing on articulating what he means, figuring out the best way to say what it is. Yes, a lot of it is the same, but there’s no fury underneath it, no anger. It’s something, but what it is he can’t explain.

He’s grown silent now, letting her pick whether she wished to stay or wished to leave with his last comment made, but he still scans her now and again to see whether or not it’s helped – if breaking the promise of not speaking of the past helped prevent them from having to walk on eggshells around one another, then it was worth it.

Just because they meant something to one another once – and perhaps still do in a way – didn’t mean that they needed to avoid one another. So he extends what he can, through his frustration, coming out the other side as a different man, one less prone to gut reactions that impacted him in a way like his father had. Perhaps that’d been the lesson all along.

“You’re welcome.” He says gently, offering her a small smile as he tempers down everything else inside him, looking away from her now, back to the lantern. “I’m glad too.” Because if Nate wasn’t coming back, there would be a very different Flood that sat in the sand and earth before her – certainly not as passive, certainly not as understanding, certainly not as ‘levelheaded’ as he appears to be at the moment. “And I forgive you for breaking the promise we made about not bringing up the past.” He comments offhandedly, an attempt at a joke as he adds some finishing decorum to the lantern before he lifts it above him a little to peer at it from underneath, where he might attach a candle.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

His remark made her laugh again through the tears. "Very generous of you," she replied with a lilt in her voice now that was almost chipper. "I suppose it was inevitable."

Though it didn't really do anything, she drew in several deep breaths until she could collect herself. Again there was a moment where she had to decide whether to stay or go - and with a slight huff she turned and walked towards the lake. The grassy edge was soggy and water squished around her feet, but she didn't pay it any heed as she sat down on her heels and cupped water in her hands. Rinsing away the traces of sadness from her cheeks, it felt oddly like some purification ritual of old.

"So," she said eventually and turned back towards Sunjata. "What have you been up to, since I saw you last?" Now that she had thoroughly ruined his day, she might as well try to shift things back around again.

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“Mmm.” He agrees, the accented rumble softer in his ears than he anticipates it to be. “Like a broken record at this point.” He offers with a small shrug, already relaxing as the tension in the air lessens. He’s still upset about the clinic burning, yes, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. All it draws back to is the what-if’s, the waiting game of Nate waking up to tell him to contact Maea, and to simply… Just exist from there.

So instead, he focuses on the bottom part of the lantern, wrapping it around with little pieces of rough, partially rusted metal, more little plates to be placed around and around as a base to be attached and unattached whenever he got around to putting a candle in it as she washes the fluid from her cheeks.

Her question is a good one, one that has him thinking back on what he’s done. Not a whole lot all things considered, rare for him.  “Went to Stormbreak, got Nate back. Watered the deity. Got stuck in a shitty cave with Amun. Worked on my quest from Frey some more.” He shrugs, pausing as he sets the lantern down, wings ruffling as he moves to sit back a little. “Met the Voice officially.”

He regards her curiously now, taking a slow, even, measured breath. "You?"

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

Maea

Rest against my pillow
like the aging winter sun

There was a lot to unpack there. Perhaps the most surprising thing was that none of those items had anything to do with getting drunk, fighting or almost dying. Well. Perhaps with a few exceptions.

"Did your adventure with Amun have anything to do with an angry spirit and a tomb?" she wondered, while squinting down at the water. Little rainbows covered the surface where she had been, an oily sheen lingering. Like a snails trail of slime, only more unclean.

"I've... mostly been with Amun. Tried to visit the Voice too, but... spirits showed up instead. They wanted me to tear down the Temple shrine. Then they threw books and a shelf at us." She remained hunched by the edge of the lake, arms resting loosely on the top of her knees. She tilted her head back, turning her gaze to the sky as she tried to recall all that had happened. Sorting out the pieces she could tell someone who wasn't Ascended.

"I think I made friends with Wessex. I've been helping Amun arrange this party... Oh, and I might try to put the Loreseekers back together. Not exactly the same but... still all books and records and all that."

Only wake each morning to
remember that you're gone

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“As a matter of fact, it did.” Sunjata offers, adding the finishing touches to the lantern before setting it down and leaning back, swallowing hard as he shoves those memories away, not wanting to relive the whole getting trapped in the tomb, the body in the sarcophagus, the way it tugged on deeper, darker, well seated memories that Sunjata would much rather avoid.

He regards her about the temple shrine with the raise of a brow, moving to stand to brush off the sand from his legs before he picks up the lantern, his wings shaking out more sand from their leathery surface. “Hopefully you don’t take them up on that. That shrine took a lot of work.” He’d rebuilt it. She was there. That was… Quite possibly at the start of them with the only piece of Adam Caido seemed to have left.

Aside from Peter, of course.

“{ssay}A party? For what?” What could be so important to host a party of all things? Regardless, he doesn’t comment on befriending Wessex – mainly because the bite marks from their tryst in the room was still healing along his skin, alongside the fresher ones from Isla. “I joined Amun’s guild I think, too, though I haven’t done much within it.” Nothing aside from cleaning up Amun’s house and setting him up with better looking décor.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end