apassingafternoon | between two points

The journey was largely uneventful.

They passed some angry yaks and Kaine's 'skirt' fell off and she squealed before she fumbled it back on but that was about the extent of things. It took the entire afternoon and the sun had long fallen by the time her home/little compound made itself known, even against the mountains. Just as she had thought the lights were on inside and her animals made their familiar, happy shuffling noises. Shivering, Kaine didn't bother to explain a damn thing just yet, no matter how many questions might linger on Alain and Cuthbert's tongues. She undid the strings to her gate to let them in and then quickly closed and retied it from the other side to help keep the wolves out.

As they traveled up the little stone path to her door Kaine could smell dinner and suddenly she knew with frightening clarity that Roland and Nariko hadn't gone anywhere. Maybe into town but returning to Roland's world wasn't currently on their mind. That didn't bother her but she knew it would only further aggravate Bert who was already in a shit mood and poor Alain who was in pain and shouldn't have been traveling at all.

Kaine opened her door and sighed even as she heard a gun unholstering and knew from its soft whistle that it was Nariko's.

"You're not shooting me in my own fucking house," Kaine said, raising a brow at her best friend. Her ex-lover. "... How did you even find a dress that tight?"

Because it was certainly that, a rich blue and figure hugging, paired well with her dark hair left down, too genuinely Nariko-ish for Kaine to believe this was some odd dream she was still having in the corners of her brain. They were here and Nariko was alive. Roland was alive. Kaine couldn't see the telltale ring on either of them. That crazy bitch-god had kept her word and brought her back, let Roland go find her. Kaine had never believed in anything but even though her expression remained deadpan she suddenly wanted to praise any God that might listen to her.

"Wei." Nariko answered but her voice was thin and uncomprehending. "Why are you - how?" Her eyes darted to Alain and Cuthbert as if unable to fully understand their existence, Kaine could clearly see her friend trying to puzzle out what the hell was going on but she gave up halfway through. Her gun went back to the table and Kaine gave up before she started and let herself be pulled back into those familiar, warm arms, the protective grip.

"I'm home." She didn't know if anyone heard it, didn't really care. Shit was going to hit her own fan, but Kaine earned these few seconds.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

askthelookout

"Ask Al," Bert retorted. "He's our fucking wizard, apparently." His own head was starting to ache, and although he'd been doing his level best to stay on decent behaviour - he really had! - it had been a long walk under shitty circumstances, and Alain's refusal to talk to him (thanks to the headache, Bert knew, but it still stung) had hardly helped his temper. "Where's Roland?"

"Wondering how tired you are, that I could come up behind you that easily." Roland holstered his guns, looking between the two of them - Bert scowling and snapping, Alain pale and sick-looking - and any relief he might have had at seeing them seeped away as fast as it had come. "What tidings, gunslingers? I take it none good."

At that, Bert laughed, loud and hard, throwing his hands up in the air. "None good, he says? None good, as he sits in his comfortable house, fucks his wife, takes a fucking vacation. No, Ro'. None good." His hands, at his sides, bunched into fists. He looked very much as though he was about to break something, cry, or both, and Alain's hand on his shoulder only seemed to make matters worse. In the end, though, he only took the horn from his belt, that he'd retrieved when they awoke, and shoved it hard into Roland's hands. "Jamie's dead. Farson won. Gilead's nothing but rubble. And you weren't there. Here's your bedamned horn, though you never sounded it when the time came. Some fucking son of the Eld."

"Bert..." Alain began hoarsely, but he might as well have been talking to thin air. Cuthbert's fists flexed at his sides, and he shoved past them both, back out of the door and into the darkness. Roland looked as though he'd much rather have been hit. He stared down at the horn in his hands, looking stricken to the bone. He didn't even attempt to hide it, swaying slightly where he stood, like a stone statue buffeted by a gale only he could see. But he was still present enough to put a restraining hand on Alain's shoulder when the latter moved to follow Bert.

"Give him space," he said, his voice sounding hoarse and ragged and somehow aged. "Fuck knows we need it."

From:

apassingafternoon

Apparently the shit flew real quick. Kaine and Nariko had enough time to part, to witness the entire violent, upset, and emotional affair. It was ironic to her that they needed space. They'd all had a literal world between them, how much more fucking space could they get? Kaine sighed, looked up and wasn't surprised to find that Nariko's gaze was worried and fixed on Roland.

"Alain," Kaine found her voice again, "You need to rest, do you think you can make it to your new room?" A temporary one, of course, but the one thing about Kaine's house that, yes, Roland and Nariko had definitely been fucking in, was that it had more than enough space for five people. Right now she could only focus on what remained in her control. Bert wouldn't listen to anyone right now, Roland was entirely outside of Kaine's jurisdiction. Alain could be helped.

Nariko, meanwhile, let go of Kaine but did not immediately touch Roland, either, she was only at his side, keeping her attention on all three, just visibly on her husband. "Sitting might be a good idea."

It wouldn't make the revelation any easier, nor any less painful but he looked ready to fall over and the last thing he needed was a concussion.

From:

atouchofka

"I can," Alain allowed, but his eyes, too, were on Roland. Setting down the book and Trish's box with great care, he ran a hand back through his hair, frowning. "But I'd sooner not." His Touch was still weakened by the spell earlier, but he hardly needed it to feel the waves of grief and guilt coming from Roland. Quietly, he put one hand on his friend's arm, clasping just below the elbow. There was nothing magical in that touch; only a reminder that he was there, and that he understood. It could never be enough. But it was something.

"We made a sizeable dent in his troops," he said at last, his voice low but level. "They came from one side. We should have bought enough time for most of the civilians to get out through the crypts. If not... Ro', we did all we could. You could have done no more."

"I could have been there." Roland's voice hardly sounded like his own. It was thick, muffled, and lacked all his usual clarity; it was, in short, the voice of a man on the edge of breaking. "I thought we had more time. I thought..." His voice trailed off, and he put the horn aside, on top of Alain's burden. "Kaine's right. You should rest."

From:

apassingafternoon

"Everyone was out of that," Kaine's tone was far gentler than she thought possible, especially considering whom she was speaking to.

"There was no avoiding it. They did everything in their power and then some. If things weren't the way they were Alain might not have thought to save us the way he did. It's not - I know it's not enough, Roland, but there were thousands." And she knew that didn't make up for losing an entire, massive home, one with years of history, but Alain and Bert were here. If not for Kaine being a dumbass, for Alain's desire to just put them back together again there wouldn't be anything at all. It wouldn't be anytime soon but maybe one day Roland would know that was valuable, too.

"Alain," Kaine's voice firmed. "He's your dinh you have to listen to him, right? Or whatever that implies. You can at least come upstairs so we can do something about your headache." She paused, and smiled but her tone was utterly humorless. "I'll drag you if I have to, and don't think I can't pull it off." So maybe don't argue so much. Roland was going to feel like shit one way or the other, whether Alain stood around or not, and it wasn't as if Nariko wouldn't look after him. Or, judging by what Kaine felt, she might end up being the lightning rod.

From:

toweredingly

"He's my dinh, and he's grieving," Alain replied, rather sharply, but he let go of Roland's arm, looking up to meet his friend's eyes. "If you need me, Ro', you know where to find me. I'll give you a fuller report when you're ready."

Roland nodded, mute. As Alain moved to follow Kaine, though, Roland found his voice, enough to say in low, hoarse tones, "I'm glad. That you came. That you saved them. Thankee, Al."

Alain shook his head. "One from many," he reminded Roland, just as quietly, and closed his eyes. "Jamie died quickly, and well. Remember that." And with that, he turned to stumble away, his hand on his temple.

That left Roland, still standing stock-still. After several moments, he pressed his lips together tightly and looked at Nariko. "Your kin will have suffered a great loss, too," he said. "I'm sorry."

From:

apassingafternoon

Kaine sighed heavily and resolved to keep her mouth shut unless her life somehow depended on it. When Alain was ready to go she lead him to the stairs and up them. Nariko and Roland would be in one room, but between theirs and Kaine's was an empty guest space.

Nariko leaned against the edge of the couch, knowing better than to push Roland into saying or acting before he was ready.

"Thank you, but I'm not going to deal with that just yet." It would be tucked away until she was alone, or until she couldn't bear to keep it to herself anymore. "There's no use in telling you it isn't your fault, is there?" Why was she even asking useless questions? That was a better question. She hesitated just slightly but settled for gently touching his hand. Nariko wanted to pull him into a hug but seeing as she was the reason he hadn't been there ... Well, she would understand if he didn't want to deal with her.

From:

toweredingly

"No," Roland replied shortly, but he clasped her hand tightly, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. For a moment, he stood there, steadying himself as best he could. Then, at last, he moved to sit down. After a little while, mostly for something to do with his hands, he began to roll a cigarette.

"We'll have to take a few days to recover, of course," he said, not looking up at her. "Alain looks as if he's like to faint at any moment, and Bert's struggling too, by the looks of him. And we'll need another trip into town, for we're provisioned for two, not five. Then we'll head out, as we planned. Say, a week from now."

He spoke coolly, matter-of-factly. It was the only way he knew how to be. What good would it do to scream and wail? He would cry later, grieve later. But if he let himself feel it now, really feel it, then it would destroy him.

From:

gunslingerqueen

Sitting wasn't a bad idea and Nariko took her place beside him, let him plan and organize because it was what he still had control of, and because there was no such thing as accepting the entire gravity of the situation. That would take days, weeks, months, and years of unpacking and it would only ever sting less, it would never be anything but painful.

"There's still enough money to get everything we need, so that's one less concern." Her hand found its way to him again, on the space between his shoulders blades and then pressing, running up and down. Maybe her own form of a cigarette, but mostly to keep herself from saying a whole host of things that wouldn't do any good.

"So, how long before Bert tries to knock me on my ass?" That was meant to be funny, darkly funny of course, but still! Unfortunately it came out a little too genuinely.

From:

toweredingly

"He won't." Roland looked up at her, sighing a little. "If he was going to knock either one of us down over this, it would have been me, and he would have done it already. He won't blame you."

That, of course, was a lie. But it felt like a necessary one, and if Roland knew Bert, then it wasn't entirely a lie - he strongly suspected that most of the blame was going to be shared out between Alain, Roland, and Bert himself. Nariko had done nothing wrong. She had only been the catalyst, and Roland thought that, on some level, Bert certainly knew that.

It just might take him a long time to figure it out.

He sighed again, tucking the cigarette between his lips and resting his hand on her leg. She was there. That was something - even if it didn't fill him with that heady relief any more, knowing for certain what it had cost.

For a long time, he just sat there, unlit cigarette in his mouth, hand on her leg, eyes downcast. At last, he said in a low voice, "I guess we knew it was coming. But that horn should have been sounded by the Eld's blood."

From:

gunslingerqueen

Oh, it was definitely a lie, and not one she was stupid enough to believe. Whether Bert might settle out into some other belief or not wasn't the point. For now he would be upset until he cycled through the whole thing and if someone was getting hit then it only helped to be prepared. Through that and the silence, she continued to touch him, though every so often the specifics of it changed. A little massage, a gentle scrape of her nails, that sort of thing. Patience wasn't usually one her virtues but for Roland it seemed she could find a well of it.

"I suppose it should have." And she only said that much because no amount of convincing would change his mind. Whether he had been there or not, no matter who had been behind it ... Nothing would have changed. People still would have died, been hurt, and Gilead would have fell. But it wasn't going to feel that way for him. "But even so, I don't think it's purpose was undermined any, Roland. 'One from many', that doesn't change just because of a world stuck in the middle." It was a romantic thought but one she still thought held merit in its own way.

From:

toweredingly

"I kennit," he said quietly, leaning into her touch a little. Reaching into his pocket for his tinderbox, he lit his cigarette and smoked for a moment in silence, watching the thin little wisps of smoke drift up towards the ceiling. "It isn't that it would have changed anything for me to be there." Although he couldn't shake the feeling that it might have done. He could have killed more of them, even if it was only as one more man in an army; he could have laid traps or set ambushes; surely he could have done something. But she wouldn't believe that, so he didn't say it. "Gilead was born with the line of the Eld. It feels wrong that it didn't die the same way. I should have been there."

And yet, he hadn't been. And he could see that clearly, and see it as ka. It hadn't been his ka to die on Gilead's walls. Anything else was grief talking.

From:

gunslingerqueen

"Maybe it would have changed something," She acknowledged. "But what really hurts is knowing that even if something had changed even slightly, the ending probably would have been the same. Or it might have been infinitely worse." But there wasn't any better and that was the worst part of the grief. Still, she spoke very gently, having absolutely no desire to turn his emotions from grief to anger.

"Gilead was never going to be your ending. You said it as many times, believed it, and probably still know it in your heart. That it's gone this way doesn't meant you didn't spend years defending it, and years fighting every form of resistance, you aren't invalidated and neither is the line of Eld. You're still here, and the three of your are still parts of Gilead." She dared to wrap her arm around his shoulders and squeeze gently. "... Granted, none of it feels that way. Throwing up nails would hurt less."

Or maybe that was just how she felt about her family.

"But you still deserve to hear it even if you won't believe it."

From:

toweredingly

Roland let himself be held, even putting an arm around her in return. His injured arm was throbbing dully, but he almost welcomed that. It was a pain that he knew how to deal with. Right now, that made it practically a respite.

Tapping ash off his cigarette, he pressed his lips lightly to her temple for a moment and closed his eyes. "Thankee," he said, his voice almost inaudibly low, and turned away again to go back to smoking. After a little while, he said, "Throwing up nails would hurt less and achieve more than this fucking guilt. I kennit. Fault lies in one place," he added meditatively, "with he weak enough to lay blame." He needed to stop being that weakling. So did Bert, although that might take a while.

From:

gunslingerqueen

"'How do we learn to walk and ultimately run'?" She answered it herself. "By falling down, we crawl back up and keep going. There's no sense in being upset that you fell, or that you feel a certain way about falling. It's a part of the process as anything else." Her father always used to say that and for the most part it had ... Made her a little more reasonable, not necessarily made her feel better. "Only getting up halfway and never really walking again would qualify as weakness." At least that was how she felt about it.

"Also, the only thing that might be genuinely achieved from throwing up nails might be an infection, and then it would be such a pain to talk or even frown at people, and what's life without any of that?" It was sort of a weird, vaguely humorous thing to say. She tilted her head in a bit to kiss his forehead, nothing but comforting affection in it. "And you've nothing to thank me for. You're bound to the worst of it, if you need something I can give, of course its yours." And that might mean giving him space, being near him every instant, or giving him more control because he felt a lack of it. That was just ... How she loved. Nothing more, nothing less.

From:

toweredingly

"What I need," he said after a long time, "is a trail under my feet and a reason to keep walking it. Until then, that you're here is enough." Not enough to make the pain go away, of course. But he didn't expect the pain to go away. If there was one thing he'd learnt, it was that grief moved like a rot; it might be held back from cankering any deeper, but it could never be entirely shifted, not without cutting that part of yourself out entirely. And he wasn't ready to do that yet. He would carry it with him, and when he reached the Tower...

"I'll sing all their names," he said, and didn't realise for a moment that he'd spoken out loud.

From:

gunslingerqueen

A fair amount of that could have been unbearably painful to hear and in many respects it was, but, again: It could be packed away and dealt with later on. Besides, it was never any big secret that he needed his Tower and his near storybook quest. That was just how things were, and sobbing about the obvious and inevitable wouldn't do any good.

"Hm." No, he didn't realize at all, but Nariko wouldn't point it out, either. "This is a bit anticlimactic, but you still need to eat dinner. It probably won't be as terrible as yesterday." And to be fair it had looked pretty horrible yesterday (Nariko no longer trusted 'casseroles') but been edible. Or it must have been since she had yet to accidentally murder her own husband through cooking. "And are we all just waiting for Cuthbert to return whenever he feels like it?"

Leaving him out in the middle of nowhere in a strange world was a horrible idea, but maybe it was better for Kaine to go after him.

between two points

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags