apassingafternoon | between two points

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.

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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.

"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.

"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."

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.

"'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.

"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.

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.

Roland half-smiled, a thin, bitter thing that was little more than a twitch. He didn't think her cooking was that terrible. She was certainly no chef, but he'd eaten far worse on the trail and been grateful for it; he wasn't about to complain. But she was right, it was anticlimactic, and felt discordantly everyday. Then again, he knew as well as anyone that life didn't stop just because you were hurting. So he nodded, getting to his feet to head into the kitchen.

"If I go after him, he'll blacken my eye and refuse to listen," he said, with some certainty. "He's left because he's afraid of what he'll do if he stays. When he's regained himself, he'll come back. Until then..." He shrugged. "He has his guns and his training, and by the looks of things, he's not injured. I wouldn't worry overmuch." As if there wasn't that nagging fear at the back of his mind that ka might have another twist in the tale.

"You say that, and yet ..." It was only right that Roland still be concerned. Of course Bert was perfectly able to take care of himself but that didn't stop anyone from worrying. With a gentle roll of her eyes Nariko joined him and found the ... Well, she called them heat mittens, but whatever they actually were she used them to get the chicken out. "Oh, dammit, it's kind of burned." Yes, discordantly everyday was the best way to put it.

"He's less likely to punch the girl that's in love with him. If he isn't back by the time we go to bed, I'll ask her to at least find out where he is. I'll sleep easier that way." And they could pretend Roland wouldn't mind one way or the other if that was easier.

Roland didn't answer, at least not with words; he replied with a curt little nod instead, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. When he did speak, it was only to say "Is there enough of that for the three of them to eat too, or should we put something else on to cook besides? In my experience, almost dying can be hungry work."

Nariko found a fork and poked their dinner a bit, still pouting with all the maturity of an eight-year-old. It was supposed to be baked chicken over rice and some of the vegetables she had bought. It … Sort of looked like that? "There's enough. I'll make them plates but I don't think Alain will be coming down to join us again." As he well shouldn't, but on the off chance it would be here for him. Right now she focused on feeding herself and Roland in a silence that wasn't entirely peaceful on her end. Still, she kept her mouth shut until both places ended up on the table and she gave him a look. A you need to eat and I will sit on you and shove it down your throat if need be look.

It might have been better than what followed, for as repetitive as it happened to be. "When we go back," When they made it home. When they didn't get to, as Bert put it, 'cozy up and fuck around' anymore: "I have to deal with the rest of my family. With Farim." If there was something to be done at Gilead, bodies buried, goodbyes said, things gathered? That was fine. Of course she would be there for him, for all of them. But there was no 'can I' or 'can you manage to not over worry while I go deal with the remains of a suddenly extinct lineage?'. "Even if Kaine's right and they're all dead, they deserve at least this much."

Edited 2015-03-04 05:53 (UTC)

Roland nodded, sitting down at the table with his eyes on her. "Of course they do," he agreed, sounding, if anything, rather surprised that she thought it was necessary to say so. "I'll be at your back, if you wish it. If not, you need only say."

As for himself, the thought had occurred to him that he might have to return to Gilead. And he had immediately set it aside. Working for a year, the three of them might perhaps manage to bury all their dead and collect all they needed; that would be a year wasted on a dead place and a dead past. If they did return, it would only be to try and collect the Grapefruit.

Was it really so surprising? Really? Of course what was far more important here was that no past mistakes would be repeated. "I think, considering how dangerously tempted I am to take up drinking for the next decade assuming the former is probably the best course of action." And maybe that should not have been said with her usual cheerfulness, but oh well. It was true. She felt as much guilt as she did anger, and that was a combination that couldn't be repressed for too long.

"What's really sick about it ..." She poked at her food, trying to pin herself with the same hardheaded dedication she had given to Roland. Food was necessary even if it felt as if she couldn't really keep any of it down. "Is that I actually feel better." Quickly, she waved a hand just to make sure there was no misunderstanding here: "Not Gilead, I mean everything else."

He shook his head slowly, and started eating. It was well over a minute before he said, without looking up, "It's over. And some of us survived. There's a relief in that."

More relief than he wanted to admit to, frankly. He had been fighting this war for four years, and feeling more and more pinned down by it. He had never expected to win. To be free of it, and to have most of his tet still alive, was a great weight lifted from his chest, even with the grief and pain of it pressing him down. Somehow, the lightness of it was worse.

Relief wasn't a big enough word, and even though she ate - far quicker than usual, thankfully without any loss of manners - there was no taste. It was an automatic set of motions to follow. Auto-pilot, as Kaine would say to her if the sensation was described. Something else bothered her about it all, nagged at the edge of her feelings and would create inevitable problems, but every time she thought to speak on it another mouthful of food went into her mouth.

"Something to be said for just ..." She laughed, but it was humorless. "Starting the process of letting it go." So the lightness might not be so acrid once all of this became a hard set reality, once the first stages of grief were out of the way. That would be a long time from now, and she stopped herself from thinking about it. "At least there's tomorrow."

And the day after, the day after that. Maybe it was enough to be grateful for a fact as solid and undeniable as that. The suns would come back up and they could deal with things as they arrived.

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between two points

Very, very true

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