FFXIVwrite2023 12.Dowdy
Characters: Tataru Taru, Estinien Wyrmblood, Violet Fisher, Sewingway
Expansion: Endwalker
Rating: T
Notes: This fit well with an ask @karoiseka gave me! And @matrixdragon, @reassambled-dragoon, and @scrollsfromarebornrealm for outfit suggestions!
"Wicked Wenches. Both of you! Stealing a man's clothes while he's in the bath."
Tataru laughed, hands over her face while peaking through her fingers as Estinien stood cupping his naked form, glowering at her and Violet as water slid down his muscular form. The latter tossed her hair and handed the man a sealed package of smalls.
"This is an intervention long coming Dragoon. Everyone has managed to figure out how to dress themselves these past few years aside from you," Violet huffed, arms crossing.
The Dragoon grunted then tore open the package with his teeth as Tataru let out gasp as the man's hand moved and a nutkin jumped by and hurried into a corner.
"Goodness! Thancred must be back from wherever he's been," the Lalafell mused, looking back to Estinien as he tucked himself into his underbreeches properly.
"I think I look quite regal in my armor. I've certainly not heard complaints from those I've fought alongside in battle."
"Yes, but when you're not playing soldier you're with us and look like you just wandered out of a damn swamp."
"It is unfortunately true. Unless you've got your paramour around to dress you, your fashion sense is left to be desired," Tataru added delicately.
"A man of weaker esteem might take offense."
"Well it's good for us then that you've got thick skin. Now put this on," Violet ordered.
Estinien grumbled then did as he was instructed, fastening a crisp white shirt over himself before slipping into a pressed jacket. He turned as he moved to put his pants on as some modesty washer over him. Once buttoned, he turned and shrugged at the women who started to circle around him.
"Really Tataru, when is he going to need a suit?"
"A gentleman should always have a nice suit at the ready. Should Lord Borel call upon him for a gala, his rags certainly wouldn't do."
"If the Lord Commander wanted me present I'd be in my armor and he'd never bother himself with worrying about my attire otherwise."
Violet erupted into laughter while Tataru shook her head.
"Who do you think provided Elezen sized clothing and your measurements? This effort is far from our personal preferences alone. Did you think your wardrobe was going to come solely out of my own gil," Tataru asked before turning her head to call out, "Sewingway! Bring in the rest!"
"By the Fury…" Estinien breathed out as a Lopporit wheeled in a rack of new clothing.
"Alright. Let's see who else has a request…," Violet hummed, flipping through the curated outfits while Tataru held out her arms, gesturing for him to return the suit.
"Get on with it then," the dragoon grumbled, “And the hells I’m trying on all of those!”
“Nonsense. Just stand there and look pretty and we’ll take care of the rest. Sewingway, the champagne,” Tataru called, the Lopporit bringing in a tray for them.
“Bubbly at the ready miss! As well as the bombs!”
“Bombs? Why could you possibly need bombs,” Estinien inquired, watching the women pull up chairs as their helper filled their glasses.
“Oh relax. They’re just modified glamour prisms. Here, this is Lucia’s contribution,” Violet said, taking her seat and crossing her legs before grabbing a small atheric pyramid and giving it a chuck at the half-naked Dragoon.
Estinien shielded himself from the coming explosion, instead feeling a pulse of aether wash over him. Opening his eyes, he found himself unharmed and in a simple blue tunic and tights. He furrowed his brow, “While the shirt is nice, I am hardly one to flaunt my lower half like a stage player.”
“Top good, bottom bad. Got it. Next,” Tataru called out, letting Violet toss the next prism.
“Something from our dear Varshahn,” Violet announced, crossing her arms as she gave the man a once over.
Estinien turned a bit, looking down his body at the knit wool Thavnairian sweater and a loose pair of slops. “This is fine” he hummed before crossing his arms, “Can I go?”
“We’re just getting started. Here’s one from Alphy,” Violet said, chucking another prism at his head.
The Dragoon grunted as he found himself transformed again, in familiar garb: his old blue dress shirt with white slacks. “Well, at least the young Lord is ever practical.”
“Indeed he is. How nice,” Tataru sighed, remembering days gone.
“Practical and boring. Perhaps something from the First,” Viole mused, digging through the prisms.
“You roped poor Ryne into your scheme too, did you,” Estinien asked before finding himself once more rushed with aether, “WHAT THE HELLS IS THIS!?”
Violet nearly fell out of her chair as the Elezen nearly toppled over in a pair of heeled boots and leggings that left little to anyone’s imagination. Atop a short dress of sorts that let his pecks peep through a little window. Tatru giggled, shaking her head while waving her hands out in front of herself while Sewingway titled their head.
“A gift from Feo Ul it seems,” Violet laughed.
“Fisher, undo this at once or I’ll-” the Dragoon started, stomping forward in his heels.
A crack sounded out, the shoe breaking under his heavy footing causing him to fall ungracefully forward onto the tile before the two. The girls continued to chortle together while Sewingway moved to help the Dragoon get back upright and into another prism so that he could abscond out the nearest window.
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North To The Future [Chapter 14: Strong Enough]
The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.
Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, sexual content, violence, angsttttttttttt (but what else is new 🥰).
Word count: 5.3k.
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
Taglist: @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @hinata7346 @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @bearwithegg @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @elsolario @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @tillyt04 @cicaspair418 @fan-goddess @ladylannisterxo
Only 1 chapter left! The series finale will be very...eventful 💜
Ice clinks in Aegon’s rum and Coke, his fourth in an hour; lemon juice and crystalline sugar is a halo around your appletini. The sky is a watercolor painting blending from lavender to violet to indigo, clouded, moonless. Downstairs inside Ursa Minor, shadows grow longer, slanting across the red-brown hardwood floor: hands turn into claws, men into beasts, skeletal and reaching. If this was a movie or a book, you would be able to see the Northern Lights, just like you did the first time Aegon brought you up here. It would be a full-circle moment that would soften a goodbye with a homecoming. Instead, the sky offers no consolation, no hint of any grander design. Sometimes things just blink out of existence like an eviscerated star. Sometimes things are just over.
You stand together on the rooftop patio in a patch of snow that is only shin-deep, exhaling white fog that evaporates into the nightfall, drinking. You don’t speak, because speaking of the end will make it real. You don’t look at each other either. You gaze out over the channel, where dark waters ripple and boats bob in easy waves. When Aegon offers you his rum and Coke, at first you don’t understand; and then you realize he wants to trade.
“I thought you hated these,” you say as you pass Aegon your appletini, Dale’s newest addition to his repertoire. You taste the rum and Coke: solid, heavy, bitter, biting.
“Figured I shouldn’t miss my shot. How often does someone get the chance to enjoy an appletini with an Appletini?” He gives you a wry, off-balance smile as he sips it, saccharine and emerald green.
You down the rest of the rum and Coke, haul up your courage like a body from the silt of a lake. And then you ask him: “What if you went with Aemond?”
Aegon stares at you in disbelief, in betrayal. “What?”
“Back to Miami. What if you actually went?”
“Whose fucking side are you on?”
“No, really, think about it,” you plead. “They can afford to get you the best treatment, take you to the best doctors. You can go to rehab and then, maybe, maybe after you’re better—”
“You want me to go crawling back to my parents after—?!”
“Then don’t do it for your parents!” you shout, your breath short-lived mist in the Arctic wind. “Do it for Aemond and Helaena and Daeron, do it for yourself, do it for me. You’re young, you’re brilliant, it’s not too late for you to start over. You could stop running, you could make amends.”
“I killed three people. How can anyone make amends for that? Aemond lost an eye, he’s maimed for life. How could anyone make amends for what I’ve done? What would me being home do for anybody except serve as a constant reminder of the fact that I got to walk away without paying for my mistakes?”
“You’ve paid,” you say. “You’ve paid for six years.”
He shakes his head, peering into the channel. “I can’t go back.”
“You really think you can run for the rest of your life? You’re never going to get married, have children, own a house, file taxes, start a business, go back to school, keep the friends you’ve made? Aegon, think about it! You can’t even play in a band good enough to book a spot at a festival or a club without there being advertisements, magazine articles, Google search results. You can’t disappear, not in the world that exists now. You can’t disappear and have any life worth living.”
“I’ve made it this long. I’ll find a way.”
“You’ll die,” you tell him, cutting like glass, like the splinters of a broken window. “You can’t keep doing this or you’ll die. And what then?” What about me, Aegon? “What was this all for?”
“I can’t go back.” It’s an echo, mindless and reflexive, a survival instinct. There’s no reasoning with it. He drains the appletini and pitches the glass off the roof, out into the darkness.
You hear footsteps on the staircase, and again you are reminded of the night Aegon kissed you for the first time, the night he sang Everlong, the night under the Northern Lights. Then it had been Heather who interrupted you. Now it’s Kimmie. She bursts through the door, panting from the effort of scaling the steps in five-inch hot pink heels.
“She’s here,” Kimmie informs you and Aegon from the doorway, her face an exaggerated, childlike pool of sympathy, all soft edges and slick eyes. And then she hurries back downstairs.
Heather, sitting in the usual booth, is inundated by well-meaning spectators who offer sympathy, support, thinly-veiled prying so they don’t look quite so much like kids gawking at a zoo animal. They hug her and pat her back reassuringly; they buy her drinks. There is a small army of Sex On The Beaches on the table. Kimmie climbs nimbly into the booth, snuggles up beside Heather, and rests her head on her shoulder. Heather, for once, does not seem to regard this as an intrusion. Aemond, attempting not to encroach, is sipping a Caipirinha at the bar in his black Armani suit. Dale has apparently at last tired of Shania Twain songs. From the stereo drifts the wistful acoustic chords of Sheryl Crow’s Strong Enough.
You slide into the seat across from Heather and take her hands. Joyce is beside you, no book to be found. Brad and Rob are standing a few yards away, both drinking heavily, both murmuring in dazed, conspiratorial voices. “Guess the Hulk jokes aren’t so funny now…can you imagine…he did get kind of aggressive sometimes…the best quarterback Juneau’s seen in decades…but the boots…who would have guessed…?”
“I can’t stay long,” Heather sniffles. Her eyes are red, her face puffy from crying. “My parents are calling around trying to get a good lawyer. They’re in shock, they’re fucking devastated, we’re all just…just…” She crumbles into loud sobs, shoving a fistful of tissues against her nose.
“Shh,” Kimmie says, stroking Heather’s hair. “Shh, shh…”
“Heather,” you begin, not knowing how to put it delicately. “Were there any…you know…any signs? That Trent could be the Ice Fisher?”
She shrugs despondently. “You know how he is. He’s a dumbass sometimes. He gets angry…he says the wrong things…but he doesn’t kill people!” She starts crying again.
“He does fit the description,” Joyce says softly. “He’s big, he’s athletic.”
Kimmie marvels: “I can’t believe we spent all that time around him. We were totally clueless. Out in the woods with him? Hanging out together at night? Trent could have gotten any of us.”
Heather wails, mopping the tears from her face with the damp mass of tissues.
“So he’ll stay in custody?” Aegon asks Heather. “Until the trial?”
“That’s what the cops said. There’s no way he’s getting bail.” She shakes her head. “Chief Baker came to the house to talk to my parents about what was happening. What they had found in Trent’s apartment, what the next steps would be. He looked so sorry to have to deliver the news. That was nice of him, wasn’t it? He didn’t have to do that.” More sniffling, more tears snaking down her cheeks.
“Heather, please,” you say helplessly.
“I hate this,” she sobs. “I hate this!”
Kimmie holds her tighter. “Shh, shh. I know.”
“It’ll kill my parents. They were always so proud of Trent, they loved him so much…they still do, I mean, but now…now…”
“Did he say anything to you?” you ask Heather. “After he was arrested? He got a phone call, right? Did he confess, did he give a reason why? Did he say anything?”
“Yes.” She gazes across the table at you, eyes murky with bewildered, immutable horror. “He said he didn’t do it.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Heather, somewhat mollified by a number of Sex On The Beaches, asks Joyce to drive her home. As Aegon bids goodbye to Rob and Kimmie—a permanent goodbye, a remorseful one—you retreat to the bar to give him space. Brad must know about the transitory Kimmie-Aegon situation; he glares at him as he knocks back glass bottles of beer misty with condensation. Aegon is working on his sixth rum and Coke. He sways, he slurs, he blinks in slow motion.
“Can you believe it?” Dale asks as you sit next to Aemond, sliding you a fresh appletini. His bushy eyebrows are raised: incredulous, inquisitive. “Trent? Our very own hometown hero?”
“It’s disturbing, for sure. But he was prone to…outbursts.”
“Yes,” Dale says, a little vaguely. “I had noticed that.” He lumbers away to take orders. Ursa Minor is full of locals clamoring for gossip, theories, commentary, self-medication.
Aemond nips at his frosty Caipirinha, his eye fixed on Aegon. “He’s stalling.”
Why lie? There’s no shade of dishonestly that he can’t see through. “Yes.”
“It won’t work.”
You watch Aegon from across the room: the way he talks with his hands, the way he smiles crookedly beneath sad eyes, the way that lock of white-blond hair falls over his face. He’s leaving. He’s really leaving. “Show me more pictures from Miami.”
Aemond smirks. “Now you’re stalling too.” Regardless, he produces his wallet and starts leafing through a small stack of photographs. He plucks out the ones you haven’t seen yet with lithe and yet curiously dangerous hands. There are more images of Vhagar, several mansions and yachts, some of a young woman who must be Helaena—slight, delicate, intensely vulnerable—and a boy in his late-teens playing golf.
“Daeron?” you guess.
Aemond nods. “He’s the most balanced, the least damaged. He would have been Dad’s choice to inherit the leadership of the company if he was older. He’s the best of us.”
“I doubt that.” You sift through the photographs until one stuns you: an olive-skinned, black-haired man, perhaps thirty, with his arm around a woman’s shoulders. He wears a modest, strangely burdened smile, but his dark eyes are warm. “Who’s this? He’s gorgeous. And he actually looks Greek. Don’t tell me you have yet another brother. If so, I fear I might have allied myself with the wrong one.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” he says with just a dusting of sarcasm like flurries. “No, he’s Criston Cole. He’s been Dad’s bodyguard since before I was born.”
You squint at the photo. “How old is he?”
“He’s in his forties now. I know he looks younger.”
“And the woman is…his wife? Girlfriend?”
“My mother, actually.”
You raise an eyebrow. Aemond smiles bashfully, averts his gaze. “They share an affinity. He’s helped her immensely through Dad’s illness, through…well.” He gestures to Aegon with his glass. “Everything.”
“I mean…yeah. I’d probably find an excuse to fuck Criston too.”
Miraculously, this works: Aemond laughs, the first time you’ve ever heard him do it. It’s a joltingly beautiful sound. It’s like the earth waking up again at the end of winter. He gathers up the photographs, places them safely back into his wallet, sips his Caipirinha contemplatively. “You’re not stupid,” Aemond says. “You have to understand that there’s no way this ends with you and Aegon together.”
We were supposed to have two more months. And maybe I even dreamed of more than that.
Aemond continues: “He has to get better before it’s too late. He has to get sober. I can’t give him a new liver. Dad’s the only one in the family with Aegon’s blood type.”
You turn to him, bemused. “You’ve already thought about that.”
Aemond is annoyed, like you haven’t been keeping up. “Of course I have.” His BlackBerry beeps, and he slides it out of his pocket. He reads the onyx pixels on the screen, his eye widening. He reads them again. And then he says: “I need a phone. Immediately.”
“Okay, um, well there’s a payphone outside, and Dale has one behind the bar—”
Aemond flags down Dale, expresses that he has an emergency, is swiftly ushered to the phone. While he’s gone, Aegon makes his way back to you. He finishes his latest rum and Coke, bangs the glass down on the counter, kisses you with unaccustomed roughness, his calloused fingers cradling the arc of your jaw.
You tuck his unruly lock of hair behind his ear. “Aegon—”
“We have to leave now,” Aemond says. He’s reappeared, and he will not be ignored.
“Go buy a newspaper and jack off to the business section,” Aegon flings at him, bringing his lips to yours again, burning with dark rum.
Aemond grabs the neckline of his brother’s royal blue sweater and drags him away from you. Bar patrons glance over. You’re beginning to attract attention. “We have to leave. Now.”
“Okay, okay,” Aegon agrees; but there’s something flighty and devious in his eyes, like an animal too sly to be caged. The three of you walk back to Aegon’s apartment together, stepping in footprints already left in the snow. Each time Aegon staggers, you catch him and haul him upright again. You can’t even resent him for it. Soon you won’t be able to touch him at all.
Sunfyre is waiting when Aemond unlocks the door. He gives the golden retriever an absentminded pat on the head as he glides past him. Aegon lurches into the kitchen, where the mugs are still waiting on the counter for the hot chocolate he never made. And then he just stands there unsteadily under the goldenrod florescent lights. He’s run out of room to run. He’s a rat at the end of a maze, not an open door but a brick wall.
“Pack your things,” Aemond orders.
“No.”
With one powerful hand, Aemond shoves him against the refrigerator. Magnets—Las Vegas, Phoenix, Baltimore, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, many more—go flying in every direction. “Pack your fucking things.”
“No,” Aegon repeats.
“Dad’s in the hospital,” Aemond says. “He was admitted this morning. It’s bad, he has a pulmonary embolism. He might be dying. I need to be there to handle things.”
“So go,” Aegon replies dismissively.
“Not alone.” His only eye is an icy blue, sharp and ferocious; but it’s heartbroken too. “Not without you.”
“I’m not going.”
“Aegon,” he implores, he begs. “Mom can’t make these decisions alone, Helaena doesn’t have the spine for it, Daeron’s too young, we need to be there!”
“You need to be there. Not me.”
“Pack your things,” Aemond says again.
“No.”
“Then you can leave as you are.” And he lunges for Aegon, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat. Sunfyre barks franticly.
“Aegon, no!” you shout, because you realize what he’s going to do. He grabs the green mug off the kitchen counter, shatters it against the stovetop, and wields a thick, five-inch-long shard of it like a dagger as Aemond grapples for him. Aegon’s arm is lightning in the air, striking blindly. The jagged sliver of the mug connects with Aemond’s face.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Aemond roars, touching his palm to his forehead and seeing the blood. “What’s your plan? To cut out my other eye too?!”
“No.” Aegon brings the shard to his own throat and starts slicing: not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to show he’s serious. A trickle of blood flows down his neck like a string of rubies.
“Stop!” you and Aemond shriek together. He gets to Aegon first. Aegon careens away from him until his back hits the wall. Aemond knocks the piece of the mug out of his grasp; it clatters over the hardwood floor like a rock skipped across water. Aegon slaps at his brother’s face ineffectually, then finally slams his elbow into Aemond’s nose. Blood rockets, blood flows like a river. With an open palm, Aegon smears it upwards into Aemond’s only remaining eye. Aemond screams in anguish and frustration, fumbling blindly for the kitchen sink. Then Aegon reaches for his brother.
You shout: “Aegon, don’t hurt him—!”
“I’m not.” As Aemond twists on the faucet and splashes water into his eye, Aegon thieves his few consequential possessions from Aemond’s pockets: his keys, his wallet, his cash. And then he retreats to the other side of the room. His message is clear. He doesn’t want to fight; he wants to run. He wants to start running and never stop. Sunfyre scurries over to him, claws clicking on the floor, examining Aegon like a fretful mother.
You yank a dishtowel out of a drawer and go to Aemond. “It’s me, it’s me,” you say gently when he flinches away. You help clear the blood from his eye, assess his nose. Not broken, but bleeding like hell. Aemond doesn’t even look angry. He looks exhausted, he looks hopeless. Aegon watches from across the small apartment, holding his belongings, clutching them to his chest, a coward and hating himself for it.
“Six years,” Aemond says, his voice clotted with scalding blood, with an ocean of time. “For six years I tried to find you and this is what I have to show for it. You didn’t miss me at all. Not even sometimes. Not even for a second.”
“I never said I didn’t miss you.”
“But you won’t come home.”
“No,” Aegon says, like an apology.
Aemond readjusts his suit, smooths his hair. He doesn’t seem aware of the blood still streaming from his nose, his forehead. “I have to go. I have to be there.”
“Then go, Aemond. That’s where you belong.”
He stares at Aegon with a vacantness that you can feel in your own bones: excavated marrow, howling void. “This isn’t over,” he says. “All I’ve ever done is live in your shadow. I don’t know how to stop.” And then he gets his green Louis Vuitton suitcase and vanishes through the apartment doorway. You bolt after him, chasing him out into the darkness, a starless night with a cold wind that slits into your lungs like needles.
“Aemond!” you call, and he stops. “Where are you going?”
“Home. The jet is waiting.”
“But you can’t walk to the airport from here. And I’ve had one too many appletinis to drive you.”
“I’ll call a cab from the bar. You do have cabs here in Juneau, I assume?”
“Yes. Two, I think.”
“That’ll do.” He stands in the weak beam of the streetlight, heaving in labored breaths. He wipes the blood still pouring from his nose with the back of one hand. “Good luck with him. You’ll need it.” And then he’s gone, his suitcase bumping over thickets of snow and ice.
Upstairs, Aegon is dragging his own suitcase—black, tattered, Samsonite—out from beneath his unmade bed. He opens it and starts throwing in clothes: band T-shirts, sweaters, jeans, flannel. Sunfyre, whimpering, crawls under the bed and stays there.
“Aegon—”
“If my father stabilizes, Aemond will come back. If he dies, Aemond will come back. He might try to bring my mother up here, or Helaena, or Daeron, or Criston, or the whole fucking family, who knows? I have to be long gone by the time he returns to Juneau.”
“Aegon, please, think about this—”
“I already have a guy lined up to buy the Nova…I think I still have his phone number…I don’t have enough cash yet, but I will once I’ve sold the car…” He’s mostly talking to himself. He’s not really in Juneau anymore; he’s in the future, he’s in the past.
“You don’t have to go—”
He says suddenly, looking at you: “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. We’ll do this together.”
And for a second, you almost say yes. You can see it in one of those flashes, brief and inescapable like lightning: sand, surf, wild children with white-blond hair. Then reality roars back in like a storm. “What, so I can drag you off the floor, clean up your messes? So I can have a front row seat to your self-destruction? So I can burn all the bridges behind us as I follow you into exile? There’s no place for me in a future like that. That’s not a future at all. It’s a cage. It’s a different kind of cage than the one I’m in here, but it’s a cage nonetheless.” Your voice isn’t harsh. Perhaps it would hurt him less if it was. You sound patient and sad and old, like you’ve already seen it all and returned as a ghost, wearing decades of regret instead of white sheets. “And you’ll drink away the money I make, or you’ll inject it into your arm, or you’ll buy pills with it, and I’ll resent you, at first just a little bit, and then more, each time stacking up like pennies in a jar, getting heavier and heavier until I can’t feel all those reasons why I fell in love with you, I can only feel the crushing goddamn weight.”
He can’t even tell you that it’s not true. He wants to, he wants to desperately, but he can’t.
“Tell me you’ll get better,” you say in a whisper thinner than a knife’s edge. “Tell me you’ll try, at least, that you’ll go to rehab, that you’ll face your past, that you’ll make amends. Give me something, anything to hold on to. Give me a reason to leave with you. Please, Aegon, please, just give me one fucking reason.”
“I’m not capable of what you’re asking for.”
“Then I can’t leave Juneau.”
“If you walk out that door, it’s over,” he says, his eyes glassy, tiny barren oceans. “I can’t wait. And I won’t be here tomorrow.”
“Maybe that’s for the best.”
“Then get out,” he hisses. “You want to go so bad? You want to get away from me, you want to start forgetting? Just get out. You don’t need to make polite excuses. You don’t need to placate me. I understand. I understand perfectly.” And he doesn’t hit you, but it feels like he does. “Go find some painfully ordinary Juneau boy that you won’t give a fuck about. Maybe he’ll be a logger, maybe he’ll work on a fishing boat, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’ll play pool with him and you’ll stroll through Blockbuster together and you’ll let him order you beers you don’t want and sooner or later you’ll be lying underneath him, and he’ll be fucking you, and you’ll be amazed by how it’s possible to be so close to another human being and yet so far away. And you know what? The whole time you’ll be thinking about me.”
“Yes,” you answer, dripping with cold venom. “I’ll be wondering what morgue you ended up in.”
“Then get out,” he says again, he dares.
But you don’t turn to go. You don’t even move. Aegon’s gaze sweeps over you: face, down to your boots, back up to your eyes.
His lips curl up at the edges, not in a smile but something stinging, boastful, cruel. “I know what you want.”
Don’t touch me, you wish you could say, you wish you could stab him with like a blade, all the way to the hilt. I don’t want you to touch me. I don’t want you at all. But Aegon has learned every one of your languages, and he can read lies on you like scrawls of ink.
He crosses the room, buries a hand in your hair, holds you still as he skates the other into the front of your jeans. You cry out, opening your thighs for him, surrendering, ravenous. One last time. Yes, oh god, please, one last time. He yanks your jeans down to your ankles and unbuttons his own. Then he turns you to the wall. You brace yourself against it—a palm pressed to fraying wallpaper—as he slips into your wetness, becoming a fleeting visitor rather than one with you, a lover without a name, a face.
And you want it, yes, yes, there’s no ambiguity there, but still it’s agony, because it’s nothing like it was before. Aegon doesn’t whisper to you, doesn’t kiss you, doesn’t touch you anywhere that isn’t necessary. He makes you come, yes; but quickly and mechanically, like it’s a necessary task to be checked off a list, a patched roof, gasoline into his Nova. He doesn’t leave bruises on you, yes; but that doesn’t mean anything. He never left bruises on Kimmie either. When you reach back—instinctively, without thinking—to touch his face, his hair, he catches your hand and pins it to the wall. You could be anybody, and you will be: soon enough the girl standing in your place will be from Des Moines, Modesto, Scottsdale, Buffalo, Plano, Durham, Wichita, Knoxville, Fargo, Ann Arbor, Hartford. It doesn’t matter where she lives, because he won’t be there long. It doesn’t matter who she is, because that’s not why he wants her.
Aegon finishes with a shuddering gasp, is still for a moment, and then recedes from you. The sensation of abrupt emptiness is forlorn, sickening. I feel worse than I did before. How is that possible?
“Now get out,” he says, zipping up his jeans in the sepia florescent light. He can’t even look at you. He stares down at the floor instead, pretending to be scrutinizing something, a scuff or an indentation. You both know he doesn’t care about things like that. You both know he’s done with you. You dress yourself, grab your purse, and break out into the freezing darkness.
You go to Ursa Minor and clean yourself up in the bathroom, a tear-streaked ghost under stark white lights. Then you go to the usual booth. You don’t order anything, not even when Dale swings by to check in with you, his forehead crinkled with questions and worry. You don’t talk to the few locals who are currently drinking their January evening away. You just sit there, staring at the wall, not feeling time as it breathes through you: an invisible truth, a string that ties the past to the present like an anchor. Eventually, you get up and leave, climb into your Jeep, drive back to the place you’ve always called home.
You walk into the house, into the nightscape silence. Your purse drops off your shoulder and thumps against hardwood. And you stand there, not speaking, not seeing, just feeling the ionic bonds between your atoms being snipped, your veins and ligaments unweaving, pieces of you falling away until you vanish. You can feel yourself becoming transparent. The pigment of your eyes, your hair, your skin evaporates—boiled water from a tea kettle, steam off a bathroom mirror—and is replaced by the muted grayscale of Juneau. Your eyes are puddles of melted snow on asphalt, laced with salt and stray earth. Your hair is wisps of fog. Your skin is the Gastineau Channel, a silver-cold river deep with bones. It’s not that you can’t imagine a future. It’s that you’ve forgotten how to imagine anything at all.
“You’re home already?” Your mom steps out of the kitchen, drying her hands with a dishtowel. “Dad went to the Foodland. I found this neat new cookie recipe but we’re out of baking powder—”
You look at her, and she sees you, really sees you. And the totality of the understanding on her face is like you’re under a spotlight, like you’ve never had a secret and never will. “How did it happen?”
“He’s leaving Juneau. I can’t go with him, not the way he is now. That’s all.” You show her your palms, empty.
“Well, it’s not necessarily goodbye forever, is it? I mean, you can still stay in contact with him. Make phone calls, send letters…”
“There’s no point, Mom,” you say, with more despair than you intend to. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Ladybug…” She hesitates, wringing the dishtowel. “Your dad and I…we want you to be happy. You know that, don’t you? And we like having you here. We love having you here, it’s the greatest gift we could have ever hoped for. But if you need to change things to be happy…if you need to see other places, experience different things…we would want you to do that. We would want you to do whatever it takes for you to feel that you’re truly living.”
You stare at her like she’s speaking a dead language: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Gothic, Illyrian. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
I could get out of Juneau. They would want me to. “But even if I did leave one day, I couldn’t go with Aegon.” Your voice breaks, your lips tremble. “He’s too damaged. He’s too much like Jesse.”
“Oh, ladybug,” your mom says, smiling with tears in her eyes. “Aegon isn’t like Jesse.”
Of course he’s like Jesse. He’s exactly like Jesse. And that’s why he’s going to end up dying the same way Jesse did. “He’s…not?”
“Well, he is, but he isn’t. Aegon is more defenseless, more gentle, more kind. Aegon would never hit you. There’s more good in him, I think. There’s more of a chance.”
You want to believe her. It shocks you how much; you’ve never wanted to believe in anything this badly. “So you think I should go with him.”
“That’s something you have to decide,” your mom says. “And only you. Because you’re the one who has to live with the choices you make. All I can tell you is that if you see potential in someone, even a glimmer of possibility, and you don’t try with every shred of yourself to make it work…you might regret it for the rest of your life.”
A question occurs to you that is so horrible you almost can’t bring yourself to ask it. “Do you regret being with Dad?”
“No, never,” she says, and the relief rolls through you. “But I think that if I had handled things differently with Jesse, he would still be alive. I had given up on him by then. I had stopped trying to help him, I had stopped believing him when he told me he wanted to change. I wasn’t there for him at the end. And I should have been. Because it really did seem like he was getting better.” She embraces you, warmth and unconditional harbor. “If you want to run after Aegon…if even the smallest part of you does…then I don’t want you to ignore that because of your love for me and Dad. We’ll be alright. Do you hear me? As long as you’re happy, we’ll be alright.”
“Okay.” You kiss her on both cheeks and hug her one last time, your arms slung around her neck, clinging to her like a child. “Okay, Mom. Thank you. Thank you so much. I love you.”
“I love you too, ladybug. Now go. Go, if that’s what you want.”
So you go. You snatch up your purse, bolt for the door, run through the frigid darkness to your Jeep. Dim gloomy streetlights flick by overhead as you drive, snow and ice and salt crunching beneath the tires. The channel is a glistening ribbon to the west, the mountains vast ancient shadows to the east. And you think about what you’ll tell Aegon, what perfect confession you’ll make; but the truth is, you won’t need to say anything at all. When he sees you, he’ll know.
You swerve to a haphazard stop under the streetlight outside Aegon’s apartment building. You dive out of your Jeep, sprint up the steps, rattle the spare key he once gave you in the door. It opens. So does the rest of your life.
Inside, Aegon’s apartment is silent and still. The refrigerator magnets have been collected from the floor like seashells from frothing surf. The battered green electric guitar is missing. His closet is bare; the blue mug has disappeared from the kitchen counter. There are pawprints in the dust on the hardwood floor. But there’s no Sunfyre, and there’s no Aegon either.
He’s gone. He’s just gone.
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