deercountry | 13 . autumn catch-all

[ He falls into step a pace behind, patient. He can read the exhaustion, the aches, but he says nothing of it aloud. ]

Any guesses what we're meant to be doing out here, other than making smalltalk?

[... Waver wasn't sure that he felt comfortable with small talk with this man. The state Anna had been in when she returned from being dead was chilling. He had never imagined that she was so fragile, and he swore to himself in those moments to never give her reason to seem so hollow again. However, a crucial part of that would come from understanding what had driven her to that state... And part of it meant understanding this man.]

Not sure. I went to bed with my better half, but woke up out here. Its probably a test...

[He glanced over his shoulder briefly. ]

Or, an opportunity.

This is Cloverfield's month, and he's lonely. Maybe you weren't far off about 'the power of friendship'.

Not a big believer in Mother Mercy, huh?

[ She's been interesting to him for a while now. ]

You might be onto something.

[Cloverfield is his Patr--

-- no, he wasn't going to say that. Waver compulsively but his lip. Revealing Patrons was akin to selling someone your Sun Sign, but he wasn't ready to take risks. Instead, he picked out something more neutral. ]

... Haven't you heard that stories from the Sleepers who arrived here from that child's dream?

They don't trust Mother Mercy. I bet they have good reason not to.

In bits and pieces.

[ This is a vast understatement, but also kind of true. ]

Fair enough. I missed out on the dream, though it sounds like that wasn't my loss.

Agreed-- but I imagine we've both had our share of problems without being in it.

A few.

[ Funny understatement if this guy knows about July. ]

You been in town long?

[He knows Enough-- enough to have worried himself sick quite literally, but also enough to register John as Not An Immediate Threat. ]

I got here in time for my first month to be straight out of Thirty Days of Night. I asked if it was a Vampire kind of darkness or Werewolf kinda of darkness.

[A wry chuckle, dry as a cough, met his throat. ]

It was neither.

It was a Moonlight Butterfly, Go Into The Water kind of darkness.

[ He huffs a startled laugh, and the look he gives Waver as they walk is assessing. ]

And how's it treating you so far?

[The question earned a soft smile as they stepped further away from the woods, towards a rock studded field. In the distance, the horizon seemed to flatten-- almost like the edges of the cliff faces of his island homeland.]

I have my better half,

[He commented, his voice warming at the thought. ]

That's more than I have on my Earth.

[ At this, he goes quiet and wry. Exhales a soft breath. ]

I was with you for a moment there.

[ Waver's met her. There is no gold-haired woman at his side now. ]

But, hey, congratulations.

[He knew what grief sounded like. It was a hole as vast in the ocean in the pit of your chest, that rolled and roiled as if it had a will of it's own. The salt of it's waters came out in an endless stream of tears-- or in torrents of bitter words that hurt everyone that heard... But especially the speaker.

Waver knew to tread careful, but Gods were still people-- and they could be as emotionally fragile as Anna was. As he was.]

... The only time I've seen a union between a man and one of the Fae work was when the man rejected the dimension he knew entirely. He gave up everyone and everything he knew, with full understanding that he could never return.

[A strong gust whipped in from the sea that was as yet unseen, from behind the rise of the cliff's edge and the boulders that marked a path upwards to see. The salty air caught his hood and ripped it down before he could react--

He was ordinarily fair, but the pallor he currently bore carried a cast of green. Waver was tired... But didn't really care about the danger at this juncture.

He understood loss.

In a low voice and with an unwavering gaze he added:]

Honestly. I didn't blame him.

Edited 2022-10-10 15:52 (UTC)

[ This cracks open some bright surprise in him: John Gaius laughs, startled and soft. ]

Yeah. You know, yeah, neither could I.

[ It's not that this guy understands the situation, not in its hideous and layered complexity— but the broadest strokes, the gesture of sympathy? He can appreciate what's being offered, there. ]

And yet here I am, surrounded by the echo of familiarity... like a funhouse mirror... and she couldn't stay longer than a day.

[A thoughtful hum was the initial response as Waver compulsively reached for his hood, dragging it back up over his head so he could have just one small shield from the world.]

...That happened to me, at first.

[He said thoughtfully, still riding the tails of sympathy despite not having grasp of the full situation. Anna, surely, would have a fit if she knew he was showing a thread of understanding for the Emperor of the Nine Houses that slaughtered life throughout the whole of their solar system.]

The person I spent my life trying to hold again appeared before me for a day over the spring, when those ghostly lighthouses reached out over the horizon. I was overwhelmed-- but before I knew it, he had returned to the sea.

[A sigh shuddered his shoulders. Those early months without Iskandar or anyone he knew had been dreadfully difficult on every level.]

That was the month where we had no sun. I was so aggrieved that I fell for a trick and tried to walk into the sea. Obviously, I didn't. And it was only the following month, after the sun had risen, that he arrived once again and stayed.

[He gazed at the man that was God without wavering, feeling the teacherly-urge to clarify for unruly students in case he had left any room for doubt:]

What I'm saying is that it's possible she might come back to you. We don't know how the seas here works-- not that you haven't tried to understand, from all that noise on the Network.

...It's hard, but trust the process. And-- maybe keep a steady supply of glassware, in case she's hungry.

[ He listens. As he does, there is that great and terrible ache in his eyes, the weight of it bowing his shoulders. For a while it's all sympathy, all familiar weary pain.

But he doesn't like the conclusion drawn. It shows in the twist of his mouth, the flinty gloss of anger in his black and inhuman eyes. ]

And that's fine by you? Being at her mercy for all that?

[ Mariana, the arbiter of which lost loved ones they get dangled like carrots before them, and which they get to keep like rewards. ]

[It was a question for the ages; mankind, at it's very core, was always drawn towards the splendor of the sea. However, it was deeper still on for the man whose heart ached with love for someone separated from him by the unscalable boundaries of time and was only made whole once more in this world that existed on a separate plane from the one he knew.

Was the London he knew, with its crowded cobblestone streets and muddied river that was so full of poison that they couldn't eat the fish from it anymore, really just the dream of a small little squid that had washed unceremoniously ashore?]

...She represents that which my King conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia for, that which he even pressed into India seeking out for himself and the people who believed in him. That being: the freedom and limitless possibilities of the ocean at the edge of the world he understood.

[He smiled softly-- rueful, bitter, but also sweetly sad for the years he had wasted and lost in pursuit of more realistic, attainable goals. If he were honest with himself, the ideal of Okeanos was still infinitely more tangible than the possibility of him being a great magus in the twenty-first century.]

My life became intertwined with the unknowns of the endless sea the moment I stormed out of my classroom and booked a ticket for Japan. It was the Nineties-- not an easy feat for a college kid from a working-class family and barely any money to speak of.

....If anything, giving up that kind of control in my life has been a small mercy on myself.

Edited 2022-10-19 02:12 (UTC)

[ He makes a soft sound like Hmm, not quite judgmental: resigned, maybe. There's a way in which he could envy that, this ability to give in. To let it happen, and throw in his lot with the changing tides. ]

I get that.

[ And he does. It's a way to give in, right? To stop fighting the current.

But this isn't how he ever wanted that to go. He likes his ends more final - which is funny, when you think about it. John's never had a clean break at anything in his life, for all that he's tried to make them. ]

I'll be crossing my fingers, then. For your king to make it back to shore.

[ It's simpler than wanting Annabel here, or fathoming what he'd do if she was. ]

[Waver could say that John had already met the man. He could give up his name and his identity, as if it couldn't already be guessed by how few people there were from Earth's ancient history that fit his description in town. He could say a multitude of simple nothings that contained the depths of myriads in the shallow notes of a few words-- but Waver knew that he couldn't make any impact on John in a way that mattered.

He was just a man-- one who stubbornly swore to live, but whose body at that moment desperately wanted to rest.]

...And I'll have mine crossed for luck in your endeavors, too.

13 . autumn catch-all

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cw: NtN spoilers, reference to tdm thread

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