This conversation was overdue and yet it would be a lie to say Agetta had actually built up the courage to face it. She hadn’t, not even close. She felt the fear of seeing Plume again right down into her core. But she knew it needed to happen - because she still loved him. Lying by omission had become a habit for her lately, and she did not know whether it was better that Plume was not the only victim of these lies, or was it worse?

Although she wanted Mazikeen to finally meet her sisters, she encourages the ink-splashed girl to go explore and says that they’ll meet up later. She doesn’t want her daughter to be accidentally used as a prop in this conversation - and she fears she only has the strength for one confession.

It is dark by the time she gets closer to the Pangea border, a fact that she is grateful for. The stars have always given her courage, have shown over almost all of the wonderful moments in her life. And, like the coward she is, she wonders if it will be easier to talk to Plume if she cannot easily see his face.

Agetta still hasn’t made up her mind on how she is going to say what she needs to say when she sees him, illuminated by moonlight. She feels her breath catch the way it had when she saw him in the afterlife and again when they reunited on this soil.

For a brief moment, she considers running - she’s run from her sins before. She left the consequences of her weaknesses behind in the hopes that they would no longer haunt her. Alive for over a century and she still has not fully accepted that she will always carry these ghosts with her.

So she speaks before she can give in to that impulse, calling out his name and somehow finding the strength to close most of the gap between them. “Plume.” It is instinctual to touch him but she refrains for now, knowing she does not deserve a gentle caress or the simple pleasure of his scent rushing into her. She stops when there are a few strides between them still as a sad smile softens her features.

Would it be easier, she wonders, if she did not feel that same thrill when he spoke her name? Even with the careful tone, even with his wariness, it still amazes her that she is standing here, breathing, and hearing his voice. How many times had she dreamed of him in the century she has lived without him? How many times had she wished to curl beneath his wing and smell his wild scent and hear his gentle laugh as he teased her?

And now, this is how she repays him for his love that followed her from death itself. It breaks her heart afresh to hear the sweetness there and know that in a few moments she can cause it to shrivel towards her forever.

A part of her attempts to rationalize this by reminding her Plume would not love her if he knew what she had been like when she had returned to the earth. Weak, afraid, a relic of a time long past who gave up every single time she had a chance to make a difference.

For too long of a moment she stands there silently, waiting for the right words to come to her, before she realizes that there will never be any right words for what she needs to tell him. So with a deep inhale, she just starts. Her voice trembles slightly as it comes out, soft and low in the night air. “I’m so sorry, Plume, for being as distant as I have been and for how long I let it stretch out. I’ve been a coward, thinking if I could just avoid this very conversation somehow it would wash away what I’ve done…” She is still a coward, still feels fear and self-loathing pulse through her as though they are in her veins instead of blood. Perhaps they are - she’s gone so long with them as her constant companions.

She wants to look anywhere else instead of at his face, but she knows seeing his pain is what she deserves. She should have to live with the weight of this memory for the rest of her days - until the sea finally claims her cold body.

Agetta tries not to cry, though her midnight blue eyes shimmer with the tears she fights as she continues. As her confession begins. “This spring, I gave birth to a filly that I had with someone else. I’ve… been with them, raising our daughter together.” She hears the hypocrisy as she says it - knows that she shares two daughters with Plume that she should have been with too. The shame of it causes her head to droop.

She fears that will be the part that stings the most. That it wasn’t something she had impulsively done in the heat of autumn, wasn’t something that had been forced upon her. She had made a new family, thinking she could somehow have both. Excuses and explanations begin to bubble up on her tongue but she stifles them for now, paralyzed by fear and indecision.

“I’m so sorry.” She says it again, and her leg twitches with the impulse to step forward, to touch him. But she holds herself back even though she fears she’s already felt his touch on her skin for the last time and she did not even know it.

Anger would be easier to deal with and it is not surprising that Plume does not yell or rage. The quiet sadness, the raw heartbreak, is so so much worse and although Agetta has been living with this knowledge, knew this would be a conversation they had to have, it is something else entirely to live it.

When he asks if he was not enough, she feels her legs tremble as she threatens to collapse. “Oh Plume.” She chokes on his name and takes a small step forward but stops herself before she can go any further. She’s not strong enough to watch him recoil from her if she should try to touch him. Even if that is exactly what she deserves to witness.

“You’re everything.” And then suddenly all the thoughts that have been like a hurricane in her mind come tumbling out, her voice strained as the words are joined by tears. “I know I’ve given you no reason to believe me but that’s the truth. It’s me, my failings. When you came back - it was the happiest I have ever been. And then all I could think was how you did this huge, wonderful thing to be reunited with someone who no longer deserved you.” Agetta inhales a ragged breath. There’s no ease that comes with finally speaking these thoughts out loud, no sense of lightening in her heart. She’ll continue to sink for the rest of her days, the look on Plume’s face the anchor dragging her down to the fate she does deserve.

“I’ve been alive for so long now. When I wasn’t sulking in the shadows because the world had moved on without me, I was busy making so many mistakes, letting hatred and darkness fester inside of my heart and poison me. So when you came back, I was afraid that if you knew... if you knew how different I am now to that black mare you met in the Gates, you’d know I didn’t deserve for you to cross over from the world of the dead. That I don’t deserve your love.”

It's hard to stem the flow of words now and she doesn't know if they are just plunging that knife in further - but at least she's being honest. Finally. “But I didn’t even give you the chance to know me, I just ran. I hid because I was afraid - and then I went and broke us anyway.” She'd laugh at the irony of it if she could. But she feels hollow. She looks up to the starry sky then, though she finds no comfort there. “None of it is fair - especially that I didn't even give you a chance.”

For the barest flicker of a moment, Agetta wishes she had just fallen out of love with Plume. That would be a lot cleaner for the both of them, right? A surgical removal. As if love is something with clean edges that can just be plucked out upon desire. But she does still love him, feels it pulse throughout her whole being side-by-side with the pain of seeing him actually recoil from her. She knows that if she had just tried, just found an ounce of bravery or common sense, he would have still loved her no matter what she told him. Would have helped her soothe the wounds she has collected over the years.

She doesn’t know if that is why she strayed, flinching back from a love like that after decades of fear, waste, and neglect? It’s just an excuse, like everything else. Even now she doesn’t believe him when he says he has always loved all of her. She doesn’t believe that anyone could.

But she wishes she had trusted him too.

When he asks about whether she was afraid to be honest with him, to tell Garbage all of her, her dark eyes close against the wash of guilt, hitting her from both sides. Her voice is quiet when she replies. “Of course I am. I’m just as afraid to be honest with him. He knows pieces, maybe less than you.” And she laughs, but it is a mangled, quiet, and hollow sound that is little more than a snort.

“Isn’t that just the stupidest joke you’ve ever heard? I did all this and still couldn’t be honest with anyone involved. He doesn’t even know about you.” She had avoided the subject every chance she had to speak about it. Brushing it off and saying she would give it one more day. And she hates herself for it - two conversations, two stallions, two loves, and she treated them the same awful way. Speaking it out loud finally causes the extent of her mistakes to settle in. She has so many excuses and none of them stand up at all when she looks at Plume. “We talked about previous children but…” She cuts herself off, not sure either of them wants to follow that line of thinking, and now she takes a step back, reclaiming her previous spot and growing the distance between them as she continues to unravel, shaking her head from side to side.

“I don’t know what I’ve been doing. None of it makes any sense, does it? And you…” She inhales sharply and takes another slow step back. As though physical distance could somehow undo all the pain she has caused. Though her eyes remain on him now, filled with the heartache she's caused. “You deserve so much more than that. You deserve so much more than what I could ever give you on my best day.” Something that finally tastes like the truth.

All I ever wanted was you.

A sob chokes out of her even though she tries to catch it before it seeps out into the night air. The aftershocks feel as though they will shake her entire body to pieces. She can’t even think clearly now, it’s nothing but pain. There’s no relief, no sense that she has done the right thing by telling the truth. She cannot even imagine walk away from this spot, walking away from him, though one of them will need to leave eventually.

He voices the thoughts in her mind and it almost makes her smile.

What do they do now? Agetta genuinely has no idea. All her dreams about possible futures are obscured by a haze that’s choking her. She had once pictured two clear paths - but she didn't realize that she could not exist in one after giving up the other. It is not possible for her to move on from this, to chase a future without Plume. There’s only one thing that seems possible, a path that leads to a final and soothing darkness.

Maybe that’s where she finds her relief.

“I don’t know.” She answers, her voice soft and ragged. It’s an effort to look at him and she only just manages it. “All I know is I can’t imagine going back to a life without you in it, Plume. Not again.” She hears how selfish these words are as she speaks them and shakes her head once again as though that action can clear them away so she can try again. 

“Tell me what you need. Please.”