"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
When they returned to this new Beqanna (for now that she had seen the Deserts again, now that she had been back in the old world, this place would forever be “new” to her), Agetta knew she needed to find Garbage.
She had absolutely no idea what she was going to say to him when she did find him, wasn’t even sure if there was anything that she could say at all. What do you say to someone when they did not tell you their trauma but you were shown it anyway without their permission?
Maybe she just needed to see those beautiful orange eyes where they belonged in his head and not rolling along the desert sand.
Maybe, as much as she was driven by concern for him, she was also driven by the selfish need to hear his voice when it wasn’t screaming at his dying mother. The one who had named him Garbage.
Her stomach twisted thinking about it, and she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to forget that scene. The mists return her to the grey afternoon they had robbed her from when they transported her into the past. There is a burning on her forehead - a golden marking is there now when there had been none before - and her legs burn from the bites from the magical snakes she had fought, but she begins her search all the same. In a swift movement, she has shifted into the form of a white eagle and taken to the skies - soaring low over the common lands as she searches for a now-too familiar black form.
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;
He is still trying to comprehend what he’d seen.
He was taken back, a clock rewound, led to see her death and his own awful self – but this time, he saved her. This time, she said thank you. She didn’t follow him any further – she’d left, and he’d let her – but it had been more than he could have hoped for. There was still no love in those amber eyes, but they did not blaze quite so bright with hatred. She’d heard the exchange, the strange impossible conversation with his own self, the self that was all but unrecognizable.
He doesn’t know the foundations of this experience was a shared one, that it was part of some larger plan. He had not completed the plan, ultimately, but he did not know this and further, he did not care, because he’d found the smallest measure of salvation in her thanks, in the knowledge that there was one timeline where she did not die by his hand on that day.
He is not thinking of the white mare he met briefly, and still does not think of her when the white eagle lands before him. It’s only when she transforms that her recognizes her, and his orange eyes widen with surprise. He does not have many repeat encounters, lately, as he is often found to be poor company.
He smiles, though, because he had liked her, she had been kind and she had questioned the awfulness of his deserved name.
“Agetta,” he says, “it’s good to see you again.”
He doesn’t know what she’s seen – had he known; he would have fled. But he is ignorant, so he smiles, thinking that she may become a friend.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
Back on the ground before him, once she shifts back into her natural form, it’s easier to find a smile for him than she had expected. His words certainly help - it’s always nice to hear such pleasant things - and they erase a little of the horror from the Deserts vision.
Agetta moves forward, her midnight blue eyes bright and she stretches out a pale muzzle to bump it gently against his dark one in greeting. She doesn’t let herself stare at him too long, doesn’t dare lapse into any form of silence, lest the memories begin to choke her.
But she finds it hard to look at his bright, sunset-eyes without thinking of them rolling across the sand.
“It’s so good to see you again too.” She states with genuine affection as she steps back to a more companionable distance. There’s a flicker of a frown, but it’s a thoughtful one. It feels weird not to address someone by name - but she is determined now more than ever not to use the one his mother had give him. She explains the frown with a shake of her head and a small laugh. “I’m going to have to think of a nickname to call you, I think. Something that suits you better than your given name.”
Creativity had never been her strength, but perhaps something will come to her.
In the meantime, she asks the only question she can think of that isn’t anything like ‘so did you really kill your mother?’
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;
He’d never once thought of changing his name – his adopted mother had called him something else, once, but it was long ago and he never really answered to it. You’re nothing, you’re filth, you’re garbage, Craft had spat (and the cruelty of this – what she did, to a child – never occurs to him, even as he has children of his own), and it had been prophecy, really. What else could he be?
There had been pet names, tender things whispered by other lips, and he had liked those, of course, had drank down the affection like a man dying of thirst. But they could have called him anything, so long as the name stemmed from affection.
He smiles, though, at her words. She is kind – too kind, maybe, and he worries that if she stays around him too long she will soak up his wretchedness, none of which she deserves.
“Whatever name you wish,” he says, and dips his head a little, as if acquiescing to an order.
Her second question, though, draws the smile from his face, as he thinks of what he’s seen – his own history, repeated and then warped, changed, a timeline created where maybe things were different. Where maybe he could have known forgiveness.
“I…” his answer is too convoluted so the word stalls. I, I, I. I what? I saw myself kill her. I saw my life undone. I changed it. For a moment, I changed it.
“I saw something,” he says, “I crossed a desert that wasn’t there and I saw a-…a different world.”
He cannot quite confess to her the vision; it involves too much confession. He does not know he was not alone in this vision, that others saw him at his worst, and that some chose to save her.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
It does not occur to Agetta that perhaps the reason so many of her new friends are, if not broken, then with fractures of their own is because like calls to like. She is aware that when she first met Garbage she had felt like a ghost, but that feeling has mellowed out for her with all the changes that have happened. Thanks to an accidental trip into the afterlife, she’s lost the memories of her most significant fractures - the pieces that have been forcibly carved out of her heart and soul over the years and left to rot.
So the white mare thinks that she has become whole recently, but it’s only because she can no longer see the whole picture. As if someone has taken half of her senses away but so expertly that she does not know the difference.
She stands in silence, letting him say whatever it is he needs to in his own time, her expression softened with concern.
When he mentions the desert, the scene she witness plays through her mind and she is horrified to think that he had not only lived through that experience once - but had been drawn into whatever it was that had brought her into the deserts. That he had to stop it the way she had.
“I know.” The confession slips out and for a moment Agetta pauses, surprised by it. She had not meant to say those two little words, had not meant to tell him what she knew. But now they're out there, and her voice is quiet as she explains. “I was taken to the Deserts as well and... I saw it too. I don’t know why...” Agetta hopes he won't hate her for knowing this piece of his past, but she can't say she would blame him if he did. It's a violation, plain and simple.
“I’m sorry.” There is a mountain of meanings behind those two apologetic words, weighing them down. Sorry that it happened to him in the first place, sorry for the pain re-experiencing it must have caused, sorry that she was shown it without his permission.
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;
Of all the answers he might have expected, I saw it too was not one of them. He is filled immediately with horror and for a moment his muscles tense, as if this was a problem he could run from. He can’t breathe, either, and the world spins around him and he wonders if perhaps he will simply faint instead, collapse in a broken pile at her feet, Maybe that would be for the best – he would welcome unconsciousness, would gladly accept the blackness.
But alas. The world straightens and she is still there, and so is he. He hasn’t run, but he is too scared to look at her, to see what she must think of him.
“I saved her,” he says. His voice is dry, weak. “This time, I saved her.”
It means nothing. He’s the one who killed her in the first place. He’s the reason she needed saving at all.
“She never loved me. She left me for dead. I was…I was so angry at her. So hurt.”
He should be quiet. There is no justification to be found here. But once started, he finds he cannot stop himself.
“It was a mistake. The moment it happened, I wanted to undo it. I just wanted her to look at me and not hate me. I’d do anything to change it.”
Change it in this timeline, he means. Make himself a new man, who does not have such ghosts haunting him.
“Do you think I’m terrible?” he asks. A foolish question. Of course he is. Of course.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
He does not meet her gaze, but it remains steady on him - no judgement, nothing but a gentle sadness. If he were to run from her, she would let him - and just hope that their paths would cross again.
He stays, though, and after a moment he speaks. She’s quiet, letting him get out all of the words - each of them hurting more than the last. She wishes she could have saved him from this for real - that either of their attempts to stop what had happened had worked beyond.
Agetta searches herself for the part of her heart where she should agree with him - where she should condemn this new friend for taking a life. But that part does not exist. She isn’t sure when murder became a grey area for her - but if she has to guess it would have been in the very vision they are speaking of now. When she saw the way his mother had looked at him and her heart had broken.
When he asks the question, she reaches out to him - hoping to touch her muzzle gently to his for a moment, as though the proximity will help him believe what she says. “No, I don’t think you are.” It’s the truth, even if it should not be.
Agetta had never said the next words out loud, not to a single other soul. She has made idle threats, and not-so-idle ones, but she does not believe anyone thought she was serious. She was "queen of the lights" after all. What threat was there in those that loved peace? “There is someone I would kill, if given the chance. And I do not believe I would regret it afterward.” It’s hard to say for sure, of course, but Agetta thinks she would feel a sense of peace to have Atrox wiped from the planet. A sense that her mission in returning from the dead (the first time) had been accomplished. “So you are certainly less terrible than I am.”
She inhales a shaky breath, searching for words while she avoids her own dark thoughts. She hopes she can find the right combination to ease his heart, even if it’s just temporary. “I think… it is not our mistakes themselves that matter, but how we react to them. You have a good heart, my dear friend. A good soul. Even the best of us break - and given the chance you chose differently. That is not terrible at all.”
02-23-2020, 08:48 PM (This post was last modified: 02-23-2020, 08:48 PM by garbage.)
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;
He expects so many things from her. Horror, revulsion – perhaps even hatred. Any of it would be understandable, for he has known and expected such things all his life. They have largely come from within, of course, but there have been plenty of outside sources. He is all too familiar with despair.
What he does not expect is compassion. Even understanding.
It almost breaks him, because he was not prepared for it. Although he stands before her raw, he had expected salt in his wounds instead of salve, and kindness, to him, is strange.
He listens to her talk, to explain that there is someone she would kill. He wonders what atrocities this other horse had committed to incite such a feeling in her, for she gives off no sense of bloodlust. You are certainly less terrible than I am, she says, and he laughs, a sound that surprises him, that sounds foreign in his throat.
“I doubt that. I’m sure whoever they are, they would deserve it more than…more than she did.”
He doesn’t know the extent of his mother’s sins, that there were plenty who wished her dead. He doesn’t know that she killed her own mother, that there is an awful matricidal history haunting his blood.
She continues on, more kindness that he doesn’t know how to swallow. He isn’t used to this, to others knowing one of his worst sins and remaining by his side, understanding him. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, feels something like panic – a different sort, a confusion. He doesn’t want to run – not anymore – but he isn’t sure how to process her words, so at odds with the story he has told himself for years.
“Thank you, Agetta,” he says, “your words mean more than you know. I don’t…I don’t talk about her much. About what happened. There’s not many who know. Or, there weren’t…”
For if she saw, if she was there too, how many others? No. He cannot think about it.
“For a lady who would kill a certain someone if given a chance, you’re very kind,” he says, and he manages a smile. And then, without fully realizing it, he touches her, just briefly, his muzzle to her neck. It’s bold, for him, but he is newly drunk on forgiveness, and she is there, kind and warm, looking at him like he might matter,
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
02-26-2020, 08:29 PM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2020, 08:37 PM by Agetta.)
She smiles at his laugh, as he says whoever she wants to kill must deserve it more than her, but has no words to contradict him or confirm. How could she say whether that was true? She felt the weight of what she knew, and she imagined it was the same for the stallion with her now. Agetta wishes she could ease his worries about who else might know about this part of his history, but she can’t. And she feels freshly furious that this piece of her friend had been put on display as if it were nothing at all - as if it did not matter.
(Just think of how mad she would be if she knew how the others had reacted to that scene, how many of them had attacked him.)
When he calls her kind, despite her willingness to commit murder, she cannot help the smile and the quick joke. “Well I don’t want to kill you.” She whispers back with a small touch of laughter before she sobers at the darkness of her own words. Agetta doesn’t know when she became who she is today, someone who can joke about murder, speak about it, and condone it. Has she been slowly turning into this version of herself? Has it been lurking beneath the surface of the Gates Queen all along?
She supposes it’s foolish to think she would not change after the years she has lived, the deaths she has experienced and the resurrections that followed. How fractured does a soul become when it rises and falls as often as hers?
The sigh that escapes her at his touch is subtle, the ghost of something that should not exist. She turns her head slightly so she can touch him too - but where his was brief she lingers and speaks her next words in the infinitesimal space between them. “I mean every word, you know. You’re more than what she made you, what she named you.” And she believes it - oh how thoroughly she believes those words.
Because she needs them to be true for her, too. Needs to believe it’s possible for them to be more than the sins inflicted on them, and to gain forgiveness for the ones they will commit in kind.
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;
He doesn’t know how it turned to this, from confession to caress, but he is stricken at her touch. He isn’t sure how long it’s been, since he has known kindness – years, maybe. Time is flimsy and insubstantial to him, but he knows it has been a long time.
More than the touch, though, are her words. Still kind, still forgiving, showing an understanding that he has been unable to show himself.
(He lives in a kind of denial, most days. He shakes under the weight of his sins, yet he does not think about them in great detail. He cannot, see, or he might break entirely, unable to face them in their entirety.)
“Agetta…” he says, and oh, how her name sounds holy in her mouth. He wonders how long this will last – this moment, her kindness – but he knows he will carry her memory long after she is through with him. And she will be, surely, because it is the cycle, and he knows this, of course he knows this, but for now—
For now, he can say her name and run his lips across her neck. For now.
“You are like no one I’ve ever met,” he says, “I’m honored to know you.”
It’s not I love you, but it’s close. He has learned not to be so quick, knows he reacts and falls with a swiftness that is alarming. Besides, he knows she will depart, soon, and will he see her, after this? This confession, this moment of their bodies close, white and black, the most quintessential contrast – it may very well be all he has but oh, how he intends to cherish it.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
