Logs:R'oan's Home
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| RL Date: 5 January, 2016 |
| Who: Dahlia, Taeliyth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Dahlia finally goes to R'oan's weyr and finds some measure of closure. |
| Where: R'oan's Weyr, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 25, Month 9, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: A'sran/Mentions, Aira/Mentions, Ka'ge/Mentions, R'oan/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Angst. Grief/loss/death triggers. Description and poetry by R'oan with many thanks to his player for supplying the prompt! <3 |
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| Even without Dahlia and Taeliyth's influence, there would be no demand for R'oan's weyr to be cleared out so that someone else can occupy it. The reason for that is obvious enough in its lack of desirability. Only someone who wanted to be away enough would want this weyr; it is certainly isolated, occupying a height on the bowl wall that few ledges do, far, far away from it's nearest neighbor. The ledge itself is hardly big enough for a green to land, worn through time to smooth edges. Inside, the weyr is only one room. The dragon's wallow is immediately adjacent to the weyr's entrance, leaving it blocked when occupied and a hazardous slope even when not. But after turns and turns, one might suspect you could get used to it, even when drunk. Beyond the wallow, it flattens out into the dragonrider's portion of the weyr, only containing a bed and a locked trunk. The bed is pilled with soft blankets, still rumpled and unmade as if expecting its occupant to still return and nest inside at any moment. A mostly empty whiskey bottle lies beside the bed, that scent still soaked into stones where it must have spilled when set aside in haste. The trunk remains locked, for now of course: and inside, clothes, both worn and folded clean, are pilled. Only at the bottom is a hint that this couldn't be just any rider's weyr; a stack of poetry that's never seen anyone else's eyes is hidden beneath the rest. The poem on top has the freshest ink, not old enough to have faded like some at the bottom. It reads in a careless scrawl:
« I'm here. » That helped. Dahlia took a moment to look out on the bowl from this ledge, to take in how far away R'oan kept himself before turning to trudge the steep incline. « He was lonely, » Taeliyth observes, « but Etrevth kept him company. He was lonely too, I think, in a different way. » "Yes," Dahlia found the sound of her own voice a comfort now in this profound emptiness. There was dust, she knew there would be. The cleaners would be vexed with her for letting it get so bad, but she couldn't have them in here, cleaning, touching his things, not before she was ready to come herself. She'd asked Aira if she or anyone she knew had a claim on him, on this things, and Aira snorted, good-naturedly, patted her arm and didn't need to reply. It was sweet of Dee to think someone in this whole rock would mean something to him. "Do you think he meant it when he said he loved me?" « Every word. It was hard for him to be in love with you. Hard to become attached. He let himself, in the end, and it was hard. » Taeliyth's words somehow helped in that moment when Dahlia took in the state of the weyr-- the state of the bed and the bottle. "Oh, R'oan." She didn't register the voice of pity as her own. She hadn't pitied him in life, how could she betray that now in death? Taeliyth was quiet. « How many turns does a man like that build up habits of comfort? » As the gold asked, Dahlia moved to pick up the bottle. "Turns upon turns, Taeliyth," Dahlia answered numbly. "There are so many 'if only's in my chest that I can barely breathe." « If only he had lived. If only he had drank less. If only you had known him sooner. If only you had his child. If only you had a life together. » The gold gave voice to some few while Dahlia sank onto the bed and wept. She stretched out, pressing her face into the blankets and wept more. They still smelt of him. Not only of him, but Dahlia didn't need to think about that right now. Right now, she missed him so badly it hurt. She missed those dreams that had died in that infirmary bed. She missed those parts of herself she had shoved away while she forced herself to watch the tragedy of humanity pass before her eyes and become numb to it. She cried for R'oan, she cried for the other 59 Fortians who died, for the more Holders, for the very plague itself. She cried until she had no tears left, until his pillow was soaked and she had only shaking breaths left. Taeliyth was with her - silent, but there. « You needed that. » She had. « It's alright, you know, » the gold's voice was quiet, « this thing you're doing with A'sran. It's good. He's easy and easy is what you need right now. You don't have to feel so guilty that you're not ready for something with so many strings as Ka'ge wants. A'sran is easy. He's kind and he's a good listener and he's not trying to make your heart feel anything. » It's a relief to her, personally. "I thought I'd feel guiltier. But he's not here to love me." She knew she was blushing when she said, "Not here to fuck me, either," and laughed at herself. "I keep wishing there was a way to go back and undo it, Taeliyth." « There isn't. Not any more than you could have undone my finding you. R'oan knew that life was full of shitty lessons. In a way, knowing that and that you can't change the choices you made in the past is his legacy for you. » "What a shitty legacy." Taeliyth laughed. It made sun sparkle suddenly through the boughs of her Wood. « It was probably the best he could do on short notice, » was wry. It wasn't funny, and it was. It was good that Dahlia was starting to be able to remember him not just with pain but with fondness too, with humor. « He wouldn't want you to be unhappy. He wouldn't even want you to miss him. » "I know, the sharding idiot. As if I couldn't. As if I wouldn't." « He never thought he was worth missing, worth loving. You showed him he was. You gave him a gift, Dee. » "Too little too late?" « Maybe. We'll never know. » Dahlia sighed, slowly getting up, stretching limbs that had become stiff with the effort of her grief. "I could've gotten him a better weyr." « The only one he wouldn't have resented you for was yours. » Dahlia laughed. It hurt her throat, but that was okay. It took her time to find the key to the trunk. She thought of bringing the whole thing down, but like everything else in this space, it was only special because it had once belonged to R'oan. Once open, she took her time with his things, handling them as gently as she would the man if he were still here. « He's not coming back, » it was quiet answer to the goldrider's dizzying thoughts that he might walk in at any moment, mightn't he? Dee pressed her eyes shut and buried her face in his shirt. "Would I be crazy to keep this?" « No, but they'll never smell of him again. » That made the woman swallow hard, swallow back tears she didn't have. She didn't know what she had put her hands on when she got to the papers. Pulling them out, her thoughts were already going to wing reports that R'oan had never bothered with, had tucked into the bottom of this trunk and forgotten. When her eyes fell on the topmost one, her free hand lifted involuntarily to cover her slightly gaping mouth. From somewhere, there were tears again, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. She felt frozen, couldn't even draw breath. Oh, oh, oh. She could feel her heart throbbing and then her lungs released, but not before Taeliyth's mild panic of, « Dee? Breathe! » reached her. Maybe Taeliyth was why she breathed. She wouldn't have been surprised if that were the case. She had come through the illness for Taeliyth, why wouldn't her heart answer her lifemate's call to continue to live? « What is it? » was anxious and Dee could feel the way that Taeliyth hovered not far from the ledge she couldn't possibly land on. "Poetry, my love. He wrote." It was awed, astonished, deeply sad. "I never knew." « He never told you? » "Never." She hugged the poems to her chest all the same, like old friends, like some tiny piece of him that she could keep forever. The only tiny piece of him she could. There was a little more to do, to search, to sort, but in the end, when Taeliyth asked the green back up to get her late, late in the night, Dee took the pages with her, tucked carefully in one of his bags. She took two of his shirts, and the whiskey bottle that she emptied off the ledge with a good thought for him as she did. When she got home, she spent an age with Taeliyth, just pressed against her, breathing in the scent of her oiled hide. Taeliyth said nothing and just stayed with her. Then she went to find a safe place for the pages, a home for the shirts in her wardrobe, and took the bottle to the bath with her, washing it as thoroughly as she did herself. No need to take any chances. « Are you ready to say goodbye? » I'm not sure I can ever be ready to say goodbye to someone or something I love. Taeliyth considered that. « I would not ever say goodbye to you, » and that was really the best comparison she had for love. It made Dee laugh, lightly, warmly, "Nor I you. But I suppose we must brace ourselves for more goodbyes we don't want and losses we're not prepared for. We've already seen many," and more. "If we waited until we were ready to say goodbye to something we loved, we would never say it. Sometimes we don't get a choice." She poured water from the mouth of the bottle into the bath and held it between her hands. Maybe it was silly that she wanted to keep it, just a regular whiskey bottle, just another of the many that helped speed R'oan to his end, but she did, and she could, so she would. But she would say goodbye. Holding the bottle between her hands, her fingers stroked across the raised marks on the glass. She took a breath that shuddered, and another, and a third. With Taeliyth bracing her bravery, she closed her eyes and called up his face, fingers brushing the bottle as if it were him instead. "I'll never know what might've been, R'oan, but you'll always be in my heart. I'll remember you even when no one else does." She took another breath and brought the bottle to her lips to kiss it lightly. "Goodbye, my love." |
Comments
Alida (23:37, 9 January 2016 (PST)) said...
- sniffles* <3
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