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Private.
Someone had come into the shed, someone who had smelled like the sea and the sun. It had been Kaena, he supposed, because he remembered her eyes. He didn’t know exactly what he had told her, or what she had told him, but he remembered laughing. He had been laughing a lot, as if he had taken the demon from Laruku and swallowed him whole. Maybe he had, back in the wilderness, in the rain and the never-ending rise and fall of the tides.
Then there had been noise. That noise had been indistinguishable, fury and pain, and it had been muffled by the white noise in his skull. Eventually, it had quieted down. It was only then that the second noise had begun, that soft, maddening sobbing. It crawled along the wood like rats and dug into his skin because, vaguely, he knew he was responsible. He was responsible for a lot of things, and this he knew. Pulling himself up to the wall, her found the source and leaned against it, eyes shut and hair falling limply in his face. “Sleepy hands are creeping to the end of the clock,” he sang quietly, voice hoarse and broken. “, play a lullaby in ragtime.”
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He didn't know if he had cried in his sleep before. It was just as likely as it was unlikely, but there was no point in dwelling on it too long because he was sure he would forget the question as soon as he found an answer. It was dark now -- he could feel it, somehow -- and cold in the room, though he knew the girl was still close by. But she was quiet, and he did not want to disturb her further. He inhaled and swallowed a lump he hadn't known was there; he opened his eyes, blinked, and tried to wipe the water from his face, but his arms were too sore to move. Laruku shuddered slightly and once again drew his knees to his chest. He suddenly remembered what had stirred him.
A voice he had forgotten somehow because it had been buried in the fog where he hadn't heard it in days. Some days, days was all it took. Ahren? Fear and tension gripped his already immobile body. A voice, but there was no new presence in the room. It was hard to feel through a wall; perhaps he was stupid not to realize, but it was so easy to be terrified. (Always with the easy route.) Laruku wondered if he was dead. He wondered if maybe they were both dead.
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Ahren? Distantly, he felt a rush of fury, of displeasure, and felt it fade away. It was raining outside, and the noise was soothing. Far more soothing then the crying had been. Pushing himself up and coughing, the blonde leaned against the wall and listened to the water and the thunder, and wondered for the first time in days just how long he had been in here. “I’m here,” he said lowly, voice clearer then it had been. His mouth felt dry, but he wasn’t thirsty.
“Don’t cry anymore,” he continued, opening both eyes in the darkness. “Please.”
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A confirmation. A request. Okay, he said softly. Please. I'm sorry, it was automatic. It was always something he had done wrong. He didn't know or couldn't remember why; dreams and thoughts fled when consciousness came, like bats in the light. Ahren was there. Somewhere he couldn't see, but he sounded alive. The voice wasn't wispy like his mother's had been and there was no fog. It was cold, but not as chilling as it had been that day. It was raining, but he was dry. Nothing felt real. Except the voice. I got you sick, didn't I, he said. Not a question. He knew. He could smell it in the space between them. Promises were all broken in the end.
Are you okay? Suddenly, it was the only thing he cared about. Nothing else mattered.
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Both of his ears went back, and his eyes narrowed in the darkness. “Don’t apologize,” he said suddenly. Laruku hadn’t been the one at fault, and in some way, Ahren was responsible. Pushing, that was what he had done. Pushed the angel and the madman bum because it was in their blood, as plain as day. Pausing to listen to the distant thunder, he curled his legs up under his body and curled his tail around his side. “I’m fine,” he answered, though this felt like a lie. “I don’t know. You and Jasper were both sick.”
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He was comforted, however slightly, by the response. Of course, Ahren always said he was all right, just like the hybrid did. He didn't know if it was another lie for his sake, but he chose to believe it anyway. Maybe he needed to. No one else could die because of him. You'll get better, he said, sincerely believing it. For better or worse, he no longer believed he would die either. There were a thousand explanations. God, maybe. The devil and angels. His daughter. Irony. Bad luck. The latter two he believed the most, but the end result was all the same. Sometimes, lies became the truth.
Laruku did not know how much time had past or what all had happened while he drifted aimlessly in his own mind. He did not remember his prior conversation with Ahren, but his chest swelled like he did. Do you believe in God? he asked suddenly.
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They had lied to each other since they had met. Always, they had been fine, they had never needed someone else. They only told the truth when it didn’t matter. When there was nothing left to lose. At the bottom of the pit where all dreams went to die and no one else could reach, for fear of sinking. “You will too,” he offered automatically. They would all get better. They had to get better.
At the question, he stiffened. Had they discussed this before? He could remember a church, a cross, a crown. He remembered fire. Everything blurred together, eventually. “No. I never have.” His voice was so solemn and so certain that there was no doubt he was telling the truth. “I believe in chaos,” he added quietly, looking at the scar on his palm.
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The voice was something to hold on to. Like Rachias's, it kept him grounded because it was something real. His body still ached and his head still burned, but he felt coherent. And he remembered. I don't believe in anything, he said. It had been Gabriel that had stood over him hours ago. Not an angel. Not a demon. Not anything. Another man. A mortal. There was nothing to believe in but reality, but reality was too subjective to be sure. There was no truth. That was what he had always known, wasn't it? A nihilist evermore, an existentialist occasionally. Nada es nada por nada. For the moment, he could not recall Hemingway's name, but perhaps tomorrow, he would.
Why chaos?
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“Because everything is random,” the blonde stated quietly. There was no predetermination. No deus ex machina. Nothing to come and set everything right, to explain that their suffering had been righteous and that they would be rewarded. His mother had believed in something, and she had died like a dog. His father hadn’t believed in anything, and crumbled to demise, trapped in his own hell. He thought of Conri, and of the look in his eyes—it had been like hazy sunlight glinting off a bar of steel. It had been madness, but it had been madness for a reason.
“Chaos is fair,” he said, as if reminding himself of this would take away those sins.
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Nothing's fair. Randomness never appeared random. People found patterns in the simplest things. They found meaning. Interpreted it in their favor or against it. There was no such thing. A coin could hand on heads a hundred times in a row. It was all subjective. And even their own minds weren't reliable. If you could see it, was it real? If you could hear it and taste it and smell it and feel it? Was it real? Everything was filtered through the brain. They could be nothing, just a brain, floating in a vat of liquid, being fed lies. They could be sure of nothing at all. So he believed in nothing.
I believe in people, he added after a while, speaking slowly. Sometimes. Some people.
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Maybe that was true. Maybe nothing was fair. It sure as hell helped to think that some events were fair. That Shakespearean justice was fair, that violence was fair, that what happened to them and to their families had been fair. Karma, revenge, whatever it was. Random acts that changed the world. That was fair. Setting fires and killing strangers in dark alleys had been fair. Everything and nothing was fair. “Who?”
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He hesitated. Their relationship was one hidden in the mist, and he did not know the words to describe it. Even now, lying there in the darkness, he couldn't tell if it was denial or fear or guilt or a thousand other things that kept him from saying. Deep down, Laruku knew some things never changed. Puppy love or not, those feelings were still real; they had never left, and they never would. But accepting that was harder than realizing it. Tsunami, he said, voice drowning in the rain. He believed that the grey wolf was good. He believed that he had always tried to do right. He believed they'd both made mistakes. And he believed that there was nothing left now. But he believed.
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When that name had been spoken so long ago, it had sent him into a rage. Of course, that was before he realized that Laruku was acting just the way he had been. Ahren had been in love with Matinee in much the same way. Then he realized he hated her. Then he realized he had no reason to hold on for a woman who had abandoned him, struck him, and vanished into the darkness. Outside, the rain kept coming, and the rain was comforting. It washed away everything. “You still love him,” he said quietly, knowing this was true.
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Laruku flinched in the darkness and inhaled sharply. It was true. Of course it was true. It was the only thing he knew was true, regardless of perspective or circumstance. As the rest of him fell away to nothing, as he withered in the rain and cold, as he waited quietly to die and decay, it was the only thing that remained as it had always been. Even in their worst of times, it had been true. The hybrid had no one and nothing to blame but himself; he knew it almost as well as he knew he still loved him, but knowing did not keep the loneliness away. It did not keep the regret away. It did not keep the guilt at bay. He had been the one who'd struck first and the one to turn away. He blamed no one else and hated no one else.
He did not know what to think about Ahren's words, did not know how to begin wondering what Ahren was thinking. Part of him already knew that he cared deeply for the other red-eyed prince, but he was terrified of it. Laruku could keep loving Tsunami because he was no longer there, because the grey wolf was not there for him to hurt anymore, because he was a ghost and a memory. Ahren was there beside him, even if there was a wall between them, physically, metaphorically. Ahren was still real. His voice was still real. And it scared him. His chest was tight and his temples throbbed. Laruku could not find the words; he was crying again, inhaling in short bursts, ashamed.
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In the end, nothing mattered. Laruku had told him that several times over, swearing up and down the nihilist path he followed, walking on knives and falling along the way. Perhaps that was true. Maybe nothing mattered, and the fact that he was still in love with Tsunami didn’t matter. The two of them, they weren’t anything special, really. They were just people who had been lost and needed someone, found each other, and now were too scared to own up or let go. And maybe, really, that was for the best.
The crying began again, and it drilled into his skull above the rain, above the thunder. He could stand it no more. “You can tell the sandman is on his way, by the way that they play, as still as the trill of a thrush in a twilight high,” he sang, quietly, soothingly. He could remember doing this with his children when they were sick, or unable to sleep. He remembered singing to his son, laying in the next room, maybe dying. “So you can hear the rhythm of the ripples on the side of the boat, as you sail away to dreamland. High above the moon you hear a silvery note, as the sandman takes your hand,” As his voice rose and fell, he realized that he didn’t feel anything at all. Maybe he had finally gotten his wish. “, so rock-a-by my baby, don't you cry my baby, sleepy-time is nigh. Won't you rock me to a ragtime lullaby…”
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It was tiring to live when nothing mattered. His body ached down to his bones; the cold and rain, while numbing and strangely calming, did not help. He was weary of everything and nothing; life was full of exhausting things, among them, thinking and feeling, loving and hating, hurting, and that quiet half-acceptance they wrestled with when it was all over. The throbbing persisted and he could see the floating Cheshire grin in the white fog. Wonderland. That was where his vision was trapped, in that veiled, secretive place in his head, no longer filled with useless metaphorical structures. No hallways, no houses. No fields and no train tracks. He didn't know what he was crying for. It wasn't sadness, just nothingness. The more he thought and the more his chest swelled, the emptier he
The voice came again, steady like the sunshine. Suddenly, part of him wanted to destroy it, to crush it and silence it forever. The strength of the urge was startling, but it faded when another wave of exhaustion took its place. He closed his eyes, having forgotten they'd been open. The view was the same. He wanted to apologize again, but had been told not to. He wanted say something, but still had no words. He wanted to reach through the wall and touch him, but it was solid. He wanted the world, but nothing in it. Laruku inhaled and sighed.
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