la curador. (holyga) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-03-14 21:48:00 |
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Disciplined to follow an ascetic lifestyle, Araceli expected to adjust to the limitations of solitary travel easier than she had so far. Her arms hugged her luggage, a single bag packed with spare clothes and exhausted of other supplies. The monastic workwear (it clung to her skin from the rain earlier that day and her hair clung to her clothes) marked the young girl as a church-affiliate, teetering on the edge of adolescence and early adulthood. Shoes abandoned while running from bandits, the white mage took hesitant steps, savoring the connection to the elements as her feet sunk into the mud. Between her previous destination and the next was one of Kerwon’s famous forests, this one a brilliant, deep green and coated with fog. How much longer she would last, she did not know, but refused to resign now. Jumping out of the traffic’s way, she huddled for shelter beside a rock on the side of the road. The young girl picked up a damp twig and drew circles into the mud as her eyes glazed over with exhaustion. A thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, clutched tight by shivering hands, offered little protection from the chilly winds. She craved the warmth of Fire but this runaway had never been taught black magic. What felt like hours passed as she watched caravans and wanderers pass by, hunger and dehydration sapping her of lucidity. The forest was intimidating and deep, which kept people away from it. That suited Jareth just fine; the last thing he wanted to was to be around anyone, to accidentally fly into some rage and take out people who had done nothing to him. A slight wave of panic coursed through him, squeezing at his lungs and blurring his vision until all he saw was Liana and Liam on the ground. All he heard as the ragged panting of his breathing and the hushed quiet of being alone with the dead. He took a step back and collided with a tree, snapping him from his memory. His breath was still coming in short pants, but the scene had vanished; he was alone in the midst of heavy woods. Slowly, he sank to the ground, tears streaming from his eyes. They haunted him, day after day, night after night. Liam’s accusing cry. Lianna’s betrayed gasp. He could hear them, see them, as clear as the night it happened. “Get a hold of yourself, Strand.” Cyllian’s voice echoes in his head and Jareth looks up, half-expecting to see the specter of his dead partner; there is nothing there. Jareth wiped the tears away and stood, legs shaky. He needed to eat; if he ate, the ghosts abated for a while. There was a merchant who stopped by the edge of the woods on his way to town; he often left something for the wasted shell that Jareth had become after he’d freed the man’s daughter from a nasty situation that Jareth had accidentally come across. He knew he couldn’t depend on the kindness forever, and that, eventually, he would have to get moving, but for now, he would take what he could get. The road was busier than usual and Jareth kept his head down, careful to keep from making any eye contact with those that passed. So focused on the ground, it wasn’t a surprise that he would notice the shivering lump on the side of the road. Jareth frowned and moved by, taking his place on a rock to wait for the merchant, who appeared not long after, bundle of food in hand. Jareth thanked him and the man nodded, thanking him for his help again. The constant thanks were discomfiting; he had saved one person who meant nothing to him, but had killed the ones he loved. There was nothing to thank him for. He nodded in acknowledgement, and the merchant left. The sun was setting, and the temperature dropping. He’d have to start the fire as soon as he got back to his clearing. Distracted, he nearly tripped over the girl. “Sorry,” he muttered, righting himself and planning on continuing on, but something about her stopped him. He turned back around and frowned. She couldn’t be more than sixteen; what was she doing out here? “You should head home,” he said, voice rough from disuse. “It’s not safe out here on your own.” “I left home,” the girl responded frankly. She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. (It felt cold against her skin, but no more so than the soft breeze on damp clothes.) Her head bowed slightly, a sort of apology to the man for tripping him, as she stood up and gathered what was left of her dignity. Straightening her back, the girl looked Jareth in the eye with unwavering resolve. A glimpse of some hidden emotion flashed in her mind, fleeting hopelessness at her situation perhaps. Still, she shook only from the cold, not fear. “I’m not going back,” she added, the words a statement of fact, steady without a defensive edge. He wanted to shrug and move on, but there was a voice in the back of his head, whispering, If this was Liam, would you want someone to leave him where he lay? The answer was no, and he sighed. “You’ll die,” he told her. “Come with me.” The least he could do was put her in front of a fire and lend her his sleeping bag for the night. In the morning, he could figure out what to do with her. Not that it was really his responsibility. He didn’t know the kid. And bringing her with him was tempting fate; he’d already killed his own wife and child. Did he really want to risk murdering this kid, too? (Except, had he killed them? The Guildmaster didn’t think so. But Jareth had been the only one there with the bodies. Liana and Liam and Cyllian. All dead. There had been blood on his axe. Of course it had been him. It was a fool’s hope to think it had been someone else.) Come with you? she wanted to ask but all she said was: “Señor--Sir?” Are you sure? Why? A moment of hesitation passed as she surveyed the stranger. Common sense told her not to follow, but then common sense might also have told her not to run away from home. What did she have to lose now? He was right: without help, she would die here. Alone. “Thank you,” she said with a quick bow of the head, interrupting her own train of thought as she gathered up her belongings (there was not much to take). She looked up at him, eyes wider and brighter and more innocent than she intended, and moved to follow his shadow. “Don’t thank me, yet,” he muttered, leading her into the woods. He’d set up a small camp in a clearing; a clearly delineated firepit stood a few feet from a makeshift tent. Without a word, he put the food to the side and quickly got to work starting a fire. It was clear the kid was cold, and the last thing he wanted was to have to bury another body. (He hadn’t been able to attend Liana’s and Liam’s funerals; he wasn’t sure whether or not he would have wanted to. Seeing his wife and son lowered into the ground… That would have been too much, too soon.) The sticks caught, and he spent the next several minutes coaxing the fire to life. Once it was in no danger of snuffing out, he stood and wiped his hands on his trousers, thinking. What the hell was he going to do with this kid? What was something that he could even offer her? “Eat,” he said, back to her. He pointed at the bag that he had retrieved. “If you’re hungry.” “Thank you,” the girl said as she reached over to the bag and dug in for her meal eagerly. She found herself saying thank you to him all too often in the recent moments, and wasn’t she more than grateful to this man? How many good Samaritans saved a stranger’s life? She had once believed them to be rampant, but on the streets she learned that it wasn’t quite so… “You are,” she began after hesitation, “traveling alone, too, Mister…?” Trailing off to have him answer the question (and perhaps, give him her name), she closed in beside him and the fire to take in the heat of flame and a warm body. He considered giving her a fake name - he was a wanted man, after all, and going further south didn’t change that - but her moving in close had thrown him. “Jareth,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the fire. “Jareth Strand.” It was strange saying that name - he’d taken it when he’d married Liana, having no surname of his own, but its owner was dead. Everyone with the name Strand was now dead, even Jareth. Walking, talking, breathing - that didn’t make a person alive. He was a walking corpse sustained by fear and a cowardice to do what he knew needed to be done. Wasn’t like staying this way was going to do him any good. For a moment, he sat there, uncomfortable with her proximity. It had been too long since he’d been around anyone for more than a few minutes. People weren’t safe around him; he knew that. Saw the truth of it in every hellish nightmare. Heard it with every phantom cry that played in a loop in his mind. This kid would do better without him, away from him, but he couldn’t have just left her there. Maybe, in some ways, he was still alive. Just a little. He stood. “You got a name?” The walk to the food was short, and he grabbed what remained of it and brought it back to the fire, retaking his seat. “Araceli Monsiváis,” she answered, turning her head to follow him as he walked away and back. The girl fell into silence, not for lack of questions. Countless swam through her mind and she fished for the proper one to ask at the moment. She sighed, a determined little thing, directing her attention to the fire as she fiddled with her fingers. Then suddenly, she shifted to face him again and a hand reached out to hover over his face, tentatively examining the strange man. “I like your name.” He stilled, her hand scant millimeters from his skin. Instinct told him to run, or to prepare to fight, but he quashed it, breathing in and out, in and out. The kid - Araceli (a strange name for a strange girl, he supposed) - wasn’t going to hurt him. If she tried, he could easily take a waif like her. (It would be easy; he doubted she’d even have time to cry out before her head slammed against the floor. It wasn’t an image he wanted to dwell on. He didn’t owe Araceli anything, didn’t owe her her life he if she tried some stupid shit, but he refused to give in to the rage, to the paranoid fear that all he could do was break.) “Good a name as any,” he said neutrally, to which she nodded, listening. “Going anywhere in particular, Araceli?” The name felt strange on his tongue; too many syllables. One more than Liana, two more than Liam. Celi seemed more fitting, less foreign. Maybe he’d call her that. Maybe he wouldn’t call her anything at all after this. “Away. I am traveling to be away, to get away.” Maybe she should leave now. Get away now. From him. Her hand returned to her lap with the nonspecific answer. Araceli gave him a soft, tentative smile. He did not owe her but she owed him. Asking for company on her trip to nowhere seemed too much after food and fire. “Do you know where you are going,” she ventured, “Jareth Strand?” Not the same place she was, the mage could guess. This mysterious man without a smile next to whom she sat too close did not seem to be like her or perhaps they were more similar than she could imagine: both without a place to which to return. He shifted uncomfortably. “Jareth is fine.” Strand reminded him of Liana, of everything that he had failed at in his life. “And no. I don’t.” It was something he’d been thinking about, trying to figure out what the hell to do with his life, but there was nothing. For years, he’d been wandering, helping out where he could, but he couldn’t settle. Couldn’t return home, if he could even have called it that. A glance to the side. She was tiny, thin. Couldn’t even scrounge her own food, shivering on the side of the road. His mouth set in a hard line as he stared into the fire; she would die on her own. Another death on his hands if he left her to her own devices. “You’re free to come with. If you want.” It was awkward, getting the words out. He didn’t want or need company, but this was about the girl and death and so many things that he just couldn’t begin to deal with. She gasped, cupping her mouth. Nodding, she removed her hands to squeeze his. “Yes, yes. Please and thank you, yes.” Jareth Strand. Jareth. She engraved the name into her mind, the life debt owed. That night, she slept soundly, curled up and warmed by the fire and his company. He couldn’t recall how many months it had having her at his side. It was disconcerting; over time, he’d expected to get used to her, but he never did. As the days turned to weeks turned to months, he’d become increasingly agitated. He’d taught her what he could - how to start a fire, to scavenge for food, how to protect herself - but as time wore on, he started to wonder if she could protect herself against him. His hold on his rage was tight, controlled. But what if it snapped? Again? (He’d tried, once. To get her to go away. Explained in short sentences what he could do, what he’d thought he’d done. She was still there.) But then he ran into Cyllian, and everything spiraled from there. Jead had told him where he could go, if he wanted. Maybe it was time; no way he could stay with Celi, not knowing what he knew. Not with actual blood on his hands. She was still at the camp when he got back. “Celi,” he said, “we need to talk.” Celi cocked her head to one side as she waited for him to continue. Fuck, this wasn’t going to be easy. “Maybe it’s time for you to move on.” Faram, that sounded like he was trying to break up with her. It really shouldn’t have been this hard; they’d never agreed to continue traveling together like some fucked up family. He was protective of her, but even more, he knew that she needed to be protected from him. “It’s not safe to travel with me.” Wasn’t when I first found you, still isn’t now. “You keep me safe,” she said simply. Not a correction. She spoke patiently as though it was fact, as though she was simply reminding him the sky was blue (and that the sun would rise and there would be Light). But the corners of her mouth twitched and she stirred into a standing position, moved by a whisper in her ear that he was more serious than she could ever understand. He shook his head, held out his hands. Blood was still caked under his fingernails, dark streaks mingled with dirt decorated his forearms. He could try to explain with words, had once, but now wasn’t the time. The Guard, whoever and whatever they were, would move quickly and he wanted - needed - to be with them when they did. It was clear what he had done; if it scared her, convinced her that he’d been telling her the truth all this time, then good. There would be just enough time to get her to a town, drop her off, and then move. If she questioned him, he would answer - he didn’t owe her anything, but it would feel wrong to not explain. Araceli examined his hands without flinching, scanning them with a healer’s gaze. Holding her breath (and holding back her thoughts, judgement), she reached out to palpate the streaks, to trace his calloused fingers. She was searching for injuries; it was a reflex she had honed in her years of study. “You are not,” she swallowed, thinking hard to find the right words, “injured, then?” He shook his head, withdrew his hands only to run one through his hair. “I told you,” he said, fighting to keep his tone even, distant; he had never been good at that, always letting his emotions get the better of him. (Liana had always said she loved his honesty; Cyllian had sneered, called him an animal driven by base instinct.) “About my wife. My son. My” a sneer “partner.” This was not going the way he’d wanted it to. Better to just get it out. “He wasn’t dead.” Now he is went unspoken. Araceli swept her hair over one shoulder in thought. Too stubborn (or scared) to face the truth that they ought separate, she pressed on, “Are you safe from him?” She fought the temptation to ask for everything, to know the whole story, curious as a kitten but with better sense not to tread where she did not belong. “Yes.” No. Everything up until now had been a lie. His family had died by someone he had trusted, and he sunk just as low. “He’s not a threat anymore.” Jareth shook his head. They were wasting time. “There’s a town not far from here. I’ll take you there.” She averted her gaze and shuffled her feet. Taking a deep breath, she gave in: “Okay. You can take me there.” After a long afternoon of errands Araceli arrived back in the Cathedral’s vicinity with her arms swinging at her side. Her last stop was at a nearby bakery to surprise her fellow monastery residents with fresh concha bread. the back of his head; now she carried a cloth bag filled with the sweet and colorful bread in one hand. A thoughtful, calm look on her face, the arithmetician took the steps two by two up to the entrance. Until she saw a head of closely-cropped dark hair, thick and muscular arms, a slight curve of his familiar back. Those hands, that neck, that man. Araceli knew who this was. She remembered. Forgetting her original destination, the young mage strode over to him in a swift silence. From behind, she stretched out a hand, nearly brushing her fingers against his shoulders. “Jareth Strand?” she choked out in a voice barely above a whisper. Her other hand flying to her mouth, she touched her bottom lip and held her breath. Her shopping bag fell with a soft thwomp at her feet. It was supposed to be a quick errand - something he hadn’t done, not since before joining the Guard. It didn’t have to be religious, but he wanted to…. He didn’t know. Light a candle out of respect, maybe. They hadn’t been partnered long, but a partner was a partner. (She had never betrayed, never taken anything from him except time.) The Cathedral loomed in front of him, and he shook his head. He couldn’t. There was no way he could walk in, not without feeling dirty. He’d been ready to turn when he heard that name. No one, save Aspel and Li, knew that name. Not here. He turned to find a waif of a girl, bag laying at her feet, the contents on the marble. Her eyes were wide, her hair floating in the breeze, one hand to her lips. Celi. The recognition hit him hard. Dazed, there as the stray thought that she had survived without him. (He had known she could.) One hand was lifted, as though reaching for him, while she stood frozen, waiting. Fuck. He could lie. Tell her she was mistaken and descend the stairs. Never think about her again. He’d done it, once. Forgotten her so thoroughly that as the blood caked his hands she wasn’t even a twinge in his memory. (He could lie to himself while awake; in his dreams, she always stared at him, puzzled. Not understanding.) Instead, slowly, warily, he nodded. The following gesture came without warning: she threw her arms around his neck for an embrace. The show of intimacy was closer than what she had dared when they had traveled together but years of separation weighed on her shoulders. The arithmetician missed him on cold nights and rainy days, in the years before she had the Disciples’ company. Now and then, she thought of the kind man (she would think of him as Kind forever, vision tinted to rose-colors that could wash any amount of blood he could show her) who took her off the streets and under his wing. Overwhelmed by the emotion, she said again and again, “It’s you. It’s you.” Instinct had him wrapping his arms around her, hand moving to smooth her hair and repeat the mantra Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay, Celi. Like a decade hadn’t separated them. This wasn’t his Celi, the girl that he had cautiously saved; this was a woman he had never met, with years smoothed into her face and body. She wasn’t the half-starved girl that had huddled in his shadow, leeching the warmth he willingly gave. But none of that mattered. The years melted away and he was standing (in the forest), calming the (girl) woman that wrapped herself around him. She was more solid, less ethereal; she could withstand more, now. His arms wouldn’t break her, not like they would have all those years ago. (He hadn’t touched her more than necessary, then. Distance and space and control; the rage had always bubbled close, close, closer until he worried it would ooze out of him and into her. She had calmed him, then.) He let a few minutes pass, but the curious gazes of passerby stiffened his back. He didn’t pull away but she did eventually, if only to observe the whole of this man. Araceli held him back at an arm’s length now, healer’s eyes checking for ways to cure, to help. “It is you,” she said one last time. The cursory question came next: “How are you? How have you been?” As though either one of them could sum up a decade apart in single answer, but she had to try asking. For his part, he didn’t fidget under her gaze. His control had been hard won, and he refused to let it fall because a girl he had once protected when he was weak stood in front of him. “Fine,” he replied to her question. There was no way to accurately describe how he was, not without going into things that were better left unsaid. (Araceli had expected as little an answer from him.) “How long have you been here?” Had she been here since the beginning? Had he just never run into her? She looked to the sky, counting in her mind. “Less than a year, since around… Virgo?” He nodded; he’d been here a little longer than that. “Been in town since last Taurus,” he said. (She would have asked, eventually. He doubted that she would be able to curb her curiosity for long.) “It’s Monaco now,” he added, quietly so that only she could hear. He would have to explain, but not here, not now. That would have to wait for when there was no one around, no one to eavesdrop. No one who could use the information against him. (It never occurred to him that she could; his trust, too, was hard earned and hard lost.) “Monaco?” She repeated the name with a twinge of confusion. With a breath, the mage nodded and did not object. Explanations could come later. They had time now. They had time. “But still Jareth?” She would call him that if she could. The question bore another meaning: were they the same people who traveled together, who had found solace in the other’s company in a time when it seemed like only solitude was due. A brief pause, then a nod. “Don’t see why not,” he said. Another pause, then: “Celi.” She smiled and gave a heavy sigh of relief. “Jareth.” The woman tested his name on her tongue, finding it as easy to say as it was years ago even after not using it for long. “I am—” She cut off when the sight of her fallen groceries entered her peripheral vision. Right, she had come here for a reason. The present mingled in with the past and Araceli jolted back into reality. Taking a step to the side and leaning over, she reached down to pick up the bag and the bread that had not fallen out. “I am glad to see you again.” Safe, alive and, she hoped, happy. Looking from side to side, she hesitated for a brief moment before continuing. “Sorry if I was keeping you.” Meaning now from whatever business he was up to before the ambush of nostalgia, (meaning then when she had latched onto him like a remora). He shook his head. “Was just… passing by.” For a brief second, he considered inviting her somewhere - anywhere, to talk. The moment had already gone by, though. “I’ve got a place in the Theatre District,” he continued. (It as a struggle to keep the awkwardness from his voice.) “Across the street from the Tipsy Sheep. Second floor, first apartment on the right. Drop by if you want.” The anytime was implied. He gave her a small smile, one that he hadn’t given anyone in years. “See you around.” It wasn’t a question; he knew they’d cross paths again. |