♆ - The clouds are bright green today, and for some reason, if you feel like you should forgive someone today, you can't help yourself from doing so.
Cappie wasn’t sure what had made him realise he needed to forgive himself, or how long he’d actually been feeling angry, but talking to Claire about Breckentale had given him an idea about where to start and today felt like a day to start putting things right.
When things hadn’t worked out between him and Octavia, after their brief and manipulated relationship in Breckentale, Cappie had done the easiest thing and essentially cut her out of his life. Still, in doing that, he’d lost his best friend along with the more complicated parts. Whilst looking up at the weird green clouds earlier that day, he’d started thinking about the anger he felt towards himself for making that decision, for being so weak that he couldn’t have just dealt with the awkwardness with dignity in order to preserve all the good parts of their friendship.
It was exhausting, he realised, being angry at yourself. It was relentless. There was nowhere to hide from it and he was fed up of it. He wanted to make his peace, with himself and with Octavia.
He’d texted her then and there, beneath the green clouds, on his way home from the Base, and within the hour he was waiting for her on Atlantis Beach. It felt strange to be back in the same spot after so many months; the last time he’d been there with Octavia was when he’d told her he couldn’t spend time with her any more. It felt like the right place for this, whatever this was. Forgiveness?
Octavia was glad to get Cappie’s text though maybe a little surprised. It had been a year since the crazy dive into the alternate reality of their other lives, and their friendship hadn’t been the same since. It hadn’t really been the same before that either, but Breckentale had changed things in a different way. She understood it to some degree, but she’d missed having him as a close friend over the last year.
Collecting Cooper after she was home, she fed the other two dogs and headed towards the beach. Buka and Loufa were pretty cute slashing around in the water with their little legs, but handling three dogs and making sure that they didn’t chase a pelican into the ocean was a little much. She’d take them with her in a day or two.
The trip out to the beach didn’t take long since she took it mostly at a jog, and once they hit the sand, Octavia spotted Cappie and found one of the tennis balls in her bag. After unhooking Cooper’s leash, she threw the ball in his direction and watched the giant dog run after it and end up close to Cappie’s feet. By the time Cappie had managed to recover the ball again for another throw, she dropped her bag and stopped next to him.
“I swear, he acts like he’s never seen a ball before every time,” she said and squinted up at the sky that was covered in green clouds. “Only in Atlantis, right?”
Cappie watched fondly as Cooper lolloped after the ball he’d just thrown for him, wiping his hand on the leg of his jeans to get rid of the slobber, before looking down at Octavia beside him. He followed her gaze up towards the clouds and nodded, an amused smile spreading across his face.
His eyes returned to her face as his expression became a little more serious again and he cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he said, deciding to just go ahead and say what he wanted to say without muddying the waters with small talk. “That things have been weird between us this last year. It was my bad.”
Octavia hesitated a little at first when he first started. She hadn’t expected to dive into a deep conversation right off the bat, but Cappie had jumped right into it. “Cappie,....” she started slowly. “What happened in Breckentale wasn’t your fault.” She knew that it went further than that; he’d told her another time how he felt, but they’d been mostly okay. The trip into an alternate reality with the luxury of retaining all of those memories only made their friendship more complicated.
Her eyes drifted down to the poor ball that was being chomped on by her dog, and they stayed there for a few seconds before looking back up at him. “After a while, I probably should have pushed harder, but I didn’t want to make it worse or harder.” It wasn’t like her, this was much less familiar territory for her. Breckentale Octavia probably would have handled it a lot better than Atlantis Octavia did.
“What changed?” She asked him, curious why he decided to tell her this now. Not that she wasn’t glad to possibly get to some sort of normalcy with him again, but she still wondered what had been the spark.
Cappie gave a little shrug, glancing up at the green clouds overhead again.
“I don’t know,” he mused. There were a lot of reasons and many of them had crossed his mind over the months but it hadn’t been until today that they’d solidified into a kind of acceptance and, moreover, a desire to move past it all.
“It just seems like such a waste, you know?” he added after a moment, crossing his arms casually as he glanced down at her. He offered her a warm smile, his very best.They’d been friends first, in Atlantis and in Breckentale, and it was her friendship that he found himself missing the most. The rest had complicated matters but somehow things were looking much clearer today.
Octavia wondered if there was more to it than that, but she wasn’t going to press and, honestly, she didn’t want to rehash any of the past. Like him, she was happy to move on and get back to the easy friendship that they used to have. “Yeah, I get it.” She did, and she was just thankful that they’d gotten back to this place again even if it had taken a little longer than she would have hoped it would.
Pulling the ball away from Cooper, she threw it far down the beach and into the water and watched him barrel after it. She smirked for a minute then looked back to Cappie. “But, hey, we’re here at the beach and it’s a nice day despite the weird ass green clouds. Was there anything you had in mind that you wanted to do?” She asked lightly about the time Cooper came running back over to where they were standing, now wet and sandy.
Cappie took a deep breath and breathed out a happy sigh. He thought he felt lighter, like a weight had lifted. He watched Cooper make his way back and stooped down to greet him, getting a lovely line of slobber over the sleeve of his shirt. He cringed but chuckled as he took the disgustingly wet ball from the dog’s mouth and launched it back down the beach. Straightening up, he looked over at Octavia.
“Let’s play a game,” he replied, spontaneously, to her question. He hadn’t had a plan for what to do once he’d spoken to Octavia but she was right, it was a lovely afternoon, and he wasn’t ready to go back to his house yet. “We could get some more people down here and play Baseball or something.”
Octavia’s eyes brightened at the mention of a game. She could always go for something active especially when there was competition involved in some way. “Yeah, we should. Once the normal training schedules wrap up for the day I bet we could get several people to come down.” She certainly wasn’t the only competitive person in Atlantis, that was for sure.
“Baseball if we wanted to head over to the park or what’s that other game called?” She squinted for a second while she thought. “Oh, right. Volleyball. People play on the beach too, yeah? It might depend on how many people we can get to come down.”
“Yes, Beach Volleyball!” Cappie agreed triumphantly. He hadn’t played Beach Volleyball in forever. He already had his device out of his pocket, searching for names of people to contact to make up enough for two teams. He paused, though, mid-swipe, and looked up at Octavia with a bright smile. This. This was what they were supposed to be like. This was easy. He couldn’t believe he’d been such an idiot to allow himself to miss out on this for so long.