Camarilla IC Post
Because a goodbye was in order and I obviously need not focus on important things... like cleaning.
Click to viewI wanna dance the tango with chance
I wanna ride on the wire
'cause nothing gets done with dust in your gun
And nobody respects a liar
So goodbye for a while I'm off to explore
Every boundary and every door
Yeah I'm going north
"I do not know who I am."
"I do not believe that many of us do," she responded, her voice quiet. She quit toying with one of the ribbons in her braid and reached down. He peered at her hand as though it was some errant, white ghost trespassing into his field of vision. He was afraid of her and she did not understand it. She wasn't much more than a girl, even if she was made out of shadow and light, and her most terrifying trait was that sometimes she stayed up far too late to stave off nightmares that still riddled the landscape of her life. It was why Mr. Hunter sent her to collect people like this-- in ribbons and sweet smiles-- she understood the nature of docile tones and honeyed words. She threatened no one. It was not what she was.
"I assure you, I mean you no harm. I only mean to bring you to safety. You are safe. I promise you," she said, this time using a little of the influence shown to her by her time with one of the Spring courtiers. She did not remember his name. He was hurried off after he kissed her on the cheek, but he had a way with words that was to be admired. She was to know everything, Mr. Hunter said. Her education was to be impeccable. She took the inflection that said I am to be trusted. I am to be followed. I am the most trustworthy person you will ever meet. and wrapped it so carefully around her words, put bits and pieces of her heart into it, until even she believed in it. The man before her smiled.
"Ms..." he wavered for a moment, his identity fading in and out of existence. She marveled for a second. He was a mirrorskin and it fascinated her, but it was a lesson for a different day. He would need a name, something to cling to for stabilizing points were so important to all of them. Mr. Drake had told her that they all must find things which made them more stable and make them focal points of their lives, points of clarity. Her tutors were thorough in their lessons.
"My name is Miss Catherine Wheel. As you have no name, until you remember yours, it is Noman. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Noman. Now, it is rather chilly out here and you have no coat. Perhaps we should seek shelter," she said, matter-of-factually. He took her outstretched hand and stood up. He was still cautious, like an animal ready to run away should her demeanor change in the slightest way. He survived the worst possible thing and was under stress. Even if she could not piece together enough cause and effect to understand why he would be threatened by her, Mr. Hunter told her fight-or-flight might be the case with several of their targets. Her medical school training, catch-up as it might have been this past year, had taught her to take that in stride.
She held his hand tight, willing it warm though her hands were freezing. Her voice was sing-song and reassuring, "Now, Mr. Noman. We need to go home now. There are people that are waiting for you that you should meet. They are good people. They may one day be your friends..."
I wanna know where children would go
If they never learnt to be cool
'Cause nothing's achieved when pushed up a sleeve
Till nobody thinks you're a fool
So goodbye for a while I'm out to learn more
About who I really was before
Yeah I'm going north
They were in bed together. One of his hands tangled up in her long hair, having loosed the ribbons that bound it. She sighed against his gray t-shirt, then took in a breath full of the scent that was something akin to soap and nothing. She could never explain it to anyone else, and it became the setting for so much else she would not be able to explain regarding her relationship with him.
She could trace lines back to those first moments, as one would trace the first threads in a tapestry, but those threads individually did not create the larger picture before her. They did not weave explanations. He had asked so little from her, only that she be there for them, a point of reality for him to pivot around, and from that they had created a friendship more true to ideal than anyone had been able to understand. Jackson told her she was a damned fool for swearing her heart to a man she didn't love in a romantic sense, and she found it an impossibility to explain that romance had nothing to with what her heart felt for him. Noman, who shifted his form with the day, his moods, his assignments, was her point of stability in this world. Words failed when she tried to explain the threads, the minutia of developments that led them to that point from when he took her hand and trusted her just enough to this point where he held her in her bed and they trusted each other completely.
"Alfred bumped into me the other day," she said, interrupting the silence. Her voice had lost none of its girlish softness, but she learned inflection and tone. She learned manipulation. She learned emotions and how to use them to her advantage. She had to play none of them in these quiet moments, and she appreciated that fact that with him. She could be herself, instead of something cultivated for other things.
"He lives there." Noman responded. His voice had lost its fear and questioning. Noman determined who he was and run with it as far as he could. He had moments, in the darkest of places, when he questioned her as to whether this was a dream, but it no longer defined what skin he wore. He expected her to know him well enough to know his words, phrased as a statement, were as much of a question as she would ever get regarding her encounter with their motley mate.
"I am...he knocked the books out of my hands," she replied. She explained in the only way she knew how to him. Noman, never one to emotionally respond to anything, raised an eyebrow.
"Shit. Catherine. You know... you cannot." He leaned up on his elbows and met her eyes, "Just forget it happened."
She never grasped cause and effect. Things happened around her and she accepted them as fact until something or someone became important to her. Noman made things happen in her world all of the time, because he was the most important person in it.
"Yes, I suppose I need to," she said with a sleepy smile. He relaxed against her, kissing her neck gently. They had each other. It may not have been love, not in a sense anyone would have understood, but it was enough for the Winter Queen and the Autumn Knight. They were irrevocably broken, and it was all of their hearts they would have been able to give. They understood this. They were the only ones who understood each other. They had made their lives with one another, in oath and deed.
Up where the hunted hide with ease
Under the arms of eye-less trees
Up where the answers fall like leaves
Oh and your love is all I need
Yeah I'm going north
She sat on the edge of the steps of the serpentine wall that ran along the Ohio river. Muddy water ran into city lights. They used to blind her when she came out here. They used to take away thoughts of people like Christian. Noman would sit beside her, wavering in and out of view, and the silence was exquisite. It was an understanding between them, that when there was nothing, they still had everything. Now, she had everything, and yet there was nothing here in this stillness.
"I do not know who I am..." she said into the night. The words didn't sound the same coming from her. She wasn't a girl, tutored by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Drake, but a woman who had been educated in myriad of topics in love and loss by various people. Perhaps Jackson had taught her how to toughen up. Maybe Al had given her a few lessons in opening her heart to the possibilities, but those lessons were not tutelage to a child-queen. There were no ribbons in her hair-- it was cut stylishly at her shoulders. She was thirty years old. Marriage loomed in front of her. Life moved within her. Death had broken apart bits and pieces of her life. She had grown up.
"I do not believe that many of us do..." she answered herself, with a shrug. She sounded self-assured. She spoke them with a confidence that seven years had given her. All of the girlish charm was gone from her voice and was replaced with someone who sounded haunted by years of trying to take parts out and replace them parts that made sense as much as anything made sense. Her life had changed in a chance meeting in a hallway, everything broken apart and built back into something that existed as "right now", but right now had changed subtly the moment she felt a different lifetime's set of oaths break.
She spoke to the air and if it sounded insane, she comforted herself with the fact that she was clinically insane. They all were. No one escaped unscathed. She stared into the darkness and her words began.
"I said I hated you. It started out in a place like this, on a night like this, and I said I hated you. I was wrong. I am sorry."
She took a deep breath and the air she breathed in was cold in her lungs. It had rained for days and it was starting to sprinkle again. The sound of water splattering against the stone steps met her ears and she closed her eyes, forgetting for a second that it was too cold and it was too wet to be out here.
"You protected me. You held me when I thought I could take no more. You loved me when I did not love myself. You took what was broken and you tried to make it whole. I took it for granted for so often, as I do, because I did not understand, but thank you for all of it. Thank you for being all the things I needed, even when I did not realize it," she whispered. She started to cry and used the back of her hand to wipe away the cold tears. The wind was kicking up, and she expected a thunderstorm at any point. The baby would get riled up-- it had starting somersaulting the moment the temperatures cooled-- but there were things she hadn't had time to say when she should have said them. Life was like that. Words were never said when the person was in front of you and it was always too late. Tonight was too late, but she would not be deterred.
"I am sorry for the things I could not be for you, but I thank you for all the things you helped me be and for the life I can now lead."
She did not even attempt to wipe the tears away this time and she gasped for a breath, trying to to remain calm enough to stand. The wind whipped at her sweater as she held it around her and she smiled bitter sweetly, "I have to go home now. Al is waiting for me. Your friends... we will miss you."
She walked up the serpentine wall, trying to keep her balance on the slippery steps. She cast a glance behind her and imbued her words with a last bit of magic, "I love you, Noman... for what that is worth. I always will."
Yeah, I'm going North