Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to it either," Erin admits. "Part of me wants to suggest writing it down in case you forget later, but...years."

[decrypter]

"I already did that when I was up the entire night waiting for it to come back, when I realized it was dead and it was my fault for bringing it there. I have pages and pages of a life I'm not sure I even lived, but that I remember like ghosts that left impressions in wax. It makes me realize how much changed. What could have changed. What, perhaps, should have, regardless."

A beat.

"I have to apologize to anyone that got dragged into one of those hunting grounds, though."

[crushed_pearls]

"I'm not sure an apology is the balm that wound needs. Anyone with a heart will be worried for you, little bird."

Erin squeezes Helena's hand. "...Life in America is rarely sunny for the blind, even without a clown car full of murderers."

[decrypter]

"I feel like it's my fault that they'll have had to endure that fear, that pain."

She sighs, and squeezes Erin's hand back.

"Goodness. I've been going on and on about myself, and I haven't even asked you how you are, even when you just told me you spent two years away. You're welcome to roundly scold me for the selfishness."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Little bird I can, and will, cuddle you and that is a threat."

[decrypter]

"That doesn't change that I haven't asked you how you're doing after two years in the forest."

[crushed_pearls]

"Like shit!" Erin admits, even as she makes good on her threat with a wing hug. "...Feels like I lost something I didn't even know that I wanted. Happy?"

[decrypter]

"No."

But she's hugging her back, completely accepting any and all cuddles. That's a good way to put it, really.

"But thank you for telling me the truth anyway."

[crushed_pearls]

"Swear to God if I end up running an orphanage when we get out of here..." Erin sighs. "There's nothing for it. I'm just. Tired, and sad. Y'know?"

[decrypter]

Erin will feel the nod against her, the understanding inherent in it. One has to feel what they feel, let the sorrows exist as well as the joys.

"...I know. I know."

She won't try for words of wisdom or anything like it, because she does know a little, from the other end. If somehow, Security had stopped her from answering that letter-

No, she can't go down that path. It's too crushing.

[crushed_pearls]

"Now, little bird...anything in particular happen that you need to talk about?"

The deflection only works for so long Helena.

[decrypter]

She sighs, knowing she's been caught for the time being.

"...All of this makes me think about what if. What if I didn't go to that place. What if I had been stopped? But then I don't want to think about it at all, because I'll just be mourning what I can never have."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Yeah. But, there's also walking out with new insights on what can be, or is, here." Erin sighs, a little wistfully. "Ruby gave me the fucking business for worrying that I might be a bad sister, and...I dunno, maybe it's sticking a little, y'know?"

[decrypter]

"I think you worrying about it is the first sign that you're not."

She says it softly, a little knowingly, but she's not going to harp on the point.

"You can't doubt someone's sincerity when they've spent years with you because you needed them. Let it stick."

[crushed_pearls]

"And you, little bird? Anything good sticking to you?"

(Phrasing.)

Yyyyoooouuuuu have a point but shut the fuck up anyway.

[decrypter]

"You're taking the full walk around the pasture to your point, Erin."

She knows when she's being led around.

[crushed_pearls]

"...Helena, you do remember the prison-gin empathy powers, right? Those ones? The ones we had a whole discussion about? I wasn't dancing around my point, I was trying not to ask directly about what made that sea change in your heart but if you're gonna just say it directly we go to the prison gin hours."

[decrypter]

There's a silence that's half a beat too long.

"...what does it feel like, to you?"

You can't just ask a girl to go spill her secrets and not at least let her know what flavor her secrets seem like.

[crushed_pearls]

"Like the first scent of woodsmoke when you get home to your own hearth after a long journey," Erin answers, poetically. "There's something warm in you and that warmth radiates out from you, and it's quite pleasant, if I'm being honest. 's why I thought you might be willing to talk about it without me just crassly tossing it out there like I did."

[decrypter]

...Ah.

"It's hard to get something past you, isn't it?"

There's a feeling as Helena tucks herself a little more securely next to Erin, the little bird wrapped up in the larger bird, and a soft wordless hum of thought.

"Let's phrase it as I understand something better than I did before. Perhaps in a way that was already there, but hadn't come to conscious thought yet, and got a chance to privately blossom."

Or perhaps it's that death has a way of throwing things in perspective, and the waiting between death and life solidifies it.

[crushed_pearls]

"Seems like it makes you happy, little bird." Erin nuzzles Helena's hair with her cheek (she makes sure to stop eating before doing this, and resumes after; Erin is Fucking Hungry). "'m glad. This world is beautiful and abundant too, for all that it's also everything else."

[decrypter]

"Yes. And...it does. It does make me happy, and I hope to hold onto it as long as I am allowed."

Even in the midst of the pain and confusion, the surging tides of different thoughts, not everything is endless suffering. Some of it is the very balm.

"I've never thought the world was only bad. Sure, I ended up in a bad place, where terrible unspeakable things happened to me and others. And pain was bound to happen no matter what became of my life. But...there are so many wonderful things that can be found as well. There are so many I've yet to discover."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Hey, little bird. You up for an annoying existential question from someone who doesn't respect philosophers?"

[decrypter]

"Always. We all know half of them didn't respect women as their own entities, anyway."

[crushed_pearls]

"I promise I'm not leading you anywhere with this, I'm asking your earnest thoughts." Despite this assurance, Erin lapses into silence for a good while. When she talks again it's with a soft hesitation: "Is there a thread that connects the past self to the future self? And if there is...what is it? What's the continuity that goes from the infant to here?"