"Schlatt told me that I shouldn't be letting you out of the house." Dream comments, in a passing way, like he was mentioning today's weather. We both laugh.
"He's only saying that because he's scared of running into me." I don't look up from the sword I'm sharpening. The blade sings as it slides against the wet-stone, a high pitched ringing that ends in a flourish.
The binding on the handle is soft in my hand. Worn. Moulded. The uncomfortable bites of the edges of new leather have dulled, the roughness smoothed over weeks, months, years of use. Of pressure.
Like me, really. Something to be wielded, to be moulded, to be tamed. To have my sharp edges rubbed away by a firm hand, pressed down into something palatable, gentle enough for the palm. The handle of the blade is all I'll ever be.
The support to something worse, something more powerful, more dangerous, sharper, stronger, better.
The blade scrapes against the stone again, like the oars of a rowboat, a looping, dragging circle that I drive. A constant.
"I mentioned the villages on the coast," he says, "next time we meet I'll start talking about the supply lines, I got conformation from Sam."
"Good."
"He's trying to get me away from you."
I hum in response. "Mm well he doesn't like you very much."
"You shouldn't let him think that he can change this. Us."
"I didn't, but he's my big brother Dream, he'll never stop trying to look out for me. He's stubborn."
He looks at me, the edges of his eyes creased in a smile. "Runs in the family."
I pause, flickering my focus from marred grey metal to the man leaning against the bench across the room. "You think I'm bad? He was the original."
"I don't know, you do pretty well for yourself."
I grit my teeth. I'm here, aren't I? How's that for stubborn you stupid, selfish, arrogant assh-
"As if you don't love it." I smile back at him instead.
"It looks better on you than on him."
"Aw don't tell Sam that, you'll break his heart."
I can love him. I can love him. I can do this. I could love him. I have loved him. I can.
We both laugh, and he uncrosses his arms, turning to pick up a collection of little iron daggers I finished earlier, dumping them into a wooden box. The thundering clatter of metal rings in my ears. It goes on for too long.
He's always so tense when he gets home, arms tucked across his chest, back tensed, teeth clenched together. He doesn't even realise he does it. I never point it out to him.
It's just something I know. Something I shouldn't. Something I do.
You know, I thought losing my mind would be bigger than this. Like an explosion. An all-consuming fireball that envelops and incinerates everything in it's path. Something that leaves a black char mark on what's left. Something noticeable.
It's more-so something folding in on itself, compact, neat, nice. Quiet. A quiet little implosion that shatters everything inside, rids your insides, leaving an empty shell. The chaos bounces around my skull. The exhaustion paints itself on my face. The breakage is tolerable, palpable, easy to digest.
The world can accept my brokenness when I break in the right way, it seems. When I fall into the right pieces, when I swallow my own anger and let sympathy take its course.
"What're you thinking about?" His voice cuts through the haze.
I shrug. "Life."
"You okay?"
"Course"
"What if I don't believe you?"
"Dream, I'm fine." I glance back up at him, admiring the easiness of his stature, the comfort he gleans leaning against the bench in our kitchen, looking at me in our living room. "Just in my head."
"That's a dangerous place."
"It's okay."
"You know if you aren't, that's not- you're not breaking our agreement if you're having a bad day, or- or a bad week. You're allowed to live."
Liar.
An easy smile pinches my cheeks, pulling my lips taut. "I promise Dream, I am okay."
We're both liars. To ourselves, to each other. Untruths slip past slick, practiced lips like oil on water, in this house, as familiar as our own skin.
His face calls me a liar, but he lied first, so neither of us mentions it.
"You can tell me, you can talk to me. I want to talk to you."
We're both staring, a silent battle going against every word we spout. "Don't say that like you talk to me about anything."
His face blanches, the shock at something real being said aloud.
"You need to talk to me too, Dream. I know- I know that you are not okay, and until we talk about it, we're never going to be actually okay. There's always going to be something running around in either of our brains and all it does is eat away all of our trust."
Dream's lips press together, eyes hard. Distant. Unreadable. "I don't know what you want me to say."
He says it quietly, but it's all that's pounding in my ears.
"So you're not angry? You don't think about me abandoning you in the middle of the night, when I never choose you, when I put everyone above you? You don't hate me? You don't feel hurt?"
Are you even human?
"Yes! Yes I was hurt! Yes I was angry Rosie! What do you want from me? I love you!"
I want you to be human. I want you to feel like I feel. I want you to know.
"I did that to you!" The sword falls from my hands, onto the table. "And you don't care?"
"You think I don't care? Of course I fucking care Rosie, of course I do." His face crumples slightly as he looks at me. Looks straight through me.
"You rip people apart for nothing, and I have done this to you over and over and over again, and you still love me?"
"I don't- what- do you want me to be angry? Do you want me to hate you and want to rip you apart?"
"I just don't understand Dream." Desperation leaches from every syllable. There is no plan, there is nothing clever behind my words. Just fear. Just confusion. "I don't understand you."
"I love you." He's on the ground before me, fingers entangling with my own, holding on tightly. He presses our conjoined hands to his lips. "So of course all of that- everything hurt. It made me so fucking angry and scared and lonely, but it all goes away with you. It's all worth loving you."
Is it worth hurting me?
"I-I just- Dream I look at you and all I can think about is how much you must resent me, all the shit below the surface that you don't see but you feel, and I- I'm scared that one day you'll realise you hate me. I don't know how you don't hate me."
The question is unspoken, loud in my mind but it probably doesn't even register in his.
Why can't you hate me?
It'd be easier. There'd be less guilt. It would have probably ended already.
He seizes my face in his large hands, clinging onto me with all the desperation that pours from the wounds we created on each other. "No, no, no, no Rosie. I don't hate you, I don't even think about half of that shit because I'm just happy you're here, that you came back to me." His lips press into my forehead, my temple, the tops of my cheeks.
"You should hate me." Traitorous tears slip past my eyelashes, falling on my cheeks in a betrayal that forms a lump in my throat. It comes out as a plea.
I sit there and beg for my release from his love.
"You should hate me." He breathes back, and I want to tell him I do.
Even though some part of that would be a lie too.
"How can you love me?"
"How could I not?"
I don't know what breaks within me, my mind, my heart, but the dam bursts, the memories I've clung onto washed away, pushed out by the flood of Dream's poisonous, delicious words. I fling my arms around his neck, slamming my lips into his.
He responds simultaneously, arms wrapped about me to lift me up off of the couch. I wrap my legs around his waist, consumed in him. Consumed in everything I couldn't describe.
When we finally pull away for air, he's whispering a mantra that drills straight into my brain.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
It hurts. It does.
I can love him. I could love him. I have loved him.
Will I love him?
I will live regardless, I think, and everyone else will be okay. That's all I can ask for, at the end of the day. How could I ask for more?
"It'll be okay, we'll be okay." I murmur against his lips, against the scratch of his day-old stubble, before he captures mine and we're pushing and pulling, a flurry of hands and hair and shirts, ankles locked behind backs and hands on waists.
"There will be a life for us after this." He tells me, in between kisses, laboured by heavy breaths.
I don't believe him, but that's okay, because we're used to the lies.
There may be something, but it will not be living, it will be survival, another fight, another war. It's a lot harder to sacrifice everything for something once you have it, hard to remember how bad it really was. Without the pain to drive you, you lose focus, you get sloppy.
You dream. You hope. You forget.
I'm terrified of what happens after. After the war, and L'manburg and Schlatt. After the happy ending. After, when I'm still in love with Punz.
I'll admit, he's fucking good. Dream. He knows how to break me, he knows how to hurt me, he knows enough to tear me apart without moving from his chair. He had me, for a moment. It passed far before this moment of realisation, but it was there, somewhere, entangled in every confusing, muddled thought.
He'd of gotten me if it wasn't for Punz, really. He knows everything except the few things that matter more, and it's my last defence.
He kisses me again, and I kiss him back, and let his lips slip down to my neck, and my throat, and my collarbones, draw my own lines across his, break apart before we cross lines I've been too afraid to draw, and I lie next to him as night slips into dawn, listening to the rhythm of his breathing, watch the rise and fall of his chest in the faint whispers of light brought by a new day.
After everything, will I fight it? I don't know.
After everything, will I want? Yes.
I could love him, but I think I've already loved enough.
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A/N Well well well...guess who's back?!
Throughout this we're seeing the affects of everything compounding on Rosie. It doesn't come out in a breakdown, or anxiety attack, but manifests as a swarm of confusion that she can't untangle. She is laying out the conflict in her life, her commitment to her family, her commitment to herself, and her commitment to the men she loves and did love. I'm really focusing on the idea of 'after the war', because she's just trying to keep it together until then, but she can't live like this forever. In this chapter, she is acknowledging it. While it may seem like she's very conflicted and struggling to comprehend what's happening, there's a lot of elements of progress in her manner of thinking. It centres around her, and her own feelings, primarily, and a self awareness to consider them, rather than just blinding terror or anger she often develops to cope.
I have one more exam to go, and then I am free to get back into writing! It has been a crazy month with exam season, and I am so sorry it took me this long to get a chapter out! More is yet to come for this book, and once this last exam is out of the way, it's open road!
Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed,
Oopsies x