How to disappear completely

That there, that's not me. I go where I please. I walk through walls. I float down the Liffey. I'm not here. This isn't happening.

[o-oneil]

[Oz knows it isn’t true. He knows that words, meanings, letters form in her head just as clearly as they had in his. He knows the language of betrayal, and the ache of it all. He knows she feels it, but he too is looking for clarity.

If the words have grown in their minds, then they’ve bloomed out of order. Each letter positioned an inch off, throwing the atmosphere far into the realm of the unreachable. They stand real, but the air they breathe is not. There is no escape from the silence that clings to the space between them. Nothing he can say to her to make the meaning easier to bear.

There was her, and there was Christian. An all too simple way to put it. And it’s too much of Oz to expect her to know what he’s never explicitly said; feathered carcasses laid with care or not.

He is a heartache; the speck of dust in the air that people choke on when they breathe too deeply. Never whole, he is the frustration, and stress, and low that crawls from bone to bone in every body until even the bones are relics.

Their dance is an ever-lasting one; caught on a tide that never rises. And denial is only the first of the supposed steps. He’s raised his foot and felt it fall too fast.

This is the impact. The crashing realization that there was only ever air in his progress.

He has to tell her. He has to tell her what he cannot.

The words escape in the creak of his feet, as he settles back to the floor. The metaphorical staircase crumbles away.

He is back where he started. He is still in love.]

I do.

[And though the words carry a relevant context, he doesn’t mean them that way. It’s a much sweeter statement than it ought to be. He’ll chase it down with work and sleepless hours.]

[river-ros]

[The I do is the I know that burns seven types of holes through the cracks in her brain. Opens them up so that he can fit right in and make his home between her synapses -- to stay. As if he hadn't already done so when she'd been hair yellow as corn kernels and legs only half as long. 

It's laughable, really, the way he burrows now and makes a home where he doesn't know he's already had one. But he does know; he has to. How could he not? Because it's silly things that real girls do when their minds know what isn't possible to be known. It's those that she could put her hand through and make vanish if only she would stop concentrating so hard on pretending that they're real.

But what fun would a world without the ghosts be?

Lonely. Boring. Creeping up with emotion she doesn't know that she can feel, and yet still has to face. Cornered up at the edge of the ring asking them to take their hits because it's so much easier to be the one that bleeds than to think that spilling their heads open would ever make them exist.

But he exists. Exists touching what doesn't and she the same and it sends her stomach churning gutless nothing for what feels like hours and might be days. They haven't seen anyone else since they've been standing here. Time stopping was never so easy as it is when she's with Death.

I do. I know. I do.

Nothing of the likes of what she has known buried deep and slung about like the worst of men. Like the worst of pain. You know? Do you? 

Because to know is to feel -- something that he's always fared so much better at than she. And yet - her first. Isn't it funny that it would be her first? I do I do I do.] 

Tell me then.

[o-oneil]

[He almost thinks to laugh. Almost, as the sound catches halfway up his throat in the way that flightless birds do when they first leap. It comes out choking, strangled, and it does not do justice to the noise it ought to have been. Not that it ought to have been a laugh.

But that is, as always, the instinct.

To brush away and mend.

To peel away and mend.

To strip away and mend.

Always to mend, and in its equal, to destroy all he touches.

That is what death is after all; both a start and an end. He would not be himself if he did not ruin all he built in firm, equal measure.

But he cannot ruin her. Nor can she ruin him, though they both may make each other feel like it — it simply isn’t so. Death and the Real Girl. Made for one another perhaps. Or just thrown down on the right wrong rock.

Canopies spread above his head in simple swirls and puffs. Clouds he knows by other names, though they’re printed only on his tongue like names on graves; never to leave the stone, but on stranger’s lips.

Was he happy?

No.

It was only ever her to make him so.]

I think you know the answer to that question already.

[But he knows that perhaps the point is to hear it from his lips. Then again, when have they ever said the things they really needed to?]

[river-ros]

[The answer to that question. The answer. As if it could possibly be so definitive that she would know without asking. Without opening her lips and letting the words go to him because she wants to know. Wants to know for sure. Wants him to say it. Because the statement of guilt has never been enough, has it?

And she's yellow like stars are, old light flashing forward and pulsing back like strings of matter wrap themselves around her skin and pull tight. Like she might burst from the knowing. What right does she have to supernova right now? He was the star once. Wasn't he?

The question doesn't matter. And when she breathes in the bloated, thick air that lingers in the space between them, it doesn't matter either. Her lungs fill up tight and full like the belly of a man after a meal and she wants to burst again.  It doesn't matter. Breathing doesn't matter. She doesn't matter if he can touch another and not feel anything like remorse.

Because, she wants him to feel human for this. Doesn't she?] 

I don't. [Lies trickle off of her tongue.] I don't know anything.

[o-oneil]

[There’s a bitter hollow at the back of his mind that jumps too instantly to — how fitting.

And he thinks of killing birds in days long past. Of unspoken promises that had always looked more like betrayals. Only there’s no way to twist this into one, and it is what it always was. What it should have been to him then.

The inside of his mouth feels like it’s made of charcoal, and he will scrape away with every brush of his tongue. Not that he will ever crumble. Death has no room for that, not for a while at least. His concerns have never dabbled in aging, or rotting, or —

What he knows is that he’s stripped so many people — both of clothing and flesh — that he ought to know what it would feel like to do it, have it done to, himself. And yet he’s never quite present enough to process anything more than the steady cutting of flesh, or the muted thump of clothing hitting the floor as un-whole hands wander just too far.

And it’s not that sex hasn’t interested him, it just hasn’t been a priority. Pretty girls and boys of days past hadn’t mattered, because River hadn’t been there. And they weren’t real. They didn’t taste like raspberries and stardust. They didn’t make his skin burned where they touched.

There was only empty arousal, and hushed nights spent between other people’s sheets, because what was the point of watching them live their not lives if he didn’t occasionally join them?

Now it has consequences. Namely looking to her now, and trying to think back to what it was that she had said to him those weeks ago.]

I was with someone.

[Funny, a bit, how killing has no toll on him these days. The almost made-up memories of his mother’s carcass hitting the floor through the gap in the closet door stirs nothing. No fear, no sadness. His second mother mixing vegetables in the kitchen as his second father speaks to the men upstairs, is not nostalgic. His fourth, his fifth families giving him up; it only feels like the sense of loss that one might experience losing a property in monopoly.

It doesn’t feel like a story, a life. And definitely doesn’t feel like his.

The only things that feel distinctly him anymore are the killings; the collections of bone and flesh made trinkets the police must have collected from his home.

The killings and the real girl. The only one he cares about losing.]

[river-ros]

[River might have been made of words, once upon a time. When whatever celestial being had passed itself down into her and given life in the tiny, blonde form that sits on a rock awaiting a rogue passer-by now. She might have been strings and intricate, woven linguistics within the very fiber of her being -- when her mother lay down and her father too, and their words came from mouth to ear so that they could feel that thing she thought she couldn't (but knew she could) to bring her into being. At least, for the time being.

But she isn't now. Isn't words and it's tongues like she knows she can be when the timing is right. She's been to the museum in the city and she's looked the Rosetta Stone in its core so that she might understand why this world forged of plastic and written with code chose to split tongues. But right now, it does her no good to know. 

Because she has no reason to feel the burning beneath her skin that comes with knowing he's touched another. She'd done the same, in days that passed with those she shouldn't have. Because she couldn't have. Not with Oz. Not with the Ender who laid down and split the ground when she was only a child so that no touch would ever really feel right against her.

There's no point in being angry. Not when it won't undo. What are they? What are they but a figment that she's made up in her own mind? Something she'd bent down and pulled from the depths of her pocket to play with and keep herself interested. God, they mean nothing. They mean nothing.

But Oz touched them like his hand never touched her and that want is about as human as she can get.

Nothing.

So she watches the rain sheet down the window like she might have known to make it so. How cliche. And she asks.] 

Were you happy? [Human again.]

[o-oneil]

[The world sits heavy on his shoulders today, it seems. Though not as heavy as he knows it could, and perhaps, that stands because the world is not what is heavy after all. It’s only him.

Somewhere further in his mind, fingerprints trace their way across ways, map lines, and flesh. Leaving inky trails in their wake, they are there and gone in a moment. Only long enough to make their presence known and fade. Tracks deep enough that Oz cannot simply wash them away. But it is not yet that Oz fully wants to.

The time will come, he is sure.

For now, hypocrisy takes the reins, and he lets it lead him to a common hall window. Looking out at the grounds beyond, he can pretend that things are as simple as saying sorry.

But they never are. Never have been.

He’s real, and thus too whole for the conveniences of easy lies. And she is too. They are not simplistic beings — not made of flesh and command, of programming and static echos — and this can’t be either.

He will face it, and she will face it, and they will face it both together and apart. There’s no part of him that thinks this ends in anything but distance; a split that honesty demands for a time.

So it’s not necessarily that he’s postponing it, he’s just not seeking her out either. He’s waiting for the world to trip the flooring beneath their feet; stumbling them into one another.]

[river-ros]

[It is days like today when the sight of him would be one the splits atoms and fills empty cracks where she hadn't been sure what to do with before. Like the space inbetween, where she would slip her fingers and feel around until she realized that there was nothing to be found there, could have had a purpose: to fit him in quietly, stealthily, like they always had been.

She feels cracked today, only in the way that the earth around her feels like it might crack beneath her feet and swallow her up in a long storm that eats up ages and men and histories that had been meant to happen but do not for their disappearance. Her skin feels in cracked. The vessel of a girl always pulsing and bursting at the seams so that what she really could be might escape. Today feels like a day when the vessel isn't quite big enough. And to see him and do the simplest things would be enough to distract -- as if maybe he could slip between and fill her up. As if he could mend her so that she doesn't supernova.

But the look on his face swallows planets more than any poor earth crack could ever eat stories. The way he is, not distraught and not brash, but somewhere on a level that she hadn't been able to see before, it makes her glow dim. That glow that she reserves for the moments when playfulness come out. It falters and hides and becomes reclusive so that she can see without filter to dim what is there.

And she comes to stand next to him, eyes out the window, like they always do. Wordless for a moment, but the moment doesn't last.] 

Penny for your thoughts?

[o-oneil]

[It’s not quite how he means it (and he thinks she knows), but the grin that spreads across his lips swallows any intent to say so. Oz just reaches for her hand, like her hand is only a separate part of his own and vice versa. Breathes in the same air she does, like breathing is only natural for the two of them.

And maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe one day they’ll actually touch each other.

His tone is teasing when he finally manages to reply. He spends approximately fifteen seconds just smiling at her, but it’s not like that’s really out of the ordinary. Oz sometimes forgets how it feels to have someone real there, until he’s standing beside her.

He’s plunging his roots into the depths, and freezing his lungs in the process.The sweetest kind of choking he knows.]

You’d come back?

[It’s meant to be teasing, but there’s an undertone to it that suggests that if she intends to go with any permanence, she should tell him.

Because it’s one thing to move away on the human earth. One, incredibly numbing, experience he would not like to repeat. It’s another thing to leave the planet, and Oz has no intentions of getting separated from her again.

It’s a quiet ‘I’m coming with.’

He far too much likes breathing her air with her.]

[river-ros]

We'll see. [The words are filtered through like all of theirs are. Cracks and codes and binary all weaving in and out of the tiny holes that exist in the space between them. They're thick, like they always are. But more with thought than with conviction. And it sulks about in her brain to think it so.

Her hand, wrapped around his already, fingers inter-laced like children playing on a playground, squeezes gently once. And then once more harder still. A simple 'I know.'

Because the words mean nothing when they exist for Oz's ears. That linguistic barrier that had always stood between them could not matter if she were to head off to the moon. Anywhere but here is good. Anywhere with him is better.] 

[o-oneil]

[He’s been re-tracing footsteps for over an hour now. Thing is, he’s not so certain that they’re his own. For one, his feet don’t really feel all that connected and secondly, the memories feel as if they’re being seen through someone else’s eyes.

Which would be strange if they weren’t so very surely his own. Like the way he thinks he can see his second father turning corners in the halls ahead of him.

He read somewhere once that more people die a day than he can count to in his head. He believes this easily. Thousands, upon thousands. But this is only the realization, for him, that these thousands are passive deaths. Ones set only into action by the ending of a timeline.

He’s not guided someone over in months. Vaguely, Oz wonders if he’s been replaced. But of course, he hasn’t. Because he can still see little tears in the walls where Asphodel insists on falling apart. Rips and gaps he closes over with only a brush of his fingers.]

Any day now, I’ll start collecting dust.

[river-ros]

[It isn't strange, the way the night sky seems to have risen up like a dark flame beneath the touch of her hand. She's sure, as her day was spend in the space beneath it, hand to the clouds, whisking them to and fro, that no more than an hour may have passed. Morning to Evening in only an hour. And it would have come sooner, closer, farther, if she'd willed it to be so. But her hands wanted the time to paint portraits within the white on blue, pink, grey, orange. 

She's been told that the hottest flame burns black, but never known her sky to be black any time but when her hands feel cold -- itching to see the stars and paint them constellations. And as the night leaks down upon her with her final movement, she wonders if Oz has felt it too. 

And when she approaches him, it's with quiet earnest that she speaks.] 

I'll bring you some back from the moon, if you'd like.

[lookhowyourgardengrows-blog]

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

[lookhowyourgardengrows-blog]

[Marcel turns at the voice, taking in the woman as he takes a few steps toward her, leaning against the wall.] My mind is far from easy, lady. ‘Tis plagued by the cry of potential misdoings, and yet I see not the reason in’t to attempt. I wouldst see the sky unfettered by stone walls, and yet such walls do encapsulate me in a sea of distaste.

[river-ros]

[Her distraction is focused on how his words categorize her immediately. Lady. River the Lady. Lady River with her flaxen hair filled with galaxies and porcelain skin laced with constellations  Existential gender neutrality notwithstanding, his words carry on and so do her thoughts. And she wonders, in the midst of all things, why those who can run... do not.

The child of the stars does know a thing or two about being 'encapsulated in a sea of distaste' upon the ground.] 

The sky would see you, too. I bet it would approve of your venture. [It would. She would.]

[owen-organized-chaos]

[He doesn’t understand at first, and at first he thinks she’s asking because of what he has said about numbers and shapes and he is about to feel embarrassed because maybe she is saying he is crazy. But then he thinks that maybe she is talking about his question and he bites his lip in thought.]

Do you mean… like you have may thoughts but they do not all make sense when put together? Like contradicting?

[river-ros]

[She nods, slowly at first, like taking in his words, seeing if they fit correctly into the puzzle like missing pieces do. And when she comes to her answer, the nod is more pronounced -- more rapid and knowing. Yes, that is what I mean. I mean that.] 

Sort of how you know something, and you're sure that you know it. You're absolutely positive. And then you're suddenly sure that you're wrong.

Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

[lake-valentine]

[She takes his hand, and it’s like, all soft and warm and it makes it hard to focus on what she’s talking about because all he can think about is her skin and how it was once on his so close and hot and how he’d kissed her and how she’d touched him…

but she’s talking about something odd and off and like.. wait, what? Focus, Lake. So he tries to focus on what she’s saying. And he succeeds, but he doesn’t succeed in really understanding so he’s not really sure if he’s any better off.]

You…. see things other people don’t? Oh okay so like… that’s why you’re here? [Okay, so like, delusions or whatever. That’s no so strange. I mean, considering their surroundings.]

[river-ros]

[It's difficult, explaining that which does not have an explanation to someone who she's chosen to tell. There has never been an instance before, not a real one, not as if this one could really be considered real in the first place. And her head is aching with the thought and the sudden rush of 'nevermind' that fills her because it feels simply like too much effort. And when has effort ever been put in to any living thing?

She sighs, audibly, at herself. But he's trying and she's trying and it's all so very new. And there's rain where trees where and Lake's hand in hers. So she tries again.] 

It's a... side-effect, I guess. [A pause, and she watches their hands before looking up at him beneath heavy lids. It was the question to be answered that comes from her lips.] Lake, have you ever felt like you're surrounded by people who are so very different from you? As if you were made from some material that doesn't match theirs. And they can't tell -- not when they look at you. But when you look at them... when you really look... You see right through them?

That's me. I am that material.

[inthehellwithenchiladas-deactiv]

Visit Original Link

[river-ros]

I live my life inside a dream, only waking when I sleep If I could sell my sorry soul, I would have it all

[o-oneil]

[He’s the one to pull away. Though he honestly can’t find a reason to, he knows he has to do it regardless; lest they choke on the emotion that’s always sure to swell. It’s something that used to make him bitter, that feeling. Back when they were children, and a much kinder incarnation of it would flood his thoughts. He didn’t want to feel like that, and yet he did, he did, he did. But he couldn’t afford to let himself get carried away. Not now, and so he presses his forehead to hers with a soft sigh.

He has no excuse to give her. No justification, no voice. It doesn’t matter.]

[river-ros]

[The sigh is a softer one. And frustration isn't the word, because frustration isn't the feeling, necessarily. How could it be? Every touch between the two of them undoubtedly set glowing ember heat boiling the blood beneath her skin. It's a tired metaphor, the thought of her being ablaze by a simple touch, but it doesn't fade and it doesn't acclimate. Only grows stronger each time he waits days, weeks, months, years to touch her again. When he kissed her for the first time since she was a child, her lips felt like they might burst open with rampant flame and engulf the entirety of the plastic earth her feet stood upon.

She wouldn't have minded.

Only now her breath is uneven, her thoughts far from numbers and trees and closer still to the way his heart still beats beneath his chest like a real boys should. She counts the beatings beneath her palm, and her eyes reach up, up to see his, heavy-lidded and forehead pressed. 

She'd kiss him again if she thought it would matter at all. But it doesn't. Nothing does.] 

Why do you do that to me? [It is, without question, the farthest thing from a complaint.]

[lookhowyourgardengrows-blog]

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Wouldst flight to freedom be a sin if the reason for such treachery was sound as the clanging bell of heaven’s house?

[river-ros]

[Had the air not thinned out with the setting sun, and the static dropping below the horizon with it, River may not have heard the noise ringing through the hallway. But it had, so she does. She watches for a moment, introspective and lacking reason to speak, really. Having not heard words with lilt such as this casually spoken from the mouth of one of them, she finds study reason enough.] Do you want an answer or are you asking yourself? Because I doubt there's any definitive one waiting around for you. But I could be wrong. Possibilities.

[owen-organized-chaos]

[Her smile is nice but it is distracted, like his feels when he is counting things and making mistakes but people are talking to him and he is trying not to say.] 

Odd numbers are nice because they make interesting shapes like triangles and pentagons but even numbers are symmetrical and make things match. Sometimes I do not know how I feel about odd numbers, but I think seven is a good odd number to have.

[He looks over at her in his pause] Are you okay?

[river-ros]

[His rant is far from lost upon her; she likes the way his words wrap around themselves knowingly in presentation. Here are my thoughts and here is why and nevermind what you might think of it. She wonders, vaguely, if that's how she comes across to others when she speaks. She hopes so.] 

Owen, do you ever feel like your own thoughts are miscommunicating with themselves? [The question is all she can give in the form of an answer. It isn't outright. But then, she's still searching for her own answers as well.]

[lake-valentine]

[Okay….confusion….. 

But he nods like he understands. His frown gives him away.] Um, I… don’t understand. How can they just be gone?

[He feels like they’ve talked about why she’s here before, but they’ve never REALLY talked about it. It was always vague and weird and weird and vague and she’s say long words he didn’t really understand and he’d be distracted by her boobs anyway.

Now, maybe things could be different.]

I missed you, [he says without thinking. Another frown] Sorry, that’s off topic, um…

[river-ros]

I missed you too. [The words find themselves coming out of her mouth foremost, because they feel the most important. They feel pressing, like the hiding away they both seem to have done recently needs to be addressed. So she takes her hand and wraps it around his. No fingers interlacing, simply cupped, like school-yard playmates holding onto one another. Her eyes come up to him, to better explain herself.] 

Sometimes, I notice things that others don't. Maybe they aren't supposed to, or aren't allowed. But sometimes... things change. Or end up where they aren't supposed to be.

[She's slow with the words because they're honest, and she can't remember the last time she tried to be that. But she's trying now.] I can see that. I can see the world changing.

[o-oneil]

[Oz doesn’t reply verbally. He merely closes the physical distance between them, and tells himself that the veil between worlds, between their lips as they meet, is as unreal as her programs. But that’s a lie and both of them know it. She’ll feel it as he does, and maybe she’ll be bitter about it too.]

[river-ros]

[There's a sigh that breaks from her lips, lingering in the lack of space between theirs, hovering like it knows it isn't the only thing that stops them from truly touching. But it isn't there as a reminder, as a barrier. It's surprise, waiting like she had since the last time he pressed his lips to hers, pending the problem that there was no reason to ever stop. She pushes that thought to the back of her mind, with the trees and the world, and lets the sigh move to touch his lips; she could never touch anothers, even with the veil between them, and feel satisfied.]

[o-oneil]

[Oz huffs amusedly.] They aren’t usually intentions spoken. [And he may or may not have purposefully ducked closer as he spoke.]

[river-ros]

[She smiles at this, opening her eyes once more in slight shock of the warmth growing closer.] When have you been the type to do what's usual? [With her head turned to face him.]

[o-oneil]

[Oz exhales through his nose; a longer, softer version of a sigh. Tilting his head down so as to be closer to her, he ‘hm’s softly.]

I can think of many things.

[It seems to be a game today. Letting her take things as she will. Though the intended meanings are always clear enough to dance across his tongue in spoken lilts in his tone.

He can think of many things. Many things indeed. Things she would like, and things he knows she would not.

Things he should have done long ago, both good and bad.

Blood, the meeting of lips. But this is her decision as much as it is his. Her game to engage in as well, and it’s only his job to make steps one way or another.]

[river-ros]

[Her eyes are closed now. Closed because she can't be bothered by the outside world -- the things to count, clues to find, objects to observe and hate all the same just for being -- not when Oz is close.

This close.

It's a cold comfort in the warmest of ways, her hand in his. And she breathes in the thick air around her. Breathes in the days that smell of wet paint and disinfected table-tops. Days that will be gone just as quickly as wheat-air and the taste of ocean salt on her tongue.] 

Tell me them.

[It's almost a whisper. A slow invitation to fill her ears with what he probably won't. Their differences always were the most frustrating.]