growth and decay

I am all the earth has ever been. I am the flowers in bloom, I am the maggot that eats dead flesh. I am the branches that reach to the sky, I am the the dirt that suffocates your corpse. Emma-Rose Hartfield / Naturalist / Living Contradiction

[sweetsunflora]

romantiisme​:

it’s a lovely speech. would have been quite moving at another time, he’s sure, with another person. overlooked, disregarded, cast aside– no better words could she have chosen to pull at his historically neglected heartstrings, on a normal day. one where they were not so recently snipped down the middle.

we need each other, she says, and elias smiles obligingly. falls into the expression easy as anything, considering it’s the same one he’s practiced everyday for years, the natural countenance of a good steward, the one that says: i am calm. i am content. i am inoffensive in every way. “oh, i’m not pushing you out,” he replies, polite as if reciting a menu. tilts his head a touch as he blinks up at her above him. “you’ve got the whole scene backwards, dear. i was the one beside you when half the ship called you mad, and the other called you demonic. you’re the one who left. and without a word of farewell, too– goodness.”

( this tone. this voice. it comes from his own mouth, and yet he doesn’t recognize it. and yet he can’t quite make it stop. )

“so i’d consider this entire production–” a wave towards her, and her general state, “– a bit late to the party. i’m glad to hear you can ‘heal on your own’. impressed at your verve, and all that. but as for myself– i’ve rather lost faith in such ideas. no energy left to spare for them. so, if that’s everything…”

he clears his throat. lets out a little cough he’s never heard before, and knits his hands together over his stomach. breathes in deep for the final rejection, the kick out the door, when he notices:

she’s wearing his trousers.

he stops. frowns, because he has no idea when she could have taken them, hadn’t even known they were missing, but their ownership is undeniable: not only are they absurdly long on her frame, cuffs rolled up nearly to where his knees would normally be, but he recognizes the unmistakable dark green shape near the left pocket– a small leaf embroidered by a london friend, early in his time in the navy. can still taste the gin on his tongue from the evening she’d handed them over, laughing– so you’ll always know what’s yours, even with all you boys dressed the same, the friend had said, and the love had been like a splinter in his throat.

with the memory, the last reserve keeping him going– keeping this act alive– crumples, leveled like a shout.

the only outward sign of it comes with a small gasp, hardly more than a breath outwards. he slides a hand over his mouth, eyes round with horror, and from between his fingers, with the sort of desperation usually reserved for the dying, he begs: “i just– i really think you should leave, emma.”

Elias smiles but it does not sit right. The gesture spreads on his face like arctic fog rolling over frozen hills. Well, actually, more than that, it reminds her of a tundra apparition. Dangerous. Disturbing. Untrustworthy. 

She inhales at his words, a sharp and painful action. When did her romantic learn how to cut into hearts like this? Who is this person? Plucking fond memories from the past and sharpening them for weaponry. Is the same being who waxed poetry with her, whose touch is more familiar than her own hand?

And then, and then, to push the blade deeper, he waves her off and says, ‘this entire production--’. Production! As if she was capable of pretending, as if their entire friendship was not founded in the authenticity of two known souls. 

I crossed the ocean for you, she wants to scream. I faced my demons for you. I went back to the womb of all my nightmares and hauntings, to keep you safe. To keep the Silent One at bay. And you want to tell me that this is all production? Her features twist, brows knitting together and mouth in ugly downturn. Her bottom lip quivers.

Emma’s vision blurs, tears starting as he dismisses her one last time. And yet, she does not do as she is told. She cannot. 

“If I leave now...I will never come back to you,” A tear drags down her face, falling from the mere thought, “We will never return to each other again. Elias, please. Can we not just talk this out?” She places a gentle hand on his knee.

“It was supposed to be a secret. And we never planned to stay for more than a night on the island. At the time, there was no reason to say goodbye. And even so, I did say a sort of goodbye...I wrote you a letter, to read if I didn’t return––You have to understand, Elias. I––I didn’t go to the island to abandon you. I did it to save you, to spare you from the same fate as the Agathe. ...I’ve lost so many friends, Eli. So many people I will never get back.” Gabriel, Eloise, Jaime... “I know you can’t fully understand but if you were in my shoes, if you experienced what I have, wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to save someone you loved? Even if they didn’t like what you did.”

[sweetsunflora]

ofcoeurbrise​:

it’s not what she would have wanted, he knows. 

to honor her memory with the blood of another is to dishonor what she stood for, tantamount to dragging the sunrise down from the morning sky and forcing the colors to mix again, to either turn bright blood red or back into night. you have your memory of me, darling, he can hear her voice saying. let it be something beautiful and untouchable, let it bring you the strength to keep your kindness–do not let this darkness seep in around the edges, turn the whites of the photograph, the smile in it, black. 

he should tell emma that they’re better than this–like nyima would have told her. i told you once the ache would fade, he would say, a gentle hand on her shoulder before he pulls her into a hug, builds her a fortress from his own weary blood and flesh in which to fall apart. this is just another, and it will dull all the same. he would kiss her forehead, maybe even conjure up a smile from somewhere inside of himself, a complete facsimile of the thing, and tell her that he won’t suffer her hands any more red on them than they already have. 

but nyima isn’t here. 

her blood still soaks in the fabric of his shirt, he can see the spots where emma didn’t quite clean herself of it–little flecks of red, the only reminder of a whole person, of their real savior. nyima isn’t here, and its clear now that god, if such a being ever existed, chewed tristan henin between his canine teeth and spat him back out with distaste. god looks at the two of them, standing unmoving like statues on this beach, and says you alone will know the meaning of true suffering, this living while everyone you’ve ever loved falls at your feet. 

he will bury his kindness with her–now is the time for claws. 

“i’m with you, emma. in every way that’s possible, i’m with you.” he swallows, his voice hoarse with disuse, with the scars of a the howl that ripped from it. “that shot–that kill–” he bites down hard on his bottom lip, enough to taste copper on his dry tongue. “it was meant for me and i mean to repay it in kind. i’m not letting any more of you fall while i still live–even if that means i have to get my hands wet with english fucking blood.”

--

There should be comfort in knowing that she will not walk this terrible path alone. It is better, is it not? To tread a darkened way hand-in-hand with someone who loves you. Who would fight gods and men alike to ensure your safety.

But when she looks at Tristan, taking in his sorrow-ridden appearance, slowly and meticulously; there is no comfort, no joy, no satisfaction, no happiness. There is only the sad and somber understanding that there is no other way for them to be than this.

They could not choose forgiveness, even if Fate allowed them every opportunity to do so. They cannot turn the other cheek, lest they insult the severity in which pain has gripped––seized and squeezed in unflinching fingers––their soft and loving hearts. No, no, this is their only option. To turn that love and make it deadly, let it spoil and turn poisonous. The only fate they will accept is one of spilled blood and hate. 

She steps closer to him, reaching out to hold his larger hand in her small one. “And I am with you,” she says in voice that rings with quiet confidence. “I am with you to the ends of the Earth. To the ends of Hell, even. I refuse to let you bear the entire burden of our revenge, nor the heavy guilt of Nyima’s––” She can’t say it. Not yet. “It wasn’t your fault, Tristan. It wasn’t.”

[sweetsunflora]

Visit Original Link

❝ But my family… oh, that is darker than love...I think what we have is the kind of organisms you find in stones, and starfishes, and things that grew on the ocean bed. That were there before the first fish appeared, and the first ancestors of our kind - which Darwin supposedly claims might not have been holy, after all, but I refute it just the same. Darwin is boring, and easily replaceable. Myth is eternal. ❞ - Sebastien Sylvian​, 1845 // @thespicn

(( HAPPY HOLIDAYS, VENLI! I adore you so much and I am so thankful your life and mine have met. Hope you enjoy! ))

In a garden on the sea There were two people, you and me, debating about the universe. Poetic words in exchange,  adoring glances sent your way. Tell me, mon cheri, did you know?

Talks of love and family, oh I never asked, what did you really mean? When you said ‘My love is older than the sea’. 

You said, ‘Myths. They’ll last longer than time’ and I know you believed it when I looked in your eyes and you said ‘My love, my lovers, they are mythos in disguise’. 

In a garden on the sea, there were two different people, you and me, one dipped in mythos and dreams.

And I was there just watching, wanting to touch, wanting to know what you mean when you say your love is  deeper than the sea. But that afternoon has come and gone and I will never know if  you’re where I belonged. And I will never be back in the garden on the sea.

[rpmusings-galore]

                                  surely, she was too  young 

                                              to have so many    ( g h o s t s )

[sweetsunflora]

I am all the earth has ever been. I am the flowers in bloom, I am the maggot that eats dead flesh. I am the branches that reach to the sky, I am the the dirt that suffocates your corpse.

[sweetsunflora]

ilvulcanico​:

he waited. 

it was her move — her chance to put the pick to the ice, to make the first crack spill into something more. ice into diamond. and if she had looked away, if she had chosen the path of some wilted flower, he would have made his move too: he would have accepted that she had died on the island, that the thing that returned in her place was pale and bleak, that she had always been someone cruel and weak. 

she did not look away. she was smiling, and then she wasn’t; she was flickering, and then she was solid.

“i do not know what i am.” ( we are already at war, do you not see? we have been at war with one another since the beginning, and yet still, even still, even now, even here, i would turn my weapon anywhere to keep you living and foolish. what have you done to me? what have you done, poisonous flower? ) “angry, angry is too tame a word. do you think a letter may do away with that? shall we sit around together and read it? did you write of love, i wonder? ‘love is the most convoluted, maddening, beautiful, simple thing in all the universe.’” he mocked her now, rolled out the words he remembered, turned them into a ridicule of the truth they had found within them that night. “‘i am glad i could know you. i am glad i could expose the flesh of you so that i might eat it raw.’ is that what makes you lubrique? it seems you did not let me know you at all.” 

a moment of silence, of nothing. a moment with the death around them. 

“i am glad it was only that girl that died. what if it had been you? did you think of that at all — what it would mean?” he did not sit yet but neither did he leave. he thought he might hate her, but this felt worse than hate. he knew that he simply wanted her alive still, alive here. that he would use the whole of the world to fuel a pyre for her warmth. and he hated it, hated this need. “i am afraid of what i would do if le silencieux wore your face. i am afraid i would serve it.”

She intends to let him spill his anger out, until there is no more. That is, after all, the best way to deal with Teo when he gets like this. Let the flame burn and burn and burn until there is no firewood left to fuel him; until he dooms himself with his own consumption. And she was doing quite well—stoic and unflinching—up until the moment he casts doubt on her. Is that what makes you lubrique? Her eyebrows furrow, surprise and offense written into the creases of her forehead.

She can take his ridicule, his twisting of beautiful words into weaponry. That is his way: to slice when hurt, to lash out when wounded. But even so, he is not allowed to do that; to desecrate holy ground, divine memories, with the idea of her insincerity. Or even worse, painting her affections as nefarious. Fighting words claw from the back of her throat, battling self-control to escape her mouth. She bites down on a soft tongue, sharp pain just a footnote of the moment. The incendiary words are pushed back; back until he is finished. Back until she forms something matching in its cruelty.

Then he softens, in the way only Teodoro does. Burning inferno to warm bedroom flame; that is his way too. However, an admission of care, admittance of devotion that extends into afterlife; they are still not enough to purchase her forgiveness. Not yet. She rises from her seat, approaching him until they are less than an arm apart––an abandoning of love letters on a cold bench. When she looks up, her face is still marred by ugly offense.

“Do you mean that? Do you truly believe that you do not know me, just because I haven’t poured every single sorrow into you? Because I was too busy loving you?” She pauses, an angry exhale filling the silence. “You are a sorry, faithless thing, Teodoro. But I made a deal...and you are due your sadness.”

“So here it is: I did think, Teo. Ever single step I took across the ice, I thought of you—and the rest––and how the danger would be worth it, if I found a way to kill the Silent One. If there was even a chance of understanding it. But I didn’t find any of that. All I’ve discovered, all I’ve put upon myself, is a new depth of self-loathing and hatred; and more questions that have no answers. Tell me, nounours. Does that satisfy you?”

[weusedtobegiants]

In the wrong light anyone can look like a darkness.

Richard Siken, from War Of The Foxes

[sweetsunflora]

philistined​:

———

“Getting more than enough,” the caulker snorts wryly as he comes up alongside her and plants his tar bucket by his foot. “Too much, even.” Laszlo looks down at his gloved hands. Smudges the tar off of one finger just to get it on his thumb.

“Oh, ‘course, Rosie.” a small, half-dismissive grumble of endearment as he eyes her sidelong. “It’s already written in stone. Well— Stark’s Ink,” shrugs nonchalantly. “Close enough.” 

The shift in tone quirks one brow— then the other when she asks if he’s all right. The half-hearted smile he can expect, but that? “No,” he admonishes in a low hum. “‘Course I’m not fucking all right.” Laszlo’s eyes crinkle, mustache twitching lopsided toward a smile. “Don’t make to tell me you are, either.” Hones in on the most material next step he can think of, when it comes to things like this— “you eaten at all since this time yesterday?”

She looks to the island, steeping in his words. “Yes, far too much. If this was fiction, I would have closed the book a long time ago. There’s only so much terror one can believe in.” 

Then that nickname, a harkening to warmer, more lightened, times. She turns her head, glancing at him up and down. So much about him is different here; tar on his hands instead of ink, frost forming on his facial hair. She can’t help but think of his intelligence as wasted on this ship, in his role as a caulker. He could’ve been the Promethean’s head naturalist, if he wanted. But that was how it was between them, always has been; she didn’t understand him and he didn’t understand her but that did not stop their spirits from being linked. Balanced, she used to think, the universe desires to be balanced. Emma and Laszlo were evidence of that. And despite their differences, she knows him enough to recognize his band of care: unembellished affection, blunt words, a focusing on the next capable action. 

“No, but I’m fine.” Grief makes everything taste like ash, like a waste of time. “I’m not that hungry. No fussing, Laz. This isn’t Manila.” I’m not even a little sick.

[sweetsunflora]

fatherfoxhound​:

when: post-mutiny, just after the funeral service where: philippa’s cabin with: @sweetsunflora

The chaplain would call it a miracle he made it through the service, if he could recall the details at all— less a service than tragedy’s latest triptych, paint strokes just so. Three lives rendered in oils that time might never dry. It’s as if the event seeps from him with each passing second that displaces it; growing hazier and hazier until he can’t even recall the words that’d left his own mouth on the main deck mere minutes prior— just the fog. Can only recall the sight and sound of his own breath. The icy clouds it formed before his face when he’d moved his leaden jaw. Can only recall the cold-strained breathing of the scores that stood there to watch. The fog. Escaping in puffs from scores of chapped and sorrow-pursed mouths. The fog, and faces hazing in and out of it.

At first, his feet take him through the lower deck before he entirely realizes where he’s going. As the cabin nears, so does the intention crystallizing in his chest. This must be the place. If grief’s built a house in him, this must be the place to cut its timbers down.

He pushes through the door before he’s certain what he plans to do on the other side of it. Sit on the edge of her cot, maybe. Sit on the edge of her cot and turn her coat over in his hands.

The last thing Laurents expects is to find someone already there. He freezes in the doorway, voice escaping in a startled crackle. 

“Emma—?”

She had an idea––an awful, symbolic, idea: to sit in the hollow, empty, turtle shell of Philippa’s life, and take on the full scope of her actions. To burden herself with the gravity of death. Of murder. She had not just killed flesh and blood, but hope and dreams...Thoughts and ideas that will never come into being again. When she opens the cabin door, she intends to drown in the context of the life she ended.

Her hands run over bedsheets, unmade and cold. A bed left in a rush, meant to be tidied later upon returning. There is a small bookshelf in the corner and a writing desk close by. Emma approaches it to find a journal, closed but page marked by fountain pen. She almost opens it, almost breaches into the mind that is here no more but another thing catches her eye first. A peaking corner of a portrait just underneath the leather bound diary, and before she can even pull it out; before she can see the whole picture, Emma knows it is her own work. The noblewoman’s face––made with her own strokes, her own hand––half-smiles in burning irony. And it feels like a mocking, the universe’s mocking. The naturalist’s features twist, wrought iron mangled by this new blow. Her chest heaves, up and down, and the ugly lines on her face deepening. Suddenly, a scream claws out her throat and she is no longer human but hurricane, tearing through books and blankets and journals. She howls, and keeps grabbing and ruining, because that’s all her stupid hands can do. All they know how to do.

Suddenly, Laurents is in front of her and she stands in the middle of unholy debris. There is wetness on her face, running down in streaks. When did she start crying? “Laurents––This isn’t––I can explain.” But she chokes on her excuses. “––I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I don’t know why––W-Why did I do that? I’m so sorry.” She sinks to the floor, holding herself. As if that will keep the shattered pieces of her together.

[sweetsunflora]

romantiisme​:

—

emma reaches for him and he sits utterly motionless as he waits to see what she will do; emma reaches for him and if he weren’t so busy being still and silent and useless, he would tell her not to touch his hands. you don’t know where they’ve been, darling. you don’t know where i’ve been at all.

once she’s made her retreat, he slides down on the coverlet until he is only half-propped against the wall behind him. lets his legs slip out straight until they drape over the edge of the bed, bent to hang at the knee, listless as his half-shut eyelids. drums his fingers over his stomach and looks to the ceiling, a perfect picture of boredom if not for the blood still tacked to his shirt.

“what would you have me say, emma? ton coeur, ma langue– what’s the use of it, any of it? is it comfort, the purpose? well, dear, if that’s all, take whatever you’d like. heart, liver, and the rest– though i’ve little left to offer tonight, apart from body heat and dull company, so. perhaps another cabin would better suit.”

he looks to her directly for the first time since entering the cabin. raises an eyebrow and flicks his eyes, pointed, towards the door.

-- His dismissal stings, acid burning in indifferent disregard. Oh, Elias. Have you always looked like Bastien? How have I never seen it, the romantic poetry oozing from your words––why it’s just like the actor’s lyrical drawl from once upon a time. Once upon an Agathe; once upon a greenhouse bathed in afternoon glow. Or perhaps the resemblance is a trick of the light, the bent trays of the sun filtering through Promethean windows. Either way, she’s been here before; reaching out to someone adored, only to find that the door to their heart has been locked and chained.  With Bastien, she did not fight. They pushed her out, no hands needed; just the right combination of scathing words and harsh delivery; and she had slipped away into quiet distance. When was the last time the actor and her spoke? Eons ago, surely; But Elias was not them and she isn’t sure she could last a day without her Romantic reflection, much less an eon. This reprise will not have the same sad ending. 

Emma stays in place, stubbornness set in her brow. “No. You don’t get to push me out. I have lived my entire life ignored and disregarded; overlooked and cast aside. I will not let you do this to me too. I am staying, whether you like it or not, because we need each other. And I don’t need you to fix me or comfort me. I can heal quite well on my own. So, just let me stay. Tell me how to help you.”

[sweetsunflora]

She is the silver lining in all of this. I am glad to have met her.

[sweetsunflora]

where: on the coast of New Place when: 2 hours after Nyima’s death whom: closed to @ofcoeurbrise​, mentioned: @dawndusted​

Someone tried to reach her. She felt it; sympathetic hands attempting to pry the young naturalist from Nyima’s side. The second she feels a slight separation, she snarls; guttural sounds clawing from the back of her throat and out into the world, ready to kill should the fools attempt again. A savage vocalization perfectly matching the animalistic twist encompassing her entire visage. Her shoulders shove off the caring palms with no regard, still too busy pressing scarves to wound. Even if the scarves have made complete transformation into scarlet rags. Even if there is no longer any light in her eyes. Even if Tristan’s pained howl tells her the truth: Nyima is dead.

She is dead. She is dead. She is dead.

Save for the doctors, Emma refuses and snaps at anyone who dares approach them. Even then, they are not allowed to move her body. In the end, it is only Tristan’s hands and voice that pull her away from Nyima. He is the only one who can touch her now.

If there was a bond between them before, a red string, now there is a steel rope wire made up of a million threads of grief and loss. They are not one person but they might as well be for how similar they look: dark hair, dark eyes, arms around their own bodies, same vacant haunted features. Same blood under their fingernails, on their clothes. They standing closely at the shore of this new place with its crimson sands. It is a lifetime of sorrow that passes before the silence is broken. And it will be a lifetime of sorrow after.

“I’m going to kill them,” she says, a measured God speaking facts and rules of nature into existence. “I don’t know how or when but I know. I’m going to kill them.”

[sweetsunflora]

dawndusted​:

i only ever wanted to give you the sun. it is as plain, as simple as that. 

when she sees emma now, it is not the picture of the girl that she has held so closely through the colds they have gone through together  —  a testament, perhaps, to how what leaves her will not return fitting into her life the same way again, leaving her with nothing but jagged cutouts waiting to be filled by someone long gone. 

her heart breaks when she sees emma now, and she thinks that she would give her all the pieces of herself to the girl if it meant having that bright glint in those eyes again. 

perhaps it is too late to be wishing for such things. 

“did you think you could go without taking a part of me with you? silly goose.” even still, she speaks with a lightness lacing her tone, shoulders gently nudging. 

this is the worst kind of heartbreak: the splintering of hurt and the dam of normality that you use to pretend your ache is nothing. 

“you will be the death of me one day, emma.” she doesn’t mean for her smile to be a sad thing. she sits down next to emma, pauses in her reaching for the girl. asking for permission.

“you could burn the letter, you could read it to me, we could pretend it never existed  —  tell me what you need and i will give it to you. please let me.” 

-

Right now, Nyima is the very essence of ‘fake it until you make it’. She plays it like a dance, and Emma can hear every beat by old beat. 1, 2, 3, 4. Mimic a lightness until you stop feeling heavy.  5, 6, 7, 8. Fake a smile til’ it reaches your eyes. 9, 10, 11, 12. Fabricate life like the insides of you are not rotten and molded; overgrown and infested by death and all its disgusting companions. And then comes the last four count. 13, 14, 15––Then the dance stumbles, Nyima faltering to accommodate her. To ask for permission. The ritual ceases because they both know that nothing, absolutely nothing, is as it was. 

Emma is silent, for all of it; for every attempted joke and lighthearted remark. She just follows the older woman with empty eyes and hollow heart. There is a small voice, knocking on the door of her mind, that says: you should at least try to be happy, or something. Try for her. But she can’t. The best she can manage is this: a reaching for Nyima’s hand and an interlacing of fingers with hers. Her face is still a dark void, betraying nothing, but at least––at the very least––they are connected in some small way. 

“I don’t need much from you. And I won’t read the letter verbatim––” It’s too hard to do that. “––But I will paraphrase. It just says that I’m sorry; for leaving you. And that I didn’t grow up with a mother but, at least I found you; just in time. I also asked you to go back to France and tell my father what happened to me, maybe with a little less mention of monsters. But I wanted you to be the one to tell my papa that I forgave him and that I love him. I still do, should something happen.”

[derangedrhythms]

He knew me as one knows the seasons, knows the tide. Knew me like the smell of smoke, knew what I was, and what I wanted.

Hannah Kent, from ‘Burial Rites’

[sweetsunflora]

astowsway​:

emma pulls katja to her feet and she follows, ragdoll in the hands of someone who seems to know what they’re doing, who seems sure. in that moment, katja can’t say if she’s been sure of anything, really, in her whole life, the veil between real and unreal– then and now– far too thin, too nebulous, for any real clarity. so, for once: she follows someone else’s lead. meets emma’s eyes with her own wild gaze, and nods.

“you followed me,” she rasps, realization dawning.  her hands travel up emma’s arms to her shoulders, pull her closer. “you have to come back too.”

and it’s easier like this. to note: no one’s followed her anywhere, before. not in the world she’s from, where soft things stupid enough to walk to their own death deserve whatever’s coming to them; wild women wandering out onto the ice only ever meet their dues. now, having salvation passed to her from another’s hands, she is suddenly, wildly desperate to know that emma will be safe too. 

not out of some new kindness of spirit, but because it will be harder to not have this– offering, softness, kinship, whatever it is, that sent her onto the ice after katja– now that she’s had a glimpse of what it might be like. to be someone who is followed after.

her head dips to emma’s shoulder, too much cold and ice and damp for her to feel anything but solid under her forehead, and she allows herself to be led. awkwardly, they shuffle back towards the ship, a stumbling four-legged creature with far too much exposed skin for this frozen place, hair whipping back in their faces like a punishment. her voice is oddly flat, distant, small, for such a scene, but it’s the most she can manage. “we’re not dying on the ice,” she repeats, oddly, like a child parroting a line from the radio. then looks to emma, asks, absurd but– god, trying: “you doing alright there, hartfield?”

-

When Emma was young, she found a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest and broken a wing. Chirping in sad pain, the sound had drawn her in like a beacon. Save me, it called. Help me.

It was the first time she had ever felt that desperate need to protect life; to take a broken thing in her hands and say ‘you will live. I say it so’. 

Katja’s voice, raspy from clawing screams, has the exact same effect. They pull her in with cold hands and her own chilled fingers find the back of their neck, accidentally pinning down wild curls in the process. Steady, steady, the movement says with no words. “Of course I’m coming back. Of course I am.” 

Their forehead finds rest on Emma’s shoulder and suddenly she realizes...This is what it's like to be needed. To be necessary. No one has ever needed her support before. Perhaps the rest of the world didn’t think her capable of it. Her: a shy, fragile, thing made of smooth edges and delicate words. But oh she is fragile no more. Not when Katja needs someone solid, and strong. Someone strong enough to hold them in sure embrace as they make the brutal trek back into the Promethean’s warmer halls. “Yes. Yes. I’m doing fine. Don’t worry about me. We are almost there.”

When the finally make it into the safe haven of their room, all Emma wants to do is wrap them in every blanket the two of them own and rub Katja’s arms until life returns to their face. But experience tells her to pause, to take note of the freezing dampness on the other’s clothes. They will never get warm wearing that. “You need to get changed; into dry clothes. You can use one of my nightgowns. And then I will smother you in every blanket I can get my hands on,” She lets a tinge of leivity come forward through a small, crooked smile, “How does that sound?”

[watchoutforintellect]

Langston Hughes, from ‘Tired’ featured in Selected Poems

[sweetsunflora]

astowsway​:

katja lets out a huff at emma’s wink, amused despite herself, and rolls her eyes. “emma, you are talking an awful lot about men tonight. do you have something to tell me? some secret tryst you’re dying to share?” she waves away further mention of the doctor, pulling a face. best not to open that can of worms at all, if she can manage it. “i don’t know all that about troublemakers. but why don’t you tell me your type? what secrets lie in the heart of a hartfield?”

katja similarly passes over the further discussion of fathers, side-stepping it politely as a drunkard on the sidewalk, which is– a bit of an ironic choice of a metaphor, that. she smothers her own smile with a raise of her eyebrows, which turns into a distressed noise as she sees emma tracking her shoes into the bed. katja’s bed. “wait, no, no, no–” she says, grabbing emma by the ankles and rotating her like a clockhand, so her legs are hanging off the side of the bed. when that doesn’t work she reaches up under her skirts and grabs her calves for leverage, spinning her until the shoes are dangling safely away from the clean sheets. falling to a knee, katja strips them from emma in a few quick gestures before the girl gets any other ideas, her sober fingers steady on the many buckles. then she throws them behind her, knowing emma will be too drunk to protest at the carelessness– assuming the wastrel doesn’t laugh it off first.

shoes removed, katja steps back and examines emma with her hands on her hips and sighs, knowing what is to come. knowing what she must do. she can’t send her to bed in all that…stuff. even if it wouldn’t completely dirty up their shared linens, the girl’s sure to complain for days over the backache if she sleeps in a corset. “up, up, one last time,” katja commands, hoisting her like a doll, and turning her around slowly so she can get to the back of her dress. “lean against the bed if you have to, but this thing is coming off, hartfield. i don’t know what those men track into the common mess, but i won’t have it tracked into my bed too. so, arms up above your head, chérie.” she pats her on the hip, once, a distancing gesture, the sort of affection someone might show a horse, or a particularly friendly dog. it still makes her feel a bit… odd, though, and she retracts her hand soon after.

the dress buttons are a beast of their own, and katja is thankful for the distraction. getting the thing up and off the girl is such an endeavor it almost doesnt feel terrifyingly intimate, the soft brush of fabric peeling from fabric in a quiet room, the little holes of the sleeves where the girls hands disappear. the moment her head emerges from under all the skirts, hair askew, looking not unlike some tumbling, young creature, blinking confusion at the sudden change of lighting. katja swallows once, twice. takes a deep breath. is glad, for the dozenth time that evening, that emma is drunk. and that she isn’t.

“okay, you’re fine to sleep in your shift–” because holy christ katja is not getting her out of that and into a nightgown, she’s not a saint “–but we need to get you out of this corset.” she claps her hands together, like she’s trying to convince a small child of something. realizes it’s a move she picked up at the orphanage, and immediately frowns, drops her hands. “last step, and then you’re free to bed. and then you’ll hear all about– baby and grownup me, or whatever.” it feels ridiculous, saying it aloud, but. easier to humor the silly thing, right? “while you’re drifting off to sleep. it’ll give you something tragic to dream of, and you’ll curse me about it tomorrow, but–” a shrug– “you asked for it.”

Katja rolls her eyes but Emma takes it in stride. More than stride, in fact. She takes it with glee; happy to create an ounce of amusement in her new friend. There is something special about fondness forged in teasing and lighthearted jokes; an open exchange that says ‘please, step closer; even if it’s only to giggle at my ridiculousness’. A gateway to more vulnerability down the line. 

what secrets lie in the heart of a hartfield? Emma chuckles at this, at the idea that she could ever be something mysterious. Her, an open book with a bleeding heart stitched onto the cover. If Katja wanted to peer in, crack open the tome of her, who was she to refuse. “My type? Hm...Let me see...” She taps her bottom lip in thought. “I’m afraid I’m too inexperienced to have a type. My mind is a very powerful thing, you see. I can make myself fall in love with anyone, if I try hard enough. Everyone has a drop of beauty in them, you only need a keen eye to see it. But I suppose if I could choose who to love, it would be someone kind and sweet. Someone who will build me cathedrals out of poetry and inscribe me in history with heartfelt words of prose. A writer, now that I think of it, of the romantic variety.”

Emma laughs when Katja takes off her shoes, but not before offering an amused, “Merci”. 

Truth is, she is used to being dressed (and undressed) by hands that are not hers. So she obliges to the other’s commands easily and without qualms. Arms above her head, holding still. If she closes her eyes she can almost pretend she is back in Paris, handmaiden at her whim. Albeit, her handmaiden was a bit less rough with her and certainly less snarky. Not that she minded. Better roughness than patronizing gentleness.

If Emma was more sober, Katja’s hand on her clothes, moving against her corset would feel so odd, so foreign, so...intimate. But whiskey has the habit of removing things like embarrassment from an emotional vocabulary. “My dreams are already tragic, Katja. If anything you’d be providing me a small reprieve.

But you must let me help you out of your corset. It’s late and I feel terrible for making you care for me like a lost child. If you let me help you then at least we can both get to bed faster, non?”