Wet Clothes - Lilac POV Lilac/Tarver
I’m in my own bed; a shocking discovery, considering the last thing I remember was a rather interesting conversation with the daughter of the President of Kerenza. The room is cold, dark, and silent. My arms and legs feel stiff like wood.
The feeling brings me back to Tarver's and my first days on Elysium when my muscles seemed to turn to stone overnight. I close and open my eyes. Our room is as I expected, with the dress I had decided against last night still hanging on the closet door. Tarver’s nowhere to be seen, which is unusual in our downtime, but his socks are balled up at the crack of our bedroom door, letting me know he’s coming back. I can’t move more than a few inches, so I resign to once again sit and wait for Tarver to rescue me.
I seem to have fallen asleep again. I don’t remember being particularly tired, but I was spending my time staring at our bedroom door, waiting for Tarv to return, which is not a particularly engaging activity. The sun is up now, shining brilliantly through the paned window behind our bed. My hair sticks to my neck. Once again, the room is silent. Sometimes, this massive house is too big for me. In moments like these, the walls seem too white, even in the places my paintings have splashed over the canvas. The vents seem to be too loud. The clean smell of bleach transforms into another stench entirely. One I am much too familiar with. In these all-too-quiet nights, Tarver is the one who brings me back from the hull of the Icarus. The air dries as the image comes into my mind. Oxygen turns to ash in my lungs.
It comes in a sequence.
First, the screeching giant falls down into the dirt. In my hands, I feel the power to stop it, and around my legs, I feel chains tying me to the ground I watch from. At the time, the Icarus seemed like it was larger than life; a titan. The crash gave it the life it took away. Even though it’s been more than two years, even though I’m finally free from my father, I’m not free from their ghosts. I hear them now, echoing off the confines of my skull.
Tarver’s voice breaks through.
The aches in my body jolt back like a tsunami and wash over me like a soft tide. A monsoon of gray follows me and splashes my fleshy body. The ache of being so humanly alive soaks my bones and bedazzles me with a million pointing stones, sticking into my skin. Those jewels prick blood and let it drip down my thighs to the floor, spelling out Tarver’s face.
Tarver’s face.
It startles me awake. Horrific dreams are not so uncommon, but they’ve never acted like that. Never put me to sleep so quietly that I didn’t notice. Sweat falls down my palms and through my fingers. Tarver picks up my hand.
“Hey, Beautiful,” he whispers.
I am overcome.
Tarver picks me up and places me in his lap, the blanket on our bed dropping off my shoulders. My joints feel like clay; like they might all plop into a useless clump. Tarver’s warm arms hiss the cold away from me. I dry my hands, my forehead, my neck on his shirt. The air is hazy around my head. I can feel my pulse in my chest. The sweat pours out of me. I see now, as I sit up, that the dress I wore last night is folded in a neat, glimmering, blue pile on the floor.
“Wha-what’s-,” my voice is raspy and tired, and upon speaking, I realize I’m in desperate need of water. Tarver realizes it, too, and he sets me back down on the bed. He reaches behind himself and presents me with a glass of water and a bowl of orange slices. They’ve been my favorite ever since I read a poem of Tarver’s mother’s about a girl with hair of oranges and lemons when I was seven.
“Shh. Don’t worry. Here, drink some.” He hands me the water glass. Too weak to do much of anything about it–and too thirsty–I grab the glass with shaky hands and tip it to my mouth. Tarver’s calloused hands run up and down my back. I look at him, and he understands my question.
“Someone put something in your drink last night. You collapsed in the middle of talking.” His voice is thick. It seems like he’s always the one who has to watch me fall apart. “You’ll be fine. I called the doctor and she said so.”
“Everything hurts.”
“I-I know. You’ll be okay.” He tells himself that more than me.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he sighs, “You should eat.”
The switch between the throws of such a profane hurt and domesticity doesn’t seem normal. It doesn’t seem usual. It feels unnatural and shocking, like stepping out of cold, wet clothes and into a warm bath. The wet clothes never truly leave, though. They’re still there when the bath water cools. Those clothes are the ones I’ll wear for the rest of my life. I’ve come to accept that. Some days, the sun will rise, and its heat will dry the clothes through an open window. Other days, the water seeps out of them. It floods the floor and seeps into the bath.
But the clothes never change.
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