Accept Our Ring and Join Our Fight

[Emprexx Plush]

((Ty Yazzie Continued From With Blood and Rage of Crimson Red, Ripped From A Corpse So Freshly Dead))

Mom always used to talk about how you knew you were with the right people when you could sit and talk for hours without ever saying a word. As a kid he always figured it was an excuse to try and make him not feel guilty for being quiet when they gardened. As he got older he figured it was a little more than that; a kinda coping mechanism for the life she'd wound up in. The old man was usually pretty quiet himself. So was damn near everyone else in the house. Beans and Elan were the chatty ones, and it wasn't long before even they either weren't around or were busy most of the time. So maybe it wasn't to make him feel better. Maybe it was just to make her feel better about all the silence.

Then he met Bee, and it all clicked.

It wasn't some fairy tale moment of fate bullshit. Hell, at first it wasn't even nice. They just hated each other almost as soon as they met. They both had their reputations, and he was...no way around it, he was an asshole. God they fought back then, even when they weren't yelling each other. Their body language just seemed to transform around each other. Damndest thing was, that's why he noticed her that day in the hall. Bent over, alone, struggling down even though she didn't seem real sure where she was going. It was the first time her body wasn't bristling with anger just from being around him, and when he called out to her he saw it start to rise up only to crumble back down. That's when he knew something was real, real wrong.

"Couldn't ignore that. I... needed to make sure you were alright. That's all."

She told him so much every goddamn day since without opening her mouth. Where she wanted to go. What was on her mind. When she was hurting. When he needed to settle the hell down. How much she loved him. It all came in words too, sure, but half the time they didn't need them. Not really. It was just nice to press together and feel the way they sank into each other as they whispered "I love you."

Her body was still against the cliffside now. She'd always been so active in a thousand tiny ways when she was up and about. Even when she slept she was never perfectly still like that. More than anything else, that told him that she was really gone. Yet in a weird kinda way, he could still hear her. He could sit there on the ground staring at her body for what felt like hours to him, and he never said a goddamn word, but they talked the whole time. On and on about home, or their future, or this place. They talked most about how the fuck he was supposed to keep going. Why he shouldn't climb the fence looming over them, cut his ass to ribbons, and drop over just to get it all over with.

Of course he wasn't gonna do it. Ty never took the easy way out before, and he wasn't about to start now. There might not be anything for him here. There might not even be anything for him left back home. But there were people that needed him still. Mom, Dad, Atsa, hell even Marcus were all counting on him to get his shit together.

He knew that.

He just needed to hear her say it.

The thing that haunted him was how he was gonna face her parents. Deep down, there'd always been this fear that he'd never be good enough for them. That somehow, some way, he was gonna fail their daughter and prove the doubt they had to have about him right. Here it was, almost like destiny: the worst goddamn way he could possibly fail. There was no changing that, no matter how many times he felt that comforting presence on his shoulder. He couldn't bring her back. That didn't mean he couldn't do better, though.

Keith would see him coming with Bee's stiff, decaying body held tight in his arms and a proud, defiant look frozen on his face to try and hold back more tears. It wasn't working. He could fool himself for a spell, though. "I'm takin' her down to the beach," he said flatly. There was no way in hell he was leaving her out here like this, and that was the only place he could imagine to give her something approaching a proper burial.

--------

There's a long mound left in the cove below. Buried at its head is a cluster of stones, and right in the middle of them is a pair of small plastic rings. One blue, one violet. They're wrapped together in a long, silver chain. Somebody put a lot of work into getting it all looped and kinked up around them to the point that trying to get them apart would be a real trick. If someone managed that...

Well. Probably best if they slept with one eye open for awhile.

((Ty Yazzie Continued In Topic Title))