The docks, Friday night

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had rushed back to the docks after his encounter with Lucifer, excited to let Octavia know what he'd found out, and see if they couldn't relocate some equilibrium together.

Octavia wasn't there, though. Her boat was, which was a relief (he hadn't let himself think about it consciously, but he'd been really worried she'd just take off), but she was nowhere to be found.

He pulled his phone out and sent her a quick text -- found the fix! where r u?? -- and sat down on the dock next to the Samsara to wait. Running his clearest happy memory, Octavia in her new butterfly dress, though his head on repeat to keep the night mares at bay.

[open!]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

Octavia had made what was clearly the sanest choice a person could make at a time like this... And gone out to the preserve. She had a fire going, burning bright, and she could hear the night mares in the shadows around her almost constantly. Occasionally, one or two got close enough to affect her.

She let the bad memories wash over her. The terror, sorrow, pain all felt real in the moment, but that was all. And she'd survived much worse - as all these agonizing memories were reminding her, in their roundabout way.

And then Duke's text came in.

In the woods, she sent back. Where else?

[betterthanaplan]

Right. Of course. In the dark, spooky woods. When there were weird things feeding on trauma memories haunting the darkness.

Sometimes Duke really worried about her.

come home? I found a FIX

[okteiviakom]

It'd only been months since Octavia had been the leader of Wonkru and Fandom had been nothing but a distant memory. There should have been nothing surprising about how easy it was to fall back on that when everything else failed.

She was the worst thing in these woods tonight.

(Maybe she shouldn't have skipped yesterday's therapy.)

What is it?

[betterthanaplan]

Duke hesitated, thumbs hovering over the keyboard on his phone. For an eternal, irrational moment, he’s sure that if she tells her, she’ll take the info and run. She won’t need him anymore, and she’ll leave.

It’d been a very long few days.

good memories. They cancel the bad

[okteiviakom]

Probably didn't help that Octavia kept him waiting for an answer, huh?

But she was staring at his text. Good memories? She was supposed to be able to call up good memories? It felt so absurd she almost wanted to laugh.

[betterthanaplan]

It really didn’t. Not with the number of times he’d relived his dad’s death over the last few days. Or watched his mom leave. Or heard Nathan reject him. Or —

Good memories, he told himself firmly. And started typing.

the first time I saw you I’d been here a month. You were sitting at the bar even though they wouldnt serve you yet and you had this ...look on your face. Like you could glare your way through the bar itself if you tried hard enough.

I thought ‘ooo, I don’t know her.’

‘But I want to’

Who said the good memories had to all be hers?

[okteiviakom]

There was another long pause before a reply came.

I remember that

She was remembering it right now, in fact. She'd talked about it to Lucifer just a couple of weeks ago, when he'd asked her to tell a happy story for a change.

You asked about the ocean

The insistent noises in the darkness around her seemed to thin out, just a little.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke let out a breath he hadn't know he was holding.

you said it was still there. and wondered why I cared.

I invited you to go see it on my boat

[okteiviakom]

Octavia wasn't good at this. It didn't take much for her thoughts to stray to how the ocean was on the Ground now - the ocean floor was nothing but sand and worms and storms that felt like shards of glass, and Octavia had marched her people right into it - but she was fighting against it, trying to focus on this memory.

And i tried to leave halfway through

[betterthanaplan]

I was disappointed, Duke said, far enough away not to know that her mind had tried to stray. you asked questions like you cared about the answers

I thought maybe I was too much for you. scared you away

but you stayed

Even that early on. She'd stayed.

[okteiviakom]

I just thought i should quit while i was ahead

Because it was going well

[betterthanaplan]

Duke relaxed back against her boat, smiling down at his phone.

it was

kept going well too

you told me about being a raccoon

[okteiviakom]

You told me youd get me a fake id

Those were probably somewhere in the boxes with all the stuff from the apartment, actually. She tried not to think about it.

[betterthanaplan]

I did get you a fake ID! and a card with horses on it

that was later, though

[okteiviakom]

You got me TWO

One with her actual birthdate, and one that was 2019-appropriate for a 21-year-old.

She stood up, while she typed.

But even that first time, i knew i wanted to see you again

[betterthanaplan]

yeah? Duke was exhausted, but felt better than he had in days. you called me 'good people'. I still wasnt used to that

I wanted to see you again too

She'd been twelve years younger than him at the time, and he'd felt like a dirty old man. Did his best to ignore any attraction and keep it platonic.

It hadn't worked. Clearly.

[okteiviakom]

I remember the next time, Octavia sent back, trying to hold on to that memory as she gathered her things.

She hadn't brought much with her.

[betterthanaplan]

pecan pie, Duke sent back. made such an impression you tried to make it for thanksgiving

[okteiviakom]

Badly

Went without saying, but not right now.

But you were cute when you came to talk to me

[betterthanaplan]

well sure! I excel at cute

that's when you taught me my first words in trig

[okteiviakom]

And thats when i knew

Knew what? He might have to wait a while to find out. Because that was the memory Octavia was trying to cling to now that she was putting out her campfire, leaving herself with nothing but the torch she'd first come here with.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke waited, biting his lower lip.

. . . Okay, this was taking awhile. His expression slowly drooped.

tavi?

u okay?

He was having some trouble keeping up his own happy memories now. As the last time Octavia went suddenly incommunicado in the preserve came pouring into his head.

Wandering in the woods for hours, calling her name. Lying in bed alone, feeling like he couldn't breathe. The endless cycle of drunk-hangover-pain-drunk. Everyone telling him she'd be okay, but knowing enough about the Ground to know even a day back there could have altered her irrevocably. . . .

He had a whole month's worth of these just stacking up on each other in a giant trauma sandwich for the night mare hanging out with him. Octavia was maybe going to want to come back fast.

[okteiviakom]

Trust her, making her way across the island with just a torch and flimsy good memories was no picnic, either. The landscape of the forest looked different in the dark, and she remembered the way she'd been plucked from these woods and tossed back onto the Ground, too.

And the night mares just loved that.

Octavia didn't dare try and text anything else before she was out of the woods, at which point she sent a simple, On my way home.

The good thing about that, at least, was that she didn't have a very long way left to go.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke felt his phone buzz with the incoming text, and did his best to try to look at it, but the mare had gotten her hooks in his brain now, and the only lights he had were those of the harbor and the moon.

He'd gotten overconfident. And the mare had found a nice, juciy, fresh terror to sink her teeth into.

He sat hunched over on the hard stairs to the lighthouse, the wind rustling through the whispy remains of his hair. Every breath was a struggle, his prematurely ancient lungs straining, his weakening heart stuttering in his chest.

He was going to die before he ever saw Octavia again.

Maybe Lucifer would visit him in Hell.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was moving as fast as she could, as fast as she dared, practically running once she came to the port and headed for where their boats were --

And then skittered to a stop as the scene seemed to warp around her.

Oh. Oh, she'd walked right into a memory. "... Duke?"

[betterthanaplan]

"You're not dying today," Nathan said. "When you die, it's going to be because I killed you myself."

"I'm sorry." Duke was starting to wheeze. "For everything."

Nathan's hands tightened on the step below him. "You're never sorry."

Duke shook his head. The movement made everything blur and fade. "I'm always . . . sorry." He choked on his next breath, his chest seizing. "Nathan -- I miss you. What — we were. But I'm in love —" He had to stop to heave in another breath, collapsing slowly to the stairs. "— With someone else —"

[okteiviakom]

Was Octavia supposed to be fighting this with good memories? Because, she couldn't.

All she could do was stare in horror.

[betterthanaplan]

The rest only came in hints and snatches. Nathan laying Duke out on the stairs, staring CPR. Danny leaning over him with baby Jean, and his breathing going from labored to practically nonexistent.

Pain. Everywhere. Just -- pain. Until even that faded to black.

Duke -- the real one -- lay curled on his side by the Samsara, his phone clutched in both hands against his chest, shaking with silent sobs.

There was a reason he'd told her he never wanted to go through any of that again.

[okteiviakom]

As soon as the memory faded away again, Octavia rushed to Duke, dropping onto her knees next to him. One of her hands was still holding the torch, casting a small circle of light around them, but with her other hand, she tried to --

She wasn't even sure what she was trying to do. Pull him onto her lap? She just wanted to save him from this, and knew she couldn't.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke grabbed onto her the moment she touched him, his phone clattering to the dock and nearly falling between the boards. He didn't care. He fisted his hands in her shirt, pressed his face into her side.

"I fucked up," he said, voice muffled and wobbling. "Let it get to me."

He'd thought he'd be fine now. But knowing how to fight something and actually doing it weren't quite the same thing.

[okteiviakom]

"It's everywhere, snogon," Octavia told him quietly, rubbing a circle against his back. "You didn't fuck up, this is what it does."

Waited until it got its claws in you.

[betterthanaplan]

"You stopped answering. I was worried. . . ."

She could probably guess what he was worried about.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia knew.

And the torch was dying.

They were in a room in Arkadia, and Lincoln seemed to realize she was crying before she did. He pulled her into his arms, snug against his chest, and kissed the top of her head, and murmured, "Hey, hey, en's ogud, gada".

She finally felt something, and it seemed like everything.

They stood there for a while. Octavia just shaking, Lincoln just holding on until she calmed down. Or at least settled down a little. And then they stood there like that for a moment longer before Lincoln spoke again. His voice was gentle, and steady, but had a slightly off note about it.

"Why don't you tell me about them, hm?" he asked. "Whoever it was that... you lost."

She didn't want to talk about it.

She desperately wanted to talk about it.

Octavia drew in an unsteady, ragged breath. "His name," she said, sounding small, "is Duke."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke let out a soft noise, still curled against her. He should do something. Get her thinking about happy memories again, fight this off.

But he wasn't sure this wasn't a happy memory for her. Held by one man she loved, talking about another.

And he wanted to hear what she had to say.

[okteiviakom]

Held by one man she'd loved and had been forced to mourn, talking about another she was in love with, and would have to mourn, with no body to bury.

It was guilt and grief, nothing more.

Her voice words came haltingly. "Two years," she said, trying to swallow down the urge to start crying again. "Been there for two years before I met him. And that was the -- he was the first thing that made me feel something I'd thought I'd never feel again. H-he felt like he was, like he could be home."

She buried her face further against Lincoln's chest, and only barely felt him stroking his fingers over the braids on the side of her head.

"He wanted to learn Trig," she continued, her voice going smaller again. "I taught him, like you taught me." And then her voice broke. "And I'm never going to see him again, and he's never going to find out what happened to me."

Lincoln seemed to tense, as the memory faded out again.

It was a bad memory.

Octavia's cheeks were wet again.

[betterthanaplan]

Oh. Oh.

Duke could be slow sometimes, but he realized what the mare was showing him. Octavia had seen his goodbye to his ex, and now this was hers. He hadn't remembered it that way, not tonight; tonight he'd been remembering the dying, the pain and the fear and the knowledge that he'd never see her again.

Which was what she was remembering too, wasn't it.

They had to stop this. He had to. No matter how much pain the mare tried to conjure.

The result was chaotic. Duke in his office, ripping his desk to shreds over a little foam shark. The Devil's Nest on New Years, watching Octavia lose herself to the music. A New Year's long ago, watching Nathan throw himself at the reverend's daughter in a rejection of everything Duke. Octavia punching Nathan. Nathan punching Duke. Nathan appearing out of the blue at the Parents Weekend picnic. Octavia appearing out of the blue on the Rouge, after being missing for a month. Nathan, Octavia, Nathan. Octavia. Hugs and blows and fierce kisses. Bare skin, smooth or scarred, pale and pink or black and blue. Flashes and sparks, enough to make him dizzy and then --

Water.

Specifically, the clear green-blue of tropical water from below, the platonic ideal of aquamarine. Duke hung there, suspended in a shaft of scattered sunlight, unencumbered. Weightless. Playing chicken with his breath to make the moment last as long as possible. Nothing in his ears but muffled rippling and the roar of his own blood, nothing in his mind but the peaceful sea.

I'll remember this forever, he'd thought at the time, and he had; like an old movie, an over-exposed snapshot. A moment worn shiny and smooth by hundreds of touches over the years. He offered it up willingly, gratefully, and hoped Octavia found it as beautiful as he did.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia did. The calm of it felt soothing after the bombardment of images right before it, and it felt like it took her breath away.

The torch had gone out. She tossed it aside and wrapped her arms around him, and tried to bask in his memory.

And, she knew what he was doing. So she tried to offer one of her own, too: equally calm, and quiet. Blue with hints of green. The Earth, as seen from above, just hanging suspended in space with the moon just barely coming into view behind it, and the vastness of space behind them.

The stars like flecks of glitter on black velvet.

[betterthanaplan]

That was one of the things they’d first bonded over; the similarities between water and space. Duke drank up the beauty of it, leaning into her, letting his head rest fully on her chest. Listening to her heart beat.

He didn’t notice that torch going out. Hadn’t noticed she’d had it to begin with. All he knew, all he cared about, was that she was here. Battered, maybe. Changed. But his, and here.

“Thank you.”

[okteiviakom]

"I love you," Octavia murmured, holding on to him tightly.

A flicker, a snapshot of him, smirking against the backdrop of a picnic at the school. Saying, "Ai fig yu pri meizen, seintaim." It was accompanied by a feeling, of warmth, of belonging.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke laughed softly. "I barely knew what I was saying. But you lit up."

He'd even gotten a laugh out of her. Which they both could see now.

"Made it my personal mission to make you do that as much as possible."

[okteiviakom]

"I hadn't heard Trig from anyone in years," Octavia murmured. "That's when I knew I wanted you in my life for as long as I could keep you."

That was what she'd meant to tell him when she'd left the preserve.

[betterthanaplan]

"You get to keep me," Duke said. "If it's up to me. You get to keep me forever."

[okteiviakom]

It wasn't up to them, and they both knew that.

But Octavia was vehemently ignoring that right now. Instead, she tried to call up more memories. None of them particularly remarkable in an obvious way. Just... small moments.

The both of them wrapped up in bed. Him, cooking. Otters in their enclosure. Jellyfish in a tank. A sunset from the deck of the Rouge. Kisses and embraces, at his diner, in the galley, out in the preserve.

The very warmest of his smiles.

[betterthanaplan]

And in return, Duke picked out his favorites of her. Laughing at the picnic. Standing in the powdered sugar snow. Wearing her new butterfly dress.

Wearing his shirts.

Every single tiny, half smile he'd ever won from her.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia made a small noise, something like a gasp.

Then she tried to pull him a little more upright. Because she wanted to kiss him.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke let her.

Because he wanted to kiss her, too.

[okteiviakom]

And as Octavia did, it blended into another memory. Wine on a quiet Sunday night on his boat, on his couch.

Only she was much less awkward about this kiss than she had been about their first one.

[betterthanaplan]

Well. Practice made perfect.

Duke finally unknotted his hands from her shirt, so he could press them to her face instead. He paused for a breath, looking her over from less than an inch away, then dove in for more.

He was going to remember this forever.