okteiviakom | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday Morning

Entry tags:

The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday Morning

Duke was out for his class thing. Octavia wasn't sure for how long, but she was taking a chance, and so she sat at the table in the galley with two things in front of her. One, the phone Duke had given her after she'd shown up. Two, the locket Niylah had made her in the bunker. She'd finally opened it. Taken out the SIM card, and carefully, almost hesitantly put it in the phone.

She was honestly surprised to find it still worked. As soon as she turned the phone on, the notifications poured in. Texts, voicemails, missed calls. Almost all of them from Duke.

For a moment, Octavia just stared at them. And considered just deleting them all without looking.

But when had she last made a sensible choice like that? So instead, she went through the texts, from the selfies with goats through the increasingly worried questions, all the way down to just a picture of the ocean meeting the sky, with no caption, no words attached. She checked the date. A day, two days before she'd come back.

Then she moved on to the voicemails. "You missed lunch. You're not at the flower shop." The texts hadn't been easy, but at least they were short, quick to get through - a little more distant than the voicemails. They were his voice but not his voice.

(And then there was a voicemail that wasn't from Duke -- "So if you don't mind, I think it's time to come out of hiding." -- and that was its own kind of tangled emotion.)

"What's the point of anything if you can just go away? Fuck!" The texts hadn't had the sounds of glass breaking. None of Duke's shaky breaths. "I was and am very fucked up, and people need to stop asking me how I'm doing before I start stabbing them with your sword." She wanted to stop listening. But she also didn't want to miss even a second. All those years of wanting to talk to him, and he'd been talking to her, and his voice was -- "It's okay, you know. If you come back broken."

She wanted to stop listening.

She didn't. There was just one more voicemail left.

"Someday, we'll both be butterflies. And then we'll both be sharks. And then something else we haven't even dreamed of yet, but -- we'll find each other."

She'd just... sit here and let that last one loop a few times.

(Too many times.)

[ooc: Open, but angsty. Duh.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

Octavia twisted the chain around her fingers until the locket was resting on her palm again.

"Should I not have listened to them?"

She didn't sound very sorry that she had.

"No, it's -- it's your voicemail. I just." He let out a pained laugh. "I'm pretty sure I remember yelling at you at one point."

Octavia shrugged one shoulder. "You did, a little," she replied in her best rasp. "It's fine."

Almost everything else had been harder to take. Anger was simple.

"It's not." Duke shook his head. "I don't feel that way. I'm glad you got me to open up. To let you in."

"It's fine," Octavia repeated mildly. She looked down at the locket again, then closed her fingers around it. "I get thinking that. It's only been a couple of weeks since I told someone... really important to me that love's a weakness."

Her head tilted a little, but her eyes stayed on her hand that was now a fist around the necklace.

"And that the only way to not get hurt is not to love."

Duke swallowed hard.

"Do you still think that?"

"I think it's solid advice because that's where most of the worst pain comes from," Octavia drawled without looking up. "But I know it's not that simple."

There was always love inside her that just refused to day, even when she'd tried to suffocate it.

"Anyway, I was angry. And disappointed. That's why I said it."

And then Indra had immediately made her regret it.

Duke nodded. "I did think that way," he admitted. "For kind of a long time. Can't help but keep falling for people, though, can we?"

"I guess."

Said a woman who had not done so for seven years. Mildly.

She fidgeted with the locket again, opening her hand.

Well, she'd had other things on her mind.

"Are you going to put the card back in there?" Duke asked.

"Not really the plan, no." The locket had served its purpose. Or the maybe its purpose was shifting. "Not that I really need a phone, either."

"Not yet, maybe," Duke said. "Though . . . I mean, I kind of like the idea of being able to call or text you for real again."

Or getting random texts from her. He'd missed that.

It was probably going to take a while before she'd get back into the habit.

But hopefully, at some point.

She shrugged. "So the card's not going back in."

"Alright." Duke nodded and flashed her a little smile. "Do you want to put something else in it, instead?"

Not that she'd had much -- or anything -- else on her when she'd gotten back.

"No."

Well. Hadn't thought of anything by now, anyway.

Octavia looked down at the locket again, and snapped it shut. Then ran her thumb over the front for a quiet moment.

Then said, "She made this out of scrap metal from Arkadia."

Duke nodded. And tried to remember if he knew what Arkadia was.

"It sounds like she was a good friend."

It was likely Octavia had never called it that, before. The first time she'd ended up in Fandom, the camp had only been called that for a very short while.

She sidestepped talking about Niylah for now, even if it made her seem like she hadn't even heard him.

"Means it was also scrap metal from the Ark," she said quietly. "So if you'd ever wanted to touch a piece of the place I was born, surprise. Now you have."

“You kept a piece of Fandom inside a piece of the Ark,” Duke said. “And kept them both close enough not to leave them behind when Fandom pulled you back.”

"Something like that," Octavia murmured.

But it was exactly like that. The Ark part hadn't been on purpose, but she had still realized that had been what she was doing.

"Ended up leaving behind everything else I'd brought from here." The shark and the dove were gone. Both on purpose, but for very different reasons, in very different context.

"Things are just -- things," Duke said, shaking his head. "Most of them can be replaced." He reached for her hand. "I'm just glad you're back." He gave her a little smile. "I got pretty tired of talking into thin air."

They hadn't been just things. Especially not with the ways she'd lost them.

But she let him take her hand.

"I guess I got tired of not really talking to anyone," she admitted. It might have seemed like she was being tight-lipped here, and yet she'd still managed to say more about her feelings in less than two weeks than she had in the last three years in the bunker combined.

How many people in the bunker had been actively trying to get her to talk about her feelings? Or let her be her instead of who they wanted her to be?

"Kind of wish I could stick a new card in my phone and hear what you wanted to tell me," Duke said, rubbing his free hand over his mouth. "Though -- from the look on your face when I came in, being able to hear mine didn't really make you feel any better."

Octavia gave his fingers a squeeze. "It's not that simple." Her feelings were mixed and tangled and complicated. What else? "But I wouldn't want you to hear what I had to say, anyway."

The version of her who'd talked to a dead phone was not the one here today.

"I want to know everything," Duke said softly. "But I know I probably never will. And -- and that's okay."

He was saying that half to convince himself. But he meant it. He would make it be okay if he had to.

"Mochof," Octavia murmured.

It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him. But she couldn't tell him. There were things she'd never even talked to other Wonkru about since they'd happened.

She watched him in silence after that. An urge was bubbling up, and she was weighing whether to go with it.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject